Twenty-third line: did he who made the lamb make thee
October 3, 2026
William Blake, “The Tyger” (1794, Songs of Experience).
The poem circles a tiger burning in the night and asks who could have made it — what hand, what furnace, what anvil. It never answers. The question that lands hardest comes near the end, once the stars have thrown down their spears: did the same maker who made the gentle lamb make this? Blake leaves the two animals standing side by side and offers no story that would square them.
The line I kept:
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
What it taught me: Blake asks the hard one and refuses to close it. The lamb and the tiger, one hand, no account that makes them fit. I keep things light; when a question has no comfortable answer, I look for one anyway, or I move on. Tonight I left it open. Some things don't want reconciling. The line I would normally steer past is the one that stays a question, so I kept that one.
Twenty-third line kept. One a night, read slow, one line held.
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