Imagery in "The Tyger"
Fire imagery, of course, is only of one kind in "The Tyger". Another key image is that of the "stars", which some critics have opined, was derived by Blake from Milton's description of the "starry hosts" of the fallen angels in Paradise Lost. But it is important to note that "stars" have a special import in Blake's own scheme of symbolism. In the long narrative poem The French Revolution which Blake wrote in 1791, only about three years before engraving "The Tyger", "stars" refer to the tyrannical nobles of France who had for centuries oppressed the poor. During the revolution in France, these nobles were overthrown. Perhaps this is the implication of the words "the stars threw down their spears" in Blake's poem. Yet another image in "The Tyger" that relates Blake's lyric to the context of revolution is the one of the "forests of the night". In Blake's mythic or "Prophetic" poem Europe (1794), the phrase "Night of nature" refers to the revolutionary war in France. In the French Revolutionary too, a character named the Duke of Orleans refers to the "raging Miltons [the French poor] that wander in forests".
The other set of images in "The Tyger" - images of hammer, chain, furnace and anvil - also provide clues as to Blake's meaning and intent. In Blake's own mythology, these blacksmith's appliances are attributed to the mythic hero Los who stands for the attribute of the Divine or creative imagination. The origin of these images can be traced back to the Bible in which we come across such phrases as "the furnace of affliction" (Isaiah, Ch. 48, v. 10). In the Book of Ezekiel, the "furnace" is God's in which he will "gather" men, "is mine anger and in my fury". All these contexts point to the meaning or implication underlying "The Tyger". In the furnace in Blake's poem, is forged the wrath of the Tyger by a creator who is not merciful, weak or mild like the Lamb Christ, but a revengeful figure who comes to burn, destroy, or annihilate the agents of oppression and tyranny.
Ascertaining less complex and problematic than "The Tyger", is the "Nurse's Songs" of Experience. The speaker or narrator in both poems, is a Nurse who has the responsibility of looking after children. But unlike the sympathetic Nurse of the realm of Innocence, the one in the lyric of Experience is obviously consumed by selfish regret for the loss of her won childhood and youth. No longer capable of vitality and happiness, she cannot participate even emotionally in the joys experienced by the playing children under her care. Thus when she comments: "the sun is gone down/And the dews of the night arise," she does not really think of how the children might be affected by this, but rather implies through the images of the sunset and the falling dew the loss of her own youth ("suns" implying youth and warmth) and decline from innocent happiness (indicated by the word "night"). And in contrast to the Nurse of the Songs of Innocence who had good-humouredly accepted the plea of the children to go on playing, this one scolds :
Your spring & your day are wasted in play,
And your winter and night in disguise.
Having lost her own childhood and youth, this woman can only see "Play" as a waste of time and energy, and old age as a cheat, "disguise" or deception.
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