William Blakes The Tyger
Essay by 24 • June 27, 2011 • 646 Words (3 Pages) • 1,476 Views
The Tyger By William Blake
William Blake's poem The Tyger is a poem that alludes to the darker side of creation. He suggests that maybe when God created the earth and Jesus that he may have also created evil, “Did he who made the lamb make thee?”(Blake 751).
The poem begins with the speaker asking a fearsome tiger what kind of divine being could have created it: "What immortal hand or eye/ could frame they fearful symmetry?" Every following stanza contains further questions, all of which refine this first one. In the first verse, the author compares the fierceness of a tiger to a burning presence in dark forests. He wonders what immortal power could create such a fearful beast. You already begin to feel a sense of evil. “Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright
in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?” (Blake 751).
Here the author compares the burning eyes of the tiger to some distant fire that only someone with wings could reach and only with impermeable hands could seize. The author wonders where such a powerful fire could have come from. The fire is in hell. It can only be reached by the devil. “In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire?”(Blake 751).
“What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, & what art. Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, what dread hand? And what dread feet?”(Blake 751). In this verse there is a metaphor that compares a vision of a skillful and powerful blacksmith creating the tiger's beating heart and awakening a powerful beast. The phrase "twist the sinews of thy heart" is also an allusion to the coldness that a beast of prey must have towards the creatures it kills.” What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp dare its deadly terrors clasp?”(Blake 751). This verse continues the allusion to a creator, who, having made the fearsome best, must confront with the utter terror of a tiger's nature. It makes you question where the creator got the
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