Essay Archive - William Blake's The Chimney Sweeper
William Blake's The Chimney Sweeper
In William Blake's The Chimney Sweeper, Blake takes on the persona of a young chimney sweeper to tell a tale that is quite straightforward, yet ironic and sad at the same time. The voice of the poem is that of a young boy, characterized by the lines, "And my father sold me while yet my tongue/ Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep."(2-3) The boy is telling a story about how he became a chimney sweep, but mostly about another little boy named Tom Dacre who was also a chimney sweep and a dream little Tom had one night. The poem begins, "....
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