Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright…
audio reading (top of page) by Thomas Tucker.
The Tyger is a famous poem by the English poet and illustrator William Blake, from his Songs of Experience collection written in 1794. It’s perhaps his best-known and most analyzed poem.
Blake was regarded in his time as very strange, but many of his ideas make sense to the modern reader.
When this poem was written, it was highly unusual for writers to show interest in wild animals. People did not have access to wildlife documentaries on television, as we do today: exotic animals might be seen in circuses and zoos, but tigers would be a rarity, perhaps turning up stuffed or as rugs (this was to become very common in the 19th century).
Just as today the tiger is a symbol of (endangered) wildlife, so for Blake, the animal is important as a symbol – but of what? Blake’s images defy simple explanation: we cannot be certain what he wants us to think the tiger represents, but something of the majesty and power of God’s creation in the natural world seems to be present.
– Excerpted from www.universalteacher.org.uk
Andrew Moore’s popular teaching resource site
TIGER, tiger, 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 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 water’d heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?