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"Holy Thursday" is a poem by William Blake, first published in ''Songs of Innocence and Experience'' in 1794. This poem, unlike its companion poem in "Songs of Innocence" (1789), focuses more on society as a whole than on the ceremony held in London. ==Analysis== The primary objective of this poem is to question social and moral injustice. In the first stanza, Blake contrasts the "rich and fruitful land" with the actions of a "cold and usurous hand" - thereby continuing his questioning of the virtue of a society where resources are abundant but children are still "reduced to misery". The "Holy Thursday" referred to in the poem is Ascension Day, which in the Church of England and other parts of the Anglican Communion, is a synonym for the same feast; however the term "Holy Thursday" is also applied by some Christian denominations to what is also called Maundy Thursday.〔(Collins English Dictionary )〕 On that day a service was held in St. Paul's Cathedral for the poor children of London's charity schools. Appreciation of the "wise guardians of the poor" thus advertising their charity may not be wholly shared by Blake's "Piper", the supposed narrator of the "Songs of Innocence". In their state of innocence, children should not be regimented; rather, they should be playing blithely on the "echoing green". The children in this poem 'assert and preserve their essential innocence not by going to church, but by freely and spontaneously, "like a mighty wind," raising to "heaven the voice of song." '〔Gleckner, Robert F. "Point of View and Context in Blake's Songs", ''Twentieth Century Views: Blake, A Collection of Critical Essays''. Ed Northrop Frye: Prentice-Hall Inc. 1966.〕 With his "Holy Thursday" of the "Songs of Experience", Blake's "Bard" clarifies his view of the hypocrisy of formal religion and its claimed acts of charity. He sees the established church's hymns as a sham, suggesting in his second stanza that the sound which would represent the day more accurately would be the "trembling cry" of a poor child. The poet, as Bard, states that although England may be objectively a "rich and fruitful land", the unfeeling profit-orientated power of authority has designed for the innocent children suffering within it an "eternal winter". The biblical connotations of the rhetorical opening point us towards Blake's assertion that a country whose children live in want cannot be described as truly "rich". With the apparent contradiction of two climatic opposites existing simultaneously within the one geopolitical unit, we are offered a metaphor for England's man-made "two nations". Blake wrote during the industrial revolution, whose pioneers congratulated themselves upon their vigorous increases in output. The poet argues that until increases in production are linked to more equitable distribution, England will always be a land of barren winter. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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