Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, November 18th, 2004.

Today's poem is one of the most anthologized, most classic of classic poems.

If you somehow escaped your school years without encountering this poem, go demand your money back.

It is The Tiger by William Blake.

And I have said this about similar poems in the past, these very famous, much anthologized poems that I tend to think of as schoolhouse poems,

and therefore tend to dismiss them maybe as trite or childish.

Oh yes, we all know that one.

But the classics are classics for a reason,

and I find that every time I come back to this poem and hear it

on its own terms, read it afresh that I love it. And it takes me on an enjoyable ride every time.

I'll read the poem once, say a few words, and then read it one more time. Here is the tiger by William Blake.

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye could

frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes, on what wings dare he aspire, what the hand dare

seize the fire, and what shoulder and what art could twist the sinews of thy heart, and when

thy heart began to beat, what dread hand and what dread feet? What the hammer? What the chain? In what

furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp? Dare its deadly terrors clasp.

When 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? Tiger, tiger burning bright in the forests of the night. What immortal hand or

eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry.

This poem comes, of course, from William Blake's greatest poetic project,

The Songs of Innocence and Experience.

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