Audio recording (download wav. file)

(sound courtesy of Rothe Technologies, Inc.)

William Blake

I wander through each chartered street,

   Near where the chartered Thames does flow,

And 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 appalls;

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.

Edwin J Ellis, ed., The Poetical Works of William Blake,