William Blake (1757 – 1827)
THE CHIMNEY
SWEEPER; Songs of Experience
(1794)
A little
black thing upon the snow:
Crying weep, weep. in notes of woe!
Where are thy father & mother? say?
They are both gone up to the church to pray.
Because I was happy upon the heath.
And smil'd among the winters snow:
They clothed me in the clothes of death.
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
And because I am happy.
& dance & sing.
They think they have done me no injury:
And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King
Who make up a heaven of our misery.
http://www.uv.es/~fores/poesia/poesoe.html#chimney
William Blake, as the Romantic poet that he was, talked in his poetry about his life. He was an orphan as he reflects in The Chimney Sweeper from Songs of Experience, the chosen poem to analyse. Blake was a Romantic, and for that reason, at the time he is writing, he is making his life public. He is a very emotional poet and he expresses his feelings as the most important expression of the human being. This is another important characteristic of the Romantic movement. The language used by the author in his poetry is very accessible and, as the Romantic poet that he was, Blake tried to evoke through daily words the images that he wanted to represent.
Blake also was an engraver, so he represented the images that were exhibited in his writing in his collection of engravings.
The author, in Songs of Experience,
writes with a new tone, a different one of that which we can read in Songs
of Innocence. Now, Blake addresses his poetry not only to children, but
also to adults, and he talks about other issues, as for example death.
The title, as in The Chimney
Sweeper from Songs of Innocence, represents a person of good luck
and also a person in black who frightens children. In the
The poem is placed the present time
and the poet describes himself at this time. Blake learned the job of sweeper
in his real life, so he is explaining his feelings to the reader being an
orphan and working as a chimney sweeper. This poem is addressed to the reader.
There is a double contrast in the
first verse: he is a black thing in a land full of white snow, and he is a
little thing in a big piece of earth. Nature is shown to the reader in the
first line. This was a tipical issue used by
Romantics. There is a feeling of returning to nature at the time.
In the second line we can read how
the sweeper cries because he is alone (we must remember that Blake was an
orphan) and the tears represent the liquid with which the sweeper cleans the
chimneys. The word ‘weep’ and its repetition sounds as if the tears were
falling down to earth.
In the third verse the author asks
the reader were the parents of the sweeper are, referring again to his
condition of an orphan.
During the second stanza, Blake
refers to his childhood. He explains that although he was apparently happy, he
really felt alone (because in the real life Blake was sold by his father) and predestinated to live in poverty.
The first two verses of the third
stanza treat about the same issue and the two final verses are a very critical,
asking if there is a real God for people to believe in, and also if there is a
King that looks for the citizens. Blake is saying that the relationship between
the Church and the State seem rare.