In William Blake's poem The Chimney Sweep (1789), the poet attempts to shed light on the social injustice inflicted on children by appealing to the reader's conscience to free them from their nightmarish existence. He uses a child's voice as a vehicle to convey his message and draw attention to the injustice of forced child labor. The speaker is a little boy whose mother has died. He has no time to grieve because his father has sold him to a life of filth and desperation. The child cries not only for the loss of his mother and his father's betrayal, but also for the loss of his childhood and his innocence. Blake skillfully uses sound, imagery, irony and symbolism in an attempt to provoke outrage at the inhumane treatment and exploitation inflicted on young children by forcing them into chimneys. The poet uses the end rhyme to give the poem a sing-song quality that dictates that the speaker is a child. “Young, tongue, cry, sleep” are examples of end rhymes in lines 1-4. At the end of the poem the speaker changes the quality of the sound to assonance where he uses the non-rhyming words “behind, wind” (16-17), “dark, work” (21-22), “heat, damage” ( 23 -24)” which are close enough in sound to hear the echo of the syllables but illustrate opposite meanings. The “work” is “dark”, being “hot” should not cause “harm”. “When my mother died I was very young, / And my father sold me while still my tongue / Could scarcely cry 'cry!'cry! 'cry! 'cry!' (1-2). Repeating the words “cry, cry, cry” sounds like a nursery rhyme, the refrain of a song or perhaps even the sound of an alarm clock. We see the image of the crying baby and we also hear his pain. Is it possible that the child is so small that... half of the paper... struggling. “And so Tom awoke; and we arose in the darkness, / And set to work with our bags and ours brushes” (21-22). Reality has returned, the darkness has returned, but a newfound acceptance and optimism have replaced desperation. “Tom was happy and affectionate; / So, if everyone does their duty, they have no fear damage,” (23-24).The hypocrisy of a society charged with protecting children but failing in its obligations to children has not gone unnoticed. Paradoxically, in the end, it was society that truly lost its own humanity, not children. Blake hopes, by exposing this tragedy through his poetry and the voice of the child, that society can correct the mistake of robbing children of their youth and innocence and end forced child labor. Works Cited Blake, William. The chimney sweep. 1789. Web.Meyers, Michael. Literature to go. New York, New York: Bedford/St. Martin, 2011. 445-446. Press.