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Home: Poetry: William Blake: London
| LONDON |
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a poem by William Blake
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- I wandered through each chartered street,
- Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
- A mark in every face I meet,
- Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
- In every cry of every man,
- In every infant's cry of fear,
- In every voice, in every ban,
- The mind-forged manacles I hear:
- How the chimney-sweeper's cry
- Every blackening church appals,
- And the hapless soldier's sigh
- Runs in blood down palace-walls.
- But most, through midnight streets I hear
- How the youthful harlot's curse
- Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
- And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.
| "London" is reprinted from Songs of Innocence and Experience. William Blake. London: Basil Montague Pickering, 1866. |
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