LONDON , in William Blake s London and William Wordsworths Composed Upon Westminster Bridge.

William Blakes London and William Wordsworths Composed Upon Westminster Bridge depict the city of London and the way it is experienced by the speaker of the poem. However, despite the fact that both poets are describing the same city around the same period of time, they offer of London a strikingly different picture: Wordsworths speaker celebrates the beauty and majesty of the city, Blakes condemns its oppressive nature and corruption. Wordsworths view of the city is personal. The speaker, which may well be interpreted as the poet`s voice, is overwhelmed with joy at the sight of London from Westminster Bridge at dawn. The city is quiet, there is no activity, and the first sunrays are reflected on the Thames and its surrounding buildings and fields in their full splendor. The lyrical `I confesses he has never seen a sight so touching or felt a calm so deep before, not even in natural landscapes, like valley, rock or hill. The spiritual effect of this vision is so powerful that the poet feels the city is organic and alive, a mighty heart asleep, and in awe exclaims Dear God!, as if nothing else was there to be done in the presence of the sublime. Wordsworths sonnet abounds in positive terms, mostly associated with light and beauty: fair, majesty, beautifully, bright, glittering, splendour, calm, sweet. Hyperboles are used to convey the magnificence of the sight, some of them reinforced with negative forms: Earth has not anything to show more fair; Never did sun more beautifully steep/ In his first splendor; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! Two very beautiful personifications are employed to endow the city and river with a natural life of their own: This City now doth, like a garment, wear/ The beauty of the morning; The river glideth at his own sweet will. Paradoxically, this urban setting, usually associated with the hustle and bustle of city life, is presented as silent, bare/ Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples, and devoid of any human presence, but for that of London itself, lying still, asleep, and open unto the fields and to the sky.

In striking contrast with Wordsworth, Blakes vision of London is social and political, and it is devastating. The speaker wanders through the chartered streets of London, Near where the chartered Thames does flow, only to find misery and

exploitation all around Marks of weakness, marks of woe. His tone is not of pity but of passionate anger against the oppression, powerfully expressed with the metaphor The mind-forged manacles, of such institutions as the Church and the Monarchy, metonymically represented by church and palace-walls How the chimney-sweepers cry /Every blackening church appalls,/And the hapless soldiers sigh/ Runs in blood down palace-walls. In the last stanza the mood appears to become prophetical, almost apocalyptic, at the sight of young prostitutes, whose curse is heard through midnight streets, who will pass their misery to their own children and also lethal diseases to married couples How the youthful harlots curse / Blasts the new-born infants tear, / And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse. This appalling phrase the Marriage hearse, may be interpreted as a severe metonymy for the institution of Marriage, which is also condemned in the poem. Repetition is effectively employed to stress the feeling of oppression and regimentation chartered street, chartered Thames; Marks of weakness, marks of woe; In every cry of every man/In every infants cry of fear; the chimney-sweepers cry. Auditory images of pain and harsh sounds, together with

negative visual images effectively construct a scene of utter desolation. Despite the clear opposition between victims, the chimney-sweepers, the soldiers and the youthful harlots, and victimizers, the Institutions of Power, no one is immune to the destructive effect of this society in chains, as the church walls are blackened, the palace walls are covered in blood and husbands and wives are infected with disease. Thus, the negative prophetical vision of the poem may as well be interpreted as a potent demand for change. Different as the poems are, Wordsworth and Blake share the Romantic approach. They both rely on their senses, not on Reason, to apprehend reality, and pass from sight to vision. They highly value their own feelings and impressions and employ a persona, which may be interpreted as the poets voice, to develop a strongly personal viewpoint. They do not write for the few but for every man, and thus deal with matters which may affect everybody in very direct and simple language. Both
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poets praise nature and blame civilization; in fact, as opposite as their views of London appear to be, they effectively complement each other: Wordsworths favourable impression results from the revelation of a city devoid of human beings and their pernicious effects, such as the smoke caused by industrialization, and transformed by the powerful beauty of nature; Blakes condemnation derives from the pernicious effects of industrialization and its control over nature and human life. Above all, both Wordsworth and Blake worship freedom, and while Blake denounces and exposes those mind-forged manacles that render men weak and woeful, Wordsworth attempts to destroy them by the liberating power of nature.