Skip to content

In his own words

The Chimney Sweeper

William Blake · 1757-1827 · From Songs of Experience (1794)

A little black thing in the snow,Crying "weep! weep!" in notes of woe!"Where are thy father and mother? Say!"--"They are both gone up to the church to pray.
"Because I was happy upon the heath,And smiled among the winter's snow,They clothed me in the clothes of death,And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
"And because I am happy and dance and sing,They think they have done me no injury,And are gone to praise God and his priest and king,Who make up a heaven of our misery."

The Innocence poem of the same name, seen without the dream. The parents are at church, praising a God the child says is made of their misery.

The poems are in the public domain. The texts here follow Poems of William Blake, Project Gutenberg ebook 574, reproduced verbatim, punctuation included. That late 19th century text keeps the famous Tyger spelling while smoothing some others, so a few lines read slightly differently than in Blake's original etched plates. Songs of Innocence first appeared in 1789, Songs of Experience in 1794, combined by Blake into one book whose title page promises to show the two contrary states of the human soul. The introductions and groupings are ours.