Although Blake wrote "The Chimney Sweeper" featured in Songs of Innocence before Felicia Hemans was born, issues relevant to first-generation Romantic authors still permeated the literary scene. when second-generation authors like Hemans finally took the stage. “Casabianca,” published in 1826, and “The Chimney Sweep,” published in 1789, both address a central question: what does it mean to be a child? Both poems examine children's duties to society as a whole. Although there is an overarching sense of allegiance to duty in both poems, the situational irony of the poems complicates the relationship between children and responsibility. The last line of “The Chimney Sweeper” best demonstrates this complicated relationship. The speaker of “The Chimney Sweeper” concludes by saying, “So if all do their duty, they need fear no danger” (24). However, as readers, we have reason to question the validity of the speaker's promise since the poem seems to suggest that relief from hardship comes only through death. Through their language, choice of perspective, situational irony and other features, “The Chimney Sweep” and “Casabianca” attack the notion of childhood in order to clarify the complex relationship between children and duty in the company. The structures of the poems appeal to the young people around whom they were focused. Each poem features ending rhyming quatrains, which create a nursery rhyme feel. Both poems have a more or less regular rhythm, which adds to the feeling of happiness created by the rhyme. However, it is often the case that the heavy content contrasts with the structure of the poems. In order to better understand both poems, it is important to examine why the authors would choose to use a structure that contra...... middle of paper ...... it is fair to say that both poems are proponents of both duty and childhood because of their youthful structure and irony. However, each poem is more strongly oriented toward one allegiance or another. Hemans feels remorse for Casabianca's untimely death, but his choice to present the story from a third-person perspective proves that his allegiance is geared more towards fulfilling his duty to family and country than towards fulfillment of childhood. If anything, Blake's choice to give his child character a first-person voice empowers his protagonist and supports the idea that Blake was a greater supporter of childhood than of duty. Both poems reveal the complex nature of this issue during the Romantic period, and each poem contrasts the other to give them both a more multidimensional perspective on the consequences and benefits of childhood preservation and duty..