Audio recording (download wav.file)

  (courtesy Rothe Technologies, Inc.)

 

William Blake (1757-1827):

 

London

 

I wander 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 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.

 

Edwin J Ellis, ed., The Poetical Works of William Blake,

Vol. I. (London: Chatto & Windus, 1906) 88.