LONDON 1, by
William Blake.
I
wander thro’ each charter’ d street, 1
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,
5
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 blackning Church appalls, 10
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 15
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
(From Songs of Experience,
1794)
We are going to analyse and comment a poem
related with Romanticism. We have chosen a very interesting and characteristic
poem full of content. Let
us start the study of London, which is a poem written by William
Blake (1757-1827) and
published in 1794 in one of his collection of poems titled Songs of
Experience.
First of all, it is important to know a little
about the author of London in
order to understand better the meaning of this poem:
William Blake was an English poet, printer and engraver who wrote a kind
of poetry accompanied with illustrations.
In fact, we can see that the poem
London is also represented by an illustration.
Blake’s plate of London2.
Being the predecessor of Romanticism, his poetry, which was inspired
by mystic visions, can be found among the most original and prophetical poems
of English language. Therefore, his
poetry reflects a rejection of the ideas of the Illustrated movement and
defends the Romantic one.
After writing a collection of poems titled Songs
of Innocence and having lost his
faith in the possibility to reach the human perfection, Blake published Songs
of Experience, poems in which
he used the same lyric style than in Songs
of Innocence and in which Blake
shows us his sensitivity and mystic exaltation. It is interesting to know that Songs
of Experience has corresponding
poems in Songs of Innocence. In fact, when we read and contrast them, we
realise both series of poems have a lot of similar analogies because Innocence
and Experience mean, for Blake, “the
two opposite conditions of the human soul” 3.
Nevertheless, London is one of the few poems in Songs of Experience
which does not have a corresponding poem in Songs of Innocence. This
confirms that Blake recognises there is
no innocent side in his city - London - at that moment, but a side based
directly in the experience, its own experience, which has left bad consequences
– as, for example, the ones of the
Industrial Revolution- to its citizens.
The poem selected occupy a characteristic place
in the life of its author, William Blake:
He was
in the half of his life when published London
in 1794. He was born in 1757 and, we
must know that he died in 1827. Therefore, he was thirty-seven years old when
he wrote this poem and, thirty-three years later, unfortunately, he died.
Therefore, we can say that he was very young when he wrote London but he
was able to did it because he was full of experience in life - never better
said the word experience because of the title of his collection of poems
in which the work London is included -
by recognising the terrible situation of his city and by defending the
ideas he had in mind.
The importance of this poem in Blake’s life is that he wanted to describe his city to the reader
and, what is more, to the society but showing just its negative side, not the positive
one, because he wanted to criticise the situation of his city by means of his
own explicit ideas.
This poem shows William
Blake’s point of view of his city, London, during the 18th century. He describes the oppression imposed
by the upper classes and authorities to the majority of Londoners, who belong
to the working class. The poem was published during the period of the Romantic
poetry, after the French Revolution( 1879-1899) and during the consequences of
the First Industrial Revolution which began at the end of the 18th
century in Great Britain.
The poem London is a lyric
ballad written in four
stanzas. Each stanza is formed by four
lines or verses and, that is why, we can say that each stanza is a quatrain.
Therefore, this poem is organised in four quatrains. Each one is structured in
an iambic tetrameter, with a rhyming pattern starting a / b
/ a / b, which provides a succession of rhythmical repetitions. Here we are an example:
I
wander thro’ each charter’ d street, a
Near where the charter’ d Thames does flow, b
And mark in every face I meet a
Marks of weakness, marks of woe. b
(lines 1
to 4)
Blake also uses assonance, for example, flow and woe.
The poem’s title denotes a specific geographic
space, not the archetypal places in which many of the other “Songs” are set.
The content of the poem takes place in an English city, that is, the city of
London. William Blake who was born and died in there wants to tell us about the
current situation of his city by means of this poem. Therefore, Blake
criticised slavery and defended sexual and racial equalities. Besides, he was
really interested in social and, also, in political events and he refused all
kind of imposed authority. On the other hand, William Blake was a Christian who
had a lot of affection for the Bible but, by contrast, he was against the
established Church, because he was disagree with the ideas of this institution.
That is why, Blake felt that, together with the government, the religious
institution was abandoning those in need. That is why, the Bible, which was
interpreted by him according his moral ideas, influenced so much on him and, as
a consequence, on his poems.
The poem reflects Blake’s extreme
disillusionment with the suffering he saw in London. William Blake is
protesting about the cruelty of society
with respect to the innocent people,
being no matter what age or gender. The Church and the Royals who run the
country are the responsible for the suffering and the polluting of the innocent
people lives. All this makes us think about that in the 18th century London lived inside the dark; and we
can realise that William Blake presents London in a pessimistic and negative
point of view. Therefore, this poem deals with the difficult and hard life in
the city of London at that time and, what is more, by means of the content of
this poem the author wants to show the poverty and the horrible circumstances
that poor people are living in.
To sum up, all what it has been said, in the
paragraph written above, we can say that, the poem creates a very dark and
depressing atmosphere and it is obviously sorrowful because it is about a
society that is troubled by the mistakes of the generation before. It expresses
restrictive laws, hypocrisy in organized religion, poverty and the evils that
flow from it, including disease and
prostitution. The poem fully realises the tension within the society it describes.
Now, we are going to analyse
the poem by stanzas:
1st stanza:
There is an opening image of wandering. In the first two lines
the speaker says that he wanders through the streets of London and comments on his observations. He describes both chartered streets
and river Thames:
I wander thro’ each charter’ d street,
Near where the charter’ d Thames does flow, (lines 1 to 2)
In the
first line of the poem the author is making use of the apostrophe in two words:
thro’ (through)and charter’d
(chartered) in order to make shorter the verse because of the iambic
rhythm pattern.
Also in the second line appears the
abbreviation of charter’d4 and
it does as a sign of repetition because the author wants to emphasise
the situation of London. The repetition of this word emphasises the sense of
stricture the speaker feels living in this city just in that period of time.
Telling us all this, Blake shows London to be controlled by bureaucratic laws,
to be restricted by rules and regulations.
In the third line we can found and anticipation
of the alliteration in every: in every face.
Finally, in the last line of the first quatrain
we can realise of the use of a caesura: Marks of weakness, marks of woe. Here
we are a pause
that divides the verse in two parts by
means of a comma. Besides, both parts in this caesura are considered an
alliteration because they start this way: marks of w.
The third and fourth lines talk about how the
poor people who live in London suffer hopelessly and need money to survive:
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe. (lines 3 to 4)
The speaker introduces a society in which every
person he sees has Marks of weakness, marks of woe. We can found a
repetition of mark, which means that Londoners are very affected by the
situation of their city.
2nd stanza:
The first letter of the words Man
(line 5) and Infants (line 6) are written in
capital letters because the author wants to give them a lot of importance: men
an infants represent all the Londoners who are suffering because of the
circumstances happened in their city.
Blake constantly uses the words every
and cry to symbolize the depression that involves the entire society.
Thus, he suggests that everyone is upset and as a result of this they are
crying. The alliteration in every really emphasises that
everybody in London is suffering:
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice; in every ban, (lines
5 to 7)
In line 7 we appreciates a caesura which divides the verse in two parts by
means of a semicolon ( ; ) which makes more evident the use of
alliteration.
Finally, in line 8, Blake uses again an
abbreviation: mind-for’d (mind-forged). The mind-forg’d
manacles the narrator hears suggests people’s preoccupation with money. The use of the word hear
emphasizes that sounds in the poem can be read and can be heard. The use of manacles
brings us to mind chains that are placed on someone by one in authority,
something similar to the use of the word chartered. Therefore, these words
express both the oppressor (the authorities) and the oppressed (citizens) in
London.
3rd stanza:
The third stanza represents the working class
and how upper classes never see the
working class apart from what they leave behind them.
Here we see again the use of capital letters at
the beginning of the words Chimney-sweepers and Soldiers
because they represent an important part of society, which is suffering. On
the other hand, the use of a capital
letter in Church has not to do with what has been explained because, in
that case, we understand it consist in being a powerful institution. Now, it
could be interesting to mention that the figure of the Chimney-sweeper is
already employed by Blake in two poems, titled
The Chimney-sweeper, and included in both Songs of
Innocence and Experience.
Therefore, we have to take into consideration,
the importance of these characters:
The chimney-sweepers in old London were
children corrupted by society by making them work in a terrible environment by
only giving them that choice or dieing. Also the Chimney-sweepers cry
(line 9) symbolizes trying to clean the ashes of the consequences of a complex chain of disasters in London.
In line 10 we observe the use of another abbreviation: blackning instead of blackening. The language
used in this poem is totally negative, because he uses dark adjectives such as blackning,
which suggests an evil and corrupt scene. He does it in order to create a
negative image of London, placing some of the responsibility onto the Church,
metaphorically described as blackning to represent the guilt. Also,
there is a juxtaposition with blackning in this line: appals.
Blake relates the chimney-sweepers little boys with the Church because they
need the Church’s help but there is no answer. Also Blake uses the religious
imagery of the blackning Church to represent the loss of innocence, and
the society’s abandonment of religion. The following verse And the hapless
Soldiers sigh (line 11) together with the cry of the chimney-sweepers Runs in blood down Palace walls (line
12). Here we found a metaphor which means that the suffering of a soldier is
not visible inside the space of authorities but stands just outside, in the
walls.
The way the poem goes from chimney-sweepers to
Church, then to soldiers and the blood that runs down palace walls from those
soldiers shows that there is misery all around and those who are not concerned
and too wrapped up in money should feel guilty from those suffering around
them and fighting for their country.
4th stanza:
Now, Blake makes use of the repetition of the word thro’
accompanied with an apostrophe because of the abbreviation. In this part of the poem the speaker
continues wandering through the streets of London , but now he does it at
midnight. That way, he emphasizes the metaphoric darkness in which the city is
exposed:
But most thro’ midnight
streets I hear (line 13)
Another final use of Capital
letters is used in Harlots (line 14) ,because they
are women whose lives are totally traumatised because of a social exclusion; in
Infants (line 15), in which we also find a repetition
because this word is already said in the second stanza; and in Marriage,
understood as an important institution or sacrament in life.
In this last stanza another
victim appears the youthful Harlots
whose diseases will turn marriages into death. Here, the poem climaxes at the moment
when the cycle of misery recommences with the new-born Infants, born
into poverty, being his or her mother a prostitute.
In the last verse, he mentions the idea of plague:
And blights with
plagues the Marriage hearse.
This suggests that even the happiest things,
such as marriage are tarnished with disease. Sexual and marital union are
tainted by the blight of venereal disease. There is also an example of juxtaposition or
paradox which confuses eternity and death: marriage and hearse
together suggest a marriage followed by
death.
The final image is, therefore, the Marriage
hearse, a vehicle in which love and desire combine with death and
destruction. The “ marriage hearse” is the wedding carriage which becomes
deadly due to the harlots disease and which leaves London and drives to the
confines.
Finally, as a conclusion of
the analysis of the poem London, by William Blake, we are going to do a
reflection full of interest:
Let us establish a relation of
the poem with today:
Blake was unrecognised during
his life time, but today his poems are considered important in the history of
poetry and painting. He is known today because of his creativity,
expressiveness and also because of his philosophical point of view of
things. William Blake has played a
characteristic and critical role in the conception of imagination of the modern Western countries and his great legacy is, maybe, his belief
that humans can go further than the possibilities of their five senses.
Finally, it would be very important to
mention that we should continue defending equalities between men and women,
between social classes and between races as he did.
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Ana Calatayud Moreno
