Songs of Imagination and Digitisation: October 2008

FILMED ON NATIONAL POETRY DAY 2008 BY SASHA HOARE

The Chimney Sweeper

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 & in soot I sleep.

There’s little Tom Dacre who cried when his head, 
That curl’d like a lamb’s back, was shav’d: 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, & that very night, 
As Tom was a sleeping, he had such a sight, 
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned & Jack, 
Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black.

And by came an Angel who had a bright key, 
And he open’d the coffins & 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 & 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 & never want joy.

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

The Chimney Sweeper

A little black thing among the snow,
Crying ‘weep, weep,’ in notes of woe!
‘Where are thy father & mother, say?’
‘They are both gone up to the church to pray.

‘Because I was happy upon the heath, 
And smil’d among the winter’s snow, 
They clothed me in the clothes of death, 
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

‘And because I am happy, & dance & sing, 
They think they have done me no injury, 
And are gone to praise God & His Priest & King, 
Who make up a heaven of our misery.’

Holy Thursday

Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduc’d to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song? 
Can it be a song of joy? 
And so many children poor? 
It is a land of poverty!

And their sun does never shine, 
And their fields are bleak & bare, 
And their ways are fill’d with thorns:
It is eternal winter there.

For where’er the sun does shine, 
And where’er the rain does fall, 
Babe can never hunger there, 
Nor poverty the mind appall.

London

I wander thro’ each charter’d street
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man, 
In every Infant’s cry of fear, 
In every voice, in every ban, 
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry 
Every black’ning Church appalls,
 And the hapless Soldier’s sigh 
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear 
How the youthful Harlot’s curse 
Blasts the new born Infant’s tear, 
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.