Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1826)/Songs of Experience/Holy Thursday

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For works with similar titles, see Holy Thursday.
5473Songs of Experience — Holy ThursdayWilliam Blake

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 & bare.
And their ways are fill'd with thorns.
It is eternal winter there.

For where’er the sun does shine,
And where’er the rain does fall:
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

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