Social Commentaries
London
From Songs Of Experience
I wandered through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
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:
How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appalls,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.
Codex Note
Blake walks a city where even the streets and the river are ‘charter’d’ — owned, mapped, sold. His ‘mind-forg’d manacles’ locate oppression not only in church, palace and law but in the minds that consent to them: public anguish, heard street by street.
Cite this poem
MLA
Blake, William. “London.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/blake/36/.
Chicago
Blake, William. “London.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/blake/36/.
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