“Tyger Tyger, burning bright,”
— William Blake, The Tyger (1794)
Context
Blake's 'The Tyger,' published in his 1794 Songs of Experience, is the dark twin to 'The Lamb' in Songs of Innocence. Across six stanzas the speaker addresses the predator and asks what kind of maker could forge such terrifying beauty. The poem opens — and almost closes — with this doubled invocation.
How the repetition works
The adjacent repetition of 'Tyger' acts as apostrophe twice over, conjuring the creature into the room while the trochaic pulse mimics a hammer striking the anvil the poem will go on to interrogate. Repeating the noun (rather than a verb or adjective) freezes the addressee in attention before any predicate arrives, so the entire poem unfolds as a question posed face-to-face. The device returns nearly verbatim in the final stanza with only 'Could' shifted to 'Dare,' showing how repetition itself can register the speaker's deepening alarm.