The Chimney Sweeper

First of all, I'm not the biggest fan of poetry. In fact, I used to dislike poetry, a lot. I hated doing poem analysis during high school. 

Yet I chose to study philology, which one might say, is a pretty odd (read: stupid) choice for someone, who hates poetry. Reading poetry is quite essential, if you want to pass your literature courses, which is pretty logical. I thought I'd just try to grin and bear it, get it over with doing as little as possible. But somehow along the way, I guess one could say I got brainwashed, I started actually liking some of the poems we needed to read to pass literature courses. I think it was actually Edgar Allan Poe's poems, which first aroused some interest in me. Thinking about it now, this isn't very surprising, after all, E. A. Poe is probably one of the most popular poets among people who like heavy metal, or other "dark" music. Anyhow, the more poems I read, the more I found myself starting to analyze the contents, getting excited when I thought I had discovered some hidden meanings or nuances. 

The poems of William Blake didn't quite open up to me as I first browsed through them, but I guess that's pretty normal when it comes to reading poetry. Reading poetry seems to require a certain mood, and I found it quite nicely put when a teacher once said that most people find the beauty in poetry only in their deepest hour of misery.

Since I felt like I couldn't get a good grip on the poems, I googled Blake a bit, and after reading about his thoughts on religion and world in general, I started over with his poems. And found them absolutely fascinating.

The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience are poem collections, in which Blake published some his poems, that later grew to be hist most famous ones. The idea of the opposites, of Innocence and Experience, shares some qualities with John Milton's Paradise and Fall, viewing things from different perspectives. Many of the poems in The Songs of Innocence have their more gruesome counterparts in The Songs of Experience, like Blake's well known The Lamb vs. The Tyger.

I'm not exactly sure, what it was, that made me fall in love with the two poems, both called The Chimney Sweeper (One published in The Songs of Innocence, the other in The Songs of Experience). Perhaps it was the way Blake was able to capture the cruelty of the Chimney Sweepers' lives in such beautiful lines. Or perhaps it was the quite obvious critique on society. Or perhaps the back then fresh critique on God himself. Regardless what it was that startled me at first, I found myself reading these two poems over and over again, researching the historical situation discussed in them and trying to put everything in to some context. 

The Chimney Sweeper: (From: The Songs of Experience)

A little black thing among 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."

By William Blake.

Chimney Sweepers were usually young small boys, because they'd fit very well into the chimneys. Now isn't that a good reason for child labor or what? Of course it was then the poorest of the poor, who sold their children to the sweeping business, most of the time having no other choice; if you have no money to feed all your children and you know that some if not all will perish from starvation, why not sell one or two for the benefit of the others. This of course sounds atrociously cruel. But if you really think about the situation poor people used to find themselves in... Well, I guess history has taught us many times, that there is no greater power for inhumanities than hunger. And perhaps mental illnesses.

Blake and many other romantic poets wrote about the social and political situation, the discomfort of the lower classes in England, in hope of getting things to change. And they did. One can probably not say that it was because of this and that poem, that the child labor was pronounced illegal. But one can with great certainty say, that for example Blake's Chimney Sweeper played a role in raising the issue, making upper classes aware of the problem, helping them see the cruelty of what was happening. I have always found literature a great tool for opening the eyes of those, who for some reason do not realize what or to what extinct things are wrong in our society, or the world in general. Therefore I myself love to read books about foreign cultures and their struggling. It is perhaps a cliche, but reading does broaden your horizon, and I don't think it can ever be too broad.

Blake illustrated many of his poems, above a picture 

of the original Chimney Sweeper from Songs of Experience.