London is a city of many faces. Through the writing of these two famed authors, William Blake and William Wordsworth, they both manage to effectively illustrate the two very different views on London. Blake shows us the dark and twisted side of London facing poverty and oppression, while Wordsworth highlights the bright, peaceful, and beautiful aspects of London. The two poets write their contrasting views by using tones, imagery, and senses; can open the reader's eyes to change and how quickly it can happen.
The two authors have very different ways of expressing their own views on London. While Blake may use crude language to describe his experience, Wordsworth makes the city appear so pleasant and warm. When Wordsworth writes about London, he describes it as a beautiful, charming place that is clear and peaceful; Like when he writes “All bright and glittering in the smokeless air” (8) he describes the air as a bright place that isn’t polluted with the factories and mess. Unlike Wordsworth, Blake describes London as a dark dirty place filled with desperation and fear. For example, when Blake writes “In every cry of every man” (5) he tells the reader about the people of London who are crying for help in the painful, tear-jerking city of London; due to the fact that this was written in a time of the industrial revolution when children were forced into labor, and families were torn apart with work and couldn’t provide. The world in which Blake was experiencing was a sad and desperate time, unlike Wordsworth. Despite the constant contrast of language and descriptives, they are both still talking about the same city.
When reading the work of Blake and Wordsworth, they both beautifully paint this picture in the reader’s mind that contradict each other drastically. Wordsworth acknowledges the silent beauty of London, while Blake highlights the dirty, enslaved London. Blake describes London in a way that makes you think it’s this dirty, sad, gloomy place where even the churches and palaces are in danger and facing danger. “Every blackening church appalls...Runs in blood down palace walls” (10,12), He is explaining to us that even the buildings in most power were faced with disgrace. On the other hand, Wordsworth
The topic of death is either suppressed or masked in both poems. Both poems are very strong and powerful pieces, which allows readers to connect to the issues being told. Throughout “London”, Blake not only implies the difficult times that London went through during the Industrial revolution, but also how many died during this
Sometimes, things that seem opposites at first glance turn out to be more similar after a second look. This is the case for the poems London, 1802 by William Wordsworth, and Douglass by Paul Laurence Dunbar. The major differences in these poems combine with the similarities to show the timeless need for revolutionary authors.
these “female follies,” on men and argues, “From the tyranny of man, I firmly believe, the
A Comparison of Poems About London 'London', by William Blake, and William Wordsworth's untitled poem, composed on Westminster Bridge, are two different poems written with different styles and techniques to portray their feelings towards London. They are both written in the romantic era and are very passionate in the way they convey their (as both are written in first person) differing opinions on London. Wordsworth's sonnet shows all the positive points and that in his opinion London is an admirable place. However, Blake speaks of a much bleaker London, which contrasts greatly in opinion. Rather than writing his poem on opinion, he uses fact to inform and protest against what he feels is wrong
One way that Blake uses to convey his anger on what he sees is through
William Blake, John Keats and William Wordsworth all believe in the "depth" of the world and the possibilities of the human heart. However, each poet looks towards different periods in time to capture meaning in life. Blake looks towards the future for his inspiration, Keats towards the present and Wordsworth towards the past. Regardless of where each poet looks for their inspiration they are all looking for the same thing; timeless innocence. Each poet sought to transcend time by creating works that dealt with life, death, hope and imagination and to discover some kind of deep truth or meaning in existence. Life and death is an issue that we will all have to deal with at some point in our life
William Blake’s poem “London” takes a complex look at life in London, England during the late seventeen hundreds into the early eighteen hundreds as he lived and experienced it. Blake’s use of ambiguous and double meaning words makes this poem both complex and interesting. Through the following explication I will unravel these complexities to show how this is an interesting poem.
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.
London by William Blake is a poem characterised by its dark and overbearing tone. It is a glimpse at a period of England's history (particularly London) during war and poverty, experienced by the narrator as he walks through the streets. Using personification it draws a great human aspect to its representation of thoughts and beliefs of the narrator.
In both of William Blake’s poems, “The Little Black Boy” and “The Chimney Sweeper,” an innocent-eye point of view portrays the stresses of society in an alternative way to an adult’s understanding. The innocent perspective redirects focus onto what society has become and how lacking each narrator is in the eyes of the predominant white culture. Each naïve speaker also creates an alternate scenario that presents a vision of what their skewed version of life should be like, showing how much their unfortunate youth alters their reality. From the viewpoint of children, Blake’s poems highlight the unhealthy thoughts or conditions in their lives and how unfortunate they were to be the wrong race or class level. These narrators were cheap laborers and were in no control of how society degraded them. Such usage of a child’s perspective offers important insight into the lives of these poor children and raises awareness for the horrible conditions children faced in the London labor force prior to any labor laws. The children of the time had no voice or platform on which to express their opinions on their conditions. Blake targets society’s lack of mindfulness towards the children using the innocent-eye point of view and illusions of what they dream for in life.
One of the most popular themes for Romantic poetry in England was nature and an appreciation for natural beauty. The English Romantic poets were generally concerned with the human imagination as a counter to the rise of science. The growing intellectual movement of the 18th and 19th centuries placed scientific thought in the forefront of all knowledge, basing reality in material objects. The Romantics found this form of world view to be restrictive. They felt that imagination was crucial to individual happiness. The imagination also provides a common human bond; a means of sympathy, of identification. However, the absence of imagination, the Romantics felt, would lead
During the Romantic Period, poets believed themselves to be very politically aware and important. William Blake and Charlotte Smith are those amongst those Romantic Poets who took it upon themselves to educate the public on the events of the time; particularly the established Church, the Industrial Revolution and the Slave Trade in Haiti: ‘[Poetry] speaks to a divided society in an attempt to constitute its readers as citizens of what [Geoffrey] Hill calls… the just kingdom… and the commonwealth’.
William Blake is one of England’s most famous literary figures. He is remembered and admired for his skill as a painter, engraver, and poet. He was born on Nov. 28, 1757 to a poor Hosier’s family living in or around London. Being of a poor family, Blake received little in the way of comfort or education while growing up. Amazingly, he did not attend school for very long and dropped out shortly after learning to read and write so that he could work in his father’s shop. The life of a hosier however was not the right path for Blake as he exhibited early on a skill for reading and drawing. Blake’s skill for reading can be seen in his understanding for and use of works such as the Bible and Greek classic literature.
William Wordsworth existed in a time when society and its functions were beginning to rapidly pick up. The poem that he 'Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye', gave him a chance to reflect upon his quick paced life by taking a moment to slow down and absorb the beauty of nature that allows one to 'see into the life of things'; (line 49). Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey'; takes you on a series of emotional states by trying to sway 'readers and himself, that the loss of innocence and intensity over time is compensated by an accumulation of knowledge and insight.'; Wordsworth accomplishes to prove that although time was lost along with his innocence, he
Wordsworth, like many beggars, is found outside of the house of the protagonist, only he comes with a much stranger request. He asks to look at the bees in the grugru trees of the boy’s yard. As odd as it is, B. Wordsworth divulges in the boy that he is “the greatest poet.” He spends the majority of his days admiring with his gaze the wonders of Nature; an assortment of bugs and even morning glories, and cries over them. We learn, from the curiosity of the boy, that the ‘B’ in the poet’s name stands for Black, and that his brother is “White Wordsworth” and they “share on heart.” White Wordsworth is the name given to the famed poet of the Romantic Age, Williams Wordsworth. Seeing that he calls him ‘White’ based on his skin colour, we can carefully deduce that ‘Black’ is not his real name. It is a name taken on by him. In the face of invasion, Black forsakes his Trinidadian identity and embraces a new, more ‘appropriate’ one, based on a traditional English poet. Like his ‘brother,’ we see the strong admiration for Nature in