"The Little Vagabond" is spoken in the voice of that little vagabond himself—that is, a little rover or rogue. As the poem begins, readers might picture him squirming on a hard church pew, tugging on his mother's sleeve:
Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold,
His insistent epizeuxis on the words "dear Mother" establishes his imploring tone: he's terribly uncomfortable and wants to leave this chilly place for greener pastures. Just for example, he suggests, he and his mother might head for the "Ale-house"—the local pub, which looks awfully "healthy & pleasant & warm" in juxtaposition with the cold church. He clearly feels more welcome in the pub, where he says he is "use'd well," treated kindly. The way the church treats him, by contrast, would never go over "in heaven."
Such an assessment of the relative goodness of church and pub—especially in the voice of a child—would have sounded pretty scandalous in Blake's time. But this poem will suggest that the little vagabond has a good point. His innocent, common-sense observation that the pub is kindly and the church is cruel sets the stage for a critique of organized religion more generally. If this kid is a vagabond, the cold, rigid, hidebound church has made him one, driving him away when it could welcome him home.
The poem is made up of four quatrains (four-line stanzas); each is divided into two couplets by its AABB rhyme scheme. While most of the poem adheres strictly to this pattern, the first two lines (comparing the church and the pub) don't rhyme, a choice that emphasizes the difference between the "cold" church and the "warm" alehouse.
The poem is written in accentual meter. That means its lines all use a certain number of beats (four, in this case) without sticking to any one metrical foot (like the iamb or the trochee). This flexible rhythm sounds naturalistic and conversational, believably capturing the voice of a little kid. Its changeability also helps to create a mood—for instance, by emphasizing the very different atmospheres of the Church and Ale-house, as it does in lines 1-2:
Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold,
But the Ale-house is healthy & pleasant & warm;
The stumbling, awkward rhythms of the first line make the church sound plain uncomfortable. The second line, meanwhile, trots by in steady anapests (metrical feet with a da-da-DUM rhythm, as in "But the Ale") suggesting how much more easy, free, and happy the speaker feels when he's at the pub.