Comparing London by William Blake and Westminster Bridge by William Wor

Comparing London by William Blake and Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth William Blake was born in London in 1757. He was taught by his mother at home, and became an apprentice to an engraver at fourteen. In addition to poetry Blake spent much of his time painting. Blake lived on the edge of poverty and died in neglect. His poetry receiving little acclaim while he was alive. ‘London’ was written by Blake in 1789. Taken from Blake’s ‘Songs of Experience’, the style is darker and in a sense depressing. It describes the city after the Industrial Revolution. Blake takes a very negative and hopeless view of the city and the lives of those living within it. He hated the way London was becoming, looking negatively on business and materialism. Blake felt himself as free, and the poem is a comment on others living in London. In the first line of the first stanza, he creates immediate effect as he contrasts the words ‘wander’ with ‘charter’d’, which he goes on to use to describe the Thames River in the following line. Wander suggests a sense of naturally meandering in an open expanse, contrasting greatly with the latter, which referring to the city itself, suggests a sense of narrow enclosed in space. This description leads the reader to envisage a regulated and constrained city, limited by business and materialism. Blake goes on to describe the ‘charter’d Thames does flow.’ This is ironic in the sense that any flow seems to be restricted by the banked in and concreted image of the river that the poet creates – there is nothing natural or beautiful about the Thames any longer. Equally Blake’s repetition of the word mark, while us... ...r for what she does in order to make a living. This is ironic because the business of prostitution is caused in part by the restrictions placed upon the married man. It is also ironic because the married man is what has created the need for, and use of prostitutes. The harlot curses the respectable and polite society because it is they who have created the demand for her, and then look down upon what she does. ‘Blights with plagues’ implies that perhaps she also infects them with some sort of sexually transmitted disease, conceivably as a type of vengeance upon those who shun her. The final words of the poem, â€Å"Marriage hearse† compares marriage to death. The narrator sees marriage as another type of restriction placed upon man by society, marriage is a sort of death in man’s ability to be free to do as he wishes.