Holy Thursday
Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduc’d to misery,
Fed with a 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
and bare,
And their ways are filled
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.