Holy Thursday
from Songs of Experience

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.
Home 1