Blake, William - London (3)

London by William Blake

Lots of aspect of this poem compete to convey the readers an emotional impact of desperation and misery in the city. The sounds are mainly harsh, in the text prevail consonants, in particular r, t and k. The use of these letters make the rhythm fast and not particularly fluent; this kind of rhythm is used to represent the concurrence of many bad aspect, it is not a sweet immagine as in The Lamb but a bad reality. The repetition used by the poet are significant to underline some strange and oppressive restriction that all the people there have in common: chartered, Mark, every.

The language is mainly concrete, except the immagine of the Westminster Palace covered with blood and the last line of the poem.
It doesn’t seems the common way of poetical, it seems a mere description of what the poet hears or understand with his sense. The poem is complex in words and rhythm but is simple in showing some concise phrases.
The images used are proposed to the reader both with auditive characteristic and visual, filtered by the mind of the poet. All the images are unpleasant and convey distress.

The colors that the text evoke are grey, black and red; the first and the second with the images of misery, crying, desperation, the last one with the description of blood on the Palace. This colors are useful to form a place of oppression and suffering.