A Visual Poetry Mini-Anthology for Electronic Literature
THE TYGER
(from Songs Of Experience)
By William Blake
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
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
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
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?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
1794
George Herbert (1633)
Lewis Carroll, “The Mouse’s Tale” from Alice in Wonderland (1865)
Two poems by e. e. cummings
It’s Raining
Guillaume Apollinaire (translated by Roger
Shattuck)
It’s raining women’s voices as if they had died
even in memory
And it’s raining you as well marvellous encounters of my life O little
drops
Those rearing clouds begin to neigh a whole
universe of auricular cities
Listen if it rains while regret and disdain weep
to an ancient music
Listen to the bonds fall off which hold you
above and below
Roger McGough (1960s?)
Visual Poetry by John Hollander