The Chimney Sweeper (Experience)
The Chimney Sweeper (Experience) - meaning Summary
Innocence and Social Hypocrisy
Blake presents a child chimney sweep who, outwardly playful, reveals harsh exploitation. The child’s voice contrasts innocence with the physical and moral damage inflicted by adults who send him to work while attending church. The poem indicts family, clergy, and state for creating a “heaven” built on others’ suffering, exposing religious and social hypocrisy and the denial of responsibility for child labor and poverty.
Read Complete AnalysesA little black thing in the snow, Crying "weep! weep!" in notes of woe! "Where are thy father and mother? Say!"-- "They are both gone up to the church to pray. "Because I was happy upon the heath, And smiled among the winter's snow, They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe. "And because I am happy and dance and sing, They think they have done me no injury, And are gone to praise God and his priest and king, Who make up a heaven of our misery."
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