London by William Blake (Text with themes)

 

London

By William Blake

I wander thro' each charter'd street,

Near where the charter'd Thames does flow. 

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

 

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infants cry of fear,

In every voice: in every ban,

The mind-forg'd manacles I hear 

 

How the Chimney-sweepers cry

Every blackning Church appalls, 

And the hapless Soldiers sigh

Runs in blood down Palace walls 

 

But most thro' midnight streets I hear

How the youthful Harlots curse

Blasts the new-born Infants tear 

And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

 

The poem is written by English poet William Blake. It describes a walk through the streets

of London which is presented as an oppressive and impoverished city in pain and all the

poet can find in this city is misery and dejection. It especially focuses on the sounds coming

from the city with men women and children crying throughout the poem. The is also

somewhat a response to the industrial revolution, but than anything is a fierce critique of

humankind’s failure to build a society based on love, joy, freedom and connection with God.

 

Summary

 

The speaker strolls through the streets of London. The speaker walks near the river

Thames whose course has been dictated for it as it flows throughout the city. The

speaker sees signs of resignation and sadness in the faces of every person the speaker

walks by.

The speaker can feel this pain in the cries of men as well as those of fearful newborn

babies. In fact, each voice of the city, in every law or restriction London places on its

population, the speaker can sense people’s feelings of being oppressed by city life.

 

The speaker listens to the cry of young chimney sweeper boys whose misery brings

shame on the church authorities. Thinking of the British soldiers who are dying in vain,

the speaker imagines their blood running down the walls of the palace.

 

Oppressed Urban Life

In the poem, the speaker takes a walk through the city and finds only misery. The dirty and dangerous city is an intense expression of human life—not at its fullest, but at its most depraved and impoverished. Blake was notably writing at a time when the Industrial Revolution was at full pace, restructuring society in a way that he believed made people lose sight of what it means to be human. Blake uses "London" to argue that this urban environment is inherently oppressive and denies people the freedom to live happy, joyful lives.

The poem opens with the speaker’s experience of walking through the city. Through the speaker’s eyes and ears, the reader gets a strong sense of the dismal lives of the Londoners. The people are “marked” by “weakness” and “woe"; the streets and even the river Thames are “charter’d”—that is, their courses have been decided for them. (Rivers are often a symbol of freedom, but not in this poem.)

The speaker also hears pain everywhere—it’s “in every voice,” even that of newborn babies—and it's caused by “mind-forg’d manacles.” Manacles are a type of physical restraint, like handcuffs, but these particular manacles are “mind-forg’d”—that is, they come from thought rather than the physical world. The root cause of London’s misery, it seems, is the way that humanity thinks about itself, the way that society has been conceived and developed. The speaker suggests that society could be joyful, free, and full of love, but that people's fear, greed, and thirst for power have made the urban environment unbearably oppressive.

Though the poem doesn’t delve too deeply into the way it thinks society should be, it's very clear about the strong links between misery and its urban setting. At the time of Blake's writing London was (and still is) one of the busiest, most developed urban environments in the world. The poem argues that this way of life—with its focus on economic activity and individualism—is fundamentally flawed.

To emphasize the point that the city environment itself oppresses its inhabitants, the speaker gestures towards some of the desperate measures people take in order to survive. The chimney-sweepers, who are only children, put their health at great risk to earn a living; both the soldiers and the harlots (female prostitutes), in different ways, must sell their bodies in order to survive. In other words, everyone is trapped by their situation, forced to exchange the only things they have—their bodies—in order to, paradoxically, keep those bodies alive.

What's more, the poem offers no real hope that society may find a way to cast off its “mind-forg’d manacles.” Note that the poem emphasizes the next generation in closing on the “youthful Harlots” and the “new-born infants.” This image turns what should be a joyous celebration of new life into an initiation into poverty, pain, and hopelessness; it implies the cyclical nature of London's poverty, and suggests people don’t have the freedom to escape their urban woes.

The poem, then, views modern city life as hopelessly oppressive. With the Industrial Revolution at full pace, London was undergoing significant and speedy changes. The poem argues these changes aren't for the better, and its criticism of London may be just as relevant to today’s cities.

Corruption Affecting the Innocent

"London" also touches on an important theme throughout Blake's work, one that is especially prominent in his Songs of Innocence and Experience: the corruption of childhood. Blake believed that people are born with everything they need for a joyful, loving, and happy life—but that the adult world corrupts this innocent state. In this poem, the speaker describes how children are essentially crushed by the adult world, thus building a vivid argument supporting Blake's broader belief.

The speaker of "London" presents urban children as being in distress from the moment they are born. For example, line 15 describes how newborn babies are "blasted" by the curses of their impoverished prostitute mothers. With this image, the speaker gestures towards an ongoing cycle of misery—miserable mothers lead to miserable children, who may themselves create more miserable children later on—that is integral to the urban environment. Similarly, in line 6, infants are characterized as consistently crying, and these cries are specifically related to the fear they feel. It is as though they can sense the misery around them, before they've even developed their ability to meaningfully perceive and make sense of the world.

Perhaps the most poignant reference to childhood corruption is in line 9, when the speaker discusses the chimney-sweepers. Chimney-sweeping was a brutal but very common profession in London in Blake's day, and it was work that children were frequently sold or forced into. (Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" poems discuss this theme in greater detail.) Like the prostitutes and the soldiers mentioned elsewhere in the poem, the impoverished children of London are forced to exchange their one possession—their bodies—for money, food, and/or lodging. In other words, they give up their childhood—when they should be playing and learning about the world—in order to merely survive. And doing so, of course, actually diminishes their chances of survival, because chimney sweeping places them in toxic and physically dangerous environments.

Through the images of childhood suffering that the speaker observes and recreates for readers, Blake seems to suggest that the oppression of children is one of the worst examples of how the "mind-forg'd manacles" of urban life and industrialization corrupt society.