"For Blake the true aim of art was to tune the senses and the imaginative faculties to the higher pitch of a spiritual reality, not to the natural world."

The other day we were talking about William Blake and children's literature and I decided to look at some of his Poetry he wrote about children. He was such an advocate for rights for children and his Poems Songs of Innocence and Experience. "They are testimony to his acute sensitivity to the realities of poverty and exploitation that accompanied the "dark satanic mills" of the industrial revolution"

The Chimney Sweeper was definitely an example of that.

The Chimney Sweeper William Blake
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 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, & 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 & 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 & our brushes to work.
Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.