"Literary Links" - London is hell !!

"Literary Links" is a series of posts celebrating Britain's wonderful links with great authors, dramatists and poets.

The southern bank of the River Thames became a real den of vice and dissent.  The outcasts from the city gravitated to this area – some by choice to rub shoulders with other criminals and religious dissenters and others by force to spend time in squalid prisons like the Clink.

The Welsh Poet Tomas Prys (1564-1634) wrote a charming little poem called ‘London is Hell’ in which he compares Wales to Heaven and London as hell.   In his description he mentions these foul Southwark prisons by name and talks of the destitute inmates whose souls have been sucked out of them.

“there was no fear of hell but one: it is London”

A similar comparison was made by the poet Percy Shelley (1792-1822) who begins his poem Peter Bell the Third with the lines:

“Hell is a city much like London -  

A populous and a smoky city”

In another poem Shelley repeats this hell like theme with: 

“You are nowIn London, that great sea, whose ebb and flowAt once is deaf and loud, and on the shoreVomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.”

This is an excerpt from the tour London River Walks - South Bank which explores the southern bank of the River Thames.  The full tour is found on  www.obelisktours.co.uk