William Blake was born in London on November 28, 1757, to James, a hosier, and

Catherine Blake. Two of his six siblings died in infancy. From early childhood, Blake spoke of
having visions—at four he saw God “put his head to the window”; around age nine, while
walking dathrough the countryside, he saw a tree filled with angels. Although his parents tried to
discourage him from “lying," they did observe that he was different from his peers and did not
force him to attend conventional school. He learned to read and write at home. At age ten, Blake
expressed a wish to become a painter, so his parents sent him to drawing school. Two years later,
Blake began writing poetry. When he turned fourteen, he apprenticed with an engraver because
art school proved too costly. One of Blake’s assignments as apprentice was to sketch the tombs
at Westminster Abbey, exposing him to a variety of Gothic styles from which he would draw
inspiration throughout his career. After his seven-year term ended, he studied briefly at the Royal
Academy.
In 1782, he married an illiterate woman named Catherine Boucher. Blake taught her to read and
to write, and also instructed her in draftsmanship. Later, she helped him print the illuminated
poetry for which he is remembered today; the couple had no children. In 1784 he set up a
printshop with a friend and former fellow apprentice, James Parker, but this venture failed after
several years. For the remainder of his life, Blake made a meager living as an engraver and
illustrator for books and magazines. In addition to his wife, Blake also began training his
younger brother Robert in drawing, painting, and engraving. Robert fell ill during the winter of
1787 and succumbed, probably to consumption. As Robert died, Blake saw his brother’s spirit
rise up through the ceiling, “clapping its hands for joy.” He believed that Robert’s spirit
continued to visit him and later claimed that in a dream Robert taught him the printing method
that he used in Songs of Innocence and other “illuminated” works.
Blake’s first printed work, Poetical Sketches (1783), is a collection of apprentice verse, mostly
imitating classical models. The poems protest against war, tyranny, and King George III’s
treatment of the American colonies. He published his most popular collection,Songs of
Innocence, in 1789 and followed it, in 1794, with Songs of Experience. Some readers
interpret Songs of Innocence in a straightforward fashion, considering it primarily a children’s
book, but others have found hints at parody or critique in its seemingly naive and simple lyrics.
Both books of Songs were printed in an illustrated format reminiscent of illuminated
manuscripts. The text and illustrations were printed from copper plates, and each picture was
finished by hand in watercolors.
Blake was a nonconformist who associated with some of the leading radical thinkers of his day,
such as Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft. In defiance of 18th-century neoclassical
conventions, he privileged imagination over reason in the creation of both his poetry and images,
asserting that ideal forms should be constructed not from observations of nature but from inner
visions. He declared in one poem, “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s.”
Works such as “The French Revolution” (1791), “America, a Prophecy” (1793), “Visions of the
Daughters of Albion” (1793), and “Europe, a Prophecy” (1794) express his opposition to the
English monarchy, and to 18th-century political and social tyranny in general. Theological
tyranny is the subject of The Book of Urizen (1794). In the prose work The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell (1790-93), he satirized oppressive authority in church and state, as well as the works of
Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish philosopher whose ideas once attracted his interest.
In 1800 Blake moved to the seacoast town of Felpham, where he lived and worked until 1803
under the patronage of William Hayley. He taught himself Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Italian, so
that he could read classical works in their original language. In Felpham he experienced
profound spiritual insights that prepared him for his mature work, the great visionary epics
written and etched between about 1804 and 1820. Milton (1804-08), Vala, or The Four
Zoas(1797; rewritten after 1800), and Jerusalem (1804-20) have neither traditional plot,
characters, rhyme, nor meter. They envision a new and higher kind of innocence, the human
spirit triumphant over reason.
Blake believed that his poetry could be read and understood by common people, but he was
determined not to sacrifice his vision in order to become popular. In 1808 he exhibited some of
his watercolors at the Royal Academy, and in May of 1809 he exhibited his works at his brother
James’s house. Some of those who saw the exhibit praised Blake’s artistry, but others thought
the paintings “hideous” and more than a few called him insane. Blake’s poetry was not well
known by the general public, but he was mentioned in A Biographical Dictionary of the Living
Authors of Great Britain and Ireland, published in 1816. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who had
been lent a copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience, considered Blake a “man of Genius,"
and Wordsworth made his own copies of several songs. Charles Lamb sent a copy of “The
Chimney Sweeper” from Songs of Innocence to James Montgomery for hisChimney-Sweeper’s
Friend, and Climbing Boys’ Album (1824), and Robert Southey (who, like Wordsworth,
considered Blake insane) attended Blake’s exhibition and included the “Mad Song” fromPoetical
Sketches in his miscellany, The Doctor (1834-1837).
Blake’s final years, spent in great poverty, were cheered by the admiring friendship of a group of
younger artists who called themselves “the Ancients.” In 1818 he met John Linnell, a young
artist who helped him financially and also helped to create new interest in his work. It was
Linnell who, in 1825, commissioned him to design illustrations for Dante‘s Divine Comedy, the
cycle of drawings that Blake worked on until his death in 1827.

Selected Bibliography
Poetry
All Religions Are One (1788)
America, a Prophecy (1793)
Europe, a Prophecy (1794)
For Children: The Gates of Paradise (1793)
For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise (1820)
Poetical Sketches (1783)
Songs of Experience (1794)
Songs of Innocence (1789)
The Book of Ahania (1795)
The Book of Los (1795)
The First Book of Urizen (1794)
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)
The Song of Los (1795)
There Is No Natural Religion (1788)
Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793)
Biography of William Blake

an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now
considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.
His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body
of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry has led one contemporary art critic to
proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". Although he lived in
London his entire life except for three years spent in Felpham he produced a diverse and
symbolically rich corpus, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "Human
existence itself".
Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by
later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical
undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of both
the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic",[6] for its large appearance in the 18th century.
Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England - indeed, to all forms of organised
religion - Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American
revolutions, as well as by such thinkers as Jakob Böhme and Emanuel Swedenborg.
Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify.
The 19th century scholar William Rossetti characterised Blake as a "glorious luminary," and as
"a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced
by known or readily surmisable successors".
William Blake and his works have been extensively discussed and criticised over the twentieth
and now this century, however previous to that he was barely known. He first became known in
1863 with Alexander Gilchrist’s biography “Life” and only fully appreciated and recognised at
the beginning of the twentieth century. It seems his art had been too adventurous and
unconventional for the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, maybe you could even say
he was ahead of his time? Either way, today he is a hugely famous figure of Romantic literature,
whose work is open to various interpretations, which has been known to take a lifetime to
establish. As well as his works being difficult to interpret, him as a person has also provoked
much debate. Henry Crabb Robinson, who was a diarist and friend of Blake’s at the end of his
life asked the question many students of Blake are still unable to conclusively answer:
“Shall I call him artist or genius – or mystic – or madman?” (Lucas, 1998 p. 1)
Born on 28th November 1757 in Soho in London, he had a grounded and happy upbringing.
Although always a well read and intelligent man, Blake left school at the early age of ten to
attend the Henry Pars Drawing Academy for five years. The artists he admired as a child
included Raphael, Michelangelo, Giulio, Romano and Dürer. He started writing poetry at the age
of twelve and in 1783 his friends paid for his first collection of verses to be printed, which was
entitled “Poetical Sketches” and is now seen as a major poetical event of the 18th century.
Despite his obvious talents as a poet, his official profession was as an engraver because he could
not afford to do a painter’s apprenticeship and therefore began his apprenticeship with the
engraver James Basire in 1772. After completing his apprenticeship six years later, he joined the
Royal Academy of Art. At this point his art and engraving remained separate – he wrote and
drew for pleasure and simply engraved to earn a living. In 1784 he opened his own shop and in
the same year completed “Island in the Moon”, which ridiculed his contemporaries of the art and
literature social circles he mixed with. Two years previous to this, he married Catherine
Boucher.
Now Blake was an established engraver, he began experimenting with printing techniques and it
was not long before he compiled his first illuminated book, 'Songs of Innocence' in 1788. Blake
wanted to take his poetry beyond being just words on a page and felt they needed to be illustrated
to create his desired effect. Shortly after he completed 'The Book of Thel' and from 1790-3, 'The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell', which followed on from his significant Prophetic books. These
books were a collection of writings on his philosophical ideas and although they have nothing to
do with his poetry, it was a sign of his increasing awareness of the social injustices of his time,
which led to the completion of his 'Songs of Experience' in 1794.
One of Blake’s main influences was the society in which he lived. He lived during revolutionary
times and witnessed the downfall of London during Britain’s war with republican France. His
disgust with society grew as he matured and 'The Songs of Innocence and Experience' depict this
transition. As well as having radical religious ideas for the time (he did not believe in “religion of
nature or reason, but thought man’s nature was imaginative and mystical” (Lister 1968, p.27)),
he also had radical political ideas due to the day-to-day poverty he was forced to witness.
“Living near the end of a century, born in a period of imperialistic wars, coming to maturity
during the American Revolution and to the full bloom of his genius during the French
Revolution, aware of impending economic change and sick to the bone of ruling hypocrisy, he
viewed the evnts of his own days as the fulfilment of prophecy…” (Hagstrum 1964, p. 97-98)
Blake’s preoccupation with good and evil as well as his strong philosophical and religious beliefs
remained throughout his life and he never stopped depicting them in his poetry and engravings.
He died at the age of sixty-nine in 1827 and although the Blake family name died with him, his
legacy as a fascinating, complex man of many artistic talents will no doubt remain strong well
into this century. Other famous works include 'Europe', 'America', 'Visions of the Daughters of
Albion' and 'The Book of Urizen'.
Although Blake is not well known for being a specifically grotesque artist, it is his experiences
and disgust with London society in the late eighteenth century that clearly emulates elements of
the grotesque. As it would be impossible to discuss all of Blake’s works, this study will focus on
'Songs of Innocence and Experience', particularly 'Songs of Experience' to learn how he
portrayed his views on society and how the grotesque falls into that.
SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE
William Blake
Context
William Blake was born in London in 1757 . His father, a hosier, soon recognized his son’s
artistic talents and sent him to study at a drawing school when he was ten years old. At 1 4,
William asked to be apprenticed to the engraver James Basire, under whose direction he further
developed his innate skills. As a young man Blake worked as an engraver, illustrator, and
drawing teacher, and met such artists as Henry Fuseli and John Flaxman, as well as Sir Joshua
Reynolds, whose classicizing style he would later come to reject. Blake wrote poems during this
time as well, and his first printed collection, an immature and rather derivative volume
called Poetical Sketches, appeared in1783. Songs of Innocence was published in 1 7 8 9,
followed bySongs of Experience in 1793 and a combined edition the next year bearing the
title Songs of Innocence and Experience showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.
Blake’s political radicalism intensified during the years leading up to theFrench Revolution. He
began a seven-book poem about the Revolution, in fact, but it was either destroyed or never
completed, and only the first book survives. He disapproved of Enlightenmentrationalism, of
institutionalized religion, and of the tradition of marriage in its conventional legal and social
form (though he was married himself). His unorthodox religious thinking owes a debt to the
Swedish philosopher Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688 –1772 ), whose influence is particularly
evident in Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. In the1790 s and after, he shifted his
poetic voice from the lyric to the prophetic mode, and wrote a series of long prophetic books,
including Milton and Jerusalem. Linked together by an intricate mythology and symbolism of
Blake’s own creation, these books propound a revolutionary new social, intellectual, and ethical
order.
Blake published almost all of his works himself, by an original process in which the poems were
etched by hand, along with illustrations and decorative images, onto copper plates. These plates
were inked to make prints, and the prints were then colored in with paint. This expensive and
labor-intensive production method resulted in a quite limited circulation of Blake’s poetry during
his life. It has also posed a special set of challenges to scholars of Blake’s work, which has
interested both literary critics and art historians. Most students of Blake find it necessary to
consider his graphic art and his writing together; certainly he himself thought of them as
inseparable. During his own lifetime, Blake was a pronounced failure, and he harbored a good
deal of resentment and anxiety about the public’s apathy toward his work and about the financial
straits in which he so regularly found himself. When his self-curated exhibition of his works met
with financial failure in 1809 , Blake sank into depression and withdrew into obscurity; he
remained alienated for the rest of his life. His contemporaries saw him as something of an
eccentric—as indeed he was. Suspended between the neoclassicism of the 18 th century and the
early phases of Romanticism, Blake belongs to no single poetic school or age. Only in the 2 0th
century did wide audiences begin to acknowledge his profound originality and genius.
SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE
William Blake
Analysis
Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience (17 94 ) juxtapose the innocent, pastoral world of
childhood against an adult world of corruption and repression; while such poems as“The
Lamb” represent a meek virtue, poems like “The Tyger”exhibit opposing, darker forces. Thus the
collection as a whole explores the value and limitations of two different perspectives on the
world. Many of the poems fall into pairs, so that the same situation or problem is seen through
the lens of innocence first and then experience. Blake does not identify himself wholly with
either view; most of the poems are dramatic—that is, in the voice of a speaker other than the poet
himself. Blake stands outside innocence and experience, in a distanced position from which he
hopes to be able to recognize and correct the fallacies of both. In particular, he pits himself
against despotic authority, restrictive morality, sexual repression, and institutionalized religion;
his great insight is into the way these separate modes of control work together to squelch what is
most holy in human beings.
The Songs of Innocence dramatize the naive hopes and fears that inform the lives of children and
trace their transformation as the child grows into adulthood. Some of the poems are written from
the perspective of children, while others are about children as seen from an adult perspective.
Many of the poems draw attention to the positive aspects of natural human understanding prior
to the corruption and distortion of experience. Others take a more critical stance toward innocent
purity: for example, while Blake draws touching portraits of the emotional power of rudimentary
Christian values, he also exposes—over the heads, as it were, of the innocent—Christianity’s
capacity for promoting injustice and cruelty.
The Songs of Experience work via parallels and contrasts to lament the ways in which the harsh
experiences of adult life destroy what is good in innocence, while also articulating the
weaknesses of the innocent perspective (“The Tyger,”for example, attempts to account for real,
negative forces in the universe, which innocence fails to confront). These latter poems treat
sexual morality in terms of the repressive effects of jealousy, shame, and secrecy, all of which
corrupt the ingenuousness of innocent love. With regard to religion, they are less concerned with
the character of individual faith than with the institution of the Church, its role in politics, and its
effects on society and the individual mind. Experience thus adds a layer to innocence that
darkens its hopeful vision while compensating for some of its blindness.
The style of the Songs of Innocence and Experience is simple and direct, but the language and
the rhythms are painstakingly crafted, and the ideas they explore are often deceptively complex.
Many of the poems are narrative in style; others, like “The Sick Rose” and “The Divine
Image,”make their arguments through symbolism or by means of abstract concepts. Some of
Blake’s favorite rhetorical techniques are personification and the reworking of Biblical
symbolism and language. Blake frequently employs the familiar meters of ballads, nursery
rhymes, and hymns, applying them to his own, often unorthodox conceptions. This combination
of the traditional with the unfamiliar is consonant with Blake’s perpetual interest in
reconsidering and reframing the assumptions of human thought and social behavior.
SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE
William Blake
“The Lamb”
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee

Little Lamb I’ll tell thee,

Little Lamb I’ll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Summary
The poem begins with the question, “Little Lamb, who made thee?” The speaker, a child, asks
the lamb about its origins: how it came into being, how it acquired its particular manner of
feeding, its “clothing” of wool, its “tender voice.” In the next stanza, the speaker attempts a
riddling answer to his own question: the lamb was made by one who “calls himself a Lamb,” one
who resembles in his gentleness both the child and the lamb. The poem ends with the child
bestowing a blessing on the lamb
“The Lamb” has two stanzas, each containing five rhymed couplets. Repetition in the first and
last couplet of each stanza makes these lines into a refrain, and helps to give the poem its song-
like quality. The flowing l’s and soft vowel sounds contribute to this effect, and also suggest the
bleating of a lamb or the lisping character of a child’s chant.
Commentary
The poem is a child’s song, in the form of a question and answer. The first stanza is rural and
descriptive, while the second focuses on abstract spiritual matters and contains explanation and
analogy. The child’s question is both naive and profound. The question (“who made thee?”) is a
simple one, and yet the child is also tapping into the deep and timeless questions that all human
beings have, about their own origins and the nature of creation. The poem’s apostrophic form
contributes to the effect of naiveté, since the situation of a child talking to an animal is a
believable one, and not simply a literary contrivance. Yet by answering his own question, the
child converts it into a rhetorical one, thus counteracting the initial spontaneous sense of the
poem. The answer is presented as a puzzle or riddle, and even though it is an easy one—child’s
play—this also contributes to an underlying sense of ironic knowingness or artifice in the poem.
The child’s answer, however, reveals his confidence in his simple Christian faith and his
innocent acceptance of its teachings.
The lamb of course symbolizes Jesus. The traditional image of Jesus as a lamb underscores the
Christian values of gentleness, meekness, and peace. The image of the child is also associated
with Jesus: in the Gospel, Jesus displays a special solicitude for children, and the Bible’s
depiction of Jesus in his childhood shows him as guileless and vulnerable. These are also the
characteristics from which the child-speaker approaches the ideas of nature and of God. This
poem, like many of the Songs of Innocence,accepts what Blake saw as the more positive aspects
of conventional Christian belief. But it does not provide a completely adequate doctrine, because
it fails to account for the presence of suffering and evil in the world. The pendant (or companion)
poem to this one, found in theSongs of Experience, is “The Tyger”; taken together, the two
poems give a perspective on religion that includes the good and clear as well as the terrible and
inscrutable. These poems complement each other to produce a fuller account than either offers
independently. They offer a good instance of how Blake himself stands somewhere outside the
perspectives of innocence and experience he projects.
Summary
The speaker, identifying himself as a child, asks a series of questions of a little lamb, and then
answers the questions for the lamb. He asks if the lamb knows who made it, who provides it food
to eat, or who gives it warm wool and a pleasant voice.
The speaker then tells the lamb that the one who made it is also called “the Lamb” and is the
creator of both the lamb and the speaker. He goes on to explain that this Creator is meek and
mild, and Himself became a little child. The speaker finishes by blessing the lamb in God’s
name.
Analysis
Each stanza of “The Lamb” has five couplets, typifying the AABB rhyme scheme common to
Blake's Innocence poems. By keeping the rhymes simple and close-knit, Blake conveys the tone
of childlike wonder and the singsong voice of innocent boys and girls. The soft vowel sounds
and repetition of the “l” sound may also convey the soft bleating of a lamb.
One of Blake’s most strongly religious poems, “The Lamb” takes the pastoral life of the lamb
and fuses it with the Biblical symbolism of Jesus Christ as the “Lamb of God who takes away the
sin of the world.” By using poetic rhetorical questions, the speaker, who is probably childlike
rather than actually a child, creates a sort of lyric catechism in which the existence of both a
young boy and a tender lamb stand as proof of a loving, compassionate Creator.
The lamb stands in relation to the boy as the boy stands in relation to his elders; each must learn
the truth of his existence by questioning the origin of his life and inferring a Creator who
possesses the same characteristics of gentleness, innocence, and loving kindness as both the lamb
and the child. Then the direct revelation of the Scripture comes into play. The Creator, here
identified specifically as Jesus Christ by his title of “Lamb of God,” displays these characteristics
in his design of the natural and human world, and in His offer of salvation to all (hence the child
is also “called by his name”) through his incarnation (“he became a little child”) and presumably
his death and resurrection.
THE LAMB INTRODUCTION
In A Nutshell
Judging by his collection Songs of Innocence and Experience, William Blake was obsessed with
lambs. If you gave him a Rorschach test(where you look at a random pattern of ink and say what
comes to mind) Blake would probably say, "Lamb…Another lamb…newborn lamb…Lamb
doing gymnastics…" In his poem titled "The Chimney Sweep," he writes that the shape of some
poor kid's shaved head is "curled like a lamb's back." This is definitely one of the stranger
metaphors we have encountered in any classic poem.
"The Lamb" takes us to the heart of the matter. We learn Blake's two main reasons why lambs
are so awesome: 1) they are soft, happy, and make cool noises; 2) they are associated with Jesus
Christ, whom the speaker of this poem regards as the savior of the world.
But we're not going to lie, this poem doesn't exactly make us want to head to the nearest petting
zoo. If you're reading "The Lamb" out of a textbook or anthology, you might even think it's a bit,
well, boring. It sounds like something you might see embroidered beneath an image of the
unbearably cute creature and placed in a pretty frame to hang on someone's bathroom wall. The
rhymes are gratingly simple and the speaker repeats himself constantly.
But that's not the whole story. "The Lamb" was published in 1789 as part of a larger work, Songs
of Innocence, which is itself part of Songs of Innocence and Experience. This collection is
Blake's most famous work, and it's more than the sum of its parts. How so? Blake believed that
life could be viewed from two different perspectives, or "states": innocence and experience. To
Blake, innocence is not better than experience. Both states have their good and bad sides. The
positive side of innocence is joy and optimism, while the bad side is naivety. The negative side
of experience is cynicism, but the good side is wisdom.
Many of the poems in the Songs of Innocence have counterparts in theSongs of Experience. The
counterpart of "The Lamb" is "The Tyger." If you're tempted to call "The Lamb" boring and
childish, remember that it's supposed to complement "The Tyger," and vice-versa. The logic of
"The Lamb" is that God creates lambs and that lambs are sweet and gentle, so God must be sweet
and gentle. The logic of "The Tyger" is that God also creates Tigers, and tigers are savage and
terrifying, so…uh-oh.
One other thing to know about William Blake: he is like a graffiti artist in the sense that the
meaning of his words oftentimes cannot be separated from their visual appearance. Blake was an
amazing painter, and theSongs of Innocence and Experience were published as art books rather
than as "literature" plain and simple. Blake's illustrations are actually quite strange and
 fascinating. For example, check out the illustration for "The Lamb." What's the deal with those
curly, intertwining trees? We think Blake gives Dr. Seuss a run for his money, and then some.
THE LAMB THEME OF INNOCENCE
Innocence is definitely a theme in "The Lamb," right? The poem belongs to a collection
called Songs of Innocence. But do we know what the concept of innocence really means
according to Blake? Is it lack of guilt? Is it something that we have as children but lose as adults?
Can we ever regain innocence? If you read the whole of the Songs of Innocence and
Experience (which you really should do; it's not that long), you'll discover that the two ideas
intertwine in many places. For example, children can live in the world of experience if they are
poor chimney-sweeps working terrible hours and coughing all the time. But the child who
narrates this poem clearly belongs to the world of innocence. He's pretty jazzed about everything
around him, and he takes joy in natural creation. Just wait till he meets "The Tyger"…
THE LAMB THEME OF MAN AND THE NATURAL WORLD
In "The Lamb," nature is a product of God, the ultimate shepherd. When God says, "Eat that
grass," you eat that grass. When God says, "Wander by that stream," you do that too.
Oversimplification? Perhaps. But the point is that the natural world as depicted in this poem isn't
a particularly savage or unpredictable place. What's more, nature is the means by which we learn
about God. The poem implies that all the nice things in the world prove that God is a kind
benefactor who will guide us innocent lambs through the sunny world.
THE LAMB THEME OF RELIGION
In the first stanza, you've got a lamb and a child. Then, in the second stanza, the speaker throws
Jesus Christ into the mix, who, in Christian theology, is often considered both a lamb and a child
(and a shepherd, too, but let's not even go there). The poem is an expression of the speaker's
amazement at connecting the natural and supernatural worlds, not to mention the literal and
symbolic, in the figure of the lamb. The speaker's attitude represents what you could call "simple
faith," a faith that doesn't have to justify itself using complicated arguments but which perhaps
doesn't ask the hardest questions, either.
THE LAMB THEME OF YOUTH
Ah, to be young again, down at the ole' pasture, shepherding those lambs by the stream in
advance of shearing season…OK, so it may not be so easy for us modern folk to identify with
the speaker's pastoral childhood in a pre-industrial society. Nonetheless, it's clear that the voice
of the poem is a youthful one, full of optimism and still a stranger to despair and defeat. In a
way, the lamb and the speaker are really in the same boat; just a couple of kids, you know,
except for that species thing.
Symbol Analysis
William Blake loves lambs. They connect religion with both the human and natural worlds,
being associated with the rugged fields and valleys of the English countryside as well as with
farming and country folk. Traditionally, lambs represent innocence. In the Christian Gospels,
Jesus Christ is compared to a lamb because he goes meekly to be sacrificed on behalf of
humanity. Moreover, lambs, as baby sheep, are connected to the theme of childhood that runs
throughout the Songs of Innocence. By contrast, Songs of Experience contains only one reference
to a lamb. The speaker of "The Tyger" asks, "Did he who made the lamb make thee?"
 Lines 1-2: The imagined lamb is addressed using apostrophe. The speaker talks to the lamb as if
it could understand him. Also, through being called "little," the lamb is domesticated and treated
like a pet. Finally, "Little Lamb" is a clear example of alliteration.
 Line 3: The story of the lamb's making is probably a distant allusion to the creation story in the
Book of Genesis in the Bible.
 Lines 5-6: The lamb is personified as having clothing, which is actually just its wool. The
description of its "Softest clothing wooly bright" is one of the most sensual images in the poem.
 Line 7: Animals make sounds, but we don't often think of them having "voices" unless we're
personifying them.
 Lines 9-10: This repeated address to the "Little Lamb" is the poem's refrain. "Dost thou know
who made thee" is a rhetorical question. The speaker does not expect an answer from the
bleating lamb.
 Lines 11-12: If "The Lamb" were a pop song, you could think of the break between the two
stanzas as the "bridge" that connects two choruses, or refrains.
 Line 14: The Lamb is a symbol for Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
 Line 18: The lamb is also a metaphor for the child speaker, who belongs to Christ's "flock." In
Christianity, Jesus is compared both to a lamb going to the sacrifice and to a shepherd who
protects his flock of lambs and sheep.
 Lines 19-20: The poem ends with one more two-line refrain in which the child blesses the lamb.
PASTORAL LIFE
Symbol Analysis
Many of the poems in the Songs of Innocence, including "The Lamb," contain pastoral imagery.
"Pastoral" refers to the idealized lives of merry shepherds and shepherdesses who traipse through
the countryside alongside their flocks. They are connected to the land and the seasons, unlike the
city dwellers who appear more frequently in the Songs of Experience. Pastoral imagery is often
highly formulaic, and once you've seen one fluffy sheep resting in the dappled shade of a tall
oak, you've seen them all. This poem is no exception. Still, it's hard the resist the charms of a
good gurgling brook or flower-strewn meadow.
 Line 1: The lamb is a classic symbol of pastoral life. Before farmers started to fence in their
livestock, they would hire shepherds to lead their herds from field to field to feast on herbs and
grass. The speaker of this poem may be one such young shepherd.
 Lines 3-4: These lines contain an implicit metaphor comparing God to a Great Big Shepherd.
God is the one who gives sheep the desire to feed in the first place.
 Line 8: The valleys or "vales" of the country landscape are personified as a joyful choir echoing
the sound of the lamb.
CHRISTIANITY
Symbol Analysis
Sometimes a lamb is just a lamb. That is, unless it's the "Lamb of God." Or unless it's the human
lambs being shepherded by Jesus Christ. Christianity turns everyone in this poem into a lamb.
The poem's symbolic, religious meaning comes through in the second stanza, where the lamb's
creator is revealed to be Jesus Christ.
 Lines 1-2: The speaker asks the lamb a rhetorical question: if it knows who created it.
 Lines 13-14: One of Jesus Christ's "names" is the "Lamb of God." The real lamb of the poem
(you know, the soft fuzzy one) is personified by being given a name.
 Lines 15-16: The description of Christ as "meek" and "mild" may be an allusion to a hymn
published by Charles Wesley in 1763. The description of Christ as a child is an allusion to the
Biblical story of his birth into the world, which many celebrate at Christmas.
 Lines 17-18: That both the child and the lamb are called by Christ's "names" sounds like a
punning reference to the fact that Christ was known by several different names.
SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE
William Blake
“The Tyger”
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, & 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?
Summary
The poem begins with the speaker asking a fearsome tiger what kind of divine being could have
created it: “What immortal hand or eye/ Could frame they fearful symmetry?” Each subsequent
stanza contains further questions, all of which refine this first one. From what part of the cosmos
could the tiger’s fiery eyes have come, and who would have dared to handle that fire? What sort
of physical presence, and what kind of dark craftsmanship, would have been required to “twist
the sinews” of the tiger’s heart? The speaker wonders how, once that horrible heart “began to
beat,” its creator would have had the courage to continue the job. Comparing the creator to a
blacksmith, he ponders about the anvil and the furnace that the project would have required and
the smith who could have wielded them. And when the job was done, the speaker wonders, how
would the creator have felt? “Did he smile his work to see?” Could this possibly be the same
being who made the lamb?
Form
The poem is comprised of six quatrains in rhymed couplets. The meter is regular and rhythmic,
its hammering beat suggestive of the smithy that is the poem’s central image. The simplicity and
neat proportions of the poems form perfectly suit its regular structure, in which a string of
questions all contribute to the articulation of a single, central idea.
Commentary
The opening question enacts what will be the single dramatic gesture of the poem, and each
subsequent stanza elaborates on this conception. Blake is building on the conventional idea that
nature, like a work of art, must in some way contain a reflection of its creator. The tiger is
strikingly beautiful yet also horrific in its capacity for violence. What kind of a God, then, could
or would design such a terrifying beast as the tiger? In more general terms, what does the
undeniable existence of evil and violence in the world tell us about the nature of God, and what
does it mean to live in a world where a being can at once contain both beauty and horror?
The tiger initially appears as a strikingly sensuous image. However, as the poem progresses, it
takes on a symbolic character, and comes to embody the spiritual and moral problem the poem
explores: perfectly beautiful and yet perfectly destructive, Blake’s tiger becomes the symbolic
center for an investigation into the presence of evil in the world. Since the tiger’s remarkable
nature exists both in physical and moral terms, the speaker’s questions about its origin must also
encompass both physical and moral dimensions. The poem’s series of questions repeatedly ask
what sort of physical creative capacity the “fearful symmetry” of the tiger bespeaks; assumedly
only a very strong and powerful being could be capable of such a creation.
The smithy represents a traditional image of artistic creation; here Blake applies it to the divine
creation of the natural world. The “forging” of the tiger suggests a very physical, laborious, and
deliberate kind of making; it emphasizes the awesome physical presence of the tiger and
precludes the idea that such a creation could have been in any way accidentally or haphazardly
produced. It also continues from the first description of the tiger the imagery of fire with its
simultaneous connotations of creation, purification, and destruction. The speaker stands in awe
of the tiger as a sheer physical and aesthetic achievement, even as he recoils in horror from the
moral implications of such a creation; for the poem addresses not only the question of
who could make such a creature as the tiger, but who would perform this act. This is a question
of creative responsibility and of will, and the poet carefully includes this moral question with the
consideration of physical power. Note, in the third stanza, the parallelism of “shoulder” and
“art,” as well as the fact that it is not just the body but also the “heart” of the tiger that is being
forged. The repeated use of word the “dare” to replace the “could” of the first stanza introduces a
dimension of aspiration and willfulness into the sheer might of the creative act.
The reference to the lamb in the penultimate stanza reminds the reader that a tiger and a lamb
have been created by the same God, and raises questions about the implications of this. It also
invites a contrast between the perspectives of “experience” and “innocence” represented here and
in the poem “The Lamb.” “The Tyger” consists entirely of unanswered questions, and the poet
leaves us to awe at the complexity of creation, the sheer magnitude of God’s power, and the
inscrutability of divine will. The perspective of experience in this poem involves a sophisticated
acknowledgment of what is unexplainable in the universe, presenting evil as the prime example
of something that cannot be denied, but will not withstand facile explanation, either. The open
awe of “The Tyger” contrasts with the easy confidence, in “The Lamb,” of a child’s innocent
faith in a benevolent universe.
Type of Work and Year of Publication
"The Tiger," originally called "The Tyger," is a lyric poem focusing on the nature of God and his
creations. It was published in 1794 in a collection entitled Songs of Experience. Modern
anthologies often print "The Tiger" alongside an earlier Blake poem, "The Lamb," published in
1789 in a collection entitled Songs of Innocence.
Meter
The poem is in trochaic tetrameter with catalexis at the end of each line. Here is an explanation
of these technical terms:
Tetrameter Line: a poetry line usually with eight syllables.
Trochaic Foot: A pair of syllables--a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.
Catalexis: The absence of a syllable in the final foot in a line. In Blake’s poem, an unstressed
syllable is absent in the last foot of each line. Thus, every line has seven syllables, not the
conventional eight.
The following illustration using the first two lines of the poem demonstrates tetrameter with four
trochaic feet, the last one catalectic:
.....1...........2...............3..................4
TIger,..|..TIger,..|..BURN ing..|..BRIGHT
.....1..............2...............3...............4
IN the..|..FOR ests..|..OF the..|..NIGHT
Notice that the fourth foot in each line eliminates the conventional unstressed syllable (catalexis).
However, this irregularity in the trochaic pattern does not harm the rhythm of the poem. In fact,
it may actually enhance it, allowing each line to end with an accented syllable that seems to
mimic the beat of the maker’s hammer on the anvil. For a detailed discussion of meter and the
various types of feet, click here.
Structure and Rhyme Scheme
The poem consists of six quatrains. (A quatrain is a four-line stanza.) Each quatrain contains two
couplets. (A couplet is a pair of rhyming lines). Thus we have a twenty-four-line poem with
twelve couplets and six stanzas–a neat, balanced package. The question in the final stanza
repeats (except for one word, dare) the wording of the first stanza, perhaps suggesting that the
question Blake raises will continue to perplex thinkers ad infinitum.
Examples Figures of Speech and Allusions
Alliteration: Tiger, tiger, burning bright (line 1); frame thy fearful symmetry? (line 4)
Metaphor: Comparison of the tiger and his eyes to fire.
Anaphora: Repetition of what at the beginning of sentences or clauses. Example: What dread
hand and what dread feet? / What the hammer? what the chain?
Allusion: Immortal hand or eye: God or Satan
Allusion: Distant deeps or skies: hell or heaven

Symbols
The Tiger: Evil (or Satan)
The Lamb: Goodness (or God)
Distant Deeps: Hell
Skies: Heaven
Themes
The Existence of Evil
“The Tiger” presents a question that embodies the central theme: Who created the tiger? Was it
the kind and loving God who made the lamb? Or was it Satan? Blake presents his question in
lines 3 and 4:
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Blake realizes, of course, that God made all the creatures on earth. However, to express his
bewilderment that the God who created the gentle lamb also created the terrifying tiger, he
includes Satan as a possible creator while raising his rhetorical questions, notably the one he asks
in lines 5 and 6:
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thy eyes?
Deeps appears to refer to hell and skies to heaven. In either case, there would be fire--the fire of
hell or the fire of the stars.

Of course, there can be no gainsaying that the tiger symbolizes evil, or the incarnation of evil,
and that the lamb (Line 20) represents goodness, or Christ. Blake's inquiry is a variation on an
old philosophical and theological question: Why does evil exist in a universe created and ruled
by a benevolent God? Blake provides no answer. His mission is to reflect reality in arresting
images. A poet’s first purpose, after all, is to present the world and its denizens in language that
stimulates the aesthetic sense; he is not to exhort or moralize. Nevertheless, the poem does stir
the reader to deep thought. Here is the tiger, fierce and brutal in its quest for sustenance; there is
the lamb, meek and gentle in its quest for survival. Is it possible that the same God who made the
lamb also made the tiger? Or was the tiger the devil's work?
The Awe and Mystery of Creation and the Creator
The poem is more about the creator of the tiger than it is about the tiger intself. In
contemplating the terrible ferocity and awesome symmetry of the tiger, the speaker is at a loss
to explain how the same God who made the lamb could make the tiger. Hence, this theme:
humans are incapable of fully understanding the mind of God and the mystery of his
handiwork.
The Tiger
By William Blake
1
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Stanza 1 Summary
What immortal being created this terrifying creature which, with its perfect proportions
(symmetry), is an awesome killing machine?

2
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?
Stanza 2 Summary
Was it created in hell (distant deeps) or in heaven (skies)? If the creator had wings, how could
he get so close to the fire in which the tiger was created? How could he work with so blazing
a fire?

3
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?
Stanza 3 Summary
What strength (shoulder) and craftsmanship (art) could make the tiger's heart? What being
could then stand before it (feet) and shape it further (hand)?

4
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
Stanza 4 Summary
What kind of tool (hammer) did he use to fashion the tiger in the forge fire? What about the
chain connected to the pedal which the maker used to pump the bellows? What of the heat in
the furnace and the anvil on which the maker hammered out his creation? How did the maker
muster the courage to grasp the tiger?

5
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?
Stanza 5 Summary
When the stars cast their light on the new being and the clouds cried, was the maker pleased
with his creation?

6
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Stanza 6 Summary
 The poet repeats the the central question of the poem, stated in Stanza 1. However, he
changes could (line 4) to dare (line 24). This is a significant change, for the poet is no longer
asking who had the capability of creating the tiger but who dared to create so frightful a
creature.
. Summary
In this counterpart poem to “The Lamb” in Songs of Innocence, Blake offers another view of
God through His creation. Whereas the lamb implied God’s tenderness and mercy, the tiger
suggests His ferocity and power. The speaker again asks questions of the subject: “What
immortal hand or eye/Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” The questions continue throughout
the poem, with the answers implied in the final question that is not a repetition of an earlier
question: “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” The same God who made the gentle,
obedient lamb also made the frightening, powerful, and bloody-minded tiger, and whereas the
lamb was simply “made,” the tiger is forged: “What the hammer? what the chain?/ In what
furnace was thy brain?”
Analysis
The use of smithing imagery for the creation of the tiger hearkens to Blake’s own oft-written
contrast between the natural world and the industrialism of the London of his day. While the
creator is still God, the means of creation for so dangerous a creature is mechanical rather than
natural. Technology may be a benefit to mankind in many ways, but within it still holds deadly
potential.
In form and content, "The Tyger" also parallels the Biblical book of Job. Job, too, was
confronted by the sheer awe and power of God, who asks the suffering man a similar series of
rhetorical questions designed to lead Job not to an answer, but to an understanding of the
limitations inherent in human wisdom. This limitation is forced into view by the final paradox:
"Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" Can the God of Innocence also be the God of
Experience? If so, how can mere mortals, trapped in one state or the other, ever hope to
understand this God?
"The Tyger" follows an AABB rhyme scheme throughout, but with the somewhat problematic
first and last stanzas rhyming "eye" with "symmetry." This jarring near rhyme puts the reader in
an uneasy spot from the beginning and returns him to it at the end, thus foreshadowing and
concluding the experience of reading "The Tyger" as one of discomfort.
The Tyger
Copy A of Blake's original printing of The Tyger, c. 1795. Copy A is currently held by
the British Museum
"The Tyger" is a poem by the English poet William Blake published in 1794 as part of the Songs
of Experiencecollection. Literary critic Alfred Kazin calls it "the most famous of his
poems,"[1] andThe Cambridge Companion to William Blake says it is "the most anthologized
poem in English."[2] It is one of Blake's most reinterpreted and arranged works.[3]
Background[edit]
The Songs of Experience was published in 1794 as a follow up to Blake's 1789Songs of
Innocence.[4] The two books were published together under the merged title Songs of Innocence
and Experience, showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul: the author and printer, W.
Blake[4] featuring 54 plates. The illustrations are arranged differently in some copies, while a
number of poems were moved from Songs of Innocence to Songs of Experience. Blake continued
to print the work throughout his life.[5] Of the copies of the original collection, only 28 published
during his life are known to exist, with an additional 16 published posthumously.[6] Only 5 of the
poems from Songs of Experienceappeared individually before 1839.[7]
Structure[edit]
The first and last stanzas are identical except the word "could" becomes "dare" in the second
iteration. Kazin says to begin to wonder about the tiger, and its nature, can only lead to a daring
to wonder about it. Blake achieves great power through the use of alliteration ("frame" and
"fearful") combined with imagery, (burning, fire, eyes), and he structures the poem to ring with
incessant repetitive questioning, demanding of the creature, "Who made thee?" In the third
stanza the focus moves from the tiger, the creation, to the creator – of whom Blake wonders
"What dread hand? & what dread feet?".[1] "The Tyger" is six stanzas in length, each stanza four
lines long. Much of the poem follows the metrical pattern of its first line and can be scanned
as trochaic tetrameter catalectic. A number of lines, however, such as line four in the first stanza,
fall into iambic tetrameter.
"The Tyger" lacks narrative movement. The first stanza opens the central question, "What
immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" Here the direct address to the
creature becomes most obvious, but certainly, "the Tyger" cannot provide the lyrical "I" with a
satisfactory answer, so the contemplation continues. The second stanza questions "the Tyger"
about where he was created; the third about how the creator formed him; the fourth about what
tools were used. In the fifth stanza, Blake wonders how the creator reacted to "the Tyger," and
who created the creature. Finally, the sixth restates the central question while raising the stakes;
rather than merely question what/who "could" create the Tyger, the speaker wonders: who dares.
Themes and critical analysis[edit]
"The Tyger" is the sister poem to "The Lamb" (from "Songs of Innocence"), a reflection of
similar ideas from a different perspective (Blake's concept of "contraries"), with "The Lamb"
bringing attention to innocence. "The Tyger" presents a duality between aesthetic beauty and
primal ferocity, and Blake believes that to see one, the hand that created "The Lamb", one must
also see the other, the hand that created "The Tyger”: "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"
The "Songs of Experience" were written as a contrary to the "Songs of Innocence" – a central
tenet in Blake's philosophy, and central theme in his work.[1] The struggle of humanity is based
on the concept of the contrary nature of things, Blake believed, and thus, to achieve truth one
must see the contraries in innocence and experience. Experience is not the face of evil but rather
another facet of that which created us. Kazin says of Blake, "Never is he more heretical than ...
where he glories in the hammer and fire out of which are struck ... the Tyger". [1] Rather than
believing in war between good and evil or heaven and hell, Blake thought each man must first
see and then resolve the contraries of existence and life. In "The Tyger," he presents a poem of
"triumphant human awareness," and "a hymn to pure being," according to Kazin.[1]
THE TYGER SUMMARY
"The Tyger" contains only six stanzas, and each stanza is four lines long. The first and last
stanzas are the same, except for one word change: "could" becomes "dare."
"The Tyger" is a poem made of questions. There are no less than thirteen question marks and
only one full sentence that ends with a period instead of a question mark. Addressing "The
Tyger," the speaker questions it as to its creation – essentially: "Who made you Mr. Tyger?"
"How were you made? Where? Why? What was the person or thing like that made you?"
The poem is often interpreted to deal with issues of inspiration, poetry, mystical knowledge,
God, and the sublime (big, mysterious, powerful, and sometimes scary. Ever heard the phrase,
"To love God is to fear him"? That’s talking about something sublime). But it’s not about
anyone thing: this is William Blake.
For better or worse, there really is no narrative movement in "The Tyger": nobody
really does anything other than the speaker questioning "the Tyger." The first stanza opens the
central question: "What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" The second
stanza questions "the Tyger" about where he was created, the third about how the creator formed
him, the fourth about what tools were used. The fifth stanza goes on to ask about how the creator
reacted to his creation ("the Tyger") and who exactly was this creator. Finally, the sixth restates
the central question while raising the stakes; rather than merely question what/who could create
the Tyger, the speaker wonders: who dares.
THE TYGER THEME OF RELIGION
You can’t get away from religion in "The Tyger." In Blake’s day, religious individuals and their
institutions held great sway over people, far more than they do now in Europe. Questioning
God’s absolute supremacy was pretty rare, and was all but political suicide. Blake, on the other
hand, has no problem questioning God, or dabbling in religious arenas that don’t automatically
assume that the Christian God is actually alpha and omega ("the beginning and the end" of the
Greek alphabet). Thus, Blake questions who "could" create the Tyger, casting aside the notion
that such a being is omnipotent (all-powerful). He also challenges he who "dares" forge the
Tyger, and contain ("frame") its "fearful symmetry." Blake is not afraid of religious visions,
since this poem is full of them, but he's not interested in simply rehashing the Christian doctrine.
Rather, he interacts with Christian religion by challenging its assumptions.
THE TYGER THEME OF AWE AND AMAZEMENT
Closely related to the theme of religion, awe and amazement are what the divine or sublime
inspire. The sublime is a specific term that used to mean more than it does today. Now, you can
say a bowl of ice cream is "just sublime," but back in the day (say, late 18th century England),
people would have no idea what you meant. To them, the sublime is (typically) big, scary,
mysterious, awe-inspiring, and, yes, amazing. You could get published writing a book about how
"The Tyger" is about the sublime – Fearful Symmetry is in fact the title of one of the most
influential books about Blake's poetry. The sublime is big and unable to be "framed." It’s scary
and "fearful," full of "deadly terrors." It’s mysterious, lurking in the "forests of the night,"
forcing you to put thirteen question marks in your poem. It is awe-inspiring and amazing. Thus,
"The Tyger" is in part about the fact that it is mysterious. It is about the awe and amazement that
such mystery and sublimity inspires.
THE TYGER THEME OF LITERATURE AND WRITING
When a piece of literature is about literature in general, things can get a little tricky. What it
means for a poem to be about poetry is that its content somehow reflects on the process or craft
of its creation. Take, for example, a song about writing a song: "Ohhhh, it’s so hard to write a
soooong, about how much I loooooove yooouu, oooh ooh," etc. It’s a song about writing a song.
In the same way, any poem could be about the process of writing a poem or artistic creation in
general. In one way, "The Tyger" is a poem about writing a certain kind of poetry. Blake is very
interested in visionary poetry, the kind that communicates deep truths about the universe, often
concerning the divine or a higher power. Knowing anything about these subjects is really hard,
so "The Tyger" can be read as a poem about how hard it is. If we think of the Tyger as the divine
or as the knowledge of the divine, and the creator ("he") as a poet, then the poem is about the
speaker questioning how a poet could ever "frame" or possess the knowledge of the divine, let
alone write about it in a poem.