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Ms. Dunn
An Analysis on London
London by William Blake is about London in the 1790s. The speaker makes it seem as
though London is not the place to be. He hears cries from kids and adults alike. He sees people
who look terrible, a church that gets blacker, and a palace that has blood running down its walls.
While on the streets at midnight he even hears a harlot, prostitute, curse at a new-born infant.
Blake uses themes of death, freedom and confinement, and innocence throughout his poem. Is
this poem portraying the government as narrow, and is it possibly trying to convince us to be
The speaker begins London by telling a story, I wander through each chartered street, /
Near where the chartered Thames does flow, (1-2). The word charter has many different
meanings, in this poem however it holds a sense of confined, mapped out, or legally
defined. In these lines chartered evokes all these senses. The speaker suggests that London
and even the Thames are under constant government control. Another way of seeing it is that
they are extremely constricted and defined rigidly, in other words not open or free.
Now the next two lines are really interesting, And mark in every face I meet / Marks of
weakness, marks of woe. All the mysterious hints of the word chartered are made even more
clear when the speaker tells us what he is seeing on the streets. These signs are on every face that
he sees and meets. Its clear that these marks are not good for all the weakness and woe shown.
The word mark can mean that there is a physical or emotional mark, but in this sense it can
actually also mean that he himself is marking every person that he sees, sort of like how you
would mark down people who have missed class on their note card.
In every cry of every man, / In every Infants cry of fear, / In every voice, in every ban, /
The mind-forged manacles I hear. (5-8). Using anaphora, the speaker tells us that he hears the
mind-forged manacles in almost everything and everyone. The word manacles mean metal
band, chains, or shackles for binding someones hands or feet. Really it is a reference to being
confined, restricted, and constricted. This goes hand in hand with the word chartered discussed in
line 1-4. The same can be said for the word ban which is also a form of restriction. Now in the
same way that the word mark may have been used as not a physical sight but used to make a
mental not, mind-forged manacles may be the intellectuals of London confined by their
government during the Industrial Revolution that lead to chartered streets of the late 1700s.
In lines 9-10, the chimney sweepers cry can be seen as a protest to the church. During
this time children were used as chimney sweeps because their bodies were small enough to get
the job done. The job of a chimney sweep was a dirty and dangerous one, the church would use
orphans and most of the orphans didn't bathe and were covered in soot. This may be the reason
why the church was blackening, in a literal sense due to the children covered in soot. Soot is also
very carcinogenic and led to a lot of children developing cancer and during the job sometimes
these kids would even get stuck in the chimney. The care of orphans fall under the church and
other religious institutions. The church becoming blacker may mean that the church is becoming
less good, pure, and devoted to the betterment of humanity itself. The word appalls may be the
a metaphor in these lines. The palace is a symbol for government and has blood on its hands. The
sigh of the helpless soldier may mean that something is bothering him but there is nothing he can
do about it. The sigh runs in blood because it has to do with the palace, i.e. the government that
has control over the policies that the soldier is set to follow. The hapless gesture shows how
powerless the soldier is to change is situation and all he can do is defend the palace and enforce
whatever policy the palace sets out, even if it includes violence. The lines in this poem enforces
the idea that manacles are everywhere. He says that the restrictions are everywhere and these
But most through midnight I hear / How the youthful Harlots curse / Blasts the new-
born Infants tear, / And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse. (13-16). Now, the speaker
hears lots of things but most of all he hears a youthful harlot, not just any harlot, but a young one
cursing a new-born Infants tear. Babies are being brought into the world where young women
have become prostitutes and the babys tears are being cursed at instead of soothed. In addition
to children being brought into a corrupt, dirty world, the same harlot-curse blights with plagues
the Marriage hearse. Both blight and plague are similar and both refer to disease, a plague being
disease. Blight is used as a verb instead of noun in these lines though, making it mean tarnish,
mars, or even destroy. The harlots curse is most likely a symbol for her terrible life
experiences, much like the soldiers sigh is for his, ruins the Marriage hearse. The curse
completely destroys the institution of marriage and plagues it. The speaker uses a semi-
oxymoronic phrase Marriage hearse because we associate marriage with children, life, and
union. A hearse symbolizes death and marriage is a hearse because unmarried harlots are
running around and babies don't seem to have parents, the whereabouts of the babys parents are
not made apparent in the poem. Marriage has been plagued both figuratively and maybe even
physically. Plague may possibly be a reference to venereal disease which also existed around
this time. The marriage hearse may be blighted by whatever diseases that the harlots profession
may have given her. In other words, the harlot engages in prostitution which give her some sort
of sexual disease which she brings into her marriage or perhaps even the marriages of her clients.
In conclusion, Blake is a fantastic poet and portrays London as place of dark confining
times. It is not a place full of happy people, laughing babies and children, and wonderful
marriages. London is place where the government is in control, restricting those who live within
the confines of its walls. It is also a place where the church is no longer pure and only seeks to
better itself instead of the people who put their trust into religion.
Works Cited
Blake, Williams. London. The Norton Introduction to Literature Shorter 12th edition, edited by