The Romantic poet William Blake wrote, in the age of European colonial expansion and encounter with Asian fauna:
TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Tigers in the wild could be extinct in only 12 years if extreme conservation measures are not taken. Blake knew “tygers” only from natural histories and travelogues. His was a literary tiger, a symbol of the dark side of the divine (he probably belonged to a sect with Gnostic tendencies). Are all future generations doomed to know these marvels of nature only as a literary trope? And, how ironic that Blake saw the work of an “immortal” hand in the creation of the tiger, whereas they were to be ephemeral and gone only a couple of centuries after he wrote, a symbol of mortal cupidity and insouciance rather than of divine creativity.
The Tiger
TIGER, tiger, 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 seize 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?
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
– William Blake
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