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 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?
Summary
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?” Each subsequent
stanza contains further questions, all of which refine this first
one. From what part of the cosmos could the tiger’s fiery eyes have come,
and who would have dared to handle that fire? What sort of physical
presence, and what kind of dark craftsmanship, would have been required
to “twist the sinews” of the tiger’s heart? The speaker wonders how,
once that horrible heart “began to beat,” its creator would have
had the courage to continue the job. Comparing the creator to a
blacksmith, he ponders about the anvil and the furnace that the
project would have required and the smith who could have wielded
them. And when the job was done, the speaker wonders, how would
the creator have felt? “Did he smile his work to see?” Could this
possibly be the same being who made the lamb?
Form
The poem is comprised of six quatrains in rhymed couplets.
The meter is regular and rhythmic, its hammering beat suggestive
of the smithy that is the poem’s central image. The simplicity and
neat proportions of the poems form perfectly suit its regular structure,
in which a string of questions all contribute to the articulation of
a single, central idea.
Commentary
The opening question enacts what will be the single dramatic
gesture of the poem, and each subsequent stanza elaborates on this
conception. Blake is building on the conventional idea that nature,
like a work of art, must in some way contain a reflection of its
creator. The tiger is strikingly beautiful yet also horrific in
its capacity for violence. What kind of a God, then, could or would
design such a terrifying beast as the tiger? In more general terms,
what does the undeniable existence of evil and violence in the world
tell us about the nature of God, and what does it mean to live in
a world where a being can at once contain both beauty and horror?
The tiger initially appears as a strikingly sensuous image.
However, as the poem progresses, it takes on a symbolic character,
and comes to embody the spiritual and moral problem the poem explores:
perfectly beautiful and yet perfectly destructive, Blake’s tiger
becomes the symbolic center for an investigation into the presence
of evil in the world. Since the tiger’s remarkable nature exists
both in physical and moral terms, the speaker’s questions about
its origin must also encompass both physical and moral dimensions.
The poem’s series of questions repeatedly ask what sort of physical
creative capacity the “fearful symmetry” of the tiger bespeaks;
assumedly only a very strong and powerful being could be capable
of such a creation.
The smithy represents a traditional image of artistic
creation; here Blake applies it to the divine creation of the natural
world. The “forging” of the tiger suggests a very physical, laborious,
and deliberate kind of making; it emphasizes the awesome physical
presence of the tiger and precludes the idea that such a creation
could have been in any way accidentally or haphazardly produced.
It also continues from the first description of the tiger the imagery
of fire with its simultaneous connotations of creation, purification,
and destruction. The speaker stands in awe of the tiger as a sheer
physical and aesthetic achievement, even as he recoils in horror from
the moral implications of such a creation; for the poem addresses
not only the question of who could make such a
creature as the tiger, but who would perform this
act. This is a question of creative responsibility and of will,
and the poet carefully includes this moral question with the consideration
of physical power. Note, in the third stanza, the parallelism of
“shoulder” and “art,” as well as the fact that it is not just the
body but also the “heart” of the tiger that is being forged. The
repeated use of word the “dare” to replace the “could” of the first
stanza introduces a dimension of aspiration and willfulness into
the sheer might of the creative act.
The reference to the lamb in the penultimate stanza reminds
the reader that a tiger and a lamb have been created by the same
God, and raises questions about the implications of this. It also
invites a contrast between the perspectives of “experience” and
“innocence” represented here and in the poem “The
Lamb.” “The Tyger” consists entirely of unanswered
questions, and the poet leaves us to awe at the complexity of creation, the
sheer magnitude of God’s power, and the inscrutability of divine
will. The perspective of experience in this poem involves a sophisticated
acknowledgment of what is unexplainable in the universe, presenting
evil as the prime example of something that cannot be denied, but
will not withstand facile explanation, either. The open awe of “The
Tyger” contrasts with the easy confidence, in “The Lamb,” of a child’s
innocent faith in a benevolent universe.
