The reading
for August 29 includes The Romantics and Their Contemporaries,
pp. 3-28 and Blake, "Songs of Innocence and of Experience,"
some of which you will find below. Please read all poems carefully
before the class period.
The
Chimney Sweeper 1
From "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.2
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.
Theses little Tom
Dacre, who cried when his head
That curl'd like a lambs 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 sleeping he had such a sight,
That thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe, Ned & 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.
3
1. Chimney-sweeps were young children, mostly boys,
whose impoverished parents sold them into the business, or
who were orphans, outcasts, or illegitimate children with
no other means of living. It was filthy, health-ruining labor,
aggravated by overwork and inadequate clothing, food and shelter.
Among the hazards were burns, permanently blackened skin,
deformed legs, black lung disease and cancer of the scrotum.
Protective legislation passed in 1788 was never enforced.
Blake's outrage at this exploitation also sounds in "London.'
Admiring the poem, Charles Lamb sent it to James Montgomery
(a topical poet and radical-press editor) for inclusion in
The Chimney-Sweeper's Friend, and Climbing Boy's
Album (1824), which he was assembling for the Society
for Ameliorating the Condition of Infant Chimney-Sweepers.
2. With a relevant pun, the child's
lisping street cry advertising his trade, "sweep! sweep!"
3. A typical conduct homily.
