The main themes in "London" are the fallen world, political tensions, and social woes. The fallen world: The poem embodies Blake's Christian belief that humanity has fallen from a state of grace to a life of compromise and sin.
The poem describes a walk through London, which is presented as a pained, oppressive, and impoverished city in which all the speaker can find is misery. It places particular emphasis on the sounds of London, with cries coming from men, women, and children throughout the poem.
In summary, Blake describes the things he sees when he wanders through the streets of London: signs of misery and weakness can be discerned on everyone's face, it seems. Every man's voice – even the cry of every infant, a child who hasn't even learnt to talk yet – conveys this sense of oppression.
The poem has four quatrains, with alternate lines rhyming. Repetition is the most striking formal feature of the poem, and it serves to emphasize inability to escape the all-encompassing effect of the 'mind-forg'd manacles. Blake frequently uses alliteration to link concepts: The weak are in 'woe' / misery.
The overall theme of “London” is that the city is a dark and miserable place. Words like “hapless,” “weakness,” “woe” and “manacles” contribute to that sense of gloom. Even descriptions like “Every blackning Church” and “thro' midnight streets” quite clearly depict a darkness.
While William Blake's poem "London" consists of four stanzas which contain a cross rhyme throughout the whole work, William Wordsworth's "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802" has the form of a Petrarchan sonnet. The octave has a strict rhyme scheme (abbaabba) which is fulfilled in Wordsworth's poem.
“What is now proved was once only imagined.”- William Blake. When William Blake wrote those words in his “Auguries of Innocence” in 1803 he likely didn't imagine we would one day have the technology to actually “see a world in a grain of sand” but with Gravity Probe B we pretty much do.
"A Poison Tree" is a poem written by William Blake, published in 1794 as part of his Songs of Experience collection. It describes the narrator's repressed feelings of anger towards an individual, emotions which eventually lead to murder.
The "chartered streets" refers to the system of commercial management, or charters, that existed in the city. The same system extends into nature, too: the "chartered Thames". Blake is saying that even the ancient and unencumbered river is managed for profit.
I believe that Blake wrote this poem to decry the state of people in the urban centers of his time. He argues, in the poem, that people in the cities are really badly off in a number of ways. In this poem, Blake is saying, for example, that people are oppressed. He says that they are, essentially, living in chains.
His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and as "Pre-Romantic". A committed Christian who was hostile to the Church of England (indeed, to almost all forms of organised religion), Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American Revolutions.
William Blake. William Blake's significance in the Romantic movement came late in the 19th century, after what is officially considered the Romantic period. Blake's early childhood was dominated by spiritual visions which influenced his personal and working life.
Published in 1794, "London" is a poem by British writer William Blake. The poem has a somber, morbid tone and reflects Blake's unhappiness and dissatisfaction with his life in London. Blake describes the troublesome socioeconomic and moral decay in London and residents' overwhelming sense of hopelessness.
The London of Blake's poem is a dark and bleak place. The descriptions create an image of a dreary city that is marked by death. The narrator hears cries at every corner, and words like "curse," "plagues" and "hearse" conjure images of death.
There are two themes of death in the comparison between London and Ozymandias. In "London", Black talks about people's death and suffering, and in "Ozymandias" Shelley talks about the death of civilization. Both verses have sense of ruler, more powerful person. In 'London', rich people have this advantage for the poor.
