Darkside of the Industrial Revolution Exposed in Poems by William Blake, Michael Thomas Sadler, and Percy Bysshe Shelley

In England during the industrial revolution there was a lot of poverty and pollution, especially in the main towns where the mass unemployment and people often had to go into the work houses. The conditions that they were made to work in were overcrowded. There was no sanitation or anywhere to clean, and there was a large amount of pollution. These all led to diseases among the workers. Some of the jobs that the children were made to do were chimney sweeping or selling matches. Adults had to do bone crushing for fertilisers, working in kitchens and doing the laundry for rich people.

At the time there were three poets that all felt strongly about the appalling conditions and they were, William Blake, Michael Thomas Sadler and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Blake wrote the poems ‘London’, ‘The Chimney Sweeper Innocence’ and ‘The Chimney Sweeper Experience’. Sadler wrote ‘Factory Girl’s Last Day’ and Shelley created the poem ‘What Is Slavery?’

William Blake is the first poet that I’d like to consider. In the poem ‘London’, he makes it seem more personal to the reader by using first person in the first two stanzas. This helps as it becomes more appealing to the reader. Throughout the poem ‘London’ Blake uses the rhyming pattern ABAB, I think he has done this because it expresses his ideas of what he thought of the prostitution and chimney sweeping that the children were made to do. Blake uses short verses, with 4 lines in each verse and short lines in the verses because he is trying to get the point across that because of chimney sweeping and prostitution the children’s lives were cut short. Blake also uses present tense in the poem because he is trying to get across to people that society has to change before exploitation and prostitution...

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... what happens to their children.

The line ‘casts to the fat dogs that lie’ is upsetting because the rich believe that the poor don’t deserve their leftover food so they end up giving it to their dogs. In the last verse the line, ‘tis to let the ghost of god’ it is telling us that people in those days were losing faith in god, because the religion is corrupt which ties back to the poem ‘London’ when Blake says ‘Every black’ning church appals’

In conclusion I have looked at five poems from three different authors. I have discussed there writing styles and techniques used for each of the poems. I have compared and contrasted them to each other. The things that they have compared with are the rhyming scheme, techniques used (alliteration and metaphors). I have also looked at how they differ, as only ‘The Chimney Sweeper Innocence’ uses a simile while the rest don’t.