On Holy Thursday, the speaker watches a line of poor children from London’s charity schools march into St. Paul’s Cathedral. Their faces are clean, their clothes bright red, blue, and green, and they walk in pairs behind beadles with white wands. The line flows like the Thames, filling the vast dome. The sight and sound fill the speaker with tenderness and awe. Seated in rows, the children seem to glow with their own inner light—like flowers scattered across the city, or a flock of lambs. Their singing rises as a ‘mighty wind’ or ‘harmonious thunder,’ so powerful it seems to shake heaven’s gates. Yet beneath this radiant scene sits the ‘aged man,’ the parish guardians, reminding us that these children depend on charity. The mood is joyful but fragile; the final line turns into a quiet plea: don’t harden your heart against such innocence, or you might shut out something holy.
Holy Thursday — Summary
'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.