William Blake's poetry

London

This poem is a lyric ballad that expresses the tension, sounds, and meanings of a collapsing city. The poem shows the reader a dark and sad city by through the tension in the poem’s voice, expressing sounds and anger that escapes beyond the boundaries of the poem itself. It is a sense based poem; there is sight, emotion, things heard, etc.

…The word that stood out the most to me was “weakness,” because following that word there is a repetition of the phrase “in every…” To me it seems as though every person, man or woman, is feeling the same way, with weakness in their hearts. It seems as though the society is being eroded by the strict policies of London.

Proverbs of Hell
It seems as though Blake's conception of Hell is not as a place of punishment, but a source of unrepressed, somewhat philosophical energy. Blake eluded to the readers a repressive nature of conventional morality andinstiutional religion.

…The word that stood out the most to me was “God,” just because throughout the poem, the poet declares the uniqueness of his vision when compared to the conventional wisdom of "the present world," not to mention the vision of the angels and demons. So it was just interesting to me that his poem was directed towards both evil and goodness.