Mind-Forged Manacles

In line 8 of the poem London, Blake aimed to use imagery to assist the reader in his overall point. The "mind-forged manacles" are not literally manacles. They are restraints in the sense that the mind cannot escape the weakness and woe the narrator sees in the faces of the people along the Thames. The minds of the people are locked into one setting. That setting could be regret, sadness, weariness, or any other suffocating emotion, but the manacles are not literal. The phrase is intended to be figurative. War could be the source of of London's problems simply based on the line depicting a soldier's blood on the palace walls. While this is not literal either, it certainly represents the sacrifices of the peasants and lowly for those of the upper-class, which is common in war.