LAMB: WILLIAM BLAKE :TYGER

The Lamb

   Little lamb, who made thee?

   Does thou know who made thee,

Gave thee life, and bid thee feed

By the stream and o’er the mead;

Gave thee clothing of delight,

Softest clothing, woolly, bright;

Gave thee such a tender voice,

Making all the vales rejoice?

   Little lamb, who made thee?

   Does thou know who made thee?

   Little lamb, I’ll tell thee;

   Little lamb, I’ll tell thee:

He is callèd by thy name,

For He calls Himself a Lamb.

He is meek, and He is mild,

He became a little child.

I a child, and thou a lamb,

We are callèd by His name.

   Little lamb, God bless thee!

   Little lamb, God bless thee!

The Tyger - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The Tyger" is a poem by the English poet William Blake published in 1794 as part of the Songs of Experience collection. Literary critic Alfred Kazin calls it "the most famous of his poems," and The Cambridge Companion to William Blake says it is "the most anthologized poem in English." It is one of Blake's most reinterpreted and arranged works.

"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”. 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. 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 that, "Never is he more heretical than ... where he glories in the hammer and fire out of which are struck ... the Tyger". 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 "The Tyger" he presents a poem of "triumphant human awareness", and "a hymn to pure being", according to Kazin.

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 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?