‘The City now doth like a garment wear the beauty of the morning; silent bare… the river glideth of his own sweet will… and all that mighty heart is lying still.’
Notice a capital letter for city is given. This hints to the reader that the city is alive and personified. He does this again more obviously when he uses the word ‘his’ for the river’s action. He used the word ‘now’ when describing the city. This implies that the city is not always peaceful and beautiful but only in the early hours of the morning. This is because the word ‘now’ is in the present tense. ‘The river glideth at his own sweet will’ gives off the impression that it is relaxed and untouched by humans (natural). ‘And all that mighty heart is lying asleep’. This sentence is personified. The ‘mighty heart’ is a metaphor for the people living in the city. This is a good metaphor because the heart given connotations of vital, important and something you can’t live without. The city can’t live without the people (the heart of the city). Also this could be interpreted as London being the heart of the British Empire as it was the capital of it. The people of the city and the city itself have a symbiotic relationship; both are beneficial to each other.
William Blake wanted to become a poet but due to his anti-church and anti-monarch views his literature was mainly ignored until after his death in 1827. This is because he lived in a period where religion was not a choice as it is today (for most people) but much more compulsory. Someone who was considered a ‘non-believer’ was frowned upon and a social outcast. He is the writer of two important books; songs of Innocence (1789) and the other, Songs of Experience (1794) in which his beliefs and thoughts are strongly expressed. He often wrote about a sense of purity and cleansing as his belief was innocence is better that experience. Better translated this means as soon as you want things in life, you become unhappy and depressed because you cannot have or afford them. Blake used a very abstract method in describing the city of London. He looks at life in a pessimistic view due to his miserable background of being poor and generally not having a pleasant life which is very sad.
‘And mark in every face I meet/Marks of weakness, marks of woe’
The word mark has strong and powerful connotations of scaring, pain and permanent. The people have been ‘marked’ with ‘weakness’ and ‘woe’ because of the industrial revolution which has been thrust upon them causing them to work like slaves for hardly any money.
Blake tries to portray London as an evil and dark place to be.
‘In every cry of every man/In every infants cry of fear,/In every voice, in every ban,/The mind – forged manacles I hear.’
Blake uses crying and fear to make London sound evil. ‘Every cry of every man’ makes the city sound very bad because men would almost never be seen crying in that period of time. So for something to make a grown man cry must be extremely bad and evil. The phrase ‘mind forged’ gives the impression that people are bound and restricted not only physically but mentally also. The people have no freedom whatsoever. To emphasise that the city is evil, Blake uses ‘infants cry of fear’ because children are meant to be defenceless, innocent and sweet (in an ideal world) and the thought of something hurting and scaring something defenceless is evil.
‘How the chimney sweepers cry’
This dwells on the corrupt city. Corrupt because young boys from the age of five years old to 10 years old were worked to death cleaning chimneys just for something to eat. Again the innocence of children is brought forward to show the level of corruption.
‘Every blackening church appals;/And the hapless soldier’s sigh/Runs in blood down palace walls.’
Again Blake’s hatred for the industrial revolution is brought up. The industrial revolution has even affected churches, a place of refuge for any Christian person no matter how rich or poor. This shows that the industrial revolution affected everybody in some way. Also the phrase, ‘And the hapless soldiers’ sigh/Runs in blood down palace walls’ is a good metaphor for how the Kings and Queens did not care how many people they forced to fight and die in the Napoleonic time of war, so as long as they were still on the throne and leader of the country.
Both Blake’s and Wordsworth’s views of the city of London are extremely different. One describing it as natural and beautiful. Wordsworth’s view that lived in the Lake District, a place of such described qualities. And the other evil and corrupt. Blake’s view whom was poor, a drug addict and pessimistic attitude. Both their views describe their background in which they grew up and lived.
