When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry ‘Weep! weep! weep! weep!’
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved; so I said,
‘Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head’s bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.’

And so he was quiet, and that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight!—
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.

And by came an angel, who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins, and set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.

Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind:
And the angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy,
He’d have God for his father, and never want joy.

And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm:
So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

From Songs of Innocence

It was a time when thoughts and violets bloomed—
When skies were bright, and air was bland and warm,
And Pleasure every fleeting hour assumed
A new and strange Cameleon hue and form.
When, suddenly, that hand-cloud, once beheld
From Carmel by the Tishbite seer of Eld—
Appeared, and foresayed coming storm.

All minds were called away. The slumberers who
Had slept through years of Idleness awoke—
All felt a consciousness of somewhat new,
The lightning prelude to the thunder-stroke.
GOD struck on every heart, and men grew pale—
Their bliss was metamorphosed into bale.
There was no Power they dared evoke!

Even as the dread Simoon of Araby
Sweeps o'er the desert through the pathless air,
So came, 'mid Ireland's joy and revelry,
That cloud of gloom above her visions fair.
The thoughtless wondered, and the thoughtful wept.
And those who through long years had dreamt and slept
Arose—too many to Despair!

Despair? Yes! For a blight fell on the land—
The soil, heaven-blasted, yielded food no more—
The Irish serf became a Being banned—
Life-exiled as none ever was before.
The old man died beside his hovel's hearth,
The young man stretched himself along the earth,
And perished, stricken to the core!

O, GOD! Great GOD! Thou knowest, seest, Thou!
All-blessed be Thy name! This work is Thine—
To Thy decrees, Thy law, Thy will, we bow—
We are but worms, and Thou art THE DIVINE!
But Thou wilt yet in Thine own day redeem
Thy Faithful; and this land's bright sun shall beam
To Earth a Pharos and a Sign!

Ye True, ye Noble, who unblenching stand
Amid the storms and ills of this dark Day,
Still hold your ground! Yourselves, your Fatherland,
Have in the Powers above a surest stay!
Though Famine, Pest, Want, Sickness of the Heart,
Be now your lot—all these shall soon depart—
And Heaven be yet at your command!