Blake's poem "London" criticizes the suffering of the working class caused by the industrial revolution through its rhyme scheme and metaphorical language. The poem draws attention to the cries of pain from the many people in desperation through the repetition of their suffering. Blake grieves the loss of the old London, seeing the changes from the industrial revolution as replacing happiness with an inevitable death for dreams.

1. "London" by WilliamBlake
-Orla Golden
“London” by WilliamBlake has an AB (alternate line) rhyme scheme. The simplicity of the
rhyme scheme reinforces how plain and simple it is to see: who is suffering, and why.
“And the hapless soldier's sigh/ Runs in blood down palace walls.” Here, Blake is using a
powerful metaphor to blame royalty and the aristocracy for the lack of action on the
suffering of the working class. Blake never meets any of the individual victims that he
mentions themselves, but he hears and witnesses the damage that the industrial revolution
has caused for the masses; the effects of the ever-growing economic inequality. The fact
that he never personally meets any characters shows how the poor are not properly seen.
They do not have individual personalities and are instead differentiated by their jobs and
class. This is shown when Blake mentions them using their job to identify them, since they
are representative of the working class.
Each of them are crying, begging for the suffering to end. In the stanza “In every cry of every
man...The mind-forged manacles I hear:” he repeats the fact that each of them are crying to
emphasise the sheer amount of people in pain or desperation, and to draw attention to this;
it is an important factor that overpowers anything else.
Blake grieves the death of London he once knew in the last line “And blights with plagues
the marriage hearse.” when he uses the term “hearse”. He is comparing a marriage to a
funeral: “marriage” is the beginning of something new – the industrial revolution – and a
“hearse” is the vehicle used for conveying a coffin at a funeral; he is saying that the
industrial revolution brings happiness to some, but ultimately they must give up on their
dreams and accept death.