Notes

Compare how the poets explore the conflict between people and their environment in ‘London’ and one different poem from the poetry cluster 'Power and Conflict'.

The physical environments in ‘London’ and ‘Storm on the Island’ are both described by first-person narrators who lead us through each setting. Blake’s poem opens with the speaker walking through the London streets, his even stride suggested by the regular rhythm and ABAB rhyme scheme of the opening verses. Heaney’s speaker also uses the present tense to give his/her surroundings a feeling of immediacy. Both poems also explore the way each of these environments helps to shape the lives of their inhabitants and, in both cases, focus on the harmful effects felt by the people living there.

In ‘London’, Blake’s speaker paints a dystopian vision of the city where people live harsh, miserable, stunted lives. The use of repetition (“In every… In every…”) and parallelism (“marks of… marks of”) creates a feeling of relentless, inescapable suffering felt by all Londoners. Blake’s combination of visual and aural imagery to describe the sights and sounds of London also helps to capture the pain felt by its inhabitants. The first two verses build up to Blake revealing one of the causes of people’s suffering: “the mind-forged manacles”. This image emphasises the psychological pressures felt by Londoners in their urban environment. There is a lack of freedom connoted by the use of “manacles”, linking to the repetition of “chartered” in the opening verse which suggested that the lives of Londoners, and even the flow of the river itself, are restricted or inhibited.

In the third verse, Blake condemns the institutions which help to make Londoners’ lives so miserable – the Church and the State. He uses the nightmarish image of “blood” running down the “palace walls” to evoke the suffering of soldiers sent to fight for their country and also describes the “black’ning church” which allows child chimney-sweepers to suffer in terrible working conditions. This image of the “black’ning church” helps to highlight the pollution generated by increasing industrialisation but also symbolises the hypocrisy which stains the reputation of the church.

The poem ends with more bleak imagery. Things which are meant to provide joy such as marriage or raising a family are here described as causing more suffering. Blake’s final image of the “marriage hearse” acts as a striking oxymoron – an act which is supposed to promise new life instead only promises death. The “youthful harlot’s curse” shows how young women are exploited and also perhaps suggests the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases, again presenting London to be a place which torments its inhabitants.

In ‘London’ there is a feeling of isolation, with everyone detached from everyone else, but in ‘Storm on the Island’ Heaney immediately creates a feeling of community and collective action by using the plural pronoun, “we”. The short sentence which begins the poem (“We are prepared”) evokes an attitude of confidence and determination, again contrasting with the atmosphere of fear and despair in ‘London’.

One similarity with ‘London’ is that the environment is seen as bleak and unwelcoming. The earth is “wizened” suggesting emptiness and barrenness, an impression reinforced by the lack of any trees on the island which might provide some shelter. However, the inhabitants of the island are able to influence their environment in a way that Blake’s Londoners cannot. The list of three verbs (“We build… sink… roof”) again shows the collective effort made to protect themselves from their harsh environment and helps to create a feeling of calmness and security in the opening lines.

However, when the storm arrives, Heaney uses a range of methods to capture the sensations of violence and chaos. He uses caesuras at the beginning of lines to mimic the sudden bursts from the storm (“But no: when it begins…”) and employs the imagery of warfare (“exploding… strafes… salvo… bombarded”) to suggest the islanders as under attack from its environment. Personification also helps to bring the storm alive (“spits like a tame cat / Turned savage”) with the repetition of the ‘s’ and ‘t’ sound creating an aggressive, violent atmosphere.

While ‘London’ ended with images of pain, misery and death, the ending of ‘Storm on the Island’ is more reflective, with the speaker mulling over the “strange” thought that the wind is simply “empty air” and that, as a result, “it is a huge nothing that we fear”. While this could be reassuring to some readers, others may be more troubled by the poem ending with the word “fear”. Although the narrator knows he and his community will be safe, the violence of the storm and the extreme nature of their environment means that they are always wary of how the elements can turn against them.