Each quatrain in William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” from Song of Innocence consists of two riming couplets, some perfect rimes, others slant or near rime. Blake is offering social commentary in this poem, as he often does.
First Quatrain: “When my mother died I was very young”
The narrator of the little drama is an unnamed boy, and the reader knows only that when this narrator was “very young,” his “mother died,” and his “father sold [him]” before he could even talk. But the poor little boy “could,” although “scarcely cry 'Weep! weep! weep! weep!' / So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.”
Second Quatrain: “There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head”
The speaker then abandons his own story and situation and turns to another boy’s story, “little Tom Dacre.” He reports that little Tom Dacre cried when his head “was shaved.” The little boy had curls that looked like “a lamb’s back.” The speaker comforts little Tom, however, telling him of the efficacy of having a shaved head instead of all those white curls.
Because the pair will be working in chimneys sweeping out the black soot, they need to have shaved heads so that the soot will not become lodged in the hair. It is, of course, much easier to wash soot off a bald head than out of a tangle of wooly hair. The narrator’s common sense reasoning is supposedly meant to make little Tom feel better.
Third Quatrain: “And so he was quiet, and that very night”
The narrator’s logic seems to help little Tom; at least, he stops crying. And little Tom has a beautiful dream that night. He sees “thousands of sweepers,” including four boys whom he knows by name, “Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack.” But sadly, they are all “locked up in coffins of black.”
Blake’s not so subtle symbolism is working again. Of course, the black coffins represent the chimneys of soot in which the boys must spend their precious childhood days.
Fourth Quatrain: “And by came an angel, who had a bright key”
The dream takes a twist, though, that is as remarkably unsurprising as the symbol of the chimney-soot-black-coffin. Who should come along but “an angel” with a “bright key.” The bright-keyed angel opens up the coffins and “set[s] them all free.”
As the reader has seen with Blake’s “The Garden of Love,” Blake’s enthusiasm leads him to make silly artistic choices: Coffins do not require keys, nor do chimneys.
After their release from the coffin, the boys run “down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run / And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.” The dream has taken a lovely turn.
Fifth quatrain: “Then naked and white, all their bags left behind”
And the dream continues, growing more surreal as it goes: after enjoying the earthly pleasures of romping in the sun, and running through an open meadow, and swimming in a lush river, they find themselves “ris[ing] upon clouds,” where they “sport in the wind.” And the angel admonishes little Tom that if he behaves properly, he will “have God for his father” and always be happy.
Sixth Quatrain: “And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark”
But little Tom wakes up from his dream, and he and the other chimney sweep boys get up “in the dark,” get dressed, grab their chimney sweep equipment, and go to work. Despite the cold morning, Little Tom is “happy and warm” because of his dream.
But the speaker, who is also just a boy like Tom, has a more sinister view of things; thus he sarcastically remarks, “So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.” The angel’s appearance in the dream liberated little Tom, but his more experienced coworker remains cynical about the angel’s function, echoing Blake’s own cynical view of anything religious.
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