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Home  »  The Poetical Works by William Blake  »  Holy Thursday

William Blake (1757–1827). The Poetical Works. 1908.

Songs of Experience

Holy Thursday

IS this a holy thing to see

In a rich and fruitful land,

Babes reduc’d to misery,

Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song?

Can it be a song of joy?

And so many children poor?

It is a land of poverty!

And their sun does never shine,

And their fields are bleak and bare,

And their ways are fill’d with thorns:

It is eternal winter there.

For where’er the sun does shine,

And where’er the rain does fall,

Babe can never hunger there,

Nor poverty the mind appal.