I found this poem very difficult to understand. The rhyme scheme is very traditional going AABB CCDD EEFF etc. The most I could get out of this poem was that even those faced with impossible adversity can be visited by the "Angel who had a bright key." The first-person narrator in this poem is "sold" away by his father as an infant and he grows up sweeping chimneys with truly no opportunity to seek his own explanation for life or find a religion to believe that would find him a "Heaven." The narrator makes another point towards this with the hair predicament. The white hair of Tom can be seen as the unscathed religious canvas that is painted throughout a person's life. When his father removes this "canvas" before it can be painted and "spoiled" by the worlds "soot," it takes away any chance for them to choose the wrong religion or wrong path in life. His dream finally leads him to conclude that all he has to do is do his job well where he can not be spoiled like his hair would have been by the world's "soot."
