HAPPY is England! I could be content
To see no other verdure than its own;
To feel no other breezes than are blown
Through its tall woods with high romances blent:
Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment
For skies Italian, and an inward groan
To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,
And half forget what world or worldling meant.
Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;
Enough their simple loveliness for me,
Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging:
Yet do I often warmly burn to see
Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing,
And float with them about the summer waters.
John Keats, Poems (1817)
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 blackning 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
William Blake, Songs of Experience (1794)
It is always difficult which poems to choose or which ones are easier to understand in order to be analysed. I spent a lot of time looking for the correct ones, reading a lot of them trying to find the best related ones; some of them about Nature, Love, Poetry, …etc. But finally I chose two poems about political protest. Romantics also expressed their consciousness of what was happening in the world through their poetry.
My paper is going to deal with London written by William Blake in “Songs of Experience” in 1793-4 and the poem Happy is England! by John Keats belonging to his “Poems” written and published in 1817. “Blake was a strong libertarian, with a deep hate of the tyranny that was rife during his lifetime. He dreamed of an idyllic England, free from corruption. The disastrous end of the French Revolution caused Blake to lose faith in the goodness of mankind.” (Wikipedia, Blake). Keats was centered in the ancient Greek culture, but because of a trip to Italy his point of view of England changed and therefore wrote this poem. (Wikipedia, Keats).
London is more concrete than Happy is England! ; what I mean is that the former makes references to the city, the streets, the everyday life, the people, the children. The latter is more abstract because Keats doesn’t base his poem in a specific city, the poem is generalised to England, where Keats explains his worries and therefore doesn’t totally trust in his country. He also uses the comparison with Italy to make clear what he wants to say. We need to have in mind that London was written in 1793 and Happy is England! 24 years later. Blake was 37 and aware of the cruelty and injustice in his country and therefore his criticism is more clearly exposed. Keats was younger (22) when he wrote Happy is England! so he was more excited about the situation of his country although he knew that England wasn’t in a good moment of its history. Both criticise the political and economic inequalities that reigned before the Industrial Revolution.
In London, William Blake details the realities of the human conditions of his time and city. London is described as a sad city, full of cries and sighs, where everybody is suffering and nobody believes in the improvement of the city. It is a poem formed by four quatrains in which Blake doesn’t use any positive adjective (chartered, hapless). The nouns are also negative like weakness, woe, ban, blood and the same happens to the verbs cry, curse, tear. London is based on its streets, on the atmosphere, on the different social groups (youth, workers, Church, soldiers and Palace). Everyone and everything is included and described as a chaotic city with a weak population.
He wrote the poem in first person as his own experiences. As the title of the compilation of poems in which he included this one, his experiences were a great source for writing them. So, if we take into account that he lived in London we can suppose that he was trying to express with words what painters would have shown in paintings.
In Keats’ poem the idea is not so radical. Keats is aware of the situation in England, but he tries to find a way of escape from reality. The poem is a sonnet and has a logical distribution.
The first quatrain enhances the positive aspect of England, its Nature, and how happy he feels in enjoying it. For me, he claims that England is happy only because of the verdure of its woods. It seems a bit ironic that this could be a reason of happiness because England has always possessed vast forests and meadows. In the second quatrain, he compares England with Italy. For Keats, Italy is a better place where you can sit on the Alps and forget about the worldling problems. This is a way of showing us that the situation in his country was not reliable. When someone languishes for another thing it means that he/she is not happy with what he has.
In the first tercet, Keats praises England’s women. They are sweet, artless and simple, maybe they are presented like this in order to show how plain they were, women just obeyed. And once again in the second tercet he prefers Italian women and appreciates their features. Italian women are more virtuous, maybe more independent.
I interpret beauties of deeper glance as a definition of a beautiful woman but also intelligent, with whom you can talk, discuss different opinions, and go for a walk. English women are just described as beings that are next to men without saying anything and this is (surprisingly) enough.
Both poems are written in first person singular, the first one as a sign of experience and the second one as an imaginative situation, a wish.