Songs of Experience: London

I wandered 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.

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