Raquel Jordá Bresó                                                            

20 – X – 05

LONDON

01 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.

05 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

10 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
15 How the youthful Harlots curse
     Blasts the new-born Infants tear
     And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

Blake, William.”London”. Songs of Experience, 1794.

 

ANALYSIS

 

 

Title à London means the city itself. The author does not refer to it as a receiver but as the object being described through the poem.

 

The whole poem is a sad and obscure description of William Blake’s contemporary London.

            The theme, so, is the unhappiness, loneliness, sadness, fear… the horror and darkness which belong to the city and that are carried by the citizens from babies to old men.

            In the 1st verse the author describes the dark feeling that involves the city and that affects the people there, showing ‘marks of weakness and marks of woe’ (L4) in their faces.

            The streets, the buildings, the mankind, even the Thames – which gives life to the city – are marked with woe.

 

            London is full of a melancholic and hopeless mood, showing us the ‘Infants cry of fear’ (L6) and the ‘palace walls’ in blood (L12).

            In both stanzas II and III, William Blake mixes the main themes in the work the poem comes from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, quoting: Infants cry of fear (L6) and the  Chimney – sweepers cry (L10).

 

            The last of the stanza is the cruelest one, and remembers us that London is cursed and so its people, where the ‘new – born Infants tear’ (L16) is blasted and the Marriages go in a hearse with plagues (L17).

 

            William Blake’s point of view is a personalized one – marked by the use of the 1st person in stanzas I, II, and IV – which allows the reader to clearly see the true feeling the author had of the city and of the inhabitants themselves, as quoted, in stanza I. Here Blake describes the faces of the people he meets (L3).Also the ‘mind – forg’d manacles heard’ (L8) in every Man, Infant or voice. The author here acts as a witness, as a chronicler of the daily life of the poor by those images quoted above.

 

            To make the reader be close to the situation of the city that Blake describes, in the third stanza the author points out the three powers of the Crown – the Church, the Army (Soldiers) and the Government (Palace).And tied to those, the working class people represented by the Chimney – sweepers.

 

            London, as part of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience is a poem much more of William Blake’s experience than the primary innocence of the author’s first publication.

 

PERSONAL OPINION

 

            My personal response to this poem is that I have liked it very much since it reflects – from my view point – the real situation in that time, like a mirror, but giving Blake’s own feelings and sensations, which move the reader’s soul and mind.

            The poem achieves the main aim – to make the receiver not to be indifferent to the situation related but to feel the weakness, the sadness, the misery, the desolation of London.

 

 

 

 

 READINGS