William Blake’s “London” is a clear indictment of the contemporary materialistic and industrial

society. Blake has severely criticized the evils of English society. Firstly. he has shown the
apathetic or callous attitude of society towards the chimney sweepers who have led a miserable
life. Secondly, he has demonstrated the adversities of war as expressed in the plight of the
soldiers. Thirdly and lastly, he has exhibited sexual perversion or distortion which poses a serious
threat to the holy institution of marriage and the blissful life of the offsprings. Blake has strongly
denounced the malpractices and corruptions of English life and society in these respects. Blake’s
satiric attack on London’s life bears a striking resemblance to T.S. Eliot’s virulent satire on the
deterioration of the social, economic, and cultural life of London in the poems.  Preludes, The
Hollow Men, and The Wasteland.
“London” by Blake is a poem of protest. Here the poet has strongly revolted against the
corruptions, malpractices of English society. The poem has faithfully portrayed the ennui,
weariness, pessimism, corruption of London society. He is of the view that London society is not
only ethically corrupted, it is also sexually debased and contaminated. The poem is a biting satire
on the prevailing ills of London society. The very foundation of London society is very weak and
fragile because the values and ethics on which this society is reliable are rotten and degraded. The
poet is severely critical of the comprehensive degeneration that has set in upon English society.
In England Blake’s London is certainly the principal city. There each street is chartered, clearly
defined, and, like the chartered Themes, limited and confined by its definition. Every face in this
London is chartered marked by the same lack of scope and the same misery and woe because of
it. But this chartered quality is not only due to ‘social comedians’, but, as Blake says,

“In every cry of every Man

In every Infant’s cry of fear
In every voice in every ban
The mind-forged manacles I hear.”

‘Mind-forged’ is the important phrase here. Each individual is chained as much by its own
psychological predisposition as by social injustice. The interdependent misery of the inhabitants
of this London is most forcefully expressed in the poem’s concluding stanza. It is important that
the ‘harlot’ is youthful for it suggests that the new-born infant is itself not so far from the
condition of the whore. Her curse is not only what she shouts against society, but the disease she
is certain to succumb to. And this disease is not referred to show how dreadful the fate of the
harlot is, but because it is effective and destructively so towards the new-born infant’s generation-
it is blasted-and the marriages too are infected. Not only symbólically is the marriage care a
hearse. The misery of these Londoners is not simply displeasure or discomfort, It is death
following disease, a disease which cannot be cured because it is neither acknowledged socially
nor understood to be fundamental to society’s disabilities. The mind-fogged manacles are the
more effective for not being recognized.

Blake’s tragic appreciation of the restrictions which imprison and kill the living spirit was no
purely personal thing. It was this criticism of society and the whole trend of contemporary
civilization. His compassionate heart was outraged and wounded by the sufferings which society
inflicts on its humbler members and by the waste of human material which seems indispensable
to the efficient operation of rules and laws. In ‘London‘ he gives his own view of that ‘chartered
liberty’ on which his countrymen prided themselves and exposes the indisputable ugly facts.

“London” is a poem by William Blake published in 1794 in his work “Songs of Experience”. The
poet, engraver and craftsman was born in 1757 in London where he spent almost his entire life.
He published his poems engraved in a script embellished with illustrations. 1 Blake was known as
a “non-confomirst” which refers to a religious group that had seperated from the Church of
England and that was critical to the government. 2 The poet and his work are part of the early
Romantic period which is characterized by the rejection of the ideals, values and beliefs of
classicism and neoclassicism such as restraint emotionality or objectivity. Instead a freer and
more subjective expression of passion, pathos and personal feelings was pursued. Furthermore,
Romantic thoughts proceeded social and political reactions against oppression and the stereotypes
of Christian thinking.3

The lyrical I in “London” describes his or her impressions and his individual experience while
walking through the streets of the city of London. The lyric person as a wanderer perceives on his
journey many negative realities. Strong and dramatic expressions with destructive connotations
were used by Blake to create a melancholic and sorrowful atmosphere of London's streets (marks
of weakness and woe, cry, fear, ban, sigh, blood, blights and plagues). The capital city and its
inhabitants were found in a terrible condition of child labor, war and prostitution.

The lyric person refers to himself in the first person singular. The repetition of the pronoun “I”
shows a high degree of explicit subjectivity which is a criteria of the Romantic period. The
poem's four stanzas, each consisting of four lines, offer four glimpses into London during the late
18th century. The poem's structure shows high regularity: the four quatrains, eight syllables per
line, the cross rhyme scheme and the mostly iambic meter contribute to the poem's coherence.

Blake's poem reflects on the social, political and religious circumstances during the 18th century.
“London” analyzes and points out cruelty and injustice occurring in the society and criticizes the
church and the British monarchy. It articulates the social grievances of marginalized people such
as prostitutes and chimney-sweepers who used to be children during that time. Focusing the
socio-historical context, the French Revolution (1789-1799), the American Revolutionary War
(1775-1783), and the Industrial Revolution (late 18th century) were periods and happenings all of
which had changed people's life and society significantly. London became an emerging and dirty
black city. The process of urbanization took place.

In the first stanza, the use of the word “charter'd” in relation to the river Thames provides
ambiguity since the expression being “chartered” is not clearly determined. It could either refer to
a written statement describing the particular rights someone should have given by the state or to
the act of leasing or renting something. In conjunction with the river Thames, the meaning of
“charter'd” alludes to the fact that in the early years of capitalism everything in the city is owned
and controlled by commercial interests – London's streets and even the river Thames, an actual
natural thing.

The parallelism (the use of parallel clause) in the first three lines of the second stanza and the
repetition of the word “every” for five times in the stanza underline clearly the fact that the entire
society and each individual person is affected. In the second stanza, the metaphorical expression
“mind-forg'd manacles I hear” alludes to mental oppression and restraint. Blake illustrates the
idea of a mentally imprisoned society by using an actual physical object (manacle) within a non-
physical, psychological context (manacles of the mind). Further, a synaesthetic effect is used as
another rhetorical figure to transform the abstract symbol of the “mind-forg'd manacles” to an
auditive perceivable object – the manacles convert to something clearly noticeable and can be
heard.

The poem's criticism and accusation come to a climax in the third stanza. The physical
descriptions develop to a more social commentary. The „Chimney sweeper's cry“ complains and
accuses the “black'ning Church” of not fulfilling it's assignment of protecting the weak. The color
black shows a negative and darkening picture of religion and the church. It could also refer to the
society's abandonment of religion. The “hapless soldier's sigh” which “runs in blood down palace
walls” is another synaesthesia which converts an auditive stimulus to something visible, movable
and more graspable. The “Soldier's sigh” refers to the war between the Kingdom of Great Britain
and the colonies in North America and alludes to the violent riots during the French Revolution.
The British soldiers who were partly pressed into service were returning weak, likely invalid and
not given any support or respect by the state. The “Palace walls” symbolize the British monarchy
for which the soldiers had to lose their blood. Neither the church nor the government shows any
effort to alleviate the population's distress it has to cope with. Instead of providing solidarity,
empathy or social justice to the suffering people serving the Empire, morality is ignored. Harmful
consequences as prostitution and child labor can occur.

The initial letters of the third stanza form an acrostic 4. By reading the initials vertically the word
H.../E.../A.../R... appears and emphasizes the stanza's content and which can be read as a direct
order addressed to the reader.

In the fourth stanza a caesura reinforces the poem's content. The lyrical addresser now points to
the consequences which will affect the society's future. The "youthful harlot's curse" symbolizes
how the youth's sinful failures damage the future generation, described as the "newborn infant's
tear". The next generation is charged with the correction of the mistakes which the previous
generation has made. Blake creates a paradox by using a rhetorical figure – the oxymoron
"marriage hearse" confuses eternity and death.

Blake uses in “London” a variety of stylistic devices in paradigmatic and semantic contexts.
Ambiguous utterances invite the reader to imply extra meaning into the content and open up the
access to interpretation. The rhetorical figures, metaphors, synesthesia, imagery etc. all of which
used, affiliate the poem's articulation as well as illustrate and enhance it's implicit statement.

“London” is a prime-example of a Romantic socio-critical poem. Blake reflects with his work on
different levels of meaning in a subjective and expressional manner. “London” reveals the
process of social change and the related negative consequences in society. The poem points out
lack of freedom and inhumanity which is neglected by the British Empire and the church in the
late 18th century. “London” shows solidarity with the people who are hit by the changes the
hardest. Furthermore, the poem is a call for morality, empathy and social justice in order to
protect the future generation.

‘London’ by William Blake is a dark and dreary poem in which the speaker describes the
difficulties of life in London through the structure of a walk.
The speaker travels to the River Thames and looks around him. He takes note of the resigned
faces of his fellow Londoners. The speaker also hears and feels the sorrow in the streets, this is
the focus of the final three stanzas. There is a true pain in the hearts of men, women, and children.
The most prominent of those suffering in London’s streets are the prostitutes.’ London’ ends with
a fantastical image of a carriage that shuttles love and death together around the city. 

Themes: In ‘London,’ Blake engages with themes of urban life, childhood, and corruption. The
latter relates to both childhood and the broader nature of life in the city. It’s clear from the first
lines of the poem that Blake has a widely negative view of what it’s like to live and work in
London. He is surrounded by misery, mostly due to the way the adult world destroys the
innocence of childhood. These children are in distress throughout their lives, forced to deal with
the sins of their family members and the darkness of the urban streets. The speaker hears pain
everywhere he goes in the city, something that he knows isn’t necessary. The world could be
happier and freer but humanity’s darker side has made that impossible in the city.

Structure and Form: ‘London’ by William Blake is a four stanza poem that is separated into
sets of four lines, known as quatrains. These quatrains follow a rhyme scheme of ABAB
throughout. The first stanza explores the sights around the city of London while the following
three focus more on the sounds the speaker can hear. Close readers might notice that the third
stanza of the poem is actually an acrostic, it spells out the word “HEAR” with each first letter of
the first word in every line. Some of the lines of ‘London’ make use of a metrical pattern known
as iambic tetrameter. this can be seen perfectly in the first three lines of the poem. But, that
changes in line four when the speaker is confronted with the people. The normal
walking rhythm of the first lines is interrupted, a way of referring back to the content
in ‘London.’ 

Literary Devices

In ‘London,’ William Blake makes use of several literary devices. These include but are not
limited to examples of caesura, metaphor, and enjambment. The first of these, enjambment, is a
common formal device that occurs when the poet cuts off a line before the conclusion of a
sentence or phrase. For example, the transition between lines three and four of the first stanza as
well as line four of the second stanza and line one of the third stanza.

Caesurae are pauses in the middle of lines, either due to a break in the meter or the use of
punctuation. For example, line four of the first stanza. It reads: “Marks of weakness, marks of
woe.” Another good example is line three of the second stanza: “In every voice: in every ban.” 

Metaphors are a kind of figurative language, one that is quite common in poetry and often helps
to create great examples of imagery. There are numerous examples to be found, especially in
stanzas two and three.