Compare William Wordsworth's composed upon Westminster Bridge and William Blake's London.

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Compare William Wordsworth’s composed upon Westminster Bridge and William Blake’s London.

The two poems I have studied are on the same topic and were written around the same time but there treatment of the subject matter is very different. Blake’s poem “London” deals with the darker side of London and the people who suffer and make others suffer. Wordsworth’s poem “Composed upon Westminster Bridge” describes the beauty of the city.

In “London” Blake describes a diseased and plagued city where the innocent are tortured and die. This poem also deals with the church and the authorities in a very negative way. The beginning of the poem there is an immediate feeling of restriction with the “chartered streets” and “chartered Thames” which suggests that there is little or no freedom. There is also the idea of man playing God and wanting to able to control the river. Blake then goes onto the people and the first thing he mentions is woe and weakness and all-round feelings of stress, gloom and sadness.

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  “I wander thro’ each chartered street,

    Near where the chartered Thames does flow,

    And mark in every face I meet                                                                                                                                             Marks of weakness, ...

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