‘HOLY THURSDAY’ By William Blake

Throughout ‘Holy Thursday’ the reader is continuously faced with images of poverty and overbearing authority. The poem opens with images of children being marched ‘two by two’ into St. Paul’s Cathedral. The children are very regimented, and, like the Thames, must only follow their mapped out path, not only into the church, but also throughout life. They have no freedom. These children are the orphans of London. They are charity children with no family, no love and no future.

They live under the rule of the ‘grey-headed beadles’, who do not really take care of these children, but wash their faces and dress them in ‘red and blue and green’ merely for appearances. The ‘wands as white as snow’ carried by the beadles appear to be good, directing and guiding the children, however, these sticks are what the children get beaten with if they do not conform to the beadles strict authority.

By describing them as the ‘flowers of London town’ Blake is putting...