"London" by William Blake

• William Blake is a harbinger of 19th century Romantic poetry.
• He wished to construct a mythology of his own using the twin arts of poetry and drawing.
• He wanted to portray symbolically the forces always at war with each other in the soul of man.
• Reflections of the society of London city known in those days for its poverty, squalor, destitution and cruelties in the satanic mills which exploited the poor.

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• Third stanza is one of the poem is one of the most striking - highly compressed form of writing.
• Holds the church responsible for the chimney sweeper's woes and the king for the soldier's sigh.
• Chimney sweeper's young and fair skin is physically blackened.
• Alluding to the corporation rules in the city of London, whereby the City market and the Thames river were divided into zones.
• Street and Thames, limited and confined by its definition.
• Every face, marked by the lack of scope and the same misery.
• Men are imprisoned in the chains, the y have forged for themselves.
• Note, the repetition of 'every' in this stanza - nothing has escaped the curse man hasbrought upon himself.
• Early stages of British Industrial Capitalism, no laws governing factory labour - children - chimney sweepers - many died of suffocation - they symbolized oppressed humanity.
• Newborn infant is  not far from the curse of the harlot - her curse blights the next generation and the marriage.

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• This is an extra ordinary compressed and powerful denunciation of the inequities of Blake's society, inequities in the first half of the poem are presented as the consequences of  the regimentation of people's lives within the social system.
• Blake is saying that a loveless marriage can be a living death and that it can be a physical death brought on by diseases.
• Strong patterns of repetition, Blake mixes literal and metaphorical meaning in a disturbing and powerful way.
• Faces bear marks; marriage is destroyed; both are signs of the corruption and decay of the society.
• Chartered river symbolizes the natural life that has turned rotten and corrupt.