Assonance is used throughout "The Chimney Sweeper." The poem, generally speaking, uses simple language that fits with the speaker being a young sweep himself. The assonance has a gently playful sound to it, which helps support the poem's focus on issues of childhood.
An early example of assonance is in line 4: "So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep." The /ee/ sound chimes with "weep" from the line before, linking the act of crying to the enforced labor of chimney sweeping. As a repeated sound, the /ee/ also suggests the way that chimney sweeping is a repetitive task.
In line 12, which is part of Tom Dacre's dream, assonance and consonance are used to create an image of dead chimney sweeps all "locked up in coffins of black." The uniformity of the vowel sounds suggests the way that so many young children have suffered the same fate.
Lines 15 and 16 are also part of Tom Dacre's dream, and use subtle assonance to suggest the playfulness of childhood:
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.
These /ee/ and /i/ vowels have a bouncy, frolicking kind of sound. In contrast to the examples discussed above, these lines capture a sense of joy—joy that is starkly different from the boys' daily lives.
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