William Blake: The Chimney Sweeper

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The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)

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 curl'd llke a lamb's back. was shav'd: 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 or Jack.

Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black.

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,

And he open'd 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.

Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;

So if all do their duty they need not fear harm.

The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Experience)

A little black thing among the snow:

Crying weep, weep, in notes of woe!

Where are thy father & mother! say!

They are both gone up to the church to pray.

Because I was happy upon the heath,

And smil'd among the winters snow:

They clothed me in the clothes of death,

And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

And because I am happy, & dance & sing,

They think they have done me no injury:

And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King

Who make up a heaven of our misery.

"On the first of May each year a holiday was granted to the young chimney sweeps of London, known as 'climbing boys' or 'lilly-whites'; for the rest of the year they were engaged in 'calling the streets', from the dark hours before dawn until midday, but upon this one festival they were permitted to celebrate. Their faces were 'whitened with meal, their heads covered with high periwigs powdered as white snow, and their clothes bedaubed with paper lace.'...They... banged their brushes and climbing tools as they paraded through the city. They were the lords of misrule and for that day had become white, and clean, and even beautiful. How the people laughed -- and perhaps even the little boys themselves were for a while able to forget the wretched conditions of their existence. They were generally sold between the age of four and seven..." -- Peter Ackroyd, Blake

The Chimney Sweeper: William Blake, from Songs of Innocence, 1789
The Chimney Sweeper: William Blake, from Songs of Experience, 1794

May-Day in London: William Blake, engraving after Samuel Collings, c. 1784 (Cleveland Museum of Art)
The Shepherdess and the Chimneysweep: Vilhelm Pedersen, 1845, illustration for H.C. Anderson's fairy tale
Chimneysweep, c. 1850: photographer unknown, image by Andre Engels, 2004