The Chartist's Complaint

Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 (Boston) – 1882 (Concord)



Day! hast thou two faces,
Making one place two places?
One, by humble farmer seen,
Chill and wet, unlighted, mean,
Useful only, triste and damp,
Serving for a laborer's lamp?
Have the same mists another side,
To be the appanage of pride,
Gracing the rich man's wood and lake,
His park where amber mornings break,
And treacherously bright to show
His planted isle where roses glow?
O Day! and is your mightiness
A sycophant to smug success?
Will the sweet sky and ocean broad
Be fine accomplices to fraud?
O sun! I curse thy cruel ray!
Back, back to chaos, harlot Day!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

31 sec read
93

Quick analysis:

Scheme AABBCCDDEEFFAGHHII
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 559
Words 104
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 18

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. more…

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