Essay About Songs Of Experience And Heart Of This Poem.The Poem

Grecian Urn
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Published in 1794 as one of the Songs of Experience, Blakes “The Tyger”
is a poem about the nature of creation, much as is his earlier poem from
the Songs of Innocence, “The Lamb.” However, this poem takes on the
darker side of creation, when its benefits are less obvious than simple
joys. Blakes simplicity in language and construction contradicts the
complexity of his ideas. This poem is meant to be interpreted in
comparison and contrast to “The Lamb,” showing the “two contrary states
of the human soul” with respect to creation. It has been said many times
that Blake believed that a person had to pass through an innocent state
of being, like that of the lamb, and also absorb the contrasting
conditions of experience, like those of the tiger, in order to reach a
higher level of consciousness. In any case, Blakes vision of a creative
force in the universe making a balance of innocence and experience is at
the heart of this poem.The poems speaker is never defined, and so may
be more closely aligned with Blake himself than in his other poems. One
interpretation could be that it is the Bard from the Introduction to the
Songs of Experience walking through the ancient forest and encountering
the beast within himself, or within the material world. The poem
reflects primarily the speakers response to the tiger, rather than the
tigers response to the world.It important to remember that Blake lived
in a time that had never heard of popular psychology as we understand it
today. He wrote the mass of his work before the Romantic movement in
English literature. He lived