Poetry recovery - The Tiger
OK, so I still trying to get over the embarrassment of having posted my (very bad - and somewhat half-hearted) trochaic poetry attempt - and wishing I could write some brilliant thing on demand to outshine it, but, alas, I can't. So below is one that works, which perhaps will ring familiar. (Incidentally, my Mum read this poem to my niece one day when she was quite little and rather taken with stuffed rabbits. A few days later she was heard alarming people by toddling around saying "Bunnies, bunnies, burning in the night".) Anyway, writing in trochee is not at all like natural speech, which is what can make it so awkward - if it fails. Another famous trochaic poem is The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, which makes me shiver (when read dramatically by candlelight).
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