Chimney sweeper

             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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Chimney sweeper. (2000, January 01). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 17:02, September 10, 2026, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/28833.html