Thread: William Blake

I love his poetry, his juxtoposition of innocence and experience. His poem the tyger has always been my favorite.

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 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?



Showing a darker side of God: why would he create just a "dread" animal, the dark imagery God as a blacksmith forging creation, the expulsion of Lucifer from heaven and God's contentment. Fantastic, I absolutely adore this poem.

I never 'got' William Blake. In Literature back in high school, maybe it was cause I was a simpleton in a crowd of smarter people, but everyone would be discussing on the themes on one particular poem and I'd just be blank, trying to work out how they got to those themes...

William Blake is my favorite romantic poet.

He is sex-ay.

I preferred Blake before we spent a year studying his 'Songs of Innocence and of Experience' in school. Some of his poems are great - my personal favourite is 'London', and there are a few other 'Experience' poems that are very powerful. However, on the whole, studying his poetry put me off. Some of the 'Innocence' poems are just awful...'Infant Joy' and 'Spring' are two prime examples of this. Of course, this is just my opinion.

Yeah, I definitely prefer his 'Experience' but I find the two works connection very interesting.

Damn, the interpretations are always so different. I thought the tiger was a metaphor for the French revolution.

Blake is a genius. Enough said.

Originally Posted by lisajane

I never 'got' William Blake. In Literature back in high school, maybe it was cause I was a simpleton in a crowd of smarter people, but everyone would be discussing on the themes on one particular poem and I'd just be blank, trying to work out how they got to those themes...

No, you were probably just more intelligent and dismissed them as rubbish to start with. I used to scratch my head sometimes when my english teacher would go off on one about the meanings in his poems. It's that moment where they say something ridiculous and everyone thinks, my God, you're a genius miss/sir, whatever, and you're thinking: I just don't see it. But, of course, you're not right to point the dubious nature of their ramblings out!