William Blake channels his general dissatisfaction of the organization of society during the late eighteenth century in his lyrical poem called “London”. Blake uses very expressive language through the spoken observations of a made up character he created to tell people about social and political problems affecting london in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. The poem’s rhythmically patterned linear style, which is very strictly structured, reinforces its central theme: that oppression will be revisited. Blake’s use of such elements of poetry as setting a situation, tone, structure, form, symbols, images, sound, rhyme, rhythm and meter to express this strong message of political and social importance.
The title of the poem establishes the setting in London and describes the social environment that shows the city’s residents and their surroundings. The title designates the exact location of the setting and immediately informs the reader that it takes place in London. Although the lyric is written in first-person singular, the speaker is not the poet. Blake sensibly creates a person that expresses subjective thoughts and expressions to refer to the speaker’s personal experiences in order to emphasize penetrating resonance of the poem’s diction. “London” reflects the period in which it was written by depicting the image of most urban life during the victorian perioud in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Many of the movements during this period were induced by the desire to be free of convention.
The first stanza of Blake’s poem is critical to its main meaning because the Romantic era was marked with the indictment of the metropolis; and consequently directly sketches the political and social picture in London as that of dark, dismal, authoritative, and dirty city. The repetition of the word charter illustrates the monarchs strict control over its nation. The fact that the streets, which are man-made structures, as well as the river, a natural...