“A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.”
The first time Blake mentions the word “mark” it could mean a sign maybe of poverty or struggle however the second time “mark” is mentioned it means a sign of weakness, such as drunkenness. The last time “mark” is used it is referring to a scar, a wound. This adds emphasis to Blake’s point because the reader has to think about each meaning to understand the line. It could be argued that Blake was trying to say that the people of “London” were mentally affected by the horrors of industrialisation. Blake uses grammatically unusual phrases such as the phrase
“mind forged manacles”
in his poems. This may be because Blake wishes to create a stronger or stranger image. This is very effective because as with the word “mark” it creates a very strong image of mental anguish for the people of “London” This may be saying that the effects of living in a largely populated industrial area are bad for you and causes people to suffer restrictions caused by their own minds and thoughts. Hence the phrase
“mind forged manacles”.
The poem is telling us that the chains that hold us are mental chains. Chains of our own making chaining our own freedom of imagination
In “London” Blake uses changes in rhythm to draw attention to certain lines. (Especially in verse two) An example of this is when the pace of the last line of each verse slows down, thus drawing attention to it.
In every cry of every man
In every infants’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind –forged manacles I hear:
We can see that this is also often the same with the order of the verses. The last verse has a slower pace than the other verses. There is an example of this change in rhythm in the start of the fourth verse when Blake starts with the word “But”.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot’s curse
Blasts the new –born infants’s tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.
The use of the word “But” implies that the previous verses were bad “But” if the last point (child prostitution) was rectified then a lot of things would improve.
In the poem “The Chimney Sweeper” Blake is telling us about child exploitation in large industrial cities such as London. Through focusing on the plight of chimney sweeps. In it he is critisizing society, the church, the parents who allow their children to be used as slave labour and the employers who exploit them.
In the poem “London” Blake was the observer. However in the poem “The Chimney Sweeper” Blake speaks through the voice of a child. ) This is extremely effective because of the child’s naivety and belief that if he is good everything will be alright. Tom, the child Blake speaks through believes this because, in a dream or vision he has, an angel tells him that
“if he’d be a good boy,
He’d have God for his father,and never want joy.
.
This could be saying that if Tom is good and continues to do as he is told (cleaning chimneys) then he will die and “have God for his Father”. This could also be irony from Blake by putting the teachings of the church in the voice of a child and telling us that only in the afterlife will he be happy. We know Blake felt that this teaching from the church encouraged the exploitation of the young, the poor and the vunerable.
The rhythm of the poem suits its content and purpose because it is in the form of a nursery rhyme. For example, the last word of each verse rhymes with the last word of the line before.
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry “Weep! weep! weep! weep!
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.
This emphasises the innocence of the child saying the poem because it relates to “childhood fun” which the young chimney sweep never experienced. In “The Chimney Sweeper” Blake creates multi faceted images through his use of similes. We can see this when Blake says “coffins of black”. This can mean two things, the first being that the young chimney sweeps will end up in one of the black coffins because their job will lead to their death, or it could also mean that the children are in the chimney which is dark and black and which will kill them. A double meaning in a phrase is typically used by Blake to get more than one of his ideas across. Blake uses an interesting structural device at the start of the poem “The Chimney Sweeper” this is the word “SO”. At the end of the first verse the word “SO” is put in front of the line
“So your chimneys I sweep”.
This may be putting blame onto the reader; however it is more likely to be society’s guilt for allowing it to happen. However, in the last verse “So” is used in the last line in the phrase
“
So if all do their duty”.
This is blaming society, the Church, parents and the owners of the children. This is because the poem says that if everybody did their duty they would step in to stop the chimney sweeper’s pain. “So” is also a structural device because after the evidence against society and the Church is shown “So” seems to condemn them.
Blake uses colour to create symbolic contrast in this poem, this is kept going throughout. The colours are white and black. White is used when Blake is talking about innocence, helplessness and youth. We can see this when the young chimney sweep Tom comforts the other child who has had his head shaved so
“the soot cannot spoil your white hair”
This is one of many things that show the innocence of a child being destroyed purely for the duties of chimney sweeping. Blake tends to use the words black and soot whenever he is referring to something which is wrong. As when coffins are mentioned, creating the phrase
“coffins of black”.
Blake also shows the reader, through a dream or vision, how life should be for the children. This vision creates a strong contrast that emphasises the cruel reality of their lives. We can see this when Tom has a dream or vision, as Blake did as a child, of his friends being set free by an angel and being taken to a better and sunlit place. Instead of a dream being used to describe what Tom sees, the word “sight” is used. This may be telling us this is the way things should be instead of it only being a child’s dream of happiness. In the vision there is an angel who tells Tom
“if he’d be a good boy, he’d have God for his father,and never want joy”.
This could be Blake criticizing the Church for saying you can only be happy and have a good ‘life’ in heaven when you are dead. Blake employs the same tequnique of unusual combinations of words in “The Chimney Sweeper” as he did in the poem “London”. This may be because Blake was still trying to get similar points across to the public. In “London” there are phrases, such as,
“marriage hearse”,
Words that do not usually go together. We see the same thing in “The Chimney Sweeper” when Tom’s friend cries when he has his head shaved and his head
“
curled like a lamb
This is a simile and creates the image of a small defenceless lamb in pain. The lamb could also be a symbol of innocence and sacrifice, telling us that tithe chimney sweeps are being sacrificed for the benefit of society who want their chimneys kept swept and don’t care how this is done or who suffers.
The poem “Jerusalem” is the last of Blake’s poems I will be looking at. Today Jerusalem is often perceived as a patriotic song but its true message goes much deeper than many people realize. In this poem Blake talk’s mainly about one thing .This is Industrialisation .Blake does this by continuously referring to “when” England “was” a “pleasant land.” The poem Jerusalem has been set to music, which means that the mood is different to “London” and “The Chimney Sweeper”. The question
s back”.
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon Englands’s mountains green?
May be a reference to the legend that Joseph of Arithamea had once brought Jesus to England. This may be a metaphor to say that Jesus’s spirit lives on in England.
Blake uses questions to invite the reader to recall England’s past. This is a rhetorical device used to draw the reader s interest into the poem. We can see this when Blake says
And was Jerusalem builded here
Amoung these dark satanic mills?
This could be saying that England was once beautiful and had Holy meaning (like the town Jerusalem) but now is just an industrialized piece of land. The word “satanic” means, like Satan or a thing in hell. This gives the image of England once being a good place but now it resembles hell.
Blake uses imperatives to show the force of his feelings. We can see this when at the start of the second verse the words
“Bring me”
are used to start the next four lines.
Bring me my bow of burning gold;
Bring me my arrows of desire;
Bring me my spear; O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
This adds a sense of urgency to the poem as if we must hurry to return ‘our’ country England to its former better state.
Blake describes modern industrialisation in dark terms in the last line of the second verse.
Among these dark satanic mills?
There are two words that create a sense of evil, dark and satanic. The word “mills” are used as a symbol of England’s industrialisation.
The power of Blake’s feeling is expressed through his own personal readiness to take up arms, literally and metaphorically to defeat evil and restore his country to its former glory. We can see this in the forth verse when Blake says he
“Will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand”.
This could mean that Blake intends to keep writing poems to change people’s minds about England, to convince them to return England to the country it once was. Blake has a ‘utopian’ vision of England. The word ‘sword’ creates an image of a knight fighting, so, this may be suggesting the necessity of a physical fight. However this may also be referring to the saying “his tongue‘s razor sharp” which means that Blake would continue to write poems in the belief that ‘the pen is mightier than the sword.
The first four lines of the third verse suggest war since they each have weapons in them. These lines also have a mythical feel to them. Blake may see himself as a knight or hero who has come to help save England , but , as with Jesus, in “Jerusalem” he has not ‘come’ as what people expect, because words are his weapons not swords.
In all three poems Blake conveys strong feelings about his society. He writes about the misery of poverty, the exploitation of the young and the helpless, the start of industrialisation and the consequences of sexual sin. In all three poems there are strong themes such as , child exploitation, in “The Chimney Sweeper”, Poverty in “London” and industrialisation in “Jerusalem” With the poem “Jerusalem” it could be said that it is ironic that a poem that says England is messed up is sung as a patriotic song which says ‘I am proud to be English’ .
It could be argued that “London” is the most important poem out of the three discussed since it talked about the problems of Blake’ s time and the same problems still exist today such as poverty, exploitation of the helpless and prostitution.
“London” is my favourite poem as it mirrors modern day London. The fact that we still have the same problems within society that Blake saw proves that times have not really changed very much .The wealthy still have the most power and in addition to the problems racism, and refugees, fleeing war and death in their own countries . I Blake saw we now have drugs destroying people’s lives, AIDS, think Blake would feel sorrow that all these years later there is still a huge divide between the classes. However’ he would be pleased that there is now education for everybody and working conditions, at least in this country, have improved. So maybe his poems did inspire people to question the justice of their own thoughts and actions.
