Channel Firing

Like all else, individuals have different views and opinions regarding which poetry is the best. For one individual, it may be Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” while for another it may be Thomas Hardy’s “Channel Firing.” In my personal opinion, William Blake’s poem, “The Tyger” is one of the world’s greatest poems because of the poet’s use of the various literary and sound devices including: alliteration, consonance, assonance and repetition, among others, and also because of the poet’s use of questions to create a sense of mystery.

First of all, Blake’s poem, “The Tyger” is comprised of six quatrains in rhymed couplets, and the meter is regular and rhythmic, as its hammering beat is suggestive of a tiger’s fun, playful and dangerous nature. Speaking of which, the “hammer” is mentioned in line 13. Here, the poet is comparing the tiger to the fire and its creator to a blacksmith, giving the image of a beating hammer, by using a metaphor. This poem’s rhyming pattern is AABB. The rhyming
and meter are parallel to the entire poem, thus questioning the identity of the tiger’s creator, and represents the process of creating the tiger, or at the very least, the tiger’s beating heart. In line 11, “And when thy heart began to beat,” the word “beat” is an example of onomatopoeia, as it is suggestive of the sounds of a heart beating (11).

As mentioned in my analysis of the sound devices used in Blake’s poem, “The Tyger,” the questions asked throughout the poem create both a sense of fear and a sense of fascination that we should feel at the notion that a beast such as a tiger could have been created by an all-powerful and loving God. The questions articulate the idea of the tiger, and affect how the poem is read and therefore how the poem sounds when read out loud. The questions are not answered throughout the poem, and this creates a fear of the unknown to the reader. These questions also gradually become more persistent and quick throughout the poem, thus creating a sense of urgency to obtain the answers to these questions. The last stanza of the poem is a significant example of repetition, as it is the very same as the first stanza of the poem. It emphasizes the unanswered questions through the use of a single different word, as “Could” in line 4 changes to “Dare” in line 24.

There are many instances of internal rhyme throughout Blake’s poem, as well. Examples of internal rhyme include: “thy” and “symmetry” in line 4, “And” and “began” in line 11, “dare” and “terrors” in line 16, and lastly, “he” and “see” in line 19.

Alliteration is also present throughout the poem to create the sense of the presence of darkness and suffering.
The alliteration used emphasizes the playful nature of the poem, which is alike feline creatures, particularly tigers. The fact that this poem is playful is one of my favourite things about Blake’s poem, “The Tyger.” An example of alliteration is “Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright” in line 1, as both the “T” and the “B” are repeated. Other examples of alliteration are “distant deeps” in line 5, “Dare its deadly” in line 16, as the letter “d” is repeated, and “frame thy fearful” in line 24, as the letter “f” is repeated in both words. Blake also uses assonance in “the fire of thine eyes” in line 6, through the use of the “i” sound and consonance in “deeps or skies” in line 5 through the use of the “s” sound. These types of sound repetition place emphasis on the beauty and power of the tiger, while also emphasize the constant mystery of the creator of the tiger and its
origin. In conclusion, it is clear that Blake is a very talented and skillful poet. Blake’s subtle, complex and obvious use of various literary and sound devices help to both create and communicate the overall meaning of his poem, “The Tyger.” As a result of Blake’s sophisticated use of questions to create a sense of mystery and his use of literary and sound devices to create and communicate meaning, Blake’s poem, “The Tyger” is one of the world’s greatest poems.