Home ⇒ 📌William Blake ⇒ The Chimney-Sweeper (Experience)
The Chimney-Sweeper (Experience)
A little black thing among the snow:
Crying weep, weep, in notes of woe!
Where are thy father & mother? say?
They are both gone up to the church to pray.
Because I was happy upon the heath.
And smil’d among the winters snow:
They clothed me in the clothes of death.
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
And because I am happy. & dance & sing.
They think they have done me no injury:
And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King,
Who made up a heaven of our misery.
(2 votes, average: 2.50 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- 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 weep, So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head That curled like a lambs back was shav’d, so I said. Hush […]...
- The Chimney-Sweeper's Song Hath Christmas furr’d your Chimneys, Or have the maides neglected, Doe Fire-balls droppe from your Chimney’s toppe, The Pidgin is respected, Looke up with feare and horror, O how my mistresse wonders! The streete doth crie, the newes doth flie, The boyes they thinke it thunders. Then up I rush with my pole and brush, […]...
- Loud And Low In The Chimney LOUD and low in the chimney The squalls suspire; Then like an answer dwindles And glows the fire, And the chamber reddens and darkens In time like taken breath. Near by the sounding chimney The youth apart Hearkens with changing colour And leaping heart, And hears in the coil of the tempest The voice of […]...
- The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
- With No Experience In Such Matters To hold a damaged sparrow Under water until you feel it die Is to know a small something About the mind; how, for example, It blames the cat for the original crime, How it wants praise for its better side. And yet it’s as human As pulling the plug on your Dad Whose world has […]...
- Successful Failure I wonder if successful men Are always happy? And do they sing with gusto when Springtime is sappy? Although I am of snow-white hair And nighly mortal, Each time I sniff the April air I chortle. I wonder if a millionaire Jigs with enjoyment, Having such heaps of time to spare For daft employment. For […]...
- Songs Of Experience: Introduction Hear the voice of the Bard! Who Present, Past, & Future sees Whose ears have heard The Holy Word, That walk’d among the ancient trees. Calling the lapsed Soul And weeping in the evening dew; That might controll. The starry pole; And fallen fallen light renew! O Earth O Earth return! Arise from out the […]...
- The Kitchen Chimney Builder, in building the little house, In every way you may please yourself; But please please me in the kitchen chimney: Don’t build me a chimney upon a shelf. However far you must go for bricks, Whatever they cost a-piece or a pound, But me enough for a full-length chimney, And build the chimney clear […]...
- Intorduction to the Songs of Experience Hear the voice of the Bard, Who present, past, and future, sees; Whose ears have heard The Holy Word That walked among the ancient tree; Calling the lapsed soul, And weeping in the evening dew; That might control The starry pole, And fallen, fallen light renew! ‘O Earth, O Earth, return! Arise from out the […]...
- Nurses Song (Experience) When the voices of children. are heard on the green And whisprings are in the dale: The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind, My face turns green and pale. Then come home my children. the sun is gone down And the dews of night arise Your spring & your day. are wasted […]...
- Holy Thursday (Experience) Is this a holy thing to see. In a rich and fruitful land. Babes reduced to misery. Fed with cold and usurous hand? Is that trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy? And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty! And their sun does never shine. And their […]...
- First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, […]...
- An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Kar Karshish, the picker-up of learning’s crumbs, The not-incurious in God’s handiwork (This man’s-flesh he hath admirably made, Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste, To coop up and keep down on earth a space That puff of vapour from his mouth, man’s soul) To Abib, all-sagacious in our art, Breeder in me of what […]...
- Piping Down the Valleys Wild Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again.’ So I piped: he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy […]...
- Reeds of Innocence Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again;’ So I piped: he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy […]...
- Songs Of Innocence: Introduction Piping down the valleys wild Piping songs of pleasant glee On a cloud I saw a child. And he laughing said to me. Pipe a song about a Lamb: So I piped with merry chear, Piper, pipe that song again So I piped, he wept to hear. Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe Sing thy […]...
- Introduction to the Songs of Innocence Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again;’ So I piped: he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy […]...
- The Fly Little Fly Thy summers play, My thoughtless hand Has brush’d away. Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me? For I dance And drink & sing; Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. If thought is life And strength & breath; And the want Of thought is […]...
- An Antheme O sing a new song to the Lord, Praise in the hight and deeper strayne; Come beare your parts with one accord, Which you in Heaven may sing againe. Yee elders all, and all the crowd That in white robes apparrell’d stands Like Saints on earth, sing out aloud, Think now the palmes are in […]...
- Dance Me To The End Of Love Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove Dance me to the end of love Dance me to the end of love Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone […]...
- Repression of War Experience Now light the candles; one; two; there’s a moth; What silly beggars they are to blunder in And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame – No, no, not that,-it’s bad to think of war, When thoughts you’ve gagged all day come back to scare you; And it’s been proved that soldiers don’t go mad […]...
- Impromptu, to Lady Winchelsea In vain you boast Poetic Names of yore, And cite those Sapho’s we admire no more: Fate doom’d the Fall of ev’ry Female Wit, But doom’d it then when first Ardelia writ. Of all Examples by the World confest, I knew Ardelia could not quote the best; Who, like her Mistress on Britannia’s Throne; Fights, […]...
- A Lyric to Mirth While the milder fates consent, Let’s enjoy our merriment : Drink, and dance, and pipe, and play ; Kiss our dollies night and day : Crowned with clusters of the vine, Let us sit, and quaff our wine. Call on Bacchus, chant his praise ; Shake the thyrse, and bite the bays : Rouse Anacreon […]...
- None can experience sting None can experience sting Who Bounty have not known The fact of Famine could not be Except for Fact of Corn Want is a meagre Art Acquired by Reverse The Poverty that was not Wealth Cannot be Indigence....
- Welsh experience called out by the sun This easter saturday morning I’m sitting on a bank In pistyllgwyn (house of the sacred spring) Against a tall oak (close to a daffodil-clump) Overlooking the road Between brechfa and abergorlech On the west side of the valley Of the afon cothi Reading a poem by taliesin From the sixth […]...
- From the Ansty Experience (a) They seek to celebrate the word Not to bring their knives out on a poem Dissecting it to find a heart Whose beat lies naked on a table Not to score in triumph on a line No sensitive would put a nostril to But simply to receive it as an Offering glimpsing the sacred […]...
- Tцrnfallet There is a meadow in Sweden Where I lie smitten, Eyes stained with clouds’ White ins and outs. And about that meadow Roams my widow Plaiting a clover Wreath for her lover. I took her in marriage In a granite parish. The snow lent her whiteness, A pine was a witness. She’d swim in the […]...
- Experience is the Angled Road Experience is the Angled Road Preferred against the Mind By Paradox the Mind itself Presuming it to lead Quite Opposite How Complicate The Discipline of Man Compelling Him to Choose Himself His Preappointed Pain...
- Mad Song The wild winds weep And the night is a-cold; Come hither, Sleep, And my griefs infold: But lo! the morning peeps Over the eastern steeps, And the rustling birds of dawn The earth do scorn. Lo! to the vault Of paved heaven, With sorrow fraught My notes are driven: They strike the ear of night, […]...
- Sonnet XLVI: Plain-Path'd Experience Plain-path’d Experience, th’unlearned’s guide, Her simple followers evidently shows Sometimes what Schoolmen scarcely can decide, Nor yet wise Reason absolutely knows. In making trial of a murther wrought, If the vile actors of the heinous deed Near the dead body happily be brought, Oft it hath been prov’d the breathless corse will bleed. She’s coming […]...
- Astrophel And Stella-First Song Doubt you to whom my Muse these notes intendeth, Which now my breast o’ercharged to music lendeth? To you, to you, all song of praise is due; Only in you my song begins and endeth. Who hath the eyes which marry state with pleasure? Who keeps the key of Nature’s chiefest treasure? To you, to […]...
- Dolphin My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise, A captive as Racine, the man of craft, Drawn through his maze of iron composition By the incomparable wandering voice of Phиdre. When I was troubled in mind, you made for my body Caught in its hangman’s-knot of sinking lines, The glassy bowing and scraping of my […]...
- The Mole Said he: “I’ll dive deep in the Past, And write a book of direful days When summer skies were overcast With smoke of humble hearths ablaze; When War was rampant in the land, And poor folk cowered in the night, While ruin gaped on every hand – Of ravishing and wrath I’ll write.” Ten years […]...
- Little Moccasins Come out, O Little Moccasins, and frolic on the snow! Come out, O tiny beaded feet, and twinkle in the light! I’ll play the old Red River reel, you used to love it so: Awake, O Little Moccasins, and dance for me to-night! Your hair was all a gleamy gold, your eyes a corn-flower blue; […]...
- A Curse For A Nation I heard an angel speak last night, And he said ‘Write! Write a Nation’s curse for me, And send it over the Western Sea.’ I faltered, taking up the word: ‘Not so, my lord! If curses must be, choose another To send thy curse against my brother. ‘For I am bound by gratitude, By love […]...
- Psalm 87 Among the holy Mountains high Is his foundation fast, There Seated in his Sanctuary, His Temple there is plac’t. Sions fair Gates the Lord loves more Then all the dwellings faire Of Jacobs Land, though there be store, And all within his care. City of God, most glorious things Of thee abroad are spoke; I […]...
- Hallelujah: A Sestina A wind’s word, the Hebrew Hallelujah. I wonder they never gave it to a boy (Hal for short) boy with wind-wild hair. It means Praise God, as well it should since praise Is what God’s for. Why didn’t they call my father Hallelujah instead of Ebenezer? Eben, of course, but christened Ebenezer, Product of Nova […]...
- Poem (Old man in the crystal morning after snow) Old man in the crystal morning after snow, Your throat swathed in a muffler, your bent Figure building the snow man which is meant For the grandchild’s target, do you know This fat cartoon, his eyes pocked in with coal Nears you each time your breath smokes the air, Lewdly grinning out of a private […]...
- Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down As you descend, slowly, falling faster past You this snow, Ghostly, some flakes bio- Luminescent (you plunge, And this lit snow doesn’t land At your feet but keeps falling below You): single-cell-plant chains, shreds Of zooplankton’s mucus food traps, Fish fecal pellets, radioactive fallouts, Sand grains, pollen….And inside These jagged falling islands Live more microlives, […]...
- An excerpt from "Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus" iiGloria Praise the wet snow Falling early. Praise the shadow My neighor’s chimney casts on the tile roof Even this gray October day that should, they say, Have been golden. Praise The invisible sun burning beyond The white cold sky, giving us Light and the chimney’s shadow. Praise God or the gods, the unknown, That […]...
« Corn