Thomas Matheny

ENGL 2201 SEC 004

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

more open and free?

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.

Perhaps meaning that these manacles are forged by the mind.

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

chimney sweeps shaming the church for its doings.

 And the hapless Soldiers sigh / Runs in blood down Palace walls. (11-12). Blake uses

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

two lines help prove his point.

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

what it is and blight describes barrenness or infertility usually brought on by drought or

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

Kelly J. Mays, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2016, pp. 801.