The English Romantic poet William Blake wrote two poems entitled "Holy Thursday": the first appeared in Songs of Innocence, and the second—the poem we're treating in this guide—in his Songs of Experience. He published those collections together in an omnibus 1794 edition, Songs of Innocence and of Experience; readers were meant to encounter one poem after the other. Both describe an old tradition in which orphaned or abandoned kids housed in London's "charity schools" paraded to St. Paul's Cathedral on Holy Thursday, a Christian holiday during Easter week. In the first poem, a softhearted speaker is touched by the children's innocence and their sweet singing in church. In this poem, by contrast, an angry speaker lets loose a tirade against the children's self-satisfied guardians and against poverty in general: what does it say about English society, they ask, that so very many impoverished children need to be housed in charity schools at all?
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The Full Text of “Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)”
1Is this a holy thing to see
2In a rich and fruitful land,
3Babes reduced to misery
4Fed with cold and usurous hand?
5Is that trembling cry a song?
6Can it be a song of joy?
7And so many children poor?
8It is a land of poverty!
9And their sun does never shine.
10And their fields are bleak & bare.
11And their ways are fill'd with thorns
12It is eternal winter there.
13For where-e'er the sun does shine,
14And where-e'er the rain does fall:
15Babe can never hunger there,
16Nor poverty the mind appall.
The Full Text of “Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)”
1Is this a holy thing to see
2In a rich and fruitful land,
3Babes reduced to misery
4Fed with cold and usurous hand?
5Is that trembling cry a song?
6Can it be a song of joy?
7And so many children poor?
8It is a land of poverty!
9And their sun does never shine.
10And their fields are bleak & bare.
11And their ways are fill'd with thorns
12It is eternal winter there.
13For where-e'er the sun does shine,
14And where-e'er the rain does fall:
15Babe can never hunger there,
16Nor poverty the mind appall.
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“Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)” Summary
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“Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)” Themes
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Child Poverty and Society's Failures
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Society vs. Nature
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)”
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Lines 1-4
Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery
Fed with cold and usurous hand? -
Lines 5-8
Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty! -
Lines 9-12
And their sun does never shine.
And their fields are bleak & bare.
And their ways are fill'd with thorns
It is eternal winter there. -
Lines 13-16
For where-e'er the sun does shine,
And where-e'er the rain does fall:
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.
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“Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Rhetorical Question
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Allusion
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Metaphor
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Parallelism
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Repetition
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“Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Babes
- Usurous
- Where-e'er
- Appall
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- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)”
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Form
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Meter
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Rhyme Scheme
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“Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)” Speaker
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“Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)” Setting
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Literary and Historical Context of “Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)”
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More “Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to the actor Toby Jones performing the poem.
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A Brief Biography — Visit the Poetry Foundation's website to find an overview of Blake's life and work.
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Blake's Legacy — Read contemporary novelist Philip Pullman's reflections on what Blake means to him.
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Blake as a Visual Artist — See more images of Blake's wild art (and learn about his artistic philosophy) at the website of London's Tate Gallery.
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The Poem Illuminated — See an image of the poem as Blake intended it to be read: in one of his engraved and hand-painted illustrated manuscripts. It's worth thinking about how the images Blake chooses interact with his language.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by William Blake
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