Answer

The London of the 1800s is full of sadness as he notes
‘and mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe.’

He discusses in the second stanza the cries of every man and the ‘Infant’s cry of fear’ London seems to be like a prison that is too ordered where everyone is subject to ‘the mind-forg’d manacles’ which are like chains imprisoning the minds of all the people, as if the government is trying to control everyone so much as to not allow them to have their own, independent thoughts.

Even the church is ‘black’ning’ which means the walls are black from the soot of all the chimneys, but also means that corruption is rife in London at this time and the church is forgotten.

You may think that nothing much has changed from 1800 to today.

‘The hapless Soldier’s sigh Runs in blood down palace walls’ Refers to the needless deaths of soldiers at war and the blame is put of the royalty who sent the men out to fight and thus the blood runs down the place walls symbolic of the fact that it is the palaces fault that there has been death.

There is sadness in the final stanza that there has been birth, where there should be joy. The Harlot (or prostitute) curse the birth of a child as it is no doubt the result of an accidental pregnancy.

And marriage is seen as a death, the ‘hearse’ normally associated with funerals as it is the vehicle that the dead body is carried to the grave in. here the marriage is cursed by ‘plagues’ (disease) and seems like a death.

It is a world upside down, where what should be happy events are seen as bad ones.

The structure is ordered, like the forced order of the London that Blake lives in.