Previous Next

Blake wrote most of “The Tyger” in trochaic tetrameter, which means that most of the lines in the poem consist of four trochees. (Recall that a trochee is a metrical foot with a DUM-da rhythm, as in the word “ti-ger.”) The opening stanza provides a representative example of the poem’s overall metrical scheme:

Ty-ger / Ty-ger, / burn-ing / bright,
In the / for-ests / of the / night;
What im- / mor-tal / hand or / eye,
Could frame / thy fear- / ful sym- / me-try?

The first three lines of this quatrain are all trochaic, and they each contain four feet. However, it’s notable that all three of these lines are also missing the final unstressed syllable of the last foot, a situation that scholars refer to as catalexis. Catalexis has a distinct rhythmic effect, causing a brief pause of expectation in the space between the end of the shortened line and the beginning of the next line. The sense of tension caused by this expectation is resolved in the metrically complete final line, which also trades trochaic rhythm for the da-DUM pattern of iambic meter. Yet the mechanics of this rhythmic resolution are strangely complex. The third line is missing its final unstressed syllable, but because the final line is iambic, it opens with an unstressed syllable. To the listener’s ear, then, it sounds like the third line is actually complete, with the final line being an abbreviated trochaic tetrameter:

What im- / mor-tal / hand or / eye, could
Frame thy / fear-ful / sym-me- / try?

For such a simple-sounding meter, the technical details are startlingly sophisticated.

Yet for all the subtlety and sophistication Blake brings to his poem, it’s important to note that “The Tyger” has a meter that, on the whole, sounds a lot like a simple children’s rhyme. The major factor contributing to this effect is Blake’s use of tetrameter. Regardless of whether it’s written in trochaic or iambic rhythm, tetrameter tends to have a sing-song quality that stands in contrast to the more measured and elegant rhythm of, say, pentameter. The four-beat lines of tetrameter readily lend themselves to song—and indeed, most popular songs are written with a repeating four-beat rhythm. The use of rhyming couplets further emphasizes the neat subdivision of each quatrain into tidy rhythmic units. The five-beat line of pentameter, by contrast, doesn’t break down neatly into two clear halves, which is more difficult to sing. Yet Blake’s use of tetrameter has a powerful effect in “The Tyger,” which is a poem that affects an attitude of childlike curiosity to get at profound questions about faith and doubt. Therefore, the seemingly “simple” form stands in a relationship of generative tension with the poem’s sophisticated content.

Previous section Structure Next section Rhyme

Take a Study Break