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Description: William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" chronicles a social evil that is prevalent to the present day. Set against a backdrop of great social inequality and grinding poverty, bonded labour, and rampant exploitation of orphans and the children of poor people, this poem rings true across centuries. The claustrophobic lives of the young chimney sweepers who would never find solace save in innocent visions of Heaven, the loss of their innocence, and the fantasies that they had to conjure up to go from day to day are encaptured here. Many a child lost his life in the suffocating soot of the chimneys in London of the 18th century. Blake's poem published in 1789, (Songs Of Innocence), when a social and political revolution was taking place in a neighbouring country (France) is a powerful depiction of how tender lives were being sacrificed at the altar of "The Industrial Revolution" and progress. A difficult poem to take in, " The Chimney Sweeper" remains one of William Blake's finest works.
Full poem:
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 thousands 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.
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