Poet’s Corner: Blake–Tyger

12 February 2026

(23 May 2014) I cannot leave Blake without looking at one of my favorites, and probably his most famous poem, “The Tyger”:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forest 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, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and 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 watered 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?

This is one of the few of Blake’s poems for which we have the drafts: Blake labored over the first and last stanzas, vacillating between the words ‘could’ and ‘dare’, first using one, then the other, and finally deciding to use ‘could’ in the first stanza and ‘dare’ in the final, causing the feelings of the reader to go from admiration to fearful disbelief and amazement that anyone one would conceive of and then create such a fearful, powerful beast as the tiger. This poem, from the “Songs of Experience”, has an analogue in the “Songs of Innocence” in “The Lamb”, another well-known poem that asks the lamb if he knows who made him, which poem is referenced in the concluding line from the penultimate stanza, “Did he who made the lamb make thee?” One only needs to see a tiger in action to understand why the poet would choose to look at this predator in the way he does, awestruck amazement! Come back next Friday for another edition of the Poet’s Corner! Anyone interested in our poetry can find it here.