Blake’s “The Tyger” represents an intense, visionary style with which William Blake confronts a timeless question through the creation of a still-life reverie. To examine “The Tyger's” world, we must inspect Blake’s diction, images, archetypes, allusions, rhyme scheme, meter, and theme. “The Tyger” seems like a simple poem, yet this simple poem contains all the complexities of the human mystery. The archetype tiger creates reactions of both awe and terror; however by placing his “tyger” “in the forest” instead of the jungle where tigers usually live, Blake both softens the image and contributes to the unnatural atmosphere begun by the unusal spelling of the word tiger. Blake's spelling in the title “The Tyger” at once suggests the exotic or alien quality of the beast. The memorable opening couplet points to the contrast of the dark "forest of the night" which suggests an unknown and hostile place and the intense "burning" brightness of the tiger's colouring- Blake writes here with a painter's eye.The questions that follow are directed at the tiger, though they are as much questions for the reader. Blake used rhetorical questions because no answers are given. However, these are questions to which the answer is far from obvious. For example, the answer to the first question might be "God's" ("immortal hand or eye"), but Blake is asking not so much "whose?" as "what kind of?" We are challenged to imagine someone or something so powerful as to be able to create this animal. The idea that the tiger is made by someone with hands and eyes suggests the stories in the Biblical book of Genesis, where God walks in the Garden of Eden and shuts Noah in his ark. It is again the painter and engraver who observes the complexity of the tiger's markings in their "fearful symmetry”. Blake asks where the fire in the tiger's eyes originates. It is as if some utterly daring person has seized this fire and given it to the tiger. The poet is amazed at the complexity of the tiger's inner workings ("the sinews of thy heart"), at the greater power that set the heart beating, and wonders how the animal's brain was forged: "What the hammer? What the chain? / In what furnace was thy brain? / What the anvil?” The second last stanza takes us back to Genesis and the creation story there: on each of the seven days except the Sabbath, God looked at His work and saw that it was good. God is represented as being pleased with His creation, but Blake wonders whether this can be true of the tiger. If so, it is not easy to see how the same creator should have made The Lamb. The poem appropriately ends, apparently with the same question with which it started, but the change of verb from "could" to "dare" makes it even more forceful.
Blake's description of his “tyger” reminds us of an artistic criticism. The descriptive word symmetry (which is defined as the excellence of proportion and regularity of form) expands the archetypal symbol of a tiger to an abstract so that when Blake appends the word “fearful” the reader is nearly startled by both the beautiful contrast and the absolute truth of the frightful and ghoulish description.
While it is granted that every word in a poem could be called into question and analyzed individually, the remainder of these words can be handled more effectively by grouping them into three broader categories: improbable images, suggested allusions, and superimposed figures. First, the “tyger” on fire in the forest” “with burning eyes”, “a twisted heart” and “his brain in a furnace” must be interpreted as figurative language. This gives us, the readers an intentionally exaggerated image of the “tyger's” creation, and further enhances the chimerical quality of the creature. Secondly, because no direct allusion appears, the interpretation of implied allusions encompasses many possibilities. The first question, "On what wings dare he aspire?” could be a reference to Icarus who flew too close to the sun and melted his wings, or it might be a reference to Satan- the classic, winged rebel but the phrase "dare he aspire" communicates the idea that someone is forcefully attempting something. This pattern continues throughout the poem, and includes the image of the blacksmith creating the “tyger”. The impressions of simple, stunning contrasts are also intensified by the poetic form of "The Tyger". The trochaic tetrameter supplies the poem with a feeling of raw, restrained energy. Then, this energy heightens the concentrated anticipation produced by the ending couplets, yet like a child's rhyme the unpretentious four-line stanzas give the reader an impression of simplicity. As a result, even the structure of the poem complements this extraordinary work in expanding contrasts. Blake has used rhetorical questions, simple meter and rhyme as well as incantory rhyme and contrasted this poem with meekness of “The Lamb”. In a nutshell, this poem is not so much about the tiger as it really is, or as a zoologist might present it to us; it is the “Tyger”, as it appears to the eye of the beholder. Blake imagines the tiger as the embodiment of God's power in creation: the animal is terrifying in its beauty, strength, complexity and vitality.
In the poem “London”, Blake has exposed the gulf between those in power and the misery of poor people. Man’s lack of freedom and the theme of oppression is highlighted in this poem through Blake’s use of repetition, imagery and biblical references.
The central metaphor of this poem is the "mind-forg'd manacles" of the second stanza. This is a vivid symbol that explains a deep human truth. The image of the forge appears in stanza four of “The Tyger” as well. Here Blake imagines the mind as a forge where "manacles" are made. "Manacles" and shackles would be seen on convicts, perhaps passing along the streets on their way to prison or, commonly in “London” in Blake's time, on their way to ships for transportation to Australia. For Blake and his readers, the image is a very striking and contemporary one: they will have seen "manacles" and will view them with horror. Blake is saying that "manacles" are "mind-forg'd" - they come from the ideas and outlook imposed on us by external authority. We see this in the poem's opening- it is a matter of fact that charters were granted to powerful people to control the streets of London and even the river. It is absurd that the streets are "chartered" but blatantly so in the case of the mighty river, which cannot really be controlled by the passing of a law. Blake writes ironically of "the chartered Thames". Man’s arrogance is shown in futile attempt to make the river obey his laws when Blake writes of the “chartered street” and “chartered Thames”.The "weakness" and the "woe" of every person is plain to see "in every face", as in their cries, whether of adults or babies- in “every” face. Blake gives us three powerful examples of this "weakness" and "woe", starting with the chimney-sweep. As the church building is literally "black'ning" with smoke from the chimneys, so the church as an organisation, which should help the poor is blackened, metaphorically, with shame at its failure to give that help. The church should be appalled as Blake evidently is, by the cry of the "chimney-sweeper". The second image, of the "hapless" unfortunate soldier could perhaps be symbolic as the poem was written shortly after the start of the French Revolution: this was so bloody an uprising that the hyperbole was often used, as blood was said to be running down the walls. In “London”, Blake shows how the unhappiness of the English soldier could, if its causes were ignored, lead to similar bloodshed here. The last image is the most shocking to Blake, as to us: the cry of the child-prostitute is the truth behind respectable ideas of marriage. New birth is no happy event but continues the cycle of misery, and the wedding carriage is seen as a hearse, leading to a kind of death. This death could represent the death of innocence and happiness. The word "plagues" here suggests the sexually transmitted diseases which the "youthful harlot" would contract and pass on to others. “Harlot” is a biblical word and was sometimes looked upon as stronger than to be called a prostitute.
“The Garden of Love” was written during the birth of the Industrial Revolution and the strengthening of the Church’s stranglehold over England. Blake uses carefully-written, highly suggestive diction to represent his views of the Church and its values in an intense and compressed way. This language allows for a wide range of varied interpretations, all of which however revolve around a central theme of the Church’s assimilation into the lives of parishioners.
From the poem, it can be seen that the persona is not an innocent, happy and innocent child. The persona is an adult, wandering back to the place where he used to - the “Garden of Love”. The poem states that “it was filled with graves, and tomb-stone” and “priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, / binding with briars” his “joys and desires.” Only a mature man or woman, having personally experienced the truth and existence of mortality can utter such disheartening words. The sophistication or experience of the situation portrayed by the persona us a sense of mental devastation and empathetical disbelief on behalf of the speaker. “So I turn'd to the Garden of Love / that so many sweet flowers bore / and I saw it was filled with graves” is a great outcry and reminiscence of the persona’s carefree and happy childhood experiences and attitude that now has changed and weathered due to disillusionment and experience. We can even sense the persona changing his attitude to the places they are witnessing by the way the poem is structured. In “the Garden of Love” we begin with the same expectations as the persona, deceived by the title and relaxed with the positive images. But soon, the persona’s horror becomes our horror.
The first basically reveals what they see as they visit the Garden. All of the first stanza's lines have eight syllables and “seen” and “green” in lines two and four . The second stanza gives us a sense that what they see is not pleasing to them. All of the second stanza's lines have eight syllables, still; “bore” and “door” in lines six and eight also rhyme. As we get to the third stanza, which talks about the persona’s reaction to what he sees, there is no consistency in the rhythm, and the rhyming pattern switches to two internal rhymes in the last lines. This switching of modes reveals their rather disbelieving response to what had happened to the speaker’s Garden, and positions the reader to accept the fore grounded theme of an intruding Church.
The central theme of an intruding church is further developed through the imagery presented in the poem. In the first stanza, Blake writes that a “Chapel” had been erected in the Garden of Love where the persona “used to play in the green". This image is symbolic of the church imposing itself into the individual’s private life of joys and desires. Blake continues in the second stanza to describe how the Church imposed itself into the private lives and joys of people. He writes that the “gates of this Chapel were shut”, and how “’Thou shalt not’ writ over the door.” The gates of the chapel being shut symbolizes the fact that the Church was separated from the common man and tried to exclude the individual from building a personal relationship with God and gaining a personal understanding of God.
However, the Church made many rules that God had never intended in the Bible. Blake represent that tendency of the Church by the “Thou shalt not” written over the door. The Church was constantly telling people what they were not supposed to do and trying to dictate every aspect of their lives, which took joy out of many things in life. In the third stanza we discover that all the flowers that used to be in the persona’s “Garden of Love” had been replaced by tombstones. The flowers are symbols representative of the joys of life, and the tombstones are representative of the fact that the Church was killing the pleasures and passions of life with its rules.
Blake more bluntly states this idea in the last two lines of the poem when the persona says that they also found in the Garden of Love “priests in black gowns were walking their rounds / And binding with briers” the persona’s “joys and desires.” The long "o" sounds in the line "priests in black gowns were walking their rounds" give the impression that this is not an impassioned or infrequent occupation of the priests, but rather routine, methodical and bloody never-ending! The internal rhyme in each of the last two lines slow us down, emphasizing the oppression and again suggesting a cyclic, ongoing action. This cyclic action shows Blake's views on the inevitability of the loss of innocence in the face of experience. It is significant that Blake chose to stress the colour black as it is a colour with connotations of death and joylessness as well as being associated with the priests. Also, in the poem as a whole it is significant that the joys and pleasures of life are represented by a garden and that the restrictions of the church are represented by a man-made structure. Perhaps Blake sees the “garden” of love as the natural state created by God and the restrictions on joy as man-made artifice.
With imagery such as this, and due to its apparent simplicity, Blake presents "The Garden of Love" as a trite image of the Church muscling in on the private lives of Englanders; an almost comically melodramatic scene of tombstones and Death-figure priests. It is thus perhaps too easy to dismiss this poem at once as nothing more than that. However, this simplicity allows the poem to become a didactic poem, with new levels of resonance rising from it with each reading. The level that first presents itself is explained above; the Church taking on itself the legislation and administration of morality. This Songs of Experience lyric deals with the repression of joys, desires and instincts by the church and by prohibitive morality. Given that the poem deals with a vision of a journey into the "garden", we could perhaps also view the poem as a commentary on the ways that conscience and guilt are imposed on the imagination and on what is natural and instinctual, the 'mind-forged manacles' of London.