William Blake had two different sets of poems published with each depicting a
different contrary state of the human soul. "The Chimney Sweeper," is a poem in both the
Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Experience. Both of the poems are about a child and
his life as a chimney sweeper. There are many similarities and differences in the poems
because they were written about the opposite sides of the human soul.
The two poems are both presented in the perspective of the child and show their
views of life. In both of the poems the child is a chimney sweeper. In each case the child
was forced into the life of labor by his parents in one way or another. In the version from
Songs of Innocence the father sells the boy into child labor and tries to pass it off as
charity. In the version from Songs of Experience his parents are dead and he is forced into
the life of a chimney sweeper. From lines 3 and 4 of "The Chimney Sweeper," in the
Songs of Experience, it mentions that the parents are absent and the only thing that the
child knows is that they went to church to pray. This is presented from the view of a
child, so the fact that his parents went to the church and never came back could also
imply that they had their funeral at the church. The two poems give a bad image on how
the life of this child is progressing. Both poems mention the words "'weep," this refers to
two different things. First it is the action that the child is performing, which is sweeping
the chimney, and it is also the sound of the child crying. The poems make the reader
sympathetic for the child by using those words. It makes me picture the child working and
crying at the same time, which is not a pleasant sight.
Event though both poems were about children in general, each one had a different
feel to it. The poems are from the point of view of a child, one shows the child with a
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