Quotations

chimney sweeper quote - “They are both gone up to the church to pray”

• Irony: parents worship God while their child suffers

• Church symbolizes institutional hypocrisy and is shown as a justification for cruelty

Chimney sweeper quote - “Where are thy father and mother? say?”

• Rhetorical question → exposes parental neglect

• Religious tone (‘thy’) → links family failure to religious hypocrisy

The chimney sweeper- Crying ‘weep! weep!’ in notes of woe”

• Onomatopoeia → mimics chimney sweeper’s cry and emotional suffering which reinforces emotional distress

• Repetition of ‘woe’ → constant, inescapable misery

chimney sweeper quote - “A little black thing among the snow”

• Colour imagery: “black” vs “snow” → corruption of innocence, labour stains child’s purity

• “thing” → dehumanisation; society sees the child as an object, not a person

• “little” → vulnerability and innocence

chiney sweeper quote - “And taught me to sing the notes of woe”

• “taught” → suffering is learned and enforced

• Repetition of ‘notes of woe’ → misery is institutionalised and not just the child

chimney sweeper quote - “Who make up a heaven of our misery” - final line

• others’ ‘heaven’ is built on children’s suffering

• Collective pronoun ‘our’ → widespread exploitation

• Final line delivers Blake’s direct moral condemnation

follower quote - “His shoulders globed like a full sail strung”

• Simile → father likened to a powerful sailing ship suggests control, direction, and mastery

• “globed” implies strength, dominance, and completeness

follower quote - “The horses strained at his clicking tongue”

• “strained” horse straining contrasts father’s minimal physical effort highlighting his experienced and strong

• “clicking tongue” suggests father commands animals with ease → quiet authority

follower quote - The sod rolled over without breaking”

• ‘rolled’ mirrors controlled movement

• “without” highlights precision and skill of father

• Symbolises harmony between man and land

follower quote - “His eye / Narrowed and angled at the ground”

• Visual imagery → intense concentration suggesting he is methodical and disciplined reinforcing expertise

• “angled” suggests calculation and precision

follower quote - Fell sometimes on the polished sod”

• Repetition of physical failure reinforces inadequacy of child

• “polished” implies father’s work is perfected

follower quote - “I wanted to grow up and plough”

• Aspirational tone → desire to emulate father

• suggests Ploughing symbolises adulthood and masculinity as Speaker defines success by father’s example

follower quote - But today / It is my father who keeps stumbling”

• Volta → role reversal

• Age and time undermine physical authority

• Emotional shift from admiration to responsibility

follower quote - “Behind me, and will not go away”

• Reversal of ‘follower’ dynamic

• Suggests burden and dependency of father

• Emotional complexity: love mixed with frustration

where i come from quote - “People are made of places. They carry with them / hints of jungles or mountains, a tropic grace / or the cool eyes of sea gazers.”

• Metaphor: people’s identities shaped by environment

• Listing (“jungles or mountains) → suggests variety of influences

where i come from - “Atmosphere of cities… like the smell of smog / or the almost-not-smell of tulips in the spring”

• The “almost-not-smell of tulips” feels distant and faint, implying nature is present but not dominant.

• This shows how industrial surroundings shape how the speaker sees the world as she can faintly enjoy the smell of tylips

• the imagery - “smell of smog” evokes pollution, confinement

where i come from - “Nature tidily plotted with a guidebook”

• Metaphor → suggests is nature controlled

• “Tidily” → order imposed on wildness, implying that natural spaces are controlled rather than wild, mirrors how people are shaped by systems in their environment.

where i come from - Or the smell of work, glue factories maybe, chromium-plated offices; smell of subways crowded at rush hours”

• Listing→ emphasizes endless variety of urban experiences that can effect idenity

• Juxtaposition of industrial vs corporate vs public life, shaping people emphasises range of influences on identity

where i come from - “Spring and winter / are the mind's chief seasons: ice and the breaking of ice”

• “Spring and winter” represent emotional and mental states which suggests identity is shaped by inner experiences

• “Ice” symbolises emotional hardness and restraint

• “Breaking of ice” suggests growth, emotional release, and change showing that identity is formed through cycles of struggle and renewal.

hunting snake - “The great black snake went reeling by”

• Adjective “great” → humans awe and respect for the animal

• “reeling” → movement is graceful, almost hypnotic

hunting snake - “Head-down, tongue flickering on the trail / he quested through the parting grass”

• Personification “he quested” → animal given purposeful, almost heroic qualities implying snake is powerful

• Focus on detail → careful observation mirrors human reflection and ability to care about animals even though they tend to be dominant

hunting snake - “sun glazed his curves of diamond scale”

• Visual imagery and metaphor → snake’s scales compared to diamonds

• Elevates ordinary snake to majestic, almost mythical status

hunting snake - “and we lost breath to watch him pass”

• Hyperbole → awe and wonder at nature

• Reflective tone → quiet appreciation, not fear

hunting snake - “Cold, dark and splendid he was gone / into the grass that hid his prey”

• Juxtaposition “cold, dark and splendid” → suggests that nature’s power is not brutal or malicious, but beautiful and worthy of respect.

• The verb “hid” shows nature working with the snake, portraying the natural world as efficient and perfectly adapted.

report to wordsworth - “You should be here, Nature has need of you.”

• Direct address → urgent tone and establishes poet’s concern for environmental decay

• Personification of Nature → almost pleading for attention

report to wordsworth - “She had been laid waste. Smothered by the smog”

• Personification of nature → Nature treated as victim

• Strong verbs “laid waste, smothered” suggests violence and destruction emphasized

report to wordsworth - “the flowers are mute, and the birds are few / in a sky slowing like a drying clock”

• Metaphor “sky slowing like a drying clock” → time and life itself is stagnating because of damage

• “mute” → silence highlights absence of life

report to wordsworth - “All hopes of Proteus rising from the sea / have sunk; he is entombed in the waste we dump”

• Metaphor “entombed in waste” → human destruction overwhelms natural resilience

• Uses a hyperbole, exaggerating human destruction of the sea to the point that even the mythical sea god Proteus cannot rise highlighting the severity of pollution

report to wordsworth - “and Neptune lies helpless as a beached whale, while insatiate man moves in for the kill”

• Simile “as a beached whale” → vulnerability, dramatic image of helplessness

• Contrast with “insatiate man” → human greed versus natural weakness

report to wordsworth - ““O see the wound widening in the sky, God is labouring to utter his last cry”

• Exclamatory tone “O see” → urgent plea to witness destruction

• Metaphor “last cry” → finality, environmental catastrophe as moral reckoning

carpet weevers morroco - ”The children are at the loom of another world.”

• Metaphor → weaving represents both survival and shaping the future

• Suggests children’s labor contributes to both culture and legacy highlights restricted childhood

capret weevers morrocco - “Their braids are oiled and black, their dresses bright.”

• Attention to everyday detail → emphasizes ordinary beauty and individuality

• Highlights cultural identity and pride

carpet weevers - “They watch their flickering knots like television.”

• Simile → weaving captures attention like entertainment, yet work dominates play

• Implies children’s focus is directed by economic need rather than choice

carpet weevers - “Then they will lace the dark-rose veins of the tree-tops.”

• Metaphor → conveys artistic and cultural value of their work

• BUT also highlights global inequality: beauty produced at cost of lost childhood

carpet weevers - “The carpet will travel in the merchant’s truck. It will be spread by the servants of the mosque.”

• Exposes reader’s indirect involvement in exploitation

carepet weevers - “Deep and soft, it will give when heaped with prayer.”

• Imagery suggests he carpet fulfills spiritual and functional purposes IRONIC

• Contrast between children’s hard work and the ease of others’ use

carpet weevers - “The children are hard at work in the school of days. From their fingers the colours of all-that-will-be fly / and freeze into the frame of all-that-was.”

• Metaphor “school of days” → childhood replaced by labour, education and play sacrificed

• temporal imagery, suggets work links past, present, and future, showing generational continuity of exploitation

sonnet 18 - “Thou art more lovely and more temperate:”

• “Temperate” → balanced, enduring qualities, unlike fleeting natural phenomena, suggesting her beauty surpasses nature

sonnet 18 - “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, / And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;”

• Personification and metaphor → nature is unpredictable and temporary

• Highlights temporary natural beauty vs eternal beauty of subject of poem and poetry

sonnet 18 - “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, / And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;”

• Metaphor for sun → nature’s beauty is inconsistent

• Contrast → human or poetic beauty is preserved and reliable

sonnet 18 - “Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade”

• Personification of Death → powerless against poetry

• Suggests death will not be able to claim or boast power over the beloved in death because of art

• “shade” suggests death

• Shows Renaissance idea in human achievement

sonnet 18 - “When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:”

• “Eternal lines” → poetry as literal and metaphorical vehicle for immortality

sonnet 18 - So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

• Uses volta as he switches from criticising nature’s tendency to destroy beauty to presenting art and poetry as the solution

• Art as immortalising force can defy time

report to wordsworth - “Nature is no longer kindred to us”

• “Kindred” suggests family, closeness, and harmony — a key Romantic ideal in Wordsworth’s belief in unity between humans and nature

• The phrase “no longer” directly signals loss, showing that this bond has been broken by modern society.