Holy Thursday (Song of Experience) : Quotations

Quotations

Is this a holy thing to see

In a rich and fruitful land,

Babes reduced to misery

Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Exp: These lines ask if it is okay to see babies suffering in a wealthy land due to greed and neglect. It argues that witnessing such a contrast between wealth and child suffering is wrong.

Is that trembling cry a song?

Can it be a song of joy?

And so many children poor?

It is a land of poverty!

Exp: Here, the poet thinks their prayer song is a cry. There are many poor children, so the country is not rich but poor.

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.

Exp: Here, the poet thinks they are unfortunate because the authority does not care for them. Their lives are nothing but thornful, dark, and barren.

For where-e’er the sun does shine,

And where-e’er the rain does fall:

Babe can never hunger there,

Nor poverty the mind appall.

Exp: Here, the poet says the children should not stay hungry as the country has everything to make them happy.