T. S. Eliot – Journey of the Magi

Eliot’s poem, “Journey of the Magi,” is based on the journey of the Three Wise Men to see Christ in the book of Matthew. The first part of the poem tells about how hard the journey is—“’A cold coming we had of it, / Just the worst time of the year / For a journey, and such a long journey: / The ways deep and the weather sharp, / The very dead of winter.’” Even the camels are unhappy. The kings are used to “summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, / And the silken girls bringing sherbet.” The men they hired to keep the camels didn’t want to work, they wanted “their liquor and women” instead. They were never warm, and had no shelter; the cities were unfriendly. Eventually the men just traveled all night because it was easier that way. They had “voices singing in our ears, saying / That this was all folly.” The voices are telling them that they are going through all of this hardship for nothing.

Then at last, they “came down to a temperate valley, / Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation, / With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness / And three trees on the low sky. / And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.” At last they are getting somewhere! After they got to their destination, they went back to their kingdoms—“We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, / But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, / With an alien people clutching their gods. / I should be glad of another death.” After they have seen Christ, they are no longer at ease in their palaces, and their people who worship different gods seem as aliens. The kings have seen the way they are supposed to live, and no longer feel comfortable in this life. “I should be glad of another death,” implies that they want to be with Christ, in the afterlife.

Robert Browning – Porphyria’s Lover

Browning’s poem, “Porphyria’s Lover,” is about one lover not ever wanting to be without Porphyria, and I mean literally. Porphyria comes to visit her lover one stormy night, and never leaves again. She comes into the cottage filled with trust and love—“And, last, she sat down by my side / And called me. When no voice replied, / She put my arm about her waist, / And made her smooth white shoulder bare, / And all her yellow hair displaced, / And, stooping, made my cheek lie there, / And spread, o’er all, her yellow hair, / Murmuring how she loved me.” She came through the storm to see her lover—no amount of bad weather could keep her away. The lovers had a perfect night, and Porphyria’s lover—the narrator—did not want the moment to end. The narrator was surprised at the love of Porphyria and how she worshipped him. “at last I knew / Porphyria worshipped me; surprise / Made my heart swell, and still it grew / While I debated what to do. / That moment she was mine, mine, fair, / Perfectly pure and good.” He did not want to lose that moment! Not then, not ever. In the next few lines, the narrator tells how he strangled Porphyria with her own hair! He tries to convince himself that she didn’t feel any pain—“No pain felt she; / I am quite sure she felt no pain.” He says it twice as if he doesn’t quite believe the first time.

The narrator opens Porphyria’s eyes after death, and fancies that they are laughing, and that her cheeks blush again when he loosens the hair from her neck. He is acting like she is not dead and that everything will remain in the perfect moment forever—“I propped her head up as before, / Only, this time my shoulder bore / Her head, which droops upon it still: / The smiling rosy little head, / So glad it has its utmost will, / That all is scorned at once is fled, / And I, its love, am gained instead!” He has convinced himself that this is what Porphyria wanted—to be dead and be with him. “she guessed not how / Her darling one wish would be heard. / And thus we sit together now, / And all night long we have not stirred, / And yet God has not said a word!” He sat with her all night, content to be with her, and thinking everything is okay.

John Keats – La Belle Dame sans Mercy

In Keats’ “La Belle Dame sans Mercy,” the woman in the story is a “femme fatale,” which is a temptress whose seduction proves fatal. The poem begins with the narrator asking himself, “Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight, / Alone and palely loitering; / The sedge is wither’d from the lake, / And no birds sing. / Ah, what can ail thee wretched wight,/ So haggard and so woe-begone?” The fourth stanza seems to begin answering this question as the narrator falls victim to the Lady’s charms and fancies himself in love with her. He tells of the day they spent together—“I met a Lady in the meads / Full beautiful, a fairy’s child; / Her hair was long, her foot was light, / And her eyes were wild. / I set her on my pacing steed, / and nothing else saw all day long; / For sideways she would lean, and sing / A fairy’s song.” He noticed her beauty immediately, and could not keep his eyes off of her the entire day. They fell in love, and the narrator has to suffer the consequences. In the third stanza, he introduces the traditional emblems of love and death. He writes, “I see a lily on thy brow, / With anguish moist and fever dew; / And on they cheeks a fading rose / Fast withereth too.” The lily symbolizes death, and the rose symbolizes love. He has death on his brow and the love that was so new is fading fast.

After he spends the day with the Lady, he fell asleep and dreamed of “pale kings, and princes too, / Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; / Who cry’d—“La Belle Dame sans mercy / Hath thee in thrall!” These dream figures had experienced her love before, and that’s why they were as pale as the narrator. They were foreshadowers, and sure enough, the narrator woke up alone—“Alone and palely loitering, / Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake, / And no birds sing.” The poem ends as it starts out, reiterating his heartbreak.

James Joyce- Clay

What I enjoyed most about this piece of work what is simpilicity. I do enjoy works that make me have to think but its nice when one can keep my interest without stressing me out. This poem definitely possessed a shock factor, one minutes Maria was a “veritable peace-maker” and then turns out she is a prostitute. To my knowledge prostitutes are usually a source trouble, not peace. I don’t know if Maria is a peace-makes but she is ignorant. Maria works in a kitchen in a place for ex-prostitutes and recovering alcoholics. After work one night she attends a party at Joe’s, a man she was the nurse to when he was a boy. This is an odd scene to me at first because I could not understand what Joe would want with her exactly. Then as I continued to read I saw that he “had his way with her, and then they lay by the fire” (1136). This was disturbing to me, I cannot even comprehend the age difference, but that is beside the point. During a game at the party, Maria chooses “clay” This is a significant because the people believed that this meant that she would die soon. She does not understand the significance of her choice.

Besides Maria ignorance, I want to know how one goes from being a nanny to a prostitute and vice versa? She took care of Joe as a child and not she has slept with him. He got her drunk and then slept with her (1136). Joyce shocked and disturbed me, but I did enjoy how he simply put it, he writes, “so Maria let him have his way and they say by the fire talking over old time…” He wasn’t graphic yet I was still disturbed, in fact I had to read it twice because it was presented so non-chantilly, but once I grasped it I couldn’t stop reading it. It was like a car horrible car wreck that I could not pry my arms away from.

The French Revolution and Helen Williams

The French and the English have never gotten along, at least there are virtually no records of it in history. Her writings were surprisingly civil. She was a competent individual, and Englishwoman but she was not unpleasant. Her letters were pleasant, they shared her journeys and views of France, and surprisingly enough they were not negative. Her letters brought something very interesting to my attention, is ones nationality based on birth or based on love for a country? My grandparents on my Father’s side are full Mexican, they moved her about 50 years ago, they don’t speak English very well, they only eat at Mexican restarunts and are as traditional as they come, we even eat tamales on “Feliez Navidad.” My grandparents on my mother’s side are full Scottish. They also came to the United States about 50 years ago. Granted it was probably a lot easier for them to adjust, I see them embracing American culture but still being respectful of where they came form. Does there love for America make them American? My mother has lived her since she was 2 but she is a “naturalized citizen” something about that sounds very capitalistic. For some reasons these letters made me think about nationality, Williams’ letters wer not what I expected for writing of the French revolution, they were not hateful, I don’t know any Englishmen or women, I don’t even know Scottish men or women, that would speak kindly of the French. Thus, I am intrigued by the thought that ones love for a country could out weigh the importance of their birthplace.

William Butler Yeats- "No Second Troy"

W.B. Yeats poem “No Second Troy” is a poem of rejection and heartbreak He compares Maud to Helen of Troy. I am not sure if this is meant to be a compliment or not. On the one hand she was a very attractive woman, but she also smashed the entire country. Maud enchanted him in the way the Helen of Troy enchanted the people of Troy, yet in the end no amount of beauty can make up for destruction. In his poem he writes, “Why should I blame her that she filled my days with misery” It’s as if he came to the realization that he was only miserable because he allowed her to make him feel that way. This opening line reminded me of a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” I can relate this poem to this quote because they are both talking about allowing other people to control how you feel. Keats is basically kicking himself for allowing Maud to make him feel miserable, he realizes that she could only make him feel that way because he allowed her to.

Going to back to Helen of Troy, she was a political figurehead, a ruler. She was to be loved by all, yet she causes chaos and destroyed a country. Keats uses the comparison of Helen of Troy to show the great destructive power women have. At the end of the poem he writes, “With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this, Being high and solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?” Again the comparison is evident, but when he asks if there was another Troy for her to burn I am not really sure what he means. It could be a variety of things; he could be wondering if his was the only heart scorned by her love? He could also be wondering, if there are more countries that will be destroyed by women with too much beauty and power? I do not know exactly, but I do like even if it depicts women as the cause of wars and destruction, because it can also be seen that men are easily manipulated by love.

Ode to Virginia Woolf

The writing style of Woolf is modern, and she is perhaps the greatest female wrighter of the 20th century. She also had connections such as James Joyce and T.S Elliot. She had a great mind a witty mind. In her essay The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection. Her humor can be admired, and her style makes for an interesting read. In this essay she uses a looking glass as a vice for examining another woman, Isabella Tyson’s life (1225). This peculiar because a looking glass is a mirror, and one would usually use that to examine ones own life. This leads the reader to wonder to if the woman is not a representation of Woolf herself. Perhaps a mirror image or an alternate ego of herself is who she is describing. She is describing herself; she is the lady in the looking glass. What is also amusing about her story is the very first line “People should not leave a looking-glass hanging around their rooms any more than they should leave open cheque books or letters confessing some hideous crime” (1224). She is condemning people having household mirrors. She alludes to it being dangerous and self-destructive. This is humorous because what is dangerous about a mirror? It is also meaningful on a deeper level, like self-examination is a destructive behavior. She is saying that examining one’s self is dangerous because you might not like what you find out.

This looking glass can also be said to be a method of uncovering levels of character. She writes “But, outside, the looking-glass reflected the hall table, the sunflowers, the garden path so accurately, and so fixed that they seemed held there in their reality unescapably” (1225). She uses that mirror to examine the outside of the house; she is describing the external self. She is showing the self that is, well in her time, unchangeable. She describes this garden path as a type of constant, it fixed. It leads is only one path, unchangeable, the directing of the path the size of the path has been set literally in stone. This is the external body, the one thing that is constant, appearance. She then describes the interior of the house, which would be the deep interior of the self. The inner and outer images of the self are very different, just as the image the people present to others and attempt to maintain in themselves is very different. The narrator of the story examines Tyson through her looks, her dinner conversation, and faces about her life. Then Woolf examines her “larger and larger in the looking glass” (1228). This could mean that she is seeing the complete and whole person not just layers. Woolf is truly an ingenious woman; she combines Tyson, the narrator and herself and throws them into her story “The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A reflection”.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson – The Karken

Tennyson wrote a poem about a large mythical sea monster, what could be more Victorian? This is one of the poems where I just had to put my book down, and laugh, thinking to myself “How do people come up with this stuff?” I then had to look up exactly what a Kraken was. I loaded some images for your enjoyment…

These are delightful. After reading this poem the rest of Tennyson couldn’t be anything else but creepy and weird to me. He writes, “Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green./ There hath he lain for agaes and will lie/ Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep” These are not the lush, romantic images I was used to in our reading. It wasn’t even gory, but it is still graphic. In these lines he is describing a huge sea monster flailing it’s enormous arms, which I imagine are scaly and slimly. The image also includes this beast devouring worms. Oddly enough this creature is peaceful. He is thought to be in actuality an oversized squid, which peacefully sleeps at the bottom of the ocean. This poem proves to me that poetry and literature can entail anything and everything.

Thomas Hardy – Channel Firing

Thomas Hardy was a mixture of the Victorian and Modern era. Most of his books were very controversial. He wrote on and challenged religious beliefs which during his time period was completely taboo. Many of the reader during that time were alarmed that such a man would even write about the topic. He covered a variety of topic other then religion, such as industrialism and the differences in social class. He wrote mostly Victorian novels, but when it came to his poetry he was a modernist. Hardy lived during the time of Word War I and the events of the war influenced many of his poems. His poem “Channel Firing” was written before World War I which shows that was had a huge impact on the thoughts of Thomas Hardy. I was never involved in war until I read an essay a little boy in a middle school class I was helping teach this summer wrote an essay about his brother who recently died in Iraq. For some reason I felt closer to war, and it has been weighing on my mind. Thomas Hardy had the weight of war on his mind when he wrote “Channel Firing.”

Hardy wrote “All nations striving strong to make/ Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters/ they do no more for Christes sake/ Than you who are helpless in such matters” (1077). I enjoyed these verses of the poem because it shows the madness and helplessness of war. Later Hardy attempts to justify why war is necessary, but here he shows the hatefulness of war. “All nations striving strong to make/ Red war yet redder” (1077), this give me an image of complete chaos. I imagine a sea of people from all over the world, or in this case near the English Channel, just slaughtering one another. I know that “slaughter” is not a very appealing word, but it conveys the intended meaning of a “Red war yet redder.” Since this particular poem is refereeing to military exercises this verse is of particular interest. He doesn’t take sides, he mentions “All nations” (1077), and this is a way of sharing the blame. Saying that all are partaking, all are striving to cause the chaos that is war. I love how concise his words are in this poem. It is beautifully written, I really enjoyed reading Thomas Hardy.

John Stuart Mill - A Biography

From a very early age Mill was taught different languages such as Greek and Latin, he was also taught mathematics and economics. He was educated by his father, James Mill, mostly and also by his assistant. He was considered one of the greatest thinkers of the Victorian age. John was intentionally sheltered from boys his own age, instead of hunting and enjoying life he was being influenced by his father’s friends. His fathers along with associate Bentham founded utilitarianism.

Like his father James, John intended to follow a strict utilitarianism life style, but later his wife Harriet Taylor influenced him. He later became and advocate for women’s right and involved in politics. He defended individual liberties against the intervention of society and state law. In 1869 Mill argued for the right of women to vote. Plato influenced him in thinking that “higher minds” should be at the head of society. This meant that women would be included, he saw a woman as intellectual equals, which was a thought was too advanced for his time period.

After he branched out from utilitarianism, he later returned to the principles and realized that his father had been grooming him to be a prophet. Mill formed a small society where he taught his fathers political philosophical views. It wasn’t long after this that he experienced a nervous break down, this occurred just as he was becoming a respected member of the intellectual society. It was recorded that his break down was a result of sever mental and physical. I believe it was because he never had a chance to relieve any stress. His father groomed from to be a political and economical mastermind starting at the age of free, he was kept from children his own age in order to develop and mature faster. At the age of three, instead of learning colors and ABC’s he was learning to speak Latin and Greek. He never had a chance to be a child, he didn’t get to experience that part of life so of course at some point enough will be enough and he will break down.

Mill was a natural intellectual, he followed his principles while developing his own. He was a philosopher, an economist, and an author. He wrote theories and developed a religion, but he was never got to experience childhood

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Browning was born in Mach of 1806. She lived a quiet life in the country with her parents and eleven siblings. She was a daughter of privilege, her father acquiring most of his money from Jamaican sugar trade. As a child she was a bit unusual. She did enjoy riding her pony, and attending social gatherings with her brother and sisters. What she mostly enjoyed however, is reading. She had tutors; she loved to study languages, including Greek and Hebrew. At the age of fifteen she fell ill and upon her fathers request she was prescribed opium, when she was thirty she suffered a serious lung illness. For the rest of her unmarried life she lived in seclusion, surround by books and paintings. (Doesn’t it seem that most of these authors suffer from some type of illness?). Her health did not keep her from writing she continued to publish poetry and essays.

The one particular poem that I was attracted to was the “Sonnets form the Portuguese” number 43. The poem begins “How do I love thee, let me count the ways?” I keep wanting to say “their ain’t no number high enough to end this phrase” which are the lyrics to a country song by Garth Brooks. Her poem is delightful it is witty and sweet. My favorite lines from this poem are “I love thee with the passion put to use/ In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.” It makes so much sense to me. I know how much effort into worrying, about money, family, and relationships. If I could put that same passion into loving someone, as I do about worrying about past events and what might happen, then it would be amazing. If I could have faith in someone like a child, to be in love and to be fearless is truly ideal. This idea of loving with a child’s faith is very religious. Jesus calls us to have like a child, to believe like a child, without hesitation. A type of faith that is pure. This may have been what Browning intended. For her love, or the love that is described in the poem, to be pure, holy even. Something that is so wholesome that only a child would be able to see it for what it is truly worth. She maybe even inspired Garth Brooks a little, he used that line in his song “Wrapped up in You.”

Felicia Hemans – Records of Woman

Properzia Rossi was a gifted artist. She could sculpt, write poetry and was also musically gifted. Her heart was for only one man, Roman Knight, and she would do anything for his attention. As a true romantic, eventually, after she was constantly discouraged she died of a broken heart. Hemans writes, “Have I not lov'd, and striven, and fail'd to bind one true heart unto me” There is such longing in this line. Longing for love, for attention, for comfort, for desire, and for lust. It captures that ones talents don’t ensure happiness, that aquacades won’t outweigh loneliness. Properzia seems lonely to me, she has planned out her perfect life with Roman Knight, and because of her stagnant image of what her life should be he can do no wrong. She seems desperate, someone that is lovesick with a fantasy or an alternate reality and because of her heart she has lost sight of herself. She speaks of leaving the earth unknown, and longing for one more dream, she then goes on to write about wondering what will happen when she is gone. After reading these lines, I began to consider the idea that she may have committed suicide. She was making the ultimate sacrifice to show her love. She was so delusional that she believed Roman Knight would take notice. She reached an edge and believed that death was the only way down. Also what makes me believe that suicide is an option is that she leaves a sculpture with him, as if it were to remain a shrine to her. She believed in a love solely devoted to one man. She centered her life on gaining his attention. Unfortunately she did not attain her love, and she lost her life for it. Does this mean that Roman Knight was not the one she was meant for? Or was she so delusional that she couldn’t see life in its own reality? She had a true and pure love, it was just misplaced in the wrong man.

Percy Bysshe Shelley- Ode to the West Wind

Shelley was born August 4, 1792. At the age of twelve he attended the Sion House Academy before entering University College Oxford. Organized education did not agree with Shelley’s philosophies and ideas and he was later expelled. He eloped with sixteen-year-old Harriet Westbrook to Scotland. The two had two children together before Shelley attempted to have an open marriage, which eventually cause his marriage to fail. In 1814 Shelley eloped again with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin who had her own famous work Frankenstein or Modern Day Prometheus. The most famous work of Percy Shelley is probably his poem “Ozymandias” which was published in 1818. What I emjoyed most about Shelley was not “Ozymandias” but another one of his popular poems “Ode to the West Wind”

Perhaps what drew me to this poem is the word “West.” I am from California and every time I say that, some one replies “All the way from the west,” it never fails. I cant “help where I come from I wasn’t born southern but I got here as fast as I could. There is something more vibrant about the west. I know that when Shelley wrote this poem he wasn’t thinking about the West Cost of the United States, but he was thinking of a vibrant force. Shelley was thinking of the wind. The wind is a driving force not only scattering leaves but also scattering lives. In this particular poem the “Wind” is the autumn wind. Autumn leads to winter, thus the wind is the ever-pressing force towards death and stillness. The speaker in the poem speaks about being a dead leaf carried on by the wind. This could mean having himself be carried though death. The speaker asks the wind to takes his thoughts across the universe, so that every intellectual mind will hear and understand. The speaker asks “If winter comes can spring be far behind.” This shows Shelley’s infatuation with nature and natural law. He relates the wind to the driving forces in ones life. The wind is what will support one even after death. This is a sort of moral and principle. Even after life has taken its course and ended in winter, the way one lived and conducted affairs, ones memory will live on. The wind is like the human sole, uncultivated and arrogant. The seasons are the physical something one cannot control. One’s sole remains intact even after the season has passed.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Kubla Khan

This poem was written in a 1816 and is Coleridge’s most prominent work. The poem also has the title A Vision in a Deam, A fragment. The origin of this poem is interesting it came to coleridge in a dream. He was reading about a place that Khan Kubla had commanded to be built and fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke he wrote this poem. It is believed that a visitor interrupted Coleridge and when he returned to this poem the images that had percolated his dreams had vanished, thus the alternate title A Fragment. The poem begins with an intimate description of a place. It describes the walls and the surrounding areas. It is evident that this is not a real place because the Coleridge writes “Through caverns measureless to man/Down to a sunless sea.” Coleridge creates an entie world through his poem. In the beginning Coleriged leads the reader to believe that this is a harmonious place, but the poem takes a turn when he writes “Woman wailing for her demon-lover” This implies that this magical land could be a prison, a place of punishment. It is a woman wailing for her demon lover. This can be seen as her having been in sin. She wants something that is sinful and evil, something out of the ordinary but because she is entrapped she cannot have her desire and she is forced to suffer.

Notice that the man (her demon-lover) is nowhere to be found. The focus is on the woman. Another image in the middle of the poem that is interesting is a “sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice.” Sunny and pleasurable would indicate that this place is tolerable, almost like a vacation spot, but then in that same sentence Coleridge writes “caves of ice.” These images give two different emotions. One is warm and comforting, the other is isolated and cold. Coleridge creates a world of confusion with his words, I don’t particularly care for his style, but I do like the way he switches from third person to first person. It makes the work more personable, which understanding that the writer is not always the eye, this some how makes me feel closer to the work, like I am the one gaining power through him.

Dorothy Wordsworth

She was a modest female writer in the 1800’s, and oddly enough she never considered herself an author. This is a typical attitude of a woman in this time period, writing for pleasure, not with the intent of being published in a male-dominated society. Her poem, Thoughts on my Sick-bed can be easily summarized. The seasons are changing, the flowers are blooming, old friends are stopping by, but Dorothy is suck in bed, sick and unable to enjoy the first signs of spring. To dig deeper into the poem, one can notice frustration, followed by hope. This poem was written in the Spring of 1832, and Wordsworth at the time was in her early 60’s and would pass about 20 years later. At the time of this poem she was ill, hence the title “Thoughts on my sick-bed” Looking into Wordsworth’s life it is noted that she was sick with a debilitating illness. What is interesting about the title of the poem is the word “sick-bed.” This word implies that she was sick as fore mentioned, but it also implies that she has another bed. The she is not her deathbed, she is withering but she will over come. Her “sick-bed” is only a place to spend time when she is ill. In this poem she makes a reference to the celandine, a resilient flower…

She writes, “I welcome the earliest Celandine/ Glittering on the mossy ground” (ln. 11-12). This is a very particular flower, and given her location, was commonly thought of as a garden weed. As shown above the leaves are yellow but they turn white with age. Wordsworth is welcoming this flower, she is glad to see its return. I think she also respects this flower, and perhaps sees it as a representation of herself. The flower is a resilient, persistent weed that will wither with age. Wordsworth has the same mentality that nothing will defeat her, she will preserver, and succumb to only age.

William Blake—The Tyger & The Lamb

These two poems are very confusing, and it is difficult to understand some of the symbolisms, yet others are obvious. In “The Lamb” the symbolism is obvious. Blake writes, “Little Lamb who made thee/ Dost thou know who made thee” (Ln 1-2). Later he writes, “He is meek& he is mild/ He became a little Child” (15-16), if it wasn’t obvious form the fist lines of the poem it should be from these lines, the Lamb is God, who was incarnated in a child by the name of Jesus. Blake’s words are concise, and non explicit. In the poem “The Tyger” Blake’s symbolism are not as obvious. His words are concise. He does not elaborate on anything, he simple makes a statement and moves on. The tyger can represent pure evil, it can represent Satan, the horrors of the world, and it can represent understanding and reason. There are many interpretations of what the tyger represents. In relations to faith and believing in an omnipotent God, the Tyger represents an unsatisfied feeling. The tyger, is unbelief and doubting. The tyger represents the reason one uses to question the power and authority of God. This poem is about reason being trumped by the realization of the exquisiteness and repulsion of the natural world.

Evil is used in many different senses, and the word holds many different meaning for different people. In this poem, the tyger kills a lamb. This is a torturous act; a ferocious overpowering tyger killed a poor innocent wholesome lamb. Is this evil, or just an act of nature? Animals killing others animals for survival is a part of the process of life. Some animals are meant to be predators and other are the pray. In order for the tyger to live, he must eat. He is not killing the lamb for sport. This is the harsh relization that there is horror in the world, there are acts of disgust, and turmoil, and God has created it. It leads one to believe that God does not necessarily only encompass good. God created the animal that carried out this unnerving act, which can only mean that God also encompasses evil. In order for evil (the tyger) to exist there must be good to thrive upon (the lamb). Evil is dependent on good, and vice versa. Without one the other cannot exist.

These two poems are about having your reason and practical beliefs plagued by the horror and beauty of the natural world. The beauty is seen in creation, in God. The horror is seen in the tyger, in his snide and cruel acts. Yet there is still beauty in the tyger, because the creator created him and he doing exactly what he was created to do. Horror and beauty were both created of our benefits.