THE TYGER WILLIAM BLAKE

                                                          THE TYGER

                                                                            WILLIAM BLAKE

INTRODUCTION TO THE AUTHOR

            William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age.

          William Blake was a 19th-century writer and artist who is regarded as a seminal figure of the Romantic Age. His writings have influenced countless writers and artists through the ages.

HIS MOST FAMOUS POEM:

          The Lamb is one of the most important poems in Songs of Innocence. Its parallel in Songs of Experience in Blake's most famous poem, The Tyger. The Lamb is regarded as a poem on Christianity. In the first stanza, the speaker, a child, asks the lamb how it came into being.

SUMMARY :

            The poem The Tyger by William Blake is written in the praise of the Creator – God who has made such a fierce creature. However, it also reflects the poet’s amazement over the Creator because He is the same who has created the lamb which is quite opposite in nature to the tiger.

           The poem has been divided into 6 stanzas having 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme of the poem is AABB. The first stanza is repeated in the end except for the change from the Could frame to the Dare frame. The poet uses the word ‘Tyger’ for tiger probably because in his times it was the correct spelling of this word

POEM LINES:.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

 

In what distant deeps or skies.

Burnt 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 is the hammer? what the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?

What is 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 at 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?

 

Stanza 1

In the first stanza, the poet says that the tiger is burning bright in the forests of the night. The line means that the tiger which is in the forest is burning like fire or in other words looking like yellow fire in the dead of night. The burning bright also reflects the tiger’s bright yellow colour that making it look fierce. In the third line, the poet raises a rhetorical question, which is the immortal hand or eye which is capable of framing or building its fearful symmetry. The poet, in a way, appreciates the power of God who can create such a fearful structure and bear its appearance. Man can neither create it nor can bear its appearance due to fear.

Stanza 2

In the 2nd stanza, the poet talks about the eyes of the tiger. He wonders from which distant (he means infinite places) the fire has been brought and put into the eyes of the tiger. The fire has been brought either from skies (i.e. either sun or heaven) or from deep oceans (means either core of the earth or hell) because it can not be an ordinary fire of the world but a divine one which makes the eyes of the tiger so fierce, in the third line, the poet wonders which were those wings that took Him to those distant areas. Similarly which were the hands which dared to catch that divine fire. So, in the first two lines, he appreciates the fire and in the 3rd and 4th lines, he appreciates the Wings and Hands of the Creator.

Stanza 3

 In the third stanza, the poet talks about the heart of the tiger. He wonders what kind of shoulders and the art the Creator would have that twist (give shape) the muscles or ligaments of a tiger’s heart. Here the poet is praising the power and amazing art of God which helped Him create the tiger’s heart.

In the third line, he is amazed by thinking how powerful the Creator’s hands and feet are which made Him stand in front of the tiger when its heart began to beat. In this stanza, the poet seems to praise the Creator’s physical power, daring nature and jaw-dropping art.

Stanza 4

In the fourth stanza, the poet praises the brain of the tiger. He wonders which hammer, chain, anvil and furnace the Creator would have used to create the brain of the tiger. These tools are used by the iron-smith to create solid and heavy items.

The brain of the tiger, for the poet, is no less than iron. Hence he thinks about the divine tools used to create the brain of such a deadly animal. Again the poet wonders how powerful would the grasp of the Creator could hold the deadly brain of this animal.

Stanza 5

In this stanza, the poet tends to compare this deadly animal to the lamb which is meek, innocent and quite opposite to the former. In addition, there is also a reference to a Biblical incidence as mentioned in Paradise Lost by John Milton.

The poet says that when God created the tiger, the stars (here means Satan and his followers) which were at war with Him were so frightened by its (Tiger’s) sight that they accepted their defeat and threw down their weapons and made the sky wet with their tears

 In the third line, the poet wonders would God have smiled after creating Tiger as it was beyond words for Satanic forces. He again thinks is He the same who created the lamb because the latter is quite innocent and meek while the former is deadly enough to frighten Satan.

Stanza 6

 The final stanza is a repetition of the first one. The only word changing here is ‘dare’ instead of could which is quite significant. In the first stanza, the poet seems to be less amazed by the powers of the tiger and God but after going through all the features of the tiger he wonders if it is only God who can dare to create such an animal.

CONCLUSION:

 In the poem “The Tyger” William Blake is stating that God should readily punish the creatures he brings into existence. God created the Lamb, but he also created the Tyger and is so directly responsible for the misery of that same lamb, the Tyger that would prey upon it.