The Syrian Revolution and Victorian London

It is strange how when we write about suffering and agony we seem to connect with all those who suffered the tyranny of fate and injustice now and in times past. Yesterday I wrote the short piece below and a friend of mine described it as Blakean, then sent me the poem “London” by William Blake. Blake, a Victorian poet and  artist,  was a rebel who rose against custom and social taboos because he believed they destroyed the soul. I read the poem and  saw the connection after a spell of deep thinking.  

I wrote in description of the  disruption and the schism attendant on a  revolution seeking freedom, but ruthlessly attacked and sabotaged, whereas  Blake was describing the shackles of mind and poverty, imposed by society, which destroy true  freedom.

This is the war of extremes, extreme savagery and extreme compassion; extreme sacrilege and extreme sanctity; extreme breach of human ethics and extreme refinement of the moral imperatives;  extreme overflow of love and extreme eruptions of hatred; extreme desire to kill, destroy and annihilate and extreme evocation of healing and grace.  It is as if the world is standing on the intersection of heaven and hell, salvation and damnation. Innocence is desecrated yet a yearning to restore innocence is informing the souls with visions of indestructible profundity. As death stalks and predominates, life fights back with the indestructible strength of the seed that must sprout, must push its roots deep into the good earth and rise up to to gleam in the sun.

London

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

I wander thro’ each charter’d street,

Near where the charter’d Thames does flow. 

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infants cry of fear,

In every voice: in every ban,

The mind-forg’d manacles I hear 

How the Chimney-sweepers cry

Every blackning Church appalls, 

And the hapless Soldiers sigh

Runs in blood down Palace walls 

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear

How the youthful Harlots curse

Blasts the new-born Infants tear 

And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse 

 

London by William Blake