William Blake: Holy Thursday

Question 1

Summary

Answer 1

• poor Children flow like the ‘Thames’ into St. Paul’s cathedral to sing praise to their benefactors.
• The poet pleads for the virtue of pity, lest goodness be lost.

Question 2

Innocence and Youth

Answer 2

‘Innocent faces clean’ is a puzzling way of describing the poor children. Most critics site, as these children are very poor and oppressed, the word innocence describes the children’s innocent state of mind and there good well being, as it’s likely that children from poverty would have been dirty. This being said, the sinister presence of the beadles could connote that the children have been forced to be clean, and that their ‘wands white as snow’ command the children to do as they wish.

‘Two and two in red and blue and green’
‘These flowers of London town’

The flour metaphor describes both the beauty, naturalistic and growing side of children, but more negatively describes their fragility. The multitudes of ‘Lambs’ metaphor of the children also makes us wonder about their fragility. As well as relating them to Christ.