has been interpreted by Swinburne: 'Could God bring down his heart to the making of a thing so deadly and strong? Or could any lesser daemonic force of nature take to itself wings and fly high enough to assume power equal to such a creation? Could spiritual force so far descend, or material force so far aspire?'
Upon the same page, to the right of these two stanzas, follows a fair copy of stanzas 1, 3, 5, and 6, which, except for unimportant differences of capitalization, and the readings 'dare frame' for 'could frame' in the first, and 'hand and eye' for 'hand or eye' in the first and last stanzas, is identical with the text of the engraved Songs.
The following is a faithful transcript of the original draft of 'The Tyger' in the MS. Book, Blake's variant readings being indicated typographically by placing them in consecutive order, one below another, deleted words or lines being printed in italics. The manuscript itself is unpunctuated throughout. It will be seen that this version differs in important details from that given by Messrs. Ellis and Yeats (iii. pp. 91, 92), which not only fails to make clear the sequence of Blake's alterations, but contains such inexplicable misreadings as 'filch' for 'fetch,' 'horn'd' for 'horrid,' 'inspire' for 'aspire,' and 'did' for 'dare'—errors repeated in Mr. Yeats' 'Muses' Library ' edition of Blake (notes, pp. 238, 239).
THE TYGER.
1. Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand & eye
or
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Dare
2. In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt in
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
The cruel
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?
3. And what shoulder, & what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat
What dread hand & what dread feet
Could fetch it from the furnace deep,
And in thy horrid ribs dare steep?
In the well of sanguine woe—
In what clay & in what mould
Were thy eyes of fury roll'd?
5. What the hammer? what the chain?
Where where
In what furnace was thy brain?
