Sundays with William Blake: The Tyger

Did He who made kittens put snakes in the grass?...

A Koch snowflake is a strange mathematical object with a limited area but infinite perimeter, that is, the length around the object is infinite but the space that the object takes up is finite.  Koch snowflakes are made by taking an equilateral triangle and adding three more equilateral triangles to each face and so on to infinity.  This relates back to the coastline paradox, a real problem in the real world.  Due to the coastline paradox, the apparently simple question "How long is the coast of Britain?" is, in fact, unanswerable.

The Tyger is one of my favorite poems by Blake and, to me, seems to open the question of the nature of God.  God made all that was good, kind and lovely without a doubt.  But there's also violence and cruelty in the world - did God make that, too?  How could a kind and loving God make a cruel world?  It would appear to many that intuitively obvious answer is that either God does not exist or He is Himself cruel.

The Tyger
By William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! 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 sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & 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 watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?