Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern. Today's poem is by William Blake, who lived from 1757 until 1827. He was an English poet. The poem that I'm going to read today is called London. It was composed in 1793 and published

the following year. And like his famous poem, The Tiger, which has been read on this podcast before,

this poem first appeared in his collection, Songs of Experience. This is how it goes.

I wander through each chartered street near where the chartered Thames does flow.

And 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-sweepers cry, every blackening church appalls, 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 newborn infant's tear and blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

My guess is it wouldn't be surprising if I were to tell you that Blake was highly influenced by the

ideas by the pursuits of the French and American revolutions and so he was concerned certainly

with the plight of everyday people in his anthology the classic hundred poems which I've mentioned

many a time on this podcast,

William Harmon writes that, quote,

Blake's poem fits into a world to which anybody can relate,

and he draws powerful emotions from everybody's ordinary fears and desires.

At the same time, Blake wields a strikingly original style,

which looks like some of the combinations of physical

details seen in surrealist art. A sigh turns into blood running down a wall. End quote. And Harmon goes

on to talk about how what we get here is not just abstractions or criticisms, but ideas embodied

in people, embodied in everyday people, in the plight of everyday people,

and in the pursuits of everyday people.

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