1794 - Songs of Experience
London
by William Blake
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice; in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every black'ning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
“London”, by William Blake, allows us to eavesdrop on the thoughts of a midnight wanderer who stalks the streets of London laying judgment to all he sees. As part of his book of poetry, written in 1789, “London” was included in the section named “Songs of Experience” (as opposed to “Songs of Innocence”). Every poem of the book has an “experienced” and an “innocent” counterpart, save this one. The mind of Blake's wanderer is the mind of a sociopath. The narrator of the piece is disgusted with all around him and all that London represents. He seems to hold the babies, the soldiers, the whores and the church accountable for the state of the city. He displays the abnormal tendencies of what would be considered, in modern psychology, an antisocial personality. Perhaps there is no innocent counterpart to this poem for the man in this poem has lost his innocence. There is no complement to the mind of a person who, for all intents and purposes, has lost touch with the his fellow man.
The fact that the narrator in this piece is wandering, rather than walking or strolling, is significant. The act of wandering is associated with a lack of purpose, or destination, to a journey. The wanderer in this story states no intention for his activity. He feels no compulsion to explain why he is walking the streets of London at night, gazing at all the faces of all he sees. When he says “and mark in every face I meet” (LC p52 .3) he is saying that he is watching, noticing, and examining, every other person that is out in the city with him. It is not customary for most to do this sort of thing, but the wanderer of London feels no sense of remorse in doing what, by most standards, is abnormal behavior...
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...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.
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...
William Blake is remembered by his poetry, engravements, printmaking, and paintings. He was born in Soho, London, Great Britain on November 28, 1757. William was the third of seven siblings, which two of them died from infancy. As a kid he didn’t attend school, instead he was homeschooled by his mother. His mother thought him to read and write. As a little boy he was always different. Most kids of his age were going to school, hanging out with friends, or just simply playing. While William was getting visions of unusual things. At the age of four he had a vision of god and when he was nine he had another vision of angles on trees.
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 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.
William Blake is a literature genius. Most of his work speaks volume to the readers. Blake’s poem “The Mental Traveller” features a conflict between a male and female that all readers can relate to because of the lessons learned as you read. The poet William Blake isn’t just known for just writing. He was also a well-known painter and a printmaker. Blake is considered a seminal figure in the history of poetry. His poems are from the Romantic age (The end of the 18th Century). He was born in Soho, London, Great Britain. He was the third of seven children. Even though Blake was such an inspiration as a writer he only went to school just enough to read and write. According to Bloom’s critical views on William Blake; one of Blake’s inspirations was the Bible because he believed and belonged to the Moravian Church.
Although written prior to what became know as Marxism, William Blake’s poem London exhibits many of the qualities favored by Marxism. The poem, in its sixteen lines, centers on both the political background and the social background of London. Keeping with Marxist beliefs, it exemplifies the differences between the upper class citizens and the poverty stricken lower class. He also attacks the Church and the Palace for contributing to the plights of those on the lowest spectrum of society. Blake starts his poem with
...ions of his speaker creates and underlying tension in the poem as it appears that he can not decide whether he is chastising the rich member of society for allowing the lives of the lower class to remain in such desolate or if he is sympathizing with the lower class against the elite of London. The two moods of sympathizing and chastising are created through Blake’s use of structure and figurative language; he constructs his speakers words in such a way that there is a clear division made between the elite and the suffering lower class. Blake’s poem is unique on the grounds that it contrasts the typical idea of retelling history. With any historical situation there is always two sides to the story and it is up to the person reproducing it which side will be told; Blake’s London address both point of views and lets the audience decide which side they will agree with.
The poems ‘lines composed on Westminster Bridge’ and ‘London’ are created by William Wordsworth and William Blake respectively. Wordsworth’s work originated in the eighteenth century and he himself lived in the countryside, and rarely visited large cities such as London. This is reflected on his poem, making it personal to his experience in London, however William Blake on the other hand had a vast knowledge of London and was actually a London poet, which allowed him to express his views of London from a Londoner’s point of view. I therefore will be examining comparisons in both poems, as well as their contrasting views of London and the poetic devices used to express their opinions.
The imagery of nature and humanity intermingling presents Blake's opinion on the inborn, innate harmony between nature and man. The persona of the poem goes on to express the `gentle streams beneath our feet' where `innocence and virtue meet'. This is where innocence dwells: synchronization with nature, not synchronization with industry where `babes are reduced to misery, fed with a cold usurous hand' as in the experienced version of `Holy Thursday'. The concept of the need for the individual's faithfulness to the laws of nature and what is natural is further reiterated in `the marriage of heaven and hell' in plate 10 where Blake states `where man is not, nature is barren'. The most elevated form of nature is human nature and when man resists and consciously negates nature, `nature' becomes `barren'. Blake goes on to say `sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires'. This harks back to `the Songs of Innocence' `A Cradle Song' where the `infants smiles are his own smiles'. The infant is free to act out its desires as it pleases. It is unbound, untainted. Blake's concern is for the pallid and repressed, subjugated future that awaits the children who must `nurse unacted desires' and emotions in this new world of industrialisation. Despairingly, this is restated again in `the mind-forg'd manacles' of `London'. The imagery of the lambs of the `Songs of Innocence' `Introduction' is developed in `the Chimney Sweeper' into the image of `Little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, that curl'd like a lamb's back, was shav'd'.
In the first poem, 'Westminster' this person is visiting London for the first time, he is not shown the reality of London but a slightly obscured view of beauty, as the light is reflecting off buildings, and giving an impression of calm, peace and tranquility. 'The beauty of the morning, silent, bare.' The reason we can guess for his delusion of the city is the fact that he is seeing it in 'the m...
William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience are collections of poems that utilize the imagery, instruction, and lives of children to make a larger social commentary. The use of child-centered themes in the two books allowed Blake to make a crucial commentary on his political and moral surroundings with deceptively simplistic and readable poetry. Utilizing these themes Blake criticized the church, attacking the hypocritical clergy and pointing out the ironies and cruelties found within the doctrines of organized religion. He wrote about the horrific working conditions of children as a means to magnify the inequality between the poor working class and the well to do aristocracy.
?London? is a poem of serious social satire directed against social institutions. According to Blake author Michael Phillips ?it is a poem whose moral realism is so severe that it is raised to the intensity of apocalyptic vision.? Blake becomes more specific in his descriptions of the prevalent evil and moral decay of society as the poem progresses. Blake?s informative nature is clearly evident in ?London? as he ?points the finger? and exposes powerful institutions.
William Blake, one of the infamous English romantic poets, is most known for his romantic views on conventional scenes and objects, which were presented in his works The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience. The first collection was published in 1789, and addresses subjects such as suffering and death from the innocent and optimistic perspective of a child. The later collection addresses these same issues, but is told from the perspective of an experienced bard. The poems contained in The Songs of Innocence often have a counter part in the second collection that reflects a darker or more corrupted take on the same subject. For example, the purity presented in the creation of “The Lamb” is dramatically contrasted with its shameful counterpart “The Tyger”. In this essay, I will argue that William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” alludes to his belief in a darker side of creation and the implications of the Industrial Revolution, my argument is based on Blake’s use of rhetorical questions, word choice, and the poem’s context; specifically in the fourth and fifth stanzas. In the beginning of the poem the tiger appears as a striking and wondrous creature, however, as the poem progresses, the tiger takes on a symbolic meaning, and comes to be a physical manifestation of the spiritual and moral problem the poem explores: creation, divine and manmade.
William Blake uses repetition, rhyming and imagery in his poem to help promote the idea that London, England is not the city that people dream that it is, the city itself can be a
Sociological criticism emphasizes the political, economic, and cultural aspects of literature, and one of its main focuses is evaluating writing from a Marxist perspective, which examines the writing in mostly political and economic fashion, including ideas such as communism and social inequality. The idea of class oppression is clearly represented in many of William Blake’s writings. Blake’s opposition to the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists is obvious in many of his poems. Blake’s ideology of an equalitarian society could be described in the sayings of Karl Marx. Marxist criticism explains the reasons behind Blake’s anger towards social inequality. Poems like “The Chimney Sweeper” and “London” illustrate Blake’s despairing sadness towards the phenomena produced by the unjust inequality in 18th century England. In “The Chimney Sweeper,” Blake expresses his anger at the late 18th and 19th century's use of child labor in urban England. In “London,” Blake illustrates the depressing class oppression that could be easily seen through the streets of London.