In William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper," Blake criticizes how spirituality offers no real solution to suffering. Blake's first poem has a sweeter image that belies that nothing has changed while his second shows bluntly how religion has done nothing to help the sweeps.Through similar poems with dramatically different tone, Blake criticizes how the church offers no genuine help to the Chimney Sweeps.
Both poems have quatrains with an AABB rhyme scheme. The short stanzas allow Blake to paint a vivid image in each stanza which forms the centers of the poems. The AABB rhyme scheme creates a whimsical tone with the its immediate rhyme. This contrasts the first poem with the second, where the first has a lighter tone that better fits the AABB rhyme while the 1794 poem is very dark, making the whimsical scheme ironic and a little sardonic. The 1794 poem is mocking the naive attitude of the 1789 by having the same structure- having the same simple stanza construction and rhyme scheme to show the 1789's true colors.
The two have opposite imagery with the symbols of black and white. The 1789 poem has a more hopeful tone. Tom has white hair in black surroundings such as "coffins of black." The children are also "naked & white" when they are freed from their suffering by the angel. The presence of white in a black surrounding suggests hope and good in miserable conditions. The 1794 poem uses the opposite imagery, with the sweep as a "little black" thing in white snow. The white surroundings feel hypocritical here, a beautiful landscape that leaves the sweeps still black and miserable. The use of black in white, or bad in good, suggests that all the help being "given" is useless.
Both poems also directly discuss religion. The 1789 deals more with how Tom's faith promises him salvation from his sweeping. Religion is a positive here, helping Tom cope with his hopeless condition because one day "He'd have have God for his father & never want joy." However, the 1794 poem is far less flattering. Religion here is useless. The narrator's parents are busy praying for help in the church, but it's done nothing to help the sweep. This time, religion is seen as a useless institution, promising change with no actual improvement; an institution that "make up a heaven of [the sweeps'] misery."
The bitter 1794 poem is also half the length than the 1789. Most of the bulk of the 1789 was the vision of the angel and salvation, which is not present in the 1794 poem. This makes the hope for salvation seem extraneous and forced, like it were tacked on to try to justify the pain in the first three stanzas of the 1789. Tom is cheered up by a dream, something that isn't real. In the 1794, Blake states the hopelessness of the sweep's condition quickly and directly, with no long-winded attempts to alleviate the pain.
Blake looks at two opposites here, a faith in established institutions to help a person and the disillusionment to the failings of those institutions. When examined side by side, the 1794 poem makes the 1789 poem look naive and foolish. The first represents what the church wants to be seen as, a genuine provider of good. The second represents what Blake sees, an institution giving empty promises.
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