London - William Blake

• Context

  • Blake was anti-establishment and was celebratory of rise in democracy within the French Revolution
  • Was Christian but opposed established church recognising their hypocrisy and corruption
  • Was a romantic poem and shows how the sublime power of nature is stripped by authoritarian rule
  • Had 2 poetry collections “songs of innocence” focusing on beauty and peace of nature and “songs of experience” which London was in which laments the loss of innocence through authoritarian rule
• What shows a semantic field of oppression

  “chartered“ “mind-forged manacles” and “marks”

  Permutes the poem with Blake choosing a restricted lexis
• “Where the chartered Thames doth flow” - oppression

  • Thames was once naturally free flowing
  • Has become chartered connotating restrictions
  • Scathing of the sheer control authorities have
  • Chartered also refers to rights and privileges
  • Blake implicitly highlights how restriction derives from the privileged
• “Mind forged manacles” - oppression


  • politically critiques the abuse of power by the establishment
  • Oppression is so deep it has formed manacles on the mind
  • manacles are made of metal bands intertwined together, mimicking how people in London are inextricably intertwined in misery and oppression
• Corruption of the youth topic sentence

  Blake denounces the corruption of the youth reinforcing its direct link with authoritarian abuse of power and opression
• ”in every infants cry”- corruption of the youth

  • use of anaphora “in every”
  • Mimics the cyclical and sempiternal torture citizens of London are subject to
  • Mass suffering in every crevice
  • “In every infants cry of fear”
  • oxymoranic
  • “Infants” connotations innocence and “fear” connotes terror
  • Juxtaposing images show how the innocents of children has been plagued and corrupted as they are already tainted by the exploitive setting
• Forms - ABAB rhyme 


  • uniformed quatrains paired with regular ABAB rhyme
  • “Street” and “meet” “flow” and “woe”
  • Emulates the mass oppression and restrictions opposed on lower class
• Form -Iambic tetrameter

  • consistent iambic tetrameter highlights motif of oppression
  • No freedom to escape control
• Structure- mix of enjambment and end stops

  • mixture to replicate illusion of Freedom citizens are given
  • Juxtaposes end stops, replicating how lives of those in London are stopped and broken down by those who control them