Lecture 11 William Blake

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Title: Lecture 11 William Blake

1
Lecture 11 William Blake
2

Part one Introduction of William Blake
1.1. Life
William Blake, born on 28 November 1757, was the
son of a London hosier, The boy never went to
school. He picked up his education as well as he
could, his favourite studies in early days were
Shakespeare, Milton and Chatterton, the
"marvellous boy" who wrote "The Rowley Papers".
At the age of 14, he was apprenticed to an
engraver. After leaving him, Blake began to earn
his living as an engraver of illustrations for
various publishers. His illustrations for
Young's Night Thoughts", Grays poems and the
Book of Job show him a great artist with a style
of his own. But he was never prosperous in this
business and remained poor all his life.
In 1782, he married Catherine Boucher, an
illiterate girl. Blake taught her to read and to
help him in engraving. Catherine proved an
excellent wife, sympathizing with his work and
sharing in it.
In 1827, Blake died in obscurity and poverty.

William Blake was a transitional figure in
British literature. He was the one of the first
writers of the "Romantic Period." Before this
period, most writers, such as Alexander Pope,
wrote more for form instead of for content.
Blake, on the other hand, turned back to
Elizabethan and early seventeenth-century poets,
and other eighteenth- century poets outside the
tradition of Pope.

In 1788, at the age of thirty-one, Blake began to
experiment with relief etching, which was the
method used to produce most of his books of
poems. He called this method "illuminated
printing." He wrote the text of his poems on
copper plates with pens and brushes, using an
acid-resistant medium. The illustrations were
also drawn onto the plates. He then etched the
plates in acid in order to eat away the untreated
copper and leave the design standing. The pages
printed from these plates then had to be colored
by hand in water colors and stiched together to
make up a volume. Blake used illuminated printing
for four of his works. These included "Songs of
Innocence and Experience," "The Book of Thel,"
"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," and
"Jerusalem."

1.2. Major Works
Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of
Experience ( 1794)
The best of Blake's short poems is to be
found in these two little collections of lyrics.
Songs of Innocence contain poems which were
apparently written for children. Using a language
which even little babies can learn by heart,
Blake succeeded in depicting the happy condition
of a child before it knows anything about pains
of existence. The poet expresses his delight in
the sun, the hills, the streams, the insects and
the flowers, in the innocence of the child and of
the lamb. Here everything seems to be in harmony.

In Songs of Experience, a much maturer work.
entirely different themes are to be found, for in
this collection of poems the poet drew pictures
of neediness and distress and showed the
sufferings of the miserable. The will to freedom
must endure, for a time, the limitations of
worldly experience, and salvation is said to come
through passion the revolt, through revolution.
The poet was conscious of some blind hand
crushing the life of man, as man crushes the fly.
The Contrast between "Songs of Innocence
and Songs of Experience" is of great
significance it marks a progress in the poet's
outlook on life. In the earlier collection there
seem to be no shadows. To the poet's eyes, the
first glimpse of the world was a picture of
light, harmony, peace and love.
But in the later years, experience had
brought a fuller sense of the power of evil and
of the great misery and pain of the people's life.

Part Two Excerpts of Poems
2.1. THE LITTLE BLACK BOY
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.
My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And, pointed to the east, began to say

"Look on the rising sun there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.
"And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
"For when our souls have learn'd the heat to
bear,
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
Saying, 'Come out from the grove, my love and
care
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice',"

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy
I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father's knee
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.

10
2.1.1. Summary

A black child tells the story of how he came to
know his own identity and to know God. The boy,
who was born in the southern wild of Africa,
first explains that though his skin is black his
soul is as white as that of an English child. He
relates how his loving mother taught him about
God who lives in the East, who gives light and
life to all creation and comfort and joy to men.
We are put on earth, his mother says, to learn
to accept Gods love. He is told that his black
skin is but a cloud that will be dissipated
when his soul meets God in heaven. The black boy
passes on this lesson to an English child,
explaining that his white skin is likewise a
cloud. He vows that when they are both free of
their bodies and delighting in the presence of
God, he will shade his white friend until he,
too, learns to bear the heat of Gods love. Then,
the black boy says, he will be like the English
boy, and the English boy will love him.

11
2.1.2. Form

The poem is in heroic quatrains, which are
stanzas of pentameter lines rhyming ABAB. The
form is a variation on the ballad stanza, and the
slightly longer lines are well suited to the
pedagogical tone of this poem.

12
2.1.3. Analysis of the Poem

Blake believed in equality for all men, and this
is reflected in this poem. It may not be
immediately obvious that this is the case, as the
narrative in the first stanza plays upon the
traditional stereotypes of "black" and "white",
black being the color that denotes evil and sin,
- "black, as if beareav'd of light" - and white
being the color that denotes innocence and
purity.
It becomes clear over the course of the poem,
however, that Blake had a deeper message to
convey to his reader. "The Little Black Boy" was
published in 1789, a time when slavery was still
legal and the campaign for the abolition of
slavery was still young. In "The Little Black
Boy", Blake questions conventions of the time
with basic Christian ideals. This becomes
apparent in the third stanza, where Blake uses
the sun as a metaphor for God and His Kingdom
"Look on the rising sun there God does live,".
This line is particularly important, as the
reference to the sun not only introduces the
running religious metaphor in the subsequent
stanzas, but the fact that it is "rising" denotes
change.

In accordance with the running metaphor of the
sun, the fact that Blake speaks of "black bodies"
and a "sunburnt face" in the fourth stanza seems
to imply that black people are near God as a
result of their suffering for one can only
become dark and sunburned as a result of being
exposed to the sun's rays. In the final stanza
this idea is developed further, as the black boy
says that he will "shade him the English boy
from the heat", this implies that the English
boy's pale skin is not used to the heat (derived
from God's love) some critics assert that the
paleness of the English boy in this poem is
symbolic of the fact that the English were
distanced from God as a result of their treatment
of the black peoples.
In the 5th stanza, we see all of humanity being
united For when our souls have learn'd the heat
to bear, The cloud will vanish... In the 6th
stanza this metaphor is continued When I from
black and he from white cloud free, Here, Blake
uses the clouds as a metaphor for the human body.
These stanzas therefore imply that after physical
life has passed, all will be united with God.

Also notable in this poem is Blake's use of
politically neutral colours such as gold and
silver when describing things of moral value. The
most valuable things in life, in terms of
spirituality and wisdom are anointed with colours
that are indifferent to race and social class,
yet are related to financial status, as gold and
silver evoke images of precious metals.
In this child-monologue Blake's treatment of the
little black boy's perspective on Christianity
and salvation may well be ironic, forming the
basis for a more savage attack on religious and
social hypocrisy. The child's mother consoles the
child with a vision of a better life to come,
away from the prejudices and hardship of this
life, and the child accepts this, encouraging him
to a further vision of leading (rather than being
led by) the little white English boy to God and
Heaven. The mother's teaching may itself be a
form of 'innocence', and the boy's vision of a
Heaven, transcending the divisions of race, is
certainly 'innocent'. The central question the
poem raises, like Holy Thursday (Innocence) is
what Blake's attitude is towards the child's (and
the mother's) attitudes does he see them as
touchingly naive, or tragically misguided?
Throughout the poem, in the references to 'black'
and 'white', Blake plays around with the
traditional associations between 'white' and
'good', but also, in the little black boy's views
on Soul/Body, makes the point that colour is skin
deep, but colour is no indication of spiritual
state. The poem should, perhaps, be approached in
the light of British attitudes towards
missionaries, and arguments about the abolition
of slavery in the late eighteenth century.

2.2. THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPER
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry "Weep! weep! weep! weep!"
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.
There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his
head,
That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved so I
said,
"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head's
bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white
hair."

And so he was quiet, and that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight! --
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and
Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.
And by came an angel, who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins, and let them all free
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they
run,
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.
Then naked and white, all their bags left
behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind
And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father, and never want joy.

And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and
warm
So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER
A little black thing in the snow,
Crying "weep! weep!" in notes of woe!
"Where are thy father and mother? Say!"--
"They are both gone up to the church to pray.
"Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smiled among the winter's snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
"And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God and his priest and
king,
Who make up a heaven of our misery."

19
2.2. Analysis of the second

The first stanza is a testimony that describes
the situation of a little chimney sweeper in the
snow who is crying and calling for his parents
while they are praying at the church. In the
second and third stanzas, the child explains his
situation. He describes that he had been happy
and smiled among the winter snow, but also he
was taught to suffer when he says and taught me
to sing the notes of woe. Adults are mentioned
in the poem when he questioned Where are thy
father and mother? and when he says God his
Priest King. Finally he blames they and adds
who make up a heaven of our misery.

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2.2.2.Analysis of the two

William Blake wrote "The Chimney Sweeper" of
"Songs of Innocence" in 1789. In the next to last
line of the first stanza, the cry "'weep! 'weep!
'weep! 'weep!" is the child's attempt at saying
"Sweep! Sweep!," which was the chimney sweeper's
street cry. This poem shows that the children
have a very positive outlook on life. They make
the best of their lives and do not fear death.
This is quite the opposite in it's companion poem
in "Songs of Experience" which was written in
1794. In this poem, the child blames his parents
for putting him in the position he was in. He is
miserable in his situation and he also blames
"God his Priest King". This point of view is
different from that of its companion poem because
the chimney sweeper has been influenced by
society and has an "experienced" point of view.

For these poems, an understanding of the ideas of
one poem, as well as the ideas that it lacks,
illuminates the other poem. This gives the reader
a different interpretation of the poem than if
one of these The Chimney Sweeper poems would be
read alone. For instance, in Songs of Innocence,
the chimney sweeps are offered hope by the
outcome of Tom Dacres dream. The narrator offers
comfort that no harm or punishment will come to
those who obey. Also, Tom is used to illustrate
another point. He is originally frightened but
later feels happy and warm, showing that one
can experience a certain degree of happiness in
the even in the worst of circumstances. These
ideas of hope and happiness place further
emphasis on the bitterness of the chimney sweep
in Songs of Experience. He understands his
circumstances and sees no hope of freedom from
his oppression. Instead of believing that
obedience will prevent punishment, he perceives
his current circumstance as a punishment for
being happy with his childhood. Also, he does not
seem to endorse the Christian idea of having joy
in the midst of adversity he sees little if any
reason to be happy in his miserable predicament.
In fact, the God that his parents praise seems as
cruel as others who allow children to be
mistreated in such a way. These examples
illustrate how an understanding of the themes of
The Chimney Sweeper in Songs of Innocence can
further illuminate the some of the ideas in Songs
of Experience.

However, in Songs of Experience, many of the
ideas are more realistic in some ways. The
chimney sweeper understands that he has been
placed in a situation where he is isolated from
society and will almost certainly die young
because of the hazards of his profession. He
mentions established institutions such as the
Church of England and the government in the same
line with his mother and father, who think they
have done no harm. These institutions could have
used their power to improve life for the chimney
sweeps, but they have made little if any effort
to do so. The understanding that this particular
sweep possess emphasizes the naivete of the
speaker in The Chimney Sweeper of Innocence,
who believes that everything will be fine if he
is obedient even though his obedience will
eventually cost him his own life. The naive child
is more accepting of his circumstances, and the
narrator himself does not seem to see anyone as
being at fault but whose faith in God is a
constant source of hope.

This example of the Chimney Sweeper poems in
Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
illustrates William Blakes view that neither
naive innocence nor bitter experience is
completely accurate. There is a higher state of
understanding that includes both innocence and
experience. Both are need to complete one another
to form the more accurate view. In this case, it
is an expression on the poets view of the
political issue dealing with chimney sweeps that
dominates both poems. Although the viewpoints of
each poem are different, both show plight of the
majority of the chimney sweepers in the cities of
England, and while one endorses hope and the
other bitterness, the reader must acknowledge
that something needs to be done to improve life
for these children.

2.3. THE TIGER
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could Frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

27
2.3.1 Summary of the poem

Stanza 1 Summary
What immortal being created this terrifying
creature which, with its perfect proportions
(symmetry), is an awesome killing machine?
Stanza 2 Summary
Was it created in hell (distant deeps) or in
heaven (skies)? If the creator had wings, how
could he get so close to the fire in which the
tiger was created? How could he work with so
blazing a fire?
Stanza 3 Summary
What strength (shoulder) and craftsmanship (art)
could make the tiger's heart? What being could
then stand before it (feet) and shape it further
(hand)?

Stanza 4 Summary
What kind of tool (hammer) did he use to fashion
the tiger in the forge fire? What about the chain
connected to the pedal which the maker used to
pump the bellows? What of the heat in the furnace
and the anvil on which the maker hammered out his
creation? How did the maker muster the courage to
grasp the tiger?
Stanza 5 Summary
When the stars cast their light on the new being
and the clouds cried, was the maker pleased with
his creation?
Stanza 6 Summary
The poet repeats the the central question of the
poem, stated in Stanza 1. However, he changes
could (Line 4) to dare (Line 24). This is a
significant change, for the poet is no longer
asking who had the capability of creating the
tiger but who dared to create so frightful a
creature.

29
2.3.2. Analysis

2.3.2.1. Type of Work and Year of Publication
"The Tiger," originally called "The Tyger," is a
lyric poem focusing on the nature of God and his
creations. It was published in 1794 in a
collection entitled Songs of Experience. Modern
anthologies often print "The Tiger" alongside an
earlier Blake poem, "The Lamb," published in 1789
in a collection entitled Songs of Innocence.

2.3.2.2. Meter
The poem is in trochaic tetrameter with catalexis
at the end of each line. Here is an explanation
of these technical terms
Tetrameter Line a poetry line usually with eight
syllables.
Trochaic Foot A pair of syllables--a stressed
syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.
Catalexis The absence of a syllable in the final
foot in a line. In Blakes poem, an unstressed
syllable is absent in the last foot of each line.
Thus, every line has seven syllables, not the
conventional eight.
The following illustration using the first two
lines of the poem demonstrates tetrameter with
four trochaic feet, the last one catalectic
.....1...........2...............3................
..4
TIger,....TIger,....BURN ing....BRIGHT
.....1..............2...............3.............
..4
IN the....FOR ests....OF the....NIGHT
Notice that the fourth foot in each line
eliminates the conventional unstressed syllable
(catalexis). However, this irregularity in the
trochaic pattern does not harm the rhythm of the
poem. In fact, it may actually enhance it,
allowing each line to end with an accented
syllable that seems to mimic the beat of the
makers hammer on the anvil. For a detailed
discussion of meter and the various types of
feet, click here.

2.3.2.3. Structure and Rhyme Scheme
The poem consists of six quatrains. (A quatrain
is a four-line stanza.) Each quatrain contains
two couplets. (A couplet is a pair of rhyming
lines). Thus we have a 24-line poem with 12
couplets and 6 stanzasa neat, balanced package.
The question in the final stanza repeats (except
for one word, dare) the wording of the first
stanza, perhaps suggesting that the question
Blake raises will continue to perplex thinkers ad
infinitum.
2.3.2.4 Figures of Speech and Allusions
Alliteration Tiger, tiger, burning bright (line
1) frame thy fearful symmetry? (line 4)
Metaphor Comparison of the tiger and his eyes to
fire.
Anaphora Repetition of what at the beginning of
sentences or clauses. Example What dread hand
and what dread feet? / What the hammer? what the
chain?
Allusion Immortal hand or eye God or Satan
Allusion Distant deeps or skies hell or heaven

2.3.2.5. Symbols
The Tiger Evil (or Satan)
The Lamb Goodness (or God)
Distant Deeps Hell
Skies Heaven
2.3.2.6. Themes
The Existence of Evil
.......The Tiger presents a question that
embodies the central theme Who created the
tiger? Was it the kind and loving God who made
the lamb? Or was it Satan? Blake presents his
question in Lines 3 and 4
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Blake realizes, of course, that God made all the
creatures on earth. However, to express his
bewilderment that the God who created the gentle
lamb also created the terrifying tiger, he
includes Satan as a possible creator while
raising his rhetorical questions, notably the one
he asks in Lines 5 and 6
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thy eyes?
Deeps appears to refer to hell and skies to
heaven. In either case, there would be fire--the
fire of hell or the fire of the stars.
.......Of course, there can be no gainsaying that
the tiger symbolizes evil, or the incarnation of
evil, and that the lamb (Line 20) represents
goodness, or Christ. Blake's inquiry is a
variation on an old philosophical and theological
question Why does evil exist in a universe
created and ruled by a benevolent God? Blake
provides no answer. His mission is to reflect
reality in arresting images. A poets first
purpose, after all, is to present the world and
its denizens in language that stimulates the
aesthetic sense he is not to exhort or moralize.
Nevertheless, the poem does stir the reader to
deep thought. Here is the tiger, fierce and
brutal in its quest for sustenance there is the
lamb, meek and gentle in its quest for survival.
Is it possible that the same God who made the
lamb also made the tiger? Or was the tiger the
devil's work?

The Awe and Mystery of Creation and the Creator
The poem is more about the creator of the tiger
than it is about the tiger itself. In
contemplating the terrible ferocity and awesome
symmetry of the tiger, the speaker is at a loss
to explain how the same God who made the lamb
could make the tiger. Hence, this theme humans
are incapable of fully understanding the mind of
God and the mystery of his handiwork.

35
THE LAMB

Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who
made thee? Gave thee life, and bid thee feed,
By the stream and o'er the mead Gave thee
clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly,
bright Gave thee such a tender voice, Making
all the vales rejoice? Little Lamb, who made
thee? Dost thou know who made thee?

Little Lamb, I'll tell thee, Little Lamb, I'll
tell thee. He is called by thy name, For He
calls Himself a Lamb. He is meek, and He is
mild He became a little child. I a child, and
thou a lamb, We are called by His name. Little
Lamb, God bless thee! Little Lamb, God bless
thee!

2.4. LONDON
I wandered through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear

How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appalls,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.

39
2.4.1. Summary

The speaker wanders through the streets of London
and comments on his observations. He sees despair
in the faces of the people he meets and hears
fear and repression in their voices. The woeful
cry of the chimney-sweeper stands as a
chastisement to the Church, and the blood of a
soldier stains the outer walls of the monarchs
residence. The nighttime holds nothing more
promising the cursing of prostitutes corrupts
the newborn infant and sullies the Marriage
hearse.

2.4.2. Form
The poem has four quatrains, with alternate lines
rhyming. Repetition is the most striking formal
feature of the poem, and it serves to emphasize
the prevalence of the horrors the speaker
describes.

41
2.4.3. Commentary

The opening image of wandering, the focus on
sound, and the images of stains in this poems
first lines recall the Introduction to Songs of
Innocence, but with a twist we are now quite far
from the piping, pastoral bard of the earlier
poem we are in the city. The poems title
denotes a specific geographic space, not the
archetypal locales in which many of the other
Songs are set. Everything in this urban
spaceeven the natural River Thamessubmits to
being charterd, a term which combines mapping
and legalism. Blakes repetition of this word
(which he then tops with two repetitions of
mark in the next two lines) reinforces the
sense of stricture the speaker feels upon
entering the city. It is as if language itself,
the poets medium, experiences a hemming-in, a
restriction of resources. Blakes repetition,
thudding and oppressive, reflects the suffocating
atmosphere of the city. But words also undergo
transformation within this repetition thus
mark, between the third and fourth lines,
changes from a verb to a pair of nounsfrom an
act of observation which leaves some room for
imaginative elaboration, to an indelible imprint,
branding the peoples bodies regardless of the
speakers actions.

Ironically, the speakers meeting with these
marks represents the experience closest to a
human encounter that the poem will offer the
speaker. All the speakers subjectsmen, infants,
chimney-sweeper, soldier, harlotare known only
through the traces they leave behind the
ubiquitous cries, the blood on the palace walls.
Signs of human suffering abound, but a complete
human formthe human form that Blake has used
repeatedly in the Songs to personify and render
natural phenomenais lacking. In the third stanza
the cry of the chimney-sweep and the sigh of the
soldier metamorphose (almost mystically) into
soot on church walls and blood on palace
wallsbut we never see the chimney-sweep or the
soldier themselves. Likewise, institutions of
powerthe clergy, the governmentare rendered by
synecdoche, by mention of the places in which
they reside. Indeed, it is crucial to Blakes
commentary that neither the citys victims nor
their oppressors ever appear in body Blake does
not simply blame a set of institutions or a
system of enslavement for the citys woes
rather, the victims help to make their own
mind-forgd manacles, more powerful than
material chains could ever be.
The poem climaxes at the moment when the cycle of
misery recommences, in the form of a new human
being starting life a baby is born into poverty,
to a cursing, prostitute mother. Sexual and
marital unionthe place of possible regeneration
and rebirthare tainted by the blight of venereal
disease. Thus Blakes final image is the
Marriage hearse, a vehicle in which love and
desire combine with death and destruction.

43
2.4.4. Other Analyses

As with most of Blake's poetry, there are several
critical interpretations of London. The most
common interpretation, favored by critics such as
Camille Paglia and E.P. Thompson, holds that
London is primarily a social protest. A less
frequently held view is that of Harold Bloom
that London primarily is Blake's response to the
tradition of Biblical prophecy.
The use of the word 'Chartered' is ambiguous. It
may express the political and economic control
that Blake considered London to be enduring at
the time of his writing. Blake's friend Thomas
Paine had criticised the granting of Royal
Charters to control trade as a form of class
oppression.However, 'chartered' could also mean
'freighted', and may refer to the busy or
overburdened streets and river, or to the
licenced trade carried on within them.
In Blake's notebook, the word 'chartered'
originally read, 'dirty'
In Thompson's view, Blake was an unorthodox
Christian of the dissenting tradition, who felt
that the state was abandoning those in need. He
was heavily influenced by mystical groups. The
poem reflects Blake's extreme disillusionment
with the suffering he saw in London.

The reference to a harlot blighting the 'marriage
hearse' with 'plague' is usually understood to
refer to the spread of venereal disease in the
city, passed by a prostitute to a man and thence
his bride, so that marriage can become a sentence
of death.
The poem was published during the upheavals of
the French Revolution, and the city of London was
suffering political and social unrest, due to the
marked social and working inequalities of the
time. An understandably nervous government had
responded by introducing restrictions on the
freedom of speech and the mobilisation of foreign
mercenaries.
The City of London was a town that was shackled
to landlords and owners that controlled and
demeaned the majority of the lower and middle
classes.citation needed Within the poem that
bears the city's name, Blake describes 18th
century London as a conurbation filled with
people who understood, with depressing wisdom,
both the hopelessness and misery of their
situation.