When reading poem 1, I was left with the impression that the speaker was innocent, nave and a good-natured little boy. ... from poem 1, and the line: "Crying " 'weep, 'weep," in notes of woe" from poem 2. ... They would simply be replaced by another and possibly even younger boy. ... Blackness has devoured all parts of the chimney sweepers lives. The third line in the second stanza in poem 2 is one example of how the colour black functions as a destructive element: "They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe.". ...

• Word Count: 2076
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

In The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence), the persona, a young boy chimney sweeper, expresses how and when he became a chimney sweeper. ... Tom's initially frightening dream, "That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, Were all locked up in coffins of black... The boy accepts what the angel says. ... "A little black thing among the snow-(1), the young chimney sweeper, wonders where his parents are. " They are both gone up to the church to pray' -(4). ... "They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe-(7-8), as they continue in their happy, joyf...

• Word Count: 1280
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Here the sweep's unfeeling sanctimonious parents have clothed him in the clothes of death and taught him to sing the notes of woe. ... 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 'cl...

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