High to Low

“The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake (1789) 

William Blake is an 18th-century English poet who helped create the Romantic movement in England. Like Hughes, Blake used his poems to give the historically marginalized a voice. “The Chimney Sweeper” symbolizes the speaker’s occupation, putting them in the same socioeconomic class—though not racial category—as the “you” in “High to Low.” As with the “you,” the chimney sweeper comes across as undesirable and abject. They’re covered in dirt and they can only wait for death and an entrance into heaven. Arguably, the “you” in “High to Low” could become like the speaker, but there’s no such hope for Blake’s speaker.

“Children’s Rhymes” by Langston Hughes (1926)

In “Children’s Rhymes,” the speaker isn’t a classist adult but a child. Their central concern is the inequality between Black kids and “the white kids” (Line 2). The child speaker bluntly declares, “I know I can’t / be President” (Lines 4-5). The reference to “President” symbolizes status. Due to the toxic racism in the United States, the child speaker already perceives that he’ll never be able to climb to the top of US social hierarchy and become the most powerful person in the country.