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Never Lose Hope
William Blake, born on November 28, 1757, in London is one of the greatest English poets. His work is studied today all over the world. One of Blake’s poems, “The Chimney Sweeper”, shows many signs of immortality. In this poem, immortality can only be reached by maintaining hope in a hopeless world and embracing happiness. An example of this is line 20: “He’d have God for his father, and never want joy”. Immortality is something people have chased for years and have never been able to capture. In Webster’s dictionary, immortality is stated as, “Not mortal, deathless, living or lasting forever.” In “The Chimney Sweeper”, Blake saw immortality in a different sense than Webster states. Blake saw immortality as happiness throughout life and the importance of hope.
“The Chimney Sweeper” is a great title for Blake’s poem. The title is a symbol representing the harsh life of a chimney sweeper and his life as a child. He states, “When my mother died I was very young, and my father sold me while yet my tongue”, (ln 1-2). This is saying that his mother died when he was young and his father gave him up. Blake’s unhappiness resembles being mortal in a sense that his unhappiness is like being dead. Blake has two meanings when he says, “So your chimney’s I sweep, and in soot I sleep”, (ln 4). This line denotes that he is an adult now with the responsibility of being a chimney sweeper. Blake is really saying that his childhood was terrible like the work of a chimney sweeper.
Now Blake introduces a new character into the poem, which is Tom Dacre (ln 5). In the second stanza, Blake is stating the mortality, or unhappiness of Tom. The author’s tone changes for a moment in stanza two when he says “Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head’s bare, the soot cannot spoil your white hair”, (ln 7-8). The author has two meanings in these lines. The obvious is that he can’t have hair for the fact that his hair would be full of soot. The tone change comes in where the meaning is not so obvious. The tone up to line six is mournful. Lines seven and eight also have a mournful tone in the obvious state. They connote that Tom needs to keep his head up and not let his job get to him, or simply to keep hope alive.
From childhood he was unlike those around him. He went to school to study art and found his love of poetry. From his early childhood, Blake spoke of having visions. He spoke of seeing God and the Angels. He married his with Catherine Boucher in 1782. His brother, Robert died, but this is where Blake got a lot of inspiration for his work. In 1789 Blake wrote and illustrated the popular Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience in 1794. His poetry was extremely non-conformist and focused on imagination, rather than reason. Both works have many common parallels and themes. His poetry also deals with the common aspect of a romanticism work; it has moments of sin, suffering and salvation. In Songs of Innocence, The Chimney Sweeper, it is a heartbreaking poem about the young children that were forced into doing labor as chimneysweepers. Mostly because they were the only ones small enough to fit in the spaces and they were sold into that work. It was damaging and cruel how they treated these children and Blake writes about it in such a powerful way. In the first stanza alone the reader learns about the difficult life and the suffering this child has had to overcome, “When my mother died when I was young, my father sold me while yet my tongue…so, your Chimney’s I sweep and in soot I sleep.” (Songs of Innocence) This poor child is portrayed so innocently and gentle, yet leads this suffering unfortunate life. People treated
Mason, Michael. Notes to William Blake: A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Ed. Michael Mason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
“Our horse chestnut [tree] is in full bloom, thickly covered with leaves and much more beautiful than last year.”
At first glance, one may not fully comprehend that Elie is utilizing the aforementioned metaphor to convey much more than just the meaning behind the word “chimney” (Wiesel 39). In fact, he is attempting
The poem opens with an introduction of the speaker: “When my mother died I was very young, / And my father sold me while yet my tongue / Could scarcely cry ’weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!” (ll. 1-3). The speaker’s pathetic circumstance is stressed here, and he quickly wins the sympathy of the reader; Blake makes this possible by quickly relating some but doubtfully all the previous sorrow that the speaker has endured. First, his mother died when he, and perhaps she, too, was quite young, a common occurrence in Industrial Age England, given the dismal shape of the inner city, which was host to such problems as over-crowding, poor hygienic practices and sub-par means of sanitation—all of which ultimately led to the deaths of thousands. Second, his father apparently sold him, or, more likely, forced him to work to supplement the family’s income. Child Labor laws had yet to be enacted in England in 1789, s...
In lines 4 – 8 when Blake writes, “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.’ These lines symbolize faith in the biblical sense. Young Tom’s is like that of the sacrificial lamb of God and when the narrator tells Tom to stop crying because he knows that the soot can not longer spoil his white hair he, is saying to Tom, once he makes this sacrifice nothing else can hurt him. Blake is saying that if the children make the sacrifice of living out their lives here on Earth, no matter how dark and dismal their lives may seem at the time, they will be rewarded in heaven as long as they know the glory of God and trust in him.
William Blake, born in 1757 and died in 1827, created the poems “The Lamb,” “The Tyger,” and Proverbs of Hell. Blake grew up in a poor environment. He studied to become an engraver and a professional artist. His engraving took part in the Romanticism era. Romanticism is a movement that developed during the 18th and early 19th century as a reaction against the Restoration and Enlightenment periods focusing on logic and reason.
It was a cold, dark morning when the phone rang. It was boisterously loud and the clock read six o'clock. The deafening noise jolted us again, and there was only one way to make it stop. Chris picked up the phone and in a tired, drowsy voice, answered, "Hello."
Throughout the Industrial Revolution in England in the 18th century, many children were forced to work against their own will, to support the growing need for labor in the demanding economy. William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper,” meticulously portrays the mindsets of two individuals obligated to carry out these societal expectations of working at a very young age. However, contrary to societies opinion on harmful child labor, Blake uses irony and sarcasm to convey his critical allegation of the wrongdoings of the church and society on their lack of effort to intervene and put an end to the detrimental job of adolescent chimney sweeping. By creating this ironic atmosphere, Blake establishes a poem that is full of despair and suffering but is sugar-coated and disguised with happiness and content provided by the church and society of London.
The Industrial Revolution was a crucial point in the history of the world, and also a very difficult time to endure, especially for the working class. In the late eighteenth century, a young poet and artist by the name of William Blake became outraged and inspired by the inhumane treatment of young boys called "chimney sweeps." Thus he produced a protest in the form of simple poetry. Wicksteed says, "Deeper knowledge of Blake will reveal no darkly buried meaning, only a deeper sense in the meaning obvious to all." (Hirsch, 7) This is precisely the case in the protest Blake calls "The Chimney Sweeper." Blake utilizes realism, rather than deep symbolism, in the form of imagery to portray the brutality of the Industrial Revolution.
Blake also uses sound to deliver the meaning to the poem. The poem starts off with "My mother groaned! my father wept." You can hear the sounds that the parents make when their child has entered this world. Instead of joyful sounds like cheer or cries of joy, Blake chooses words that give a meaning that it is not such a good thing that this baby was brought into this world. The mother may groan because of the pain of delivery, but she also groans because she knows about horrible things in this world that the child will have to go through. The father also weeps for the same reason, he knows that the child is no longer in the safety of the womb, but now is in the world to face many trials and tribulations.
“The Sick Rose” is a short poem written by William Blake. He is also known as a poet, artist and mystic. Many poets receive their inspiration for writing their poems from sources like a lover, a personal experience, or a historical event. Thus Blake's short poem is not from his imagination, but it’s from the reality that he might witness in his life. Blake’s poem has received many criticisms from critics who tried to investigate “The Sick Roe” and they give their interpretation with many different types of explanation.
At the very start of the poem it is clear in what way Blake wishes to
Stanza three explains what life was like at the farm he lived on, as the previous stanzas have. Line twenty describes the landscape and how beautiful it is. It describes it as Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air,” (20). Lines twenty one through twenty three use more imagery to describe the landscape. They use words such as “lovely and watery” (21) to show how pleasant it was to gaze upon the land. The word “And” is also repeated in the beginning of each of these lines which creates suspense. They also show repetition by repeating words such as “green” and it brings up the starry night again. Line twenty four talks about owls and how they are starting to come out. The day is starting to end and there is still beauty in everything. Now night has begun and all the things that made the day happy and carefree are starting to disappear. Lines twenty five through twenty seven use imagery to show that the moon is appearing and the horses and everything else is disappearing into the night. This begins to show that the youth the speaker is experiencing is starting to
The consistent pattern of metrical stresses in this stanza, along with the orderly rhyme scheme, and standard verse structure, reflect the mood of serenity, of humankind in harmony with Nature. It is a fine, hot day, `clear as fire', when the speaker comes to drink at the creek. Birdsong punctuates the still air, like the tinkling of broken glass. However, the term `frail' also suggests vulnerability in the presence of danger, and there are other intimations in this stanza of the drama that is about to unfold. Slithery sibilants, as in the words `glass', `grass' and `moss', hint at the existence of a Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As in a Greek tragedy, the intensity of expression in the poem invokes a proleptic tenseness, as yet unexplained.