Holy Thursday
The context for "Holy Thursday" from Blake's "Songs of Experience" is the annual Ascension Thursday service at St Paul's Cathedral; orphaned children from London's charity schools sang as they were paraded into St Paul's for religious services. Blake views "rich and fruitful" 19th c. Britain as a "land of poverty," and the future of these orphans as an "eternal winter." This visceral setting is both stark and tender; the music underscores "eternal winter" with dramatic soprano solo," phrase repetition and arching cello lines.
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,
Babes should never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.
The context for "Holy Thursday" from Blake's "Songs of Experience" is the annual Ascension Thursday service at St Paul's Cathedral; orphaned children from London's charity schools sang as they were paraded into St Paul's for religious services. Blake views "rich and fruitful" 19th c. Britain as a "land of poverty," and the future of these orphans as an "eternal winter." This visceral setting is both stark and tender; the music underscores "eternal winter" with dramatic soprano solo," phrase repetition and arching cello lines.