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"The Chimney Sweeper" is the title of a poem by William Blake, published

in two parts in Songs of Innocence in 1789 and Songs of experience in
1793. The poem "The Chimney Sweeper" is set against the dark
background of child labour that was prominent in England in the late 18th
and 19th century. At the age of four and five, boys were sold to clean
chimneys, due to their small size. These children were oppressed and had
a diminutive existence that was socially accepted at the time. In the earlier
poem, a young chimney sweeper recounts a dream by one of his fellows, in
which an angel rescues the boys from coffins and takes them to a sunny
meadow; in the later poem, an apparently adult speaker encounters a child
chimney sweeper abandoned in the snow while his parents are at church or
possibly even suffered death where church is referring to being with God.
The poem from Songs of Experience was set to music in 1965 by Benjamin
Britten as part of his song cycleSongs and Proverbs of William Blake.
Analysis[edit]
In 'The Chimney Sweeper' of Innocence, Blake can be interpreted to
criticise the view of the Church that through work and hardship, reward in
the next life would be attained; this results in an acceptance of exploitation
observed in the closing lines 'if all do their duty they need not fear harm.'
Blake uses this poem to highlight the dangers of an innocent, naive view,
demonstrating how this allows the societal abuse of child labour.
In Experience, 'The Chimney Sweeper' further explores this flawed
perception of child labour in a corrupt society. The poem shows how the
Church's teachings of suffering and hardship in this life in order to attain
heaven are damaging, and 'make up a heaven' of the child's suffering,
justifying it as holy. The original questioner of the child ('Where are thy
father and mother'?) offers no help or solution to the child, demonstrating
the impact these corrupt teachings have had on society as a whole.
Gallery[edit]
Scholars agree that the "of Innocence" poem "The Chimney Sweeper" is
the 12th object in the order of the original printings of the Songs of
Innocence and of Experience and the "of Experience" version of the poem
was 37th in the publication order. The following, represents a comparison
of several of the extant original copies of the poem, their print date, their
order in that particular printing of the poems, and their holding institution:[3][4]
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In William Blake’s London, the fate of chimney sweeps was a cruel one.
Little boys as young as six were often sold by families who could not afford
to feed them and apprenticed to the trade. They were sent terrified up the
dangerous and dark chimneys and, if they dared refuse, they were
frequently terrorised by their new masters, who threatened to return them
to the life of poverty and starvation from whence they had come. As the
House Report on Sweeps shows[1], the job was not only horribly frightening
but also profoundly dangerous. Sweeps suffered high rates of cancer from
exposure to soot, along with respiratory diseases, broken bones and
stunted growth. Sweeps usually chose the chimney over starvation but
whatever choice they made, their lives were haunted by a fear of death.
Blake wrote two poems about the young sweeps he saw suffering in the
streets of London. He placed one in the Songs of Innocence and the other
in the Songs of Experience. The Songs of Innocence and Experience was
printed in two phases. In 1789, Blake printed the first few copies of The
Songs of Innocence and, in 1794, he bound these together with more
illuminated plates and titled the work The Songs of Innocence and
Experience: shewing two sides of the human soul. Blake therefore declared
his interest in duality on the very first page of the 1794 edition. When he
took the fate of chimney sweeps as the subject for a poem in both
Innocence and Experience, he gave us at least two ways of seeing the
same social predicament.
By comparing Blake’s two ‘Chimney Sweeper’ poems, we can get some
sense of his feelings about innocence and experience as ‘contrary states’.
The sweep in Innocence doesn’t understand the life in which he finds
himself. He is sold ‘while yet [his] tongue, / Could scarcely cry weep weep,
weep weep’. ‘Weep’ sounds very like ‘sweep’. This is a poetic strategy with
which Blake suggests that as there is little difference in the way the words
sound to our ears, so there is little difference in what the words mean to the
child. But the child’s language is not adequate to make sense of his sorrow.
He does not know that he has been taught a false language, which makes
him believe that sadness must be a fact of everyday life.
The little child who narrates the Song from Innocence is, therefore, unable
to comprehend the world in which he finds himself. This makes innocence
a much more frightening state than experience. The chimney sweeper of
Experience knows his position is one of ‘misery’ and angrily berates society
for it. Like the child of Innocence he cries ‘weep weep’ and Blake again
puns on the similarity of sound between ‘weep’ and ‘sweep’. The difference
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is that the child of experience knows this life has been forced upon him and
he realises that he has been ‘taught’ the language of the sweep’s sorrowful
life. Unlike innocence, Blake suggests that experience is a state of
knowledge and control.
The child of experience directs his anger at the organised religion of the
church. In the last line of the poem, he implies that the church profits from
the miserable life that he leads and therefore ‘make[s] up a heaven of our
misery’. This suggests that organised religion is built upon innocent pain. It
also suggests that the church weaves a fiction of happiness, pretending
that children like the sweep are satisfied instead of suffering. The sin of
organised religion, as Blake sees it, is to prevent people from seeing things
as they are by training them in the fallacy of received wisdom. So Blake
implies that social problems are intimately connected with spiritual
problems. Just as the child’s parents fail to perceive his misery, so they fail
to perceive the lack of spiritual truth in the doctrines and practices of the
church.
In ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ of Innocence, the speaker’s friend, little Tom
Dacre, has a dream, which discloses the malicious fiction that suffering in
this world is relieved by salvation in the next. Without the tools of
experience, which would equip him to see this falsehood for what it is, Tom
Dacre, like the innocent narrator, is little more than a ventriloquial voice for
institutional control. In the last line of the poem he parrots the doctrine of
oppression: ‘So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm’. Like the
innocent narrator, he has internalised the language of abuse and does not
have the vocabulary with which to criticise it.
Blake’s illuminated plates depict noticeably different kinds of figures. In The
Songs of Innocence the small, dancing forms of children seem natural
extensions of the vines and leaves and curling calligraphy. Three little
figures at the top of the plate are barely distinguishable from it. All the
children, here, have a light and unearthly quality, far removed from the life
of the chimney sweep. The green in the foreground suggests a paradisial
landscape. The adult figure in the bottom right-hand corner is reminiscent
of Blake’s depictions of Jesus. This is the platitudinous image of salvation,
not a depiction of the real conditions of suffering.
By contrast, the plate from The Songs of Experience shows a child bent
over, hardly able to withstand the onslaught of winter weather and hard
work. His face is turned accusingly towards the viewer and turned upwards.
This puts us in an uncomfortably similar position to the parents, who are
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‘gone up to the church to pray’. Unlike the plate from Innocence, where the
figures are slender and free of earthly restraint, this boy is heavyset. The
snow drives down and the sky is dark. The colouring of the plate is black,
white and a kind of muddy brown, suggesting a winter scene where nothing
can grow or thrive.
These two poems are not only about the atrocious fate of chimney sweeps
in Blake’s society. They are also a comment on the contrary states of
innocence and experience. Innocence, here, seems a more frightening
condition because the innocent have no way of understanding the world in
which they live. By contrast, the child of experience is a vocal social critic.
Blake entwines this social criticism with criticism of organised religion
precisely because he sees both issues as manifestations of the same
fundamental problem of blinkered perception. This, for Blake, is the real
barrier to social progress. But only the child of experience is able to see the
platitudes of church and state for what Blake believes they are: the malice
that keeps little boys chained to a terrifying and dangerous life.
In 1789 (the year of the beginning of the French Revolution),
Blake brought out his Songs of Innocence, which included The
Chimney Sweeper. The poem is in first person, a very young
chimney sweeper is exposing the evils of chimney sweeping as a
part of the cruelties created by sudden increase in wealth. The
poem was used as a broadsheet or propaganda against the evil of
Chimney Sweeping. The Chimney Sweeper’s life was one of
destitution and exploitation. The large houses created by the
wealth of trade had horizontal flues heating huge rooms which
could be cleaned only by a small child crawling through them.
These flues literally became black coffins, which killed many little
boys. A sweeper’s daily task was courting death because of the
hazards of suffocation and burns. These children were either
orphans or founding or were sold by poor parents to Master
Sweepers for as little as two guineas. They suffered from cancers
caused by the soot, and occasionally little children terrified of the
inky blackness of the Chimneys got lost within them and only
their skeletons were recovered.

he Chimney Sweeper Analysis

When my mother died I was very young,
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In these twenty-four lines of William Blake’s poem, The Chimney

Sweeper, a little boy, is telling the story of his despairing life as
well as the sad tales of other chimney’s sweeper boys. The little
boy narrates that he was very young when his died. He was then
sold by his father to a Master Sweeper when his age was so
tender that he could not even pronounce the word ‘sweep’ and
cryingly pronounced it ‘weep’ and wept all the time. The pun
intended through the use of word ‘weep’ three times in the third
line of this stanza holds pathetic significance. Most chimney
sweepers, like him, were so young that they could not pronounce
sweep and lisped ‘weep’. Since that tender age the little boy is
sweeping chimney and sleeping at night in the soot-smeared
body, without washing off the soot (blackness).
There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
In the second stanza, the little narrator tells us the woeful tale of
Tom Dacre. This is a very famous character in Blake’s many
poems. Tom was called ‘Dacre’ because he belonged to Lady
Dacre’s Almshouse, which was situated between St. James Street
and Buckingham Road. The inmates of the Almshouse were
foundling orphans, who were allowed to be adopted by the poor
only. It may be a foster father who encased the boy Tom by
selling him to a Master Sweeper. Tom wept when his head was
shaved, just as the back of a lamb is shaved for wool. The
narrator then told Tom not to weep and keep his peace. The
narrator told Tom to be calm because lice will not breed in the
pate without hair and there will be no risk for hair to catch fire.
And so he was quiet, & that very night,
The third stanza continues the story of Tom who was calmed by
the consoling words of the narrator. That same night while
sleeping Tom saw a wonderful vision. He saw in his dream that
many Chimney sweepers, who were named Dick, Joe, Ned and
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Jack, were dead and their bodies were lying in caged coffins,
made of black-colored wood.

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,

In the fourth stanza, the vision is completed. An Angel, who was
carrying a shining key, came near the coffins. The Angel opened
the coffins containing the bodies and set all the bodies free from
the bondage of coffins. The freed little sweepers of the chimney
ran down a green ground, washed themselves in the water of a
river and dried themselves in the sunlight to give out a clean
shine. This was really a very delightful moment for these
chimney sweepers, who got freed from the shackles of bondage
labor, exploitation and child labor.

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,

In the fifth stanza, the little boy continues narrating the dream
vision of Tom. All the little boys were naked and white after
washing. They were naked because their bags of clothes were left
behind. They cast off the burden of life along with the bags of
soot at the time of death. Now naked and white, the little
chimney sweeper boys ride the clouds and play in the wind. The
image of clouds floating freely is Blake’s metaphor for the
freedom from the material boundaries of the body and an
important visual symbol. The Angel told Tom that if he would be a
good boy he would have God for his father and there would never
be lack of happiness for him.

And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark

In the last stanza of Blake’s poem, The Chimney Sweeper, the
narrator tells that Tom woke up and his dream vision broke up.
Tom and other little sweeper boys rose up from their beds in the
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dark. They made themselves ready to work taking their bags for
soot and the brushes to clean chimney. The morning was cold,
but Tom, after the dream, was feeling warm and happy.
In the last line of the poem, a moral has been thrown to us: If all
do their duty, they need not fear any harm. The last stanza shows
the reality of the sweepers’ life. The antithesis between the vision
of summer sunshine and this dark, cold reality is deeply ironic.
Even though the victims have been mollified, the readers know
that innocent trust is abused.

The Chimney Sweeper consists of six quatrains, each following

the AABB rhyme scheme, with two rhyming couplets per quatrain.
Through this poem, the poet sheds light on the pitiable condition
of the chimney sweepers who were being exploited by their
Masters.
This is a poem which describes the rampant bondage labor, child
labor, exploitation of children at tender age, and the pitiable
condition of the orphaned children or the poor children who were
sold by their poor parents.

In all, this poem sarcastically attacks the advanced societies that

keep their eyes shut toward these children, but act as being
generous among their near and dear ones by holding or attending
some charity shows/functions for the poor and down-trodden
people in their country. Moreover, it is surprising to note here that
these social evils even today prevail in our society.

The speaker of this poem is a small boy who was sold into the
chimney-sweeping business when his mother died. He recounts
the story of a fellow chimney sweeper, Tom Dacre, who cried
when his hair was shaved to prevent vermin and soot from
infesting it. The speaker comforts Tom, who falls asleep and has a
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dream or vision of several chimney sweepers all locked in black

coffins. An angel arrives with a special key that opens the locks
on the coffins and sets the children free. The newly freed children
run through a green field and wash themselves in a river, coming
out clean and white in the bright sun. The angel tells Tom that if
he is a good boy, he will have this paradise for his own. When
Tom awakens, he and the speaker gather their tools and head out
to work, somewhat comforted that their lives will one day
improve.
“The Chimney Sweeper” comprises six quatrains, each following
the AABB rhyme scheme, with two rhyming couplets per quatrain.
The first stanza introduces the speaker, a young boy who has
been forced by circumstances into the hazardous occupation of
chimney sweeper. The second stanza introduces Tom Dacre, a
fellow chimney sweep who acts as a foil to the speaker. Tom is
upset about his lot in life, so the speaker comforts him until he
falls asleep. The next three stanzas recount Tom Dacre's
somewhat apocalyptic dream of the chimney sweepers’ “heaven.”
However, the final stanza finds Tom waking up the following
morning, with him and the speaker still trapped in their dangerous
line of work.

There is a hint of criticism here in Tom Dacre's dream and in the

boys' subsequent actions, however. Blake decries the use of
promised future happiness as a way of subduing the oppressed.
The boys carry on with their terrible, probably fatal work because
of their hope in a future where their circumstances will be set
right. This same promise was often used by those in power to
maintain the status quo so that workers and the weak would not
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unite to stand against the inhuman conditions forced upon them.

As becomes more clear in Blake's Songs of Experience, the poet
had little patience with palliative measures that did nothing to
alter the present suffering of impoverished families.
What on the surface appears to be a condescending moral to lazy
boys is in fact a sharp criticism of a culture that would perpetuate
the inhuman conditions of chimney sweeping on children. Tom
Dacre (whose name may derive from “Tom Dark,” reflecting the
sooty countenance of most chimney sweeps) is comforted by the
promise of a future outside the “coffin” that is his life’s lot.
Clearly, his present state is terrible and only made bearable by
the two-edged hope of a happy afterlife following a quick death.

Blake here critiques not just the deplorable conditions of the

children sold into chimney sweeping, but also the society, and
particularly its religious aspect, that would offer these children
palliatives rather than aid. That the speaker and Tom Dacre get
up from the vision to head back into their dangerous drudgery
suggests that these children cannot help themselves, so it is left
to responsible, sensitive adults to do something for them.

the Shepherd
Blake's primary persona in Songs of Innocence, the Shepherd is
inspired by a boy on a cloud to write his songs down. The
Shepherd writes of Innocence, about lambs and the Lamb, about
nature, and about the experiences of children. The Shepherd is
intended as a (biased) view of the world from a more naive
perspective than Blake himself holds.
the Bard
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The Bard is Blake's persona for several poems in Songs of

Experience. More worldly-wise than his counterpart, the
Shepherd, the Bard is also more a craftsman of words than is the
rustic singer. The Bard also has a prophetic voice and claims to
see past, present, and future all the same.
Tom Dacre
One of the few named characters in Songs of Innocence, Tom
Dacre is the young boy who cries at night after a hard day as a
chimney sweeper. He eventually sleeps and has a dream of an
Angel, who reassures him that his present suffering will end one
day, and that he will be welcomed into an afterlife without pain.
the Little Black Boy
A character from the poem of the same title, the Black Boy is
used by Blake to critique "hope for the future" religious and social
beliefs and also to point out the flaws of racism. The Little Black
Boy at first dislikes his dark complexion in contrast to the white
English boys, but is assured by his mother that all outward
appearances will fall away one day, leaving only the pure (but
white) souls to enjoy the love of God.
the School Boy
The School Boy typifies the desire of youth to be outdoors without
restrictions, despite the confines of institutionalized education. He
speaks of the drudgery he must undertake to be in school and
compares it to the wonders he might experience outside on a
summer's day.
the Lost Little Boy
A recurring character (possibly different characters), the Little Boy
who is lost appears in two poems from Songs of Innocence and in
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one poem in Songs of Experience. In each case, Blake uses the

character to point out the failure of parents and of society to meet
the needs of the children, and also the harm which blind religious
devotion often entails. In Songs of Innocence, the Little Boy is
rescued by God and finds comfort with his mother; in Songs of
Experience he is discovered by a Priest as he questions his
apprehension of God, and he is eventually burned alive for his
alleged heresy.
the Lost Little GirlThe Lost Little Girl appears in Songs of
Experience as a counterpoint to the "Little Boy Lost" of
Songs of Innocence. She is pursued by her parents
through the desert in which she wanders, but a lion and a
lioness find her and bring her to their cave for safety. The
poem suggests that they may have killed her in order to
free her from her earthly suffering.
The Chimney Sweeper’ comes from William Blake’s 1789 collection of
poems, Songs of Innocence. This was later extended to become his most famous
work, Songs of Innocence and Experience, in which the ‘Innocence’ poems are
often mirrored by the ‘Experience’ poems to present different views of the human
condition. This poem is mirrored by a shorter and bleaker ‘Experience’ poem.
‘The Chimney Sweeper’ presents us with a pitiful image of a young ‘sweeper’ and
his friends. As we learn in the opening stanza, a child, often as young as four or
five, typically became a chimney sweep when orphaned or sold by impoverished
parents. Notice how the sweeper’s lisping and mewling ‘’weep! ‘weep!’ cries out
for our sympathy.
The rhyming couplets and anapaesticmetre in this poem might remind us of a
nursery rhyme, but how does this contrast with the details? To what extent does
Blake present an innocence that has been destroyed?
Despite the harsh reality of working life, this speaker seems to have some
acceptance of his lot. Tom Dacre’s dream of an ‘Angel’ and a ‘green plain’
suggests a spiritual sense of hope for the children. Why is Tom’s dream, rather
than the speaker’s, described?
An individualist and a highly original thinker, William Blake is often associated
with the poets of the English Romantic movement. He was a mystic, poet,
engraver, illustrator and radical influenced by the French Revolution.
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He first combined his skill as an engraver and his talent for poetic expression in
Songs of Innocence. On the surface, these short poems have connections with
traditional songs and ballads and moralistic poems for children popular in the
eighteenth century, but Blake is often communicating something much more
original and subversive. The collection was engraved and painstakingly
illuminated by hand and was followed a few years later by Songs of Experience.
His work makes frequent use of symbols and is often a passionate protest against
theological and political tyranny of any kind.