A Comparison of London by William Blake and Composed Upon Westminster Bridge by Wordsworth
The poems are written from two very different perspectives. William
Blake's poem London is about a lifetime of London and is very negative
he puts London out to be ugly depressing and very much in despair he
tells us of prostitutes and very depressed people. Where as William
Wordsworth's poem Composed upon Westminster Bridge is very positive.
Wordsworth's poem gives out the impression of London as a beautiful
spectacular city. Wordsworth was a visitor to London and therefore his
poem is about only a small snapshot of the city, when it is very quiet
and at sunrise, his view is from Westminster Bridge from which the
back streets prostitutes etc cannot be seen.
William Wordsworth was born in the Lake District and travelled around
Europe he was a visitor to London. The poem is an expression of his
feelings he tells us about the beauty of London without the smoke
filled air and how the beauty of the ships, towers, domes, theatres
and temples is now unspoiled.
William Blake was born and lived in London; he was a very religious
man, a politically minded person and a mystic who was reputed to have
visions. The poem London is an expression of his sadness, anger and
despair for the population of London, he tells us of the prostitutes
and the children which are chimneysweepers. Blake tells us of the
goings on in London where as Wordsworth only tells us what he can see.
William Wordsworth's poem is written as a sonnet, the octave is an
elaborate description of his surroundings and what he can see. The
sestet is an expression of his feelings; he describes how all the
beauty makes him feel and how he has never felt like this before.
Blake's poem is written in quatrains and has four verses.
Wordsworth uses hyperbole several times in a poem for exaggeration and
chooses to uses words such as fair meaning beautiful, majesty meaning
royal and grand and bright and glittering meaning there is no smoke to
A. Title: The title of this poem suggests that it is about a small country town with one road, most likely in the middle of nowhere. Very few people and very few things around for a person to do with their free time.
How does William Blake convey his anger in the poem London? The poem 'London' by William Blake, reflects his feelings upon the society that he was living in, and how desperately it needed help. Blake thought that all of the poverty and misfortune that was happening on the streets were caused by the political oppression in London. The.
William Blake and Jonathan Swift were writers with specific intentions. Both were concerned about the human condition of their times, and many of these concerns have no resolution today. Both created literary works allowing them to present their point of view in, yet their presentation in society was vastly different. You can read Gulliver’s Travels and understand what Swift’s intends. The story appeals to the sophisticated, well-informed reader who could discern his meaning and appreciate his satirical style. He deals with human nature and its folly. This ability to engage the reader with fantastical stories was his genius. Whereas with Blake, you cannot understand his point of view fully unless you also look at his art.
The poem is gentle and nostalgic. It seeks not only to recreate the scene for the reader, but
In "London", William Blake brings to light a city overrun by poverty and hardship. Blake discards the common, glorifying view of London and replaces it with his idea of truth. London is nothing more but a city strapped by harsh economic times where Royalty and other venues of power have allowed morality and goodness to deteriorate so that suffering and poverty are all that exist. It is with the use of three distinct metaphors; "mind-forg'd manacles", "blackning Church", and "Marriage hearse", that Blake conveys the idea of a city that suffers from physical and psychological imprisonment, social oppression, and an unraveling moral society.
The Romantic period brought a new outlook on how people viewed the world. The fight for individual rights was a major cause for the sudden change. There were too many rules that held people back from being able to express themselves. Once they began to broaden their ideas and practice new motives whether it was political, or emotional, it brought freedom of expression. Many poets took the chance to enlighten their readers on their works. They would write in order to paint a picture and gave more detailed descriptions of the conscious mind. For these poets it brought many people to enjoy their freedom of speech and encouraged a new way of thinking.
In line 17 the word “hearse” is used as a car to take the bride to the
Historic poetry is unique in the respect that it gives readers an insight into a certain historic time period that textbooks cannot provide. Historic poetry not only gives a description of the time period but it allows the readers to connect to the emotions of the poet and to a point experience what it would have felt to live in that era. This is the case with William Blake’s poem London. London not only describes the horrid condition of England’s lower class during the industrial revolution but it also connects this description with a strong emotion response from the speaker. Blake’s stylistic and structure choices through out the poem paint a dark and morbid view of London but the emotion of the poem remains divide. The words of the poem’s speaker evokes both sympathy for the lower classes at the same time as he is chastising the people who have the power to change the situation.
The title of the poem is inconsistent. Habitually, the descriptive adjective ‘little’ is not paired up with the concrete noun ‘city’. Thus Horan’s choice of words is ambiguous. The unusual heading might confuse the reader or help the elocutionist build a more fertile imagination, so to assume what these lines are about.
because of the way they grew up. Blake was brought up in the city and
In the first poem, 'Westminster' this person is visiting London for the first time, he is not shown the reality of London but a slightly obscured view of beauty, as the light is reflecting off buildings, and giving an impression of calm, peace and tranquility. 'The beauty of the morning, silent, bare.' The reason we can guess for his delusion of the city is the fact that he is seeing it in 'the m...
William Blake's "London" is a representative of English society as a whole, and the human condition in general that outlines the socio-economic problems of the time and the major communal evils.
The sonnet, “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802,” shows Wordsworth’s appreciating the beauty of London and demonstrating it as “emotion recollected in tranquility.” It’s characteristic of his love for solitude that it is set in the early morning when there is no bustle and noise.
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
Sociological criticism emphasizes the political, economic, and cultural aspects of literature, and one of its main focuses is evaluating writing from a Marxist perspective, which examines the writing in mostly political and economic fashion, including ideas such as communism and social inequality. The idea of class oppression is clearly represented in many of William Blake’s writings. Blake’s opposition to the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists is obvious in many of his poems. Blake’s ideology of an equalitarian society could be described in the sayings of Karl Marx. Marxist criticism explains the reasons behind Blake’s anger towards social inequality. Poems like “The Chimney Sweeper” and “London” illustrate Blake’s despairing sadness towards the phenomena produced by the unjust inequality in 18th century England. In “The Chimney Sweeper,” Blake expresses his anger at the late 18th and 19th century's use of child labor in urban England. In “London,” Blake illustrates the depressing class oppression that could be easily seen through the streets of London.