William Blake (1757-1827) was unknown in his time. Born in London to a tradesman’s family, he apprenticed at fourteen to an engraver, a craft he practiced all his life. Although he had slight contact with the radical elite -- Godwin and Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, and Joseph Priestly -- Blake was not even a casual acquaintance. He lived in obscurity and poverty all his life, a difficult person, an impossible friend, and an uncompromising idealist. Blake despised organized religion and gentle Jesus, but he hated the rationalism of Newton, Voltaire, and the British Empiricists. He pledge allegiance to Albion but loathed empire, kings, and constitutional parliaments. Blake is acknowledged now as a brilliant visual artist; his engravings and water-colors possess rare imaginative force. His poetry constitutes the breakthrough moment of English Romanticism, and most particularly his “Songs of Innocence; Songs of Experience" (1789, printed, 1794). These short lyrics appear almost child-like, masking a profound reordering of our values, and a bitter assault upon the complacency of his contemporaries.

We assume that poetry celebrates the softer virtues and the beauties of Nature. Readers wish to be enthralled by words and transported to higher realms of being. Blake defies these expectations. His writes guerilla poetry, setting off road-side bombs along the gentle path of verse. London is Blake’s diorama of madness and brutality. The metropolitan colossus of his time, Blake’s London is a demonic hell-hole where cruelty and corruption rule under a false banner of reason and sensibility. Blake gives his readers bad dreams, destroying their confidence that London life is sound and secure.

“ The Chimney Sweeper" (“Songs of Innocence") demonstrates this incendiary simplicity. For Blake, child enslavement to chimney-sweeping epitomizes the corruption of his glorious city. London was a city of fireplaces burning coal in the houses of the comfortable; but all Londoners were familiar with troops of urchins marching the streets at dawn bearing their brooms and buckets. These children were as young as three and no older than nine, in order to fit into the narrow chimney stacks. Better not to ask where these tykes, their fair features smudged with soot, came from, and what were the circumstances of their lives. It would be painful to picture these families from the recently enclosed countryside now released into vagabondage, and their children sold into forced labor in London. It would be better, too, not to ask about Christ’s teachings concerning those who corrupt innocence and all that the Churches had done to help their congregations forget.

Blake places his explosive charges strategically. The unnamed speaker of "The Chimney- Sweeper" is a boy simple and kindly, with heroic endurance and generosity. His life a horror of abandonment and travail, he retains his trust in the world’s goodness, which makes his suffering more outrageous. We cannot help but adopt this boy and measure his humanity against the mean-spiritedness of his fortunate contemporaries. We learn as he tells his story about Tom Dacre (Tom of the Acres?), who recently joined the troop of infant workers fresh from a happier life in the countryside. The speaker consoles young Tom with perspectives that make his new circumstances seem reasonable -- his luxurious hair is shorn (innocent lamb), but this violation protects his fair hair from the soot and filth. The speaker’s gentleness, given his hard life, is extraordinary.

Little Tom dreams that all the boys are liberated from black coffins (the suffocating chimneys), and an Angel leads them to a natural paradise, sun-lit and playful, with cleansing waters and fresh blowing wind, and a Father who cares for them (unlike those who abandoned them). Warmed by his dream, next morning little Tom marches off into the cold. The speaker’s concluding remark twists us with ironies. The speaker intones: “So if all do their duty they need not feel harm. "We applaud his pluck, his ability to sustain hope amidst distress. We know, too -- we are not innocent -- that his trustful words sustain an illusion; soon enough, he will be cast aside on London’s streets without even the misery of sweeping chimneys to sustain him.

Blake confronts his gentle reader with truths he would prefer to avoid. Who would be reading poems, and in what setting? A poetry reader in 1790 has been well educated, can afford purchasing poetry books, and has the leisure and luxury to read them in a clean, well-heated room. Perhaps, too, he has a child or two upstairs, snug in a warm bed, under a thick comforter against London’s chill. Perhaps this cosseted child stamped his foot in anger at receiving a toy he didn’t want or in jealousy at the gift his brother received, and father now sits himself down to ease his exasperation with a bit of poetry.

Consider further -- the poem resembles a nursery-rhyme, with short tetrameter lines, the rhythms of relaxed speech, and plain diction. In a small space Blake recounts the speaker’s life miseries and also his attitude towards them. The speaker is matter-of-fact about terrible things -- the death of his mother, and his father abandoning him, just emerging from infancy -- the repetition of “weep" is the chirp of a little bird pecking out a meager life. But the closing line of the quatrain hurts most: the speaker accepts it all. He directs his attention to us -- “your" chimneys -- but without complaint. He exhibits no rancor and trusts it somehow makes sense. If only he would have cursed us!

Tom Dacre is a younger self. Little Tom lacks forbearance and cries at his abuse. The violation of Tom flits past in quick metaphor, his luxuriant hair rudely shaved. The speaker links causes and consequences only with “so," signaling that these things follow reasonably. Little Tom cries but must learn to accept his lot in life; so the speaker offers what anyone would, tender consolation. This “so" is remarkable. First, the speaker assumes that he does what anyone one would for another in pain. For the speaker this is unremarkable, for us astonishing. We would expect the older boy to treat the child with contempt, “wise up, kid, you think you’re the only one kicked around by life?"

The speaker is a saint. His “Hush, Tom!" a loving parent’s voice from a speaker who has had no loving parent to ease his fears.

His advice annoys us. Tom is to be consoled that the loss of his hair promotes cleanliness. But the loss of his hair “curled like a lamb’s back" is a catastrophe; the notion its loss can be a gain is preposterous. Still, the speaker is kind, the tone loving. Readers are caught in a bind.

Accepting such abuse makes us impatient, but the calming spirit appeals to our need for orderliness. Asked by the speaker to think of himself as yet another boy in this condition, Tom imagines “thousands of sweepers." Like the speaker, Tom reaches beyond personal suffering to imagine the pain of others, all buried alive, and of their shared liberation. In the madhouse of London, however, this kindliness is infuriating. It would be better if Blake had not made these youngsters loveable and brave.

Tom’s story unfolds as a “and …then" story that children tell. Events unfold naturally. If we are buried alive in black coffins, an angel will rescue us. Set free, the boys will leap and laugh and run. They will wash themselves in a clean river, as they cannot do in London, and shine in the bright pastoral sun. “And then" the story proceeds in its innocent rush of excitement, they will be taken aloft and “sport" in the wind. Tom dreams they will fly away together, rollicking in flight. The angel assures them, then, if Tom accepts his lot without complaint, the Father of all will protect him, and he will enter a life of pure joy. “Pie in the sky when you die" a cynic would say.

The final stanza has two instances of “so". Reassured by the speaker’s consoling wisdom, Tom, and the rest of them settle into their daily tasks. Perhaps they all had Tom’s dream. The dream keeps them “happy and warm" even in the morning’s cold. The final “so" is outrageous -- “so if all do their duty they need not fear harm." These saintly little chaps must believe a dream to keep going -- abandoned, exploited, and abused. We know their compliance will not protect them. They have much to fear, even doing what they are told. There is no angel and no key in London to save them. At least the consolation of religion provides the wherewithal to survive the day. If religion is the people’s opiate, as Marx tells us, at least an opiate alleviates the pain. We admire the pluck of these little workers and wonder in dismay what to do to save those who are the best of us? The comfortable reader squirms uneasily.

The companion song, “ The Chimney Sweeper" from “Songs of Experience" sheds light on “Songs of Innocence." It is a shorter, harsher, meaner poem that employs sarcasm in place of the lighter, but more agonizing irony. Here an observer sees the child “A little black thing," nothing quite human, a bird in winter. His street call advertising sweeping is reduced to an infant “weep-weep", a grim pun connecting the services offered with the tears shed by sweepers.

This child has parents, but they have gone off to church and abandoned him. The observer asks the child where his parents are, and the boy answers with a sardonic twist. Instead of the innocent “so," he says “because," seeing the grim connections in things. The causes of his misery are ignorance and spite. He did not lose his rural delight “happy upon the heath" and then find himself enslaved to soot and despair. In this case, “because" he was happy he was condemned to suffer. Now dressed in the black costume of his trade, he has been taught “the notes of woe."

While this boy retains some infant joy, his parents try to beat that out of him, believing that by condemning him to useful work they have done their duty and him no injury. This boy, unlike his innocent counterpart, understands the circuit of deceit. Londoners give allegiance to “God & his Priest & King," a trinity for whom the torment of innocence is heaven’s plan. The boy’s voice is terse and bitter. Is he happier than his innocent double? Does his dark knowledge arm him for the struggle for justice, warm him against the cold, and help him confront an evil history? Does it arouse the reader to sympathy or push us away to protect us against the anger of the dispossessed? Surprisingly,the voice of innocence abused produces a more bitter poem, with greater power to arouse us in defense of kindliness and affection.

“London" is an anthem to anger and despair.

Blake explores the connections that blind us to reality and the fractures of consciousness in the age of empire. The poem is severely compressed -- just sixteen lines, in terse tetrameter, and with meager vocabulary, including much repetition. Still, this air-tight and laconic poem measures London and the mind of its residents.

The companion song, “ The Chimney Sweeper" from “Songs of Experience" sheds light on “Songs of Innocence." It is a shorter, harsher, meaner poem that employs sarcasm in place of the lighter, but more agonizing irony. Here an observer sees the child “A little black thing," nothing quite human, a bird in winter. His street call advertising sweeping is reduced to an infant “weep --weep", a grim pun connecting the services offered with the tears shed by sweepers.

This child has parents, but they have gone off to church and abandoned him. The observer asks the child where his parents are, and the boy answers with a sardonic twist. Instead of the innocent “so," he says “because," seeing the grim connections in things. The causes of his misery are ignorance and spite. He did not lose his rural delight “happy upon the heath" and then find himself enslaved to soot and despair. In this case, “because" he was happy he was condemned to suffer. Now dressed in the black costume of his trade, he has been taught “the notes of woe."

While this boy retains some infant joy, his parents try to beat that out of him, believing that by condemning him to useful work they have done their duty and him no injury. This boy, unlike his innocent counterpart, understands the circuit of deceit. Londoners give allegiance to “God & his Priest & King," a trinity for whom the torment of innocence is heaven’s plan. The boy’s voice is terse and bitter. Is he happier than his innocent double? Does his dark knowledge arm him for the struggle for justice, warm him against the cold, and help him confront an evil history? Does it arouse the reader to sympathy or push us away to protect us against the anger of the dispossessed? Surprisingly,the voice of innocence abused produces a more bitter poem, with greater power to arouse us in defense of kindliness and affection.

“London" is an anthem to anger and despair. Blake explores the connections that blind us to reality and the fractures of consciousness in the age of empire. The poem is severely compressed -- just sixteen lines, in terse tetrameter, and with meager vocabulary, including much repetition. Still, this air-tight and laconic poem measures London and the mind of its residents.

The speaker wanders the city taking impressions, like snapshots, each an electrified image of London’s degradation. While the speaker wanders, the city is owned and tightly measured by its corporate grip. The streets are not just “charted" (defined on a map) but also “chartered"(licensed by the city). Looking up, the wanderer sees the plaques identifying each establishment as approved and regulated by the city -- each store, pub, and workshop done by public decree and by arrangements benefitting the city’s governors and enhancing their powers.

While accustomed to licensed businesses, we may find it strange that the Thames has also been claimed for ownership and regulation. A “charter’d Thames" may appear to flow, but according riparian rights, the Thames and access to it belongs to the government and is leased out to property owners and businesses at a price. Make no mistake, the enclosure of country fields and legal control of what had once belonged to God and the people, has reached its logical, but insane, conclusion in the city, where even the river, flowing and irregular, is real estate. The wanderer “marks" the impact of this totalitarianism in the faces he sees. Long before Orwell’s 1984, Blake notes the timorous fear in people overwhelmed by the gigantism of government. The verb “marks" intensifies “notes," “sees," or, “observes" -- and in the sense of “marks out" answers the notion of “charted"/"chartered". Similarly, the “marks" he sees testify to the ubiquitous terror. The wanderer sees what others fail to notice; he also connects the psycho-social trauma with the laws of ownership and control the state insists upon. The play of what we see and are unable to see is fundamental to the poem and to Blake’s powerful project to “cleanse the doors of perception."

Of the 23 words in stanza two, five of them are “every" and all in positions emphasizing Orwellian totality. Men and infants “cry"; infants, not yet capable of speech already have imbibed the fear bred by the city. The terror pervades London, seeping into the way infants cry and adults voice their constrained daily lives in the strangled pitch of their voices. These traces are audible to the wanderer, who takes impressions freely. London suffocates its people in prohibitions, in “bans" that require vigilance by its citizens. Londoners have learned not to notice the undoing of their natural force. The state could never have imposed its restrictions if the people had not accepted them as natural and reasonable. Power rules without direct force, but by ideology alone. Blake’s phrase “mind-forg’d manacles" expresses a remarkable insight. The linking of the blacksmith’s forge with airy notions and ideas hammers this into our imagination.

The first eight lines present the indictment; the next eight find warrant for these claims. Blake mentioned chimney-sweepers elsewhere, but “London" makes a political case. The “cry" of “’weep,' 'weep'" now joins the city’s chorus of pained cries. The cry of abused child-workers, soot-covered, “appalls" the churches, all of which are “black’ning." In the highly confined space of this compressed poem, this knot of metaphor comes shockingly quick. “ To Appall" comes from Middle French and means to make something become ghostly white, as the blood drains away in terror. The chimney-sweeps strip the chimneys of soot to burn cleaner; yet paradoxically this cleaning blackens the London churches; a result that causes these churches to turn a ghostly white. Blake has constructed a dizzying puzzle where physical reference and moral significance collide. To sort it out, we must stop and think. The chimney sweeps physically keep the London churches clean. The observer could take pride in these gleaming facades, except that this brightness costs the innocence of London’s suffering children. These proud fronts, then, must been seen properly -- another moral stain upon the city. While bright to the eye, they represent a ghostly horror. Christian churches that should be standing by Christ’s teaching and protecting the innocent (Luke 17:2) stand condemned by their purposeful ignorance of the plight of the poor. London’s radiant churches are “whited sepulchres" (Matthew 23: 28 … "which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness").

This tangle of images challenges Blake’s reader to put aside meanings enforced by mind- forg’d manacles, and adopt new ways of seeing. Suppose every Lexus we see, far from signaling a person of merit and application, displays another cheat who has grown rich submitting false Medicare claims, or evicting struggling families their homes, or working the system by leveraging legislation for favors and who refuses to pay taxes or send his children abroad to the wars that make him rich … London.

The second example in stanza three constitutes a more horrifying instance. The splendid facade of King George III’s palace, if seen correctly, is awash in blood. This image forces another rude collision of fact and ideological fantasy. To the “manacled" eye, the king’s palace is a shining evidence of grandeur and honor. That grandeur, like all other London boasts, has been purchased at the cost of the “hapless Soldier’s sigh." In the eighteenth-century, young British men were sent to kill and be killed in the Indian sub-continent and in North America by the tens of thousands. They were “hapless", or unlucky, in being sent there and finding themselves victims of disease, deprivation, and the grim reapings of battle. The King’s palatial monument to empire, seen correctly, is a mausoleum of shame and horror. “Cry" here gives way to “sigh" as the British soldier, facing the horrors of Calcutta or the savage woods of Canada, recognizes the hopelessness and submits to his destruction.

The concluding stanza is most shocking of all, for in this instance London’s moral rot and suffering spreads everywhere. The disease travels from the weak and hapless to their “betters" and threatens directly the existence of this imperial city. The circuitry that connects one suffering to another is again far from obvious to the untrained imagination.

London throughout the eighteenth-century experienced the influx of impoverished country workers displaced from the land. Unprepared for city life and moving into an economy unable to accommodate them, many took to thievery and prostitution. Eighteenth-century literature is full of highwaymen and “gypsies" and trollops and barmaids, the dangers of the roads and of the backstreets and low saloons. These colorful moments in fiction and engravings note the realities of the underworld and the demi-monde. London accommodated its fortunate country milk-maids with “downstairs" service, but for many others survival required the horrors of back alleys.
As “London" notes, prostitutes were numerous, in a way that allows the poem to allude to them casually as well known to any reader. Walk the “midnight streets" and you encounter them everywhere. Their “curse" has a double valence. It is another version of “cry" and “sigh" -- another sounding of despair in the London chorus of anger and hopelessness. The prostitute, finished with her client, curses him for his misuse of her. But this curse has another and more powerful effectiveness. This milk-maid of the country-side now carries a venereal plague and transmits it to the man who abused her, to his innocent wife, and to the child who should be the glory of his household establishment. The connection is medical. Having passed her STD to her client, the harlot has paid back her abuser with gonorrhea, long since known to endanger the new-born with infection and blindness. The “new-born Infants tear" then becomes a horrifying battleground where moral corruption is repaid with hideous vengeance. Where one connection “appalls" and another causes blood to “run", this new link in the circuit “blasts" and “blights with plague." In this world of reverse meanings, the marriage coach and all its hopefulness becomes a “Marriage hearse," yet another transformation of false front masking death and rot.
Blake wrote ugly poems, beautiful only in their craft of compression, the poetry one would expect from an engraver working in tight spaces. There is no filmy sentiment or heaven-climbing elations here; these poems are hard as nails and nasty in intent. Blake is an unreasonable man rejecting the Age of Reason and casting his lot instead with the biblical prophets, with Isaiah, in his condemnation of the grandeur of "houses of hewn stones" and what these glories cost our fellow human beings. Sitting in the heart of empire, he counts the costs and forces his readers to know what they would prefer not to. His is a poetry which, unfortunately, shows no signs of losing its timeliness.

' ' '