Poet’s Corner: Blake–Holy Thursday 2

7 February 2026

(9 May 2014) Last week, we looked at a Blake poem from the “Songs of Innocent, ” “Holy Thursday”; this week we will look at its analog in the “Songs of Experience”:

Holy Thursday

Is this a holy thing to see.
In a rich and fruitful land.
Babes reduced 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 & bare.
And their ways are fill’d with thorns
It is eternal winter there.

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.

This is the poet’s response to his own poem: in the first poem, he points to the practice of taking the orphans to church on a particular holiday, exclaiming how wonderful it is to see their clean faces and pretty voices; here, his ‘alter ego’ replies, “is it?” and then points right at their singing, questioning whether it is a song or a cry, given that there are so many poor children. How can we, says the poet, live in such a fruitful land, such an enlightened (supposedly) land, and allow so many innocent children to go hungry? Why should there be poverty in a land overflowing with resources? We could ask these same questions today, and that is another reason I so like Blake–his pointed social commentary. Come back on Tuesday for another edition of the Poet’s Corner! If you are interested in our poetry, find the links here.