Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In the first verse, the author compares the fierceness of a tiger to a burning presence in dark forests. He wonders what immortal power could create such a fearful beast.
- In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare sieze the fire? Here the author compares the burning eyes of the tiger to some transplanted distant fire that only someone with wings could reach and only with impermeable hands could seize. The author wonders where such a powerful fire could have come from? Hell, possibly?
- And what shoulder, & what art. Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet?
In this verse we have a metaphor giving us a vision a skillful and powerful blacksmith creating the tiger's beating heart awakening a powerful beast. The phrase "...twist the sinews of thy heart" is also an allusion to a hardheartedness that a beast of prey must have towards the creatures it kills.
- What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? This verse continues the allusion to a creator, who, having made the fearsome best, must confront with the sheer terror of a tiger's nature. Did the tiger's creator have to retrieve the tiger's fearsome brain from an evil, hot place?
- 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?
Here the author, with beautiful rhetoric, describes a marvelous creation process likening starlight to a symbolic destructive process. The author wonders whether the creator of the fierce and predatory tiger could also make the docile, gentle lamb. He sees a conflict between the creation of heartless, burning predator and its potential victim, the lamb.
- Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
The final verse is but a reprise, almost a chorus. It serves the purpose of repeating the wondrous question of the tiger's creation and gives the reader another chance to enjoy the rhetorical, and already answered question, "What immortal hand or eye?"
The answer lies in the reader's interpretation of creation: Did God create the fearsome along with the gentle? Why does He allow the tiger to burn in the dark forest, while the lamb gambols in the glen under the stars of that very creation? The author leaves it up to the reader to decide. The important thing is the question, not the answer.