IN A LONDON DRAWING ROOM

• In a london drawing room

  preposition =inside but poem focused on outside - speaker is sheltered from the harsh, urban life they describe
• “the sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke”

  “yellowed” = pollution + the city immediately seems unhealthy and unnatural: relentless, unsettling effects of industrialisation on the natural world. Sibilance adds a sinister hiss to the poems opening line
• “the houses opposite Cutting the ski with one long line of wall Like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch”

  metaphorical “wall” foreshadows speakers late comparison of city to “prison” as urban life, image implies,traps people

  “solid fog” further links citys buildings with its pollution + gloom

  “cutting”= industrialisation + urbanisation are violently harming natural world

  Enjambment of lines 3-4 “stretch” across string of houses that create “longline of wall”

  caesura after “fog” = further entrapment
• No figure lingering

  Pauses to feed the hunger of the eye

  noun choice “figure“ = a lack of individuality + reflects the dehumanising effects of urbanisation

  Metaphor: people are too busy to “feed” their natural need to beauty by pausing to take in surroundings
• the world seems one huge prison -house + court

  where men are punished at the slightest cost

  with lowest rate of colour, warmth + joy


  comparison of city to “prison” = confinement where its people are miserable + suffering

  people cut off from nature, each other + their own humanity

  List of three = bleakness, coldness + misery of city
• themes

  damage to nature-wider view

  power+ authority-thirteen

  oppression- thirteen

  loneliness/isolation- thirteen