On the other hand his poem does incorporate some time timeless symbol. For example
“In what furnace was thy brain” could mean hellish thoughts. Throughout this poem fire is mentioned, fire was stolen from the gods in Greek mythology so it is a godly thing. The tiger is supposed to represent power, god, war, suffering, false hope, and the devil.
In Blake’s poetry he discusses the commerce of the times. In the poem “London” Blake talks about how London has become all chartered
“I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow”. This means that everything has become industrialised and is showing how the whole of London, including the river is covered with businesses and had become a busy commercial area. The phrase
“But most thro’ midnight streets I hear” brings up how London is the city that never sleeps and that there is always someone who is in a state of utter misery. All of these above show how London was and how everywhere was full of commercial enterprise.
The poem also shows the spin-off effects of commercialisation and how the rich ruin the lives of the poor. Blake uses comments and phrases like
“Marks of weakness, marks of woe” to show how the city of London contains misery. The entire of the second verse refers to noises and things that you can listen to or hear. The third verse also carries an acrostic saying HEAR. These could also be a reference to the misery of the poor. Another example of the sub-standard living conditions is were the poem talks about a
“the hapless soldier sighing” this could be a reference to the plague of TB, which was a killer at the time. This also includes alliteration, as there is an s in all of the last three words almost making a sighing sound. Also “And mark in every face I meet” could be a reference to mark that were left after small pox. This misery and illness is due to the appalling living conditions due to over crowding and bad sewage control, which is caused by businesses. But the poem also brings up completely different areas of life like royalty and mental oppression. The poem also bring up how people are unable to do things they want to do as they are barred by mental barriers that were dinned into them from a young age. This is shown in the line “The mind-forge’d manacles I hear” This poem also shows how the royalty block out the unsanitary conditions and keep everything perfect for themselves “Runs in blood down palace walls” These things still happen in modern society with government spin doctoring and it was also happening before Blake’s time.
Blake also brings his antichurch feelings into his poetry, he uses the poems “The SICK ROSE”, “The chimney sweeper” and “The little black boy” to express his feeling of how the church endorse morally unjust acts such as slavery. These policies of the church on slavery come in several forms black slavery, child slavery and the slavery of the mind. Also the church makes people believe that being white is better than being white for example with the simile “White as an angel is the English child”
In the poem “The chimney sweep” Little Tom Dacre is convinced that if he works hard and puts up with everything that happens to him then he will go to heaven
“Tho’ the morning was cold,
But the tom was happy and warm,
So if all do their duty they need not fear harm”
“And the angel told tom if he be a good boy,
He’d be have god as his father and never want joy”. This is one of the things that the church does and Blake incorporates it into his poems. In this poem three letters. There is also a mention of an angle freeing the dead chimney sweeps. This section of the poem also includes rhyming, in the fourth an fifth the last words rhyme. The last words of the second and third line do not rhyme but they do end in the same
“And by came an angel who had a bright key,
And he open’d the coffins and set them all free” this yet again links the church to the poem as the angel is a symbol for the church but this time associating it with death.
Both “The little black boy” and “The chimney sweep” contain references to slavery. In the chimney sweep it is in the line “And my father sold me while yet my tongue,” this is talking about how the father of the chimney sweep sold him as a child into slavery. In “The little black boy” there is no specific reference, but the whole poem is about the black boy being told by his mother how he must work hard for the whites and then he will go to heaven. This is interesting as the mother is passing on the information the church have told the mother. This information is that they are slaves but will go to heaven in the end despite their colour and now she is telling her son.
“The SICK ROSE” is all about the church but it a written more subtly. The rose is supposed to represent England and the worm a priest. This is interesting as Blake views the church as a parasite.
“The invisible worm, that flies in the night
In the howling storm” This is about how the changes thing while people are unaware and that it is done in the night under a cover of darkness. The storm represents change in the world. In the second verse says
“Has found out thy bed,
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love,
Does thy life destroy” This is showing how the church has ruined England. We can tell that that Blake is implying that because the words joy and destroy rhyme, this is no accident or coincidence.
On the other hand some things are brought up in this poem that still go on today and went on before Blake’s time as well. For example racism is mentioned in both “the chimney sweep” and “the little black boy”. Tom Dacre mentions how when he is in heaven he will become white which we are also lead to believe that white is better than black.
“Hush Tom never mind it,
For when your head’s bare,
You know the soot cannot spoil your white hair”.
The little black boy is told that when he goes to heaven he hill be white in god’s eyes this also stresses that white is better than black. “When I from black, and he from white could free”. This is another thing that is featured in Blake’s poems which is indoctrination, this still happens today with the government using spin-doctors in “The little chimney sweep” and “The little black boy “ the children are led to believe that if the suffer during life they will go to heaven this indoctrination of the church.
We can see that Blake brings up many issues that troubled him about the unfairness of life at the time. He uses his poetry to try and inspire people to help stop the atrocities of his time. He was defiantly a man of his times who wanted to speak about the injustice of the world to all. But on the other hand he also brings up issues that were going on before his day and still are problems in today’s society. For example racism is still a big problem. So Blake was both a man of his day and of all time.
