‘Tirzah’ was published a few years later than the other poems in the series, Songs of Experience. These short poems explore the harsh realities of late 18th and early 19th Century life during the time of King George III, known — ironically given the terrible social conditions of the time — as the Romantic Era. Most of the poems in the “Songs of Experience” category are matched by an idealistic portrayal in Songs of Innocence. The contrast is Blake’s method of social protest.

This is one of the most difficult and obscure of Blake’s poems, and its meaning is difficult to decipher. The persona, whom the speaker, presumably Blake, addresses, is called Tirzah, meaning beauty and pleasure, who appears in the Old Testament Song of Soloman 6:4.

My darling, you are as beautiful as Tirzah, as lovely as Jerusalem, as awe-inspiring as bannered armies!'

She represents the theme of the sexual desire that sprung from Adam and Eve and the Fall of Man. She may also represent Blake’s earthly mother who gave him his physical form, but this material life brings misery. It is only Christ — ‘the death of Jesus set me free’ — who can bring him comfort.

Blake’s View of Humanity
In the poem Blake contrasting two views of human life:
— There is life beyond the material world. Humans can achieve imagination and spirituality through Christ, and can find immortality.
— Alternatively the physical world is all there is and humans are mortal and dependent on their senses, which therefore limit what they are able to understand and experience.
The first view is allied to the teachings of conventional Christianity. The latter view is represented by the symbolic figure of Tirzah.

About Tirzah
Tirzah appears twice in the Bible:
She is one of five daughters who asked for a change in Israelite law so that females could inherit their father’s property (Numbers 27:1-6). This became a legal precedent.

Tirzah is also the name of the first capital city of the Southern Kingdom of Israel, after the Northern Kingdom of Judah, including Jerusalem, split from it. This Southern Kingdom was corrupt, wicked and overrun by invaders and disappears from history, whereas Judah survived as the home of the Israelites. Its capital, Jerusalem, contained the Temple in which the presence of God was believed to reside.

Structure
The poem comprises four quatrains or four-lined stanzas. There is a regular AABB rhyme scheme. The metrical rhythm is iambic tetrameter, that is four metrical iambs or feet per line, where a iamb is one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable. The result is a solemn, regular tread that reflects the serious nature of this poem.

Language and Imagery
This, a most difficult Blake poem, is characterised by obscure philosophy and symbolism. Tirzah represents a mother figure and earthly unhappiness; the Tirzah of ‘Song of Solomon’. Earthly life is represented by tears and blindness. Christ, of course, represents salvation. The poem deals in abstracts; therefore mercy, cruelty, pride and shame are important, while the physical, natural world features only briefly in stanza two with reference to day and night.