THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience)


By William Blake.



Tyger! Tyger! 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 sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & 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 the 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?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

reply to post by jakyll

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While that is a great poem, no doubt, it is not the greatest poem of all time.

The top 5 greatest poems of all time:

1) The Raven - Edgar Allen Poe
2) Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost
3) Gunga Din - Rudyard Kipling
4) Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, no. 17 ("No man is an island...") - John Donne
5) Cloony the Clown - Shel Silverstein

Honorable Mention: Sonnet 116 - William Shakespeare


Boo-yah

Just thought i'd ask people's opinions as it got voted the best by some "elite" poetry group.

I'm a big fan of william blake and love tyger,tyger.as well as poe's the raven.but dante's divine comedy gets my vote as being the greatest!!

Cheater!!

A) You have to choose between Inferno, Paradiso, or Purgatorio.

and

B) Even if you choose I won't accept it because no epics allowed.

If we're going to count that as a poem then, without a doubt, the greatest "poem" ever written is Shakespeare's Macbeth.

good poem but not the greatest imo

Poe's Raven and Annabelle Lee are near the top of my list, along with a few from Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali, especially "mind without fear"

if epics were included, I would offered the Ramayana as my selection for one of the greatest.

lol....i couldn't possibly choose between the 3!

i must admit though,i don't see the divine comedy as a poem,its more like a novel.whereas macbeth is a play.beowulf,paradise lost,the iliad and the odyssey are other ones, novels disguised as poems!! lol.

if no epics allowed then it'd be a toss up between poe's the raven,tennyson's tears idle tears and blakes tyger tyger.