|| The Chimney Sweeper: Experience
Overview
The Chimney Sweeper (Experience) is a poem by William Blake from his 1794 collection Songs of Experience. It features a child chimney sweep speaking in the snow, described as a “little black thing.” When asked about his parents, the child says they are at church praying, having abandoned him despite claiming to act righteously.
The child explains he was once happy outdoors but was taken from that life, forced into chimney work, and made to internalize grief. The “clothes of death” refer to the soot-covered uniform and the premature mortality associated with the job. The child is trained to express sorrow through songs of suffering, aligning with the false moral justification used by adults.
The final stanza exposes the hypocrisy of religious and political institutions. The parents, believing they’ve done no harm because the child appears outwardly cheerful, go to worship a system—represented by “God and his Priest and King”—that structurally exploits children. The line “make up a heaven of our misery” indicts these powers for creating and sustaining societal suffering under the guise of divine or moral order.
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Real Life Details
Title: The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Experience)
First publication (Experience): 1794, Songs of Experience, printed and hand-illustrated by William Blake.
Language: English
Commonly republished by: Oxford University Press
Dover Thrift Editions
Penguin Classics
Everyman’s Library
Princeton University Press (The William Blake Archive)
Tate Publishing (in conjunction with museum exhibitions)
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