Write about two pairs of poems from "Songs of Experience" and "Songs of Innocence" highlighting their differences and showing how these are made clear through Blake's poetic techniques

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Write about two pairs of poems from “Songs of Experience” and “Songs of Innocence” highlighting their differences and showing how these are made clear through Blake’s poetic techniques

In order to complete this coursework I have chosen two contrasting pairs of poems to explain. Two poems will be taken from Blake’s “Songs of Experience” while the other two from Blake’s “Songs of Innocence.” The poems that I have chosen have contrasts amongst themselves. The first poem I have decided to write about is the, “Tiger” and the “Lamb”.

“The Tiger” is a poem that has no obvious speaker. One can only guess whom the reader maybe, this is because the writer has written it in the third person. When reading the poem one can clearly tell that poem is written in rhyming couplets were the first two lines and the last two lines of each verse tend to rhyme.

Tiger! Tiger burning bright

In the forests of the night,

This is the first line of the poem. The first line is a comparison to the skin and the eye of the tiger, which are known to be incredibly bright and be able to glow throughout the night.

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

The writer by saying, ‘What immortal hand or eye’ is trying to say that what great being, i.e. God, is able to create an animal of such fear and destruction. The writer has also used the word ‘Symmetry’ to symbolise the symmetrical stripes of the tiger.

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

Here the writer is concentrating on how the tiger was created. The writer attempts to get the reader to wonder where such a vicious animal would be created.

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

Here the writer is saying what sort of creator dares to make an animal like a tiger and on whose hand does this creation rest upon. Furthermore the writer has inputted the word ‘fire’ into the last line. This is because fire is a destructive element just like a tiger who is a destroyer.

And what shoulder, and what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? And what dread feet?

Here the writer is explaining the relationship between the tiger and himself. Furthermore the rhetorical questions he asks are meant to convey his views on the creator of this viscous animal.

What the hammer? What the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

Here the writer is asking the question of how this animal was made. He refers to tools that a blacksmith would use to produce weapons.

What the anvil? What dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

Here the writer inputs negative adjectives to emphasis his views on the tiger, e.g. ‘What dread grasp’ and ‘Dare its deadly terrors clasp?’ Furthermore these two lines describe that the tiger was made like a weapon by a blacksmith using an anvil.

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?

In the second line the writer uses a metaphor. Heaven is not literally watered with tears but it is meant to show the sorrow that the tiger is bringing to all its surroundings. In the third line the writer says that did your creator smile at his creation or could he have possibly regretted the being he can created. In the last line the writer asks was it the same god, the same creator that created the sweet innocent lamb be the same creator that could assemble the angry tiger.

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The last verse is exactly the same as the first verse. This is believed to be for poetic effect. In the first verse he was asking a rhetorical question but in this last verse he now posing the question to the creator of the tiger.

I think the writer here has been very successful in his approach to writing this poem. He manages to really emphasis the posona of the tiger correctly. This poem also has a rhythm to it that adds to its success. When looking at the verses one can see that each verse consists of ...

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