Holy Thursday (Innocence)

• Holy Thursday' by William Blake

  On the fortieth day after the resurrection of CHrist, once a yer 'charity' children go to St Paul's Cathedral and give thanks - doners would watch them.
• What is it's partner poem?

  'Holy Thursday' - Experience
• Form and Structure:


  3 Quatrains

  Rhyming couplets

  Line extension mirrors procession or flowing river to wich they are compared

  Hymn or story like style

  Speaker seperate from proceedings
• Key themes:

  Charity

  Authority - religious

  Innocence

  Age vs youth
• Relgious context:

  Blake a Christian throughout his life however did oppose authoritarian organised religion.

  Less explicitly criticises idea of charity in Innocence and yet there are still undertones
• Other romantic context:

  - Influence of Rousseau about how to view children

  - Importance of nature

  - Blake supported both the American and French revolutions.
• innocent faces clean'

  Emphasising innocence

  'clean' - tidied up for public occasion
• walking two & two in red & blue & green'

  - Noah's arc biblical allusion, like animals

  - Use of ampersand &,

  - children vibrant colours, filled with life - energy
• "Grey headed beadles walk'd before with wands as white as snow"

  - colourlessness of experience, is it wisdom or less of purity

  - 'wands' idea of rigidity

  - colours juxtapose the youthful vibrant children
• like Thames' waters flow'

  Simile: children are natural and free like water

  Water imagery: symbolises freedom

  Irony: not free, but controlled by the ruling elite and Church

  - Homogenous

  - natural imagery for children
• O what a multitude they seemd'


  - Emphasis on number, sinister or hopeful for rebellion.

  - rebellious undertones
• flowers'

  - fragility, beauty
• "Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own"

  - undercuts assumption that these children are the city's burden 'radiance' - seen as the finest.
• The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs, / thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands'

  - repetition of 'multitudes' emphaises sheer extent of suffering

  - 'lambs' as sacrificial in this ritualistic poem, 'lambs to the slaughter. Or idea from Blakes the 'lamb' of God.

  - innocence continues to be accentuated
• Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song'


  - 'mighty', have grown in strength, implication of god on their side.

  - power of 'song' and words. Angelic like.
• harmonius thunderings'


  Oxymoron, hints of rebellion
• Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor'

  - Not as close to god, loss of innocence. Accentuated by lineation literally beneath them.

  - emphasis on their age, how that connects to purity

  - eclipsed by the bright radiance of the children
• "Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door"

  - profiting out of 'good works'

  - Advises compassion for the poor