Compare 'London' by William Blake and 'Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3rd 1802' by William Wordsworth.

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english           london poems 

 As a part of my coursework for GCSE English, I will be comparing two poems written about London in nineteenth century. The two poems I have chosen to write about are: ‘London’ by William Blake and ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3rd 1802’ by William Wordsworth. Both poems give their own, different accounts of London at around the same period. One is written with a happy and joyous mood and the other a completely opposite one – a dull and grim mood, which is given by Blake.

Starting with William Blake’s background as a poet, I researched that he had a very eventful lifetime, which perhaps influenced his poems. For example, Blake was very religious. He lived by the bible and based some of his paintings (as Blake was also an artist) of the book of Revelation, such as his work “The Red Dragon and the Woman of the Sun”.  It is also said that he had been visited by angels at a point in his life. Is this to prove that he was somewhat deranged or is it his imagination? Blake’s poem ‘London’ describes a London where everything has rules or boundaries. We can see this where Blake tells us of the ‘charter’d street’ and the ‘chartered Thames’. We can see the connection of this stanza and the fact that rules were pinning every body down, with the word chartered. Chartered means something is on the map, almost as if it is owned, owned by the king, perhaps. Blake is communicating the fact that there is a stamp of ownership on everything from a small street to the constricted Thames, which being natural, makes the point more forcefully. It affects the way people live, work and play – people are not free. They are trapped in the prison of society, which is described by the line.

The mind-forg’d manacles I hear

What this simple phrase tells us is that people were not free to think. People were not free to think beyond the rules of society or beyond the rules of convention. The people of London had been brainwashed by society and they could not think for themselves because of that. Imaginary 

(mind forg’d) chains (manacles) were holding the minds of people down and they were struggling to break free (the sound that Blake hears). This did not only affect men, women, or infants, it affected all, as a city.

        In the next stanza, Blake goes on to describe the corruption of the Church of England (in one sense) or the dirtiness of all the buildings including the church, which is blackening (in another sense), with the line.

Every black’ning Church apalls

He sets the scene in this stanza by mentioning the chimneysweeper boys who cleaned the sooty chimneys of the houses of London at the time. It gives us a sense of filthiness in the everyday street of London and the fact that the job of the chimneysweepers was disgusting and dangerous. The air of London was not clean – the smoke of fireplaces filled the air and the pollution transformed the white stone of churches to jet-black. By talking particularly of the blackening church, the church can also be thought of as dirty or ‘bad’, or even corrupt. So is Blake telling us the church is corrupt and ‘dark’? Or is it just physically dirty? There is no right answer, as both of these ways of thinking fit in to the context of the stanza.

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Further on, Blake writes about the ‘hapless’ or luckless soldier.

And the hapless soldier’s sigh

Runs in blood down Palace walls.

His sigh runs in blood, signifying death, down palace walls, meaning the palace, or whoever lives in it, is to blame for his death. Which again, gives a thought of corruption.

        In the final stanza, Blake writes about the young prostitutes (harlots), who roam the streets of London, and how they are cursed with the consequences of their job. In the line of :

How the youthful Harlot’s curse

Once again, Blake is playing a meaning game ...

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