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Both William Blake’s ‘London’ and William Wordsworth’s ‘Lines: Tintern Abbey’ offer contrasting settings: the heart of urban industry and the epitome of tranquility in nature, respectively. Despite such disparate settings, however, they explore similar themes, namely those of detachment and connection, and constraint and transcendence. By doing so, the two poems seek to illustrate Man’s inextricable link to nature, and the effect of detaching from both the natural setting, and our own base nature.

In William Blake’s ‘London’, the speaker seeks to create a detachment from the setting. From the beginning line of the poem, we are told that that the speaker is a wanderer (‘I wander tho’ each charter’d street’), which thus posits him as a passive figure, rather than an active participant. In this regard, it can be seen that Blake illustrates a trope of Romantic literature by using this speaker (perhaps Blake himself) as the Solitary, and what Wordsworth termed as the Wanderer. By establishing this solitary figure that is detached from the hellish imagery of London (seen through the incessant cacophony of sound: ‘In every cry of every Man’, ‘In every Infant’s cry’, ‘the youthful Harlot’s curse/Blasts’), perhaps Blake seeks to detach himself from the growing influence of industry. Indeed, the very place and title of the poem, London, was at the heart of the industrial revolution, and saw expansive urbanisation. The solitary figure can thus be seen as Man’s yearning to escape from this encroachment on nature and loosen themselves from the ‘mind-forg’d manacles’ which it creates. Alternatively, whilst this detachment could be seen as an escape from London and its growing industry, it can also be seen that this Solitary is a product of such a setting. Throughout the entire poem, all of the speaker’s perceptions of the populace of London come not from interaction, but merely seeing and hearing the people deal with their individual pain. This is best illustrated in the second stanza wherein the speaker hears ‘every cry of every Man’. Whilst the capitalisation of ‘Man’ would suggest a homogenous connection of mankind, the lexical choice of ‘every’ separates Man into individuals. This could be Blake commenting again on the growing influence of the industrial revolution in regards to how it reduced the need for community and instead focused on the individual. Thus, by Blake showing a detachment not only from his setting but also by his fellow men, it can be argued that he critiques this growing influence of industry to show how it creates a complete isolation of the individual and disconnection from nature and community.

Contrastingly, Wordsworth illustrates a deep connection between the individual and place in ‘Tintern Abbey’. Whilst Wordsworth does have a literal detachment from his setting (‘five years have past’) of Tintern Abbey, the connection is ‘felt in the blood, and felt along the heart’. This description within the semantic field of biology thus links the setting of Tintern Abbey with Wordsworth’s innermost nature. Whilst this can be seen to illustrate the Romantic concept that man has an inextricable link with nature, it’s more intriguing to see this theme developed when, pondering on the setting, Wordsworth juxtaposes his present state with his youth. 

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