Comparing London And William Wordsworth's Composed Upon Westminster Bridge

Glory and Terribleness: A comparison based on London between William Blake’s London and William Wordsworth’s Composed upon Westminster bridge

Eason Tao

(Ginling College, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210046, China)

Abstract: In the end of the 18th century, London became the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, which the shining glory of enormous economy soar shades countless suffering and unbearable pains. The two poems, London by William Blake and Composed upon Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth, shows different perspectives of London. Based on detailed analysis of two poems along with vast supplementary information, the essay makes a comprehensive comparison of them.

Key words: William Wordsworth; William Blake; comparison;

London is full of suffering, poverty, disease, prostitution, metal slavery, warfare——all kinds of terribleness are throughout the poem in the form of cries and they burst out at last, only to lead a silent death, which the government cares nothing about it: Money is the best policy.

Look at the first stanza: From the first two verses we can see that there exists a repetition of “charter’d” (chartered), it means “to hire or rent (a ship etc.) for exclusive use”, namely the Thames and its each surrounding street has been a monopolistic “product”. Repetition is a poetic standard, but it is not appropriate to use it like this——it is more likely to be a sense of incantation. I think it aims to make a biting satire of the authority by making a stress to prove its “rationality”. The Thames can be considered as a representative mighty force of nature, so every corner of nature has been totally ruled by the capitalistic government. They take it for granted, unscrupulously consuming every source of nature to transform it into every profit for them to become blindly stronger. All the London was enslaved and deprived of freedom, and the billowing smoke is not only breathing the economy of the industry, but also the misfortune of the innocent

Norton anthology of English literature: The romantic period. Norton: New York.

Blake, William. 1991.Songs of innocence and experience. In: Andrew Lincoln. (Ed.), Notes and introduction of songs innocence and experience. Princeton: New Jersey

Different London. 2008.CHEN Yan. Sino-US English Teaching, Oct.2008, Volume 5, No.10(Serial No.58)

Paglia, Camille. 2005. Break, blow, burn. Pantheon: New York

Stephen Bygrave (ed), Romantic Writings, Routledge, 1996, p. 20; The Invisible Worm, Tom Paulin, The Guardian, March 3, 2007.

Terry Eagleton. 2008.Literary Theory: An Introduction, Anniversary Edition, University of Minnesota Press, 年份, 页码

Wikipedia. The Chimney Sweeper. Wikipedia website(2010).