In William Blake's Songs of Innocence, the poems written consist of joyful and sweet song-like lyrics creating images of childhood in a natural and happy setting. The children in these poems are young, innocent and unaware of the harsh realities of life. In a few of the songs, especially in The Chimney Sweeper, Blake suggests that the innocent child is caught in an exploitive and harsh world beyond its understanding. This poem describes how a chimney sweeper boy and his fellows cope with their miserable fate of being chimney sweepers, as it would often lead to death. The chimney sweepers are nave and innocent. They accept their fate and their child labor as a God-given duty, showing the bitterness of Blake's implied social criticism. In Blake's Songs of Experience, the poems consist of a darker and tristful tone affirming a more realistic, and often angrier view of creation than their Innocence counterparts. These lyrics create an image of a world of tyranny and sickness. In a few of the poems, the children are poor and deprived of joy. As many of the Songs of Experience correspond to the Songs of Innocence, The Chimney Sweeper (Experience), emphasizes the forsaking of the child and the false restrictive devoutness of the adult world. Although Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience create different tones and images in both, Blake remains responsive to the reality of human condition which is exploitive of others for personal joy and happiness. .
In The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence), the persona, a young boy chimney sweeper, expresses how and when he became a chimney sweeper. The young boy was sold to be a chimney sweeper at a very young age which is an excuse for his innocence of how he was being exploited, "When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue-(1-2). The chimney sweeper's father possesses the ultimate lack of care. He is indifferent to his child suffering while performing this brutal job cleaning the soot from chimneys, yet the child nonetheless abides, and does what he is told.
