Book series referencing "Tiger tiger" and "Stars, I have seen them fall"

Question

A very long time ago (25 years +) I borrowed a sci-fi book from my local library, and I pretty much forgot almost everything about the book itself, but it did introduce me to several snippets of amazing poetry.

Including, but not limited to the "Tiger, Tiger" and "Stars, I have seen them fall" in the title of this question.

It also includes at least this poem:

't is avond, boven het open veld breekt een sterrengolf zonder geruis.

Weergekeerd is de zeeman van zee, de jager is veilig thuis.

As you can see, I read this book in the Dutch translated version, and I could not find a match for this text in English. This one seems closest, but doesn't exactly fit the bill:

https://poets.org/poem/requiem

Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

One tiny snippet I actually remember from the books is that at one point the party breaks into some sort of facility and discovers a clone in a pod... after activating her, they soon find out that she has gone insane because she was sentient the whole time that she was trapped there... Imagine the horror, it was a punishment worse than death without even getting a chance to commit an actual crime. But somehow she manages to seduce? or psychically control? one of them before they finally put her out of her misery.

It doesn't help in my internet searches that my muddy memory tells me the name of the clone in the pod was "Jennifer 8", but there's actually a movie with that name. So I might have that completely mixed up, idk.

So the obvious question is, can anyone help me find the title of this series?

Answer 1

I don't know if it's the book you're looking for, but the three poems you mention are all quoted in Neverness, a 1988 novel by David Zindell (in his Neverness Universe series) which was the answer to several old questions. It can be borrowed (for free but registration required) from the Internet Archive. In 1994 it was translated into Dutch by Annemarie van Ewijck as Nimmermeer:

Wikipedia plot summary:

Neverness concerns a far-future world where interstellar travel is controlled by a group of mathematicians called pilots, because of their abilities to do the calculations needed for space travel, and posthuman or AI computer brains called "gods" rule much of the galaxy. It follows the deeds of Mallory Ringess, a young pilot, as he travels through the universe and discovers secrets and strangeness. He encounters a god, lives as a Neanderthal caveman, and eventually discovers that the lord of the pilots' order is thousands of years old and immortal, and that enlightened aliens have hidden profound secrets in humanity's genes. Zindell has said that it was partly based on Le Morte d'Arthur, with the pilots as "knights zipping around the universe in search of the Holy Grail".

It does quote the three poems you mentioned.

"The Tyger" by William Blake:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

"Stars" by A. E. Housman:

Stars, I have seen them fall
But when they drop and die
No star is lost at all
From all the star-sown. sky.

"Home Is the Sailor" also by A. E. Housman:

'Tis evening on the moorland free,
The starlit wave is still:
Home is the sailor from the sea,
The hunter from the hill.

I haven't read the book. A quick search indicates that there are clones but no Jennifer or Gennifer.