Study of William Blake’s Poems of Experience

Study of William Blake’s Poems of Experience

Most of William Blake’s poetry that I have studied has had a major

theme or themes such as religion or oppression and usually his poems

also use symbolism to get across the point. I am going to study

closer two poems: The Tiger and A Poison Tree.

The Tiger is a very famous poem and is one of the more popular poems

written by Blake. I feel that the poem is about religion, creation

and the French Revolution, which took place in France around the time,

that Blake was writing these poems. I think that the Tiger itself is

a personification of evil, which you could say is the French

Revolution as many Europeans thought that the revolution was an evil

thing. The animal, the Tiger is also a very strong, ferocious animal

that hunts its prey very well. Again there are connections with the

revolution, which was very strong and ferocious and did not stop until

it got what it wanted like a tiger doesn’t stop until it gets its

prey.

The poem starts of by saying that the Tiger is ‘burning’, which I

thinks means that the revolution is alive and burning. The word

burning gives a slow but steady feeling so that it makes the reader

think that the revolution is alive but it has not yet hit full force

and is just biding its time before it can make that crucial hit. The

first verse ends by asking a question ‘What immortal hand or eye could

frame thy fearful symmetry’. I think that this refers to how quickly

the revolution got out of control and who could possibly control it

after that. Many other countries joined in to help the king of France

but were they enough to stop the revolution?

Through the second, third and fourth verses Blake gives a very strong

image of the ‘Tiger’ being created possibly by God himself. Blake

uses phrases such as ‘sinews of thy heart’, which gives a feeling of a

very strong and unforgiving thing being produced. Then he moves on to

speak of what tools could have created the ‘Tiger’ and Blake mentions

tools such as a hammer, a furnace and an anvil which are all tools

used in forging metal and heavy industry such as that. This gives the

reader a sense of the ‘Tiger’ being very strong and tough. Also the

image of a furnace burning relates back to the revolution burning and

it makes me think of things which you don’t touch or go near as they

are very dangerous. This could be related to the dangerousness of the