THE TIGER.[15]
AS the Lion is king of beasts in Central Africa, so the Tiger reigns supreme on a large portion of Southern Asia, where it is the most dreaded foe of the native, and the noblest game of the English sportsman. Its great size, its wonderful activity and strength, its glorious colouring, make it, in many respects, the most striking of all the great Carnivora. The marvellous symmetry of its form, making it almost to much a “line of beauty in perpetual motion” as the Greyhound; the flame-like bands of orange-yellow, with interspersed black shadows, winding over its lithe sides and terrible countenance; the ferocity of its disposition, and its seeming uselessness for anything but destruction, have been the theme of one of the weirdest, most wonderful melodies of the artist-poet Blake, who sings of it thus:—
“Tiger, tiger, 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 dread hand dare seize the fire?