The Tyger by William Blake 1794
LOPKERJO
The Tyger by William Blake 1794
by
LOPKERJO
is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
For more questions regarding usage, feel free to contact the artist directly.
Contact artist
Support the Resistance! Help us amplify our music.
You can use PayPal or Venmo!
Your support helps us defeat authoritarians and restore democracy to the USA. Thank you! Together we will win. --Lopkerjo
"The Tyger" is a poem by visionary English poet William Blake, and is the most widely anthologized poem in the English language. 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 beauty.
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?