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LONDON William Blake (Commentary (this poem’s first lines recall the…

- - - - everything in this urban space—even the natural River Thames—submits to being “charter’d
        
        Blake’s repetition, thudding and oppressive, reflects the suffocating atmosphere of the city
        
        two repetitions of “mark” in the next two lines
- - - - The woeful cry of the chimney-sweeper stands as a chastisement to the Church,
      - the blood of a soldier stains the outer walls of the monarch’s residence
    - - the cursing of prostitutes corrupts the newborn infant and sullies the “Marriage hearse.”
- - - - ‘London’ singles out the Church and the King for their part in this oppression
        
        the Church is a dark force of evil
        
        the soldier’s blood is a direct indictment of the King who sent him off to die
        
        the ‘Harlot’s curse’ (euphemism for syphilis) isthe shout of a ‘youthful’ prostitute against the society which abuses her.
        
        the ‘mind-forg’d manacles’ represent the deeply ingrained respect for tradition and institutions that stopped the people of London from following the example of revolutionary Paris
        
        London’ was published in 1793, four years after the outbreak of the French Revolution