William Blake--The Chimney Sweeper & other poems

Protest Poet

Lets start off with William Blake’s “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 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.

Wow. What imagery, so let’s start there (I’m an imagist so image is the first thing I notice in a poem). You don’t even need background information on the Industrial Revolution and the use of chimney sweeps to clean out the flue to get what this poem is about.

Blake hits you right away with the speaker of the poem’s mother dying, so his father sold him into labor. “So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep” he says—speaking directly to the reader (aiming right at the audience in London during the late 1700s).

The chimney sweeps were adults, but they “hired” boys (often orphans), as young as four, to do the actual cleaning of the chimney. The boys were small enough to fit inside the spaces that could be 9 inches x 9 inches. Sometimes they would get stuck, suffocate, be burned to death.

The boys slept together on the floor under the sacks that they caught the soot in. Blake’s punches with a metaphor of how the boys slept at the end of the third stanza: “Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.”

But, lets think about the form for a second. This poem is a lyric—it sounds like it could be sung. The poem has a straightforward rhyme scheme: aa, bb, cc, dd.

The first stanza though, is full of internal rhyme with the -eep sound in its last two lines. This is a very light sound, almost uplifting. But, the subject is dark. The lyric form is also lighter, almost uplifting…

And then we get to the fourth stanza; an angel comes by to set Tom free (our main character). Suddenly, we’re in a pastoral scene: “…down a green plain, leaping and laughing they run / And wash in a river, shine in the sun.”

Then all of these sweeps run and rise up on clouds! And, if Tom’s good, he will have God as a father and have a life full of joy. And we ride in this happiness until it is time for work in the last stanza, the boys get up to work, and even though it’s cold “Tom was happy and warm”.

Blake did something interesting in all of this. The uplifting sound of a lyric poem, the song like quality, he moves us from the dark world of chimney sweeps, to Heaven, and back down to London.

In a way, he is telling you to carry your cross, to find joy in suffering, to look forward to Heaven and do your work joyfully.

Do I think he is glossing over the horror by having the last three stanza be wonderful and happy? No. Blake ends the poem with interesting punctuation: “Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm: / So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.” The energy of the comma goes to the left making the cold morning the most important thing. But, the colon drives the energy to the right, which is now on a separate line and he tells us that “if all do their duty”, meaning the reader, we don’t have to worry about being harmed. And look at the word “harm”. It is in a close rhyme with “warm’; it sounds right, but is just enough different to make sure the last thing you think about is harm—and the beginning of the poem.

That’s craftsmanship. And it is a great way to protest; Blake created art that doesn’t spell out what is wrong, it leads the reader there with beautiful imagery, makes it both intellectual and emotional.

Let’s now jump to “The Tyger”:

 Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 
In the forests of the night; 
What immortal hand or eye, 
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies. 
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears 
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

And the poem that follows it, “The Lamb”:

Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 
Gave thee life & bid thee feed. 
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice! 
         Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 

         Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
         Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb: 
He is meek & he is mild, 
He became a little child: 
I a child & thou a lamb, 
We are called by his name.
         Little Lamb God bless thee. 
         Little Lamb God bless thee.

The form on “The Tyger” is the same as “The Chimney Sweeper”, quatrains with a end rhyme. In both of these, Blake uses a lot of interior sounds that are the same. Read them aloud and listen to how stanzas will be heavy on the long e, or the l sound. This really reinforces the rhythm in these poems.

“The Tyger” is in the “Experience” part of his book Songs of Innocence and of Experience and it builds a frightful animal with dread feet, claws, brain, all build on the anvil with hammer and heat.

The poems also moves from the Earth to heaven, and back down again. We start in the forest, move to the creation of the tiger, and we end back by marveling at the tiger in the forest in a circular poem. Blake starts and ends with the same stanza, mimicking creation.

But, one of my favorite parts is the line: “Did he who make the Lamb make thee?” The Lamb—capitalized—Jesus. The tiger? Maybe evil, scary, definitely scary—was it made by the same hand that made the Lamb?

In the “Innocence” section we find “The Lamb.” It is a different structure, Now we have two stanzas of ten lines each. It still does have the strict rhyme scheme and had great sounds built into the lines.

But, notice the first stanza is about a lamb: feeding by the stream, over the mead, the softest and brightest wool… And Blake asks, “Does thou know who made thee?”

In the second stanza Blake tells the sheep who made it: “For He calls Himself a Lamb.” And Blake kind of lays it on thick right here, doesn’t even hide it: “He became a little child” and the last three lines: “We are called by His name. / Little lamb, God bless thee! / Little lamb, God bless thee!”.

Blake ends on a high note, repetition, exaltation, that uplifting long e sound. Again, craftsmanship.

Next time, I will post my own lyric poem written in this Romantic style (I better get writing!).

Go back and check out a little bit of background information on Blake and his visual art, and also read and listen to more of his poems here.

Let me know, do you think that there is room for a kind of neo-Romanticism in today’s world? Would this bring more readers to poetry?

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