Holy Thursday

Is this a holy thing to seeIn a rich and fruitful land,Babes reduced to miseryFed with 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 & bare.And their ways are fill'd with thornsIt 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.