Never Lose Hope

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Never Lose Hope
William Blake, born on November 28, 1757, in London is one of the greatest English poets. His work is studied today all over the world. One of Blake’s poems, “The Chimney Sweeper”, shows many signs of immortality. In this poem, immortality can only be reached by maintaining hope in a hopeless world and embracing happiness. An example of this is line 20: “He’d have God for his father, and never want joy”. Immortality is something people have chased for years and have never been able to capture. In Webster’s dictionary, immortality is stated as, “Not mortal, deathless, living or lasting forever.” In “The Chimney Sweeper”, Blake saw immortality in a different sense than Webster states. Blake saw immortality as happiness throughout life and the importance of hope.
“The Chimney Sweeper” is a great title for Blake’s poem. The title is a symbol representing the harsh life of a chimney sweeper and his life as a child. He states, “When my mother died I was very young, and my father sold me while yet my tongue”, (ln 1-2). This is saying that his mother died when he was young and his father gave him up. Blake’s unhappiness resembles being mortal in a sense that his unhappiness is like being dead. Blake has two meanings when he says, “So your chimney’s I sweep, and in soot I sleep”, (ln 4). This line denotes that he is an adult now with the responsibility of being a chimney sweeper. Blake is really saying that his childhood was terrible like the work of a chimney sweeper.
Now Blake introduces a new character into the poem, which is Tom Dacre (ln 5). In the second stanza, Blake is stating the mortality, or unhappiness of Tom. The author’s tone changes for a moment in stanza two when he says “Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head’s bare, the soot cannot spoil your white hair”, (ln 7-8). The author has two meanings in these lines. The obvious is that he can’t have hair for the fact that his hair would be full of soot. The tone change comes in where the meaning is not so obvious. The tone up to line six is mournful. Lines seven and eight also have a mournful tone in the obvious state. They connote that Tom needs to keep his head up and not let his job get to him, or simply to keep hope alive.

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