Synthesis #2 Draft #1
The poems “Songs of Experience: The Chimney Sweeper” and “Hymn to the Intellectual Beauty” written by William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley touch on the topic of religion and the lack of importance of this faith in people’s lives. Religion does not bring truth and meaning to life as it is perceived to doreword this . There are topics of greater importance in one’s life, faith is not only put in God and his teachings but a much greater power. Blake followed the religious teachings of Christianity growing up, and still expressed religion as not being the most important belief in his life, ironic for a man of strong beliefs for his religion. Shelley, although the author of this hymn, iswas an atheist and expresses his beliefs
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This poem has a young boy as the speaker who works the dangerous job of being a chimney sweeper while his parents have abandoned him “to praise God and his priest and king.” (Blake, 11.3) This allusion gives the understanding that the parents are worshipping to their “God” and feeding into his words and teachings to allow a child, their child to work in an inhumane environment especially not appropriate for a kid with a lack of choice, but instead enforcement. Shelley also mirrors Blake’s allusion to the Bible referring to “Demon[s], Ghost, and Heaven,” (Shelley, 27.3) mentioning the three in the same category making them correlated and not have the most importance of meanings to be seen separately. Heaven is compared to demons in this line, not giving a definite difference between the two, though often seen as being from complete different spectrums, not often compared. People get tricked into believing heaven is a reward for the good deeds they are taught to follow through with, but is completely false. Heaven is made of what is referred to in the bible as demons who believe they are the angels who belong in the pure world their God has taught his people to believe