Dulce et Decorum Est uses gruesome imagery to narrate the horrors of a gas attack.
Wilfred Owen uses careful chosen words to convey the pain and suffering of the weary soldiers.
Wilfred Owen mounts a powerful argument against the complacency of those who believe war to be a glorious patriotic duty.
Owen’s anti-war sentiments contrast starkly with the work of other poets.
For some background about the poet, see the Context section of We Remember Your Childhood Well.
For some background about Carol Ann Duffy, look at the context section of We Remember Your Childhood Well.
The poem describes a disastrous cavalry charge that took place during the Battle of Balaclava in 1854.
The Charge of the Light Brigade makes great use of alliteration to tell its violent story.
The Charge of the Light Brigade is an emotive poem which both praises and laments the action of the battle.
Many other poets have written poems about war and its effects and it is interesting to compare their work to Tennyson’s treatment of the subject.
London
I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
How the chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot’s curse
Blasts the new-born infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.
The poem describes a journey around London, offering a glimpse of what the speaker sees, such as the terrible conditions faced by inhabitants. Child labour, restrictive property laws and prostitution are all explored.
The poem starts with criticism of laws relating to property ownership. The “charter’d Thames” is a bitter reference to the way every aspect of life in London is owned, even the river – so often in other poems a symbol of life, freedom and the power of nature.
Blake’s poem also criticises religion. The speaker draws attention to the cry of the chimney sweeper and the blackening of church walls, implying that the Church as an institution is inactive, unwilling to help those in need.
It ends with a vision of the terrible consequences of sexually transmitted disease.
As the title of the collection suggests, London is presented in a very regular way, much like a song. There is a strict abab rhyme scheme in each of the four stanzas.
The four stanzas offer a glimpse of different aspects of the city, almost like snapshots seen by the speaker during his ‘wander thro” the streets.
The tone of the poem is at times biblical, reflective of Blake’s strong interest in religion. It is as if the speaker is offering a prophesy of the terrible consequences unless change is made in the city.
In the first stanza, Blake uses repetition twice, firstly using the word ‘charter’d’. This is a reference to the charters which allocated ownership and rights to specific people. Many, including Blake, saw this as robbing ordinary people of their rights and freedoms. The second use of repetition is on the word ‘marks’. This has a dual meaning: it is a reference to the physical marks carried by those in the city as a result of the conditions they endure; it is also suggestive of the speaker recording evidence during his walk through the city streets.
In the first three lines of stanza two, the speaker makes it clear that ‘every’ sound he hears is evidence of the ‘mind-forg’d manacles’. Manacles are like hand-cuffs, and here the speaker is suggesting that the minds of the people are restricted and confined, that the city has robbed them of the ability to think.
The poem is full of negative words: ‘weakness’, ‘woe’, ‘cry’, ‘fear’, ‘appals’, ‘blood’, ‘blights’, ‘plagues’ and ‘hearse’ are just some of them.
The poem ends with a startling contrast in the language chosen: ‘marriage hearse’. To Blake, marriage should be a celebration of love and the beginning of new life, yet here it is combined with the word hearse, a vehicle associated with funerals. To the speaker of the poem, the future brings nothing but death and decay.
Blake’s speaker has a very negative view of the city. For Blake, the conditions faced in the city cause people to decay physically, morally and spiritually.
For Blake buildings, especially church buildings, often symbolise confinement, restriction and failure. In this poem, the lines ‘the Chimney-sweeper’s cry / Every blackening church appals’, provide an association which reveals the speaker’s attitude. Money is spent on church buildings whilst children live in poverty, forced to clean chimneys, the soot from which blackens the church walls. To Blake, this makes a mockery of the love and care which should characterise the Christian religion.
The ‘blackening’ church walls are also linked to the running of ‘blood down Palace walls’, a clear allusion to the French revolution. The speaker is perhaps arguing that unless conditions change, the people will be forced to revolt.
The poem as a whole suggests Blake sees the rapid urbanisation in Britain at the time as a dangerous force. Children are no longer free to enjoy childhood, instead working in dangerous conditions. Charters restrict freedoms, ultimately resulting in the restriction of thinking.
The poem is pessimistic. This means it is without hope for the future.
If this poem is considered alongside William Wordsworth’s Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802, the differing attitudes are striking. This poem is very negative about city life, and it focuses closely on the inhabitants of the city throughout. Wordsworth’s poem, on the other hand, is about the speaker’s feelings about seeing a deserted city.
Wordsworth’s line ‘The river glideth at his own sweet will’ is arguably a conscious rejection of Blake’ description of the ‘charter’d Thames’. Blake sees the city as symbolic of man’s destructive dominance of nature; even the river is not free.
Both poems are about a speaker encountering the city and reacting to it.
A good way to start thinking about a poem is to read it a couple of times and make sure you are clear about what all the words mean. This is especially important with poems that are over 200 years old like this one. Next, ask yourself what the poem’s subject matter is?
A poem’s subject is not the same as its meaning. Poems communicate their meaning in a number of different ways – not just through the everyday meaning of the words. But asking yourself what is this poem about? is a good place to start.
Poetry is a highly structured form of writing.
Roll over the highlighted words, or click the buttons, to see the poems’ rhyme scheme and rhythm or pattern of stresses.
How does the language of these poems work to convey their meaning? As well as the actual words on the page, we need to consider the sound they make, and any imagery the poet creates with them.
Much of the meaning of a poem is conveyed by the attitude it expresses towards its subject matter, by the poet’s tone of voice, and the ideas the poem conjures up in the reader’s mind.
The plot of The Merchant of Venice can be broken down into 4 separate strands or subplots which weave in and out of each other throughout the play before coming together at the end.
