‘And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury,’
One of the most noticeable features in the Songs Of Innocence ‘The Chimney-Sweeper’ is its naivety. To an outsider in this day and age we can see that the child was not fully aware of his situation and the life he had ahead of him. Though some may claim it debatable, it can also be said that his blind faith in God is a naïve quality. This unquestioning faith is demonstrated in lines such as;
‘And the angel told Tom if he’d be a good boy,
He’d have God for his father and never want joy.’
The opposite of this is evident in Songs Of Experience. The reliance on God has given way to a bitter, angry view of God.
‘And are gone to praise God and his priest and king,
Who make up a heaven of our misery.’
This attitude is clearly one that can only be shared by those who have had experience of a life where they have not felt the presence of God instead of a life, still young, of innocence, in the first poem. However it can be argued that the references to God in the first poem are in fact quite wry and sarcastic - a reflection of the ideas presented and forced on to children at the time of it’s writing; a verse loaded with political implications.
Further evidence of the lack of hope in Songs Of Experience in comparison to Songs Of Innocence can be found in the language used in the poem. Words such as ‘death’ and ‘woe’ create a bleak feel and dispel any suggestion of innocence conjured by the original poem. The language used in the Songs Of Innocence version is pure and untainted. A prime example of this is in the line about Tom Dacre’s hair.
‘There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved, so I said…’
The image of a lamb is traditionally a biblical one and connected to youth and innocence. A pure white lamb is perhaps the most fitting way to describe an innocent child, and yet, there is also the idea of a ‘lamb to the slaughter’, which indeed the chimney sweepers were, for they were risking their health daily while they were in the chimneys. Therefore this description has a double meaning.
One consistent theme in the two poems is the desertion by the chimney-sweeper’s parents. In Songs Of Innocence, the child was discarded by their father,
‘And my father sold me…’
and in Songs Of Experience, the child was betrayed by both his parents,
‘”Where are thy father and mother? Say!”
“They are both gone up to the church to pray.”’
There is hypocrisy indicated here. The purity of the parents going to church versus the act of sending their child to the chimneys suggests that the parents are not as sinless as they would like to be afterall, and is again possibly a reflection of the popular corruption of some churches in the day.
One thing that Experience can hold over Innocence is the existence of memories. In Innocence, the child has nothing to look back to or compare. In Experience, the chimney-sweeper looks back on his happy memories from before when he was sent to work in the chimneys.
‘Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smiled along the winter’s snow..’
The ability to do this emphasises further the sour regret and despair that the chimney-sweeper in Experience is feeling. Despite this it appears that the chimney-sweeper has not developed any friends along the way to act like a comfort blanket in the way that the chimney-sweeper’s friends do in Innocence.
‘As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight;
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned and Jack..’
Although he would not have shared the usual childlike relationships we are accustomed to, the company alone contributes to the hopeful mood of the Innocence poem. The lack of this in Experience merely enhances the loneliness threaded throughout the poem, leaving the reader with a more sombre frame of mind, even if the Innocence poem is by no means cheerful. These are the predominant attitudes produced by the two Chimney-Sweeper poems.
