Next, I'm Going for London, England. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

I'm interested to see what my classmates will say on William Blake's London, because we didn't get a chance to talk about it today in class.  In our small group discussion of the poem yesterday, we all sort of had this consensus of a dark, unhappy, immoral, provacative, macabre city where there is some serious conflict going on.  The repetitive description of a cry in stanza two and words like 'blood', 'blight', 'plagues', and 'hearse' just give this impending sense of death and disease.  One person in our group (Kati, I believe) said that they saw this undertone of London being like a metaphorical prison one can't escape, with "mind-forged manacles" [line 8] and the "hapless Soldier's sigh" [line 11].  I agree with this interpretation, and building on present the concept that this metaphorical prison is imposed on the lower class by the aristocrats, who look down on a degenerative society where, in stanza four, "the youthful Harlot's curse" can destroy a marriage ("plagues the Marriage hearse") [lines 14, 16].  I look forward to hearing the large group's opinions on the poem; one which I believe accurately conveys an image of London so common in literature of that time.

Sweeney Todd came to mind upon reading this last one.