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Poetry in the Romantic Era

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Poetry in the Romantic Era
Dalia Selman
The Modern World
03/03/2014
Response Paper 6

The romantic period was filled with gorgeous art and well crafted poetry and paintings. Although there were many things that caught my eye while reading the chapters, I found two poems that moved me. Both of them focus on God but are from two different cultures. I will be analyzing Blake's poem "The Tiger" and Emerson's poem "Brahma" The first stanza of the poem ponders to what "immortal hand or eye" could have crafted the magnificent tiger. He describes the tiger as "fearful symmetry" referring to the predator nature and coloring of the tiger. Blake was said to see animals as symbols of God's kindness (lamb) and in this case, God's evil (tiger). He is exploring the question of the goodness of God. Is he all good and pure or is he more similar to humans and has both sides to him, good and bad.The entire poem uses such delicate and mysterious language. The poem is soaked in ambience and spirituality which I find to be rare in other poems I've read from the text book. The next three stanzas focus on where God came from in "distant deeps or skies" and I like the picture this allows you to paint in your head. Another verse in the next three stanzas that I like is "In what furnace was thy brain?" asking the question is god physical. My favorite two lines of the poem are "When the stars threw down their spears, and watered haven with their tears" because of the glorious visual it paints for you of the creation of our world through Blake's eyes. The poem concludes with a reference question to lamb (good) and tiger (evil) and if God has crafted both of these animals. The last stanza is the same stanza it begins with, depicting the beauty and danger of the Tiger. "Brahma" is much more indirect about questioning the origins of man. You would need to understand the Hindu culture on some level before being able to understand what he is trying to convey. "Shadow and sunlight are the same" is a comparison that
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