Compare and Contrast the two poems, ‘London’ and
‘Composed Upon Westminster Bridge’
Both of the poets write about London in their poems. There is one big difference between the form and the structure ‘Composed Upon Westminster Bridge’ is written in the form of a sonnet where as the ‘London’ poem is just a four verse poem, each verse having four lines.
Comparing the poems with one another I first picked up that they are equally written from first person perspectives which helps to express that these are the writer’s real thoughts and feelings of the great city. Blake doesn’t concentrate on the general scene: Like the buildings or the natural landscapes, He sees beyond all this and he thinks of the people who live there. He explains how everyone is sad and hopelessly depressed, he points out the prostitutes have no other means of earning money than to sell themselves and how the soldiers have to put their lives on the line whenever the king decides. He makes it interesting as he uses a lot of repetition in each stanza to emphasize his views, ‘‘in every cry of every man, in every cry of infants fear, in every voice, in every ban’’. Five uses of the word every in three lines symbolize that he wants a point to be put across to the reader. It draws more attention to what is different. In the phrase, he speaks of a black church saying God does not help people with their pointless lives.
