Explication of William Blakes Poem London 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.
To better understand this poem some history about London during the time the poem was written is helpful. London was the “. . . undisputed cultural, economic, religious, educational, and political center” of England in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds. It was a city of “warehouses, docks, factories, prisons,
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Other rhyme techniques noticed are the rhyming end lines that follow an ABAB pattern. This rhyming helps the poem flow and move along.
The first use of repetition can be seen in the first two lines, with the word “chartered” (1-2). In this case the two words both have the same meaning but this is not always the case throughout the poem. Blake uses “chartered street” (1) and “chartered Thames” (2) to describe public places to which everyone has rights and privileges (chartered). Another meaning of “chartered” (1-2) that becomes more obvious as we read further into the poem is that of a chart or map. Webster’s dictionary says a chart is a sheet giving information, form this we can deduce that the Thames or streets have information to give (chart).
The last two lines of this first stanza have more repetition with the words mark and marks. The speaker “mark(ing)” (3) every face is noticing the features or characterizing the people he meets. The speaker than “marks” (4) or sees a visible clues. What the speaker sees is “weakness” and “woe” (4). Woe can possibly be seen visually as in sadness, sorrow, or grief on the peoples faces, but weakness is not really a visual sign. From Websters we find weakness means lacking in strength or vigor (weakness). We learn later in the poem that this weekness is not referring to physical strength but to mental strength.
After traveling about the public streets of London near the Thames river and
In ‘London’ Blake presents the theme of power through a reportage. The narrator wanders through a ‘chartered street’ and by ‘the chartered Thames’. This shows that in the narrator’s eyes the streets are owned and even an aspect of nature such as the River Thames is in ownership of someone. These owners that Blake refers to is the state who are believed to have acquired so much power that they can own natural landmarks. Due to this power, the people in ‘London’ wear metaphorical ‘manacles’ that are ‘mind-forged’ which shows they have trapped themselves due to the pain and suffering the higher class has caused them. Also, the repetition
The poem also uses end rhyme to add a certain rhythm to the poem as a whole. And the scheme he employs: aabbc, aabd, aabbad. End rhyme, in this poem, serves to effectively pull the reader through to the end of the poem. By pairing it with lines restricted to eight syllables. The narrator creates an almost nursery-rhyme like rhythm. In his third stanza however, his last line, cutting short of eight syllables, stands with an emphatic four syllables. Again, in the last stanza, he utilizes the same technique for the last line of the poem. The narrator’s awareness of rhyme and syllable structure provides the perfect bone structure for his poem’s rhythm.
One way that Blake uses to convey his anger on what he sees is through
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
In William Blake’s sixteen-line poem titled “London,” the speaker appears to draw from his personal observations to describe the people who live in the city of London. He describes the people at the bottom of the society such as the chimney-sweeper’s and the harlots. The people with some authority that belong to a higher class, such as
Blake’s poem, “London” represent how the city life has taken away the freedom of the people. Blake uses skills of alliteration, imagery, and word choice to create his poem. In the first two stanzas, Blake uses repetition to
Blake’s “London” was at a similar disadvantaged. As part of his collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the poem was among works that could be mistakenly seen as merely nursery rhymes, and as such did not demand to be taken seriously. Comparing these texts demonstrates the importance of writing for the society in which one lives, rather than simply writing to
London, by Blake is a poem rather than a sonnet, composed of four stanzas, each containing four lines. This effect breaks up the poem and helps to give a very plodding, interrupted tone. The rhymes however are consistent, every other line rhymes. This can represent the regimented, predictable nature, reflected in the industry and mechanisation. The contrast to the flowing poem of Wordsworth is evident and makes obvious that the poet's views differ, regarding London.
For example, rhyme/ rhyme scheme, repetition, and symbolism is found throughout three poems: The Raven, Annabel Lee, and To One in Paradise to emphasize the death of a loved one and the depressing mood. The first thing to notice about all these poems is the rhyme/rhyme scheme of them.
If you read the poem in a literal sense, it is logical that the setting is based in the city of London. There are several examples that support this idea. One prime example being,
In William Blake’s poem London and William Wordsworth Composed upon Westminster Bridge, the authors use my figurative language techniques such as, These two creators see the city of London by saying that it's not a constructive case and by saying it is a constructive case to individuals by utilizing symbolism, exemplification, and non-literal dialect. William Blake's (1757-1827) "London" written in 1792 is an overwhelming picture of a general public in which all souls and bodies were caught, misused and infected. The lyric is a staggering and succinct political examination, conveyed with energetic outrage, uncovering the perplexing associations between examples of proprietorship and the decision belief system, the way all human relations are
At the very beginning of the poem, [we see] Blake castigates (the aristocrats of London who capitalize on the suffering of the poor/ impoverished workers,,,. So the poem starts with a criticism of laws relating to control and ownership)c4 as clearly expressed in the lines below:
Along with the irregularities in meter, neither poem has a regular line length or rhyming pattern. Dickinson’s poem contains alternating tetrameters and trimeters, with the exception of the first line, which contains 7 syllables. The poem contains some irregular rhyme; ‘heard’ in line 5 rhymes with ‘bird’ in line 7, and ‘Sea’ in line 10 rhymes with ‘Me’ in line 12. Whitman’s poem contains even more irregular line lengths. The first 4 lines of each stanza vary from 12 to 15 syllables, but the last 4 lines of each stanza vary from 5 to 8 syllables. Unlike in Dickinson’s poem, the rhyming scheme carries throughout the whole poem, although the AABBCDED rhyme pattern contains a few cases of near rhyme.
In this poem, Fanthorpe muses on the tributaries of the Thames which were built over as the city of London expanded and are now mostly or completely underground, coming to the surface only when they flood after heavy rain.
A Comparison Between William Wordsworth's Upon Westminster Bridge and William Blake's London The English Romantic period spanned between 1789 and 1824. This period was not so-called until the mid 19th century when readers began to see six different poets as part of the same movement. These poets were William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelly and John Keats.