William Blake’s Songs of Innocence was first published in 1789. Five years later the English poet published the Songs of Innocence and Experience Shewing the two contrary States of the Human Soul, a work combining his earlier poetry with a series of new poems My favorite of Blake's poems is, Holy Thursday, which comes from the Songs of Experience. The first time I read Holy Thursday it had a profound and deep effect on me and forced me to question my own beliefs and teachings of the church.
The first two stanzas of Blake’s poem consist primarily of rhetorical questions used to highlight the hypocrisy of religion. Although the church (in this poem Blake is referring to the church of England) gives off the pretense of caring for all its worshipers, actions would say otherwise, as there are abandoned and orphaned children suffering on the streets:
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? (1-7)
Blake continues to depict the horrible reality facing the impoverished children in the third stanza: “And their sun does never shine/ And their fields are bleak and bare/ It is eternal winter their” (9,10,12). In the fourth and final stanza Blake is most certainly being sarcastic and almost hauntingly playful with his audience: “For where-e’er the sun does shine/ Babe can never hunger there” (13,15).
Even though Blake's Holy Thursday is upsetting in many ways, I find it to be incredibly powerful and thought provoking. I would recommend this poem to anyone who enjoys reading poetry.
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