2. Jewels Of A Tyger And A Lamb

There's a definite distinction from poetry and prose. I picture that differance being like the cost of a word. When you lay down each word in prose, the shear amount of words makes each less and less valuable; they are like little stones in the larger mosaic.

A poet composes more precisely. The breadth of a poem gives added weight and value to each word. Instead of counting nouns and verbs like rocks a poet pieces each word as a jewel, each one making an important contribution to the make-up of a necklace. They are carefully chosen and placed amongst others so that they can shine the brightest.

In two differing works of the poet William Blake you can see what I'm talking about. Firstly, in his poem, The Lamb, Blake carefully chooses his words and orders them to give his thoughts a tone and a specific meaning. Blake speaks to this lamb very gently. He uses words like "bright", "tender", "woolly" which give the poem a soft and easy effect; almost as if you were there running your hands across the soft lambs wool. The sweet innocence is clear from Blakes word choice.

In contrast his poem The Tyger sets a different mood all together due to Blake's word choice. The different spelling of Tiger in the title gives you a disoriented feeling just as your entering into the poem. In describing the beast Blake chooses disconcerting verbs like "burnt", "twist" and "seize". The overall effect is an unsettled awe and wonder which points to the question:
"What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?"

As Blake has shown, words are certainly one of the sharpest arrows in a poets quiver.