I don't remember it looking like this.....

The poem "London" has an extremely melancholy tone. Every line speaks of people's sadness and crying and sighs and blood. It is just terrible. I have been to London and I thought it was a pretty happy place, but I'm sure the writer was speaking of a time other than 2009. However, if the goal of the poet was to create the melancholy tone, he was very successful. The first three stanzas are all about the people. Their sadness, their children's sadness, and their blood. The reader gets a very sad feeling after reading the poem, because every word has a sad feeling to it. The line that really shows this is "the hapless soldier's sigh runs in blood down the Palace walls." An image of soldier's blood on a castle is about as gruesome and sad as it gets. The word "cry" is also repeated in multiple stanzas which adds to the tone. Though I like happy poems, I can definitely see that the poems tone is conveyed very well.