London 倫敦

—William Blake 威廉.布萊克

簡介：William Blake, who is a British poet, painter, visionary mystic and engraver, illustrated and printed his own books. Once I heard the name of him, I just knew he was a versatile man. However, the poem—‘London’ astound me deeply when I read it again and again. There are some beautiful words, wonderful rhythm and imaginational sentences.

The poem has four stanzas, and each line has ten syllables. Every stanza has double rhyme. For example, the first stanza has two foots, ‘|I | and |ou|’. It uses some rhetoric methods in the poem, just like trope, parallelism, and metaphor. The three ‘in every’ are obvious parallelism in the second line. In the third line, Blake used hyperbole, antitheses and metaphor. The miserable chimney-sweeper contrasts the bright church. The soldier contrasts the palace walls. And the last sentence tells readers that the decayed society will be destroyed eventually.

Blake used the words skillfully. For instance, the ‘chartered’ means that a street or a river owned by rich men and nobles only. He just used a word to describe a hierarchical society that poor man has not the right to walk on the chartered street or see the river—Thames. Then he used three ‘mark’. The first ‘mark’ is a noun, the other two ones are verb. It depicts the weak and woeful people in the street visually. In the last line, Blake used the word ‘blast’ to describe how harmful ‘the youthful harlot’s curse’ to the baby. It gives readers a consuming feeling that the curse will destroy all the things thoroughly.

‘London’, which had been written in 1794 is a lyric. At the time, the Britain had been capitalism for centuries. The society became more decayed as the time past. For express the dissatisfaction to the society, the author wrote the poem. Blake opened out the reality that the society moldered day by day. The distance between rich and poor were larger and larger. More and more inequable things happened in the daily lives. It seems that people lost the hope for the future. Blake used a technique as montage to write the different angles of the society. As the fast change of the scene, the poem shows up a real British society to readers. I see as though the weak and woeful faces; I hear as though the cry of chimney-sweeper; moreover, as though the youthful harlot’s curse hovers over my ears unceasingly. The feeling is so vivid even more than 200 years past.

I love the poem because of the real description but the beautiful words. The most real poem, the most real society.

I wandered through each chartered street, 我走過每條獨占的街道，

Near where the chartered Thames does flow, 徘徊在獨占的泰晤士河邊，

A mark in every face I meet, 我看見每個過往的行人

Marks of weakness, marks of woe. 有一張衰弱、痛苦的臉。

In every cry of every man, 每個人的每升呼喊，

In every infant’s cry of fear, 每個嬰孩害怕的號叫，

In every voice, in every ban, 每句話，每條禁令，

The mind-forged manacles I hear: 都響著心靈鑄成的鐐銬。

How the chimney-sweeper’s cry 多少掃煙囪孩子的喊叫

Every blackening church appals, 震驚了一座座熏黑的教堂，

And the hapless soldier’s sigh 不幸兵士的長嘆

Runs in blood down palace-walls. 化成鮮血流下了宮墻。

But most, through midnight streets I hear 最怕是深夜的街頭

How the youthful harlot’s curse 又聽年輕妓女的詛咒!

Blasts the new-born infant’s tear, 它駭注了初生兒的眼淚，

And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse. 又用瘟疫摧殘了婚禮喪車。