The last two stanzas are end-stopped after each couplet to show many complete thoughts. Enjambment is displayed in the first stanza from the second to the third line where there is no punctuation connecting the lines or pausing the reader; the thought just continues.
The visual and aural metre of this poem is primarily anapestic with two unstressed, then one stressed syllable making a rising metre. Each line has a measure of four feet, an anapestic tetrametre. The first stanza is an exception to the metre type; it is in Iambic form, an unstressed, then a stressed syllable. Each of these lines has a measure of five feet, an iambic pentametre, excluding line three, which has a measure of four feet, an iambic tetrametre. One reason why Blake may have made the first stanza unlike the rest is because it is an introduction. He may have felt that the introduction needed to stand out from the rest and elicit deep feelings of sympathy from the reader with smooth transitions from word to word.
Many sound devices are used in The Chimney Sweeper. The main rhyme scheme in this poem is AABB with end-rhymes, the ends of each couplet rhyme with each other. The only exception to this is where two eye rhymes are included in the poem. One is in the fifth stanza at the ends of the first couplet, they visually seem as if they would rhyme: "behind" and "wind," 3 but they in fact do not. The other eye rhyme is in the first couplet of the final stanza: "dark" and "work" "Ibid., p. 156" look as though they would rhyme, however, they do not. The last type of rhyme is an internal rhyme that is included in the last line of the first stanza. "Sweep" and "sleep" "Ibid., p. 156" rhyme with each other and are both positioned within the same line. Anaphora, a form of repetition, is present in this poem. The words "and," "so," and "then" "Ibid., p. 156" are frequently repeated at the beginning of lines because they are used as conjunctions to continue the narrator's thoughts from the lines before.
