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In his own words

The Tyger

William Blake · 1757-1827 · From Songs of Experience (1794)

Tyger, tyger, burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeCould frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skiesBurnt the fire of thine eyes?On what wings dare he aspire?What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder and what artCould 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 graspDare 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 brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeDare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The most famous question in English poetry: what kind of maker makes both the lamb and this? Blake asks it fourteen ways and never answers.

The poems are in the public domain. The texts here follow Poems of William Blake, Project Gutenberg ebook 574, reproduced verbatim, punctuation included. That late 19th century text keeps the famous Tyger spelling while smoothing some others, so a few lines read slightly differently than in Blake's original etched plates. Songs of Innocence first appeared in 1789, Songs of Experience in 1794, combined by Blake into one book whose title page promises to show the two contrary states of the human soul. The introductions and groupings are ours.