Innocence Experiences Corruption in the Church
By: Nicky Como
In William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, readers are introduced to commentary on life under the church’s rule in the Romantic era in England. There is a certain ideology that is pushed onto each citizen and reminds them in a dire manner that there is a right and wrong way to live. Arguably, the church tends to take the bible and enforce it in ways that reap the most benefits for themselves. Blake disagrees with the church as he expresses his support for the concept of “free love” in many poems in this collection while the church controls people to suppress their desires. In reality, church members have so much money and power that they generally do not follow the laws they set up for the citizens. They indulge in second families and sexual relations outside of their marriages and engage with prostitutes. It is unequivocally vile and hypocritical for church officials to be shaming others and punishing them while engaging in those same activities. “Holy Thursday” is a peak into a blatant display of hypocrisy as it describes the children who are the chimney sweepers who march down the streets of London. The church cherry-picks moments to use the funds allocated for the poor children and readers can see the reality of how the church cares for these children in “Chimneysweeper.” The church has dressed the children nicely and given them a proper bath one day a year but drains them the other 364 days. William Blake establishes two contrasting perspectives of a single reality, exposing how the ruling church has created a facade of care and morality while failing to practice the values they preach. Through his poetry, Blake delicately expresses his disdain for the corrupt individuals in power who manipulate and control the public to suppress their desires while hypocritically indulging in their own.
The parallel of “Holy Thursday” in Blake’s Songs of Innocence compared to his “Holy Thursday” in Songs of Experience is an accurate portrayal of the rose colored glasses coming off as you enter adulthood and leave behind the innocence of childhood. It feels like the ultimate betrayal when one comes to the age where the corruption and hypocrisy rises to the surface and is so blatant. In Songs of Innocence, the narrator takes on the perspective of a child who observes the parade of orphans with a sense of reverence and awe, without fully grasping the deeper implications of what they are witnessing. The narrator views the parade as a celebration of the children’s purity and innocence, oblivious to the fact that this display is a carefully crafted facade. The scene is set with the narrator who is a young child who looks upon the parade. The first thing the child notices is how the children are very clean and well dressed, “Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean”(Blake line 1). All the positive portions of the event are highlighted and the reader is reminded what it feels like to experience something that the church provides the people with trust, truth, and appreciation. The beauty of experiencing a child’s point of view on this event is that the child watching this parade appreciates the small things and can not pinpoint the deception. The child places emphasis on the details adorning the children in the parade, “The children walking two and two in red & blue & green”(Blake line 2). An innocent child would not notice how the children being clean and cared for is a rather rare spectacle that is attempting to pass on as a daily normalcy. Despite how innocent the child is, even then they cannot help but notice the unsettling energy, “beneath them sit the aged men wise guardians of heaven among, then cherish pity; lest you drive an angel from your door”(Blake lines 11-12). In that line, the reader can see these church leaders who uphold God urge people to show compassion for the poor. It should be noted that Blake has a tendency to utilize sarcasm, he pours sarcasm into this line to show that the church weaponizes the idea of pity to manipulate the public into submission. The church not only tries to hide the fact that they drain these poor children as chimney sweepers but they double down as a reverse physiology attempt to remind everyone to ‘cherish pity’ meaning to show compassion to them. Pity is distorted by the church to benefit the institution and work for their success. More people will donate to the church, assuming their money will go towards these children but the ugly truth of the matter is that they give a small percent of that money to the kids just to keep them barely alive and alive to work for them. The rest of the money will go straight into these church offical’s pockets to fund rather ungodly things. These men who are supposed to be right under god do not act with that same compassion that they are manipulating the public into showing with the parade of groomed children. The eyes of innocence can not truly comprehend the depths of the manipulation and states the desire to show compassion for others blatantly but an experienced eye will know its all a game.
In contrast, Songs of Experience strips away this naive perspective. The narrator now sees the parade for what it truly is: a performative act by the church to convince the public of their moral righteousness. By showcasing the children in clean clothes and a controlled setting, the church aims to present itself as a benevolent institution, diverting attention from its failure to genuinely care for the children or address the systemic poverty and exploitation they endure. Looking at “Holy Thursday” of Songs of Experience, Blake takes on a more cynical view and exposes the church’s societal neglect. This poem is a more direct indictment of what is really happening as it illustrates the level of poverty the chimney sweepers are in, “In a rich and fruitful land, Babes reduced to misery.” The children which Blake refers to as “babes” are living in a stark contrast to the church officials and most other citizens in London and thus in immense poverty. Blake goes on to detail that the kids are “fed with cold and usurous hand” to show how even the care the children do receive is cold and the bare minimum. The hands that feed them are literally cold and also metaphorically cold as they lack compassion. Furthermore, the term “usurious” holds quite a bit of significance as it connects to how there are laws against usury to avoid individuals charging criminally high interest to a borrower. This alludes to how the care the church gives the children is not pure, full of ulterior motives and has strings attached. This further emphasizes the hypocrisy and greed that has infected the church. The church is supposed to provide honest and genuine care to anyone who seeks it but instead they have established a system of corrupt care to their most vulnerable community—the orphans and poor children of London. There are a pair of lines respectively in Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, that describe the same scene in two different lights. Songs of Innocence states “Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song” (Blake line 9) and Songs of Experience states “Can it be a song of joy? And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty!”(Blake line 6-9). Blake has the innocent child notice the intense vocals of the chimney sweepers but the experienced adult is watching in total disgust and misery as these poor children are forced to sing as if they are happy. The marching chimney sweepers in this Holy Thursday parade live in horrible conditions under the church’s care but today they can be shown off as proof of the donations flowing to the “right” places.
Blake continues to show an innocent perception of life develop into an experienced perception of life from a child’s perspective through “The Chimney Sweeper.” This poem is where Blake is able to introduce and explain exactly how the children left in the church’s care work as chimney sweeps. The poem starts with a third person noticing “A little black thing among the snow: Crying weep, weep, in notes of woe!”(Blake line 1-2) to show that the children are so dirty that they have been stained black with soot since they never get to bathe. Blake then switches to the chimney sweep narrator, “They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe”(Blake line 7-8). The child acknowledges that the church gave them the bare minimum to keep them alive but it does not tend to their heart and spirit since they sing notes of “woe.” In this line the child credits their hope for life to themselves and the church has given them nothing in that regard, “And because I am happy, & dance & sing, They think they have done me no injury”(Blake line 9-10). The child now acknowledges the reality of their grim situation but because they still have an innocent outlook on life they maintain hope for the future despite the church offering them close to nothing.
After immersing into the poetry of William Blake, readers get a peek into how perception of reality differs based on your life experience—where a child may focus on its beauty but sense a subtle dread, an adult, hardened by experience, sees only the dread in life, with even the beauty tainted by the corrupt intentions of the church. Songs of Innocence allow the reader to rest their mind and see the world through a child’s eyes as Blake perfectly captures the genuine curiosity of a child. “Holy Thursday” of Songs of Innocence introduces the reader to this annual parade and sets the scene. While experiencing this event with a child narrator the reader is told of the colors and songs and characters. Blake must write this with irony because as an adult he knows the truth of the orchestrated display of the orphans but a child would not understand this. “Holy Thursday” of Songs of Experience is where Blake can write directly about corruption and truth. His “The Chimney Sweeper” of Songs of Experience provides readers with necessary context to understand the conditions that children under the church’s care are living in. Blake transitions from a third point of view of the poor chimney sweeper to the chimney sweeper himself. The child is miserable and knows the church provided him with this life but holds out hope for better days. Blake has delicately used irony to attack the church’s corruption but also has directly exposed it. He has a complex process of storytelling that ultimately lays out the facts for the reader. He knows the church weaponizes the bible for their benefit and controls the people into acting out of fear and living miserably while their pockets are full. Blake can not ignore this corruption and speaks against it in Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.
Works Cited
Blake, W. (1977). William Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Oxford University Press.