On 2024-02-20, HenHanna <
[email protected]> wrote:
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Was the last vowel in Symmetry... fully like EYE, RYE ?
Yes, that's the common wisdom. Didn't they already teach you that
in high school?
"Symmetry" and "geometry" were borrowed from French into Middle
English. If they retained word final primary or secondary stress,
you get /iː/ > /aɪ/ as part of the Great Vowel Shift.
It's not just the vowel quality. The scansion demands a stressed
syllable:
Whát immórtal hánd or éye
Could fráme thy féarful sýmmetrý?
I'm actually surprised that none of the poem's readings by famous
actors that I checked on YouTube rhymed it.
I am reminded of Michael Jackson's hit "Thriller" that contains
a spoken word passage performed by Vincent Price:
Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'all's neighborhood
And whomsoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse's shell
"Blood" and "neighborhood" don't rhyme, but it looks like they
should? It turns out the song was written by Rod Temperton, who
was from Lincolnshire, England. That's oop north, which makes me
suspect that he originally did rhyme those lines.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber
[email protected]
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