How Would You Compare Blake’s Poems “the Garden of Love”, “the Chimney Sweeper” and “London?”

How Would You Compare Blake’s Poems “the Garden of Love”, “the Chimney Sweeper” and “London?”

  • Submitted By: jackmac
  • Date Submitted: 11/21/2009 8:43 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 712
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How would you compare Blake’s poems “The Garden of Love”, “The Chimney Sweeper” and “London?”


The poems “The Garden of Love”, “The Chimney Sweeper” and “London” highlight the suppression of emotion and human nature by figures of authority another thing shown is a mental sense of imprisonment. Also present in these poems is the irony that with knowledge comes an increased sense of imprisonment but without knowledge and experience comes the disguise and overpowering weight of ignorance. Another habit of Blake’s is to have a lot of meaning behind each word which I will explore in further depth.

The opening line of “The Chimney Sweeper” presents us with a very obvious contrast. Blake who’s the poet describes a “little black thing” which he places in the “snow”. The first thing we notice is the powerful contrast between the “black” chimney sweeper and the white snow: he stands out of his environment. The two adjectives, “little” and “black” portray the boy as fragile and mistreated, in fact, Blake describes him as a “thing” which clearly dehumanizes him.

The sentence in the third stanza shows us a very dark meaning. Blake interprets the boy being dehumanized. “They clothed me in the clothes of death”. If you look closely “they” is referred to as his parents being a threat which is why they are unnamed. “The clothes of death” has two meanings layered on top, the “clothes of death” on a more literal term are actually covered in soot and are black which is associated with death. However it’s a paradox and it also means they poor boy will die for it’s a uniform of death.

The idea of imprisonment is seen overtly in Blake’s poem “The Garden of Love”. The joys of human kind and its freedom have been taken away by the constraints of organised religion he conveys a deep anger over the fact that freedom has been taken away. “A chapel was built in the midst were I used to play on the green”. Here Blake conveys a sense of resentment towards organised...

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