Essay on William Blake as a Critic of His Time

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

“The Chimney Sweeper” (128): This version of the Chimney Sweeper is very upfront and saddening. The version that is presented in the songs of innocence is much more of a calm town and is not as straightforward, while this version is very short and to the point. In this version its very deep as the narrator basically just calls out the parents/church for doing these horrible things to the children. I really love all three stanzas of this poem because they all have a really deep meaning and Blake transitions through them very well. Reading this poem over and over I don’t know what to make of it other than it is an absolute horrible situation. I think it can be tied in to

“Holy Thursday” wherein he bluntly, yet poetically says, “Is this a holy thing to see/ In a rich

London, by Blake is a poem rather than a sonnet, composed of four stanzas, each containing four lines. This effect breaks up the poem and helps to give a very plodding, interrupted tone. The rhymes however are consistent, every other line rhymes. This can represent the regimented, predictable nature, reflected in the industry and mechanisation. The contrast to the flowing poem of Wordsworth is evident and makes obvious that the poet's views differ, regarding London.

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 was a painter, engraver and poet of the Romantic era, who lived and worked in London. Many of Blake’s famous poems reside in his published collection of poems titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience. This collection portrays the two different states of the human soul, good and evil. Many poems in the Songs of Innocence have a counterpart poem in the Songs of Experience. The poem “A Poison Tree” is found in the Songs of Experience and it delves into the mind of man tainted with sin and corruption that comes with experience. In a simple and creative style, the religious theology of the Fall of Man is brought to life. The poem tells the story of how man fell from a state of innocence to impurity, focusing on the harmful repercussions of suppressed anger. Blake utilities many literary devices to successfully characterizes anger as an antagonist with taunting power.

In the following plate, "The Little Boy Found," Blake reconciles the negative image of the priest and religion that was presented in the previous work. It begins by telling the tale of the boy who got lost by following the "wandering light," representative of the church's blinding standards for religion. God hears the boy's cries and comes to his rescue "like his father in white." This could be referring to God appearing as a human in the image of his father. God leads the child back to his mother. The mother had been looking for her child who had been led off track by the misconception of the "mind forged manacles" of religion.

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.

Blake wrote these same lines in his poem The Divine Image. In his innocence, "…Mercy has a human heart,/ Pity a human face:/ And love the human form divine,/ And Peace the human dress." This represents the acts and feelings associated with Heaven. To be with God and obtain peace, humans must show mercy, pity, and love for others. That is the direct opposite of the secrecy of cruelty, jealousy, and terror humans begin to feel.

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.

William Blake is one of England’s most famous literary figures. He is remembered and admired for his skill as a painter, engraver, and poet. He was born on Nov. 28, 1757 to a poor Hosier’s family living in or around London. Being of a poor family, Blake received little in the way of comfort or education while growing up. Amazingly, he did not attend school for very long and dropped out shortly after learning to read and write so that he could work in his father’s shop. The life of a hosier however was not the right path for Blake as he exhibited early on a skill for reading and drawing. Blake’s skill for reading can be seen in his understanding for and use of works such as the Bible and Greek classic literature.

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.

The preacher is as dry as a desert, and the lessons of the gospels are spouted out to an unenthused distant audience. The child in this poem (though told by the bard) shares a close connection (as Blake believed all children did) with God that has not yet been clouded by the harshness of life. Therefore, he can make such observances and offer his advice. Children share a connection with God that is innocent and fair, this theme is made apparent in mostly all of Blake's poems. Consequently, God is still a loving father to this child (as stated in lines xiii - xiv), and not the vengeful God that the preacher most likely is painting him to be. This poem is used by Blake as a way to communicate his belief that the church was suffering from cold militant preaching rather than warm intoxicating

To understand what is being said in such poems as "THE GARDEN OF LOVE" and "The Little Vagabond" one must consider the poet's religious, or shall I say spiritual, position. William Blake considered himself to be a monistic Gnostic. That is, he believed what saved a person's soul was not faith but knowledge. Faith, he felt, was a term that was abused by those who thought spending every Sunday in a church would grant them eternal salvation regardless of what actions they exhibited outside the walls of the church. Church ceremonies were also dry, emotionless and meaningless, according to Blake. Church was evil, as Blake would have put it.