Subjects:
Repetition and rhyme are an integral part of Blake’s “London.” The first stanza of the poem shows this repetition and rhyme. In lines 1-4, “I wander through each chartered street, Near where the chartered Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet
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In the last stanza the church is again to blame for society’s problems. It is a symbol of the restraint the speaker saw men cry for, children fear, and heard in the voices of the people of London. In line thirteen the speaker hears young prostitutes swearing late into the night.
After traveling around the public streets of London near the Thames River and characterizing the features of weakness, sorrow, and grief, in the people he passes, the speaker digs deeper into the issues of these people in the second stanza. ” The soldier is unfortunate because the church, which is part of the state and therefore the Palace, is not listening to his sighs dies at battle. ” This line, although difficult to interpret, is crucial to the poem and packed with meaning. In the “cry of every man” and in “every Infant’s cry of fear” the speaker sees restraints. These banners according to the poem contain some form of restraint. Because of the dirty nature of burning coal the air was heavily polluted resulting in the London Fogs, and chimneys were always in need of cleaning. It seems that repetition is not only a literary device in this poem, but also one of its themes. “Every” is used to place an emphasis on the occurrence of the things happening in this stanza. The city of London is stuck in a downward spiraling cycle because the church is restraining and weakening the minds of its people instead of aiding and helping them. The first meaning of cry is to call out or proclaim.
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