The meaning behind this poem is shown not only through structure but as well through metaphors and images. The images and metaphors used help to establish that this poem is about a young child who is an orphan and is being forced to deal with the pressures of child labour. The poem is written as though it is coming right out of the child’s thoughts. Many of the thoughts are very naïve, which helps to stress how young this child is. An example of this would be when the poet writes: “Where are thy father and mother? Say?” / “They are both gone up to church to pray,”. The child at this point was so young when his parents died that all he remembers is going to a church and never seeing them again. At this young age a child usually only knows of a church as somewhere where people go to pray, he does not realize that they did not just go to pray and never come back, but that they were there for their funeral and that is why they never came back. The basic tone of the poem is sad, angry, and confused. These tones all focus on the feelings of this young boy and the confusion he feels about how is life has turned upside down. Since it was the cause of his parents death that turned is life in another direction he asks him self the question of how could they both leave him and allow his life to get like this. The boy continuously blames the fact, that since he was so happy before his parents died, he was blinded with how life can really be and their death was a punishment to show him the truth. This is shown in the following:
“Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smil’d among the winter’s snow;
They clothed me in the clothes of death;
And taught me to sing in notes of woe.
The image of snow is used in the above stanza. The boy states that even in the snow he was happy before his parents died, snow symbolizing cold and bitterness. The death of his parents is then represented by the image of clothes of death, because once those clothes of death were worn, the boy was no longer happy and he entered a whole new world that was unknown to him before, a world that “…taught [him] to sing the notes of woe” .
The poem ends with the child’s negative views towards death: “And are gone to praise God and his priest and king, / Who make up a heaven of our misery”.
These last two lines stress how upset the child is and is being battered with child labor. The last line especially, “Who make up a heaven of our misery” , is stating that when the parents went to heaven it caused the young child misery, turning his life around to the worst-case scenario. Using this as an ending emphasizes just how miserable the life of this child has become. When all that he loved has left him and he is now alone. This ending allows its reader to feel sad and dark when they are finished reading the poem, for you know that the child will not be getting better and life will continue for him in a way we never wish to know. William Blake’s, The Chimney Sweeper, is a sad and lonely poem. It uses images and words that help the reader to feel from inside this young child. Images and Metaphors are used throughout the poem viewing a child’s new life and new feelings. The structure of the poem is written as though it is coming straight out of the child’s head, dark and miserable for the new life that he has stumbled into is nothing but a “…heaven of our misery”.
Comparing both "The Chimney sweeper" from songs of innocence and songs of experience, the poems are both similar in subject with Blake using `The Chimney Sweep" in both to emphasise the miserable urban life of a chimney sweep during the industrial revolution. Appearing in both poems is the rhyming pattern of ‘weep, ’weep and four beat line rhythms producing the effect of a children's song, this is a technique used to accentuate innocence of the poem. The two poems are also similar that in which are being told from a child's point of view display one important difference. In the `innocence' poem the child is unaware of the implications that the story he is telling beholds. Where as in "experience" the child is a streetwise child of the slums creating a darker tone. In both `innocence' and `experience' we can see the contrast of each revealing the story of a chimney sweep.
