"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."
The diction and syntax of this poem creates an obvious atmosphere of distress and hopelessness. Whether through anastrophe like that found in the line "The mind-forged manacles I hear", or in words like "cry of fear", " mind-forged manacles", "black'ning Church", and "hapless Soldier's sigh", Blake successfully achieves a mood of serious chaos and danger inside the reader's mind. The reader wants to help but can't. It seems that these people whom are burdened with terrible fates are just poor innocent souls undeserving of this punishment. Even the Harlot is portrayed as "youthful" and along with that quality comes assumptions of innocence and feelings of sorrow for the woman. And because she is confined to such a path in life, she too leads to the destruction of the values of marriage and the good ways to raise children, whether they're her own or those of her partners. The Church and hierarchy are made out to be the villains here. The line "Every black'ning Church apalls" shows the Church's lack of compassion for those who express their anguish. They rather expect the suffering people to bear it in silence. The hierarchy in the same apathetic way send the soldiers off to die without considering twice the value of their lives. Readers feel sympathy for the suffering who exist in this world of corruption.
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