Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

 

London

(1792)


William Blake

(1757–1827)

 

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.


In every cry of every Man,  5
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear. 


How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every black'ning Church appalls; 10
And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.


But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot's curse
Blasts the new born Infant's tear,
 15
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

            

Study Questions

  •  Blake’s “London” describes a place, that city. Consider his list of descriptions of this “capital of the world.” What contrast or connection do you see between to mark in the first stanza and to hear in the others?


 

Notes

1  charter'd: 


 

9  chimney sweeper: 

 

 

46 London

We hear Blake's own voice as he "wanders" (such a gentlemanly word) through "all this dreadful ruin."39 His restraint never falters as he passes by the dead-living which the text reports. The rejection of either anger or indignation mounts an unanswerable indictment of the forgers of those intangible manacles.40 We sense that Experience, of which this poem is a walking summary, is no fresh dispensation, but an old and chartered alienation, refashioned for the latest oppression. The poem's quiet, colloquial voice pronounces that the contemporary manipulators, having the past in their hands, have no need for dexterity of mind. It is the poem's continuity from past to present (then and now) which is appalling, driven home by the insistent repetition of "mark."41

Its termination is in the illustration. The young vagabond leads the cripple beside a workhouse door. The door is shut. The boy's shadow falls against it. Its substantial crudity both imprisons and excludes. The old man is directed across the relentless cobbles to the vagabond fire in the field; but he never arrives. For the first time, the street boy is without a family; and for the first time, thrown on his own devices, he warms himself at the fire. For old and young, the excluding charters of London streets come down to this.

 

39. The Four Zoas, plate 79. OED, "charter'd": "Charters are donations of the sovereign; and not laws, but exemptions from law" (Hobbes). So privilege is set against "every ban," that is an "interdiction which curses" the poor.

 

40. "Mind-forg'd," in Erdman, ed., Notebook, N. 109. Blake first wrote "german forged links," referring to the Hanoverian monarchy. The scare over Hessian mercenaries increased after the defeats of 1793 in the war of the Vendee.

 

41. In the Notebook, lines 3-4, Blake first wrote: "And see in every face I meet/Marks of weakness marks of woe." He deliberately altered "see" to "mark," despite the solecism of the repetition. The apparently unpolished address, so effective throughout the Songs, was deliberate. All the main meanings of "mark" carry physical implications. "Weakness," that is, debility, is not merely visible, but marked in the minds of poverty.

 

From Stanley Gardner, The Tyger, the Lamb, and the Terrible Desart (1998)

 

In "London" from Songs of Experience, for example, the opening lines have the speaker wandering the streets of London, observing "in every face...Marks of weakness, marks of woe" (E 26). Kathleen Raine has suggested that this may be derived from Virgil's account of the damned in Hades:

Nor Death itself can wholly wash their Stains;

But long-contracted Filth ev'n in the Soul remains.

The Reliques of inveterate Vice they wear;

And spots of Sin obscene in ev'ry Face appear.

If this is indeed what Blake has in mind, we must understand it to be connected with the self-deception of the "mind-forg'd manacles" mentioned in line 8 (E 27). It is interesting that the famous phrase was originally written as "german forged" (E 796) in Blake's manuscript version, which he scribbled in his Notebook. This was a transparent reference to the House of Hanover, and thereby George III. Blake's self-censoring may have safeguarded him against prosecution for sedition, but the change also shows us Blake readiness to perceive a direct link between political power and spiritual enslavement.

 

From Robert Rix, William Blake and the Cultures of Radical Christianity (Ashgate, 2007) 44.

 

 

Notes
1] charter'd. Blake first wrote "dirty", then "cheating"; the word may be an ironic allusion to "Rule Britannia."

8] mind-forg'd manacles. Blake's original version, "German forged links", perhaps reflects popular resentment at the presence of Hessian and other German mercenaries in the city.

 

 

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Last updated October 29, 2012