196 Ideals in the Modern World
for his father & never want joy” (10). “Be a good boy”: that is, do
your duty, obey your master, clean the chimney, and submit. Do that
for your entire miserable life and you’ll have joy in heaven. Blake’s
Jesus is not much interested in a transcendent heaven. He wants
freedom now. But the church and the other temporal powers are
very taken with the idea of future reward for which one has to sac-
rifi ce and behave well in the pre sent life. Be humble, accept your
lot, and do as you’re told— then you will taste all the joys in another
world.
The narrator of the poem, the experienced chimney sweep, pretty
much concurs with the angel about the vision’s meaning. What the
dream proves to him is that “If all do their duty, they need not fear
harm” (10). Presumably he shares this angelic sentiment with Tom,
much as he shared his thoughts about Tom’s hair being shaved. Now
that your hair’s gone, it can’t be soiled, you don’t need to worry
about that. So too, if your dream is all about the future, you (and I)
don’t have to worry much about the pre sent. We don’t have to plan
an escape; we don’t have to pull all the other chimney sweeps to-
gether, unite, and fi gure out our next move. We can simply do our
duty and wait for our heavenly reward.
Perhaps the narrator senses the insurrectionary energy in Tom’s
dream and sees Tom for the newly fl edged poet that he is. But he
wants to save Tom from the existential burden of having to act
on what the dream brought to him. In doing so, he may think he is
doing Tom a favor. He is, of course, doing himself a sort of favor,
in that he does not want to brood any more on his sorrowful lot. So
the narrator goes along with the angel and perverts the beautiful
dream.
The teachings of Jesus are to Blake an ongoing beautiful dream.
But they are constantly being perverted by the greedy and the timid.
Few things make Blake more distressed than the established
church— “the Chimney sweepers cry / Every blackning Church