London

London London Essay written by Unknown In London, William Blake portrays a very dark and abysmal picture of London. Throughout the whole poem, Blake never mentions a positive scene. The poem seems to deal with the lower class part of society, the part which lives in the poor neighborhoods. The first stanza begins with the speaker wandering around London. Throughout the poem, Blake repeats a word which he used in one line, in the next line. An example of this can be seen in the first two lines. He uses the word chartered in the first line without any deep meaning to it, but the use of the word charted in the next line shows that the Thames was set up so that somehow people control where it flows. In the next few lines, the speaker talks about all the negative emotions which he sees in the people on the street, "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." In the final line of the first stanza, the speaker says that he hears the mind-forged manacles. The mind-forged manacles are not real. By this I mean london, poetry, word, speaker, people, manacles, line, blake, stanza, poem, palace, mean, hear, every, soldier, probably, next, mind-forged, means, marriage, first, blackening, sees, says, problems, hearse, church, chimney, youthful, whom, very, unfortunate, two, throughout, think, talks, sweeper