"The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young", by Blake
Hand out copies of William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young" (written in 1789), instruct your students to read it to themselves, and then have one student recite it aloud in class to get a sense of the rhyme and rhythm of the poem. Use the suggested discussion points to analyze the poem in detail. Answers to some of the questions are provided here:
- What is the rhyme scheme in the poem? (Answer: six quatrains; 24 lines; AABB, CCDD ...)
- The movement of the poem (Answer: first two stanzas are an introduction to the narrator and Tom Dacre; the next three stanzas are Tom's dream; the final stanza is waking back to reality)
- What sensory effects and contrasts does the poem create? (Answer: colors like black and white, sunshine and soot etc.)
Read William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young" (written in 1789) poem and try to recite it aloud to get a sense of its rhyme and rhythm.
Use the following points to analyze the poem in detail:
- What is the rhyme scheme in the poem?
- The movement of the poem
- The characters of the narrator and Tom Dacre (for instance, the narrator is so young that he speaks " 'weep" when he means "sweep")
- What sensory effects and contrasts does the poem create?
- The significance of the title.
- Poverty, child labor, and the use of coal.
- The role of family.
- The use of religion and religious symbolism in the poem (lamb, angels, heaven, god).
- Juxtapositions of life and death.
- The emotions that the poem arouses in the reader's mind.
- What elements of Romantic poetry can be seen in this poem?
A Chimney Sweeper in England
Poem by William Blake. Provided by The Poetry Foundation