The Full Text of “The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)”
1When my mother died I was very young,
2And my father sold me while yet my tongue
3Could scarcely cry "weep! weep! weep! weep!"
4So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.
5There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
6That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved, so I said,
7"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare,
8You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."
9And so he was quiet, & that very night,
10As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight!
11That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack,
12Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;
13And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
14And he opened the coffins & set them all free;
15Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,
16And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.
17Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
18They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
19And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
20He'd have God for his father & never want joy.
21And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark
22And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
23Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;
24So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
The Full Text of “The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)”
1When my mother died I was very young,
2And my father sold me while yet my tongue
3Could scarcely cry "weep! weep! weep! weep!"
4So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.
5There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
6That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved, so I said,
7"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare,
8You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."
9And so he was quiet, & that very night,
10As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight!
11That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack,
12Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;
13And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
14And he opened the coffins & set them all free;
15Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,
16And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.
17Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
18They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
19And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
20He'd have God for his father & never want joy.
21And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark
22And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
23Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;
24So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
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“The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)” Introduction
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"The Chimney Sweeper" is a poem by William Blake, published in his 1789 collection Songs of Innocence. The poem is told from the perspective of a young chimney sweep, a boy who has been sold into labor by his father. The sweep meets a new recruit to the chimney sweeping gang named Tom Dacre, who arrives terrified. After the speaker tries to reassure Tom, Tom dreams of an angel who sets the chimney sweeps free, allowing them to play in green fields and then ascend to heaven. This dream seems to suggest that if the boys are obedient workers, they'll get into heaven. Implicitly, though, the poem takes issue with this idea, suggesting that it's a form of indoctrination for the Church. The companion poem of the same title, published in Songs of Experience, makes this position—that promises of heavenly salvation are simply a means to exploit child labor—crystal clear.
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“The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)” Summary
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I was just a little boy when my mother died. My father then sold me into the chimney sweep profession before I even knew how to speak. Since then, all I've done is sweep chimneys and sleep covered in dirt.
A new boy arrived one day; his name was Tom Dacre. He cried when his curly lamb-like hair was shaved off. I told him not to worry: with a shaven head, his beautiful locks wouldn't have to get dirty from all the chimney dust.
Later that night, Tom fell asleep. He had a vision in a dream. He saw row upon row of dead chimney sweepers in black coffins.
An angel came along with a key and unlocked the coffins, setting the sweeps free. Then they frolic in green fields, bathing in clear water and basking in the sun.
Naked, clean, and without their work implements, the sweeps rise up to heaven on clouds and play in the wind. The angel tells Tom that if he behaves well God will take care of him and make sure he is happy.
The next day, Tom woke up. We got out of bed before dawn and went with our bags and chimney brushes to our work. It was a cold morning but Tom seemed fine. If we all just work hard, nothing bad will happen.
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“The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)” Themes
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Hardship and Childhood
“The Chimney Sweeper” is a bleak poem told from the perspective of a chimney sweep, a young boy living in 1700s London who has to earn a living doing the dangerous work of cleaning soot from people’s chimneys. The poem makes no efforts to romanticize this life, portraying it as intensely impoverished and tough. Indeed, the poem argues that this is a kind of exploitation that effectively robs the children of their childhood, stealing their freedom and joy.
Early on, the poem establishes a sense of the hardship in the lives of young poor boys in 18th century London. This isn’t a task that requires much imagination—chimney sweeping was terrible, dangerous, and exhausting work for children. The reader quickly learns that the speaker’s mother is dead, and that he was sold by his father into labor. Tom Dacre probably had a similar upbringing. Now, he's had his head forcibly shaved to improve his effectiveness as a sweep. Both children, then, are forced into a miserable world. Indeed, chimney sweeping makes up pretty much the entirety of the boys’ existence. They sweep all day, and sleep “in soot”—both in terms of being dirty when they go to bed, and in the way their daily hardship affects their dreams.
In fact, it’s in one of these dreams that Tom Dacre has the vision that contains the poem’s key message. This dream, however, starts bleakly. He imagines “That thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe, Ned & Jack / Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black.” The young sweep, then, is fully aware of the realities of his life—it’s going to be short, brutish, and nasty.
The poem then offers a brief glimpse of what childhood should actually be like, which is full of freedom, joy, and nature:
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.This section of the poem is effectively a pastoral—a representation of idyllic nature. The kind of instinctive behavior depicted here, the poem implies, is what the boys should be occupied with—not getting stuck in people's chimneys, working all day just to be able to eat. This vision seems to emerge from Tom's imagination instinctively, as though Tom knows deep down what childhood should be like.
All in all, then, the boys' hardships, combined with the innocence of this part of the dream, casts doubt on the truthfulness of the poem's conclusion—that the sweeps only need to "do their duty" in order for God to take care of them and make them happy.
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Religion and Redemption
On the surface of it, "The Chimney Sweep" is a poem about salvation from a life of hardship. Young boys, forced into working London's chimneys, look to religion as a way of finding hope amid the misery. This hope, they seem to think, comes from the Christian religion. No matter the suffering in earthly life, each “good boy” who is well-behaved and dutiful will be rewarded with “joy” and “God for his father.” However, the poem questions whether this is actually true—and suggests it might just be a convenient way of making those boys into obedient little workers.
On a surface level, Tom's vision undoubtedly does offer a brief glimpse of hope and salvation. An angel visits him, bringing a message from God. This angel frees the dead boys, and they are allowed to frolic freely in nature before ascending to heaven. This part of the dream seems legitimate and rings true to Blake's ideas about childhood—that it should be free, imaginative, and joyful. Up there, in heaven, the children get to play, to be kids again—they “sport in the wind.” Religion, then, appears to provide solace in this life through the promise of joy and freedom in the next.
This religious fulfillment is linked to being a “good boy,” and here it’s possible to interpret the poem’s message in two ways. The poem could be taken at face value: being good results in access to heaven. But the poem also implicitly considers how religious belief is useful for getting people to accept the hardships in life. After all, what opportunity do the boys actually have to be “good,” considering all they really do is sweep chimneys and sleep? Perhaps being good means approaching this work with a sense of duty and attentiveness that masks how horrendous the work is. In fact, the poem seems to suggest that religion makes the boys accept the miserable conditions of their lives.
The poem thus concludes with a sense of uneasy resolution, as though Tom’s suffering is somehow solved by the angel’s visit. Both he and the speaker wake up the next morning, pick up their tools, and head out to work (almost as if they are adults going about their daily business). “[I]f all do their duty, they need not fear harm”—so the poem concludes. But it’s not difficult to detect a note of sadness in this moment, as though the truthfulness of this hope—and Tom’s dream—is only temporary, or even entirely false.
The poem’s ending can also be seen as a lack of resolution, then. It's unclear how long the promise of religious salvation can stave off the realities of suffering and hardship. Indeed, if read side-by-side with Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" from Songs of Experience (the poem here is from Songs of Innocence), the idea that the boys have been misled is pretty much impossible to avoid.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)”
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Lines 1-4
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry "weep! weep! weep! weep!"
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.“The Chimney Sweeper” doesn’t waste any time in launching into the bleak world of its central characters—two poor young boys living in 18th century London, where they work cleaning people’s chimneys. One of the remarkable aspects of the poem is the tone of the first-person speaker, who presents the tragic circumstances of his life in a way that is shockingly matter-of fact. The speaker explains how his mother died when he was “very young” (and he is still very young), while his father sold him into the life that he now leads.
The speaker explains that he became a chimney sweep before he could even really talk properly, before he knew how to "cry 'weep! weep! weep! weep!'" The epizeuxis here—the immediate repetition of the word "weep"—emphasizes the speaker’s poverty and hardship. This line captures the extent to which the sweep’s situation is worthy of weeping. Additionally, the fact that the speaker had hardly learned to “weep” when he was forced to work captures how his childhood was robbed from him. That is, crying—a perfectly normal activity for a child—is something that the speaker has barely had time to do, because he was forced into the world of work at such a young age.
In line 4, the poem makes a significant word choice, opting to describe the chimneys as "your chimneys." It's as if the speaker is sweeping the reader's chimney. This makes the reader complicit in the exploitation that causes the chimney sweeps' suffering, suggesting that everyone has some degree of responsibility for the society in which they live. Chimney sweeps were sometimes as young as four, forced to climb dirty chimneys in cramped and suffocating conditions. Their labor was usually rewarded only with meals and somewhere extremely basic to sleep—they weren't paid.
Indeed, the sibilance (a form of consonance that employs /s/ sounds) in this line helps convey the dustiness of the sweeps' working environment: "So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep." This /s/ sound, which links closely with the word "sweep" itself, occurs throughout the poem.
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Lines 5-8
There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved, so I said,
"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair." -
Lines 9-12
And so he was quiet, & that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight!
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black; -
Lines 13-16
And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins & set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun. -
Lines 17-20
Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father & never want joy. -
Lines 21-24
And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
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“The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)” Symbols
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Tom Dacre's Hair
Tom Dacre's lamb-like hair is a symbol for youthful innocence. When he's forced to join the chimney sweep gang, Tom Dacre has his hair shaved off. This hair is compared through simile to the curls on a "lamb's back." This helps emphasize Tom Dacre's youthfulness and innocence—like a lamb, he is young and defenseless. The act of shaving off his hair thus represents a loss of innocence, as well as the general demeaning of children that took place in industrialized London.
The specific mention of a lamb also has religious connotations. Jesus, for example, is also known as the Agnus Dei (the Lamb of God), and the lamb is a traditional symbol for Christ. In Blake's own poetry, the lamb is an important figure for spirituality, Godliness, and natural beauty (see "The Lamb" which also appears in Songs of Innocence).
The act of shaving additionally could also be seen as an allusion to the Biblical story of Samson. In the Book of Judges, Samson loses his immense strength when his hair is chopped off while he is sleeping. Similarly, Tom Dacre loses his youthful joy when his hair gets cut off.
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
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“The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Assonance
Assonance is used throughout "The Chimney Sweeper." The poem, generally speaking, uses simple language that fits with the speaker being a young sweep himself. The assonance has a gently playful sound to it, which helps support the poem's focus on issues of childhood.
An early example of assonance is in line 4: "So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep." The /ee/ sound chimes with "weep" from the line before, linking the act of crying to the enforced labor of chimney sweeping. As a repeated sound, the /ee/ also suggests the way that chimney sweeping is a repetitive task.
In line 12, which is part of Tom Dacre's dream, assonance and consonance are used to create an image of dead chimney sweeps all "locked up in coffins of black." The uniformity of the vowel sounds suggests the way that so many young children have suffered the same fate.
Lines 15 and 16 are also part of Tom Dacre's dream, and use subtle assonance to suggest the playfulness of childhood:
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.These /ee/ and /i/ vowels have a bouncy, frolicking kind of sound. In contrast to the examples discussed above, these lines capture a sense of joy—joy that is starkly different from the boys' daily lives.
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Caesura
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Consonance
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End-Stopped Line
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Epizeuxis
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Sibilance
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Simile
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"The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Soot
- Tom Dacre
- Sport
- Want
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The black ashy dust found in chimneys.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)”
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Form
"The Chimney Sweeper" is made up of six quatrains, or four-line stanzas. This kind of format is typical of Blake's poems, especially those in Songs of Innocence and Experience. The simplicity and regularity of the form supports the discussion of childhood, almost as if it's a nursery rhyme or childhood fable. The poem flows easily, mimicking the voice of a child.
There are four distinct sections to the poem. The first stanza is essentially the speaker's introduction to the misery and hardship of the life of a chimney sweep. The second stanza is Tom Dacre's arrival into the chimney sweep gang, followed by the shaving of his head.
The third, fourth, and fifth stanzas all deal with Tom Dacre's dream—which has elements of pastoral poetry (idyllic representations of nature). It also smuggles in what could be interpreted as a kind of brainwashing. That is, the dream reinforces the message Tom Dacre will have been hearing from the adults in charge of him, such as the master sweep and the Church administrators: that he should be a "good boy" and get on with his work. The final stanza takes place after the dream, with Tom and the speaker setting off for work the next morning.
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Meter
Broadly speaking, the poem's meter is both anapestic (da-da-DUM) and iambic (da-DUM). It mixes these two feet to achieve a flexible, song-like effect throughout. The lines are in tetrameter for the most part, meaning there are four stressed beats per line—a rhythm which is also common for songs. Overall, then, the poem flows easily. Blake's poems often do this, using a simple metrical sound to discuss complicated ideas and arguments. This poem sounds almost like a nursery rhyme, in fact, which reflects ironically on one of the poem's main themes: the corruption and exploitation of childhood.
A number of the lines use an iamb in the opening foot and anapests thereafter. For example, here's line 9:
And so | he was qui- | et, & that | very night,
The first foot here ("And so") is an iamb, and the rest are all anapests. The bouncy sound is easy to feel in the above line, as with elsewhere in the poem. It has both the galloping energy and calming naivety of childhood.
But one line has even more spring in its step than all the others—line 14:
And he op- | ened the cof- | fins & set | them all free;
This is a pure line of anapestic tetrameter, and its jaunty sound coincides with the moment that the angel sets the chimney sweeps free (in Tom Dacre's dream). The meter is thus liberated at the same time as the children are (albeit only in Tom's imagination).
As further evidence of this liberation, the next line features an extra stress:
Then down | a green plain, | leaping, | laughing | they run,
The extra stress added by "leaping," coming directly after the stressed word "plain," captures an exuberant sense of freedom, as if the line is metrically leaping with joy. (This third foot, with its DUM-da sound, is something called a trochee.)
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Rhyme Scheme
"The Chimney Sweeper" is written in quatrains that can be further broken down into two rhymed couplets, giving each stanza the rhyme scheme:
AABB
Overall, this regular scheme helps with the easy flow of the poem, which again is common to Blake's sound—a simplicity that holds complex ideas in place.
Sometimes, the rhymes come as a kind of conceptual pair. For example, the "bare"/"hair" rhyme in lines 7 and 8 contrasts Tom before and after he is shaved. Likewise, in lines 9 and 10, it's in the "night" that Tom's vision comes along (his "sight"). Of all of these, perhaps the most poignant is "boy" with "joy" in lines 19 and 20. This seems to highlight the lack of joy in the life of the young chimney sweeps.
The last stanza is worth close attention. "Dark" and "work" are not a perfect rhyme, suggesting that something is off. It's like a minor chord or moment of dissonance in the poem's otherwise easygoing melody. This also happens with the rhyme between "behind" and "wind" in the previous stanza. In both cases, the slant rhyme might be part of the way Blake hints that the boy's conclusion—that he needs only to be well-behaved and dutiful to receive happiness and joy—is sadly mistaken.
In support of this idea, notice how in the last couplet "warm" is replaced by "harm," which ends the poem. This replacement captures the way that authority figures manipulate the boys' desire for comfort, getting them to accept the harm that is continually done to them.
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“The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)” Speaker
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The speaker of the poem is a young chimney sweep. The poem opens with some autobiographical information, with the speaker explaining how his mother is dead. He was sold into child labor as a chimney sweep before he could even speak properly. From the start of the poem, he's a tragic figure.
The speaker narrates the story of a new arrival into the chimney sweep gang, Tom Dacre, and indeed offers Tom support when he cries out of fear. It's also this same speaker who acts as the mouthpiece for Tom Dacre's dream, during which the boys are told to be "good" and to "do their duty" in order to receive God's love (and, in turn, happiness, joy, and freedom).
But there's a real sense of (understandable) naivety to the speaker's perspective, suggesting the way that childhood innocence can be exploited. The speaker's concluding sentiment—that God will protect chimney sweeps from all harm—is patently untrue. Chimney sweeping was horrifically dangerous, and Blake's point seems to be to highlight the way that the Church played a significant role in the exploitation of the young.
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“The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)” Setting
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The poem is set in London, during the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s. This London, as Blake describes it here and in other poems, is full of pollution, corruption, and poverty. The poem itself is primarily set over the course of one night, telling the story of Tom Dacre, a new arrival in a chimney sweeping gang (of which the speaker is also a member). Told in the past tense, there is something dark and inevitable about the way the poem unfolds—as though the chimney sweepers' fate has already been decided.
The most significant aspect of the poem's setting is the way that it contrasts dreams with reality. The poem starts and ends with a picture of genuine and realistic hardship (stanzas 1 and 6). The sweeps begin the poem in misery and end it there too (though they do hold onto some kind of hope).
Meanwhile Stanzas 3-5 are set in Tom Dacre's imagination. They portray his longing for a more free and joyful childhood. Briefly, then, the setting becomes almost pastoral—a depiction of idyllic nature, the kind that children would love to play in. Industrial London gives way to a vision of green fields, clean rivers, and a divine ride "upon clouds." This vision can be interpreted as ending in heaven itself, as the children "sport in the wind" of the sky, and the angel promises Tom that "He'd have God for this father."
In general, however, the poem takes place in an unforgiving, industrialized urban landscape. Though the vision of the middle stanzas represents an escape from that landscape, the poem seems to hint that this escape may only be an illusion—that the boys will only leave London "in coffins of black."
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)”
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Literary Context
"The Chimney Sweeper" was published as part of the Innocence section of William Blake's best-known work, Songs of Innocence and Experience (first published in 1794, though The Songs of Innocence was also published individually a few years prior). This book of poems is essentially designed to express specific morals, though Blake resists oversimplifying difficult situations. As in "The Chimney Sweeper," there is often a great deal of ambiguity and suggestive imagery in these poems. Blake's work is also generally full of opposites and juxtapositions: childhood vs. adulthood, life vs. death, freedom vs. oppression (all of which apply to the chimney sweepers).
A key poetic influence on Blake was John Milton, whose Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained also creatively examined humankind's relationship to God. But Blake was also a wide reader of religious scholarship, which undoubtedly played a formative role in his poetry. For example, the influence of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish Lutheran theologian, can be seen in the way Blake depicts the fundamental spirituality of humanity.
Blake was not well-known as a poet in his time, and many of his contemporaries considered him to be a madman. He worked primarily as a painter, printmaker, and engraver, and he felt that his poetry was misunderstood in his era. He did not enjoy the success of some of the other poets associated with the same time period, such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge. This sense of isolation gives Blake's poetry a radical and prophetic quality; his poems often seem like small acts of rebellion against the status quo of the day.
Also important to Blake's work is the idea of the visionary—that is, art that radically reimagines the world. There are many accounts of Blake witnessing angels or other spiritual phenomena, and these experiences play into the prophetic quality of his writing. He is often grouped together with the Romantic poets (such as Wordsworth and Coleridge), and his work does share certain common ground with the ideals of Romanticism that dominated the late 17th and early 18th centuries. These ideals include the importance of childhood, the imagination, and the power of nature. However, his life and writings are distinct enough that it may make more sense to regard him as a singular entity in English literature, rather than as a solely Romantic poet.
Perhaps the most essential element of this particular poem's literary context is its partner poem in Songs of Experience. This other poem has the same title, "The Chimney Sweeper," showing that they effectively come as a pair. If there was any doubt that the conclusion in this poem isn't meant to be taken at face value, the Experience poem makes this abundantly clear. It's also worth taking a look at "The Lamb" another poem from the Songs of Innocence, which shows the way Blake links godliness, joy, freedom, and nature with the figure of the lamb.
Historical Context
Chimney sweeping was a horrific form of work mostly inflicted on children. Roughly speaking, this forced labor was most prominent between the Great Fire of London (1666) and its abolition in 1875. Ironically, it was regulations after the Great Fire that made England's chimneys more angular and narrow—making children pretty much the only people small enough to get inside them to clean them. This was terrible work—the soot was carcinogenic, and sweeps were sometimes burned, trapped, or asphyxiated.
The speaker and Tom Dacre are probably what was technically known as climbing boys. A gang of chimney sweepers would be led by a master sweep—an adult—who would get paid by the state authorities to take on children for work. These master sweeps had to provide lodgings and meals to their group, but this was highly unregulated and, as the poem suggests, a pretty miserable existence.
It's notable that in this deeply religious poem there is no mention of the official Church. Instead, the reader is presented with a close communion between nature, humanity, and God—which is how Blake felt religion should be. Blake's rebellious streak also owed something to the American and French Revolutions, which gave thinkers opportunities to dream of better forms of society (though the revolutions didn't necessarily fulfill those promises).
Blake was also writing during the accelerating Industrial Revolution, and he saw its economic, social, and environmental changes as threats to humankind. For Blake, the factories of the Industrial Revolution represented a form of physical and mental enslavement—the "mind-forg'd manacles" mentioned in his poem "London." Indeed, it was during this period that the use of chimney sweeps increased greatly.
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More “The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)” Resources
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External Resources
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A Reading of "The Chimney Sweeper" — The poem read by Toby Jones.
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Illustrations and Other Poems — A resource from the Tate organization, which holds a large collection of Blake originals.
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Full Text of Songs of Innocence and Experience — The full text in which "The Chimney Sweeper" is collected.
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Blake's Visions — An excerpt from a documentary in which writer Iain Sinclair discusses Blake's religious visions.
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Blake's Radicalism — Another excerpt from Sinclair, this time on Blake's radicalism.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by William Blake
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