Holy Thursday
'Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,Came children walking two and two, in read, and blue, and green:Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow,Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames waters flow.
Oh what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town!Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own.The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.
Now like a mighty wild they raise to heaven the voice of song,Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among:Beneath them sit the aged man, wise guardians of the poor.Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.
About this text
Holy Thursday is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems of William Blake, Project Gutenberg ebook #574; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: William Blake, Holy Thursday, in Poems of William Blake (1783–1794), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #574, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/blake-poems/holy-thursday.html, id L01993.
Form and metre
Holy Thursday is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%). 86% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 14.0 syllables.
See other poems in iambic heptameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AABB cleanA · greenA · snowB · flowB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic heptameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| 'Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, | 14 | ···/˘/˘·/˘˘/˘· |
| Came children walking two and two, in read, and blue, and green: | 14 | ·/˘/˘········· |
| Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow, | 14 | ·/˘/˘········· |
| Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames waters flow. | 14 | ···········/˘· |
| Oh what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town! | 14 | ···/˘····/·/˘· |
| Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own. | 14 | /˘·/˘···/˘˘··· |
| The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs, | 14 | ···/˘····/˘··· |
| Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands. | 14 | /˘·/˘···/˘·/˘· |
| Now like a mighty wild they raise to heaven the voice of song, | 14 | ···/˘····/···· |
| Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among: | 14 | ··˘/˘/˘˘···/·· |
| Beneath them sit the aged man, wise guardians of the poor. | 14 | ········/˘˘··· |
| Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door. | 14 | ·/˘/˘····/˘··· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.