Holy Thursday (Songs of Innocence)

Holy Thursday is a poem by William Blake, from his 1789 book of poems Songs of Innocence. (There is also a Holy Thursday poem in Songs of Experience, which contrasts with this song.)

The poem depicts a ceremony held on Ascension Day, which in England was then called Holy Thursday, a name now generally applied to what is also called Maundy Thursday: Six thousand orphans of London's charity schools, scrubbed clean and dressed in the coats of distinctive colours, are marched two by two to St Paul's Cathedral, under the control of their beadles, and sing in the cathedral.

The children in their colourful dresses are compared to flowers and their procession toward the church as a river. Their singing on the day that commemorated the Ascension of Jesus is depicted as raising them above their old, lifeless guardians, who remain at a lower level.

The bleak reality of the orphans' lives is depicted in the contrasting poem, "Holy Thursday" (Songs of Experience).

The poem

References

External links

• A comparison of extant copies of the original hand painted copies of "Holy Thursday" available from the William Blake Archive

1. Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)
2. Holy Thursday (disambiguation)
3. Song of Innocence
4. Songs of Innocence and of Experience
5. Songs of Innocence and Experience (Allen Ginsberg album)
6. Mufid Abdulqader
7. Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Greg Brown album)
8. Infant Joy
9. 1789 in poetry
10. 1794 in poetry
11. Charity Children Choirs
12. David Axelrod (musician)
13. William Blake
14. Manic Street Preachers
15. Jackie Evancho
16. Karl Korte
17. A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table
18. Nativity of Mary
19. True Blue (Madonna song)
20. Warszawa (song)