The Tyger of the tunes. The Tyger "The Tyger" is a poem by the English poet William Blake published in 1794 as part of the "Songs of Experience" collection. Literary critic Alfred Kazin calls it "the most famous of his poems", and "The Cambridge Companion to William Blake" says it is "the most anthologized poem in English". It is one of Blake's most reinterpreted and arranged works. The "Songs of Experience" was published in 1794 as a follow up to Blake's 1789 "Songs of Innocence." The two books were published together under the merged title "Songs of Innocence and of Experience, showing
The Tyger which created us. Kazin says of Blake, "Never is he more heretical than ... where he glories in the hammer and fire out of which are struck ... the Tyger". Rather than believing in war between good and evil or heaven and hell, Blake thought each man must first see and then resolve the contraries of existence and life. In "The Tyger" he presents a poem of "triumphant human awareness" and "a hymn to pure being", according to Kazin. Blake's original tunes for his poems have been lost in time, but many artists have tried to create their own versions