Answering the tiger's request for a tale to take away his sins and help him go to sleep, Blake tells him a moral tale to help him relax and also to see the nature of things. This is written in mostly paired rhymed couplets, but there is a refrain that adds an unrhymed line to the pattern, speaking in the voice of the tailor. This poem is written in iambic Quadra meter with in AABB form.
Stanza one opens the story, with a phrase resembling "once upon a time." This sets up a story of a tailor, who needed to build a house, but only used materials familiar to him. In this stanza, it's bat's wool, mouse fur, moleskin, and a few magical things "that.....
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