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The Tyger
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William Blake: “The Tyger”
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Illustration of "The Lamb" from "Songs of Innocence" by William Blake, 1879. poem; poetry
A Study of Poetry
4:043 Dickinson, Emily: A Life of Letters, This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to me; I'll tell you how the Sun Rose/A Ribbon at a time; Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul
Famous Poets and Poetic Form
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) only confirmed photograph of Emily Dickinson. 1978 scan of a Daguerreotype. ca. 1847; in the Amherst College Archives. American poet. See Notes:
Poetry: First Lines
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William Blake: “The Tyger”
William Blake: “The Tyger” The poem “The Tyger” from an edition of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

The Tyger

poem by Blake
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The Tyger, poem by William Blake, published in his Songs of Innocence and of Experience at the peak of his lyrical achievement.

The tiger is the key image in the Songs of Experience, the embodiment of an implacable primal power. Its representation of a physicality that both attracts and terrifies is expressed in the poem’s first stanza:

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

The next four stanzas elaborate on the concept of a creator forging a savage, beautiful creature. Blake posed an age-old puzzle in the poem’s question “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”

4:043 Dickinson, Emily: A Life of Letters, This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to me; I'll tell you how the Sun Rose/A Ribbon at a time; Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul
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Famous Poets and Poetic Form
The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.