Blake's London from ‘Songs of Experience (1794) ‘London’ is a poem about the evil consequences of the Industrial Revolution. It is set in London, at night. The poet identifies with the speaker and he uses the first person pronoun ‘I’. He is there, in the city, and he perceives the scene through his senses, mainly sight and hearing. He sees a child, a soldier and a prostitute; he hears the child crying, the soldier sighing and the young prostitute cursing her new born infant child. These people stand for the victims of industrial society; the chimney sweeper is the victim of the Church, which, at that time, ran the workhouses. It was the Parish that decided on the children’s destiny. Sometimes children were also the victims of their own families who decided to sell them to a master sweep for money. The soldier is a victim of the political power which demands his death in war. The expression ‘runs in blood’, l.12, refers to all the violence and the bloodshed during the French revolution. The other victim is the young woman who has been driven to prostitution by extreme poverty. Blake criticizes the institution of marriage which is not based on love but on interest. He also hints at syphilis which affected prostitutes and was transmitted inside marriage as a result of debased sexual behaviour. Traduzione: Io vago attraverso le strade monopolizzate, vicino a dove scorre il Tamigi monopolizzato, e noto in ogni faccia che incontro, i segni della debolezza, i segni del dolore. In ogni pianto di ogni uomo, in ogni prianto infantile di paura, in ogni voce: in ogni divieto, sento le catene forgate dalla mente. Come il pianto dello spazza camino, atterrito dalla Chiesa annerita, e il sospiro del soldato sfortunato, scorre in sangue lungo i muri del palazzo. Ma attraverso la maggior parte delle strade a mezzanotte sento, Come la maledizione della giovane prostituta, Secca la lacrima dell’infante neonato, E rovina con piaghe il carro funebre del matrimonio. Sonnet composed upon Westminster bridge This poem, written by William Wordsworth in 1802, describes the view of London from the Westminster Bridge. There is an accurate description of the landscape, but also of the emotions that it conveys like the quietness, typical of the dawn. The poet reflects also on the coexistence between men and God and then between nature and civilization. The poem is made up of only one stanza which is composed of 14 lines, which have an irregular length. Traduzione: La terra non ha nulla da mostrare di più bello: vuoto sarebbe nell'anima colui che riuscisse a soprassedere una visione così commuovente nella sua maestosità. Ora la città indossa come (fosse) un vestito la bellezza del mattino - silenzioso, nudo. Navi, torri, palazzi, teatri e tempi giacciono aperti sui campi, e sotto il cielo. Del tutto luminosi e brillanti nell'aria limpida (letteralmente "senza fumo"). Mai il sole si immerse in modo più bello nella sua valle, roccia o collina di splendore; Mai ho visto, mai ho provato, una calma così profonda. Il fiume scorre seconda la sua dolce volontà Oh Dio! Le case stesse sembrano addormentate; e tutto quel cuore ricco di potenza giace immobile. Lyrical ballads The first edition of the lyrical ballads was published by wordsworth and colerige in 1798. The second edition was published in 1800 and it includes his famous preface. Colerige describes the origin of their book and the nature of their collaboration and their different roles. The preface of the lyrical ballads can be considered a manifesto for Wordsworth’s work. One of the most central themes of Wordsworth’s poetry is nature that is the expression of the ideal in the real. Generally, his description of natural landscape draw inspiration from everyday life and from personal experience. England in 1819 Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley's "England in 1819" is an expression of political anger and hope. the sonnet vents Shelley's outrage at the crises plaguing his home country during one of the most chaotic years of its history. The poem begins by attacking England's leaders and institutions, deeming the monarchy a disgraceful leech draining the country of its life force. The aristocracy is totally out of touch, while starving citizens remain violently oppressed by a greedy government that crushes the freedom of those it's meant to defend. Religion, meanwhile, offers no comfort, the Church itself having become corrupt and "Christless." In its final couplet, the poem then shifts to a vision of national redemption: all of these institutions are dead, the speaker says, but England will one day rise like a mythical bird from their ashes. The language is unusually vivid and emphatic and shows how deeply Shelley's feelings were involved. The line "a people starved and stabbed in the untilled field" may be an allusion to the Peterloo massacre. On August 16, 1819, a large number of people in favor of parliamentary reform had gathered in St. Peter's Field in Manchester to hear a speech by Henry Hunt, a reformer. When troops made an attempt to arrest Hunt, a panic ensued in which eleven people were killed and four hundred were injured.
