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Compare And Contrast Black And Wordsworth

Decent Essays

London is the capital if England. With the changes of history and times, and the vicissitudes of the world, this old-line and beautiful city has formed the humanistic spirit with national characteristics. After reading the two Williams’ works, I couldn’t hold back my curiosity about the differences in their poems. Although Black and Wordsworth are all important representatives of romantic poets, their writing styles and points of view vary so much. How could London vary so much in two productions? What caused the disparity? This sends me thinking deeply.
First and foremost, the most possible reason is the background. The two writers stayed in two different ages, so it’s hard to avoid the difference in their writing styles. London by William …show more content…

When Blake wrote down this poem, he was wandering around in the street, with painful contemplation oppressed him, and the darkness of evening fell over him. He saw the weak and whacked faces of people who came home late after the tiresome work for a whole day, that made him feel grieved. People, including the poet, all suffered from huge pressure, that is not only brought by life, but also from mental confinement. Every ban which is issued compulsively by the government was the cruel chains to people. As a result, the poet let off his anger in this poem and disclose the corruption of the current society. As readers read the whole poem line by line, we may be affected by the dark and miserable society. However, when another poet, Wordsworth arrived at London, what he saw was the beautiful dawn and the quiet early morning. In the first line of the sonnet, the poet emphasizes that London is the most beautiful on earth: “Earth has not anything to show more fair, dull would he be of soul who could pass by, a sight so touching in its majesty.” At that time, the big city was still sleeping, all the ships were berthed at the harbor, the towers and the domes amazed him, there were even theatres and temples for people to entertain and pray. All these things are “bright and glittering”, making the city active and vivid. Everyone living in this city, or travelers who …show more content…

Although they were all in London, the characters in their poems differed in thousands of ways. The poem written by Blake pressed close to the daily life of citizens who lived in London. He focused mostly on the poor and common people, like infants, soldiers and harlot, and he used ordinary words to express his personal feelings. The words like “weakness”, “woe”, “cry”, “fear” and so on, they all became the representative words of streetscape of London. The poet meticulously portrayed the form and emotion of every person, that brought stirring effect to readers. The poet represents the sound and picture of London to us. The pedestrians’ sadness on their faces, the little baby’s crying caused by shock, the noise on the road, the shouting of the chimney-sweeper, the curses of the prostitutes, these representative pictures line on the “charter’d street”, raise the readers’ sympathy, strengthen its drama part. In this poetry, “In every …” is repeated three times, with this strong repetition, Blake mixes literal and metaphorical meaning in a disturbing and powerful way. Faces bear marks, marriage is destroyed, both are signs of the corruption and decay of a city whose streets are chartered and whose rivers are even chartered too. The chartered river is one of the images of natural life turned rotten and corrupt. William Blake uses his poetry as a means of social criticism. Wordsworth, however, the view in his poem is a distant

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