C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Holy Thursday

From ‘Songs of Innocence’

’TWAS on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,

Came children walking two and two, in red and blue and green:

Gray-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 wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,

Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among:

Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor.

Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.