Name : NAWABZADA BILAL AFRID
Id no: 13735
Semester: BS ENGLISH 5th
Subject: ROMANTIC AND VICTORIAN POETRY
Teacher: MAM SALMA ALI KHAN
Question No # 1
:Differentiate between Blake’s poem London and
Wordsworth’s poem The World is Too Much with Us.
Elaborate with the help of examples how the two
Romanticists view the modeern world in the background
of industrial and political revolutions?
ANS:1.Blake’s poem london:
William Blake (1757-1827) wrote many great poems which
remain widely read and studied. But ‘London’ is, along with
‘The Tyger’, possibly the most famous of all his poems.
‘London’ was first published in 1794 in his volume Songs of
Experience, which was written to offer the flipside to the
positive, transcendent message present in Blake’s earlier
volume Songs of Innocence. Although the poem’s meaning
is pretty clear and straightforward, it is our intention in this
analysis to uncover some of the more curious
aspects of its language.
"London" is among the best known writings by visionary
English poet William Blake. The poem describes a walk
through London, which is presented as a pained,
oppressive, and impoverished city in which all the speaker
can find is misery. It places particular emphasis on the
sounds of London, with cries coming from men, women,
and children throughout the poem. The poem is in part a
response to the Industrial Revolution, but more than
anything is a fierce critique of humankind's failure to build a
society based on love, joy, freedom,
and communion with God.
2. WordsWorth’s poem the World is too Much with
Us:
"The World Is Too Much with Us" is a sonnet by the
English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. In it,
Wordsworth criticises the world of the First Industrial
Revolution for being absorbed in materialism and
distancing itself from nature. Composed circa 1802, the
poem was first published in Poems, in Two
Volumes (1807). Like most Italian sonnets, its 14 lines are
written in iambic pentameter.
Differentiate Between these two poems
1:Sonnet form:
Wordsworth employs a strictly structured form, the Italian
sonnet, which conforms to a set of strict conventions. As in
many sonnets by the Romantic poets, he creates a tension
between the emotional, natural, and fluid themes explored
in the poem and the structured form of the sonnet. This
tension reflects what was occurring during the Romantic
Era, in which artists and poets were rebelling in the
structured world of the neoclassical period.
Employing the familiar with the new and revolutionary-
Wordsworth uses the familiar structure of the sonnet as well
as referring to familiar ancient Gods (in the authors context
they would have been familiar) to persuade the reader to
engage in a positive way to the concepts addressed. The
unfamiliar or unknown is always feared and suppressed
thus by incorporating the familiar with the revolutionary the
reader in the 19th century is more likely to engage
positively with Wordsworth’s message.
2:Metaphor:
The metaphor “we have given our hearts away, a sordid
boon” is also an oxymoron. Sordid suggests the worst
aspects of human nature such as immorality, selfishness
and greed, while a boon is something that functions as a
blessing or benefit.
The contradiction between the meanings of the words
suggests that materialism is a destructive and corrupt
blessing which the industrial revolution has produced. It
emphasises the tension between the good exterior and the
sordid truth behind materialism. On an exterior level,
material goods bring pleasure and are a symbol of man’s
progress; however, in truth, they feed the worst aspects of
humanity: thus a "sordid boon."
3:Repetition and rhyming scheme:
The repetitive rhyme scheme ABBAABBA, and the use of
word pairs such as “getting and spending” and “late and
soon” emphasises the monotonous nature of modern life
and materialism. Getting and spending is a cluster of longer
emphasised words with many consonants, also possibly
emphasising this view.
In essence, materialism is just that getting and spending: it
is devoid of emotion or a true fulfilling purpose. In many
ways the stereotypes of man and woman mirror the
difference between the neoclassical and romantic period
between civilised and nature. Men in this context are
associated with rationality, strength, order and power,
whereas women are associated with emotion and the
imagination.
4:Music and harmony:
The line, "For this, for everything we are out of tune" implies
that man is out of tune with nature, unable to live in
harmony with the world around him. By describing the
harmonious relationship of man and nature as a tune,
Wordsworth evokes a sensuous experience of nature.
5:Imagery:
In the simile "and are up gathered now like sleeping
flowers," sleeping flowers suggest that man is numb and
unaware of the beauty and power of the natural world. At
the same time, however, there is also a certain optimism:
the image of sleeping flowers implies that humans are only
dormant, and that there is some hope we will wake up and
realise the power of nature.
In the early 19th century, Wordsworth wrote several sonnets
blasting what he perceived as "the decadent material
cynicism of the time.The World Is Too Much with Us" is one
of those works. It reflects his view that humanity must get in
touch with nature to
progress spiritually.
Blake suggests that the experience of living there could
encourage a revolution on the streets of the capital. This
could have been influenced by the recent French
Revolution. The use of the word "chartered" is ambiguous
and goes against control and ownership. It may express the
political and economic control that Blake considered
London to be enduring at the time of his writing. Blake's
friend Thomas Paine had criticised the granting of Royal
Charters to control trade as a form of class oppressio
.However, "chartered" could also mean "freighted" and may
refer to the busy or overburdened streets and river or to the
licensed trade carried on within them.In the original draft,
the word used was simply "dirty" ("I wander through each
dirty street Near where the dirty Thames does flow"). Blake
makes reference to the "Blackening church" suggesting that
the church as an institution is not only physically blackening
from the soot of London, but is actually rotting from the
inside, insinuating severe corruption. Blake created the idea
of the poem from using a semantic field of unhappiness.
