During the late 18thcentury and early 19thcentury when William Blake was living in London, he showed that London was indeed a terrible place to live and the living standard was devastating and he expressed his personal passionate anger towards the underlying problems in the society despite the fact that London was a cosmopolitan city at the time and certainly the one of the busiest commercial centres in the world. His poem had great meaning and targeted those who were in the higher class who knew how to read. He showed how different people in London were linked together within one depressing society. Nevertheless in, “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge” by William Wordsworth, he presented the other side of the arguments. First it was a sonnet and the poem was certainly positive and showed the adoration of London from the use of language. Secondly he was the future King’s laureate, so he was likely to be biased and try the hide any negatives facts about London at that time and to make the King’s caputal sound absolutely wonderful.
Blake was an idealist who strongly upheld his political and religious views in criticizing the conditions of London at that time. His poem reflected his perspective of London from his firsthand experience of the horrific conditions in which people live and worked.
“I WANDER THROUGH EACH CHARTERED STREET,
NEAR WHERE THE CHARTERED THAMES DOES FLOW” LINE 1-2
Blake was walking through the streets of London witnessing people rushing in and out of this commercial place. Merchants came along with ships of goods from every part of the globe, eager to trade along the busy River Thames. However they seemed to be living without a soul as they were mentally chained, as there weren’t any better jobs and they w...
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...mokeless air.” Line 6-8
He started a list of physical things that he could see including important infrastructure of symbolism, e.g. ships indicated trade, towers indicated the King’s palace and defense, Domes indicated St. Paul Cathedral, etc. These all merged together which just extent the splendor of it. At that time London was smaller than nowadays, however it was still impossible to see fields from Westminster. He was stretching the truth so the poem would go smoothly with natural wonders mentioned in the entire poem. At this point Wordsworth started to develop a paradox, he used the word “bright”, “glittering” and “smokeless” to describe the air quality of London nevertheless it contradicted with the reality as the industrial revolution was occurring at that time. Factories needed to burn woods to generate heat so the air should be cover with smoke.
Mason, Michael. Notes to William Blake: A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Ed. Michael Mason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Bloom, Harold. ""The Mental Traveller" Standing Alone." William Blake. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House, 2003. 74-77. Print.
In line 17 the word “hearse” is used as a car to take the bride to the
Blake’s poetry focuses on imagination. When Blake created his work, it gained very little attention. Blake’s artistic and poetic vision is reflected in his creations. Blake was against the Church of England because he thought the doctrines were being misused as a form of social control, it meant the people were taught to be passively obedient and accept oppression, poverty, and inequality. In Blake’s poems “The Lamb,” “The Tyger,” and Proverbs of Hell, he shows that good requires evil in order to exist through imagery of animals and man.
The theme of the suffering innocent person, dying and being diseased, throws a dark light onto the London seen through the eyes of William Blake. He shows us his experiences, fears and hopes with passionate images and metaphors creating a sensibility against oppression hypocrisy. His words come alive and ask for changes in society, government and church. But they remind us also that the continued renewal of society begins with new ideas, imagination and new works in every area of human experience.
When she feels sad or lonely, he wants her to remember what he told her about nature because he believes that if his sister where to recall him, he will gain eternal life. The idea of “Lines composed of a few miles above Tintern Abbey” expresses Wordsworth sensational admiration for nature and feels a deep power of delight in natural things. He exclaims how at a moment of sadness, he turns to the nature for peace of mind and inspiration. As he becomes serious about the nature, it gives him courage and spirit enough to stand there with a sense of delight and pleasure. He lets the reader know that even though his boyish days are gone, he doesn’t ponder on it or mourn for its loss.
Blake had an uncanny ability to use his work to illustrate the unpleasant and often painful realities around him. His poetry consistently embodies an attitude of revolt against the abuse of class and power that appears guided by a unique brand of spirituality. His spiritual beliefs reached outside the boundaries of religious elites loyal to the monarchy. “He was inspired by dissident religious ideas rooted in the thinking of the most radical opponents of the monarchy during the English Civil War “(E. P. Thompson). Concern with war and the blighting effects of the industrial revolution were displayed in much of his work.
Five different situations are suggested in "Lines" each divided into separate sections. The first section details the landscape around the abbey, as Wordsworth remembers it from five years ago. The second section describes the five-year lapse between visits to the abbey, during which he has thought often of his experience there. The third section specifies Wordsworth's attempt to use nature to see inside his inner self. The fourth section shows Wordsworth exerting his efforts from the preceding stanza to the landscape, discovering and remembering the refined state of mind the abbey provided him with. In the final section, Wordsworth searches for a means by which he can carry the experiences with him and maintain himself and his love for nature. .
angered him and inspired him to convey his ideas and feelings through the poem 'London'. In the poem, Blake travels through London and describes what he sees. And as a result, he sees a severely oppressed society that is caused by the authority, such as royalty, and the church. This is as Blake sees. that even the streets and the thames are 'chartered' and governed.
poem is about only a small snapshot of the city, when it is very quiet
William Blake uses repetition, rhyming and imagery in his poem to help promote the idea that London, England is not the city that people dream that it is, the city itself can be a
We can find an indirectly accuse of industrialisation. Only when the factories are closed, ships, towers and theatre are bare and when the town is silent, it is beautiful because industrialisation and pollution do not spoil it. " Upon Westminster Bridge" is written in the form of an Italian sonnet. It is divided into an octet and sestet. In the octet the poet tells us what he sees before him and describes to us the beauty of the scene.
Authors, William Wordsworth and William Blake convey different messages and themes in their poems, “The World is Too Much with Us” and “The Tyger” consecutively by using the different mechanics one needs to create poetry. Both poems are closely related since they portray different aspects of society but the message remains different. Wordsworth’s poem describes a conflict between nature and humanity, while Blake’s poem issues God’s creations of completely different creatures. In “The World is Too Much with Us,” we figure the theme to be exactly what the title suggests: Humans are so self-absorbed with other things such as materialism that there’s no time left for anything else. In “The Tyger” the theme revolves around the question of what the Creator (God) of this creature seems to be like and the nature of good vs. evil. Both poems arise with some problem or question which makes the reader attentive and think logically about the society.
In William Wordsworth’s poems, the role of nature plays a more reassuring and pivotal r ole within them. To Wordsworth’s poetry, interacting with nature represents the forces of the natural world. Throughout the three poems, Resolution and Independence, Tintern Abbey, and Michael, which will be discussed in this essay, nature is seen prominently as an everlasting- individual figure, which gives his audience as well as Wordsworth, himself, a sense of console. In all three poems, Wordsworth views nature and human beings as complementary elements of a sum of a whole, recognizing that humans are a sum of nature. Therefore, looking at the world as a soothing being of which he is a part of, Wordsworth looks at nature and sees the benevolence of the divinity aspects behind them. For Wordsworth, the world itself, in all its glory, can be a place of suffering, which surely occurs within the world; Wordsworth is still comforted with the belief that all things happen by the hands of the divinity and the just and divine order of nature, itself.
"The Poetry of William Wordsworth." SIRS Renaissance 20 May 2004: n.p. SIRS Renaissance. Web. 06 February 2010.