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In Blake's "London" the speaker connects various characters and socio/political institutions in order to critique the injustices perpetrated in England. The busy, commercial city of London functions as a space in which the speaker can imagine ....

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... goods or property. In the first line of his poem as Blake speaks of how he is wandering through the "charter'd" streets, he is commenting on this commercial aspect of London. As he moves on in his poem he also refers to the "charter'd" Thames, he is telling us in this second line that even a river which is a force of nature, is owned in London. When Blake says that he sees "marks of weakness, marks of woe" in "every face" he meets, he means that he can see how this commercialism is affecting everyone rich and poor. Yet, despite the divisions that the word charter'd suggests, the speaker contends that no one in London, neither rich or poo ...