William Blake (1757-1827)

“The Li le Black Boy” and “The Chimney Sweeper” included in collec on The Songs of Innocence,
published in 1789.
The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young (1789)
BY WILLIAM 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 & in soot I sleep.

There's li le 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, & that very night,

As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight!
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack,
Were all of them locked up in co ns of black;

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,

And he opened the co ns & 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 & white, all their bags le 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 & never want joy.
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And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

“The Chimney Sweeper”

• The speaker of this poem is a

small boy who was sold into the
chimney-sweeping business
when his mother died. He
recounts the story of a fellow
chimney sweeper, Tom Dacre,
who cried when his hair was
shaved to prevent vermin and soot
from infesting it. The speaker
comforts Tom, who falls asleep
and has a dream or vision of
several chimney sweepers all
locked in black coffins. An angel
arrives with a special key that
opens the locks on the coffins and
sets the children free. The newly
freed children run through a green field and wash themselves in a river, coming out
clean and white in the bright sun. The angel tells Tom that if he is a good boy, he will
have this paradise for his own. When Tom awakens, he and the speaker gather their
tools and head out to work, somewhat comforted that their lives will one day improve.
• a very young chimney sweeper is exposing the evils of chimney sweeping as a
part of the cruelties created by sudden increase in wealth. (a reaction to
exploitation of child labor)
• a sharp criticism of a culture that would perpetuate the inhuman conditions of
chimney sweeping on children. The Chimney Sweeper’s life was one of
destitution and exploitation.
• The large houses created by the wealth of trade had horizontal flues heating huge
rooms which could be cleaned only by a small child crawling through them. These
flues literally became black coffins, which killed many little boys.
• A sweeper’s daily task was courting death because of the hazards of suffocation and
burns. These children were either orphans or founding or were sold by poor parents to
Master Sweepers for as little as two guineas.
 • They suffered from cancers caused by the soot, and occasionally little children
terrified of the inky blackness of the Chimneys got lost within them and only their
skeletons were recovered.

The Li le Black Boy

BY WILLIAM BLAKE
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav'd of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree

And si ng down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And poin ng to the east began to say.

Look on the rising sun: there God does live

And gives his light, and gives his heat away.
And owers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning joy in the noonday.

And we are put on earth a li le space,

That we may learn to bear the beams of love,
And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear

The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.
Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.
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Thus did my mother say and kissed me,
And thus I say to li le English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:

Ill shade him from the heat ll he can bear,

To lean in joy upon our fathers knee.
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me.

“The Little Black Boy”

• A lyrical poem dealing with issues of racism and slavery (explores racial prejudices)
• Humanism
• The black child, like the Chimney Sweeper, teaches that life is something to escape from;
which means in many ways it portrays a tragic vision but the poem retains its innocence
because there is belief in the happiness and redemption.
• Written in a context when the British was the leading slave traders; black boys were
employed as slave servants in British colonial households.
• The blacks were deemed to be savages without souls (subhuman)
• begins with the little black boy himself narrating. The boy tells the reader how his mother
gave birth to him in the southern forest of Africa. So, he is black but only his skin is black
while his soul is white (the whiteness of course representing purity). His spirit (soul) is as
white as an angel. I think the insinuation is that the black child is bemoaning his skin,
because it gives the appearance that he is “bereav’d of light”.
• Christian undertones (God, Jesus, shepherd, lamb, teaching of Gospel)
• In the last four lines of the poem, the narrator is the little black boy himself. He feels that
although his body is black and considered by many to be inferior, his soul, his spiritual
self is as fine as white child’s. So it would appear he has taken his mother’s teachings to
heart. The poet says that the black boy will shade the white boy from the beams of God’s
love. And that acts as a body or garment to the white child’s soul or body. As the black
boy has endured greater suffering on earth, he will help the white boy learn to bear the
beams of God’s love.
• Blake wrote the poem just about the time when the Mission established by the Methodist
Society were first founded in 1787, and the trend of religious thought was turning toward
preaching the Christian gospel to the black races. Black boys were commonly employed
as servants in big English houses. In this poem Blake has pointed out the comparison
between the black and the white boy. In the poem, the little black boy accepts his life as a
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gift from God. He takes it gracefully just as it is given and uses it to good purposes,
though that life is not an easy one. He is probably a slave, regarded by his overseer as one
“bereaved of light,” a beast of burden destined for an existence of hard toil. No wonder
that he cannot refer to God’s gift simply as a delightful one. The “light” and the “heat” are
received by “flowers and trees and beasts and men” as comfort in morning, joy in the
noonday,” but the “beams of love” are also something that he must “learn to bear.” He is
thankful for his life, but knows only too well that it is a hard one.
Elizabeth Barret Browning (1806-1861)

• Explored themes of oppression and inequality in her poetry

• interested in the position of women in society
• Ardent admirer of the work of Mary Wollstonecraft, whose controversial book A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) emphasized the ways in which middle-class
women were denied any proper education and were therefore made unfit for meaningful
roles in society.
• Barrett Browning repeatedly criticizes women’s secondary role in society and supports
women’s meaningful education
• The Woman Question in her major poem, Aurora Leigh, published in 1856.
• Her longest work, which is written as a nine-book epic, it traces Aurora’s struggles to
establish herself as a professional woman poet.

Across the course of the 19th century, the question of women’s roles and rights was
fiercely and widely debated. How should women – and particularly middle-class women –
be educated? What was their ‘proper’ place in society? Should they be allowed to work
outside the home? Should they be able to vote and have a political voice? These and a
range of other issues constituted what the Victorians termed ‘The Woman Question’,
which was fervently analyzed in discussion groups, in the press, in parliament, and in
scientific and medical circles as women pushed for greater recognition and equality.
Changes in social expectations and in legislation were achieved very slowly – the vote
was only granted to women over 30 in 1918 and women over 21 in 1928, for example –
but in the meantime the Woman Question was firmly on Britain’s social and political
agendas. It was an area, too, where many women writers, including the poet Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, made powerful and engaging contributions.
“The Cry of the Children”

• She wrote “The Cry of the Children” after reading a report on the employment of
children in mines and manufactories ragging wheelbarrows, and working long
hours.
• The harsh conditions in which they are made to work can cause their lungs and hearts to
rapidly dysfunction. She uses a young lamb bleating in the meadows to represent the
young children crying from whatever pains they must endure at the moment. Browning
involves young animals to symbolize innocence and being put through both mental and
physical pain for the satisfaction of an owner (1842). This encourages the reader to put
themselves in that position to better understand how intense the conditions were.
• the death of children because they are forced to work from a very tender age and they
pray to God to be taken before their time of actual death
• The poem has a melancholy tone
• The poem is intentionally didactic, political in purpose as well as subject matter. It is an
expression of her
• own alienation and abhorrence of industrial society seen through the eyes and feelings of
factory children, represented as innocence betrayed and used by
• Political and economic interests for selfish purposes.
 • demonic images of a Factory Hell are contrasted with the Heaven of the English
countryside
• ills of industrial society (preferring countryside and nature)
• factory wheels, relentlessly grind the children’s spirit and life
• The “Children” of the poem are silenced by the sound of the wheels turning, seek the
silence of death as their only means of escape, and, finally, are reduced to a mere “sob in
the silence” in a vain effort to curse.
• The struggle to speak is a constant theme in the poem, a motif that vies with the
oppression of the factory and the plight of the children. The repetition of the phrase, “say
the children” makes it a key element in the very structure of the poem.
• The hopelessness of the children’s plight is partially caused by their inability to be heard
or to express themselves.

The Cry of the Children (1843)

BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
"Pheu pheu, prosderkesthe m ommasin, tekna;"
[[Alas, alas, why do you gaze at me with your eyes, my children.]]—Medea.

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,

Ere the sorrow comes with years ?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, —
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are blea ng in the meadows ;
The young birds are chirping in the nest ;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows ;
The young owers are blowing toward the west—
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bi erly !
They are weeping in the play me of the others,
In the country of the free.

Do you ques on the young children in the sorrow,

Why their tears are falling so ?
The old man may weep for his to-morrow
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 Which is lost in Long Ago —
The old tree is lea ess in the forest —
The old year is ending in the frost —
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest —
The old hope is hardest to be lost :
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
Do you ask them why they stand
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
In our happy Fatherland ?

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,

And their looks are sad to see,
For the man's grief abhorrent, draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy —
"Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary;"
"Our young feet," they say, "are very weak !"
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary—
Our grave-rest is very far to seek !
Ask the old why they weep, and not the children,
For the outside earth is cold —
And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old !"

"True," say the children, "it may happen

That we die before our me !
Li le Alice died last year her grave is shapen
Like a snowball, in the rime.
We looked into the pit prepared to take her —
Was no room for any work in the close clay :
From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,
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 Crying, 'Get up, li le Alice ! it is day.'
If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,
With your ear down, li le Alice never cries ;
Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,
For the smile has me for growing in her eyes ,—
And merry go her moments, lulled and s lled in
The shroud, by the kirk-chime !
It is good when it happens," say the children,
"That we die before our me !"

Alas, the wretched children ! they are seeking

Death in life, as best to have !
They are binding up their hearts away from breaking,
With a cerement from the grave.
Go out, children, from the mine and from the city —
Sing out, children, as the li le thrushes do —
Pluck you handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pre y
Laugh aloud, to feel your ngers let them through !
But they answer, " Are your cowslips of the meadows
Like our weeds anear the mine ?
Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows,
From your pleasures fair and ne!

"For oh," say the children, "we are weary,

And we cannot run or leap —
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them and sleep.
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping —
We fall upon our faces, trying to go ;
And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,
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 The reddest ower would look as pale as snow.
For, all day, we drag our burden ring,
Through the coal-dark, underground —
Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron
In the factories, round and round.

"For all day, the wheels are droning, turning, —

Their wind comes in our faces, —
Till our hearts turn, — our heads, with pulses burning,
And the walls turn in their places
Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling —
Turns the long light that droppeth down the wall, —
Turn the black ies that crawl along the ceiling —
All are turning, all the day, and we with all ! —
And all day, the iron wheels are droning ;
And some mes we could pray,
'O ye wheels,' (breaking out in a mad moaning)
'Stop ! be silent for to-day ! ' "

Ay ! be silent ! Let them hear each other breathing

For a moment, mouth to mouth —
Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing
Of their tender human youth !
Let them feel that this cold metallic mo on
Is not all the life God fashions or reveals —
Let them prove their inward souls against the no on
That they live in you, or under you, O wheels ! —
S ll, all day, the iron wheels go onward,
As if Fate in each were stark ;
And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,
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 Spin on blindly in the dark.

Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers,

To look up to Him and pray —
So the blessed One, who blesseth all the others,
Will bless them another day.
They answer, " Who is God that He should hear us,
While the rushing of the iron wheels is s rred ?
When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us
Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word !
And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)
Strangers speaking at the door :
Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him,
Hears our weeping any more ?

" Two words, indeed, of praying we remember ;

And at midnight's hour of harm, —
'Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber,
We say so ly for a charm.
We know no other words, except 'Our Father,'
And we think that, in some pause of angels' song,
God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,
And hold both within His right hand which is strong.
'Our Father !' If He heard us, He would surely
(For they call Him good and mild)
Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,
'Come and rest with me, my child.'

"But, no !" say the children, weeping faster,

" He is speechless as a stone ;
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And they tell us, of His image is the master
Who commands us to work on.
Go to ! " say the children,—"up in Heaven,
Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we nd !
Do not mock us ; grief has made us unbelieving —
We look up for God, but tears have made us blind."
Do ye hear the children weeping and disproving,
O my brothers, what ye preach ?
For God's possible is taught by His world's loving —
And the children doubt of each.

And well may the children weep before you ;

They are weary ere they run ;
They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory
Which is brighter than the sun :
They know the grief of man, without its wisdom ;
They sink in the despair, without its calm —
Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom, —
Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm, —
Are worn, as if with age, yet unretrievingly
No dear remembrance keep,—
Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly :
Let them weep ! let them weep !

They look up, with their pale and sunken faces,

And their look is dread to see,
For they think you see their angels in their places,
With eyes meant for Deity ;—
"How long," they say, "how long, O cruel na on,
Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart, —
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 S e down with a mailed heel its palpita on,
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart ?
Our blood splashes upward, O our tyrants,
And your purple shews your path ;
But the child's sob curseth deeper in the silence
Than the strong man in his wrath !"
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