Talk:Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)

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It is much more likely that both these poems refer to the feast of the Ascension, as opposed to Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday. It strikes me that the prejudices of the person who wrote the original article have managed to get in the way of either a careful reading or basic systematic research.

Children from orphanages (and more rarely workhouses) were brought to various English(mostly London)churches to make them aware of the ascension of Christ into heaven. They were often taught hymns for this occasion, but the suspicions of the middle class churchmen meant that they were accompanied and controlled by various officers of pretentious stature in the church such as the beadles mentioned in stanza one of the "innocence" poem. The "wise guardians of the poor" of course established conditions for their generosity -- a fact well known to Blake -- and as a result their "charity" was mean-fisted. The actions of these "wise guardians of the poor" and the pretentious beadles (who usually misunderstood the various ceremonies they took charge of) was decried by poets before Blake, but Blake's writings, inspired by the Bible and the life of Christ, in its turn inspired writers right through our own time -- and this list of writers includes Robbie Burns, Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, WB Yeats, the Beatles.

The Maundy Thursday reference is further unlikely because the Maundy Thursday ceremony is so complex and by its very nature so melancholy, that cluttering up the church with children was not acceptable. Notice that Blake says "on ‘a' holy Thursday", even though the metre will easily sustain either "Maundy Thursday" or just "holy Thursday" on its own. Seeing the altar of the church stripped bare and the minister washing the feet of the poor was not a message the "wise guardians of the poor" wanted these children to see! Furthermore, Maundy Thursday ceremonies are usually held in the evening to represent the last supper and to merge seamlessly with the vigil many churches kept to recall Christ's agony in the garden.

The reference to the sun in the last two stanzas of the "experience" poem is clearly a reference to the Son of Man or Christ. Blake was well aware that many members of the established churches had lost sight of His message and that their charity and humility was nothing like the charity and humility blessed in the Sermon on the Mount. Even here in the midst of the wealth of England, these children are forced to remain in a desolate and dark wilderness, treading pathways filled with thorns of well established custom, convention, ignorance, and hunger. The double irony of marching them through the mean streets of London and having them sing hymns to celebrate their Saviour's leaving should not be lost on the reader. It was certainly not lost on Blake. The reference to the rain in the last stanza is an oblique reference to the "mercy" speech in The Merchant of Venice. These children were never shown the mercy or compassion taught by Christ and they are ensnared by a judicial system that sustains their exploitation and hunger.

Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands in supplication were as innocent as the lamb sacrificed on Good Friday. These multitudes of lambs were sacrificed to appeal to the vanity and greed of the middle and upper class of England. Now read "The Lamb" by Blake. That reading does interesting things to the meaning of Blake's question "Little Lamb who made thee?" and the meaning of the Holy Thursday poems.75.153.216.247 (talk) 01:20, 21 March 2008 (UTC)