The Chimney Sweeper (Experience): Notes

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A very much darker and more savage vision here than in the counterpart poem in the Songs of Innocence. The references to a church which is complicit in the repression of the child, together with the treatment of the negligent parents, make this one of the most bitter poems in the sequence, with its emphasis on a whole system (God, Priest and King) which represses the child, even forcing him to conceal his unhappiness (a reference to being "clothed"), psychologically as well as physically). Comparison with the Songs of Innocence poem The Chimney Sweeper is valuable.

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