A Comparison of London by William Blake and Composed Upon Westminster Bridge by Wordsworth
The poems are written from two very different perspectives. William
Blake's poem London is about a lifetime of London and is very negative
he puts London out to be ugly depressing and very much in despair he
tells us of prostitutes and very depressed people. Where as William
Wordsworth's poem Composed upon Westminster Bridge is very positive.
Wordsworth's poem gives out the impression of London as a beautiful
spectacular city. Wordsworth was a visitor to London and therefore his
poem is about only a small snapshot of the city, when it is very quiet
and at sunrise, his view is from Westminster Bridge from which the
back streets prostitutes etc cannot be seen.
William Wordsworth was born in the Lake District and travelled around
Europe he was a visitor to London. The poem is an expression of his
feelings he tells us about the beauty of London without the smoke
filled air and how the beauty of the ships, towers, domes, theatres
and temples is now unspoiled.
William Blake was born and lived in London; he was a very religious
man, a politically minded person and a mystic who was reputed to have
visions. The poem London is an expression of his sadness, anger and
despair for the population of London, he tells us of the prostitutes
and the children which are chimneysweepers. Blake tells us of the
goings on in London where as Wordsworth only tells us what he can see.
William Wordsworth's poem is written as a sonnet, the octave is an
elaborate description of his surroundings and what he can see. The
sestet is an expression of his feelings; he describes how all the
beauty makes him feel and how he has never felt like this before.
Blake's poem is written in quatrains and has four verses.
Wordsworth uses hyperbole several times in a poem for exaggeration and
chooses to uses words such as fair meaning beautiful, majesty meaning
royal and grand and bright and glittering meaning there is no smoke to
A. Title: The title of this poem suggests that it is about a small country town with one road, most likely in the middle of nowhere. Very few people and very few things around for a person to do with their free time.
As the man in the poem continues his journey, he takes time to notice things in detail. This I believe is a way of cherishing what you might not see again. This also shows us that he cares about the community to notice the little things one last time. For example Edward Field describes the "magnolia trees with dying flowers" and the "bright spring day" (qtd. in Schwiebert 41). The man even picked up the local newspaper before he left, this shows that he cares what is going on in the town and feels enough apart of the community to find out what is in the newspaper that day.
Through the streets and alleyways of Nineveh the prophet Jonah trudged. At every marketplace and city gate he joyously roared his tidings of evil, “forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned!” Two and a half millennia after the great fish vomited Jonah back onto dry land, William Blake faithfully follows that path of bilge and seaweed, bile and gall, into the fraternity of prophets and oracles. Just as Jonah was reluctant to prophesy to the Ninevites for fear that his enemies would hear and repent, Blake has a vested interest in perpetuating the blindness of his readers. In fact, even as he works his metaphysics to impose his “phantasy” as the prophet who proclaims the liberation of the world, he shows a full awareness that true success can only lead to his demise as a poet. Thus, standing upon his apple-crate in the marketplace, he chokes back his voice a little and mumbles in ciphers, desperately praying that he would not be understood.
The poem is gentle and nostalgic. It seeks not only to recreate the scene for the reader, but
In line 17 the word “hearse” is used as a car to take the bride to the
“Its deserted streets are a potent symbol of man and nature 's indifference to the individual. The insistence of the narrator on his own self-identity is in part an act of defiance against a constructed, industrial world that has no place for him in its order” (Bolton). As the poem continues on, the narrator becomes aware of his own consciousness as he comes faces nature and society during his walk. He embraces nature with the rain, dark and moon but he also reinforces his alienation from society as he ignores the watchman and receives no hope of cries for him. The societal ignorance enforces our belief that he is lonely on this gloomy night. “When he passes a night watchman, another walker in the city with whom the speaker might presumably have some bond, he confesses, ‘I… dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.’ Likewise, when he hears a voice in the distance, he stops in his tracks--only to realize that the voice is not meant "to call me back or say goodbye" (Bolton). The two times he had a chance to interact with the community, either he showed no interest in speaking or the cry wasn’t meant for him. These two interactions emphasize his loneliness with the
How does William Blake convey his anger in the poem London? The poem 'London' by William Blake, reflects his feelings upon the society that he was living in, and how desperately it needed help. Blake thought that all of the poverty and misfortune that was happening on the streets were caused by the political oppression in London. The.
William Blake's "London" is a representative of English society as a whole, and the human condition in general that outlines the socio-economic problems of the time and the major communal evils.
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 title of the author’s poem gives off a sense of uneasiness and causes the reader to dig deeper in order to find its true meaning. A city that does not sleep is the same as it is at daytime. The people and society in total does not change in the idea of reality and what it means to live.
Children are always portrayed in books as angelic beings that are the closest to being perfect since they are innocent and pure. Many would suggest that this is not true, that children can be just as finable as adults. They cry when they do not get their way and throw tantrums that are quite obscene. However, the idea of this angelic child did not come into play until the 18th century. The poets William Blake and William Wordsworth are the two poets that coined this idea of the child. In the poems of these two authors, children are portrayed as innocent and pure beings and are closer to God than adults. Although these two poets have very different views of what children are like such as their interactions with adults, their perspective on
The street is quiet, and seems like it is dead. The sounds I can hear are the leaves rustling in the breeze, and the pitter-patter sounds of raindrops falling on the ground. Together, they compose a brilliant song of nature. No din from the high-school students, no irritating noise from the car. No one, not even a soul dares to make a sound to disturb this moment. Everything is silent, as if it isn’t even alive, just like a ghost street that only emerges in the mid-night and will vanish when the first sunlight strikes down from the sky. Wet dirt mixes with the smells of perfumes that left behind by people suffuse the air. Making me think of the mixture of sodas and expired apple juices.
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...
Authors, William Wordsworth and William Blake convey different messages and themes in their poems, “The World is Too Much with Us” and “The Tyger” consecutively by using the different mechanics one needs to create poetry. Both poems are closely related since they portray different aspects of society but the message remains different. Wordsworth’s poem describes a conflict between nature and humanity, while Blake’s poem issues God’s creations of completely different creatures. In “The World is Too Much with Us,” we figure the theme to be exactly what the title suggests: Humans are so self-absorbed with other things such as materialism that there’s no time left for anything else. In “The Tyger” the theme revolves around the question of what the Creator (God) of this creature seems to be like and the nature of good vs. evil. Both poems arise with some problem or question which makes the reader attentive and think logically about the society.
because of the way they grew up. Blake was brought up in the city and