29

Whisper #28 was about a tiger, a familiar (if increasingly scarce) animal in this world. Everyone knows what a tiger looks like. Everyone knows they are dangerous. Not everyone, however, who thinks of a tiger, thinks of a fire burning in a forest at night. That takes a poet and a poem. That takes William Blake’s "The Tyger."

It is difficult to find definitions that fully distinguish poetry from prose, but it helps to think that poetry is special words used in a special way, and when that happens (successfully) Shelley speaks the truth. And that does happen in Blake’s poem.

Look at the special words: burnt, deadly, twisted sinews, burning (twice), and fire (twice). They tie right in with hammer, chain, furnace, anvil, and spears. Add fearful (twice), dread, (three times), dare  (four times) and you have a grim litany, a lexicon of heat and energy, power and force.

Then think of the special way the words are arranged, the rhythm and the rhyme. Read the poem aloud, noticing the repeating sequence of stressed then unstressed syllables. There is a beat, a drumbeat, a cadence. A blacksmith is hammering a terrible, swift sword. The poem is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it (As does, also said Shelley, all poetry.)

Then the overall structure.  First the awful question of stanza 1, then the buildup of tension in stanzas 2, 3, and 4. Stanza 5 pushes the question back to the very creation when the stars first flared in the heavens. The next two lines are devastating. Is the smile a smile of warmth and affection, of a parent? A smile of satisfaction? Or is it a demonic, fiendish smile? Or both? Did the One who made the gentle lamb make the terrible tiger? If, as some Blake readers think, the lamb is Jesus, is Satan the Tyger? And do they have the same parent? The first and the last stanzas are identical except for one word. “Could” becomes “dare” and turns the awful question from a question of capability into a question of intention, a puzzle into a torment.

Together, the words and the rhythm put before us a beautiful threat, a magnificent danger, an overwhelming mystery. The words are dread, the lines are powerful, and the question is immortal.