Tiger, tiger, burning bright,…
I took this photo at Prague Zoo this year, just the week before the massive floods hit my beautiful city!!! Safely behind glass, I was lucky to smile upon this amazing creature and remembered a phrase from a poem “Tiger, tiger, burning bright,…” So, I looked up the rest and thought I’d share it with you all.
| Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900. |
| William Blake. 1757–1827 |
| 489. The Tiger |
| TIGER, tiger, burning bright | |
| In the forests of the night, | |
| What immortal hand or eye | |
| Could frame thy fearful symmetry? | |
| In what distant deeps or skies | 5 |
| Burnt the fire of thine eyes? | |
| On what wings dare he aspire? | |
| What the hand dare seize the fire? | |
| And what shoulder and what art | |
| Could twist the sinews of thy heart? | 10 |
| And when thy heart began to beat, | |
| What dread hand and what dread feet? | |
| What the hammer? what the chain? | |
| In what furnace was thy brain? | |
| What the anvil? What dread grasp | 15 |
| Dare its deadly terrors clasp? | |
| When the stars threw down their spears, | |
| And water’d heaven with their tears, | |
| Did He smile His work to see? | |
| Did He who made the lamb make thee? | 20 |
| Tiger, tiger, burning bright | |
| In the forests of the night, | |
| What immortal hand or eye | |
| Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Courtesy of http://www.bartleby.com/101/489.html |
Alistair James Bell