I guess I picked this poem today because it reminds me so much of Mary Poppins, and I'm feeling a bit nostalgic. Remember when Bert and Mary are all covered with soot? I think this might have been the first movie I ever saw with my Grandma. I love Mary Poppins. I loved my Grandma more. I haven't seen that movie for ages.
But back to the poem.
William Blake (1757-1827) was never a chimney sweep. He went to school in London until the age of ten, then took a keen interest in drawing. His parents, who were wealthy enough, bought him Greek antiquities to copy with engravings. He apprenticed until he was 21, making copies of Westminster Abbey, relief etchings, and sketches. He made seven engravings for Dante's Inferno. He died while working on these, and supposedly after making a sketch of his wife, Catherine. He apparently had visions, and some considered him mad. This poem is oddly uncharacteristic of Blake's work. He wrote two versions of this poem - this one in 1789 (the other in 1794). What I like most of all though is that Blake illustrated his poems, and this is something I do with my own poems. Back when Blake wrote these poems in London chimney sweeps would get small boys of five or six years old to climb in the chimneys to clean them, often for a pittance of wages. Perhaps Blake employed some of these chimney sweeps himself.
Here is my spoken version of this poem:
https://soundcloud.com/raindrop-11/the-chimney-sweeper
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The Chimney Sweeper - by Willliam Blake
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry 'Weep! weep! weep! weep!'
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.
There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved; so I said,
'Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.'
And so he was quiet, and that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight!--
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.
And by came an angel, who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins, and set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.
Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind;
And the angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father, and never want joy.
And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm:
So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
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Picture: from Wikipedia, in the Public Domain.
References: The Chimney Sweeper picture of the illustrated poem is taken from
Wikipedia, in the Public Domain.
