The Chimney
Sweeper – Innocence
When my mother died I was
very young,
And my father sold me while
yet my tongue
Could
scarcely cry ‘weep!’ ‘weep!’ ‘weep!’
So your chimneys I sweep and
in soot I sleep.
There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curl’d
like a lamb’s back, was shav’d: 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 and Jack,
Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black.
And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he open’d
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 & 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,
& never want Joy –
And so Tom awoke; and we rose
in the dark,
And got
with our bags and our brushes to work.
Tho’ the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm;
So if all do their duty they
need not fear harm.
William Blake