For the British poet William Blake, many aspects of life in the late 1700s and early 1800s were bleak. In one of his favorite poems of mine, simply titled “London,” he wrote of such bleakness. It’s a short poem, only 16 lines, but it’s rather deep. Here it is:

London

I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet,