To What Extent Do You Agree That Religious Poetry Appeals Only to Those Readers Who Hold Religious Beliefs?

Question: To what extent do you agree that religious poetry appeals only to those readers who hold religious beliefs?

Poetry can appeal to anyone whom is either interested in a topic which could be educational, religious or political, there are many more reasons, or leisure even. Religion is a big institution that affects anyone and everything, Blake’s poems illustrate this and as does Frost’s poem ‘A Prayer in Spring’. Blake’s poems discuss many social attitudes from child slavery to the industrial state and therefore they appeal to a wide audience, not just those whom hold religious beliefs.

Blake’s own attitude to organised religion is seen within the ‘Holy Thursday’ poem in ‘Songs of Innocence’, which at first could not appear more innocent. The children are portrayed as a biblical allusion ‘walking two by two’ like the animals in Noah’s ark and the contrasting colours of the ‘red’ and ‘blue’ coats gives the ideas that the children are pulsating with energy, they themselves are the objects of innocence. Their faces are ‘innocent faces clean’ suggesting that they are holy and the real children of God entering Saint Paul’s cathedral. However beneath this poem there is another reading, which could be seen as the experienced view, which sees these children as the pinnacles of society being victimised. The ‘wands’ of the beadles are the instruments of corporal punishment. The ‘guardians of the poor’ are not benevolent and are more like guards. Thus highlighting the fact the children are being used for the riches own self-gratitude, they are merely a show, which reveals the hypocrisy of formal religion and its claimed acts of charity. This poem attacks organised religion and therefore may offend those with religious beliefs. Blake had a contrary view about religion in his era, although he was a Christian his idea of God was a lot to do with the belief of imagination and he even commented that that ‘ I know no other Christianity and no other Gospel than the...