Lyric Poem · Life
London
by William Blake · 1794
I wandered 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 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 new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.
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“London” by William Blake — quilloak.com/poems/london
Quick facts
- Poem
- London
- Poet
- William Blake
- Published
- 1794
- Length
- 16 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem, Rhyming Poems
- Themes
- Life, Sad, Power & Hubris
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 16 lines · 4 quatrains
- Line length
- Lines run 7-10 syllables (median 8), consistent with tetrameter. No single length dominates, which is normal once elision and contraction are in play.
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- William Blake1757–1827
- Source record
- PoetryDBLondon by william-blake, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- 1794
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 74e522caeb8127d0…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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