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7 - William Blake and the Universal Empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2009

Saree Makdisi
Saree Makdisi
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Summary

They are mockd, by every one that passes by. they regard not

They labour; & when their Wheels are broken by scorn & malice

They mend them sorrowing with many tears & afflictions

William Blake, Jerusalem

I wander thro' each charter'd street,

Near where the charter'd Thames does flow

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infants cry of fear,

In every voice; in every ban,

The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry

Every blackning Church appalls,

And the hapless Soldiers sigh

Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro' midnight streets I hear

How the youthful Harlots curse

Blasts the new-born Infants tear

And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

In the sixteen lines of his 1794 Song of Experience, London, Blake produces a nightmarish vision of London – both as a city and as a space of systemic modern oppression. It is precisely because Blake identifies London with more than its material and physical spatiality (its buildings, streets, etc.) that, in charting a space of systemic oppression, he is also able to chart the space of London as a material city with physical and tangible dimensions. The poem recognizes that London cannot be apprehended except in such figurative or symbolic terms.

Type
Chapter
Information
Romantic Imperialism
Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity
 , pp. 154 - 172
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1998

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