London

• He describes the "Thames", naturally free flowing, to have become "chartered" connoting restriction. He is scathing of the sheer control the authorities have, it even seeping down into nature - the oppression is so powerful that even nature is not exempt from its detrimental imapct. - This links back to tropes of Romantic poetry, centralising their poetry around nature. Blacm inverst this and makes it current with the bleak setting he is in, reinforcing how the awe-inspiring sublimity of nature is being tainted through political corruptness
• As "chartered" also refers to rights and privileges. Blake is implicitly highlighting how this restriction derives from those who are privileged: their privileges enable them to oppress the lower classes for their own benefit
• He politically critiques the abuse of power of the establishment. Their oppression is so deep, it has formed these "manacles" around individual minds. thus they are confined to the misery that the authorities have imprisoned them too. "Manacles" are made of metal bands intertwined together, mimicking how people London are inextricably intertwined with their misery and oppresion - the "manacles" are inescapable as they are "mind-forged" making them impossible to physically escape
• Blake denounces the corruption of youth, reinforcing its direct link with authoritarian abuse of power and oppresion - innocent children fall victim to their malevolent schemes
• The use of anaphora - "in every" mimics the cyclical and sempiternal torturing the citizens in London are subject to - in every crevice of London there is mass suffering, the "infants" not being exempt from this
• Cyclical suffering replicated through the anaphora is used when "in every infant's cry of fear". It is oxymoronic the idea of an "infant", connoting innocence and "fear" , connoting terror. These juxtaposing images shows how the innocence of youth has been corrupted and stolen as they have already been tainted by this exploitative setting. This reinforces the bleak pessimistic tone Blake creates - nobody can leave unscathed from this corruption as they do this to every "infant" once its born
• Blake wrote this during Industrial Revolution, a time that was marked the 'progressive era' with the introductory of factories, he speaks of how even "the chimney sweepeers cry": a job that flourished due to the industrial revolution. Yet, despite the job opportunities seeming rifle during this 'progressive era' of London, the disadvantage members of society still suffered while establishment, the government profited of these disadvantages
• • Blake uses a mixture of enjambment and end- stops to replicated the illusion of freedom London's citizens are given
  • The emjambent representing the illusion as the line continues, emulating how they believe their lives are free and boundless
  • This juxtaposes the end stops where the lines are pasued, replicating how the lives of those who live in London are stopped and broken by the authorities that control them
• Form of London is ABAB to emulate the mass oppresion and restriction the lower classes were subject to - they were oppressed by establishment chaining them to these "mind-forged manacles"
• Consistent iambic tetrameter heightens the motif of oppresion that permeates the poem; there is no freedom to escape this control