William Blake's Searing Commentary on London's Spiritual Sickness

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:02]Hello there, friends. Have a poem to explore today by one of the English greats, William Blake.

[00:00:10]Uh it's called London. Many of you may well be aware of this. Some of you might have even read it at school if you're in uh in England, although I'm not sure they do this anymore.

[00:00:20]You can imagine what they have these days. Anyway, uh it's a famous poem from his Songs of Experience collection. I was thinking of doing a whole video on Songs of Innocence uh and Experience, but it's a very, very long video that, and I thought, well, I need time and so on.

[00:00:37]Uh but this is um one of his great poems, one of his famous poems, but it it also speaks to something so important uh in the English artistic soul as well as canon that so I think in modernity we don't understand quite so well. So, we'll explore what this is all about, and we'll tie it together in the great spiritual visionary that is Blake, but also what that means for us in the modern day, and also arguably even in the uh post-liberal era when it comes to art.

[00:01:07]So, let's start from the top. It's a simple poem, a quick poem. I think I'll read it through in full cuz it's uh it's uh very short, and then we'll break it down stanza by stanza.

[00:01:20]So, from the top, London by William Blake.

[00:01:23]I wandered through each chartered street near where the chartered Thames does flow, and mark in every face I meet marks of weakness, marks of woe.

[00:01:33]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.

[00:01:42]How the chimney-sweeper's 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.

[00:02:03]Beautiful to say out loud.

[00:02:06]Wonderful flow, deep, powerful, strong imagery, and very powerful use of onomatopoeia. You know, words like blast, hapless, blood. Uh very, very effective language. Wonderful example of a great use of the English language as well.

[00:02:27]But of course, on this channel and in my sort of work, if you can call it that more broadly, I like to to bring it back to that living tradition, the living spiritual heart, which is why I'm so fond of Blake.

[00:02:39]And Blake can be read anachronistically in sort of a proto-leftist way, you know, Dylan-esque type way. Um the sort of folk hero speaking truth to power.

[00:02:50]And there is an element of that. But as I say, it's it's sort of anachronistic because in modernity we might interpret that through sort of left-wing folk music and that tradition.

[00:03:00]But what we're talking to here, or what Blake is talking to, is is something higher. You know, it's not so much we need socialist revolution.

[00:03:09]He's not against hierarchy, he's against its corruption, and he's pointing to the higher as the solution.

[00:03:15]>> [gasps] >> And we can see that when we start to break it down.

[00:03:19]So we start from the top. I wander through each chartered street near where the chartered Thames does flow.

[00:03:25]Chartered, if you don't know what that means, uh means essentially planned, you know, which speaks to again what we experience in modernity. Blake is right at the beginning of it. I was speaking in a video on the main channel the other day about [snorts] the idea of a right, if we can call it right, it's post-right really, uh that that that is beyond this market-obsessed mentality, beyond the idea of bureaucracy and regulations.

[00:03:50]And uh Blake's London is at the beginning of this. So, he wonders through each chartered street.

[00:03:56]Everything is organized, bought and paid for, controlled by something and someone else. The slightly inhuman.

[00:04:04]Near where the chartered Thames does flow. Now, in London folklore, as many people from the southeast will know, London has the nickname or did have the nickname of Old Father Thames. So, the idea being that the Thames is almost a vein, a lifeblood that flows into London and gives it all of its verdant nourishment over the years.

[00:04:27]But in Blake's era, or the way Blake is talking to it, even the Thames itself, and remember that the Thames is of course tidal, so it's it's has a a sea-like quality to it, even that, which is very natural, is being controlled and constrained. You know, there's no freedom in here anymore.

[00:04:46]So, we can see this is on two levels.

[00:04:48]Number one, it's very tight and constrained in turn of what in terms of what London has become.

[00:04:54]But also, this is a spiritual message for which you could say is classically traditionalist in the context in that we've moved away from something natural, organic, and higher towards something which is very much fake, if you will. It's uh it's part of a developing modernism, an industrial world which it we're losing ourselves in.

[00:05:19]And immediately, Blake switches to he sees this again mirrored in every face he meets.

[00:05:27]He sees marks of weakness, marks of woe.

[00:05:30]But again, we see the two terms repeated in the first stanza. Chartered, chartered, marks and marks. And naturally, of course, what that is is a poetic tool to tell us that it's a it's a a sort of symbolic rhyme, not a literal rhyme, but a symbolic one.

[00:05:48]Everything becomes chartered, our faces become marked, we become weak, we become woeful. You know, so again, it's not just happening on the physical plane of London, it is being interpreted on the face of the very Londoner. And that in itself again is a broader spiritual realization of we are our environment, it's a reflection of what we are and the spiritual state we're in.

[00:06:14]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.

[00:06:26]So, this seems like we're taking a jump into a more of a an emotional, pained cry, you know, both in man and infant, which shows the weakness of man, you know, he's infantilized in essence is is what Blake is doing here by combining him with the infant.

[00:06:45]But, there's something more profound going on in that he's bringing together what he was starting in the first stanza. In that in every voice, in every ban, you know, again, the individual human's voice and the ban, the higher, which is telling you what you can and what you can't do. And it's not again ban in the sense of all authority is bad in the classic left-wing context and it has to be destroyed so we can have the great, you know, Utopia to be who you are, which never really comes, you just get more bans.

[00:07:13]What he's saying here is that it's almost an authority without justness, an authority without true leadership, true authority itself.

[00:07:25]So, what we get from this is again this chained feeling and he brings in the word manacles and we can hearken back to this idea of being chartered. You know, it leads to the manacles, but the manacles are mind-forged.

[00:07:39]And this is a really, really key giveaway from Blake in terms of what he's talking to here.

[00:07:45]Yes, we are controlled by something external. It's a worldly power structure. But Blake was deeply visionary, deeply religious man that didn't like mainstream religion, was more mystic in his orientation.

[00:08:00]And what he's pointing to here is this is a mind state we're in where our spiritual dissolution has led to our domination in the mind and it's reflected in the power structures of modernity. So instead of some socialist revolution, he's talking about spiritual revolution. Completely different direction. For a modern music listener, you might say something like in Bob Marley's famous song forget the name of it. Might even be Redemption Song.

[00:08:29]Um emancipate yourself from mental slavery.

[00:08:32]None but ourselves can free our minds.

[00:08:34]You know, many years later speaking in his own Pan-Africanist version of this, he's talking to a spiritual revolution within his people. And good for him. You know, I've always said Bob Marley is a a fantastic songwriter, one of the greats, especially maybe one of the great spiritual songwriters.

[00:08:50]And and Blake is doing this, you know, 200 years before.

[00:08:54]These mind-forged manacles have dominated us.

[00:08:58]And then we get into sort of Dickensian social commentary or even pre-Dickensian. How the chimney sweeper's cry every blackening church appalls and the hapless soldier's sigh runs in blood down palace walls. Really nice flow there and very, very cutting social commentary, very strong in the English folk tradition.

[00:09:20]Now we all know about the chimney sweep sweeper now and it's a symbol of a destroyed innocence. Remember that was the precursor to Songs of Experience. So we see innocence is destroyed, you know, beauty is destroyed, that which is vulnerable and sacred is being destroyed and the church is blackening. Our spiritual representation is blackening.

[00:09:41]Note here, he's not saying Jesus is blackening. He's not saying spiritual truth itself is blackening.

[00:09:47]Quite the opposite.

[00:09:48]>> [snorts] >> He's saying it's worldly alteration is blackening. And I think in our modern era we know what that looks like. Although today, it's less black, it's more illusory, it's more sweet. Uh it's more the road to hell is paved with good intentions today.

[00:10:04]And the hapless soldier just sighed. The soldier who doesn't have any choice. His blood is is running down the palace walls. His blood is for nothing other than really authority without any root.

[00:10:15]Authority without any divine guidance any longer. Again, it's not that authority itself is bad, it's authority when it's not led by the higher. That's what Blake is talking to.

[00:10:28]And then this famous ending, this great final stanza, real killer ending.

[00:10:32]Reminds me of Dylan a bit there. So, you could say Dylan probably learned from Blake that big punch to end. Uh it's really really powerful stuff.

[00:10:40]But most through the midnight Sorry, 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.

[00:10:52]So, this is um what I will call radical conservatism.

[00:10:57]The idea here is uh and it's outside of, you know, this kind of weak, soft, modern Toryism. This is kind of radical alignment with tradition.

[00:11:06]Midnight streets, youthful harlot. It's black again, you know? It's not just at night and people go and, you know, try and find prostitutes at night. It's the black of night, away from the light of the morning, away from the light of life.

[00:11:20]The youthful harlot. Again, innocence being broken down. A youthful woman should not be in this job, you know? But this is what she probably has to do because of the spiritual sickness that we're in.

[00:11:34]And it blasts the newborn infant's tear.

[00:11:37]So, you know, the the idea being that the Lord or whoever goes out into the night into Soho, sleeps with the harlot who has this plague. And of course he's talking about what we call today as an STI. STIs in this context are deeper for spiritual sickness, which is the right way to see them in my view, at least if you're a traditionalist. Doesn't mean if you have these issues, don't go and get them sorted with modern medicine, but it doesn't mean that they're symbolic of something deeper. You know, we view them as, "Oh, you know, just things that happen to you." No, they're not. No, they're not. They're symbols of spiritual sickness. You know, when you become spirit- sexually wild, you'll get spiritually sick.

[00:12:15]And this is another example of this. The poor infant, who again is total innocent, but the infant is sym- symbol of a new generation being born. Not just this one infant, but symbol of the new generation of Londoners, of English people, are being born into this plague.

[00:12:31]It's a plague not just the the sexual sin, but a plague of modernity, of chartered streets, of mind-forged manacles. It all comes together in the marriage hearse. So, we're being married to it. And of course there's the other meaning here as well.

[00:12:45]Of the obvious, uh the Lord goes back, marries a woman, has a kid with her, but he's brought in the plague. But it's symbolic of the deeper spiritual sickness.

[00:12:55]And we have to remember, while Blake is making cutting social commentary here of incredible power, we also have to recall and remember that Blake is always talking to the higher.

[00:13:08]He's not to calling for socialist revolution in the modern context.

[00:13:12]He's calling for spiritual revolution.

[00:13:15]Take the blinders away. Take the mind-forged manacles away and realize that injustice is being wrought throughout the land due to our own spiritual dissociation.

[00:13:26]Come back to the living tradition. You know, take the blinders off.

[00:13:30]>> [laughter] [gasps] >> This is the uh the the the great sort of poetry of English visions, you know.

[00:13:37]Anyhow, this is a a wonderful poem from Blake. And I do hope that those of you who are watching this channel enjoyed it. Do subscribe to the channel if you're new.

[00:13:46]Join the Substack if you'd like me to explore any more uh poems or examples of English art or if you just want to support me. It's just £5 a month.

[00:13:54]Other than that, do subscribe to this channel. Thanks for watching, friends.

[00:13:57]See you next time.