"London" by William Blake

I thought I would post the occassional paper from school.  I would be interested in what could make them better for furture developement.  This one is from a recent English course.

London

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
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-sweeper's cry
Every black'ning Church appals,
And the hopeless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down palace walls

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infant's tear
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

    “London” by William Blake is a lyric ballad that pushes up against the boundaries of the form, expressing the tension, sounds, and meanings of a degenerate city.  The poem is in four quatrains in iambic tetrameter, with a basic rhyme scheme starting a/b/a/b.  The poem, originally published in Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, show the reader a dark and sad city, a large subject to tackle, and attempts to contain it in a traditional ballad form.  This helps illustrates the tension in the poem’s voice, expressing sounds and anger that escapes beyond the boundaries of the poem itself.  As Peter Ackroyd remarked, “Blake’s insistence upon tight rhymes and forms is a way of suggesting the limits of the medium he is employing,” (Ackroyd 141).  These limits of form help to express the limits and restrictions of London.

    Blake is able to have such a compact and powerful poem through the word-choices and figurative language he employs.  In the first two lines the speaker describes his wandering through “charter’d streets” near the “charter’d Thames.”  “Charter’d” implies a meaning of “given liberty,” but also means that such places are “preempted as private property,” (Norton 56) and that such places “evokes the legal rights and privileges upon which the wealth of the city depends” (Lincoln, 194).  More succinctly, the streets and Thames have been “mapped, licensed, controlled, and choked with commerce” (Paglia 59).    This rich meaning is quantified by the speakers description of the people that are met in the charter’d places.  In lines 3-8, the speaker describes the cry of every man and infant, marks of weakness and woe, and especially the speaker can hear the clanking of the “mind-forged manacles.”  These places are where the actual sounds of the restriction can be heard literally.  The use of the word “hear” in lines 8 and 13, emphasis that the sounds of the poem are real and can be heard beyond the formal expression found in this ballad.  This emphasis on hearing expresses the speaker’s desire for the reader to hear along with the poet, where sounds travel beyond the tight form of the ballad.  The actual sounds of crying and the clanking of manacles cannot be contained within an iambic or rhyming form; they are sounds that are free, informal, and uncontainable.

    The use of “mind-forged manacles” is a rich image that expresses so much in such a little space.  The image brings to one’s imagination a mental restriction is in place upon these people of London.  But “mind-forged” implies they are created internally in one’s person, but “manacles” bring to mind chains that are placed on someone by one in authority.  This image shows the tension between internal and external forces that take away liberty, similar to the earlier use the word “charter’d.”  Ackroyd points out, “’manacles,’ like ‘charter’d,’ was one of the radical code words of the period that was directed at the oppression of the authorities” (157).  By using this rich and multi-layered word, the image breaks beyond the form of the poem and expresses both the oppressor and oppressed in London.

    In the next stanza of the poem, the tension is portrayed by the interaction between victims and institutions.  The oppressed are portrayed as actual people while the oppressors are illustrated as empty, dark buildings.  In lines 9-10, the cry of the “chimney-sweeper” should be heard by the church, but the “appalls” the church utters are trite and empty, because the church is “blackening,” devoid of light and goodness, but only knows death.  The use of “appalls,” bring to the mind the word “pall,” thus emphasizing the black Church as coffin-like, filled with dead power and authority.  These two little lines are not only an indictment of the child labor, but shows the impotence of moral authority to do something concerning it.  The church oppresses by its lack of action and lack of light.  The iambic rhythm in these lines lose their regularity, showing how the content is pushing up against the tight form of the ballad.

    The unlucky soldier in line 11, sighs, possibly his last breath whose blood then will run down the walls of government.  The sigh is a softer sound than the sounds that are heard elsewhere in the poem.  The sigh is faint, because the dying soldier is far away in foreign lands, sacrificing his youth for the monarchal state.  This image ties London with the whole world, like this small poem letting it’s ideas break beyond it’s immediate scope of London’s darkness, and shows it has no bounds.  And even so the sigh is still powerful enough that it manifests it’s presence in the Palace as blood running down a wall, suggesting the biblical image “the writing is on the wall,” - the poet is a prophet foretelling the government’s eventual fall.  This sign like the crying and clanking previously, is also a sound that has no iambic tenor, thus showing again how these sounds cannot be contained with a traditional song.

    In the last stanza is filled with amazing imagery and sound.  Another victim is brought forward, the “youthful Harlot,” whose diseases will turn marriages into death.  The un-poetic sounds return to full force, where the speaker says, “I hear” the “blasts” which attempts to silence the tears of a baby.  Interestingly, the speaker gives us a specific time he/she is walking through these streets – at “midnight,” which easily is a physical time, but also a spiritual time that London is stuck in, at the beginning of the apocalypse.

    The “marriage hearse” at the end of the poem suggests several things.  In the third stanza, the victims had clear oppressors, but in the last stanza does the speaker suggest marriage is the oppressor that drives prostitution?  The “marriage hearse” is the wedding carriage that turns deadly due to the harlot’s disease.  With “marriage” and “hearse,” it echoes back to the “church” and “appalls,” suggesting marriage is an oppressor of omission.  (In a literal sense, it has been suggested by one scholar that the marriage laws promoted prostitution, and the population of female prostitutes at the time of the poem’s publication numbered around 50,000, (Lincoln 193, Ackroyd 157).  As Camille Paglia has remarked, “In Blake’s radical philosophy, prostitution is created be religious prudery and social hypocrisy” (Paglia 62).

    This image of the marriage hearse shows the tension between form and content.  Like the proverbial riding into the sunset at the end of a film, the image of a “marriage hearse” brings is the deathly carriage that is leaving the confines of the poem, and carrying it’s deadly plague to the towns and cities outside “London.”

    This poem is a tremendous indictment of London society, and seeks to establish a voice in the wilderness, while at the same time singing a song for those who will hear.  By combining this tight form, the poem becomes deceptively easy on the eyes, but as the sounds and images are brought forth to the readers’ imaginations, the poem fully realizes the tension within the society it describes.

_______________________________
Sources Cited:

Abrams, M.H.  Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period.  W.W. Norton: New York.  2000.

Ackroyd, Peter.  Blake.  Knopf: New York. 1996.

Blake, William.  Songs of Innocence and Experience.  edited, notes, introduction by Andrew Lincoln.  Princeton: New Jersey.  1991.

Paglia, Camille.  Break, Blow, Burn.  Pantheon:  New York. 2005.

Comments

[max]

Very insightful read Dallas. Thank you!

Regards,
Max.

[Dallas Robbins]

Thanks Max.

[Sally Heathcote]

this is a great info definately helped me out on a difficult assignment i am currently writing so thanks for posting this website

[J.D]

Lets just say your a saint. I can't believe the difference between my notes and yours..makes me wounder why i even do english! lol

[Dallas Robbins]

Sally and J.D. thanks for the kind comments. Don't give up on poetry - I got the most out of reading poetry during the summer between classes.

[Ahmed]

Very nice comment.It Should be taken in the eye of consideration.......>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[justina]

this site has been really helpful. the explanation was good and i would prefer if people go to site like this.

[Becca]

Thanks so much! my first assignment over the summer was to analyse this poem and I was struggling a bit until I read this. Now I actually understand the poem! =]

[zephyr]

your analysis is so enlightening.It made me understand the poem in a different light now and I am having so much joy for this poem after reading your analysis! Thank you so much!

[zephyr]

your analysis is so enlightening.It made me understand the poem in a different light now and I am having so much joy for this poem after reading your analysis! Thank you so much!

[Dallas R]

zephyr, you are too kind. read more of Blake, you'll find lots of great stuff.

[chris]

You missed a 'hear,' mate.

(H)ow the Chimney-sweeper's cry
(E)very black'ning Church appals,
(A)nd the hopeless Soldiers sigh
(R)uns in blood down palace walls

[Taylor]

Does the HEAR mean anything?

[Cassandra]

Dallas, This is a great literary analysis. I was wondering if I could use it as a resource for a paper I am writing. I can't find any information with which to site you though. Please help?

[Dan]

Not to nitpick, but should the second line read, "(Near) where..."

Also, I noticed the spelling of Hear that Chris mentioned as well. Very interesting. I wonder if it was intentional, and if so if it was intended to be subliminal.

[Miranda]

Great analysis - very insightful - but very badly written. You need to proofread for grammar, syntax, and flow. A good tip: avoid passive tense and always try to express your ideas as succinctly as possible. For example, instead of saying "Blake is able to have such a compact and powerful poem through the word-choices and figurative language he employs," try "Blake evokes his powerful theme in such compact form through specific word choice and figurative language."
Just a suggestion. Also, watch your "it's" and "its."

[domi]

as all the other i have to thank you!! very good job.

just on thing i haven't found:
blake is between the neo-classical period and the romantic period. indicators for this are:
- the first line (early romantic, because he looks at every single street, so the reader gets an subjective view)

- and the third line (neo-classical, because the speaker looks in every face - quite general, so important is not the singel human being but man in general)

i got this info from my prof, so i think it might be correct...

[castaly]

how about d william wordsworth - london 1802

[Sarah]

wow....u guys are lucky your taking this in college, im only in the 10th grade and we have to write an essay in which we have to discuss how the poem utilizes literary elements and techniques to illustrate the commodification of london and its people....UR INFO WAS A GREAT HELP, THNX A TON!!!

[Jacqui]

Thank you for posting this. I am doing this as a very important assignment suing my literature studies at the end of highschool. Although I had attempted to analyse it myself, I was unsure as to whether it was done properly or not. However upon reading your analysis I discovered that I had only missed a few tings, that will help me reach my word count. Thank you again

[Jacqui]

Oops, Sorry I did mean to write 'During my literature' and 'things'.

[stephanie]

The “marriage hearse” creates a paradox confusing eternity and death. However, the “marriage hearse” also represents the unraveling moral society and is mainly understood as the spread of venereal disease passed via a prostitute from a man to his bride, causing marriage to be a sentence of death, hence the “marriage hearse.”