The Chimney Sweeper

The poem’s speaker is identified only by the work he does: the chimney sweeper. He briefly explains how he ended up doing that kind of work. His mother died when he was small. After the mother’s death, the child’s father “sold” him (Line 2) into his service as a chimney sweep. The emotional impact of that fact is enhanced by play on words—a device in which one word sounds like another, giving it layers of meaning and possibly providing a source of humor. The boy sold into indenture as a chimney sweeper now has to advertise his services by yelling out his profession in the streets, but he is too young to pronounce his sibilants (s and sh sounds) properly. So when he shouts the word sweep, he misses the first consonant so it comes out “’weep! ’weep! ’weep! ’weep!” (Line 3)—which sounds like a child crying. The pitiable mispronunciation also evokes the chirping of a small bird, which emphasizes the weakness and vulnerability of the producer of that sound.

In the second stanza, the speaker introduces another child in the same situation. Tom Dacre cries because someone forcibly shaved his head to make him more fit for chimney sweeping. Tom probably had light blond hair because the speaker describes it as “white” (Line 8). It “curled like a lamb’s back” (Line 6). This is an important simile, a figure of speech based on a comparison, because one of the epithets often applied in Christianity to Jesus, in his capacity as sacrifice for mankind’s sins, is “lamb of god.” In a poem called “The Lamb,” also in Songs of Innocence, Blake explicitly describes the lamb, childlike in its meekness and mildness, as blessed by God. Comparing the child’s hair to lamb’s wool invokes Blake’s fundamental belief that there is something sacred and Christ-like in the innocence of children. Shaving Tom’s hair symbolizes destruction of that innocence, a sacrificial loss of something extremely valuable. (See “Lamb of God” in Symbols & Motifs.)

Trying to comfort him, the speaker encourages Tom to look on the bright side of the situation: At least now soot will not spoil his beautiful hair (Lines 7-8). These words of consolation calm Tom down, but also perhaps inspire the dream Tom has “that very night” (Line 9). Tom dreams that “thousands of sweepers” are “locked up in coffins of black” (Lines 11-12). His vision includes a large group of children, not only those living and working with him, but possibly all the boys cleaning London chimneys on the daily basis. The image of the coffins they are trapped in is multivalent: Not only the literal burial containers that will house their dead bodies, but also their inescapable servitude and the claustrophobic chimneys in which they spend their days. The poem suggests solidarity and shared hope among these exploited children since in Tom’s dream they all break free. Naming some of the boys—“Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack” (Line 11)—cements their uniformity, as the names are the generic equivalents of the modern expression “every Tom, Dick, and Harry,” and simultaneously stresses their individuality. While they may be interchangeable to their masters and customers, each boy has his own precious life and unique personality. The coffins which imprison them represent the social situation that reduces them to the collective identity of orphaned child laborers: poverty, exploitation, and indoctrination into complying with their subordination.

The fourth and fifth stanzas describe the children’s liberation within the dream. When an Angel unlocks the coffins and “set[s] them all free” from enforced labor (Line 14), the children can finally behave like children: “leaping, laughing they run” (Line 15). The imagery suggests purification and renewal. The boys “wash in a river and shine in the Sun” (Lines 16): Nature cleanses them of the soot and dirt produced by the society that exploits them. Now that they are “naked” and with “all their bags left behind” (Line 17), relieved of the rags and tools that symbolize their oppression, they are lifted into the clouds as if freed from the chains that weighed them down. They have been saved in a vision of Christian Heaven.

But even in a dream freedom comes at a cost. The Angel makes a demand of Tom: He will have “God for his father” and never lack joy (Line 20), but only “if he’d be a good boy” (Line 19). It is not surprising that this message concludes little Tom’s dream, since no doubt he has heard similar words many times from authorities. He has completely internalized the idea that he can only deserve Christian salvation by being good—that is, obedient and submissive, no matter how degraded and exploited he is. This thought keeps him “happy & warm” (Line 23), as he and the other boys have to get “our bags & our brushes” (Line 22), the very symbols of their exploitation, and head to work through the cold and dark London morning. Only in a dream can Tom and the other sweeps be free of burden, the poem implies—equating the fleeting fancy of Tom’s own nighttime dream to the empty promises of religion that only reinforces existing exploitative power structures.

The last line of the poem sums up the lesson that Tom has learned: “So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm” (Line 24). On its own, the poem can easily be taken for an example of conventional 18th-century poetry for children, explicitly didactic, contrived to teach a Christian moral lesson. But the lesson is expressed in such a glib manner that it invites the suspicion that we should not take it at face value. There is irony and sarcasm in the neatness of the moral, especially as the poem contrasts its facile vagueness with the horrific image of children buried in their sooty work coffins. Indeed, the context of the complete collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience makes it clear that Blake does not promote such simplistic moralizing. He uses the conventional rhetoric of didactic poetry to raise questions about the impact of such messages on individuals’ ability to raise their voices against the oppression to which they are subjugated.