Identify, contextualize, explain & critically comment on the following lines: Because I was happy upon the heath, And smiled among the winter's snow, They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

These lines were taken from "The Chimney Sweeper" included in William Blake's "Songs of Experience". Actually there are two poems by the name of 'Chimney Sweeper', one in the "Songs of Innocence" and the other in "Songs of Experience". The first one has a child called Tom who is so young as to be oblivious of his reality. Tom was only subconsciously aware of what atrocities he has been subjected to by his foster parents due to extreme poverty. He only dreamt of freedom. He hoped that someday his and the lives of thousands of chimney sweepers like him would improve. However, In the second poem he is depicted as a matured child who understands what social injustice & exploitative nature of his working conditions has done to him. The poems were set in the Romantic age which echoes the ideas of humanity, emotions & nature. It critiqued the notions of inequality on grounds of class connecting them with more subtle notions of individual freedom. The industrial revolution brought turmoil in the lives of the poor working class population. It brought tremendous disparities between the rich & the poor classes. New & terrible cruelties against the poor got created by a sudden increase in wealth of those who are privileged. One of these was the evil of chimney sweeping. Blake's poem was a propaganda against this very hazardous evil. Young children were forced into the life of destitution & exploitation in this work. Large houses had horizontal flues for heating huge rooms that could only be cleaned by a small child crawling through them. These flues became 'black coffins' that killed many little boys. Children used to suffocate and accidentally get burned while sweeping these chimneys. They also get cancer due to daily exposure to dangerous soot particles. The soot also caused lung problems and the children perished before they came to understand why they were being pushed into such circumstances. Chimney sweeping preferred children as young as possible so that they could easily crawl. Sometimes, children were so little that they used to get terrified of the inky blackness of the chimney inside and get lost and only skeletons were recovered.  These children were either orphans or sold by poor parents to master sweepers for as little as two guineas. Then, they used to get entraped in shackles of bondage, child labour & exploitation for their entire life which could only be cast off at death. Who was to be blamed?

 In the first poem, the child could be seen longing for a father or parental figure in the name of God. He was hopeful that one day God would be benevolent on him and he would be freed. The church and the state made him believe in this apocalyptic dream of heaven. In the second poem when the child transitions from childhood innocence to maturity,  he realizes the hollowness of this dream. He speaks up, 'God is the one who makes up heaven of our misery.' Would parents be blamed too? We cannot say they are evil as they are themselves puppets of poverty and when they have the backing of church and the king himself we can hardly say so. The government itself allowed small boys to be sold like this. So, the child is nothing but a helpless victim to this system that rationalizes it. "They" in the stanzas symbolizes the corrupt views of the church that preaches that work & hardship would attain rewards in the next life. They preach poverty as a holy thing. They made acceptance of exploitation, a "duty". The church also justified child's suffering as holy and fed its own personal gains. Innocence of these children is not just lost through aging but also through the forces of culture that allowed such hope crushing society to flourish. In this way, Blake proposes his own theological system that functions exactly opposite to the preachings of the church. He puts that a promised future happiness is just a way to subdue the oppressed. The powerful people give away such promises to maintain their own status quo. 

The poem can also be read as an affront by a child to his parents. Just because the child seems happy, does it make the parents completely guiltless? They think that they did not do the child any harm but the child knows that it is not so. He feels the 'notes of woe' ringing in his delicate ears each second. Parents sometimes don't realize what harm they did to their children in the belief of protecting them. Their mentality justifies to them that what they are doing is absolutely correct but the burden falls on the frail shoulders of the child and before he realizes what is happening to him, he becomes lost already in the worldly ways from where there is no coming back. 

The poem brings forth the increasing breakdown that the child and the society is facing. The theme is universal if we apply it to the conditions we are facing even now. The industrial capitalist system is destroying the innocence of, don't know, how many children. The value of love & humanity is nothing but a puppet to this very system. The society as an 'interaction of social beings' is on the brink of extinction. Blake could be heard asking, "Can love really exist as an abstract concept apart from human interaction?" The answer to this really makes us go dumb. Further, in being more specific to the poem, Is he not asking if using innocent children to prop up the moral consciences of adults really justified? I am sure we don't even want to go into such deep philosophical enquiries. Let it be so. Who cares? I am sorry but by leaving such questions on fate would not make the reality less drastic. Can we even do so when we boast of ourselves as the most rationally evolved species? The poem provokes us to look into alternatives because we are surely running against time. If we don't do so, we can't help but be reduced to the same 'black thing' Blake writes about which is not even human for sure because he himself left it unrecognised !