William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper", part of his Songs of Innocence, is about a young boy who was sold as a baby into the life of a chimney sweep. The boy has a dream about the child chimneysweepers' dreadful lives coming to an end, and finally being set free into God's arms.
             The author of "The Chimney Sweeper," was also an English poet, artist, engraver, mythmaker and visionary. He was the earliest and most independent of the Romantics. Blake was born on November 28, 1757 in London, where he spent most of his life. "He taught himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Italian, and his English was often remarkably original" ("Blake, William"). Blake started writing when he was 12 and friends printed a few of his early poems in 1783. Blake's Songs of Innocence, wrote in 1789, expressed a happy image about the childhood of the soul in an everlasting world sustained by love. Later he wrote the Songs of Experience in 1794, which contained poems that challenged the assumed beneficence of God and society. After his death on August 12, 1827, Blake's works were dispersed and some may have been destroyed.
             In this poem, it seems as though Blake, who uses the first person voice, is trying to make a clear connection between the exploitation of children and the social system. He is attempting to point out what a hard life these children live, and that their freedom is not granted until death. Blake uses a young orphaned boy to tell his story in "The Chimney Sweeper" and while there is no clear audience, it does appear that he is telling his story to anyone who will listen.
             "The Chimney Sweeper," written in the Romantic Age, thankfully cannot be considered a contemporary piece in the United States today. Child labor was widely practiced in the years ending the Romantic Age. The eighteenth century had "small boys, sometimes no more than four or five year...