But that doesn’t mean they want to be left to forage on the snow-covered heath, without food or shelter or parents to support them. ‘Because I was happy upon the heath, / And smiled among the winter’s snow’: children enjoy the freedom occasioned by the wild, open heath, and snow is a novelty to them to play in. The child’s parents, then, have sold the boy into slavery, but Blake cleverly points out that they don’t consider themselves to be evil for doing so: after all, they have the backing of the church and state, since the government allows small boys to be sold into a life of deadly drudgery as chimney sweepers.īlake, of course, disapproves of this and the fact that the speaker of this second ‘Chimney Sweeper’ poem is an adult, talking to an innocent little child left shivering in the snow, underscores the injustice of the situation. The child tells the adult that he is on his own because his parents have gone to church to pray, and have left him to his fate because he seemed happy among the snow.

If whiteness symbolises purity, the blackness of the soot-covered child stands in stark contrast to the surrounding snow. He is a ‘black thing’ (not even human, note: merely a ‘thing’) among the white snow. In this second ‘Chimney Sweeper’ poem, from Songs of Experience, an adult speaker encounters a young chimney sweeper abandoned in the snow.

‘And because I am happy and dance and sing,Īnd are gone to praise God and his priest and king, ‘They are both gone up to the church to pray. ‘Where are thy father and mother? Say!’ –

Songs of experience william blake