The chimney sweeper
William Blake’s poem “The Chimney Sweeper” was published in 1794. The poem has two parts. The first appeared in Blake’s 1789 collection “Songs of Innocence”. The second part, the one read here, was subsequently included in the “Songs of Experience”.
William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 in Soho, London, England, and he died on 12 August 1827 in Charing Cross, London, England, at the age of 69.A poet, painter, and printmaker, Blake was largely unrecognized during his life, but is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic age. Living in London for almost his entire life, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich collection of work that embraced the imagination as “the body of God” or “human existence itself”.
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A little black thing among the snow, Crying “weep! ’weep!” in notes of woe! “Where are thy father and mother? say?” “They are both gone up to the church to pray.
Because I was happy upon the heath, And smil’d among the winter’s snow, They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
And because I am happy and dance and sing, They think they have done me no injury, And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King, Who make up a heaven of our misery.”