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“The Tyger” doesn’t have a concrete setting. Instead of focusing on a particular place or time, the speaker poses abstract questions about the nature of creation. For this reason, the poem’s setting might best be characterized in cosmic terms. Blake’s speaker is located on the earthly plane of existence. On this plane, humans don’t have easy access to the mysterious processes that made the world around them. They must therefore adopt a speculative attitude and ask about phenomena to which they have no direct access. This is precisely the kind of shift the speaker makes over the course of the poem. In the opening stanza, the speaker begins by referencing the tiger’s usual habitat “in the forests of the night” (line 2). However, instead of going on to describe this habitat in more detail, the point of reference quickly shifts to the broader cosmos: “In what distant deeps or skies / Burnt the fire of thine eyes?” (lines 5–6). After this shift, the speaker’s questions become entirely speculative. For example, when describing the forge-like workshop where the tiger’s creator works, the speaker isn’t describing a real place. Rather, he or she is offering a speculative vision of a metaphysical place and, with limited imagination, describes it as a workshop.

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