{"id":217,"date":"2023-02-18T05:24:35","date_gmt":"2023-02-18T05:24:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/?p=217"},"modified":"2023-02-18T05:24:35","modified_gmt":"2023-02-18T05:24:35","slug":"london-bridge-is-falling-down-sorry-wrong-poem-but-same-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/2023\/02\/18\/london-bridge-is-falling-down-sorry-wrong-poem-but-same-river\/","title":{"rendered":"London Bridge is falling down- sorry wrong poem but same river"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear readers,<\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine walking down the streets of London. A city that\u2019s been described to be vibrant and bustling with rich interaction and spectacular sights. Would you see it this way? Well, William Blake doesn\u2019t. Sorry (Blake isn\u2019t sorry). Blake\u2019s poem <\/span>London<\/span><\/i> is organized in 4 short stanzas consisting of quatrains and an ABAB rhyme that aid in the sights and sounds being described in the poem that is a commentary on society and the government.<\/span><\/p>\n

Through the figure of a traveler and literary lens, Blake describes wandering through his surrounding setting which is \u201ceach chartered street\u201d (1) where he sees faces of passing people that have \u201cmarks of weakness, marks of woe.\u201d (4) In establishing this bleak setting of streets that are <\/span>chartered<\/span> into systems for<\/span> order <\/b>, Blake also introduces the poetic voice that has a sorrowful tone in this face of society\u2019s misery that is displayed by the people\u2019s facial expressions as they walk in these streets. I would like to postulate a question to my beloved readers: With this detailed observance, is it possible society is being described as miserably suffering due to the control as imposed upon them by the power hungry upper class\/ government?? Because Blake hints at this control through the \u201cchartered\u201d streets. Someone had to charter them and it most certainly wasn\u2019t the lower class who had no money or power to charter streets in the first place.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In stanza 3, Blake transitions from sight to sound. Curious, Curious. Who is this \u201cchimney-sweeper\u201d (9) that cries? And why is the church \u201cblackening\u201d(10)? How do these two completely opposite subjects relate? Upon research, you will find that a chimney-sweeper during this time period in London was the lowest of lowest in class as being a chimney-sweeper was a low paying and thankless job. Oh and did I mention a lot of young orphaned children were working as chimney-sweepers and churches were responsible for them? We just love exploitation and abuse. But with this background context, I think the chimney-sweeper and church are directly connected due to class and power. Hence, the chimney-sweeper cries from being forced to perform hard labor and the church blackens for its lack of humanity towards the chimney-sweeper.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sincerely,\u00a0<\/span>Alucard<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear readers, Imagine walking down the streets of London. A city that\u2019s been described to be vibrant and bustling with rich interaction and spectacular sights. Would you see it this way? Well, William Blake doesn\u2019t. Sorry (Blake isn\u2019t sorry). Blake\u2019s poem London is organized in 4 short stanzas consisting of quatrains and an ABAB rhyme … Continue reading London Bridge is falling down- sorry wrong poem but same river<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4770,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4770"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}