The window was cold to the touch. The glass shimmered as the specks of sunlight danced, and Blake stood, peering out. As God put his head to the window, at once, he felt light shining through his soul. Six years old. Age ceased to define him and time ceased to exist. Silence seeped into every crevice of the room, and slowly, as the awe of the vision engulfed him, he felt the gates slowly open. His thoughts grew fluid, unrestrained, and almost chaotic. An untouched imagination had been liberated, and soon, the world around him transformed into one of magnificence and wonder. His childish naivety cloaked the flaws and turbulence of London, and the imagination became, to Blake, the body of God. The darkness lingering in the corners of London slowly became light. Years passed by, slowly fading into wisps of the past, and the blanket of innocence deteriorated as reality blurred the clarity of childhood.
1793, London
With each step, he yearned for the concrete world to dissolve. Every man who passed wore a mask of disdain, mirroring Blake’s own, while resentful eyes trailed along the cobbled pathways, searching for answers to the unanswerable. The alleyways of London, once brimming with character, forlornly watched the people who no longer had any desire to stand still. Instead, the ceaselessness of noise mirrored the ceaselessness of life and, as Blake stood, the seed which once had flourished within his being seemed to wither away, while his sprit wrestled and writhed, yearning for liberation from the concrete cell of London. The Thames flowed beneath him, almost mocking the finite world through its infinite liberation. A young boy stood nearby, gazing towards him with an eerie blankness in his eyes, and yet the two eyes, black as i...
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... so polluted with insignificance, have found new understanding. It is a glorious feeling indeed. I will endeavour to channel my creative energies into a new poem, and it will be called ‘London’. I will use my voice to speak the truth and perhaps the repressed people with their marks of weakness, marks of woe, will hear me. I look forward to reading your new works, my dear friend, and do write back with your thoughts. I shall be returning to London shortly and hope to see you then.
Your friend,
Blake
August 12, 1827, London
The memories began to evaporate, fading faster than they had arrived. The countryside of Felpham blended with the cobblestoned alleyways of London. There was silence. He let himself fall into the arms of an eternal slumber, for he knew that his voice had been heard and he had found what he was searching for. Perhaps now he was to see God again.
Many Romantic works come from both the poet’s individual perceptions as well as the social consciousness of that era. “The Garden of Love” is no exception. This poem functions to brutally satirize both the oppression of the Church, which had a societal impact, and the urbanization of Lambeth, which had a personal impact on Blake’s life. As Blake has been known to do, he utilizes contrast to make the decay of his world blatant to the reader. Such contrasting is visible when the image of a life-giving garden decays into an image of death. This parallels the events that took place in Blake’s own life, when his rural home became swallowed up by urban sprawl.
One of the greatest poems in the English language has to be, “Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth. This passages takes us through a whirlwind of emotions, of a writer who comes back to one of his favorite places in nature, with his sister, and a roar of memories floods his body. He states that it has been five years since he last visited this location, sitting and listening to the nearby river, he writes. Wordsworth goes about describing this wonderful place, going all the way from the trees around him to the curling of the smoke from a nearby Cottage down the hill, he imagines this smoke as a hermit in the deep forest, waking in the morning. Then moving on to writing about his memory of the place in his past. Speaking of the beauteous forms that he would think of, to bring him back to this place when he was away in the noisy city, how this escape brought a tranquil restoration to his soul. There are instrumental things that are included in the poem, that can be put towards the absolute glory of nature, and how us human beings treat this silent beast. He looks into the future, and tells his smaller sister that he brought with him. Wordsworth knows that this place, this sanctuary, will always be an escape for him, and now his little sister. He finds joy in this realization, that what he has found will be a very instrumental in his sister’s life. He hopes to remember this place for the rest of time, and if he did stop, that he would die, and his sister would take his place. This whole passage is about messages that are expressed throughout, in the form of the Past, Present, and Future.
An enduring monument to his inadequacy to which he would employ a slumbering retreat. He would wrestle with his body for a brief respite from the perpetual torture that was his insomnia, tossing and turning over every inch of his bed west of the fissure that was once full of love, but never would he attempt to traverse it’s curves and corners for fear of falling into it’s deep, depressive vicinity. He lay there, awake again. His mind a highway of thoughts, only this highway had no lights, no exits, and no colour. He was stood resolute, immovable in the vast sea of movement. Surveying the surroundings that lay before him, he saw only mountainous regions of terrain, casting even more monstrous shadows over him. Each one taller than the last and twice as dark. Some would have the carved faces of past friends, frozen in a state of lament, both in time, and stone. The only solace in the midnight world was a single patch of firm, fresh grass, with a tasteful tartan picnic basket - ribbons and all. Entirely devoid of food, yet still somehow quenching his desires. A single ray of light in an otherwise nefarious expanse, shrouded in atrocities unfit even for the infernal realms of hell. The lighthouse in treacherous waters, guiding him to the reliable shores that are his most vivid and treasured
...ing escapes the scrutiny of this reflective artist. “London” was a vehicle for Blake to give warning to his readers as to what the industrialization of his home city was creating. According to the humanistic viewpoint of psychosocial theory of personality disorders, when a person becomes so disenchanted with the world around them, they will regress into a world of their own and disconnect with society. This is what has happened to the wanderer of London. He has lost touch with his world. He came to believe that he is of little importance and of little consequence. He has removed himself from London, not physically, but emotionally and mentally. Blake’s mistrust of the social reform of the time gave him the insight to recognize that this will happen when the world becomes too overwhelming for some. He gave a glimpse of what the poison of “progress” would create in the minds of those who were incapable of conformity to the quickly changing world. He is presenting to his audience what the new London is creating and warns that the city is self destructing.
William Blake’s poem “London” takes a complex look at life in London, England during the late seventeen hundreds into the early eighteen hundreds as he lived and experienced it. Blake’s use of ambiguous and double meaning words makes this poem both complex and interesting. Through the following explication I will unravel these complexities to show how this is an interesting poem.
In "London", William Blake brings to light a city overrun by poverty and hardship. Blake discards the common, glorifying view of London and replaces it with his idea of truth. London is nothing more but a city strapped by harsh economic times where Royalty and other venues of power have allowed morality and goodness to deteriorate so that suffering and poverty are all that exist. It is with the use of three distinct metaphors; "mind-forg'd manacles", "blackning Church", and "Marriage hearse", that Blake conveys the idea of a city that suffers from physical and psychological imprisonment, social oppression, and an unraveling moral society.
The time period this work takes place in is a very gloomy and frightening time. He wakes up in a dark place by himself and in fear, which makes things worse. A common theme we can relate this dark place to is when we fall off of the path of God. Since God represents all things good, the dark is the exact opposite. Since everything is not so clear in the wood he his describing, the path back to God is even more difficult to attain.
Hello Nadine, this email is to follow-up with the message I left on your telephone voice mail. I received a phone call from Elena, who expressed the nursing director Mr. Gordon would not allow her to see the patient in light of the fact that the patient was still being skilled. According to our record, the patient was admitted to Avante of Lake worth on December 1, 2017, the patient was placed on cc December 3, 2017. I talked with Mr. Gordon the DON, who expressed that nobody informed him that the patient was on Vitas. There was a doctor order on their chart to admit the patient to Vitas yet he maintained that nobody spoke with any of the staff at the nursing home regarding the patient admission to Vitas. I inquired as to whether the Vitas
... transcend the material world and reach what Blake views as the actual world of the spirit. The hidden interpretation within the piece is a telling commentary on Blake’s non-conventional religious awareness.
The second stanza of the poem “London” represents the typical Marxist view that in a capitalist system, the proletariats are unable to rise up against the bourgeoisies, as the bourgeoisies have convinced them that they are free and society cannot be changed. This is evident when the narrator of the poem details the helplessness of the proletariat through the use of the words “In every”. Blake’s use of syntactic parallelism and the repetition of the word “every” and the tight structure of the poem, portrays a capitalist system in which the proletariat have being trapped. Perhaps, it can also be suggested that Blake’s use of the word “every” marks the change from the visual imagery used in the first stanza to aural imagery in the second stanza to allow the audience to become fully engaged participant rather than passive observer as they cannot escape the cries of the oppressed proletariat.
The theme of the suffering innocent person, dying and being diseased, throws a dark light onto the London seen through the eyes of William Blake. He shows us his experiences, fears and hopes with passionate images and metaphors creating a sensibility against oppression hypocrisy. His words come alive and ask for changes in society, government and church. But they remind us also that the continued renewal of society begins with new ideas, imagination and new works in every area of human experience.
An individual’s solitude can come from the state of being alone; however, this word goes deeper for the purpose here. To be in a solitary state does not mean an individual is lonely or isolated in a negative way. The word instead means a chosen state in which an individual has time to reflect internally. This gives an individual time to observe and reflect. The observation can lead to a positive or negative response. This is seen in two contrasting poems: William Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” and William Blake’s “London.” In Wordsworth’s poem, his persona is observing “[a] host, of golden daffodils” (Line 4). His persona is initially “lonely” but gains a sense of solitude after seeing these yellow flowers (1). This solitude allows him retreat to personally reflect on what he has seen. In Blake’s poem, this poet’s persona has not physically separated himself from other people. He is, instead, observing his external surroundings and internally reflecting on them. Each poet depicts a solitary speaker observing his surroundings. This reveals each individual’s internal reflection. The main contrast, however, arises when Wordsworth’s persona responds positively in observing the natural world, whereas Blake’s persona responds negatively in observing an industrial London.
The skeletal outline of the Abbey broods over the streets sloping down to the harbour, and the waves break endlessly onto the beach below the road. Cars rush past – a moment of light and noise, a memory of warmth, and then I’m alone with my bottle and the stutter of my heels on the pavement. The blare of a horn jolts me out of my trance; I’ve wandered into the middle of the road. I stay where I am, defiant and reckless, and it feels like old times. I lift the bottle in a toast to the disappearing car, and to freedom. I’m free; I’ve been released from the burden of love, and I celebrate by finishing the last of the wine, tipping most of it down the front of my t-shirt. .
London is a poem about the misery and despair in eighteenth century England. The speaker is a young man who is walking the streets late at night watching the darkness wrap itself around the people. The speaker is trying to explain and show to the reader that there is more going, than what one sees on the surface. As the reader gets further into the poem one can feel the misery surrounding the citizens of the city and envision their defeat. The speaker is pulling aside the veil to share the truths of the pain and suffering the young and the old are experiencing. As the poem continues it becomes clear that the lines one reads are an allusion to what is hidden between the lines. Initially the work can be read as one poem but when the reader goes back they can see that in a sense it is in fact two poems. In William Blake’s London, he uses irony, an oppressive tone, and imagery in order to depict a dark and anguished city.
...he thinking of their authors. Blake's short poem, simply entitled “London” is redolent with his opinions of the injustices of his time, and the dismal social situation of many of the city’s inhabitants. The city, for Blake, carries an aura of damp, cold, listless people and social institutions. Swift’s “A Description of a City Shower” achieves basically the same thing, although in a more humorous manner. It does, or course, comment on the sense of entrapment and depressing monotony of life, the superficial worries that bog down human existence. It is striking how many of these problems continue to plague modern society, as we have grown increasingly commercial through time. In the works of Blake and Swift, we see a reflection of nearly any large city in Europe today, perhaps minus the extreme and abject poverty that we now only associate with third world countries.