Gemma Dormer
Appreciation for London by William Blake
The first stanza of the poem London opens with the image of Blake as he wanders “thro' each charter'd street”. Blake selected the word “charter'd” to convey various images in the readers mind. The immediate image the audience will visualize is that the streets of London were mapped out. However, on further examination the reader can determine that Blake had another meaning for the word. The word charter is also a document bestowing certain rights on a town or city. A perspective that the reader could adopt is the word is suggesting a proud independence of a city.