The Chimney Sweeper, by William Blake

The poet argues that the life is better thanks to the chimney sweeper.

It is a biographic poem because Blake begins speaking about himself. Therefore, the main ideas are:

- His parents left him when he was a child and he only could cry.

- The Chimney Sweeper represents to children good luck because the sweepers avoid that children feel alone.

- The boy of the poem dreams of being liberated by angels.

- If children make their duty and they behave correctly, nobody can make them harm, and then they will go to paradise thanks to the help of the Angels.

Blake tells what he has lived, the poem is based on his own experience, but at the same time, Blake generalizes the story using the more common names as Dick, Joe Ned and Jack because the author thinks that everybody can identify with them and it could happen to anyone.

The tone of the poem is sad because the poet tells us his life. The boy of the poem is an orphan whose mother died when she was giving to birth him and his father left him because he had no money to feed the boy. It produces in the reader a melancholic sensation.

The poet associates the good with God and the bad with hell. Therefore, we can know that Blake is a religious person.

I think that the poem is based in cultural references because in the catholic religion, people thought that they would obtain the salvation if their behaviour was good.

The poem is composed by six paragraphs and each one has four verses. The first and the second rhyme between them and the third and the fourth too, for example, weep with sleep, run with sun…

The images are related to the sense. In this case, “He had such a sight” refers to the sense of sight, to vision. It means that children have dreams with their sweepers and it has a positive sense because for children it would be great to have a lot of people around them.

There are some contrasts between cold and warm, between black and white and between the beginning and the end because first Blake speaks in a sad tone and finally the poet has the hope that things will be better.

The poem is a composition written in metrical feet forming rhythmical lines, that it is to say, composed by verses. Verse refers to a piece of poetry, it is each line of a poem. I think that a poem transmits a feeling stronger than prose because it must say all in very few words and to understand it, it is necessary to read it a lot of times in contrast to the novel because the real meaning is hidden. The reader responds in one manner or another, depending on his or her sensitivity, thoughts or tastes. For example, the first sensation that I felt when I read this poem was sad. I imagined a little boy without illusion crying around all places due to the loss of his parents and seeing all things around black. I felt pity for him.

I like this poem because it represents the bad conditions that many people suffer and the only hope to improve is to believe in God and as, in this case, in Angels. For this, it is necessary to help them in order to overcome their problems.

I suppose that due to their sufferings, these children only want to be happy not be richer or famous. They only want to have a family, eat, play with their friends…For this, in the last paragraph the author makes a reference to the happiness of children for not having cold.