The city of London has inspired many poets throughout the ages: from Chaucer’s Pilgrims to Larkin’s ‘The Whitsun Weddings’. Two of the most distinctive portrayals are William Blake’s London (1794) and William Wordsworth’s Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1803. Blake’s poem presents a bleak view of London in the late 18th century, a dismal picture of fallen humanity. By contrast, Wordsworth’s Composed upon Westminster Bridge shows the city of London as beautiful and benign, not in any way threatening or corrupting. This essay explores how these two impressions of London depend on what aspect of London is being examined. Blake wanders around London viewing its inhabitants and describing what he sees and hears; whereas Wordsworth remains static on Westminster Bridge admiring an early morning snapshot view of London while its inhabitants are asleep: an unusual opinion of the city for him. It is more usual for Wordsworth to reject cities in favor of the countryside and nature. In Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey composed in 1798, some five years earlier than Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Wordsworth writes: I am still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye and ear, both what they half-create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognize In nature and the language of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being. (lines 103-112) Yet when praising London in Composed upon Westminster Bridge Wordsworth claims ‘[n]e’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep’ (line 12). He sees the city as peaceful and calm, and this impacts on his own cast of mind. However, Wordsworth is viewing London from Westminster Bridge when the city is sleeping - without the chaos of daily life around him. He is simply admiring a scene – and doing so in unequivocal terms: in this empirical poem (which, unusually for such poems, draws its conclusion at the beginning) he states that ‘Earth has not any thing to shew more fair’ (line 1). This statement implies that his ‘heart, and soul’ are no longer under the guardianship of nature (as in Tintern Abbey). The broad noun ‘Earth’ suggests that this is where he would prefer to be – a poem (to steal a title from Thom Gunn) in praise of cities. Blake sees and hears ‘weakness’ and ‘woe’ in ‘every face’. He emphasizes negative aspects of life in London. He ignores people who may be happy with their lives. By omitting any reference to people who don’t fit his model, Blake can use hyperbole extensively - such as in the repetition and stress of ‘every’: In every cry of every man In every Infant’s cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban The mind forg’d manacles I hear (lines 5-8) This repetition of the same word is a highly rhetorical device, common in public speaking. His use of this word suggests that the narrator takes on an omniscient quality. This quality undermines the idea of the narrator walking through the streets of London as a flaneur would. It is arguable that the narrator is imagining the scene, unlike Wordsworth’s poem, which appears to be an eyewitness account. By viewing two entirely different aspects of London subjectively it is possible to see how two opposing conclusions can be reached – one benign, the other gloomy. To project their various arguments, both poets use rhetorical devices. Wordsworth makes extensive use of alliteration. For example, ‘glittering’ (line 8) an