Holy Thursday Innocence

• what is the summary of Holy Thursday innocence 


  It was The Thursday before Easter, the speaker saw the children with the grey headed officials walking into the church. The children seemed to shine. The speaker advices to nourish sympathy, charity and pity or you may turn away an angel without knowing.
• Themes of Holy Thursday

  • Poverty
  • Sympathy
  • Society complacency
  • Cruelty
  • Hypocrisy
• Form / Structure of Holy Thursday

  • 3 quatrains
  • Rhyming couplets
  • Iambic heptameter
  • ABAB rhmyme scheme
• The speaker is a Londoner deeply moved by the sight of charity for school children.
• What is the setting in Holy Thursday Innocence?


  the setting captures the sights and sounds of the holiday
• What is the context of Holy Thursday innocence?

  It’s based on Ascension day
• “their innocent faces clean, came children walking two and two, in red, and blue, and green:”


  ~Allusion shows their constant state of becoming.

  ~Visual imagery shows the order, control and authority.

  ~Polysyndeton listing gives a sense of order and progression
• “grey headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow,”


  suggests regimentation, subjects to authoritative coertion

  ~similie ”as white as snow” suggests physical pain on innocent children

  ~suggests the children aren’t clean constantly
• “Oh what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London Town!”… “radiance all their own.


  ~Metaphor suggests the children’s beauty is after a transformation

  ~This is all for representation rather than genuine sympathy
• “hum of multitudes“… “multitudes of lambs, Thousands of boys and girls raising their innocent hands.”


  ~Imagery/ metaphor =children are sacrificial

  ~ Hypberbole = show show many children are present for Holy Thursday and the extent of charity needed
• “Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven” … “harmonious thunderings“


  ~Similie / aural imagery highlights each child

  ~Allusion/ natural imagery could be the Wrath of God or a Protest of Blake
• “beneath them sit the ages man, wise guardians of the poor. Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.”


  ~Allusion advices reader to feel pity for the poor.

  Suggests the result of pity is institutionalised charity rather than genuine sympathy.

  Angels and children share the same purity in Blake’s eyes