by William Blake (1757 - 1827)
There souls of men are bought and sold
Language: English
[There]1 souls of men are bought and sold, And milk-fed Infancy for gold; And Youth to slaughter-houses led, And Beauty, for a bit of bread.
About the headline (FAQ)
View original text (without footnotes)1 Tahourdin: "These"; further changes may exist not noted above.
Text Authorship:
- by William Blake (1757 - 1827), no title, appears in Notebook, in Gnomic Verses, no. 8 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Peter Tahourdin (1928 - 2009), "These souls of men are bought and sold", 1968 [SATB chorus a cappella], from Seven Gnomic Verses, no. 2. [text not verified]
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website: 2011-02-01
Line count: 4
Word count: 25