The Tyger: A musical expression of wonder by William Blake
One of my favourite musical poems. Its music is fitting for all your days.
In an essay titled “Poetry, Pleasure, and the Hedonist Reader,” Billy Collins identifies several pleasures we get from poetry:
dance (rhythm);
sound (words);
travel (using written work to transport us to different worlds);
metaphoric connections (surprise and new perspectives);
companionship (memorization); and others.
This poem, at least for me, has all except the pleasure of travel.
It’s a musical poem far older than many people today. Still, it captures a human element some people might think time has rid us of: a reverent reference to God as the creator of astonishing beauty.
Take a look at the first and last stanzas and notice the pleasure of metaphorical connections. Other pleasures you can get from every word and line.
Something so scary carries such indescribable beauty:
It is a concession that God, has made something of a mystery, giving an awe-inspiring beauty to something that would make us wet our pants at first sight.
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 sieze 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?