poem

The Tyger — Aug 5, 2026

William Blake

0 votes
◆

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 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?

◆

Comments

  1. Loading comments…
📖 About this poem

Blake's "The Tyger" is one long, breathless question. A speaker stands before a tiger and asks, again and again, what kind of maker could possibly have built something so beautiful and so dangerous at once. The poem never answers — it just circles the mystery, forge imagery piling up as if creation itself were blacksmith work: hammer, chain, furnace, anvil, a heart hammered into being like hot metal.

The music does a lot of the work. Short, hammering couplets in tight trochaic rhythm practically strike like tools on metal, so the sound mimics the forging it describes. The single most striking turn comes near the end: "Did he who made the lamb make thee?" — one line that quietly detonates the whole poem, pitting gentleness against ferocity in the same universe, the same maker.

It still lands because the question hasn't gone anywhere. We still stare at beauty that frightens us and wonder what could have made both it and us.