William Blake

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of celebratory poems, offering a view of the world with the ‘voice of joy’ though perhaps through rose-coloured glasses. Blake is simply enjoying nature, and through this is therefore praising God. In “London” however, the glasses are removed and Blake’s images of a once ‘merry scene’ are lost, replaced by ‘charter’d streets’. Coming from the Songs of Experience, Blake is presenting his perceptions of a changed world, moulded and suppressed by human hands.
To structurally support meaning, Blake has exploited the form of both poems. “Laughing Song” consists of three, simple, four-lined stanzas. Perhaps representing succinct periods in Blake’s childhood. Beneath the apparently simple form however, lies an intricate web of complex meanings. Although ordered, Blake’s use of rhyming couplets and longer lines stress the delight in nature and the harmony between nature and man. In ...

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the ‘table’ constructed by man, ‘spread’ with ‘cherries’ taken from nature for human purposes. Thus the final verse leads into “London”, where many man made structures have replaced God’s own creation. In “London” Blake, through his use of language, exhibits a contradictory view of the world. In comparison to the ‘green woods’, in London lies ‘charter’d streets’. Gone is the image of a ‘dimpling stream’, replaced by the ‘charter’d Thames’. This implies a world that was once free and natural is now constricted and repressed. Also depicting an evil world is the ...

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