The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence): Notes

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Once again, 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.


Compare this poem with The Chimney Sweeper (Experience)

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