Poem of the Day: ‘The Tyger’

When William Blake (1757–1827) printed his “Songs of Experience” in 1794, it was as an answer and a companion to his 1789 “Songs of Innocence.” Thus, for example, The New York Sun has offered his two Holy Thursday poems, one of bright innocence and one of grim experience. Along the way, the Poem of the Day has linked “The Ecchoing Green” and “London,” and looked at “The Fly.”Whenever Blake is mentioned, experience’s tyger is linked to innocence’s lamb. And obviously so: Both “The Tyger” and “The Lamb” query their animals about creation: the tyger’s question “What immortal hand or eye, / Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” in parallel to “Little Lamb who made thee / Dost thou know who made thee.”And yet, in certain ways, “The Tyger” is a more complete poem than its sister, “The Lamb.” Certainly it has always been more anthologized, occupying a bigger place in public memory. But the poem also seems closer to the uniting of experience and innocence that is the mature form of life. In tetrameter couplets broken into four-line stanzas, Blake gives a vision of creation as a Hephaestus hammering out the living. The “burning bright” in the first line, describing the orange striped beast in the forest, explodes in the following stanzas to a blacksmith and a foundry: “What the hammer? what the chain, / In what furnace was thy brain?” The angels water heaven with their tears, but the fires of the Creator are unquenched: “Did he smile his work to see? / Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”The Tygerby William BlakeTyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?In what distant deeps or skiesBurnt the fire of thine eyes?On what wings dare he aspire?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? & what dread feet?What the hammer? what the chain,In what furnace was thy brain?What the anvil? what dread grasp.Dare its deadly terrors clasp?When the stars threw down their spears And water’d heaven with their tears:Did he smile his work to see?Did he who made the Lamb make thee?Tyger Tyger burning bright,In the forests of the night:What immortal hand or eye,Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?___________________________________________With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.

Poem of the Day: ‘The Tyger’

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