Blake Poem Analysis

The poem London by William Blake can be compared to Living Space by Imtiaz Dharker. They have many similarities in their themes, structure, and language techniques, but also lots of differences.
First of all, both poems are similar in the themes that they portray. The main themes of both are time and place, and they focus on an environment or surrounding in a certain time. Blake writes about London in the late 18th century, whereas Dharker writes about an Indian slum in the late 20th century. Although these are very different, they both convey similar messages; London and the slums were bad places to be, and the poets wanted to change this by bringing awareness through their writing. The setting is stated straight away in the poems. London’s first two lines of the first stanza is “I wander thro’ each charter’d street, near where the charter’d Thames does flow”, immediately making it clear that he is talking about London, and Living Space’s opening describes the buildings and what it all looks like, by saying “Beams balance crookedly on supports” and “nothing is flat”. Another theme that is shown through the poems is confinement. Blake shows the lack of freedom by using a repetitive structure and vocabulary, and also by describing the streets and the river Thames as “charter’d”, which means something that is controlled and owned by the government. Even natural things like the river are not free, although it continues to “flow”. This word choice does not fit into the theme,