William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper"

William Blake, one of the first of many great romantic poets, is most popular for his ground breaking work from his Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience poetry selections. If you have read both sections, it is vindicated that the poetry from each is related in multiple ways. Both sections noticeably have many similar poem titles and frequently, a poem that begins in Songs of Innocence seems to flow and connect with the same titled poem in Songs of Experience.

 The poem that I have enjoyed the most was from the Songs of Innocence section called "The Chimney Sweeper". The idea from this poem that bothered me the most revolves around the parents. It was quite typical that the parents of the chimney sweepers would send their children of to work as young as seven years of age. Owners of chimney's needed children because of how small the width was in the chimney. Although many of these boy's were parish children or orphans, many were sold into the trade by their family, just like the boy's from Blake's poems.

 

 As we can see in the section below, the narrator of the poem's parents have sold him off young. Below is a section from "The Chimney Sweeper" from Songs of Innocence:

 When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tounge,

Could scarcely cry 'weep weep weep weep'.

So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

 We can clearly see how young this boy is by Blake writing "weep weep weep weep" instead of "sweep sweep sweep sweep". Blake did an extraordinary job with diction in the poem. Instead of just writing how young this boy was, he made us feel sympathy for the child because he was so young that he could not even speak correctly.

 We also see in the poem how much hatred the chimney sweeps had for their parents. Blake made it quite clear that he was disgusted by the idea of these children's parents trading them off for work. We read in the poem that on the boys who goes by the name of Tom Dacre, see's Angels in the middle of the night. The Angel tells the boy that his father sold him and that if he continues to be good and work, he will die and go to heaven. It is absurd that this poor child wanted to be dead than live! Below is the section from the poem:

The Angel told Tom if he'd be a good boy,

He'd have God for his father & never want joy

Overall, the parents of the sweep children were harsh and stole their children’s childhood. As we can see from Blake’s poem, the children lacked love and attention from the parents. These parents sold their children off at soon as they could and trained them to work since day one.

For more information and history on chimney sweeps, please visit:

http://www.ruchalachimney.com/history.html