William Blake · first published 1789
The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence)
Meaning, complete text, stanza guide, vocabulary, techniques and an explained quiz.
What the poem means
A child chimney sweep recounts exploitation and a consoling dream whose promise of heavenly freedom helps the children return to dangerous labour.
Tom Dacre's dream replaces black coffins with river, sunlight and play, but dawn brings the sweepers back to brushes, cold and soot. The final moral about duty is painfully ironic because it repeats the belief that keeps abused children obedient rather than safe.
The poem
Spelling and punctuation follow the checked source edition. Stanza links connect the text to the guide and quiz.
Stanza 1. When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue, Could scarcely cry "Weep! weep! weep! weep!" So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.
Stanza 2. There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, That curled like a lamb's back was shaved; so I said, "Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head's bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."
Stanza 3. And so he was quiet, and that very night, As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight!-- That thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.
Stanza 4. And by came an angel, who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins, and let them all free; Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run, And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.
Stanza 5. Then naked and white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind; And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy, He'd have God for his father, and never want joy.
Stanza 6. And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark, And got with our bags and our brushes to work. Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm: So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
Stanza guide
Stanzas 1–6
The poem moves from sale and soot to Tom's liberating dream, then wakes before material conditions change. Blake lets the child narrator repeat religious comfort sincerely while the coffin image and cold morning teach the reader to question that comfort.
Return to stanza 1 ↑Vocabulary
- sweep
- a child employed to clean soot from chimneys
- shaved
- cut very close to the skin
- coffins
- boxes in which dead bodies are buried
Literary techniques
Dramatic irony
the child finds reassurance in duty
Readers can see that obedience does not remove the exploitation the child accepts.
Symbolism
“coffins of black”
The chimneys and soot become images of confinement and premature death.
Contrast
dark work against green plain and sun
The dream's freedom intensifies the cruelty of waking life.
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