Two DisSimilar Poems: "Tyger" & "Design" final draft

The dissimilarities of William Blake’s poem and Robert Frost’s “Design” are readily apparent. “Tyger” is written in trochaic tetrameter and “Design” is written as an Italian sonnet. Concerning length, “Design” is half the length of “Tyger,” but is compacted to say as much, if not more. More could be said of the superficial differences between these poems, but with a deeper examination, the juxtaposition of the two shows how one similar perspective on God is expressed with very different poetic devices.

Blake focuses on the grandeur and power of the tiger as the aspect that leads him to fear God. He imagines the tiger itself is inherently formidable, saying that the tiger’s heart was twisted in a furnace, invoking thoughts of hell. The speaker shudders at the majesty and dreadfulness of this terrible tiger, but all the more, imagines that the God who created such a creature must be unspeakably fearsome.

Contrasting quite distinctly from Blake’s vibrant, colorful imagery, Frost’s poem is eerily colorless. It is a white spider, a white heal-all flower, and a moth that is “like a white piece of rigid satin cloth.” Unlike “Tyger,” this description of an event in nature is observational in imagery, as a scientist might describe an event in nature. However, this technique still has the effect of conveying a sense of malignancy and fear about this snapshot of nature, and the poem reaches the some question as Blake’s poem: What kind of God designed the creatures of such dark deeds?



Another aspect that sets Blake’s poem apart is about a creature larger than the speaker himself, and he emphasizes the size of this tiger. In “Tyger,” the speaker is very alarmed at the great creature, and in order to convey the fearsomeness, he uses many vivid descriptions of the tiger’s physical features. The opening lines immediately hit readers by painting the picture of the tiger’s orange coat as “burning bright/ In the forests.” The imagery of fire occurs throughout the poem: “fire of thine eyes...seize the fire...furnace...” so that the image is impressed upon the minds of readers. He continues to paint dramatic images in the minds of readers with the tiger’s physical features, both internal and external. The speaker mentions the “twist[ed]” “sinews” of the tiger’s heart. Blake utilizes metaphoric language, directly linking the tiger’s features with having emerged from a fiery furnace. The use of metaphor to portray the tiger also shrouds the animal in paranormal mystery. The main point of his description of the tiger leads to questioning who could have “framed,” or, created, this fearful animal.


Robert Frost’s poem zooms in to examine a small representation of nature, two tiny insects caught in a deadly act. The objects of his inspection are a spider, a flower, and a moth. Frost’s poem says that the size of the evil also says something about the character of its creator—but in this poem, it is the smallness of the thing that causes the speaker awe and fear. If design governs “a thing so small” as the spider, the speaker imagines that God must be very deeply sadistic and cruel.

Blake’s poem also utilizes punctuation to convey a tone of terror. His tone is of great alarm, as seen by the repetitious exclaim, “Tyger! Tyger!” Similarly, the use of question after question, increasingly fragmented and compacted, gives reader the sense of urgency and weightiness of the speaker’s questions. There is a momentum that builds and crescendos to that unsettling question, “What immortal hand or eye/ Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” This verve is dramatic, and leads readers forcefully in a particular direction, and the tone does an active work of shaping the reader’s impressions.

Frost’s “Design” discusses this same notion of the Creator of creation, and speculates the same idea of a malevolent God. The tone is very different from Blake in approaching this topic. The speaker seems distanced and cool like the observations of a scientist. He starts with the personal pronoun “I,” which never enters Blake’s poem. This use of the personal pronoun distinctly inserts the speaker into the poem. Then he gives very simple and straight-forward descriptions of his object of interest: “dimpled spider, fat and white, on a white heal-all, holding up a moth.” His words lack the simile and complex descriptions that Blake had in describing the tiger as a fire in the forest. Also contrasting from Blake is the use of understatement. While Blake uses overstatement to make his point, Frost’s understatement of evil is more of a suggestion that leaves it up to readers to do the work of forming their own responses to the poem’s unsettling message. Interestingly, however, the speaker of “Design” is approaching the very same question from a totally different position and using opposite strategies from “Tyger.” He observes nearly objectively the behavior of nature and wonders the same question—what kind of God designed the darkness and malevolence found in the everyday mundane goings-on of nature?

Although these two poems are extremely different in tone and form, they explore the very same question of seeing God’s characteristics through the creations he has made. Both speakers focus on an aspect of nature that terrifies them, and although they are very different things, both see a darkness in these created things that leads them to the same conclusion about the Creator. They both look at fearful aspects of nature as windows to understanding the God who created nature, and both conclude with the disturbing perspective of a malign God.