Holy Thursday (Notebook)

by William Blake

For works with similar titles, see Holy Thursday.

Notebook 51 - Holy Thursday

Holy Thursday^[1]

Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich & fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery?
Fed with cold & usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so great a number poor?
'Tis 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.
'Tis eternal winter there.

But where'er the sun does shine,
And where'er the rain does fall:
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.

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1. "Blake Complete Writings", ed. Geoffrey Keynes, pub. OUP 1966/85, p. 181.