In “The Tyger,” the speaker talks about a tyger, and how evil it is. The speaker is asking questions to the tyger like in “The Lamb” but in a much harsher tone. Words like, “terrors” and “deadly” set a different tone than the first poem. One could even argue that the tyger is a reference to Satan because of all the evil things that are talked about, such as, “ What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?” Satan is immortal, as the tyger is, and he is also very fearful.
The imagery in each poem is different. For “The Lamb,” the imagery is sweet and serene because the speaker describes nice things like, “such a tender voice” and “Softest clothing, wooly, bright.” On the other hand, the imagery of “The Tyger” is much darker. There is no sweetness when the speaker says things like, “In what distant deep or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes?” There isn’t a lot of imagery in these two poems, but there is enough for the speaker to get the tone across to the reader.
The tone comes from the speaker in both poems. He isn’t anyone special or a symbol for anything, but he is there to talk about what is important. In “The Lamb” the speaker’s tone is soft and gentle giving the poem an overall feeling of serenity. In “The Tyger,” the speaker uses more disturbing words to get his point across about the evilness of the tyger. Both speakers use questions to set the tone. In the first line of “The Lamb” the speaker asks the lamb who made him, and that is basically the theme of the whole poem. And in “The Tyger,” the first thing asked is who made him, which is also the theme of that poem.
The structures of these two poems are almost the same. Both start out with a question, and continue with the same sort of questions throughout the poem. Each poem follows the rhyme scheme aabbccdd… However, in “The Tyger,” the first paragraph repeats itself at the end, and it doesn’t in “The Lamb” There are 5 stanzas in “The Tyger” with two rhyming couplets per stanza. But “The Lamb” has two stanzas with 5 rhyming couplets in each.
Each poem is unique in its own way, but they do share some similar characteristics like how they both start with questions and the tone comes from the questions of the speaker. However, the tones are different in more ways from the actual tone of the poems, which are almost complete opposites, to the format of them.