Holy Thursday (Experience) Analysis

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.

.: :.

In "Holy Thursday" Blake expresses feelings towards the society around him. England in the 18th Century, and the emotional, spiritual and moral poverty.
In the first stanza, Blake uses the word ''holy'',
''Is this a holy thing to see...''
He uses the word "holy" as he feels people are being sacrilegious to the country.
In stanza one, Blake describes the land,
''In a rich and fruitful land...''
"Rich" is the adjective used to describe the countries material things. "Fruitful" could mean it is an agricultural and productive place. Another possibility is that it could represent temptation or corruption, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
In stanza one Blake uses the words "reduced to misery" possibly representing the uneven distribution of wealth and power.
''Babes reduced to misery...'
England was a rich country, yet children as young as four years old were working in factories.
At the end of the first stanza, Blake says the disadvantaged children are "fed with a cold and usurous hand",
''Fed with cold and usurous hand?''
"Cold" could mean insensitive, unloving and callous. The use of the word "usurous" might mean that the people who give money or feed the children are the people who want something in return. Blake believed wholeheartedly that charity was wrong anyway, his reason being that it should not be needed, people should not be allowed to become so poor in the "rich and fruitful land" of England.
The second stanza is more Blake's disbelief than his anger,
''Is that trembling cry a song!
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor,
It is a land of poverty!''
Blake seems stunned that despite their lives of ''misery'', the children are expected to sing "'"songs of joy"'", or hymns, in praise of God and their supposed privilege of education. Blake hears the cries of the children and asks the reader if it can be a song because there is so many children crying that it sounds like a song. He also asks if it can be a song of joy, that the children are singing for joy. He says that there are so many children that are more, he says that the land is poor so therefore it must be called ''land of poverty''.

| Posted on 2008-07-06 | by a guest