SONGS OF INNOCENCE by WILLIAM BLAKE

HOLY THURSDAY

'Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
Came children walking two and two, in read, and blue, and green:
Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames waters flow.

Oh what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.

Now like a mighty wild they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among:
Beneath them sit the aged man, wise guardians of the poor.
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.

SONGS OF INNOCENCE by WILLIAM BLAKE

songs_of_innocence_holy_thursday.html

Holy Thursday

WILLIAM BLAKE

From Songs of Experience

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 and bare,

And their ways are filled with thorns,

It is eternal winter there.

For where'er the sun does shine,

And where'er the rain does fall,

Babe can never hunger there,

Nor poverty the mind appal.

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/blake/holy_thursday_experience.html

First of all HOLY THURSDAY is the title given by Blake for two versions of a poem. Two versions which are oppositein their view and their way of expressing the feelings and ideas. The vision of a young and unexperienced Blake that we can see in the version of SONGS OF INNOCENCE show a group of young boys which meet in a holy day to celebrate the religious date.

As the poem says, the image is actually positive, very childish, very “inniocent”, as the title of the book says.. there we see how young Blake makes reference to the “faces clean”, the colourful image of the children, “ red and blue and green”. This way reader’s mind travels into a place, London in 18^th and 19^th Centuries in this case, where the situation of children is healthy, admirable, we could even extract from the poem that they are rich in some sense; where the image of children represent the hope of a whole country, the expected future. The reader feels that the description of young people is a kind of national enhancement. Words and expressions like “hum of multitudes”, “harmonious thunderings” make reference to tha national feeling in that celebration, that enhancement of their time and place full of hope, of illussion. Children are symbolized as “flowers of London” in line 5 to link them with nature, to that sense of purity and energy that only nature can offer to humanity. But, as I said at the beginning, this is an innocent and childish image of the real situation of children in concrete, and society in general, at the time when Blake lived and wrote his poems.

The are some aspects that must be taken into account. The rhyme used by the author is AABB CCDD EEFF, lines rhyme in pairs in perfect consonance. This way we see the efforts of a young Blake to make a clear and recognizable rhyme and sound effect. In lines 5 and six we find a non-complete rhyme with “town-own” that variating a bit the pronunciation we can make symilar sounds, this is a visual rhyme. The same happens in lines 11 and 12 with “poor-door”. The vocabulary used by the author is clearly related to youth:”innocent “8, “flowers”4, “lambs”7, “boys and girls”8 that are closely related to the religious sense of the celebration. As verses are 17 syllable long they have a break in the middle of each to mark the rhythm.

On the other hand, the version included in SONGS OF EXPERIENCE is all the contrary. From the very beginning the poem starts with a retorical question and, indeed a very harming one. Blake has grown old and has a very different point of view. This rhetorical question asks the reader if the vision of a situation of “babes reduc’d to misery” can be “holy” at all. The author is continuously using contradictions to shake the mind of the reader, to make him see that there are two different realities, that they can not blind their eyes to that situation anymore. Some examples of contradictions are:

Rich and fruitful 2 – misery 3, poverty 16

Trembling cry 5 – voice of song 9 (in version 1)

And these contradictions make direct reference to the poem of SONGS OF INNOCENCE where the vision is much more positive. This way Blake realizes tht his earlier vision was wrong and very conditioned bye his age and his lack of experience. And he expresses that feeling by asking maybe the reader, maybe himself, how can it be possible that they live and promote that situation described in his poems.. The author wants to get inside the conscience of the reader and make him think about the situation in which children are living at that time and place.

The contrast is clear, the “song” that appears in Version 2 is seen as a trembling cry, very negative, that gives the reader an image of misery. And this is in contrast with the song we find in Version 1, where all the children are “clean”, they walk in pairs, everything is colour and celebrations. Here are two Londons, one which is enhanced as the pride of a country, represented in the first poem by a writer which was so innocent, or wanted to look at another side; and the second London where poor and miserable children are forced to work in extremely hard conditions as we extract from this poem, or other examples as “the chimney sweeper” of the same author and “the little black boy”, poems of the same author that relate the dreams and experiences of those children obligued by his parents to work sweeping the chimneys of the rich people.. Here Blake tries to express a feeling that is hidden inside the hearts of everybody at his time, but none makes public, thatt is, the horrible situation in which children are living for the good of their “fruitful land”.

There are more links between the two poems. The second poem seem s to talk directly to those “aged men, guardians of the poor”, which appear in Version 1. the first two verses of Version 1, full of colour, of health and feeling of union, “children walking two and two”, make strong contrast with a Sun that “does never shine” in Version 2, this way hope is deleted from the picture symbolized by the Sun.

Blake is questioning all the time in Version 2, he doubts about the future of the country, of people’s mind and heart, of children’s destiny, and he expresses his doubts with these rhetorical questions whose expected readers are society in general. He expresses his will for a change, a radical change in situation, “Babe can never hunger there” which is a claim to his society.