In the name of the god, the

compassionate, the merciful

Introduction:

Through the passage of history the aim for writing poems, novels, short stories, etc. was to
bring human being`s nature to a state of certain understanding about different human
properties. Not only it was not restricted to inner properties, all the participations of the human
were also focused in societal, ethnographical, political and national dimensions. Literature from
its emergence became play role and model of the realities people were engaged in, and as early
philosophers believed was a copy of what we see around us as our world. Albeit the perceived
understanding and state of literature seems to have many ups and downs, the shifting sea of its
reliance, topics, and interests were stormy, pushing different poets from different periods to
touch upon various modes of behavior, the goal always was to bring something eloquent,
separate from its simplicity or complexity, which could bring a delight feeling, understanding,
and acting in the course of life.

To absorb a delightful understanding of another literary work, the present essay seeks
to determine a close, in detail demonstration of one of the greatest poets of Romanticism.
Blake`s best-known poems are Song of Innocence and Song of Experience on which we want to
shed more light. Our goal is to compare and contrast the two poems in accordance to the use of
poetic techniques Blake gained from. The two poems published in 1789 and 1794, as we stated
prior, were written in response to the condition of human being in a society he or she lives. It
touches upon the harsh life of children, the sweepers who were forced to go inside chimney to
clean interiors. To illuminate a complete picture of what we need to put these to poems in
analysis, we will provide two categorizations to illuminate the differences and similarities the
two poems have in relation. These categorizations allow a framework for us to probe the
congruencies and incongruities in a way to determine the significance of each poem.
 As our construction goes, the first part will compare and contrast the appearance of the
poems, including Rhyme, Form, and Meter, and it will allow us to determine how the surface
structure helps the quality of the content. In the second part, there will be a manifestation of
some prominent poetic techniques, such as tone, imagery, point of view, etc. The focus will be
from an upper part with a broader range of perspectives. Descriptions will be provided on how
these two poems are connected or separated through these poetic techniques. Alongside the
two phases we have textual evidences which are in line with analyses that are following them.
At the end of paper, a conclusion will be provided as an illustration of summary of the work and
the goals.

Having the overall process in mind we will now turn to the first part in relation to the physical
appearance of the poem.

1: Rhyme, Form, and Meter:

First we will describe the rhyme, form and meter of Song of Innocence. The whole poem can be
described as rhyming quatrains of anapestic iambic tetrameter. Like many of Blake`s poems,
the meter of Song of innocence is constructed based on iambs and anapests. Because generally
each line of the poem can be divided into four parts based on four stressed syllables it contains,
the poem is tetrameter. Between these four stressed syllables are many unstressed syllables.
Each group of unstressed syllables with their stressed syllable is a foot. So in general each line
contains four feet. But there are several different types of feet employed based on the number
of unstressed syllables in each foot. If we break down the first line of the poem to four feet, we
have:

When my moth/ er died/ I was ve/ ry young

Bold syllables are the stressed syllables. So if you pay attention to first and third feet, you can
see they include two unstressed syllables which is called anapest, while the second and forth
feet only contain one unstressed syllable which is known as iamb. Although in this poem we
have a mixture of iamb feet which are very common in English and anapest. The work includes
six stanzas. Each stanza is built of 4 lines, making symmetry with four beats in each line. Each
two succession lines are rhymed, making a couplet.

In comparison to the Song of Innocence, Song of Experience is an iambic tetrameter. It should

be mentioned that for Blake`s work at least, we cannot claim that complete works are iambic.
As it can be perceived from Blake`s different works, he is a lover of anapest. Even in this poem
we can find some examples of anapests, for instance line 8:

And taught/ me to sing/ the notes/ of woe.

You can see that in feet one, three and four we have iambs but the second foot contains two
unstressed syllables which is anapest. In relation, Blake also uses trochee in some feet which is
a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. An example is line one:

A litt/le black/ thing a/mong the/ snow

As it is clear, the line contains two beginning iamb feet, following two trochees, plus an extra
stressed syllable which makes the number of syllables odd in the line. This brings a kind of
imperfection to the rhyme but it seems that Blake is a fan of such an imperfection.

Although the poem seems to be like the first one in employing stanzas, the rhyming patterns
are not couplet as in Song of Innocence. We can break down the rhyme scheme as following:

Stanza 1: AABB

Stanza 2: CACA

Stanza 3: DEDE

One interesting point which is in connection to the content of the poem is that in Song of
Innocence when we face to the end of the poem, some imperfect rhymes pop up. This
uneasiness the reader feels is in congruence with the effect of dark situation in which the
children are a part. Song is no more a sing-song perfect rhyme at the end. We cannot be sure
that it is intended by Blake but anyway it can serve as an interesting influence on the content.
As the repetition occurs in all four stanzas of Song of experience, it serves to emphasize the
prevalence of the horrors the speaker describes. So as it is clear the appearance of the songs
paved the way for a deeper feeling and understanding of the contents.

Now that we have understood the surface structure of the two poems, we can focus on the
poetic techniques with which Blake conveyed his inner feeling and idea in the two poems.

2: manifestation of the poetic techniques in chimney sweepers

Coming one step forward, from analysis of the surface structures of the two songs, we now
want to work on a more intended meaning of poems through the analysis of poetic techniques.
What is important to mention is that because we cannot cover all poetic techniques, only the
prominent one which are present in the poems are the subjects of our inquiry. To make the
boundaries clear, we will dedicate each paragraph to one song in which we want to describe a
specific poetic technique. At the end of this part, imagery, diction, point of view, tone and a
dramatic irony (in the first poem) will already be discussed.

The goal here in this article is to demonstrate a common theme of “unfortunate lives of young
boys who are forced to work as chimney sweepers.” But what is important also, is an
understanding that William Blake through different poetic dictions gives us a somewhat
different perspective of the theme. Whereas in the first poem, he employs a speaker who is
the innocent young chimney sweeper, producing a tone naïve person, in the second one he
reveals the speaker to be a knowing adult who perceives the hypocrisy in the way society
allows these boys to live, producing a cynical tone. Because of a felt necessity by the writer of
the paper, the point of view in two poems is the first area to be discussed.

A: Point of View

Considering the first poem, Song of Innocence, the narrator is young boy who does not realize
how difficult his life is. Having a “happy” image of his life, he is too inexperience and too naïve
to understand his life is harsh. As many other similar fathers at that time, his father has been
sold him. He was forced to sweep the chimneys and this can bring him an early death. He tells
us Tom Dacre that having his head shaved will really be a blessing, not a hardship. He also tells
about Tom`s “happy and warm” state of feeling although the weather is “cold”, because of
satisfaction from doing what he has been told to do. The ultimate happiness is in the hope gives
Tom that they have God for their “father and never want hoy.” What is glorious is a state of
acceptance and satisfaction which the young boy has toward what occurs in his life, and the
inability to understand the true harshness of his life. But one question remains unanswered
here:

Why does not the boy describe himself instead of Tom Dacre although he himself is a chimney
sweeper?

In last two lines he stated that Tom was “happy and warm.” He does not believe from his
descriptions that “if all do their duty they need not fear harm” as Tom Dacre believes. This
young child can feel the gap between his reality and the one he deserves, but he knows he
must believe in something positive even if it does not match up with his present state.

In the Song of Experience, the situation is different. Immediate perception occurs when an
adult asks the young boy where his parents are. The harsh life of the boy has been seen by the
adult person as the result of his parents’ carelessness, in connection with the cynical tone
which encloses the poem. The boy replies that his parents are in church “praising God, his
Priest and King,” while he is in fact a chimney sweeper, “a little black thing among the snow” as
the adult person describes him. The cynical tone is over extended toward the church, the Priest
and the King, because the religious exercises have been valued more than basic needs of the
boy to live. Although again the child is not aware of the heartless treatments of his parents and
the harshness of the life he has, the adult person recognizes this immediate with boy`s
response to his question. As in the first poem, again there remains an unanswered question:

Why is the poem narrated by two people, not by each of them?

First it should be mentioned that as Blake want the children have their own voice in life, he
allowed the young child to narrate his own life with his own point of view. But using an adult
person as a narrator of the first few lines maybe is because of the fact that Blake wants us to
feel the same way as the adult person feels. We feel complicit in this man`s participation in the
chimney-sweeping system. We are also amazed that why the child is in this situation and where
are his parents.

B: Diction

The diction in the first poem is a childlike diction because the child is speaking in the entire
poem, depicting the conversations he had with Tom Dacre. Although he through his
descriptions demonstrates a harsh and black situation, he refers to God in tone of praise with
his childish diction. Through his hopeful, positive, childish diction, you can find harshness by the
descriptions such as: “in soot I sleep,” “white hair,” children are locked up in “coffins of black,”
etc. this clearly demonstrates the childish understanding of the life by the young boy who sees
only the positive side of his harsh life.

It should be mentioned that in second poem the diction is also childish because in most of the
poem it the young boy who speaks and provides the answer to the adults question. Like the
first poem the child does not understands the cruelty of his parents and only sees his present as
he is “happy, dancing and singing,” in line with his miseries. In contrast is the way introductory
stanza by a sad diction from the adult who sees the boy as “a little black thing among the
snow,” crying “weep.” Again like the first poem even among the simple childish diction we can
find description of harshness. The child is wearing “clothes of death,” and is in “a heaven of
misery” constructed by the God, his Priest and King. So a childish diction is mixed with the sad
diction in which the adult and the child both now the miseries but the child do not wants to
blame his parents.

C: Imagery

As imagery is closely related to the diction, it is suffice to say that both the poems contain
contrasting images of darkness and light, illustrating the “dark” life of the child vs. the “happy”
way the child perceives his life. It can be touched upon for example when we talk about “white
hair,” “naked and white,” “coffins of black,” and rising in the “dark” for work in the first poem,
and also “smile, dance and sing,” “among the winter`s snow,” but wearing “clothes of death” in
the second poem. In brief, contrasting images filled the whole poems.

D: Tone

In the first poem, we can find an innocence and naïve tone when we understand that the child
is not aware of the harsh situation he is in, and his circumstances do not reveal for him how
miserable he is in reality. He was sold into the chimney sweeping profession by his father when
he can barely speak clearly. He sleeps in “soot” and in “cold” weather. The tone in fact rises
from this naïve young boy who with insist sees the positive view of the world of harshness they
are drowned in, when in fact the dream of the “coffins of black” is a more realistic description
of his life.

When we face the second poem, we find it severely criticizing and cynical. The adult speaker
knows the social injustice, and condemns it because it allows parents to pray in church while
their children are sold into slavery. This cynical tone is also depicted by the child himself who,
although not clearly, is blaming either “God,” “the Priest,” or the “King” or all of them for his
bad situation and harsh life. He does not reprimand his parents but by the tone it is clear that
someone is responsible, and hypocrisy is also involved since all these entities should value the
lives of innocent children more than the carrying out of religious exercises. It should be
mentioned that albeit the child does not reprimand and blame his parents, he knows that his
parents are also guilty.

E: Dramatic irony

If we compare the two poems together, we can find that in the second poem the adult person
immediately gets the misery of life of the young chimney sweeper, but in the first poem it is not
like that. Although we have a description of harshness through the young child`s point of view,
we can determine through the descriptions, and through the fact that most of the readers were
acquaintance with these chimney sweepers who have been sold early in life by their fathers
into slavery to toil at a job that will cause them great hardship and an early death, that there is
a dramatic irony in this poem. The child in his innocence and youth does not perceive his harsh
life but the audience, certainly do.

Conclusion

In our overall perspective, we can find a similar theme in the works of William Blake names
Song of Innocence and Song of Experience with a glace from another standing point. The poetic
techniques which we have shed more light on, are in hand of a such a mesmerizing creator as
Blake who delivers us the same theme with different perspective, understanding, feeling, and
sense with different images and tone which makes each of these poems a unique poem, in
relation to each other. The state of independency in such a tied dependency the reader feels
occurred through the artistic use of these poetic techniques in the songs of chimney sweepers.