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Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1993 1 2 Howard E. Gruber · HOLY THURSDAY Is this a holy thing to see In a rich and fruitful land, Babes reduc'd to misery, Fed 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 and bare, And their ways are fill'd 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. -William Blake Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Teachers College Columbia University, New York, New York. Correspondence should be directed to Howard E. Gruber, Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Box 119, Teachers College Columbia University, New York, New York 10027. 1053-0789/93/0100-0081$07.00/0 © 1993 Human Sciences Press, Inc. 82 Gruber William Blake (1757-1827), English poet and painter, was deeply troubled by the various forms of social distress he saw emerging as the industrial revolution progressed in England. In his Songs of Experience he wrote several