re "burning bright" make the poet stand in awe as his imagination conjures questions about the "hand" which made the beast. The poet asks in the second stanza what depths, heights and lengths of daring courage this Creator must possess. Where does this creator dwell and how high can he or it fly, and "on what wings" (7)?
The third stanza shows the poet trying to bring this Creator into a clearer picture in his imagination, trying to relate the Creator to the things familiar to the poet (shoulder and art) and also to imagine what the Creator must have felt when the tiger came to life. Did the Creator draw back a "dread hand" and flee on "dread feet"?
The fourth stanza is more of the same as the poet extends the metaphor of the artisan at his bench creating the tiger with hammer, chain, furnace, anvil. Again, the Romantic poet stands in awe before nature not simply for its own sake but for its transcendent power, its power to bring up exciting thoughts about the Creator behind nature.
The fifth stanza uses the image of the stars (shooting stars as "spears"?) and rain to evoke the finished Creation, and asks if the Creator was pleased or "did smile." The last line of the fifth stanza is meant to shock, to contrast the tiger suddenly and unexpectedly with the Lamb, or Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. Blake is suggesting that it must have been a Creator of unimaginable power, imagination, and mystery which created two such opposite creatures. One possibility is that Blake means to use the tiger and the lamb to symbolize the might of Jehovah and the meekness of Jesus.
The final stanza duplicates the first, except that "Dare" replaces "Could," emphasiz
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