Suddenly somebody tells him not to cry. In the night he had a dream. Blake describes with this dream the hard work of the boys who has to work as chimney sweepers. An angel came and set the boys free so they could wash themselves and play. The angel said to Tom, that if he will be a good boy God will be his father, and will never let him suffer. And so Tom was happy when he awoke. This poem ends with hope and optimism: „So if all do their duty, they need not to fear harm.“
The second poem The Chimney Sweeper ends more sad. Somebody is asking where the parents of a „chimneyboy“ are. The answer is: „They are gone up to the church to pray.“, what probably means they are dead. So this boy had to work hard. He blames God for his hard life. The poem ends very sadly: „Who make up a heaven of our misery. Blake shows two ways how we can deal with the problems in our life. We can blame others or God for the hardness of the life, but it will not make it easier. Or we can accept the life as it is also with the hard things in it. And this can make our life a bit easier.
The last poem is called London. This poem doesn’t describe London as very nice city. Blake is showing the dark side of London (chartered street, chartered Thames, marks of weakness, hapless Soldier’s sight...) London, according to this poem, seem to be a dirty and damned town, full of sadness, diseases, stinking air.. It is not a city you would like to visit. I don’t know why is London described this way in this poem. Maybe it is the image of the London in the time of William Blake.
In this essay I tried to describe how I see and understand some poems of William Balake. Maybe I’m not right in every detail of my understanding. Blake might disagree with my opinion. But I thing we can’t catch the thinking and meaning of some author absolutely. We can only come close to it. And that’s what I wanted to do with this short essay.