Though the content of this poem is very much tragic and miserable, ironically the story of the poem ends on a happy note; ‘So the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm.’ However, ironic is what Blake intended it to be. Children are brainwashed into believing that this is their path in life (to chimney sweep in this case) and would ‘have God for his father and never want joy’ - as long as they do as they are told and are good there will be better things for them to come...in heaven. Though Blake does not criticise this innocence that children hold in their view of God, he does present it as naive and the moral we are left with, ‘so if all do their duty, they need not fear harm,’ seems slightly uncanny. The hope of release and joy, even though this happiness is deferred to the future, leaves the present unchanged. This contrasts with the complete dearth of comfort offered in Songs of Experience. Here the little boy’s unfeeling hypocritical parents have ‘clothed [him] in the clothes of death / And taught [him] to sing the notes of woe.’ Religion is seen to be on the side of the parents, ‘who are both gone up to the church to pray.’ Blake is displaying the hypocrisy of the parents here as they are thanking the Lord for their wonderful life while their son has been sent out to work, ultimately ending in his death. God himself is implicated in the child’s condition, ‘God and his priest and king, / Who make up a heaven of our misery’ - emphasis on the whole system which represses the child, even forcing him to conceal his unhappiness (‘clothed’), psychologically as well as physically. God is transformed from a father in Songs of Innocence to an oppressor in Experience and the systems within society who are tolerating such abuse of children are held up to our scorn and loathing.
The simple language Blake uses and the rhythm make the poem from Songs of Innocence almost like a nursery rhyme. This can also be seen through the extra syllables in some of the lines, ‘As Tom was a sleeping’. This nursery rhyme likeness reinforces the innocence and the young naivety that children possess. Blake manages to convey his own thoughts through The Chimney Sweeper poems showing that children are misled by their own innocence. He is condemning society who wrongly convince the vulnerable that they have a part to play in the world despite their exploitation.
From The Chimney Sweeper one can see Blake’s concerns regarding society’s treatment of, and attitude towards the young. This poem can be connected with Holy Thursday where Blake again expresses dislike of attitudes towards children of the poor. However, unlike The Chimney Sweeper, there is something impersonal about the events Blake is describing in Holy Thursday (Songs of Innocence). The children from charity schools are attending a service in St Paul’s Cathedral. ‘Oh what a multitude they seemed,’ ‘Seated in companies they sit’ - the image is of masses of children, Blake does not describe one’s particular experience or bring us close to an individual, making the reader seem much more detached that that of the feelings one develops for the little boy chimney sweep.
When reading the poem at face value, the children seem happy as they have come to ‘raise to heaven the voice of song’ to thank God and give gratitude to the rich benefactors, ‘the aged men, wise guardians’ who have rescued them from poverty and starvation. However, there seems to be something slightly more sinister under-lying the poem, such as the ‘Grey headed beadles...with wands as white as snow’ - not only are beadles traditionally associated with torture, but the ‘white as snow’ seems to represent something harsh and cold rather than the innocence that it should portray. The children do not seem free or natural ‘in companies they sit’, they appear to have been ordered and controlled - an image Blake would convey as a loss of innocence as he strongly believed that children should be able to develop freely and naturally conform to the ways of the world rather than be ordered what to do. Blake conveys his feelings by subtly questioning the motivation of those who have responsibility for these youthful charges.
The angel at the end of the poem can also be questioned as to whether Blake has portrayed it as good or bad. Is it the good angel who has come to save the children or the bad angel who, as in The Chimney Sweeper made the children believe that everything was good and right with the world?
Blake would seem to suggest that society is doing its best for the children and this poem ‘expresses the idealism of one who saw the annual charity school service as a manifestation of loving care, [whereas] the Holy Thursday of Experience presents the horrified protests of one who recognises it as intolerable evidence of mass poverty in society.’ (Internet Source)
In the Experience version of Holy Thursday, Blake gives the reader a different view - sceptical and hostile, explicitly criticising society. The rhetorical questions Blake uses all the way through imply and enforce his indignation. ‘In a rich and fruitful land’ conveys the inequality of the social classes; the children are instrumental in maintaining the social hierarchy.
The use of the word ‘babe’ conveys a lack of innocence and childhood - Blake is conveying that children of the poor are not able to enjoy the freedom and innocence that they rightfully should. Although they are children, they do not seem to live in the state of childhood.
Thus Blake holds even the charitable actions of society are not what they seem and goes beyond their outward manifestations to examine their motives - making us aware of the conditions that permitted such poverty to thrive. Blake is conveying with these poems the importance of protecting and valuing innocence wherever it is found and that society is corrupt in its treatment of children of the poor.
