The Chimney Sweeper-Study Help

The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young
BY WILLIAM BLAKE
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.
1
About William Blake
William Blake (1757-1827) is one of the key English poets of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. He is sometimes grouped with the Romantics, such as William
Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, although much of his work stands apart from
them and he worked separately from the Lake Poets.
Blake’s key themes are religion (verses from his poem Milton furnished the lyrics for the
patriotic English hymn ‘Jerusalem’), poverty and the poor, and the plight of the most
downtrodden or oppressed within society. He is not a ‘nature’ poet in the same way that his
fellow Romantics are: he seldom writes with the countryside in mind as his principal theme,
but draws on, for instance, the rich symbolism of the rose and the worm to create a poem that
is symbolically suggestive and clearly about other things (sin, religion, shame, cruelty, evil).
In form and language, Blake’s poetry can appear deceptively simple. He is fond of the
quatrain form and short lines (usually tetrameter, i.e., containing four ‘feet’). But his imagery
and symbolism are often dense and complex, requiring deeper analysis to penetrate and
unravel their manifold meanings.
The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake
Analysis
The poem is in the first person, about a very young chimney sweeper who exposes the evils of
chimney sweeping as a part of the cruelties created by the sudden increase in wealth.
The poem was used as a broadsheet or propaganda against the evil of Chimney Sweeping. The
Chimney Sweeper’s life was one of destitution and exploitation. The large houses created by
the wealth of trade had horizontal flues heating huge rooms that could be cleaned only by a
small child crawling through them. These flues literally became black coffins, which killed
many little boys. A sweeper’s daily task was courting death because of the hazards of
suffocation and burns. These children were either orphans or founding or were sold by poor
parents to Master Sweepers for as little as two guineas. They suffered from cancers caused by
the soot, and occasionally little children terrified of the inky blackness of the Chimneys got
lost within them and only their skeletons were recovered.
Stanza One
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.
2
In these twenty-four lines of William Blake’s poem, ‘The Chimney Sweeper,’ a little boy, is
telling the story of his despairing life as well as the sad tales of other chimney sweeper boys.
The little boy narrates that he was very young when his mother died. He was then sold by his
father to a Master Sweeper when his age was so tender that he could not even pronounce the
word ‘sweep’ and cryingly pronounced it ‘weep’ and wept all the time. The pun intended
through the use of the word ‘weep’ three times in the third line of this stanza holds pathetic
significance. Most chimney-sweepers, like him, were so young that they could not pronounce
sweep and lisped ‘weep’. Since that tender age, the little boy is sweeping the chimney and
sleeping at night in the soot-smeared body, without washing off the soot (blackness).
Stanza Two
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.”
In the second stanza, the little narrator tells us the woeful tale of Tom Dacre. This is a very
famous character in Blake’s many poems. Tom was called ‘Dacre’ because he belonged to
Lady Dacre’s Almshouse, which was situated between St. James Street and Buckingham
Road. The inmates of the Almshouse were foundling orphans, who were allowed to be
adopted by the poor only. It may be a foster father who encased the boy Tom by selling him
to a Master Sweeper. Tom wept when his head was shaved, just as the back of a lamb is
shaved for wool. The narrator then told Tom not to weep and keep his peace. The narrator
told Tom to be calm because lice will not breed in the pate without hair and there will be no
risk for hair to catch fire.
Stanza Three
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;
The third stanza continues the story of Tom who was calmed by the consoling words of the
narrator. That same night while sleeping Tom saw a wonderful vision. He saw in his dream
that many Chimney sweepers, who were named Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, were dead and
their bodies were lying in caged coffins, made of black-colored wood.
Stanza Four
And by came an Angel who had a bright key,

And he opened the coffins & set them all free;
3
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.
In the fourth stanza, the vision is completed. An Angel, who was carrying a shining key,
came near the coffins. The Angel opened the coffins containing the bodies and set all the
bodies free from the bondage of coffins. The freed little sweepers of the chimney ran down a
green ground, washed in the water of a river, and dried themselves in the sunlight to give out
a clean shine. This was really a very delightful moment for these chimney-sweepers, who got
freed from the shackles of bondage labor, exploitation, and child labor.
Stanza Five
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.
In the fifth stanza, the little boy continues narrating the dream vision of Tom. All the little
boys were naked and white after washing. They were naked because their bags of clothes
were left behind. They cast off the burden of life along with the bags of soot at the time of
death. Now naked and white, the little chimney sweeper boys ride the clouds and play in the
wind. The image of clouds floating freely is Blake’s metaphor for the freedom from the
material boundaries of the body and an important visual symbol. The Angel told Tom that if
he would be a good boy he would have God for his father and there would never be a lack of
happiness for him.
Stanza Six
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.
In the last stanza of Blake’s poem, The Chimney Sweeper, the narrator tells that Tom woke up
and his dream vision broke up. Tom and other little sweeper boys rose up from their beds in
the dark. They made themselves ready to work taking their bags for soot and the brushes to
clean the chimney. The morning was cold, but Tom, after the dream, was feeling warm and
happy.
In the last line of the poem, a moral has been thrown to us: If all do their duty, they need not
fear any harm. The last stanza shows the reality of the sweepers’ life. The antithesis between
the vision of summer sunshine and this dark, cold reality is deeply ironic. Even though the
victims have been mollified, the readers know that innocent trust is abused.

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The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head

And so he was quiet, & that very night,

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,

And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark

The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake

When my mother died I was very young,

There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head

And so he was quiet, & that very night,

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,

And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark

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