"What immortal hand or eye,/Could frame thy fearful symmetry": Did this rhyme? How?

[Frylock]

@pepperlandgirl

I’m confused. Why do you think the claim isn’t true?

I don’t. I know nothing whatsoever about the poem. I just saw the claim in Wikipedia that the pronunciation is a joke, and I saw no citation, so I was asking for more. Which you provided, so, thanks!

-FRL-

[Roderick_Femm]

@pulykamell

Sure, you can lop everything under “poetic license,” but I think that’s a rather oversimplistic explanation meant for 9th graders.

I guess I take issue to this: “It’s called poetic license when it doesn’t quite rhyme, but the word the poet wants to use is the perfect word, so he goes ahead and lets it not…exactly…rhyme.”

Poets very often are quite conscious of not making a word rhyme exactly. It’s not necessarily that the word is perfect so rhyme be damned. It’s quite often not wanting to use a masculine rhyme because the effect is unwanted. (To my ears, perfect rhyme in AABB form these days can sound a bit sing-songy and “light.” For most subjects, I prefer more gentle “rhymes.” See Seamus Heaney for somebody who uses traditional forms and more contemporary ideas of rhyme in his work.)

I think Blake is being very deliberate in his choice of metrical variance and non-rhyme, and it’s for emphatic effect.

I second this one, from my dim memories of a college poetry class. Those two lines stand out from the rest of the poem precisely because the rhyme is a little off, especially since all the other rhymes are rather pat. I don’t remember if we discussed why it was theoretically important to Blake to emphasize those lines, but being the poet he was, I doubt it was anything other than intentional.
Roddy

[Terminus_Est]

@Frylock

I don’t. I know nothing whatsoever about the poem. I just saw the claim in Wikipedia that the pronunciation is a joke, and I saw no citation, so I was asking for more. Which you provided, so, thanks!

-FRL-

The English don’t seem to know how to pronounce “junta” or “Quixote” (jewn-ta and quick-shot, respectively), so how can I be expected to believe that they know how to pronounce “Don Juan”?

[Spoke]

Pfft. Blake’s got nuthin’ on Bobby Burns. The first stanza of To a Mouse:

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murdering pattle.

Maybe they rhyme in a Scottish accent…

[rowrrbazzle]

@pulykamell

I’ve never heard eye/symmetry as a perfect rhyme. My simple interpretation is that Blake was changing up the rhyme and rhythm in order to emphasize these lines. You could probably also make some sort of case for it also echoing the idea of symmetry (or perhaps imperfect human symmetry, depending on how you want to look at it.)

Personally, I think it’s mostly a musical effect to underscore and engrain those lines. When everything else is surrounded in perfect, sing-songy, masculine rhymes, and a line juts out like that, you’re going to remember it even more.

Interesting theory. But verse 3, lines 2 and 3 also have the “symmetry” rhythm, as well as verse 5, lines 2 and 4. There doesn’t seem to any particular reason to emphasize those lines. I’ll speculate he thought those lines were best as they are and the sprung rhythm and rhyme weren’t important. And he was right, of course.

[pulykamell]

@rowrrbazzle

Interesting theory. But verse 3, lines 2 and 3 also have the “symmetry” rhythm

How so? I hear it as this:

Could TWIST the SINews (OF) thy HEART? (four stresses)
And WHEN thy HEART beGAN to BEAT, (four stresses)

as well as verse 5, lines 2 and 4.

And WAter’d HEAven (WITH) their TEARS (four stresses)
[…]
Did HE who MADE the LAMB make THEE? (four stresses)

While:

WHAT imMORtal HAND or EYE, (four stresses)
(Could) FRAME thy FEARful SYMmetry? (three stresses)

[…]

(Dare) FRAME thy FEARful SYMmetry

although I can also hear a reading of:

DARE FRAME thy FEARful SYMmetry

Either way, it sticks out very obviously because of the lack of rhyme and the verse not ending on an accented syllable. No other lines in the poem share those characteristics.

[pulykamell]

I should add, you could add a secondary stress to “symmetry” on the last syllable. It’s not quite the way I hear it, but you can make a convincing argument to me. If that’s the way we want to read it, then you still have the lack of rhyme emphasizing the couplet.

[eleanorigby]

Tigers aren’t really symmetrical, so perhaps the rhyme is intentional to underscore that.

[pulykamell]

@pulykamell

I should add, you could add a secondary stress to “symmetry” on the last syllable. It’s not quite the way I hear it, but you can make a convincing argument to me. If that’s the way we want to read it, then you still have the lack of rhyme emphasizing the couplet.

The more I read this over and over, the more I feel there is a light stress on the final syllable of “symmetry.” Not as strong as the stress on the first syllable of the word, or of any of the other line-ending words, but it may be scanned as a stressed syllable. I’ve always liked reading the final lines of the first and final stanzas starting with a spondee (stressing the “could” and “dare,” especially the “dare”) for emphasis.

[Frylock]

@eleanorigby

Tigers aren’t really symmetrical, so perhaps the rhyme is intentional to underscore that.

Wondering about this, I looked it up in the OED, and found that one of the definitions of symmetry is as follows:

1. Mutual relation of the parts of something in respect of magnitude and position; relative measurement and arrangement of parts; proportion.
   With qualifying adj. such as just, right, true, coinciding with sense 2.

1563 SHUTE Archit. Aiijb, Concerning ye proportion and simetry to vse the accustomed terme of the arte of the fornamed columbes. Ibid. Bjb, They not knowing any measure of pillours considered howe to make a iust Symetrie,…after that they deuised to make a temple to the goddesse Diana, wherein they dyd deuise an other Symetrie, for that temple. 1570 DEE Math. Pref. aiv, The exhibiting to our eye,…the plat of a Citie,…or Pallace, in true Symmetry. Ibid. ciijb, Now, may you, of any Gunne,…make an other, with the same Symmetrie…as great, and as little, as you will. 1624 WOTTON Archit. in Reliq. (1672) 23 Man…is…as it were the Prototype of all exact Symmetrie. 1650 BULWER Anthropomet. 241 True and native beauty consists in the just composure and symetrie of the parts of the body. 1730 A. GORDON Maffei’s Amphith. 313 He marks out a Stair…which agrees not with the Symmetry of the Building.

I think Blake was probably using this meaning of the term.

-FrL-

[Frylock]

I need to stop reading this thing, because these two lines

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?

are coming across more and more comically to me with each reading.

-FrL-

[Contrapuntal]

@Frylock

I think Blake was probably using this meaning of the term.

I believe you are correct.

[eleanorigby]

@Frylock

Wondering about this, I looked it up in the OED, and found that one of the definitions of symmetry is as follows:

I think Blake was probably using this meaning of the term.

-FrL-

Fine. Ruin my perfectly good theory. See if I care. <stomps off>

I still say it could go either way–That Blake was a wily one.

[elfkin477]

@Terminus Est

The English don’t seem to know how to pronounce “junta” or “Quixote” (jewn-ta and quick-shot, respectively), so how can I be expected to believe that they know how to pronounce “Don Juan”?

That’s true, but I was also slightly agast to hear the local news guy talk about the JUNE-tah this morning :eek: Between that and I-rock, I’m left wondering if the media folks learn anything about pronouncing the name of countries or people they’ll speak about…

Anyway, I always assumed Blake actually pronounced symmetry like it looks. Eye and Try rhyme. I’ve heard people say it that way as well, though I’m not sure what for.

[PastAllReason]

@Pochacco

Tygger, tygger, bouncing high,
Like a tea tray in the sky.
What hand framed thee? Lies the fault
with Milne (A. A.) or Disney (Walt)?

For A. A.'s dead and Walt’s on ice
So we can’t ask them what device
Of dread design hath forged in thee
Thy wonderful uniquity!

What the rubber? What the springs?
What of Hobbes, off in the wings?
What of Calvin? What a mess!
What’s on second? (But I digress.)

Tygger, tygger, bouncing high,
Like a tea tray in the sky.
What hand framed thee? Lies the fault
with Milne (A. A.) or Disney (Walt)?

Very impressive! I applaud thee.

[rowrrbazzle]

@pulykamell

I should add, you could add a secondary stress to “symmetry” on the last syllable. It’s not quite the way I hear it, but you can make a convincing argument to me.

I do hear it that way, but I agree either way can be argued.

For me, the first thing in that line that distinguishes it is the first thing in that line – the unaccented, extra first syllable/word. That’s what the other lines I mentioned share.

If that’s the way we want to read it, then you still have the lack of rhyme emphasizing the couplet.

I agree.

[The_Stafford_Cripps]

@spoke-

Pfft. Blake’s got nuthin’ on Bobby Burns. The first stanza of To a Mouse:

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murdering pattle.

Maybe they rhyme in a Scottish accent…

I’m no Burns scholar but this doesn’t seem so strange - ‘beastie’ and ‘breastie’ are definitely intended to rhyme. Is ‘hasty’ not meant to rhyme with ‘chase thee’? The latter 2 would be pronounced the way they are today in standard English. ‘Beastie’ would probably be pronounced with an ‘ee’ sound, in which case ‘breastie’ would be as well.

On the other hand, I think the pronounciation of words with ‘ea’ has been fluid in the past; we still pronounce ‘bear’, ‘pear’ and ‘steak’ differently from ‘bean’, ‘pea(cock)’ or ‘dear’. I’ve been told that in Ireland some words from the latter group are pronounced to rhyme with the first group (witness ‘Juno and the Paycock’), and in the past this applied to English in general. This is a very badly written way of saying that I think there’s a chance that Burns intended ‘beastie’ and ‘breastie’ to rhyme with our pronounciation of ‘hasty’.

Regarding Blake, the OP asks

If they did rhyme, did Blake pronounce it ‘eee’ or ‘simm-ih-try’?

Is there not an in between option where ‘eye’ might have been pronounced a bit like a Cockney ‘hay’ If you imagine how a Brummie (someone from Birmingham, West Midlands) would pronounce ‘symmetry’ it’s possible Blake wrote down what was a perfectly natural sounding rhyme in his day.