The Second Coming And The Tyger Analysis

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The focus of this essay is to critically discuss the issues and possible solutions which are highlighted in the poems The Second Coming and The Tyger. It is important to note that, according to the structure of a poem, the first stanzas are predominantly about pointing out the problem that the poet is confronted with and the last stanzas are about the resolution or what the poet suggests must be done in order to solve the problem identified.
In contextualising the two poems, The Second Coming was written by WB Yeats and The Tyger was written by William Blake. Notably, both these poets were intrigued by something which led to the writing of these poems. “By the accident of the date of his birth, however, Yeats lived into the modern age, which …show more content…

In the Yeats poem, there are two stanzas. He used enjambments in the poem like in line 12 whereby there is no any form punctuation throughout the line until line 13 where there is a semi-colon. Contrarily, Blake’s poem has six stanzas with four lines in each stanza. There are also similarities between the two poems. Moreover, Blake and Yeats used repetition. There is a repetition in line 9 to 10 of words in the The Second Coming poem “Surely…” and “…at hand”. Likewise, there is a repetition in The Tyger. Blake repeated the word “Tyger” both in the first stanza as well as in the last stanza. Notably, the use of repetition plays a crucial role in the poem as it is for emphasis. In the The Tyger, one can argue that Blake was trying to emphasise the strength and courage that people have when engaging in evil acts like killing each other just like the ability of a tiger to kill its …show more content…

The diction that Blake used in The Tyger poem portrays an important aspect of the poem. Handley (1992, p.44) add to this, “with the first verse having the word ‘could’- the ability of the divine creator to fashion such a beast-which in the final verse becomes ‘dare’- a mixture of wonder and terror at the achievement of such power which touches on religious awe”. These two words, therefore, in the beginning and final part of the poem were placed there on purpose. One is to show uncertainty whereas the other is for certainty or courage to do

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