In the Songs of Experience version, the narrator introduces the boy chimney sweep as no more than a 'little black thing'. ... In first two verses of both the Innocence and the experience Chimney Sweeper poems, Blake employs basic colour imagery to contrast the 'little black thing' with the white of the snow, which represents the purity of the childhood that the sweep has had taken away from him. The sweep's clothes are 'clothes of death' not just because the soot has turned them black, the colour of mourning, but also because the soot will soon kill the chil...

• Word Count: 1564
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate