READING MODULE 2
15 / DEC / 2005
By: GASPAR JULIO
NAVARRO AMADOR
SUBJECT:
THE TYGER
1 Tyger! Tyger!
burning bright
2 In the forests of the night,
3 What immortal hand or eye
4 Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
6 Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
7 On what wings dare he aspire?
8 What the hand dare seize the fire?
9 And what shoulder, and what art,
10 Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
11 And when thy heart began to beat,
12 What dread hand? and what
dread feet?
13 What the hammer? what
the chain?
14 In what furnace was thy brain?
15 What the anvil? what dead
grasp
16 Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
17 When the stars threw down their
spears,
18 And water'd heaven with their tears,
19 Did he smile his work to see?
20 Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
21 Tyger! Tyger!
burning bright
22 In the forests of the night,
23 What immortal hand or eye
24 Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
(William Blake
From Songs of Experience
1794)
TO AUTUMN
1 Season of mists and
mellow fruitfulness,
2 Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun,
3 Conspiring with him how to load and bless
4 With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
5 To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
6 And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
7 To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
8 With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
9 And still more, later flowers for the bees,
10 Until they think warm days will never cease,
11 For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells.
12 Who hath not seen
thee oft amid thy store?
13 Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
14 Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
15 Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
16 Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
17 Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
18 Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers;
19 And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
20 Steady thy laden head across a brook;
21 Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
22 Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
23 Where are the songs
of Spring? Ay, where are they?
24 Think not of them, thou hast thy music too -
25 While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
26 And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue:
27 Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
28 Among the river sallows, borne aloft
29 Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
30 And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
31 Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
32 The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
33 And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
(John Keats, 1819)
On this paper, there have been chosen these two poems because of their direct
relation with Nature. Both authors have been classified as pre-Victorians (Ref
2) and romantics (Ref 1), they both give a different view and in a
very different style. On the one hand, there is W. Blake’s poem, The
Tyger. As its own title mentions, Blake
is dealing about an animal, a tiger. It is not a peaceful animal, but a
dangerous and savage beast. The whole of the poem is a meticulous description
of this beast. Blake develops a description of this animal. However, it is not
as accurate as it could be, or as Keats’ poem shows.
In
a way the author is praising this creature. In the poem, the way of explaining
how is and how a tiger behaves, and what fearful feeling awakens in a human
being when this beast is found.
Blake
makes more questions than answers in the text. In this sense, there is a direct
demand sent to the reader and to himself, which immediately, makes us think of
the answer.
In
the first stanza, the author locates the usual environment of the beast in a
forest and describes its colour (lines 1-2). Thus, all the subjects dealt in
this poem are focused on nature, which it is shown in the semantic field of
words related to this topic, such as ‘tyger’, ‘forest’, ‘eyes’, ‘heart’,
‘brain’, ‘water’, ‘skies’, ‘lamb’, ‘night’...
In
this first stanza, there is the first question about the creator of the animal,
which might have been someone immortal, mighty and definitely precise, for
having done such ‘fearful symmetry’ (lines 3-4).
Throughout
the poem, there is all a continuing of questions about the creator of such an
animal. There are questions that refer to a specific part of its body.
Therefore, in stanzas 2 and 3 the main parts which the author refers to are its
extremities: ‘thine eyes’ (line 6), which are made of ‘fire’ (line 8); ‘thy
heart’ (line 10); ‘dread hand’, ‘dread feet’ (line12); the beast’s ‘brain’
according to the author might have been made in a ‘furnace’ (line 14), which
gives the idea of strength and power and coldness. In contrast with this idea
of coldness, there is the feeling of warmness, reflected in the bright colours
of the animal, and its heart. There are also other contrasts such as the
‘night’ (lines 2 and 22), and the light that shines from the animal’s body,
which illuminates the darkness, making the creature fiercer.
Another
semantic field that the author wants to highlight is related
to the topic of fear. This is reflected in words such as ‘night’, which in this
sense evokes insecurity and something that cannot be predictable, and
therefore, something that scares; ‘fearful symmetry’ (line4), ‘dread hand’,
‘dread feet’ (line 12); deadly terrors clasp’ (line 16).
Blake
classifies this animal between something which has the power to think coldly,
thus intelligent, but with a connotation of barbarism, thus unconsciousness,
which is reflected in the terms from 4th and 5th stanzas
‘hammer’, ‘chain’, ‘furnace’, ‘anvil’, ‘clasp’, ‘spears’. All this terms give
the image of a place set in the middle ages, where human beings behaved in a
barbarian way, more than in a reasonable way. All the terms at the same time
give the idea of something that has been manufactured,
like a machine. Thus, the author gives the idea of something extremely
accurate, and perfect.
In
the last contrast, there is an exaggeration in the polarization of lamb-tiger.
The author places the tiger right in the opposite position in relation to a
lamb. Thus, if a lamb is the most quiet and peaceful animal, then the tiger is
the contrary, the most dangerous animal.
As
a stylistic point, there can be noticed that the poem starts and ends with the
same verse, which is a very recurrent method to highlight what the author wants
to be emphasize, that is the main topic of the poem.
This stanza has an irregular rhyme, in the 3rd and 4th
lines, and in parallel, 23rd and 24th lines. The rest of
the poem has a regular rhyme in AABB (2nd stanza); CCDD (3rd
stanza); EEFF (4th stanza); GGHH (5th stanza).
In contrast to Blake’s poem ‘The
Tyger’, there is Keats’ poem ‘To Autumn’. The title refers directly to one of
the seasons of the year. Specifically, the one that might be seen as
depressive, decadent or with a lack of life, because it is the season during
which all life that has bloomed in spring and has grown up through summer, is
now dying before winter.
In
this poem, Keats defines nature, from more points of view than Blake. This can be seen in the
number of different semantic fields, which is superior and extensive to Blake’s
poem. Such semantic fields may be classified as
follows:
Firstly,
we find words which represent light or the lack of light, in relation with the
author’s feelings or the feeling that the light of this season causes in the
author, as in ‘Season of mists’ (line 1), which represent the lack of light,
the shortening of the days and consequently les hours of sun light, and the
resulting feeling of sadness. ‘Maturing sun’ (line2), means that the sun gets
older through the pass of time during the year. In lines 10-11 ‘Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has
o'er-brimmed their clammy cells’, there is a sense of lack of warm, which is a
lack of light too. In line 26 ‘rosy hue’, this light tone represents as well
the liveliness of light.
Secondly,
there is a long list of elements related to fruits, fields, plants,
characteristic of this season like ‘mellow fruitfulness’ (line 1), meaning that
this season is not the most productive in terms of fruits; ‘vines’,
thatch-eves’, ‘moss’, ‘gourd’, ‘hazel’, ‘kernel’, ‘bud’, ‘poppies’, ‘stubble’,
etc.
In
third place, there is another semantic field related to farming or gardening,
linked to the outskirts of a city, or the country side, like ‘store’,
‘granary’, ‘half-reaped furrow’, ‘swath’, ‘cider-press’, ‘lambs loud bleat’,
‘Hedge-crickets sing’, ‘garden-croft’ or ‘twitter’.
In
forth place, there can be also found in the poem some elements related to life
and death in general, like in line 6 ‘And fill all fruit with ripeness to the
core’, which symbolizes the maturing of nature; or in ‘to set budding more’
(line8) or ‘bloom’ (line 25), which represents that life is rising; or in ‘to
set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think
warm days will never cease, For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells’
(line 8-9-10-11), which means that there is a false belief of eternal life, but
actually, death or the end is about to come.
There
is also a demand in line 23 ‘Where are the songs of Spring?
Ay, where are they?’. This does not to be taken literary, because it is a groan inside a rhetoric
question.
Stylistically,
there is a division of the poem in three stanzas of 11 lines and with a regular
rhyme in all three stanzas in ABABCDECDDE.
The
subject of this poem differs from Blake’s poem in that this one deals about a
season of the year and the preceding one deals about
an animal. However, what it is remarkable is that both poems refer to nature,
and what it is the main goal of this paper is to differentiate style, in terms
of, how descriptive mechanism of each author. Therefore, in this second poem
the descriptions are much more accurate and extensive. The author widely
defines what autumn means to him in a way that the previous author, Blake, does
not. Then, although they talk about different things, within the comparison
between their styles, there is a closer view to John Keats’ poem, to his
feelings and to what the author wants the reader to understand.
REFERENCES
1 - Wikimedia Foundation, Inc, Romanticism
– Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 8 May 2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism
15/12/2005
2
- George P. Landow, Some earlier authors included in the Victorian Web,
10/5/2004,