Criticism on "The Chimney Sweeper" (Songs of Innocence)
Notes - theme directs reader to think about exploitation of children - (chimney sweeps could be bought for 7 years for less than the price of a terrier) - the child tells his own story - reveals the transforming power of the imagination - little boy ashamed because he has had his hair shaved off (for lice?) - dream of heaven brings him happiness - "So your chimneys"--addressed to middle/upper class reader poem ends with a moral - but is the moral for the children or for the adults? - alternative vision expressed in speaker's caring for other boys - love, sense of shared identity -Dacre - Possibly a reference to Lady Dacre's alms house, near Blake's own house at the time. Peter Butter comments further that the aged poor where admitted here "on condition that they could say the Creed and the ten commandments. They could foster (and sell) a poor child.
As in 'Holy Thursday' and 'The Little Black Boy', this child-monologue uses the child's innocent perspective to present what could be a biting and savage indictment of social and psychic repressiveness: the child's consoling vision of the pastoral after-life may be a glorious and 'innocent' celebration of Heaven, or it may equally well show the extent to which the child-speaker has been conditioned into acceptance of his slavery in this life. The references to the 'blackness' of the children, together with the dualistic references to black body/white soul, invites comparison with 'The Little Black Boy'. The imagery within stanzas Four and Five, of leaping and laughing children, washing in rivers and children on clouds, recurs throughout the Songs of Innocence.