GCSE English and English Literature Poetry Coursework Essay.
Compare and contrast the way Blake and Wordsworth view and describe London in their poems. To what extent are they both typical ‘romantic’ poems?
The romantic period was from 1760 – 1840 after people started to move away from the Classical Era of strict laws and started to think for themselves with freedom, experimentation and creativity. At the time, more composers started to write poems, songs and music to express themselves. It was the way that poets and artists viewed things, based on key areas of: purity, nature, freedom and importance of emotions, that it was called ‘Romanticism’ or ‘Romantic period’. Sometime during this period, William Blake wrote the poem ‘London’ expressing his feelings about the real London which seems to be very negative. On the other hand, another writer William Wordsworth wrote a poem called ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’ which gives a very positive impression of London. Both poems revolve around London but describe the capital city in two different prospective.
William Blake was a poet and artist who specialised in illuminated texts, often of a religious nature. He rejected established religion for various reasons. One of the main ones was the failure of the established Church to help children in London who were forced to work. Blake lived and worked in the capital, so was arguably well placed to write clearly about the conditions people who lived there faced. The poem ‘London’ is written in first person and describes how Blake see’s London. Blake gives off a bad vibe about London by saying in the first part ‘And mark in every face I meet, marks of weakness, marks of woe’ which means every face he looks at, he see’s depression, sorrow, starvation and poverty. This line gives off the impression Blake is walking through a very poor part/street in London, therefore if he was in a richer part of London his poem might be more positive. In the 2nd part of Blake’s poem he uses repetition with the word ‘every’ to us emphasis when he describes it all as ‘The mind-forged manacles I hear’ meaning everyone’s mind has trapped them in their own world. For Blake, the conditions faced by people caused them to decay physically, morally and spiritually. The 9th -12th lines of this poem are being negative towards the government trying to make them feel guilty about war and poverty. ‘How the chimney-sweeper’s cry, every blackening church appals’ reveals the speaker's attitude about how money is spent on church buildings while children live in poverty, forced to clean chimneys. It is then followed by ‘And the hapless, soldiers sigh, runs in blood down palace walls’ because this describes how Blake believes it was the governments fault all the wars and poverty where happening. He also describes the disgust and ruining of what power has done to people. In this part of the poem he is perhaps arguing that if things don’t change, people are going to revolt and over power the people in charge. The last part of the poem says ‘blasts the newborn infant’s tear’ which means every child born in cursed and hopeless, because Blake seems to believe the conditions during the 18th century where not right for children to be living in. The poem ends with ‘the marriage hearse’ though marriage should be a celebration of love and the beginning of new life but when combined with the word ‘hearse’ (a funeral vehicle’ it shows that Blake thinks marriage brings nothing but death, decay and unhappiness. Overall this poem is negative about London due to his religious views and what he saw as he walked through London streets.
