The cruelest month: Seize the fire

[NB: My post today is dedicated to my friends MLD and LQ. I missed Saint George’s Day by 24 hours, MLD; but “Jerusalem” is for you and your ringers. And, LQ: Nini and the Tyger are very closely related.]

Today’s National Poetry Month offering is one of my all-time favorites, one whose imagery I find powerful and gripping. William Blake’s “The Tyger” has always torn my heart out, and I’ve been glad for the tearing.

I suppose the visual impact of Blake’s poetry shouldn’t come as a surprise because he was also an engraver, a printer, an etcher and a painter. His visual works are often allegorical and highly symbolic (well, much like his poetry); not surprising in a man of many talents who saw visions all his life.

By way of example, I give you “The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun”. Even that title is extraordinary. I believe I would like to be a woman clothed in Sun. (and if the Great Red Dragon is the price of admission, well, I’ll pay up.)

“The Tyger” absolutely shimmers with grace and strength, sleek and dangerous in the forests of the night. This is a creature powerful beyond all understanding—and yet when the poet asks about the maker of the Lamb, well…there you have it.

The Tyger

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 seize the fire?

And what shoulder,and what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

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

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?

Blake was also a hymnist, and he wrote one of my all-time favorites, which you don’t seem to hear all that often (outside of Women’s Institute meetings, of course). Perhaps because of its symbolism and sense of militancy. But I’ll give it to you anyhow. Consider it a bonus.

I’m sorry to say that I’m finding it impossible to find a clean audio of this glorious anthem with the descant on the second verse. So I’ll link to a clip of the closing scenes of Chariots of Fire, where it’s being sung at the funeral of Harold Abrahams. 

If that finish doesn’t send chills up your spine, even in the background, you need to have your soul checked.