THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER
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.
Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curl’d like a
lambs back, was shav’d, so I said.
Hush Tom never
mind it, for when your head’s bare,
You know that the
soot cannot spoil your white hair.
And so he was
quite, & 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
lock’d up in coffins of black
And by came an
Angel who had a bright key,
And he open’d the
coffins & set them free.
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.
And the Angel told
Tom if he’d be a good boy,
He’d have God for
his father & never want joy.
And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark
And got with our
bags & our brushes to work.
Tho’ the morning
was cold, Tom was happy & warm,
So if all do their
duty, they need not fear harm.
(From Songs of
Innocence 1789)
This poem of William
Blake is included in his collection of poems called “Songs of Innocence”.
It was written in 1789. It is a
poetry collection written from a child’s point of view, an innocent feeling of
pleasant surprise or admiration and spontaneity in natural settings that
includes “Little Boy Lost”, “Little Boy Found”, “The Lamb”
and “The Chimney Sweeper” between others.
During this period, were
the French and the Industrial Revolutions taking place.
The French Revolution was a
social and political process which was developed in
The Industrial Revolution is
defined as a group of economic and social transformations, characteristics of
the development of
The romantic period was a period
full of changes like the time we are living nowadays. The difference between
that time and today is that the changes in the romanticism were taking place
slowly, not suddenly. However, nowadays, due to the high technological
development, the changes take place very quickly, from one day to another, and
everyday there is something new invented.
Context and
importance of this poem in the overall production of William Blake:
In 1783, he printed his
first collection of verse called “Poetical Sketches”, and because at
first he had not success, he decided to combine his training as an artist with
his passion for poetry and began to experiment with illuminated printing,
hand-coloring the pages. In 1789, “Songs
of Innocence” was the first of his expert fusion of illustration and verse,
which were and still are the most popular of Blake’s illuminated books. The
poems were produced by a neat regular curving handwriting with the letters all
joined together in a very specific style, used especially in the past, and
colored with washes by hand. In 1794, he expanded the book to include “Songs of
Experience”.[2]
These poems and specifically “The
Chimney sweeper” carried his reputation after his death and nowadays they
still remain the most accessible and frequently read of his poems. When he
wrote “Songs of Innocence”, as I have mentioned before, the French
Revolution was taking place, and during this time, he was acquainted with a
political circle, which made that the American, and French revolutions became
major themes in much of his poetry. After that, he wrote more poems such as “The
First Book of Urizen” (1794), “The Song of Los” (1795) and “
As a result of this, we can say
that this poem is situated in the middle of Blake’s overall production and that
it has been important and remarkable in his all career because it has signified
an improvement and a success in his work as a poet.
ANALYSIS OF THE POEM
The entire poem is compound
of six stanzas. Each of them is a quatrain, which means that it includes four
lines.
The rhyme scheme in the poem is AABB
– CCDD – EEFF – GGHH – IIJJ - KKLL. As William Blake was also a musician, he
takes care and puts special emphasis on the intonation, metrical foot and
rhyme. For him it was very important because he wanted to convert his poems
into songs that readers could sing it as musical melody. For that reason, he
uses this specific rhyming scheme in this poem. The type of rhyme the poet uses
in this poem is a tail rhyme which consists of a rhyme in the final syllable of
a verse as in this case. This one is the most common in poetry. These verses
have more than eight syllables; in this case, the vast majority of them have
ten.
RHETORICAL FIGURES IN
THE POEM
I can observe in this
poem the alliteration of several words beginning with the letter ‘s’,
this sound is very repeated and used through the whole poem, which gives an
effect of softness. I will mention next some verses in which this is reflected,
as for example: “so your chimneys I sweep & in soot
I sleep” (line 4) and “as Tom was a sleeping he had such
a sight” (line 10).
Continuing dealing with the topic of
the use of the letter ‘s’ in the poem, I think it is also important to comment
that there is a repetition, the ‘s’ sound is very frequent not only at the
beginning of words as I have mentioned before, but also at the end and inside
of them.
Another rhetorical figure we can
find in the poem is the use of symbols, in this case the religious
symbolism of God as a mean of salvation:
“And by came an Angel who had a
bright key,
And he open’d the coffins & set
them free”.
(lines 13-14)
Despite of the different religions and
believes there are, people of different religious ideology coincide with that,
for all of them, the image of their God symbolises salvation.
In the poem there is also a Simile:
“That
curl’d like a lambs back” (line 6)
Here, the poet is comparing the curl
of the hair of the little boy with the back of a lamb. Because both of the two
objects share the same form, in other words, the back of a lamb is compound by
lots of curls, and a curl is curved in shape.
We can also find a Metaphor,
that is, when two objects are treated as identical:
“As
Tom was a sleeping” (line 10).
Here, the poet makes reference to
the moment when the boy was having a moment of peace, disconnected for a while
of the real and chaotic world. I can interpret it as if in his dreams he has
the hope of salvation and that things will get better soon. Here we can see the
presence of the religious faith, it means, the belief and trust in God. As I
have mentioned at the beginning of the paper, religion is an important topic in
Romantic poets and in consequence, this poem is full of religious references.
In the penultimate stanza of the
poem I can find a parable containing a final moral, which tries to teach
us (the readers of the poem) that if we are good people, then, God will save
us.
“And the Angel told Tom if he’d be a
good boy,
He’d have God for his father &
never want joy.”
(lines 19- 20)
Commentary of the
poem
In the poem, a young chimney
sweeper retells a dream of one of his fellows, in which an angel rescues the
boys from death and takes them to a nice place. The character of the poem sees
his situation through the eyes of innocence and doesn’t understand the social
injustice there is in the world and protests about the living and working
conditions.[4]
One thing that has
attracted my attention just from the beginning is the title of the poem “The
Chimney Sweeper” which means “a person who cleans chimneys”. I am
mentioning this profession because I think in our society it is not very common
and we don’t know almost anything about it. It is a dangerous job where workers
risk their life everyday when they enter the chimneys to clean them, to whom
nobody pays attention and worry about. In
We can also find words
related to the semantic field of nature such as: lambs (line 6), plain
(line 15), river (line 16), Sun (line 16), clouds (line
18), and wind (line 18). One of the most important characteristics when
defining Romanticism together with religion. Most of the romantic poets deal
with these topics in their poems.
The poet makes reference to religion
using words as Angel (line 13) and God (line 20) those having a
meaning of salvation. As William Blake was a romantic, and a characteristic of
the romanticism we find in the poem references to nature and religion as an example
of that.
In the poem there are also references to
death with words such as coffins (line 12), black (line 12) and dark
(line 21).
The poet uses words with negative
connotations in the first half of the poem due to the whole adversity, such
as: died (line 1), cry (line 3), spoil (line 8) and black
(line 12). However, in the second half of the poem, he changes and starts using
words with positive connotations, because God have saved them from
death, such as: free (line 14), bright (line 13), laughing (line
15), happy (line 23) and warm (line 23).
In the first stanza,
the poet is remembering his infancy when his mother died, and expressing how he
felt in that terrible moment he had to face and live while being only a baby.
In this first verse, William Blake is talking and expressing his feelings in
first person, however, in the second one; he changes it and starts using the
third person to make reference to one of his fellows.
In the second stanza,
the author starts retelling what happened to one of his fellows called Tom who
is a chimney sweeper and is very sad and unhappy about his job. But at the same
time, he is resigned about his situation and has to be conformed about it
because it is the situation that he has to live with because God has wanted it and
nothing can be changed.
In the third one, he begins
to express a dream had by Tom, in which he dreamed that some of his fellows
died and were put in “coffins of black”.
In the fourth one, an Angel
appeared in his dream and save all of them from death and set them all free. In
this verse, while you are reading it, you get a feeling of relax and happiness
because after reading the first part of the poem which is very sad and
pessimistic, then, you read it and feels a sensation of emotion and positivism.
In the fifth stanza, the poet
claims that all of them were playing together happily and that God wanted Tom
to be a good boy in order to be the children of God.
In the last one, Tom, the
following day of his dream, woke up and despite that the weather was very cold,
he went to work as a chimney sweeper very happy because of the dream he had had
the previous night. And as a conclusion, he says that if all do their work
correctly and carefully, they don’t need to worry about the possible damage
they can suffer. Because a well done work is always safe and congratulated.
Making reference to the kind of
language of the poem, we can say that it is clear and quite easy to understand.