P R E S C R I B E D P O E M S A N D L E A R N I N G M AT E R I A L S F O R G R A D E 1 2
(WILLIAM BLAKE)
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
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In the forests of the night,
INTRODUCTION
TO POETRY
THE TYGER
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
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RENAISSANCE
What immortal hand or eye
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
ROMANTIC
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
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And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
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BRITISH
MODERNIST
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
VICTORIAN
AND GOTHIC
And what shoulder, & what art.
AMERICAN
MODERNIST
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did He who made the Lamb make thee?
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Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
SOUTH AFRICAN
APARTHEID
Did he smile his work to see?
SOUTH AFRICAN
POST-APARTHEID
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
began when Copernicus claimed that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, an assertion that was regarded as
heretical because a geocentric universe (which has the Earth and, by extension, humanity as its centre) was fundamental
to many doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. Questioning these doctrines led contemporary thinkers to challenge
the Church’s dominant role in the politics of the day.
These formerly heretical ideas had taken hold of the European imagination by the late eighteenth century, when
British poet William Blake and his fellow Romantics wrote. Many of these poets no longer subscribed to a formal or
WILD CARD
QUESTIONS,
VISUALS, RUBRICS
As has been discussed, the Renaissance represented a cultural and social revolution in Western thought. This revolution
UNSEEN POETRY
ANALYSIS
institutionalised religion, but recognised a vast spiritual power in the natural world and even in the depth of the human
© THE ENGLISH EXPERIENCE 2011
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