In this installment, Anne Shaw reads “The Tyger” by William Blake. Shaw is the author of Undertow (2007), winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize from Persea Books. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals including New American Writing, Hayden's Ferry Review, Gulf Coast, New Ohio Review, and Subtropics. A recipient of a Gertrude Stein Award from Green Integer Press and a finalist for the Colorado Poetry Prize, she is assistant professor of English at Franklin Pierce University.

William Blake, "The Tyger"

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, 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 the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd 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?