Channel Firing

Like all else, individuals have different views and opinions regarding which poetry is the best. For one individual, it may be Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” while for another it may be Thomas Hardy’s “Channel Firing.” In my personal opinion, William Blake’s poem, “The Tyger” is one of the world’s greatest poems because of the poet’s use of the various literary and sound devices including: alliteration, consonance, assonance and repetition, among others, and also because of the poet’s use of questions to create a sense of mystery.

First of all, Blake’s poem, “The Tyger” is comprised of six quatrains in rhymed couplets, and the meter is regular and rhythmic, as its hammering beat is suggestive of a tiger’s fun, playful and dangerous nature. Speaking of which, the “hammer” is mentioned in line 13. Here, the poet is comparing the tiger to the fire and its creator to a blacksmith, giving the image of a beating hammer, by using a metaphor. This poem’s rhyming pattern is AABB. The rhyming
The alliteration used emphasizes the playful nature of the poem, which is alike feline creatures, particularly tigers. The fact that this poem is playful is one of my favourite things about Blake’s poem, “The Tyger.” An example of alliteration is “Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright” in line 1, as both the “T” and the “B” are repeated. Other examples of alliteration are “distant deeps” in line 5, “Dare its deadly” in line 16, as the letter “d” is repeated, and “frame thy fearful” in line 24, as the letter “f” is repeated in both words. Blake also uses assonance in “the fire of thine eyes” in line 6, through the use of the “i” sound and consonance in “deeps or skies” in line 5 through the use of the “s” sound. These types of sound repetition place emphasis on the beauty and power of the tiger, while also emphasize the constant mystery of the creator of the tiger and its