Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and
fruitful land,
Babes reduc'd 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.
This poem is written in four quatrains and I think that is written in iambic pentameter. It creates a musicality that we can appreciate in the rhythm of the poem.
In the first quatrain Blake is using a rhetorical question; with this question he tries to involve the reader in his own thoughts. He wants to impress the readers and make them think about poor children who live in a rich world.
There he uses an opposition between two terms: richness against poverty. There he criticizes who obtain some benefit of these children.
In the second quatrain he writes about the children cry, how people take it as a song, but really it isn’t a song.
Later he writes that “it’s a land of poverty” in opposition to the first quatrain where he writes “in a rich and fruitful land”. With this we can appreciate how he wants to show us that the world isn’t as marvellous as we think.
In the third quatrain he wants to express how the poverty of children is and how is their world. It’s a world without any hope and very sad and he shows it to us using a vocabulary and expressions very pessimistic. For example word like “bleak”, “bare” and expressions like “their ways are fill’d with thorns”, “their sun does never shine” or “it is eternal winter there”.
The first expression refers to the difficulties that poor children have through their life; the second, refers to the darkness they have without love; and the third, how cold and grey are their days.
In the last quatrain, he expresses that those have never suffered this hunger, this life, can not know what it is.
In my personal opinion, in this fourth quatrain, he is criticizing the hypocrisy of whose close their eyes and don’t see beyond their own needing.
The title of the poem is very interesting to be analyzed because when you read “Holy Thursday”, you think that it’s going to talk about something religious however, you find a critic view of the society of this time.
I think the purpose of this poem is to make people think about what they find out of their own life. He makes us think about what we have and what other people haven’t. He wants that we don’t close our eyes and see that the world isn’t as beautiful as we imagine.
This poem is part of “Songs of Experience” published in 1794 inside an anthology which included “Songs of Innocence” that was firstly published in 1789.
“Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience” are two different points of view of a same topic.
As we can find in Wikipedia: ““Songs of Innocence” mainly consists of poems describing the innocence and joy of the natural world, advocating free love and a closer relationship with God… It’s poems have a generally light, upbeat and pastoral feel and where typically written from perspective of children or written about them.
Directly contrasting this “Songs of Experience” instead deals with the loss of innocence after exposure to the material world and all of its mortal sin during adult life… Poems are darker, concentrating on more political and serious themes” Wikipedia.2007. Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia. 23 nov. 2007 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_Innocence>
I think that “Songs of Innocence” was what he wanted to find in the world and “Songs of Experience” was what we really find in it.
We can notice that some of the poems are counterparts, in other words, the same topic has a version in “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience”. It is because he wanted to show us that our soul needs these two parts to be completely.
The poem that I have analyzed before has his counterpart in “Songs of Innocence”. In this, the poet writes about children whose go to the Church to celebrate the Ascension Day and how they sing to God.
These books of poems are inside another group called “Illuminated Books”. “They are called Illuminated because he used to make them the Illuminated printing, that is to say the illustrations could appear alongside words in the manner of earlier illuminated manuscripts.” Wikipedia. 2007. Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia. 23 nov. 2007. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake>
Blake wrote these poems at the age of 32 and 37 and they are part of his first works. One of his famous work written one year before the published of “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” was “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” that’s a very important book where “he expresses his own intensely personal Romantic and revolutionary beliefs.” Wikipedia. 2007. Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia. 23 nov. 2007. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_ Marriage_of_Heaven_and_Hell>
The importance of “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” is because he painted the images by himself and there are a lot of versions of the same book. All his poems has an especial musicality and a brilliant rhythm, for these reasons we can say that one part what made his work a brilliant book is because the combination of elements like music, text and images.
In his works, he shows that “he is a passionate believer in liberty and freedom for all, especially for women, he courted controversy with his views on Church and state”. The Romantics. 2007.BBC Arts. 24 nov. 2007 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/romantics/blake.shtml>
During the productive period in Blake, some events marked his behaviour and his ideas.
“The industrialisation in Britain (later known as the Industrial Revolution) made the plight of the poor and uneducated even more miserable and hopeless. Adults and children alike were forced to work long hours in factories, mills, and coalmines, working under dangerous and inhumane conditions for a meagre wage”. “The life and works of William Blake” Skoletorget. Eds. Oyvind Olsholt, Ariane and Anne Schjelderup, Tore Ferer, Brigid McCauley. March 2002. 25 Nov. 2007 <http://www.skoletorget.no/abb/eng/blake/life.html>
In other words, the Industrial revolution caused that a lot of people, especially poor people, worked in very bad conditions. Some families needed more than one salary, for this reason children began to work and their bosses exploited them.
This situation is possibly what made Blake think about children and their conditions and for this reason wrote this poem.
Also, in this time, the power was in rich people and religious hands; it makes me think that when he wrote “Fed with cold and usurous hand” he referred to the religious people. “Blake believed that children lost their innocence through exploitation and from a religious community which put dogma before mercy” Wikipedia. 2007. Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia. 25 nov. 2007. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake>
Today, this poem could be adapted to our own reality. Possibly not with the meaning Blake wants to express at first only talking about children but in a more extensive meaning. Nowadays exist what we know as the Third World where all people are poor and they died because their lack of food. And people of First world make nothing for them, they are hypocrite because they give some money and they feel good with themselves.
In conclusion, after the analyzing of the poem and Blake’s life, I can say that William Blake is a poet that was out of his time. His thoughts and believes are completely normal today but in his time it could cause a danger in his life because he was against what the state and Religious said.
Sometimes to understand his poems you need to know about his time but some poets are perfectly understanding from a modern point of view.