Analysis of Epistle Of Condolence From A Slave-Lord To A Cotton-Lord
Thomas Moore 1779 (Dublin) – 1852 (Bromham)
Alas ! my dear friend, what a state of affairs !
How unjustly we both are despoil'd of our rights !
Not a pound of black flesh shall I leave to my heirs,
Nor must you any more work to death little whites.
Both forced to submit to that general controller
Of King, Lords, and cotton-mills Public Opinion ;
No more shall you beat with a big billy-roller,
Nor I with the cart-whip assert my dominion.
Whereas, were we suffered to do as we please
With our Blacks and our Whites, as of yore we were let,
We might range them alternate, like harpsichord keys,
And between us thump out a good piebald duet.
But this fun is all over; farewell to the zest
Which Slavery now lends to each cup we sip ;
Which makes still the cruellest coffee the best,
And that sugar the sweetest which smacks of the whip.
Farewell, too, the Factory's white pickaninnies,
Small, living machines, which, if flogg'd to their tasks,
Mix so well with their namesakes, the billies and jennies,
That which have got souls in 'em nobody asks ;
Little Maids of the Mill, who, themselves but ill fed,
Are oblig'd, 'mong their other benevolent cares,
To keep 'feeding the scribblers,' and better, 'tis said,
Than old Blackwood or Fraser have ever fed theirs.
All this is now o'er, and so dismal my loss is,
So hard 'tis to part from the smack of the thong,
That I mean (from pure love for the old whipping process)
To take to whipt syllabub all my life long.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH AIAI JAJA XKXK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 01111101101 101011111101 101111111111 111101111101 1110111100010 111010110010 111111011010 111011011010 01011011111 11010101111101 11111001101 00111101101 11111101101 11001111111 111011001 011001011101 11010011 11001111111 1111110101 111110111 101101101111 101111001001 111001001011 11111011011 1111100110111 11111101101 111111101101 111111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,400 |
Words | 261 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 39 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 156 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 38 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 12, 2023
- 1:19 min read
- 79 Views
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"Epistle Of Condolence From A Slave-Lord To A Cotton-Lord" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/36834/epistle-of-condolence-from-a-slave-lord-to-a-cotton-lord>.
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