By Kasey Ackert

“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.

There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved, 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 quiet, & that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight!
That thousand of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins & set them all 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.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

— William Blake

The poem “The Chimney Sweeper” is written by William Blake. It first appeared in the year 1789 and is in the collection of Songs of Innocence and Experience. The poem is set against a background of child labor that was a common abuse occurring in England in the 18th and 19th centuries. Typically, children around the age of four or five were sold to clean things like chimneys due to their small size. Often children would die from this due to falling through the chimney or getting lung damage. 

I can relate to this poem in the aspect of child labor. I have never been put in a situation like these children; however, with my family owning a farm, I guess you could say that I have experienced a form of child-labor firsthand. It  began between the ages of ten to twelve. I would get off the bus every day after school and be required to go outside and do tasks like feed calves and wash calf pens. When I turned fifteen, I started to earn money for my labor.  The jobs that I had to do could never compare to the tasks the children in “The Chimney Sweeper” had to do, but I can still relate on the level of having to do something that I was not particularly fond of. 

I believe the major theme that arises in this poem is holding onto hope while going through adversity. The poem is dark, but if the children that are being forced into this situation can fight through it, they become stronger. Better times are always to come, people say, so if these children can make it through these tough times, things will get better. Within stanza four through six of the poem, this major theme of hope really comes to light. It talks about Tom having the dream and waking, knowing that there is better to come, whether dying and going to heaven or surviving the chimney sweeping. These children have a lot of hope for the greater good regardless of the situations that they have been put through. The children feel this way because they are able to have something to hold onto rather than just living their chimney sweeping lives. This address’s hope in terms of “Light and Dark,” light being good, and dark being bad.

There is not much to the form of this poem. It is a simple, AABB rhyme scheme. The poem is also written in six stanzas. I feel like the poem’s form is so simple because the writer wants us to look more into the content of the poem rather than the form. The complex background is dependent on this form for the reader to get the full effects of the poem. The beginning of the poem gives us some insight into the narrator’s background. This insight helps us to understand the poem by showing us the conditions the narrator has been put through. In the middle of the poem, things transition into a speech about dreams/visions that Tom is having. This dream is completely made up of Tom’s mind, but it correlates to things that are happening to him and the other children in their real lives. This dream acts as a token of hope to Tom and shows him how he might escape from his current environment.  At the end of the poem, there are a couple of slant rhymes that have some different meaning to the reader. Blake is alluding to the boy being able to achieve his hope if he follows good behavior and his duties. 

The first piece of figurative language that I want to touch on in this poem is the metaphor in the first line of the last stanza. The line reads, “And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark.” They are not only waking in the dark, but also awaking in a life of unhappiness and sadness of being a chimney sweeper. Another use of figurative language being used is the use of the colors black and white throughout the poem. The color black clearly means darkness, death, and evil. The color white means purity and innocence. One final figurative language piece that I want to touch on is the use of Tom’s hair and comparing it to a lamb’s wool. This is likely symbolism relating these two things to Jesus. This is added confirmation that we are all children of God.

People need to have hope to live their lives. Without any hope, what purpose are they really living for in the first place? I feel that this quote from the book Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl is apropos: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” I feel like this theme is something that a lot of people today can relate to in the fight against injustice. Ever since the death of George Floyd, the battle for injustice has been at an all-time high this year. There has been a constant fight for equal rights across all races within the United States. Never, in any part of my life, have I seen such an expression of a political view for an end to social injustice. The reason I believe these events relate is that the children also think they are being mistreated. This correlates to multiple races, other than whites, that are not receiving the same opportunities as whites do. Specifically, I am talking about the Black Lives Matter movement and hope in terms of that. All people should be treated equally, no matter what race of color. Had this been done in the past, many lives would have been spared.