fically English birthright just as Milton was a specifically English poet, he asks Milton to come and restore manners, virtue, freedom, power all the things in fact that the poet believed were lacking in society at the time. Even though the emphasis of this poem is on passion and freedom, we can see that Wordsworth was equally concerned with goodness and morality (sparknote)William Blake has also been classed as a political and social poet, Blake, however writes about freedom, freedom of the imagination and of the mind. He disapproved of Enlightenment thinking of rationalism and reason, and of institutionalised religion. In Blakes poem London we see the speaker wandering through the streets and commenting on his observations, he sees despair in the faces of the people he meets and hears the fear and repression in their voices. In the opening lines I wander thro each chartd street/ near where the chartd Thames does flow, he uses the term charted, which draws up connotations of legalism and of mapping out. Blakes repetition of this word reinforces the sense of confinement the speaker feels as he enters the city. He repeats the word mark in the second and third lines And mark in every face I meet/marks of weakness, marks of woe but here it undergoes a subtle change, from a verb to a pair of nouns. The effect this has is to brand the people creating an indelible imprint on their faces. It also helps to set up the drumming oppressive beat of the poem. All the other subjects of the poem men infants, chimney sweeps soldier and harlot, are known only through the traces they leave behind them, the cries and the blood on the palace walls. In the third verse the chimney sweeps cry and the soldiers sigh, are changed into soot on a church wall and blood on the palace walls. We never see the chimney sweep or the soldier, likewise we never see the clergy or government who reside in the Church and Palace, Blake does this to show that he does not simply...
