High Grade Analysis of The Tyger

In this video, we cover:

• Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Understanding how the Experience poems examine the complicated, contradictory duality of existence.

• Awe and Duality: The dictionary definition of "awe"—simultaneously being captivated by beauty and terrified by danger—and how the tiger embodies that balance.

• Stanza 1 ("Burning Bright in the Forests of the Night"): The antithesis of light and dark within the tiger's coat, the balance of the AABB rhyme scheme, and the introduction of "fearful symmetry".

• The Role of Interrogatives: Why Blake constantly asks questions without providing answers, reflecting the unknowable, enigmatic mystery of God.

• Mythological Allusions: Decoding the allusions to Icarus ("On what wings dare he aspire?") and Prometheus ("What the hand dare seize the fire?") to explore human limitations versus divine power.

• The Anatomy of Creation: How twisting the "sinews" of the heart and fashioning the brain represent the intricate, internal craftsmanship of the Creator.

• Metonyms of the Forge: Analysing the hammer, chain, furnace, and anvil as human apparatus used to grapple with the divine mystery of creation.

• Stanza 5 (The Celestial Surrender): The stars throwing down their spears and watering heaven with tears, leading to the central question: "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"

• The Refrain & The Shift from "Could" to "Dare": Why changing a single verb in the final stanza signals both an enhanced awe of the beast and a meta-reflection on the artist's attempt to capture God's work.

• Trochaic Tetrameter vs. Complex Concepts: The tension between a simple, driving nursery-rhyme metre and the complex theological questions being explored.

Timestamps

• 0:00 – Top Grade GCSE Approach vs. University Level Overcomplication

• 1:11 – Context: Songs of Innocence and of Experience & The Concept of Duality

• 4:17 – Stanza 1: Apostrophe, Exotic Imagery, & Why Blake Chose a Tiger

• 6:41 – "Burning Bright" & "Forests of the Night": Antithesis & Visual Symmetry

• 8:17 – The AABB Rhyme Scheme, Historical Pronunciation (Eye/Symmetry), & Balance

• 10:22 – "Fearful Symmetry": The Creator Reflected in His Creation

• 13:23 – Stanza 2: "Distant Deeps or Skies" & The Fire of the Eyes

• 15:39 – Classical Allusions: Icarus (Wings) & Prometheus (Seizing the Fire)

• 18:37 – Stanza 3: Shoulders, Art, & Twisting the Sinews of the Heart

• 21:51 – Stanza 4: Metonyms of the Forge (Hammer, Chain, Furnace, Anvil)

• 24:59 – The "Dread Grasp": Divine Control Over Deadly Terrors

• 26:12 – Stanza 5: The Stars Surrendering & "Did He Who Made the Lamb Make Thee?"

• 29:32 – Stanza 6: The Structural Refrain & The Shift from "Could" to "Dare"

• 32:51 – Metre: Trochaic Tetrameter (Rhythm vs. Complex Meaning)

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There are also study materials on the site that can help with this IGCSE:

• Fiction Technique Bank: An extensive revision toolkit outlining key linguistic and structural devices, complete with explanations and model examples to show you how to analyse writer's craft rather than just spotting techniques.

• Unlocking Shakespeare: A complete student guide packed with practical reading strategies, contextual breakdowns, and methods to decode Early Modern English without getting stuck in the language.

• Still I Rise Teaching PowerPoint: A fully resourced, line-by-line slide deck exploring form, structure, poetic devices, and historical context for focused study or revision.

• Poetry Technique Bank: A dedicated guide designed specifically to master poetic form, metre, rhyme schemes, and structural choices across both seen anthology and unseen poetry questions.

Lesson Transcript

0:00 – Top Grade GCSE Approach vs. University Level Overcomplication

This poem is really old, which means that there's already so much content out there analyzing it. So thank you, by the way, for choosing me! But I think really it's a really important thing to keep in mind in that there is going to be so much information you just don't need at GCSE. Some students think the key to getting the highest grades at GCSE means studying something to an A-level standard or a university-level standard, but it really doesn't. I don't mean this in a terrifying way, but there is still a big gap between Grade 9 GCSE and a high-grade A-level understanding of a text.

So what I'm going to be giving you today is a top-grade GCSE-level understanding of this poem. We're not going to be talking about the ways in which Blake was radical for his time, and his hatred of the Industrial Revolution, or the allegory for the French Revolution—none of that, because you don't need it! I'm going to be focusing in on what is needed for this level of qualification: the GCSE or IGCSE at that top grade 7, 8, 9 kind of standard.

1:11 – Context: Songs of Innocence and of Experience & The Concept of Duality

With that being said, there is some background information that is really important to understand, and that is mainly that this poem, "The Tyger," was produced as part of an anthology of poems called the Songs of Innocence and of Experience. And what Blake did was kind of cool: he basically wrote loads of poems, and he put some in the section on on innocence, some in the section on experience, and they often—like there was a poem in innocence that was designed to be matched up with experience.

And what he was trying to do: all the poems in the Innocence section look at things with very sort of fresh eyes, a childlike innocence, an understanding of the world, and a really simple appreciation of nature and beauty. The Experience poems look at things much more complicated, in in a much more complex way, because they take a more adult approach of: yes, being able to appreciate the beauty of something, but also seeing the pain and the difficulty of something, and trying to understand that both of those things can be true at the same time. Something can be wonderful and beautiful, and also painful and horrible, and the complexity that comes with accepting that those two seemingly contradictory concepts.

Now, "The Tyger" was published in the Experience section of his anthology. It's matched up with a poem called "The Lamb," which was in the Innocent section, which isn't really relevant—again, we're just focusing on GCSE level of "The Tyger". But the tiger, the reason that is important is because we can essentially view the entire of "The Tyger" through that lens of how what he was trying to say in all of his Experience poems. In particular, "The Tyger" is looking at the way God has created the world with this conflicting duality and constantly and and concepts that seem to constantly contrast and contradict one another. And the tiger embodies that.

And the speaker of our poem—whether it's Blake doesn't matter, but the speaker of the poem—is in awe of God and His creation, the tiger. It's worth keeping in mind, by the way, that even just that reaction, the reaction of awe, is in itself a duality of seemingly contrasting concepts um. If you look up the dictionary definition of being in awe of something, it means you're sort of simultaneously captured by its beauty and terrified of it at the same time um. And that's essentially—the word "awe" captures the whole duality, the contrast and duality that Blake's trying to look at. So as we go through this poem, we're constantly going to look at the way this world, embodied via our tiger, is just filled with seemingly contradictory things um, and Blake, a proper devout Christian, sees that as being part of God's creation and how God has created these contrasts. So let's get into the actual poem itself.

4:17 – Stanza 1: Apostrophe, Exotic Imagery, & Why Blake Chose a Tiger

So in the very opening, we have the apostrophe. Your version of this poem might have exclamation marks: "Tyger! Tyger!" That's absolutely fine; there are some different presentations of the poem. If yours does have the exclamation mark, then it's worth noting as well the tone that that creates, with the additional passion and excitement that exclamation marks create. If the version that you've got does not have that, obviously don't talk about that.

Still, when we take our tiger, the tiger is being used as the key symbol of this poem, the vehicle via which Blake is going to explore everything I was saying before about that contrasting duality of God's creations. And there's loads of potential reasons we can come up with of why a tiger of all things, and you can definitely leave a comment below if I don't go through your theory of why it's a tiger—please share it with everybody else and let them know why you think that's what he picked! Uh, some common theories on why he chose a tiger is that it manages to embody simultaneously, as he's going to say in his poem, beauty, but also extreme danger at the same time as well. There's also room to suggest, what with Blake being an English and all, a tiger is pretty exotic for him, you know? He's not going to do: "Pigeon! Pigeon! burning bright!" He's going to pick something that feels very wondrous, so the exotic nature of a tiger may also be another thing that he picked.

But overall, we can definitely say the tiger is supposed to be a symbol of wonder and awe for our speaker. And again, who the speaker is of this poem doesn't really matter too much um, but the speaker uses apostrophe. That is not the punctuation mark; if you've seen some of my other videos with apostrophe in, you'll know this already. Apostrophe in poetry is when the poem is being spoken to a particular person or thing or whatever, and in this case, the speaker of "The Tyger" is speaking to the tiger. And what he's essentially going to do throughout this poem is muse on: how on Earth were you created in this particular way? So by speaking directly to the tiger, he's simultaneously making a comment about God's creations and what God's creations are like.

6:41 – "Burning Bright" & "Forests of the Night": Antithesis & Visual Symmetry

And the first thing we're told about this tiger is: "burning bright / In the forests of the night." Now there's two ways we can interpret "the forests of the night." One way is to think about the way a tiger actually looks, with his black stripes going down, and "the forests of the night"—it's like Blake is saying those stripes of black along a tiger look like trees um in a in a forest at night, and then the orange of the coat is sort of burning bright amongst those. And of course, it could also be referring to the location, you know: the way a tiger literally with its bright orange coat, it can be sort of prowling through forests at night hunting for prey.

Either way, what we immediately have within the opening two lines is this antithesis of "bright" and "night." Now if we interpret this as being a reference to the tiger's coat, both lines being a reference to the tiger's coat, then within the very coat of the tiger is embodied the opposites, the contrasts um. And we can think about how the contrast between the two colors actually creates a kind of beautiful symmetry and balance between them. And that is a key thing that, you know, Blake is going to keep looking at: the way that two opposing concepts create a sort of balance between the two of themselves, you know? Good versus evil, for example; bright versus night. They balance each other out in their oppositeness, and so too does the tiger coat. The tiger coat manages to embody that with the way that it looks.

8:17 – The AABB Rhyme Scheme, Historical Pronunciation (Eye/Symmetry), & Balance

This is in turn supported by the rhyme scheme he's using: you can see "bright," "night." Now you might be thinking: okay, if it's an AABB rhyme scheme, how on Earth do "eye" and "symmetry" rhyme? And that's a very fair point. Without going into too much unnecessary detail, basically the theory is back in his day, "eye" and "symmetry," with the way you would have pronounced them, could have rhymed in a way that they don't today. Trust me when I say the general consensus on this poem is that it has an AABB rhyme scheme.

Now the use of that rhyme scheme again reflects that duality, that symmetry, that balance that Blake has in looking at within the actual language of the poem as well. So he's using his rhyme scheme to reinforce that, because of course there's something really lovely and um pleasant about an AABB rhyme scheme where you have that sort of guaranteed consistency of words rhyming with one another. And I think that in turn is perhaps why Blake chose this rhyme scheme, because it reflects that idea of, you know, we as humans really like things to be symmetrical, to be balanced in the wider nature and in our language, in our poetry, and so on.

I want to take a moment to address as well that word "burning." You're going to get so sick of hearing me use the word "duality" by the end of this poem, by the way, because that word within itself also has a duality to it. Because we often think of this word having connotations of passion—"I burn for you," to quote Bridgerton—but it also, if you think of burning in terms of fire, can suggest danger as well. And that's a really common duality, isn't it? If you think about like the color red as well, has that same idea behind it. So it's like our tiger, just in the very way that it looks, has something in the way the its colors stand out that make it simultaneously come across as incredibly—we can take passion to be more like vivid, striking, but also dangerous because it's a tiger.

10:22 – "Fearful Symmetry": The Creator Reflected in His Creation

When we go to our last two lines of this stanza: "What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"

So "the immortal hand or eye": "immortal" of course creates the idea of something beyond human limitations, an allusion to God and His creations. The "hand or eye" symbolize creation: you make something with your hands, and the eye can represent like your vision, you know, what you were trying to do when you created something—you you can see what you're trying to create, and then that's sort of a symbol for your vision, if you will, for your project. So what immortal hand or eye, what like of God's creation—now I'll come back in a second to why he hasn't said "what God's hand or eye". "Could frame thy fearful symmetry": "frame" is like to capture it, right, um to make it, and then "thy fearful symmetry"—we've just talked about the symmetry in uh the way his coat looks, that's what it's referring to. And the fact that he's uh prefaced that with the adjective "fearful" evokes that tone of awe. Cuz if you think about it, he's just been talking about like the burning bright and like the beauty, the vividness of that, and then now we have "fearful"—terrified at the same time. We're getting that tone of awe coming through.

But the key thing, if we take this line all together now and piece together those three different things, what he's essentially saying, if I was translating it into more modern English: what does it tell us about God that he could create that? That's essentially what Blake is saying. What kind of immortal hand or eye could make something of such beauty, symmetry, danger, all at the same time?

So while yes, he is in awe of the tiger, he's also in awe of its creator. And essentially it's this idea of like: the tiger is a symbol of wonder and awe of God, because it's that idea of what the uh art looks like in some way has a reflection of the artist; the creator is reflected in their creation. So if God made the tiger, what does that say about God?

The key thing though: the frequent use of the interrogatives that we're going to see throughout this poem. Blake doesn't have an answer to that question. He doesn't know what it says about God, but he's putting forward the thoughts, and and in a way that's what gives him the awe, is that sort of mystery that surrounds the Creator: that we see His creations, and yet we cannot know the Creator in that same way. And so the interrogatives reflect that mystery, that uncertainty around God and everything He's done.

13:23 – Stanza 2: "Distant Deeps or Skies" & The Fire of the Eyes

In our next stanza: "In what distant deeps or skies / Burnt the fire of thine eyes?" Translation: where has this ferocity in you come from, Mr. Tiger? "The fire of thine eyes" is how we know it's talking about the ferocity of the tiger. The fire is being used as a symbol for the ferocity, and it's all the same that we've said already, right? Like fire evoking images of passion, but also great danger as well. And the fact that it's in his eyes: the eyes being a symbol of one's inner character.

Now in thinking about where that had come from, we have another use of antithesis, because we've got "deeps," like deep oceans, versus "skies." And also you've got this adjective as well of "distant." Now I think that the point of "distant" is because it literally means something far away; what it creates a feeling of is a lot of mystery around creation. While the antithesis, "deeps" versus "skies," makes it feel beyond the understanding of humans, right? Because of course "skies" makes us think of something more heavenly, while "deeps" something more hellish.

The very fact that he doesn't know, though, where the tiger's ferocity has come from—remember what I said about the frequent use of interrogatives raising the fact that we have so many questions about life and existence that we do not have the answer to. As you're analyzing this poem, please don't forget in terms of what we're dealing with in terms of religion and science: the understanding of evolution and the origin of all creatures and things like that, way more limited than what we have today. Conversely, the steadfast faith and belief in God as the creator of all things, way stronger than perhaps for some people today. So as you're analyzing this, operate in that field of: very little scientific understanding of where everything comes from, a lot of belief that everything was made from God, and therefore you can understand how we end up with these questions of like: how does God do this? Where do the—where does He create these things from?

15:39 – Classical Allusions: Icarus (Wings) & Prometheus (Seizing the Fire)

We then have these lines: "On what wings dare he aspire? / What the hand dare seize the fire?" Both of these are allusions. If you don't know what an allusion is, check out my video on allusions.

The first one, "On what wings dare he aspire," is an allusion to Icarus. You might have heard of him, because he essentially made wings, tried to fly, got too close to the sun, his wings burnt. And Icarus is essentially a story about the danger of humans trying to push too far, trying to usurp not God's role at the time—not Christian God, because Icarus is a character from Greek mythology um, and so they would have been dealing with Greek gods—but the point is still the same: don't go beyond human limitations, or else you will be hurt.

The other one, "What the hand dare seize the fire," is an allusion to Prometheus. Now what Prometheus did was he stole fire for humankind um, and he needed the fire—he'd like molded man from water and earth and created like a clay, and he needed fire in order to bring that clay to life. So fire has a general deep symbolic meaning of creation, but also "what the hand dare seize the fire" as an allusion to Prometheus is reflecting this idea of: who would dare to try to take power from this great immortal being that created something like the tiger?

The tone of all that we have here is an awe of God and His power, and therefore a sort of shock at who would attempt to go against it. And he's really recognizing the limitations of human power: limitations in the sense that, you know, if Icarus and Prometheus are representative of humans and all our limitations, then we could never hope to actually reach the level of God Himself and His creations and power.

To come back to what I was saying a minute ago about fire being a classic symbol for creation as well, because again linked to that Prometheus story, there's a duality within fire. We've already talked about his duality in terms of, you know, passion, beauty, but also danger; but there's also a duality in terms of fire being seen as something that creates and can cleanse—you might have heard in religion sometimes talk about like the cleansing fires burning away sins and things like that—but you also have with fire destruction as well, and destroying things, and fire manages to simultaneously be both. The reason I think it keeps being used throughout this poem—there's a lot of um fire imagery throughout this poem with the burning bright, fire of his eyes is used multiple times—is because it again embodies that duality of creation and destruction at the same time.

18:37 – Stanza 3: Shoulders, Art, & Twisting the Sinews of the Heart

Next stanza: "And what shoulder, & what art, / Could twist the sinews of thy heart?"

Now this stanza is all about thinking more about the actual moment that the tiger was created, and it's going to come back to the idea of what I was saying before of how the creation says something as well about the Creator. Because it's "what shoulder, and what art could twist the sinews of thy heart": so "what shoulder," it's referring to the strength and power that it takes to create something, while the "art" is the skill and the craftsmanship. And our um speaker is again just in awe of that talent of that Creator, of having the level of power and strength, of having the skill and craftsmanship to be able to create something as amazing as the tiger.

Because the "twisting the sinews of thy heart"—that imagery is designed to make us really think about the intricacy of creation. Because a sinew, first of all, by talking about something that's internal, the heart, and then within the heart talking about the sinew, something such a tiny aspect of it, is making us think about the complexity, the intricacy of God's creation. Because again, remember we're dealing with a world in which God made everything, so God made all that complexity of, yes, the tiger, but also everything else as well. I think the use of the dynamic verb in "twist" is really important as well in making us think about the act of creation, because that is what this stanza really wants us to do, is think about the power, the strength, the skill in the act of creation.

21:51 – Stanza 4: Metonyms of the Forge (Hammer, Chain, Furnace, Anvil)

Now in our next lines: "And when thy heart began to beat, / What dread hand? & what dread feet?"

"Dread" means fearsome. So if "when thy heart began to beat" is talking about when the tiger finally came to life, "what dread hand and what dread feet" is reflecting on: who was it, that that fearsome creature that made you with their hands? And also the "what dread feet" is possibly about like: was able to move around you and be present around you at the same time, with feet symbolizing movement. And both of those are are about reflecting the fearsome power of God: the One who brought life um to that tiger must be terrifying! So that use of "what" in the interrogatives, just as it did earlier in "what immortal hand or eye," that "what" is about making us think about: what does that tell us about the Creator, that they were able to bring life to this tiger? Remember though, the interrogatives mean we don't know the answer to that question. Ultimately, this poem is about showing that creation is this unknowable, enigmatic thing where we know things are created, but we can never really truly understand how um, and that is part of where the awe comes from: that mystery of how is it all really created.

Now our next stanza is a sort of musing on what was used to create you um, and so Blake uses metonyms for a forge: "What the hammer? what the chain? / In what furnace was thy brain? / What the anvil?" If you're not familiar with what a metonym is, you can check out my video for that, but essentially these are all words that we associate with a forge.

Now the forge is a classic, traditional symbol of creating something, because it links back to um smithing. But at the same time, I think that use of human apparatus in the creation is important, because, you know, his phrasing is "what the hammer, what the chain". He's simultaneously using human apparatus to kind of explore the idea of how exactly were you created, but by using the interrogative "what," it represents this this limitation of human understanding, right? We can't comprehend what kind of hammer, furnace, anvil, chain could possibly lead to the creation of a tiger! So it's like, because of our limited human understanding of creation, we need to think about things in the way we understand, which would be items in a forge; we understand how you can create things in a forge. And yet at the same time, that doesn't seem to meet with, and confuses us with, the much more complicated creation of things like animals, like a tiger.

So as I keep saying time and time again, because this poem essentially has the same ideas just really consistently explored the whole way through: it's that awe of how has God done this, because we as humans, we are limited in our capacity to be able to understand that.

The reference to the uh brain is just, I think, very similar uh to what I've already said about twisting the sinews of the heart. It's an image that's designed to really make us think about the minutiae of creation, and all the many different aspects that um God has to create. That being said, I don't think it's an accident that he picked heart and brain. If we think about the classic symbols of heart over head um, you know: God has created the tiger's heart, God has created the tiger's brain, and therefore, if we think of heart as a tiger's emotions, brain as the way a tiger thinks, essentially what Blake is exploring is the essence of what makes something a tiger. The way it behaves, the way it approaches things, the way that it thinks, is itself a creation of God. Because again, there is that question: if that's the way a tiger has been made, what does that tell us about the One who made the tiger? So by choosing heart and brain, Blake is making us think about the essence of what makes something a tiger, not just in its uh coat of the burning bright and the forests of the night, but also in the way that it thinks and feels and behaves, and that God is in the very essence of who we are in our creation as well.

24:59 – The "Dread Grasp": Divine Control Over Deadly Terrors

Now this line about: "what dread grasp / Dare its deadly terrors clasp?"

So "the deadly terrors" is alluding to the danger of the tiger, and yet "what dread grasp" is referring to the one that created the tiger has a hold of it, because, you know, they're creating it. Again, thinking about our forge imagery: you'd be holding something and hammering away at it. What our um Blake is—our speaker is wondering is, again: what kind of creature could hold on to that terrifying creature? Notice with a "clasp": now "clasp" has denotations of being a tight grip of something, which gives connotations of mastery and control over something. So our Creator has this terrifying, deadly tiger firmly in their grip and has control over it. And again: what kind of God, amazing, terrifying, fearsome God, is able to have such tight control over something that is itself so fearsome and terrifying as the tiger? What does the created tell us about the Creator?

26:12 – Stanza 5: The Stars Surrendering & "Did He Who Made the Lamb Make Thee?"

Now I'm not going to lie to you, I know it seems a little bit odd—English teachers aren't allowed to ever criticize the great works of the great writers, but I find this stanza a bit weird um! So I'll give you my interpretation of it, but by all means, if you have another, share away: "When the stars threw down their spears / And water'd heaven with their tears."

Essentially what I think Blake is saying here is—so he's imagining that the celestial beings of heaven have seen this creation of the tiger and just being like: "Oh well, we give up, we surrender! God, you are too—look at this thing, look at your creation, it's so—" So it's like the celestial beings, as represented by the stars, them throwing down their spears is an imagery of surrender. And then "water'd heaven with their tears": it's like they're overwhelmed with emotion, which if you think about it, is essentially the sensation of awe that our speaker is experiencing. Now surrender could be in terms of to the tiger and its ferocity, and Blake is making a comment about the beautiful power and ferocity of a tiger; but I would say it's actually more about the person who created the tiger, and they are sort of in the—the other celestial beings of the heavens are in awe of what what God has been able to create. Obviously the speaker is also in awe, but I think the point of this stanza is pointing out that everything, not just humans, even other celestial beings are in awe of God.

Now with all of that in mind, the question that the speaker has is: was God happy about that? Does God want people to be in awe of Him? Does He want that reaction to His creation? Cuz we can think about "His work" as being a symbol of not only the things He creates, but also the reaction to things that He creates as well. And the question is: "Did he smile his work to see?" "Smile" obviously uh connoting happiness, so is He happy about that? So I suppose this is almost a Christian reflection of the way in which Blake is wondering: how are human beings supposed to respond to God's creation? Does He want us to be in awe of Him?

And also at the same time, I think there is almost a questioning of the extent to which God intends to create things so terrifying: did He intend to make as terrifying a creature as the tiger? And that's, I think, more posed in this next question: "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" Because of course a lamb is in many ways an antithesis of the tiger. I should say, by the way, I've said the word "antithesis" so many times, I have a video on antithesis as well if you're not sure with what that means, but it's the opposite, right? It's the opposite of the tiger in terms of being all about innocence. It's of course also a reference to the companion poem to this poem, of "The Lamb," but don't worry about that; you don't need to go and analyze "The Lamb" in order to understand "The Tyger." You just need to know, you know, tigers and lambs are opposite in terms of threat level, in terms of danger, and so on. So he's musing out loud: is it just one Creator who is able to make such different things, something like the lamb and something like the tiger?

29:32 – Stanza 6: The Structural Refrain & The Shift from "Could" to "Dare"

We go now to our last stanza, which is a refrain, that means a repeat um of the stanza that we had in the very beginning. However, there is one difference, and it's a really important one. In the first stanza, that was "could": "What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" So it was more of a question around who could possibly do something like that. By changing it to "who would dare": "Dare frame thy fearful symmetry," it's doing a couple of things.

First, it shows that over the course of our poem, our speaker has gained an almost enhanced awe of the tiger's power, because it's like: who would who would even take the risk of trying to capture—not in the sense necessarily of creation, but even just to look at this tiger and frame symmetry in your eyes, to be able to see it in your eyes?

Now when I have just said that, it's not just about creating something; that's what I think is the other significance of this change, because it's not just looking at God's role in terms of creating it, but I think there is also looking at the artist's role. We can think of this whole poem not just in terms of God creating something, but the human beings trying to create something. If you think back to our allusions to uh Icarus and to Prometheus, that idea of human creation and the limitations of human creation: by changing it to "Dare frame thy fearful symmetry," I think it becomes a exploration of human artists' attempt to capture God's creation in their work, and in doing so, there is an element of risk. Not so much risk in the sense of an actual tiger is going to come and pounce on you, but a risk in the sense of: how could you possibly hope to do that? Who would have a go at trying to capture everything that God has created? Because as we've seen over the course of this poem, it's so awe-inspiring and incredible, meanwhile humans are so limited in the terms of, you know, Icarus and Prometheus. So it's this idea almost of: can an artist ever truly actually capture the essence of a tiger in its fearful symmetry, or or another of God's creations, and do it justice in the creation of its art? Which of course is an almost meta moment, because that is what Blake has just finished trying to do in this very poem! So to a certain degree, he's ending with a recognition of his own limitations, his own poem's limitations in trying to capture this incredible nature of creation and God's creations as well. And almost by like leaving it as an interrogative and leaving it as a question of "can they," I guess it invites our readers of the poems to review the poem and be like: yeah, all right Blake, you did a decent job, you you managed to somewhat capture the complexity of creation, I guess.

32:51 – Metre: Trochaic Tetrameter (Rhythm vs. Complex Meaning)

One more note about this poem just as a whole, and that is about the rhythm of the poem. Now the rhythm of the poem is a trochaic tetrameter. Don't worry too much about the ins and outs of what that really means uh in terms of understanding rhythm on a deep level, that's not necessarily a GCSE level. The key thing is that what it sounds like: trochaic tetrameter means you go DUM-da, DUM-da, DUM-da, DUM-da. You do DUM-da four times; tetrameter is the four times, DUM-da is the trochaic.

Now this rhythm is really commonly used in nursery rhymes, so you've got this rhythm, and actually I would say the same of the rhyme scheme, that evokes simplicity, and yet the language of the poem, the actual ideas it's exploring, are incredibly complicated. So even in the very nature of the language versus the structure of this poem, you've got that dueling contrast: simplicity versus complexity. And so what Blake is able to do is just reinforce this idea of: there is complexity in gosh-darn everything, there is a duality to gosh-darn everything, and that is essentially what the Experience poems of in Songs of Innocence and of Experience are about. They're about the fact that we are able to understand that the world is so incredibly complicated, and the dueling nature of things can be found everywhere.