“This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,”
Blake’s poem has four verses and follows a set rhyme scheme and structured rhythm which creates a chant like tempo as if the throbbing streets produce an everlasting hell for its inhabitants.
“In every infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear.”
Blake’s vocabulary contrasts with that of Wordsworth’s; it is dark and oppressive as he focuses on the gloomy streets where the poor are trapped in a grimy, dirty labyrinth where their only release is death,
“And blights with plagues the marriage hearse”.
In Blake’s second paragraph Blake talks about hearing the “mind forged manacles” as if the minds of the people of London’s are constricted and have no free will to do what they like, of thought and action has been taken away. ”in every voice, in every ban” The word “forged” conjures up images of hot pokers and hammers. It is as if they have been moulded in the fiery hell which is London. It as though London is a prison and everyone has a life sentence.
Unlike Wordsworth’s poem which describes London as being free and open. “Open unto the fields”. According to Blake the population of London is totally restricted in though and deed, where as Wordsworth’s views a population that has access to calmness and relaxation. “Ne’er saw I, never felt, calm so deep!”
In Blake’s third verse his main point is about the blackness and dirt of London. However Wordsworth also comments on London’s environment, but he uses such language to portray London as a perfect city. Blake portrays London as wearing grime, soot and blood,
“Blackening church” “Blood down palace walls”
Wordsworth’s is similar in the way that he uses intense description and personifies London implying that the city bears her beauty like a woman.
“Like a garment, wear the beauty of the morning”
Wordsworth says London is “touching in its majesty”
Blake contrasts this because he thinks London’s majesty is tired, fed up and anyone involved is “hapless”. Blood is running down palace walls as if its all “majesty” and royalty it is famous for is just slowly bleeding away and eventually to death.
“And the Hapless soldiers sigh, runs in blood down palace walls”
Blake’s last verse is about the people of London. As far as Blake is concerned there is nothing good about them and they are much to blame for how awful London really is.
“Youthful harlots curse”
Curse, is used pun in this case, as the harlot is cursing and is also cursed. This “blasts the infant’s tear” and like a plague makes “the marriage hearse”. It is like a chain reaction. People get divorced because men sleep with harlots; the harlots are cursed with STD’s which pass to the men and then onto the newborn causing its tears.
“Youthful harlot’s curse, blasts the newborn infants tear”
Unlike Blake, Wordsworth is always personifying things, but never talks about the people themselves. This is for a number of reasons. Wordsworth is up high on the bridge surveying London from above; he is away from the dirty back streets and the commoners,
“Composed upon Westminster bridge”
When he composed it was in the morning when all the people were asleep the factories hadn’t lit their Furnace’s yet so of course the air was smokeless.
“The beauty of the morning” “smokeless air”
So the reason why both poems are biased is because one is composed at midnight when it is dark and dingy and only harlots are about the back streets and he is among them, the other written when London is still asleep, the sun is rising and he is just looking down upon the people. One of the composer’s lives and works in London so has experiences the worst of it and is now sick of it and the other lives in Lake District and is visiting so it would be an experience for him to looking over all the buildings. This last paragraph is much better explained in title of each poem “London” this clearly means the poem is London. “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge September 3 1802” this poem is clearly about being on Westminster Bridge on the third of September 1802.
