Comparison Between “London” by William Blake and “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge” by William Wordsworth

In ‘London’ Blake presents the theme of power through a reportage. The narrator wanders through a ‘chartered street’ and by ‘the chartered Thames’. This shows that in the narrator’s eyes the streets are owned and even an aspect of nature such as the River Thames is in ownership of someone. These owners that Blake refers to is the state who are believed to have acquired so much power that they can own natural landmarks. Due to this power, the people in ‘London’ wear metaphorical ‘manacles’ that are ‘mind-forged’ which shows they have trapped themselves due to the pain and suffering the higher class has caused them. Also, the repetition

William Blake was a renowned poet whose works continue to be recognized long after his death. Blake was more than a poet he was also a painter and printmaker. Often his engraving art would act as the accompanying image to his poetry. Throughout his lifetime the British poet wrote several poems. The vast majority of Blake’s work was centered on strong religious themes or human existence itself. However in the works Sick Rose and London neither of these common themes is present. Though the two poems are different in content they both share an

The topic of death is either suppressed or masked in both poems. Both poems are very strong and powerful pieces, which allows readers to connect to the issues being told. Throughout “London”, Blake not only implies the difficult times that London went through during the Industrial revolution, but also how many died during this

Wordsworth’s famous and simple poem, “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” expresses the Romantic Age’s appreciation for the beauty and truth that can be found in a setting as ordinary as a field of daffodils. With this final stanza, Wordsworth writes of the mind’s ability to carry those memories of nature’s beauty into any setting, whether city or country. His belief in the power of the imagination and the effect it can have on nature, and vice a versa, is evident in most of his work. This

The Wasp Factory is about a disjointed Scottish family who live in a secluded area of Scotland which consists of a strange father, a psychotic brother and sixteen year old Frank. Ian Banks discusses the key issues of life in The Wasp Factory, (published in 1984). Identity is a prominent theme and it is presented in many ways. This text offers interesting comparisons and differences to The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, like Frank, Gatsby’s search for identity is continuous throughout the novel whilst the characters attempt to protect the images that they have created for themselves. Published in 1925 and set during the prosperous 1920’s in the fictional town of West Egg in Long Island, The Great Gatsby helps present the idea that identity

A Comparison of Poems About London 'London', by William Blake, and William Wordsworth's untitled poem, composed on Westminster Bridge, are two different poems written with different styles and techniques to portray their feelings towards London. They are both written in the romantic era and are very passionate in the way they convey their (as both are written in first person) differing opinions on London. Wordsworth's sonnet shows all the positive points and that in his opinion London is an admirable place. However, Blake speaks of a much bleaker London, which contrasts greatly in opinion. Rather than writing his poem on opinion, he uses fact to inform and protest against what he feels is wrong

In "London", William Blake brings to light a city overrun by poverty and hardship. Blake discards the common, glorifying view of London and replaces it with his idea of truth. London is nothing more but a city strapped by harsh economic times where Royalty and other venues of power have allowed morality and goodness to deteriorate so that suffering and poverty are all that exist. It is with the use of three distinct metaphors; "mind-forg'd manacles", "blackning Church", and "Marriage hearse", that Blake conveys the idea of a city that suffers from physical and psychological imprisonment, social oppression, and an unraveling moral society.

London by William Blake is a poem characterised by its dark and overbearing tone. It is a glimpse at a period of England's history (particularly London) during war and poverty, experienced by the narrator as he walks through the streets. Using personification it draws a great human aspect to its representation of thoughts and beliefs of the narrator.

William Blake’s poem “London” takes a complex look at life in London, England during the late seventeen hundreds into the early eighteen hundreds as he lived and experienced it. Blake’s use of ambiguous and double meaning words makes this poem both complex and interesting. Through the following explication I will unravel these complexities to show how this is an interesting poem.

The two authors have very different ways of expressing their own views on London. While Blake may use crude language to describe his experience, Wordsworth makes the city appear so pleasant and warm. When Wordsworth writes about London, he describes it as a beautiful, charming place that is clear and peaceful; Like when he writes “All bright and glittering in the smokeless air” (8) he describes the air as a bright place that isn’t polluted with the factories and mess. Unlike Wordsworth, Blake describes London as a dark dirty place filled with desperation and fear. For example, when Blake writes “In every cry of every man” (5) he tells the reader about the people of London who are crying for help in the painful, tear-jerking city of London; due to the fact that this was written in a time of the industrial revolution when children were forced into labor, and families were torn apart with work and couldn’t provide. The world in which Blake was experiencing was a sad and desperate time, unlike Wordsworth. Despite the constant contrast of language and descriptives, they are both still talking about the same city.

In both of William Blake’s poems, “The Little Black Boy” and “The Chimney Sweeper,” an innocent-eye point of view portrays the stresses of society in an alternative way to an adult’s understanding. The innocent perspective redirects focus onto what society has become and how lacking each narrator is in the eyes of the predominant white culture. Each naïve speaker also creates an alternate scenario that presents a vision of what their skewed version of life should be like, showing how much their unfortunate youth alters their reality. From the viewpoint of children, Blake’s poems highlight the unhealthy thoughts or conditions in their lives and how unfortunate they were to be the wrong race or class level. These narrators were cheap laborers and were in no control of how society degraded them. Such usage of a child’s perspective offers important insight into the lives of these poor children and raises awareness for the horrible conditions children faced in the London labor force prior to any labor laws. The children of the time had no voice or platform on which to express their opinions on their conditions. Blake targets society’s lack of mindfulness towards the children using the innocent-eye point of view and illusions of what they dream for in life.

William Blake was one of those 19th century figures who could have and should have been beatniks, along with Rimbaud, Verlaine, Manet, Cezanne and Whitman. He began his career as an engraver and artist, and was an apprentice to the highly original Romantic painter Henry Fuseli. In his own time he was valued as an artist, and created a set of watercolor illustrations for the Book of Job that were so wildly but subtly colored they would have looked perfectly at home in next month's issue of Wired.

One of the most popular themes for Romantic poetry in England was nature and an appreciation for natural beauty. The English Romantic poets were generally concerned with the human imagination as a counter to the rise of science. The growing intellectual movement of the 18th and 19th centuries placed scientific thought in the forefront of all knowledge, basing reality in material objects. The Romantics found this form of world view to be restrictive. They felt that imagination was crucial to individual happiness. The imagination also provides a common human bond; a means of sympathy, of identification. However, the absence of imagination, the Romantics felt, would lead

A Comparison Between William Wordsworth's Upon Westminster Bridge and William Blake's London The English Romantic period spanned between 1789 and 1824. This period was not so-called until the mid 19th century when readers began to see six different poets as part of the same movement. These poets were William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelly and John Keats.

Some of William Blake’s poetry is categorized into collections called Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Blake explores almost opposite opinions about creation in his poems “The Lamb” and “The Tiger.” While the overarching concept is the same in both, he uses different subjects to portray different sides of creation; however, in the Innocence and Experience versions of “The Chimney Sweeper,” Blake uses some of the same words, rhyme schemes, and characters to talk about a single subject in opposite tones.