Blake has turned Tom Dacre’s nightmare into a dream because an Angel came down and opened the coffins, ‘And he open’d the coffins and set them all free.’ The children are now all happy and feel free from all the chimneys. It says, ‘And wash in a river, and shine in the sun,’ the children are washing away all the dirt and soot from inside their skin and when they do, there will be no blackness to block out the sun so they will have sunshine.
Still in Tom’s dream and it is where he is having the time of his life, now with no soot, he is nice and clear. The Angel told Tom, ‘…if he’d be a good boy, He’d have God for his father and never want joy,’ this means that he does what he is meant to do and don’t make the worst of things he will go to heaven and never want joy because he will have it already. Tom awoke from his bizarre dream and got to work straight away, Blake says this because children couldn’t wait to go to heaven because they are so miserable with their lives. ‘Tho’ the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm.’
Another poem in the same book is ‘Holy Thursday. ‘This Holy Thursday poem is very similar to Holy Thursday in Songs of Experience. It is about young poor children being used in an orphanage so the rich become richer and get a higher status in live.
The narrator talks about the children going to church. And they have been dressed really nice in colours of red and blue and green. The narrator wants the reader to know that the owners of the children are only dressing them up when the public see them, when the public don’t the children look below average. The first two lines are the children going to church all dressed up in nice bright clothes. The owner only wants to make them look pretty so the public don’t know what he does to the children and so the owner doesn’t get a bad reputation. The third line means the Parish Officer goes before everyone so he can give out all the notices and arrest the petty offenders. ‘…with wands as white as snow,’ it means that they are dangerous because snow can kill, and the Officers are clean because snow signals clean and pure. The last line says, ‘Till into the high dome of Paul’s…’ This means all the religious people are rushing in St.Pauls Cathedral.
William Blake has written when the children were singing in the Cathedral.
In the first two lines the narrator is saying that the children look great and nice, he says that there are thousands of children in poverty who are working for the rich, ‘…these flowers of London town!’ The narrator is speaking about the children saying that they are beautiful and nice like flowers. The third line is where the children are singing in thousands, the narrator wrote, ‘…but multitudes of lambs,’ this means that they are singing miserably, they are suffering because the narrator chose to put in lambs which signals Jesus (lamb of God) Jesus suffered so the narrator wants you to know that the children suffered then by the rich. In the fourth line the narrator says, ‘ Thousands of little boys and girls, raising their innocent hands.’ The narrator wanted it to sound like the children were begging by raising their hands.
The children are still singing but they are singing miserably to the guardians and angels of the poor. The first two lines of the stanza the narrator is trying to say that the children are singing in a foolish mood because the narrator includes the words, ‘…mighty winds…harmonious thunderings…’ In the third line it says that the children are singing to the elderly poor people maybe to make them feel happy. And in the fourth line it says to value the pity you are getting because you could expire and go to a better place. He is trying to say to make the best of things because nothing will change until you breath your last breath.
I will now look into the other book, called ‘Songs of Experience.’ Blake wrote this book five years after writing, ‘ Songs of Innocence.’
The poem ‘Chimney Sweeper’ in Songs of Experience is very similar to the poem in ‘Songs of Innocence’. ‘Chimney Sweeper’ is about a boy whose parents sent him to be a chimney sweeper and the parents didn’t give the boy any choice. The poem has just three stanzas with four lines in. It also uses some phrases that were used in the other poem called, ‘Chimney Sweeper.’
In the first line it gives the felling he is an un-important sweeper who stands out, I quote, “A little black thing among the snow.” If he is a little boy it will give the feeling he is helpless and vulnerable which could make him a target for criminals, he is a little black thing because all the soot goes under the skin making it look black, the writer says he is insignificant by writing a little black thing. The boy is also standing out because his skin is black from the soot and he is standing in white snow, the boy is in the road or path shouting, “’weep! ‘weep!” he is actually saying sweep! sweep! Very similar to the poem in ‘Songs of Experience.’ The writer says it, as weep because it gives the feeling the boy is unhappy or miserable. I quote, ‘ Crying weep! weep! In notes of woe.’ It is in notes of woe because he is shouting ‘sweep’ in a distressed way. Somebody asks where his parents are and he answers, ‘They are both gone up to the Church to pray.’ This means that the parents have left the child behind to make money by himself.
The boy is pretending to be happy so the parents didn’t feel guilty about making him a chimney-sweeper. He pretended to be happy, and he smiled in winter when he was cold and when no one cared for him just to make the best of things. The parents clothed him in sweepers clothes but the writer says it as clothes of death because a lot of people who put on chimney-sweeper clothes died, the parents didn’t even give the boy a say in what he was going to do, so children didn’t have right to argue back about their future. The parents also taught him to sing notes of woe, meaning they taught him to shout sweep! sweep!
He still pretends to be happy for the parents sake, and because the parents think the child is happy they think they have done the right choice by making him a chimney-sweeper. I quote, ‘And because I am happy and dance and sing, they think they have done me no injury.’The parents have gone to praise God and: His Priest and King? I think that the parents are so desperate that they praise God and Priest and King, when really it should just be God they praise. The last line, ‘Who make up a Heaven of our misery.’ The writer wrote this because chimney-sweepers felt so miserable living that they wanted to go to heaven, they can’t wait to go to heaven.
William Blake also made another ‘Holy Thursday,’ poem.
The poem ‘Holy Thursday’ is written so that you think the poor suffered a lot in that year. It says about how the rich have a joyful time and have lots of fruitful land whether the poor are sad, miserable and have no fruitful land. Blake made this poem much more clearer than the ‘Holy Thursday,’ in ‘Songs of Innocence.’
The narrator is stating that although the land is fruitful and rich, not everybody can use it or have it meaning it is the rich side that have the land and the poor side cannot use it. The narrator is trying to say, is this what God wanted that the poor are in rich and fruitful land but can’t use it, they are being used by the rich to make the rich even richer. He says, ‘Babes reduc’d to misery’. He uses the word babes meaning baby instead of using child, this gives the feeling that the baby is vulnerable and needs to be looked after. The last line says, ‘Fed with cold and usurous hand’, this also makes it feel like there vulnerable because they have to eat out of someone’s hand. They are fed with a cold hand as well meaning uncaring, and usurous meaning the children are only being fed so they can work.
The narrator is saying that the children are making the best of things even though they are poor and living in poverty. The narrator is saying, ‘ I s that trembling cry a song?’ Meaning that the children are singing even though they are crying so the children are very sad but still try to get their moral up. The narrator states this by saying, ‘Can it be a song of joy?’ Meaning the children are singing a happy joyful song. The narrator wants us to know that there were many poor children by writing, ‘And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty!’ The last line means, how can the children sing songs in poverty.
The narrator is saying that the poor don’t have rich and fruitful land and aren’t rich and can’t have sunshine, and he is saying what they do have. The first two lines say that the poor don’t have any sunshine which means they live in darkness and they have no good land so they can’t make their own food or anything like that. The narrator is saying that no matter what, the rich will always be better than the poor and always have better things. In the third line it says, ‘And their ways are fill’d with horns.’ This has great meaning, it means they are suffering like Jesus did on the cross with the crwon of thorns on his head. The fourth line says, ‘It is eternal winter there.’ Meaning it is always cold, it is like the poor are living in a hell.
The narrator is writing what could happen in the future with the poor. The first two lines are saying that there is a place where the sun does shine and the rain does fall. Meaning that the poor will no longer be poor if they find this place, they will be happy and joyful, they will live in bliss. The third line says, ‘Babe can never hunger there,’ which means that there is so much food that the babies will never be able to starve or hunger. The last line of the last stanza of this poem means that when the poor go to this place there will be no poverty left so no one can fell sorry for them and no one can make fun of them.
The next poem is called, ‘London,’ this is the only poem title tat isn’t used twice in the two books.
The poem ‘London’ is about life in London. William Blake wants the reader to realise that the poor in London were treating badly by the rich. He wants us to know that the Poor aren’t just pieces of muck on the roads.
The narrator is saying that when he walked in the streets, he could see that all the streets had rights. Except the rich had more rights than the poor, it is the same in the river with the trading ships coming in and out. In the first two lines of the stanza the narrator is walking through London saying that the streets and the Thames have rights but the rich have a lot more rights than the poor. With the Thames, the rich have more rights with trading. In the third line and fourth the narrator has seen the faces of the poor and describes them as, ‘Marks of Weakness, marks of woe.’ It means that the poor are sad and physically weak because they don’t have enough food to live on, they are sad because of their lifestyle, living in poverty.
The narrator stresses that all the poor are sad, miserable and distressing. In the first line the narrator makes sure that the reader knows that all the poor are sad by mentioning, ‘In every cry of every Man,’ this means that even the adults can’t live like they do. In the second line he says, ‘In every Infants cry of fear,’ I think this means that the children are scared of dying because of the living situation. In the third line it says, ‘…in every ban,’ ban is linked with chart’d, it is like a curse to the poor. The last line makes sense of the stanza by saying, ‘The mind-forg’d manacles I hear,’ this means they are chained to their own individual situation and have to accept it, they have an inability to do anything about it.
The narrator is still stressing about the sadness and that all the people and depressed. In the first two lines Blake is still writing about chimney-sweepers. He mentions their sadness and that the Church is black because of all the soot from the sweepers. The Church could also be black because they didn’t help the suffering. In the third line he is still stating the despondency of the people by saying, ‘And the hapless soldiers sigh, Runs in blood down palace walls.’ This could mean that the soldier is suffering because he says that the soldier is running in blood.
Blake is emphasizing that the poor have to be prostitutes to make money. In the second line William is highlighting that the prostitutes are a curse because they can cause STD (sexually transmitted disease) to the client they are dealing with. It can also be the curse the prostitutes have because they can get beaten up and can get pregnant. In the third line he is trying to say when the prostitute does gets pregnant then the baby will be of no importance to the prostitute, it is just another mouth to feed. And in the last line in the last stanza Mr. Blake is saying that prostitutes could give diseases to their clients and then the client could give it tot his wife and so on, it could cause a lot of deaths. Also in the last line it says, ‘…the marriage hearse,’ marriage is a good thing, a thing that is congratulated and W.B has put a happy word and connected it to hearse and a hearse is a sad, miserable, glum and depressing thing. Blake is doing this because marriage is only happy when the rich do it and it is a despondent occasion when the poor get married.
William Blake chose to criticise the Church and the wealthy, including the priests and the King. Blake chose to criticise the priest and King for not noticing and accepting the bad environment the poor are living in. Blake doesn’t like the Priest and Church for not caring for the poor, even though they worship God and the Priest, it is unfair. Blake thought very highly of children, he felt sorry for the children who became chimney sweeping. He states this many times in his poetry. He thought that the children were the future and that they shouldn’t be treated like dirt. They shouldn’t get starved for hunger, the wealthy should have looked after the children, but they didn’t. The children didn’t get any importance then. Blake wanted the rich to know the suffering and pain they have put the poor side through.
