The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake
The Chimney Sweeper by William BlakeWilliam Blake’s poem, The Chimney Sweeper is about a young child whose father sells his
services to the rich. He was so young at this point he could not even say the word sweep
as indicated in line three. He is to clean their chimneys of all the soot and dirt from their
use of the fireplace. The boy encounters Tom Dacre who had a wild dream of an angle
who set free all fellow chimney sweepers that were locked in a coffin. In this dream the
people go to a river to wash the dirt and soot from their bodies which makes the sweepers
happy. When Tom wakes and realizes it all was just a dream he understands that if he does
as he is told he will be rewarded in heaven. Tom is content with this thought and it makes
him “happy and warm”(line 22).
The illustration that accompanies this poem shows the angle at the bottom right
hand corner and the sweepers from Tom’s dream. The freed sweepers are “leaping and
laughing” (line 15) because they are not working. The top of the plate shows what I
perceive to be clouds with people on them which relates to stanza five where the sweepers
are in heaven and Tom has God for his father and since he is happy already does not need
to ask for it. I feel that the plate follows the dream of Tom Dacre well with the pictorials
of an angle freeing the workers from the “coffins of black” (line 12) which are really the
confines of the chimneys.
William Blake writes about the coming of summer during the spring time in The
Ecchoing Green. In the poem he describes the way the Earth and all the...
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