sips
of "London" by William Blake :
Blake
was born in 1757 and died in 1827 and he was one of the early Romantic poets ,you'll be studying a few Romantic poets for your teachers the anthology poetry
and so it's important to know some of the key concepts in Romanticism .👈👈 (see features )
One of
the first things to know is that they place huge importance on emotion and
imagination which took priority for them over reason and logic they also will
have this this almost religious response to nature they saw nature of something
that was divine or something that was a perfect example of God's creation they
had a reverence for the innocence of childhood ,and also an interest in and
concern for the outcasts of society Blake held fairly radical views for his era
he believed in social equality including equality between men and women and
while he was a very highly religious person he saw the church as an institute
which was one that was hypocritical and corrupt so the poem itself London comes
from.
Blake's
collection Songs of Innocence and experience the first half of that collection are Songs of Innocence was published in 1789 and it contains much more positive
poems dealing with themes such as the beauty of the natural world and the
innocence of childhood whereas. The second half some of the experience he wrote a few years later it was published
in 1793 and it contains far more negative prose about the corruption of
innocence so as you can probably tell London comes from the second half of that
collection.
Overview :
in
London the speaker described the inescapable misery and poverty of London and
he seems to feel that the powerful institutions of the country such as the
church and the monarchy are causing these problems we get a pretty clear sense
that the speaker is probably Blake himself although some people have argued
that because the speaker seems fairly attached and is able to become everywhere
at once and looks at the whole of London in one go some have argued that it
could be a kind of ghostly figure in terms of the form and structure of the
poem .
Structure:
London was written in iambic tetrameter so we will get on to exactly what that means ,
it has an alternating rhyme scheme meaning it goes (a-b-a-b), all the way through ,and that very regulated consistent rhythm and rhyme scheme and structure reflects
the ideas of entrapment and constraint that we will see in the poem, so I
mentioned already this idea of the rhythm of the poem being iambic tetrameter
what that means ?we can split it up into its two parts to make it a little
bit more easy:
- The iambic; tells us the type of rhythm in the poem
so an iambic rhythm goes (da-DUM) and that's what we would call one foot, one metric
foot or one beat.
- the tetrameter; tells that there there are 4 of
those metric feet or four beats per line so if we have a look ...for example at the first line of the poem:
I wonder through each chartered street
( da - Dum - da - Dum)
If you read the poem you can tell that it's got this fairly steady (da-DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM- da-DUM) rhythm that mean that Iambic rhythm.
And
here we have four beat this tetrameter but it's not enough just to be able to
identify the rhythm and the meter of a poem, you also need to be able to
explain why that's been used, and why such a strict and steady rhythm has been used here in this
poem?
Hint:
It seems to help reflect this idea of constraint this is a poem which deals
with people who are restricted by, and the institutions in London as well as by
themselves and the fact of the poem has a very strict and steady rhythm
helps to reflect that idea ;what we could also think about is whether the iambic
rhythm places emphasis on any particular words and we could also consider
whether the rhythm is broken anywhere in if that could become significant so
we'll be looking out for a couple of those ideas as we look through the Poem, so getting on to analyzing the Poem itself .
Analysis:
now that have a look at the first stanza :
I wonder through each chartered street
Near where the chartered Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
The verb in the very first line "I wander through.." it immediately suggests a
sense of aimlessness or purposelessness, it reflects this idea that the speaker
feels powerless to change anything and he's wandering through charted streets .
The word "Chartered" means something that's mapped out and this introduces the idea
of constraints and restriction the fact of that word is repeated also suggests
that the whole city is affected wherever you go you are constrained and locked
in and trapped it's also significant that it's not just the street that a map
now but even the Thames River even the natural elements of the city are under
human control and that was one of the things that Blake found really worrying
it was when humans tried to place control over the natural elements of the
world, we've
already discussed nature was something that was seen as very important by
the Romantic poets.
Now lets focus on the third stanza "and mark in every face I meet marks of
weakness marks of woe" that word "mark" in line three has a double meaning ...it
literally means that he notices in every face he needs but it could also
suggest that he is marked or affected by what he sees and the marks that he
sees in the faces of these people; the literal meaning is that he's
looking at their facial expressions and he's sitting weakness and woe , so he's
literally seeing the emotion on their faces but the word mark also has
connotations of scarring suggesting that these people are very deeply affected
by having to live in this city and the repetition helps transfer as well
there's a total of Trochaic-Substitution ;that's their one of the points that we just refer to earlier when we mention the use of iambic pentameter, so in this poem
we've got a fairly strong iambic rhythm all the way through the second
syllable 👇
I wonder through each chartered street
Near where the chartered Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
In this fourth line the rhythm
is very clearly on that first syllable "marks of weakness marks of woe" so the
rhythm has been reversed and that's called a Trochaic-Substitution this
places emphasis on the marks which again emphasizes just how deeply affected
these people are and the final thing to mention about this stanza is the
alliteration that joins together these two words "weakness" and "woe" emphasizing
those words creating that highly negative tone which is evident all the way
through the poem.
In stanza
two we've got more repetition here :
Every cry of every man ,
In every instance
crow fear,
In every voice in every ban ,
The mind-Forged manacles I hear,
That
repetition is again emphasizing this feeling of bleakness and the despair and
misery which we've seen already in the poem clearly affects absolutely everyone
there is no escape from it this ban which is referenced in line three and the
the clearer definition of that which you're probably recognizes the idea that's
a rule against something but the word ban also meant a curse and
the double meaning is very significant here in that spinal line we have one of
the really key ideas of the pro the mind forged manacles manacles mean
handcuffs and if the handcuffs are mind forged then it would suggest that the
problems that face the people of London the problems that restrained them are
man-made so here Blake could be referring to issues like the Industrial
Revolution the corruption of the church those things that have clearly been
created by humankind or he could also be referring to the restriction the
limitations that we actually place on ourselves and again we've got a bit more
alliteration here mine forward manacles creating that harsh and forceful tone
that we've seen quite a bit in the poem already.
stanza
three this is a stanza which really is ramping up the the highly emotive
imagery
How the chimney creepers cry
Every black'ning church appalls
And the hapless soldier's sigh
runs in blood down palace-walls
the first of those in most images is the
image of child labor as we've already talked about the romantics were very
concerned with the innocence of childhood so any mage of a child facing
misery like this would be very significant to point out .The church is
described as black'ning ;which could be referenced to the pollution caused by
the Industrial Revolution it could also simply suggest the corruption of the
church so a copy of interpretations there and the fact that he's talking about
the black'ning church and the corruption there could be a wider comment on
the institution of the church which Blake saw as failing to help those in need
at the time the church spent money on maintaining its own buildings rather than
helping the poor and Blake had a big problem with that. Then the next
couple of lines focus on on this soldier the hapless soldiers sigh runs in
blood down palace walls the word "hapless" : means unfortunate; for the unfortunate
soldier ,so we get a real sense here that this soldier is powerless and
controlled by the government so
his discontent whatever it may be it might be because he's he's not in control
of his own fate or because he doesn't
necessarily agree with what he's going to war for but that discontent will
become the blood that runs down the palace walls could be his own blood or it
could be the blood which is as a result of the act that he's forced to carry
out, so again we have this sense of other people being in power and in control
and innocent people suffering because of it and the image of the running in
blood is a very forceful image of the destruction of complex it could be a
reference to the French Revolution which was at first a symbol of freedom for
the romantics many of them were really inspired by it but it descended into
violence over the years and so they stopped being supportive of it ,and finally the reference to palace walls here is another
comment on the fact that ;those in power are the ones who cause the suffering
innocent people died while those in the palace are protected .
So on to the
final stanza how the rhythm is being
used; the iambic rhythm places emphasis here, but most through
midnight streets are here bringing us to this final climactic stanza where
Blake is about to reveal what it is that most bothered him about the City of
London, and
as we get through this stanza we see that it's not necessarily the institutions
and the large powerful aspects of government but it's more the individual
people who seem to be causing these problems that takes us back to that idea of
the mind fortune manacles created by the individual person :
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
The idea of the "Youthful Harlot" seems to be a bit of an oxymoron it's a harsh
contrast between the innocence of youth and the immorality of prostitution and
that curse it's another word in the poem that could have a double meaning, it
could literally mean that (the prostitute is swearing) or it could be that ' this harlot the prostitute is a curse on the City of London ) and that curse
blasts the new-born infants here and blight with plagues we've got lots of
harsh consonant sounds there and blast flights and plagues and those again out
of this very forceful negative tone that we've seen throughout the poem and
here they reflect the distress caused by disease and illness ,and there is a
sense here that these plagues probably refer to venereal disease and because
it's talking about the impacted this harlot on on a marriage or it could also
be metaphorical.
We've got the reference to you to childhood hair
blasts the new-born infant tear one of Blake's key concerns being the loss of
innocence in children ,and finally the poem ends on this very strange image of
the marriage hearth a hearth is a vehicle that carries the coffin to a funeral
so here we've got this very uneasy image of marriage and death being linked, and
the poem ends on this final note of society's ,corruption we discuss before; corruption is not just at a political social level but it's also at
a personal level it's happening within individual people's lives and marriages
it's something which is affecting the whole of society.
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