The Tyger Poetry Analysis Essay Sample

The Tyger is a Poem by William Blake

It is included in William Blake’s illustrated collection of poetry, titled The Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Experience. The literary society regards the author as one of the godfathers of Gothic poetry. Stylistically (that is to say, from the perspectives of the plane of expression), the poem ‘The Tyger’ can serve as one of the brightest examples of William Blake’s creative manner.

In the poem under consideration, the author is reflecting on such themes as balance, creation, the purpose of art, and the purpose of a man of art (Blake). The narrator’s voice is confident, and the poem’s diction is omniscient. By and large, a persona of the poem is contemplating the very essence of creation and the mission of all living beings. The narrator himself argues that all things that exist in the world are in harmony and, thus, are perfectly coordinated. In this respect, the relationships between a carnivore and its prey serve one of the brightest examples because the force that “made the Lamb” has also created the predators (Blake).

Furthermore, there are fundamental creative principles employed by the author within this particular poem. They include the contrast between light and darkness, the warmth of fire and coldness of the night, goodwill and wrath, as well as sacrifice and the desire to live. Apparently, The Tyger by William Blake contains the inquisitive/reflexive line that manifests itself explicitly. The author explores the essence of the divine and everything that people hold sacred. Each of the aspects mentioned above stands opposed to the laws of nature. At the same time, the author questions the existence and the needs of men. Nature is wise yet cruel. The world of men, according to Blake, is filled with hesitation, common sense, aspiration, and desire to stick to some particular patterns of behavior and adhere to a definite and strict system of beliefs.

As far as the plane of expression of the poem under analysis is concerned, it is important to admit the following. The poem consists of six rhymed stanzas – six couplets. It abounds with metaphors (“…tiger, burning bright…”), personifications (“… the stars threw down their spears”), and epithets (“dread grasp”, “deadly terrors”, “immortal hand”, “fearful symmetry”) (Blake). In terms of syntactic devices, the author mainly uses rhetorical questions (“What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”, “Did he smile his work to see? / Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”) (Blake). The stylistic devices employed comply with the author’s intention itself. It is important to mention that the poem has no direct message, which is an important stylistic device in itself. Considering all the facts mentioned earlier, it is possible to assume that the author’s intention is simply to depict and reflect on something that is habitual in the world of wildlife. However, most importantly, the author attempts to provoke thinking in a reader.

Overall, The Tyger, the poem by William Blake, positions itself as a coherent whole in a sense that its plane of content and plane of expression coexist harmoniously and complement each other. The author depicts nature and reflects on the very gist of its laws in an artistically perfect way. The poem contains no message expressed explicitly. At the same time, the author urges readers to reconsider the essence of the sacred and the divine. By so doing, William Blake proves that the world of men and the world of nature are inseparably connected. The key to understanding the conditions of harmonious coexistence of both lies in attempting to conceive the essence of nature.

Tintern Abbey

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798, most commonly referred to as Tintern Abbey, is one of the William Wordsworth’s most renowned works. The author is one of the most prominent poets of Romanticism. Tintern Abbey is a work of art proving that each human being needs to find a place where “The picture of the mind revives again” (Wordsworth). At the same time, the poem argues that it is rather remarkable how secure the boundaries between faith and nature can be. Nevertheless, most importantly, the author of the poem shows how significantly both faith and the beauty of nature influence and transform one’s soul.

Polishing Your Writing to Make it Shine

Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth is reflexive, idyllic, and allusive. The poem is existential in a sense that it embraces the nature of beauty and conveys it with the help of the expressive means of language. Therefore, the poem transcends the limits of literature itself and becomes a unit that is capable of existing autonomously. The poem’s thematic frameworks encompass the broad range of problems, phenomena, and concepts. They comprise change and course of time, coming of age, the power of human mind, the healing abilities of observation of nature, and the pursuit of peace and harmony (Wordsworth). The poem can be regarded as one of the first proponents of modernist poetry for the author employs the blank verse technique. At the same time, circumstantially, the author is referring to the problem of ‘art for art’s sake’, a principle strongly advocated by the Modernist artists.

Concerning stylistic devices used in William Wordsworth’s poem Tintern Abbey, one should note that the author employs the blank verse technique. The poem contains repetitions (“my dear, dear friend”), hyperboles (“dearest Friend”, “purest thoughts”), epithets (“green earth”, “mighty world”), and metaphors (“the guardian of my heart”, “soul / Of all my moral being”) (Wordsworth). The line “Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her” (Wordsworth) reflects the message conveyed in the poem. Mostly, stylistic devices and thematic frameworks of the poem under consideration are inseparably connected. Besides, its plane of content and plane of expression complement each other harmoniously.

To sum up, the poem’s thematic framework complies with ideals of Romanticism. In other words, Tintern Abbey resonates with the most topical issues characteristic of eighteenth century’s art explored by the artists of that time. In one of his most beautiful works, William Wordsworth sings praises to the beauty of nature, the glory of the peaceful mind, and the perception of the nature’s beauty. At the same time, it is also important to admit that the poem was a bit ahead of its time in a sense that technically it addressed the problems that would have become topical centuries after. In this respect, the poem’s motives, themes, and the stylistic devices employed turned out to be interdependent as well. One of the distinctive features of William Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey is the use of blank verse technique, a creative manner that came into prominence in the late nineteenth-early twentieth century. Overall, Tintern Abbey reflects its author’s artistically perfect vision of nature and architecture. Furthermore, the author depicts the boundaries that exist between nature and faith that, according to Wordsworth, are capable of helping a person to find a peace of mind. The peace of mind, in its turn, in this particular case can be viewed as the secret of conceiving the essence of all life and inanimate objects alike.

Kubla Khan

The presence of a strong narrative line is the peculiar feature of a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge titled Kubla Khan. The poem is highly descriptive, allusive, and reflexive. Its diction accords and resonates with the flow of water, which, in its turn, is one of the poem’s most beautiful, powerful, and vivid symbols. From the thematic perspectives, the poem is as one of the classical samples of the poetry of Romanticism in a sense that oriental motives are of paramount importance in it.

Contrast and use of hyperboles are the characteristic features of the poem under analysis. Consequently, the poem’s imagery is neat yet vivid, and thus, easy to comprehend. The poem comprises metaphors (“milk of Paradise”, “build … dome in air”, “sank in tumult”) and epithets (“sunny dome”, “flashing eyes”, “floating hair”) (Coleridge).
The final part of the poem testifies its musicality. In other words, music as one of the motives of the poem under consideration is expressed through the poem’s technical peculiarities. Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his poem Kubla Khan also explores many crucial concepts and problems. They include patriotism, heroism, the purpose of art and science, calamitous aftermaths of war, and beauty of architecture and nature (Coleridge). Evidently, the author pays close attention to the mythology of the Arabic world (Coleridge). The corruptive power of passion is another motive to which the author makes a slight reference. The persona of the poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a warrior, a defender of his people. He is making acquaintance with a mysterious female character (Coleridge), which turns out to be another test of the persona’s sense of duty. It happens so that the central figure of the poem proves himself loyal since he sticks to his duty and responsibility to his people. The theme mentioned above alludes Heinrich Heine’s Lorelei to some extent.

The previous generations’ experience plays a significant role in the life of the community as a whole, which is another motive of Coleridge’s poem. “Ancestral voices” in the poem under consideration prove themselves prophetic (Coleridge). Specifically, the community takes them as omens of future war (Coleridge). Primarily, experience, beauty, peaceful thinking, and reason in the poem of Samuel Taylor Coleridge stand opposed to vanity, decay, destruction, and the vice.

As stated previously, the poem is allusive and descriptive. Its allusiveness rests primarily upon referring to the key religious and cultural concepts of Christianity and Islam. Descriptiveness as another quality of special significance in the poem under consideration consists in a fact that neither the author’s intent and purpose nor the poem’s key messages are expressed in a direct and explicit manner. On the contrary, the author is specific about the details. His vision of the events depicted is so vivid, that the readers can easily situate themselves in the world described in the poem. In other words, the poet as if invites the readers to make a journey through the places where the events of the poem take place.

In conclusion, in his poem Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge stresses the importance of being capable of noticing things, observing, abstracting from the facts, and trusting instincts. Furthermore, one should not leave any admonition or portent out of the account. Circumstantially, the author is referring to and stressing the importance of being familiar with the customs, traditions, and folklore of people with whom the readers associate themselves. In this respect, another problem contemplated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his poetic work is the issue of responsibility to one’s people and a sense of duty. Overall, Kubla Khan is the poem in which close attention is paid to the concepts of authenticity, honor, and dignity.