. revolves around the institutions of Church, Law, property, generational inheritance and marriage" (Esterhammer 23), writes Esterhammer
Social and religious matters weight the city down rather than create an atmosphere of building up the individual. Roy Graves points out how the poem is a "dark social commentary" (Graves), focusing on the misery of the people to prove his points
Each baby represents another human life that was headed toward suffering and oppression. Stephen Lambert notes that the "Church is simultaneously a blackener and self-blackening" (Lambert)
The poem is as mental as it is physical. Harold Pagliaro maintains the poem represents "powerful overflow of inner state into outer world" (Pagliaro
In the last scene, the poet attempts to show us the fear he experienced when he heard the baby cry. Martin Price states the "visible stain has become a virulent infection, and its power is caught in the terrible poetic condensation that sees the marriage coach as already a hearse" (Price)
In short, he does not have to go anywhere to see how cruel people can be to one another. Neil Heims notes the poem states the "correspondence between the spiritual and natural worlds that is effected by the mind" (Heims) and the tree "grows in the human brain, not in nature
The poem shows a poor, street urchin who has lost his family because of poverty and despair. Blake writes, "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, and in soot I sleep" (Blake)
He does not have to work, and that makes all the difference between the two poems. Dunn writes, "I quit before the summer was over, / exercised the prerogatives of my class / by playing ball all August / and spent the money I'd earned / on Barbara Winokur, who was beautiful" (Dunn)
For example, one of his primary concerns is to convey the misery that he sees all around him. When he walks down the streets, he witnesses "marks of weakness, marks of woe" (Blake 4) on the faces of those he encounters
Before he could even properly say the words, he was sent out onto the street to sell his services. While this vision of childhood may be shocking to the modern reader, to the parents who made this difficult choice, it was better than seeing their children starve (Edmundson)
Technically, the poem resembles a children's poem or nursery rhyme, with a rhyme scheme of aabb. This construction adds buoyancy to the poem and the rhyming couplets are at odds with story of the poem -- a child sold into chimney sweeping -- but in line with the ultimate joyous message of ultimate happiness and salvation (Lorcher)
The narrator also uses heavenly and religious descriptors to indicate the sweepers' innocence. Tom Dacre, a chimneysweeper in the poem, is described as having "white hair…that curl'd like a lamb's back" (Blake, 26)
A lamb is associated with innocence as well as an angel. The angel performs a heroic act when she opens "the coffin and set[s] them all free" (Blake The Chimney Sweeper 13-4)
"Sublimity is the general and prevailing quality in this poem [where] the sentiments [ideas], based as they are on scripture, breathe "sanctity of thought." (Johnson, 1779)
In addition to exploring how the tiger was created, Blake also questions why such a fearful creature would be created. The tiger in the poem is not described in delicate terms like the lamb, which is meek and mild, but rather Blake contends that the tiger has a "fearful symmetry" (Blake line 4)
Innocence is converted to experience. (Paley 541) Furthermore, Blake references the War in Heaven in "The Tyger," which further supports the concept that God created both creatures yet cast one from his kingdom, as he did Satan
" "The Tyger," found in Songs of Experience, explores the relationship between religion and creation as well as introduces the concept of good and evil. Songs of Experience were first published in 1789 and republished as Songs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul in 1794 (Sagar)