The Songs of Experience version of William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” more blatantly points out the horrors that came with being a chimney sweeper during the late 18th century. The profession was extremely dangerous, and almost always employed young boys because they would fit inside the chimneys. In this poem, the companion to the Songs of Innocence poem by the same title, Blake argues that parents and the church completely ignore the terrible conditions that these boys had to deal with, because they are devoting all of their attention to praising God.

First, the parents/church start the boy at work as a chimney sweeper because he is happy being outside in the snow. Then, once he starts the job, they believe that since the boy acts happy, he is completely fine, while he is actually singing the “notes of woe” (9).

The boy narrates this poem, and in the first line he refers to himself as “A little black thing among the snow.” This immediately depicts the boy’s view of himself: nameless, useless, hurt. Additionally, the “clothes of death” (8) that Blake refers to later in the poem are supposed to be the chimney sweeper uniform. The entire poem basically shows how the boys felt when they were forced into dangerous environments and entirely neglected by all of the adult figures in their life, because they were so concentrated on getting into Heaven. In the end of the poem, the boy says that these people ” praise God & his Priest & King / Who make up a heaven of our misery” (12-13). While the word “heaven” usually has a positive connotation, the boy is stating that since church is taking the focus off of the horrible conditions of the chimney sweeping profession, the adults’ “heaven” is actually the sweepers’ place of despair.

The engravings of this text significantly add to its emotional impact. In the images, the boy is walking in the snow to his job. Most of the engravings look messy and dirty, which immediately made me think of sadness and gloom (and of course chimney sweeping). I think Copy N and Copy T illustrate the poem best, because the boy almost blends into the background, and the pictures look like someone just threw soot all over them. The images definitely succeed in evoking feelings of grief and sympathy that add to the emotions from the text.