Innocence: Holy Thursday Flashcards
1
Q
3
‘Two and two, in red and blue and green, gey headed beadles…with wands as white as snow’
A
- Ironically like a children’s song, veiled critique of a corrupt society as well as celebration of childlike innocence and bouncy iambic heptameter
- Polysynedton - on and on procession
- Wise old men like biblical patriachs but not just spotless ethical purity but violence
2
Q
‘The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs’
A
-Parade of diascope - overwhelming huge crowd of lost children
- Lambs are a powerful symbol of christian symbolism - Christ himself is traditionally Agnus Dei because he was SLAUGHT - sacrifice - metaphor for new life
- In touch with divinity
3
Q
3
‘Mighty wind…then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door’
A
- Biblical windstorms - Apostotles at Pentecoast - God speaks
- Alludes to biblical widsom from book of Hebrew - ‘Be not forgetful to entertain strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unawares’
- Angels in disguise, chldren are to be protected, honoured and venerated, stand in for Holy spirit
4
Q
2
Structure
A
- Stanzas doesn’t just emphasise that these children are sweet, but that they’re somehow sacrificial, the colateral damage of a society that has, in one way or another, taken theri parents from them
- They only have charity to offer
5
Q
Context
A
“Holy Thursday” is one of two poems William Blake wrote by that title; this is the version from his major 1789 collection Songs of Innocence, and it takes an appropriately innocent look at poverty and charity—on the surface, at least. Watching an Easter Week procession of orphaned children making their way to St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the poem’s speaker is moved by the kids’ goodness and sweetness and cautions readers to take “pity” on impoverished and suffering people—or risk driving away “an angel from your door.” But there’s a streak of irony here: this pious speaker doesn’t seem to question how or why these children ended up orphaned in the first place. Charity and sympathy are indeed moral duties, this poem suggests—but so is trying to root out the causes of suffering.
6
Q
Charity, poverty, sympathy
A
- “Holy Thursday” tells the story of a once-traditional London event: on Holy Thursday, one of the Christian holidays leading up to Easter, thousands of orphaned and impoverished children from the city’s charity schools paraded through the streets to attend a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. This poem’s speaker, deeply moved by the sight of all these “innocent” souls singing together, cautions readers that there’s a lesson here: people must learn to “cherish pity” (that is, to develop their own empathy) or they’ll risk turning away “an angel” in need. By presenting this vision of impoverished children as angelic innocents, the poem implies that a world that treats poverty as a moral failing rather than an affliction risks hurting the most vulnerable—and missing out on great blessings.
- The charity school children on their way to the Holy Thursday service strike the speaker as the very picture of “innocen[ce].” The poem describes these “multitudes” of orphans as “lambs” and “flowers,” brand-new lives “radian[t]” with goodness. And when they sing, they make a “harmonious thundering” like a veritable choir of angels. It’s not these kids’ fault, the poem implies, that they’ve fallen on hard times; they’re both blameless and beautiful. They deserve all the “pity” and sympathy that society can muster.
- This, the poem suggests, is why “pity” for those who fall upon hard times is so important: in turning one’s back on suffering and impoverished people, one might very well be turning an “angel” away. In this reading, the poem aligns with a number of traditional Christian ideas: that the most important virtue is love, that there’s something especially sacred about children, that “angels” often appear in unlikely disguises, and that the “poor,” in the words of one of the Beatitudes, are particularly “blessed” and beloved by God. More fortunate people, the poem cautions, should keep all those ideas in mind and behave accordingly.
7
Q
Society’s complacency, cruelty, and hypocrisy
A
- On a closer look, though, the poem is also an ironic condemnation of society’s complacency and hypocrisy when it comes to so-called “charity.” While the speaker seems moved by the sight of a “multitude” of orphans making their way to church for a religious holiday, this speaker also doesn’t ask too many questions about what these orphans’ lives are like on other days—or how London ended up with so many abandoned and impoverished children on its hands in the first place. A dewy-eyed, band-aid “pity” for the world’s suffering children isn’t enough, this poem subtly suggests: people who really want to make a difference should attack the inequities that create poverty in the first place and reject the hypocrisy that treats impoverished people as second-class citizens even as it purports to care for them.
- The speaker’s sentimental portrait of children streaming into St. Paul’s for a religious holiday contains more than a few hints that not all is well. For starters, the kids are from London’s charity schools, institutions that took in orphaned or abandoned children. That’s all well and good—but when a city has “thousands” of such orphans, a full-on “multitude” of parentless kids, something has clearly gone wrong!
- What’s more, the children are escorted by “[g]rey headed beadles”—elderly officials from the orphanages or the church—carrying “wands as white as snow.” Those decorative-sounding “wands” (or sticks) might well be used to give the children a whack if they put a toe out of line on this special occasion.
- These moments of unease suggest that both society and religion in 19th-century England might have something rotten in their cores. If London has produced vast crowds of abandoned children, then it must also have either killed all those children’s parents (perhaps through poverty or accident) or forced those parents to make the awful choice to give their children up. The “beadles” here, meanwhile, in doing what they see as their Christian duty, might also be behaving as if they’re better than the impoverished kids they claim to care for: as “wise guardians of the poor,” they may well treat impoverished folks as second-class citizens who need “wise[r]” heads to guide them. For that matter, the speaker’s fixation on the children’s “angelic” innocence might also hint that the wider world is often only willing to offer compassion to impoverished people if they “earn” that compassion by behaving like paragons of virtue!
- When the speaker admonishes readers to show “pity” to suffering souls, then, the poem hints that “pity” simply isn’t good enough. Caught up in sentimental compassion for innocent children, the speaker doesn’t seem too interested in addressing the society that brought them to this state or the religious hypocrisy that disguises condescension as piety.
8
Q
O what a multitude they seemd, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands.
A
- They’re an outright “multitude,” the speaker cries; in fact, they’re “multitudes” upon “multitudes,” a parade of diacope that stresses just how overwhelmingly huge this crowd of children is.
- Not only are these children many, the speaker feels, they’re heartbreakingly sweet. These “flowers of London town” also make the low “hum” of “multitudes of lambs”—both metaphors that suggest springy, beautiful new life. They also suggest innocence, an idea the speaker leans on; the poem repeats the word “innocent,” which first turned up in line 1, here in line 8. These children, the speaker insists, are blameless.
- And that’s a pointed idea in a poem about abandoned kids. These children aren’t wards of the state because of anything they did wrong, the speaker stresses. They’re the very picture of harmless goodness.
- But then, being harmless and good has never saved anyone from suffering. The metaphor of the “lamb,” especially in the context of a Holy Thursday service, can’t help but suggest an important piece of Christian symbolism: Christ himself is traditionally called Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God. And that’s not just because he was gentle and kind, but because he was sacrificed, a lamb to the slaughter.
- In other words, this stanza doesn’t just emphasize that these children are sweet, but that they’re somehow sacrificial, the collateral damage of a society that has, in one way or another, taken their parents from them. And there are “thousands” of such children, a “multitude” of abandoned kids. The “radiance” (or glowing light) of their beautiful, innocent faces might be moving, but perhaps there’s also something awful about it; their sweetness is an indictment on a society that has only charity schools to offer them in exchange for their losses.
- Again, alert readers might sniff out some irony here: the poem’s perspective on this situation seems a little bit different than the speaker’s. While the speaker marvels at the kids’ flower-like sweetness and radiant beauty, the poem doesn’t let readers forget that all that sweetness comes from a society-wide calamity. If these kids are the “flowers of London town,” then London breeds orphans like a country garden breeds snapdragons.
8
Q
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.
A
- In other words, learning from the sight of these blameless but suffering children, people should learn to feel pity and sympathy for the poor, who might, after all, be “angel[s]” in disguise. That idea again alludes to biblical wisdom—for instance, this famous line from the book of Hebrews: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
- The real question and the real problem here is: how does a society as wealthy and powerful as England’s end up creating so many homeless children? What’s wrong with this picture? And how are people who are better-off complicit in this situation?
- William Blake would go on to spell out these questions—and his outrage—in a companion poem to this one, also titled “Holy Thursday.” Here, though, he sympathizes with the speaker to a point. This poem’s portrait of a crowd of “radiant[]” children singing in church is enough to move speaker, poet, and reader alike; there is something sacred about these children, something to be protected, honored, and venerated.
8
Q
Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among.
Beneath them sit the agèd men, wise guardians of the poor;
A
- First, the speaker hears their singing as “a mighty wind” that reaches all the way to “heaven,” a simile that might allude to all kinds of biblical windstorms, from the wind that touches the Apostles at Pentecost to the whirlwind from which God speaks to Job. A powerful wind, in Christian readings of these stories, is often a stand-in for the Holy Spirit, a visitation from God.
- The children’s song also seems to put them above the “agèd men” who serve as their “wise guardians”; these figures are seated “beneath” the children somehow, in a position that suggests that, for all that they present themselves as “wise guardians of the poor,” they’re also lesser than the people they claim to serve. While the speaker might mean that line about “wise guardians” sincerely and respectfully, there’s still a sniff of irony here—one that will come to a head in the poem’s closing line.
8
Q
Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two & two, in red & blue & green
Grey headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul’s they like Thames’ waters flow.
A
- These images might come from a storybook:
- The speaker first observes a long, long parade of newly-scrubbed kids in their Sunday best; the polysyndeton of “two & two, in red & blue & green” suggests a procession that seems to go on and on, so many brightly-dressed children that the speaker keeps having to add another “and.”
- And these kids are led by what appear to be wise old men, like biblical patriarchs: “grey headed beadles” (or officials, perhaps from the orphanage or the church) walk at the head of the procession like shepherds, carrying “wands as white as snow”—pure white walking sticks.
This passage paints a vivid picture of a particular historical custom, but it also feels timeless: the bright, innocent young being guarded by the grey-bearded older generation. Perhaps the simile the speaker uses even suggests something sacred. As the children make their way into the cathedral, they strike the speaker as like a river—the Thames, specifically, the very river that flows beside St. Paul’s. This image of a river of children making their way into a holy place might hint at a kind of Judgement Day parade of souls into heaven. - But there are also hints that something’s not quite right here. All these children, remember, are orphans or foundlings, kids whose parents have died or abandoned them. And the allusions to St. Paul’s and the Thames remind readers that these are the lost children of just one city—and a rich, prosperous city at that. Something has to have gone very wrong for one city to have this many parentless children. Even those snow-white “wands” might suggest, not just spotless ethical purity, but violence: a stick can be used to hit as well as to guide.
- This poem will depict a sincerely touching scene. But it will also undercut its own speaker’s enthusiastic perspective on that scene, asking: is it such a lovely thing, this parade of foundlings? What kind of city creates this many impoverished orphans in the first place, then leaves them in the care of the men with the sticks?
9
Q
Form
A
- Like many of the poems in Blake’s Songs of Innocence, this one is short and (deceptively) sweet. It’s built from three quatrains (or four-line stanzas), each made from a pair of rhymed couplets. This simple shape indeed feels a lot like an innocent song or a nursery rhyme.
- But there’s a lot going on under that smooth surface. Even before one knows that this poem has a much harsher and angrier cousin in Blake’s Songs of Experience (a poem, also called “Holy Thursday,” that rages against 19th-century child poverty in England), something seems just a tiny bit off about this poem’s portrayal of an angelic host of impoverished children. Just as one example, perhaps a parade of orphans so long that it looks like the river “Thames” itself is less a touching vision of charity and more an indictment of a society that produces so many abandoned kids.
- In this poem as in many of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience, then, an outwardly simple form invites readers to think hard about what the poem is actually depicting
10
Q
Meter
A
Holy Thursday” is written in iambic heptameter. That means it’s built from lines of seven iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Here’s how that sounds in line 2:
The child- | ren walk- | ing two | & two, | in red | & blue | & green
Long heptameter lines aren’t too common in English-language poetry; Blake is making an unusual and attention-grabbing choice here. These long, pulsing lines evoke what they describe: a seemingly endless parade of orphans.
11
Q
Rhyme Scheme
A
“Holy Thursday” is built from singsongy rhymed couplets. Each stanza’s rhyme scheme runs like this:
AABB
- These paired rhymes give this poem the feeling of a nursery rhyme—an appropriate choice for a poem that celebrates the angelic innocence of a crowd of orphaned children. The rhymes even walk “two & two,” just as the children do as they make their way to church.
- But, as in a lot of Blake’s work, the simplicity here is deceptive. By presenting this speaker’s vision of a host of abandoned kids as a nursery song about childlike goodness, the poem suggests that the speaker’s society often tells simplistic, self-congratulatory just-so stories about charity and religion—and thus excuses itself from thinking too hard about the underlying causes of poverty and suffering.
12
Q
Speaker
A
- The poem’s speaker is a Londoner deeply moved by the sight of charity-school children streaming into St. Paul’s Cathedral on Holy Thursday. This speaker sees in these children a reminder to be a good Christian: to take care of people who are young, helpless, and/or impoverished, and to remember that “angels” often appear in the guise of suffering folks.
- But the speaker’s warm feelings might conceal a certain hypocrisy or thoughtlessness. In getting sentimental over these kids, the speaker doesn’t seem to worry too much about how London ended up with “thousands” of abandoned children on its hands. Through the limited perspective of this speaker, the poem suggests that “pity” isn’t enough; true charity (in its oldest and strongest sense as “love for one’s fellow person”) demands that people rebel against a society that creates impoverished children in the first place.
13
Q
Setting
A
- “Holy Thursday” is set in Blake’s own late-18th-century London on the day of an Easter Week tradition: a parade of charity-school children ending with a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
- The poem vividly captures the sights and sounds of this holiday, from the children’s festive “red & blue & green” clothing to the “hum of multitudes” in the jam-packed church. The speaker also emphasizes what a very London event this is, comparing the stream of kids to “Thames’ waters” (that is, the waters of the river that runs through the city).
- In depicting a spectacular charity event, the poem also quietly indicts London—a prosperous and powerful city—for producing so many impoverished children in need of charity.
14
Q
Literary context
A
- Many of the poems in Songs of Innocence have a counterpart in Songs of Experience, a twin poem that reads the same subjects from a new perspective. For instance, “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” both explore creation, divinity, and nature, but in very different ways! This subtly ironic “Holy Thursday” has an obvious cousin in Songs of Experience: another “Holy Thursday,” this one an undisguised tirade against child poverty.
- Blake didn’t just write poetry: he also designed, engraved, printed, painted, and published illuminated manuscripts using a technique he called the “infernal method.” Blake painted his poems and pictures on copper plates with a resilient ink, then burned away the excess copper in a bath of acid—the opposite of the process most engravers used. But then, Blake often did the opposite of what other people did, believing that it was his role to “reveal the infinite that was hid” by custom and falsehood.
- Even among the often countercultural Romantics, then, Blake was an outlier. Samuel Taylor Coleridge himself—no stranger to a wild vision—once remarked that he was “in the very mire of common-place common-sense compared with Mr. Blake.”
- While Blake was never widely known during his lifetime, he has become one of the most famous and beloved of poets since his death, and writers from Allen Ginsberg to Olga Tokarczuk to Philip Pullman claim him as a major influence.
15
Q
Historical context
A
- William Blake spent much of his life railing against the cruelties of 19th-century British society. And he had plenty to rail against!
- The England of Blake’s time was just getting caught up in the Industrial Revolution, a period during which the economy shifted from farming to manufacturing. The countryside began to empty out, and the cities began to swell. And English class divisions, always intense, began to seem even more pronounced as impoverished workers lived cheek-by-jowl with the fashionable and wealthy in newly crowded towns.
- Workers during the early Industrial Revolution got a pretty raw deal. Even young children were forced to work in factories, dig in mines, and sweep chimneys (an absurdly dangerous job, contrary to the cheery Mary Poppins image many are familiar with: chimney-sweeps as young as three or four years old regularly suffocated in narrow flues). Adults didn’t have it much easier. With few regulations to keep factory owners in check, bosses could impose impossible working hours, or withhold pay for any number of trifling offenses.
- Blake’s passionate, prophetic stance on humankind’s innate divinity also made him a fiery critic of the cruelty he saw all around him in the streets of his native London. And Blake was only one in a long series of writers who saw 19th-century working conditions—and the poverty that always threatened workers—as an affront to humanity. Charles Dickens would later make similar protests in novels like David Copperfield and Oliver Twist.
