There's little better than "mind-forged manacles."
(For everyone who isn't an English major, the reference to harlots and blasting the newborn infant's tear is a reference to the effect of venereal disease on the offspring of the respectable customers: blindness.)
Overall, I think it is the most perfect poem in the English language. I mean if there has to be one such.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
And oh do you tie yourself in knots if you try to gloss this. "Charter/chartered" alone plays more tricks than I've ever traced out.
Carrol
On 10/11/2011 12:15 PM, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
> Blake writes:
>
> 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.
>
> 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 appals,
> 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.
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk