"Runs in blood down Palace walls."
Stanza 1 focusses on misery.
Stanza 2 on peoples' refusal to stand tall.
Stanza 3 about the way people are sacrificed for the rich and powerful.
Stanza 4 on how all this poverty is corrupting everything good about family and life. The four stanzas offer a glimpse of different aspects of the city, almost like snapshots seen by the speaker during his wander thro' the streets.
The acrostic that runs down the first letters of the lines in the third stanza makes up the word "HEAR". This could be a call to all those in authority to listen to the complaints and cries of the populace. Or else, those with power and money who have been an integral part of the system that wrought such suffering on people may indeed be able to hear, but choose to do nothing about it.
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,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appals,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
Mark = to notice (verb) / a sign or indication of a quality or feeling (noun).
Ban = a curse.
Hapless = unfortunate.
Blight = spoil, harm, or destroy.
Language: The tone of the poem is at times biblical, reflecting Blake's strong interest in religion. It is as if the speaker is offering a prophecy of the terrible consequences unless changes are made in the city.
In the first stanza, Blake uses repetition twice, firstly using the word charter'd. This is a reference to the charters that allocated ownership and rights to specific people. Many, including Blake, saw this as robbing ordinary people of their rights and freedoms.
The second use of repetition is with the word marks. This has a dual meaning: it refers to the physical marks carried by people as a result of the conditions they endure and is also suggestive of the speaker recording evidence during his walk through the city streets.
In the first three lines of stanza two, the speaker makes it clear that "every" sound he hears is evidence of the "mind-forg'd manacles". Manacles are like handcuffs. The speaker is suggesting that people's minds are restricted and confined - that the city has robbed them of the ability to think.
The poem is full of negative words: "weakness", "woe", "cry", "fear", "appals", "blood", "blights", "plagues" and "hearse" are just some of them.
The poem ends with a startling contrast in the language chosen: marriage hearse. To Blake, marriage should be a celebration of love and the beginning of new life. Here, however, it is combined with the word hearse - a vehicle associated with funerals. To the speaker of the poem, the future brings nothing but death and decay.
Stanza by Stanza Analysis:
Stanza 1: In the first stanza, the speaker provides setting and tone. The setting can, of course, be derived from the title, but the first stanza also reveals that the speaker is walking down a street. He says that he "wander[s] down each chartered street". The term "wander" gives some insight into the speaker as well. He appears to be not quite sure of himself, and a bit misguided, if not entirely lost. The use of the term "chartered" also suggests that the streets he walks are controlled and rigid. He is not walking in a free, open field, but a confined, rigid, mapped out area. The speaker will expound upon this idea later on in the poem. As he walks, he notices something about the faces of the people walking by. There seem to be the marks of weariness in them all. He describes their faces as having "weakness" and "woe". This sets up the tone as melancholy. The gloom and the sadness seem to seep from the speaker's voice as he describes the passersby.
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English GCSE AQA: Comprehensive Analysis of the Power and Conflict Poems
Non-FictionI decided to make a book on all the Power and Conflict poems for the English GCSE exams. NOTE: This book's analyses are very long and wordy due to much information from different sources. Although they are segmented, some may not find too much comfo...
London (1794) - William Blake
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