Holy Thursday

by William Blake

Is this a holy thing to see,
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reducd 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.
from Songs of Experience, c. 1789