The Tyger

By William Black

Willaim Blake (1757-1827) was an English poet, painter, and visionary, whose work combines profound spiritual themes with intense, often mystical imagery. Blake’s unique style blends poetry and visual art, making him a pioneer figure in Romantic literature and art. His work, though underappreciated in his lifetime, is now celebrated for its originality and depth.

“The Tyger” by William Blake was first published in 1794 in Blake’s collection of poems “The Songs of Experience” as a follow-up to his “Songs of Innocence” published in 1789. It consists entirely of questions about the nature of God and creation, particularly whether the same God that created vulnerable beings like the lamb could also have made the fearsome tiger. The tiger becomes a symbol for one of religion’s most difficult questions: why does God allow evil to exist? At the same time, however, the poem is an expression of marvel and wonder at the tiger and its fearsome power, and by extension the power of both nature and God.

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 of the Poem

The speaker addresses the tiger and says that his bright colors are shining in the night forest. He is asking him which immortal hand could possibly have created such fearsome beauty of the tiger. He is wondering where in the depths or the skies the tiger’s fiery eyes were made. Whether the creator, whose hands dared to seize the fire and create the fiery beauty of the tiger, had wings.

The speaker then tries to imagine the kind of effort and skill required to create such a beast. He wonders that who would be strong enough to build the muscular body of the tiger. He wonders whose hands and feet were the ones that made the tiger’s heart start beating.

The speaker once again tries to figure out about the tools that the tiger’s creator must have used. He imagines that the brain of the tiger was created in a forge. What terrifying being would be so daring as to create the tiger?

The speaker mentions a time when the stars gave up their weapons an rained their tears on heaven. At this time, wonders the speaker, did the creator look at the tiger and smiled at his accomplishment? And was the tiger made by the same creator who made the lamb?

Here again the speaker addresses the tiger and says that the hands and eyes that made the tiger are not of some mortal being. It is the work of some immortal power. And even for an immortal power this was a daring task to frame the fearsome symmetry of the tiger’s body.