London - William Blake (1794)

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear.
In every voice: in every ban.
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls.
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

My Re-Write

I wander late at night
down by the privatized river
in every face I see
broken looks

Grown Men crying...
Traumatized babies crying...
Small talk and public pronouncements...
All say to me our cognitive evolution has become a bad trip

The Church should pale at its black trade
in chimney sweeps orphans (both provider and user).
The blood of hard-luck soldiers
drips down the palace walls they are forced to defend

And worst:
the people screaming
about 'teenage whores!'
and their venereal diseases
that kill babies and marriages

Personal Thoughts

I'm a night walker. In Sudbury you literally take a tunnel under the train tracks to get to the 'wrong side of the tracks' part of town. I did this often. Those train tracks were the industrial artery of Sudbury, our Thames. I did plenty of night walking in Ottawa beside an actual river but those river-side property were upscale.

You think strange, often emotional thoughts while night-walking. Cities will always be weird places to me. Urban society creates a night public sphere you can wander - and meet marked faces.  And think about it all.

The heart yearns for human contact but we are traumatized from infancy onwards, growing up into a crazed world formed by those who were once traumatized infants themselves. Modern hearts now buckle under the iron laws of the Empire of Capital. This Empire has not ended, it existed in Blake's time and it exist now. It seems like a bad trip we should just be able to wake up from.

Analysis

[I'm sticking to the OED (oxford english dictionary) for sources as I want to keep this manageable]

First I have to note the acrostic in the poem's initial letters

I  I  H  B
N  I  E  H
A  I  A  B
M  T  R  A


The third stanza reads HEAR - and this is a poem about hearing cries, sighs and curses. It almost reads 'I HEAR' if we take the three 'I's of the second stanza as making the stanza a giant I. As a whole, the acrostic beings with encompassing IN and AM, the middle declares 'I HEAR!' and it ends with an infant's BH-BA burbling. I assume at least some of this was intentional.

Charter: London's flowing streets and river are 'chartered' and according to the OED its etymology is  "lit. small paper or writing, diminutive of carta , charta paper Compare 'chapter' from n.French chapitre < Latin capitulum"  The word's roots are the scirpts of paper that create capital: deeds, contracts, loans, money. Chartering " granting privileges or immunity to certain classes or individuals", it " incorporating a borough, university, company" it is a "contract executed between man and man" including "contract between owners and merchants for the hire of a ship and safe delivery of the cargo" an d"applied esp. to the documents or deeds relating to conveyance of landed property." I think the modern term 'privatized' captures the core of this meaning.


Marked Faces: This has many biblical allusions: the mark God's places on Cain as a kin-slayer, the marks Ezekiel places on those to be saved because of their concern for Jerusalem, and the marks that the Beast of Revelation stamps on those living in the End Times. The Revelation marks are placed on the forehead and hand as 'bar-code' that "no one may buy or sell who does not have the mark' (Rev 13).

The marks are suggest tally marks being placed on ships' charters as products and slaves are loaded. That latter is also suggested by the manacles.

Ban: We move from the realm of public sight - city streets, marked faces, marked charters - to public sound, Blake's I HEAR.

The word 'ban' symbolizes this audio-heavy stanza. The OED states that Ban means 'Authoritative public proclamation', one 'chiefly, in early use, a summons to arms' but could also be a 'Proclamation of marriage' or an 'formal ecclesiastical excommunication'. These uses link it to the soldier, church and marriage hearse.

A ban is also a 'denunciation, prohibition or outlawry', a pair of manacles forged in the social currency. And finally a 'curse, an execration or malediction expressing anger', a meaning that suits the purpose of the poem.

The OED points to the Proto-IndoEuropean *bannan "‘to proclaim under penalty, or with a threat,’ perhaps originally merely ‘to proclaim, publicly announce’, < root ba- , cognate with Greek ϕα- , Latin fa- , speak." So 'ban' at root is the breathy BA/FA asprirant that will come to mean speak itself.

Manacles: The Stanza's 2-4 are a listing of the sounds made by those clicking cognitive handcuffs. These are the symbols of slavery extended beyond actual African slaves passing through the Thames' port to the whole society. The fact that these manacles can be heard in even a new-born's cry suggests that they are are akin to the Fallen nature of mankind.  

Chimney-sweepers: The Church-owned orphans worked as chimney-sweepers. There is nice color symmetry between the 'blackning' and '(ap)paled' institution,

Soldiers: The phrasing is tricky but it sounds like hard-luck soldiers being killed defending the rich. 'Palace' could mean the Royal Palaces stormed in the French Revolution or the stately British Mansions burnt during the American Revolution. I suspect Blake's sympathy lies with the revolters and impressed soldiers (in this era a criminal sentence was often a choice between jail/torture or joining the army) but not the State that uses the soldiers.

Harlots: The 'harlot's curse' is likely an STD like syphilis that can be transmitted to infants. It also a 'plague' that 'blights' marriages with infertility or just mistrust.

From studying Macbeth for far too long my brain lights up when I see the words 'infant' 'blast' and 'harlot' together. In that play the line "Pity, like a naked new-born babe, / Striding the blast" has caused some mystery. The best explanation I could find is that this is a reference to Revelations where a red dragon waits for a baby to be born to eat it or roast it with fire but the woman and child are swept away to safety by god. Later in Revelations the Scarlet Harlot or Whore of Babylon will play a big role. This isn't a solid connection but it would align with one biblical interpretation of 'mark' from Revelations.

Strangely this almost bring us into Taxi Driver (1976) territory with William Blake as the night-wandering Travis Bickle trying to save a young Jody Foster from a life of prostitution in the social apocalypse that was New York in the 1970s.

Here is the essay written for Blake's London:

William Blake's "London" is about oppression of the people, anger at inequality, and the hope of change on the horizon in late 18th century London. The poem depicts Blake's journey through London where he observes a downtrodden population on the verge of breaking. Through the use of words and images Blake portrays weariness and resignation giving rise to anger. Furthermore, the poem's structure supports this evolution with a transition from soft sounds and predictability to hard sounds and disorder. At first glance the poem appears to be about darkness but on closer inspection reveals a glimmer of hope. The final stanza hints at two possible outcomes: rebellion resulting in freedom or continued suffering and death.

A combination of imagery and word choice paints a picture of a society consumed by overwhelming bleakness. While wandering the city Blake sees and hears signs of despair all around. "In every face" there are "marks of weakness, marks of woe," showing tangible effects of oppression. A chorus of cries echoes from the people: cries of need in "every man," cries of fear and pain "in every infant," and cries of anger in "the youthful harlot." The repetition of "every" emphasizes universality of the despair, not only in the people but also in the city around them: "every man," "every voice," and "every church." This coupled with the repeated cries suggests that hopelessness is everywhere. The people are overwhelmed by oppression and feeling confined by invisible "manacles;" this is the turning point of the poem.

Blake's revulsion at the institutions' apathy turns the tone from despair to anger and hope. The word choices suggest both literal and figurative darkness. While the "blackening church" could mean soot from burning coal, it also signifies corruption and fraudulence in the church at this time. He is horrified at the church's indifference to the cries of the child "chimney-sweepers," the word "apalls" suggests disgust and elicits thoughts of death and dismay. The "soldier's sigh" metaphorically "runs in blood down palace-walls;" this symbolizes the violence experienced at the hands of the monarchy and the anger that is awakening in the people. The cries of pain and suffering now echo with defiance. Although the fourth stanza is dark, it can also be interpreted as hopeful. Blake chooses words that juxtapose darkness with new beginnings. "Midnight" represents both the darkest time of night and the birth of a new day. The "youthful harlot" subjected to a cruel existence is disheartening yet her "curse" and "new-born infant" signify the potential for rebellion against this future. "Plagues the marriage-hearse" is an oxymoron between life and death; marriage represents a new beginning and new life while hearse is symbolic of death and finality.

In Blake's "London" both the sound and punctuation show an evolution from resignation to anger. The first two stanzas use predominately soft sounds - s, w, f, and m - to create a sense of bleakness and desperation. He "wanders" among the streets, the river "flows," and the faces are full of "woe" all contribute to the impression of hopelessness. The punctuation is also soft and meandering; each line ends in a comma and the first stanza ends in a period. The second stanza ends with a colon signifying continuation of thought and the beginning of a change in pattern; stanza three provides cause for the "mind-forged manacles." Moving on there is change from soft to harder sounds. The use of b and p denote anger and frustration; "blackening," "apalls," "blood," and "plagues" are not only hard sounds but also dark words. There is also a change in punctuation with fewer commas suggesting a move from calm to frantic, and that Blake is becoming angry at the situation around him.

The structure of the poem at first appears simple in rhyme, rhythm, and stanza form, but on closer inspection reveals a subtle evolution from calm to urgent. The rhyme scheme initially follows a straightforward alternate rhyme pattern but shows a deviation in the last stanza: abab cdcd efef gdgd. Blake repeats the idea of fear and sadness which is found throughout the poem, and reiterates the importance of sound imagery by repeating "I hear." By tying the fourth stanza back to the second Blake shows that the glimmer of hope comes from the desperation found in "every man." The rhythm generally follows iambic tetrameter with some exceptions. Some lines in stanzas three and four start with a stressed syllable and create a sense of urgency and importance; this contributes to increasing frustration and anger at the systemic abuse of a marginalised population. The use of spondaic meter in line 8 symbolizes a shift in emphasis from downtrodden to defiant; "the mind-forged manacles" are self-imposed and are the key to overcoming oppression. The stanzas are quatrains with the final line in each containing figurative language, a pattern that initially appears predictable. However, the metaphors become more grandiose in each successive stanza again showing a move from simple to complex. "Marks of weakness" can be literal or metaphoric marks on the weary, while "blights with plagues" is extreme and creates an almost apocalyptic image.

Blake's "London" is a poem about oppression and desire for change. There is a complex evolution despite the poem's simple beginnings; the first half portrays the people as resigned to their fate yet in the second half anger replaces complacency in what may be the beginning of uprising. The poem ends with the future undecided.

I like the contrast between hard and soft sounds you to point to.

Reb wrote:The first two stanzas use predominately soft sounds - s, w, f, and m - to create a sense of bleakness and desperation.

Moving on there is change from soft to harder sounds. The use of b and p denote anger and frustration.

P and B seem to be 'bilabial plosives' (two-lipped explosions) where the air is blocked for a moment, then released. They are fun to say because of this. The two explosions of 'blights with plagues' reinforce their harshness.

S and F are 'fricative' that involve a resisted flow of air. Playing with these sounds I can tell the difference between 'few' and 'phew' is the little explosion needed to make the P sound.

M is a 'bilabial nasal' and W is a 'bilabial glide', bilabial meaning closed mouth in this case. M really does resonate in the nose and W is so soft it is basically a semivowel (compare the vowels O or singleU).

Like most poems I find Blake's London to really come to life by reading it out loud - or setting it to song:


(nice song with modern art)


(slower song with b&w footage of London)


(folksy with interestingly modernized lyrics)