w born Infant’s tear,” (15). Syphilis among many other symptoms can cause in infected infants “crying sounds” and tearing (Syphilis). It is the disease and bad life that the Harlot passes on to her child.The Harlot’s problems are connected with the church in the last line of the poem. Her life “blights with plagues the Marriage hearse” (16). This line although difficult to interpret is crucial to the poem and packed with meaning. A Marriage symbolizes beginnings and Marriage happens at church. A hearse symbolizes endings as in death. The “Marriage hearse” (16) works for an analogy of the Marriage of a Harlot infected with syphilis. The Harlot infected with the disease then infects her husband and they will both eventually die from the disease, as there were no medicines for syphilis during the eighteen hundreds.This poem uses rhyme and repetition throughout to tell a story about life and the effects of the church on lives of the people of London. The “blackening church” (10) blackens the people of London, but by doing that it also blackens itself. The church does not allow the people of London to grow, it instead restrains them. The church does not help, protect, or look out for the health and welfare of its community as we saw with the children chimney-sweepers and soldier whose sighs went unheard. It seems that repetition is not only a literary device in this poem but also one of its themes. The church restraining its people, not helping them (the chimney-sweepers, the Harlots) causes a vicious cycle of deleterious and repetitive effects. The city of London is stuck in a downward spiraling cycle because the church is restraining and weakening the minds of its people instead of aiding and helping them. ...
