Music by Greg Brown / poem of William Blake

(The full title is “Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)”, a wholly different poem than “Holy Thursday (Songs of Innocence)”, also by Blake)

Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land
Babes reducd to misery
Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!

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

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