GCSE-readyThe Tyger by William Blake: context, form and key methods
A speaker asks who could have created a creature as beautiful and terrifying as the tiger. This poem is out of copyright, so you can quote it freely.
Context and themes
Blake was deeply religious but questioned organised religion. The poem asks how one creator could make both gentle and fierce things, good and evil.
Themes: creation and God; the power of nature; good and evil; innocence and experience; fear and awe.
Form and structure
The poem is almost entirely questions, none of them answered.
It is cyclical: the last stanza repeats the first, but "Could frame" becomes "Dare frame".
Language and key methods
Rhetorical questions: "What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" The questions show awe and fear.
Blacksmith imagery: "What the hammer? what the chain, / In what furnace was thy brain?" The creator is a mighty smith forging the tiger.
Alliteration: "fearful symmetry" and "burning bright" give force to the sound.
Allusion to the Lamb: "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?", a symbol of innocence and of Christ.
Compare with: Prayer Before Birth and La Belle Dame sans Merci
La Belle Dame sans Merci (Keats): both present something beautiful and dangerous; Blake's tiger inspires awe, Keats's lady destroys the knight.
Exam tips
Strong points for The Tyger: the unanswered questions; the blacksmith and fire imagery; the hammering rhythm; the shift from "Could" to "Dare".
You can bring in the Lamb to show the contrast of innocence and experience, but keep the focus on methods and on comparison.
How does Blake present the creator of the tiger?
- The creator is never named, only described through questions.
- Blacksmith imagery: hammer, chain, furnace and anvil.
- The question about the Lamb asks whether one creator made both good and fierce things.
- Effect: the creator seems powerful, mysterious and frightening.
Answer: Blake never names the creator; instead the poem is a series of awed questions. Blacksmith imagery ("What the hammer? what the chain, / In what furnace was thy brain?") presents the creator as a mighty smith forging the tiger with strength and danger. The question "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" deepens the mystery: how could one maker create both innocence and terror? When "Could frame" becomes "Dare frame" in the final stanza, the creator seems not just able but bold.
Blake, Songs of Experience (1794); partner poem The Lamb. Six quatrains of rhyming couplets, strong beat, cyclical. Unanswered questions; fire imagery; blacksmith imagery (hammer, chain, furnace, anvil); "fearful symmetry"; "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"; "Could" becomes "Dare".
- Context
- The circumstances in which a text was written and set, such as historical events, social attitudes and the writer's life (AO3 in the GCSE, AO4 in the International GCSE).
- Form
- The type and shape of a text: for example sonnet, ballad, free verse, tragedy, comedy, novel or play.
- Speaker
- The voice of a poem. The speaker is not always the poet.
- Imagery
- Language that creates a picture or appeals to the senses, including similes, metaphors and personification.
- Stanza
- A group of lines forming a section of a poem (a verse).
- Alliteration
- Repetition of the same consonant sound at the start of nearby words, used to link ideas or create a sound effect.
All GCSE and International GCSE English Literature key terms and definitions →
- Not “Songs of Innocence”. The Lamb is in Songs of Innocence; The Tyger is its partner in Experience.
- Not “Lyrical Ballads”. That is by Wordsworth and Coleridge.
- Not “Goblin Market and Other Poems”. That is Rossetti's collection.
- Not “Alternate rhyme (ABAB)”. Lines rhyme in pairs: bright and night, eye and symmetry.
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Last updated 6 November 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us and we will fix it.