Value And Importance To Modern Society In William Blake's 'London'

Another poem which has similar value and importance to modern society as ‘Waltzing Matilda’ is ‘London’, written by William Blake and set in the slums of London in 1794 (about 100 years before ‘Waltzing Matilda’ was written and 6 years after the First Fleet arrived in Australia).

William Blake lived from 1757 to 1827 and spent his entire life living in Britain. Blake published his poem ‘London’ in the Romantic Era of poetry when violence and rebellion was in high occurrence all throughout Europe. Blake along with other British citizens and early Romantic poets were in support of the French revolution. This was a time in history were people in all parts of the ‘New World’ including the British were fighting for their national identities.

He depicts London to be dirty, disorderly, government ruled, sad and confronting filled with powerless and entrapped people in turmoil. There is reference to, sadness is every face on the street, children being forced down chimneys by the church, blood running down Palace walls, prostitution, dysfunction of motherhood and the fairly rapidly failing state of the society before the revolution. This was the decaying, pre-revolutionary identity of the British people. ‘London’ the poem so effectively transports contemporary readers into the moment through the use of endless poetic devices. It’s like the reader is walking in the footsteps of the character, living their life and feeling what they’re feeling; these people were fighting so hard for their identity and for their rights.

‘London’ is made up of 4 stanzas with 4 lines. Blake uses rhythm in the poem to create feelings of uncomfortableness, sadness and empathy to resonate with the contemporary reader. All of the lines in the poem have a consistent metric rhythm and use the rhyme scheme (abab) for each

Line 3 of stanza 3 in the poem reads;

“…And the hapless Soldier’s sigh…”

Both the alliteration of the letter s in Soldier’s sigh, and consonance at the end of the words ‘hapless Soldier’s’ are another example of Blake using literary devices. Just as Banjo Paterson does in ‘Waltzing Matilda’, William Blake places these subtle devices throughout his work creating harmony and attention to language.

Blake was among some of the best known poets of the Romantic era including William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, Samuel T. Coleridge, John Keats and Lord Byron. All of these poets wrote something about the decreasing Anglican community, rise in religious and political conflict and the industrial revolution of Britain. All of these topics are crucial to the history of the modern British society and their development of identity throughout the centuries. Blake in his poem ‘London’ successfully manages to preserve historical characteristics of emotional and physical life in London, including what language was used in that era.

Without poetry we have no way of preserving, in lyrical tone, a history that can reach and connect with the