Blake was born in London, where he spent most of his life. His father was a successful London hosier who encouraged Blake's artistic talents. Blake has recorded that from his early years, he experienced visions of angels and ghostly monks and that he saw and conversed with the angel Gabriel, the Virgin Mary, and various historical figures. Blake’s interest for mysticism and the somewhat strange eerie events that he experienced is evidently shown in the way that he writes, an almost morbid fashion, in the descriptions and the imagery that he portrays.
William Blake’s poem London, first published in 1974, deals with the difficult and hard life in London at that time. He describes how dirty the streets and the Thames is and how the poor people suffer hopelessly and how they are in dire need of money. With this poem the author wants to show the poverty and the bad circumstances, the poor people are living in. The poem creates a very depressing atmosphere. On the one hand it is not far fetched but on the other hand the poem is written with a very negative view on London. In contrast Composed upon Westminster Bridge is a more positively looking detailed account of London. For example, Wordsworth describes London as “all bright and glittering in the smokeless air’’, trying to depict its beauty at a time where London was very foggy and dirty from the recent industrial revolution.
Blake’s poem is full of striking images. One image is “ And mark in every face I meet, marks of weakness, marks of woe”. Here Blake wants the reader to have an image of the civilians of London, how their lives must be so miserable, that it shows in their faces. He uses the word ‘every’, to suggest that these faces of sadness and woe, are shared by every civilian of London. This gives the image that London at the time was not a nice place to be living in. Wordsworth poem I would believe to contain more imagery in his writing. His description of London is easier to pick up and his message is very simple. He uses personification, he says that “This City now doth, like a garment, wear the beauty of the morning” literally meaning that London actually wears its beauty just like an accessory.
Now Blake’s structure is more complex than Wordsworth, this I believe is the main reason why his poem is one that is very powerful. Blake’s poem consists of four stanzas, and has a constant rhyming pattern. The rhyming effect allows the reader’s brain to go into a certain rhythm when reading the poem, making it more interesting to read. He is not straightforward with his language; I believe he plays around with his creativity, unlike Wordsworth who continues to maintain a clear understandable description. In the second stanza, Blake repeats the words “In every” in the first three lines, trying to add to the effect of the almost horrific images and sounds that he can see and hear. Wordsworth does not use repetition in his poem, he concentrates on clearer use of language, comparing the depth and calm of London streets, to the depth and calm of a river, “..never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own street will”.
It is clear to me that these two poets have very different opinions of London. Blake’s grim descriptions of the people and life of London, the screams of the babies of prostitutes in the streets in the night, create very dark images in my mind, whereas Wordsworth makes London look the total opposite. Wordsworth picks up on London’s appealing ness, the rocks and hills, using words such as ‘glittering’, ‘beauty’ and ‘splendour’. He says “even the very houses seem asleep; and all that mighty heart is lying still”, implying that London itself is a living thing. To me I find Wordsworth’s poem the more appealing; because of the easier to understand words and structure of his poem. Blake for me is too cryptic in the way that he writes his poetry, this leaves my understanding of the poem very hard to grasp, and for this reason I prefer Wordsworth’s more colourful, clearer, simple depiction of London.
