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April 17, 2005

‘Warning-this-train-terminates-at-HELL-for-all-other-destinations-please-change-at-PURGATORY’

I have spent the day battling with our pathetic public transport system in our poverty stricken, pestilence infested, filthy hellhole of a capital city. Oh it really deserves a whole post in itself, why I loathe the place but I always come home drained and exhausted having used all my energy retaining the will to live.
So I just thought I’d let you know that I have had that Blake poem running over and over in my head, so I have to present it to you as my poem of the day.

London by William Blake

I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A 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 appals,
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.

Posted by purple elephant at April 17, 2005 10:30 PM