Published in 1798, The Complaints of the Poor by Robert Southey deals with the themes of suffering, inequality, and the detachment of the rich from the lives of the poor people.
The Complaints of the Poor | Summary
Written in a very straightforward manner, The Complaints of the Poor bares the truth of the lives of many people. The poem opens with a rich man asking the poet, why do the poor complain. The two take to the streets to find an answer to the former’s question. They are met with sights of various people from different walks of life who’ve been struck hard by poverty and roam around the streets on a cold, windy day to seek some shelter or nourishment. An old man, a little girl, a mother with two helpless infants and woman forced to sell her body all have the same story – they are struck with poverty.
Poverty doesn’t differentiate between individuals. Whether they are old or young, with children or without one, poverty treats them equally. Towards the end of the poem, the speaker remarks that all these people have answered the question posed by the rich man’s question.
Robert Southey is known for engaging with the suffering of people insofar as the content of his poems is concerned. One such poem is After Blenheim, the analysis of which may be read here.
The Complaints of the Poor | Form and Structure
The Complaints of the Poor is a 48-line poem, split into 12 quatrains. Each quatrain has the rhyme scheme ABCB. These quatrains are called ballad quatrains, or unbounded quatrains.
The poem is composed using a combination of two different meters for each alternating line. The first line of every verse is composed in iambic tetrameter and the second line in iambic trimeter, as can be seen below :
And wherefore do the Poor complain? – (Iambic Tetrameter)
The rich man asked of me, — – ( Iambic Trimeter)
The Complaints of the Poor | Analysis
The Complaints of the Poor | Lines 1-4
And wherefore do the Poor complain?
The rich man asked of me,—
Come walk abroad with me, I said
And I will answer thee.
The poem originates with a question that a rich man poses to the narrator. Why do poor people complain so much? This question, laced with willful ignorance and a great degree of insensitivity, makes the narrator take the rich man into the streets so that he can hear the reasons of their complaints from the poor themselves. The fact that the rich man has this question shows his detachment from reality. He cannot understand what people must complain about because he is so used to his life of luxury.
Notice that person who poses this question is an unnamed rich person who enquires about the complaints of the poor. This rich man therefore isn’t a rich man in particular, but represents the rich class of people who are blissfully ignorant about the troubles of the poor. This poem thus presents a class divide so huge that one section of the society has become divorced from the lived realities of the other.
The Complaints of the Poor | Lines 5-8
Twas evening and the frozen streets
Were cheerless to behold,
And we were wrapt and coated well,
And yet we were a-cold.
The two go outside into the cold, crisp air, and though they are wrapped warmly, they still feel the cold. The rich fellow is made to face the troubles of the poor head-on in the cold, dark streets to get his answers. It is only the first-hand experience of the problems that the poor face that may wake the rich man from his complacency.
Lines 7 and 8 also bear a symbolic significance, in that, the cold outside is a reflection of the cold within- the cold attitude of complacent rich folks towards the poor that has stripped them of basic humanity and sensitivity. In this regard, a similar poem by James Patrick Kinney titled The Cold Within may be of interest of the reader, the analysis of which may be read here.
The Complaints of the Poor | Lines 9-16
We met an old bare-headed man,
His locks were few and white,
I ask’d him what he did abroad
In that cold winter’s night:
‘Twas bitter keen indeed, he said,
But at home no fire had he,
And therefore, he had come abroad
To ask for charity.
The first person they meet is an old man, bald and hatless. In this stanza, we also see the first instance of words that will be repeated several times in the poem. (“We met”). This series of experiencing the reality of the Other contributes to the learning process which accompanies the poet and the rich man.
The poet asks the old man why he is out on such a cold night, and the old man says he has nothing at home to keep him warm and needs the help of others. He is out in the streets asking people to help him just stay warm. The poet emphasizes the cold of the night, and the man accepts that though it is cold, he has no other choice. Poverty makes no exceptions, and here, we see that it has compelled an old man to ask for some charity.
The Complaints of the Poor | Lines 17-24
We met a young bare-footed child,
And she begg’d loud and bold,
I ask’d her what she did abroad
When the wind it blew so cold;
She said her father was at home
And he lay sick a-bed,
And therefore was it she was sent
Abroad to beg for bread.
Next, they meet a child walking around barefoot. The situation of the child was that her father was ill, so she was sent to beg for food. She and her family have no way to support themselves which forced the girl to forage for food on a cold, windy day. By now, we can also see that the poet dedicates two stanzas to each person they meet. The first stanza is a description and a question, and the next stanza will be their answer. The poem is made up of many short conversations, all culminating into a single answer.
The element of contrast is deftly employed here where, immediately after having met an old man, they meet a young child. While they have different reasons for venturing out into the street, the are treated in the same ruthless manner by Poverty, irrespective of their age.
The Complaints of the Poor | Lines 25-36
We saw a woman sitting down
Upon a stone to rest,
She had a baby at her back
And another at her breast;
I ask’d her why she loiter’d there
When the wind it was so chill;
She turn’d her head and bade the child
That scream’d behind be still.
She told us that her husband served
A soldier, far away,
And therefore to her parish she
Was begging back her way.
Next, they meet a woman with two infants, with nowhere to rest but a stone. She has one baby on her back and one baby at her breast. The children are suffering too, as seen by the screaming baby on her back. The mother and her children are out on the cold streets with nowhere to go. Her husband had been a soldier who was killed at war, and she was left to fend for herself and was on her way to the parish.
This stanza employs a range of poetic devices to bring out the motherly love, the vulnerability of two infants and the sheer pathos of the scene.
Assonance is used in line 26 to softly segue into the scene that is tinged with vulnerability : Upon a stone to rest.
Line 36 makes use of alliteration to emphasize the mother’s state: Was begging back her way.
Internal rhyme is deployed in line 31 to shift the focus on the crying child:
She turn’d her head and bade the child
That scream’d behind be still.
Notice, the masterful use of foreshadowing and irony in the abovementioned lines when the woman asks her crying child to be still. The words “be still”, spoken under such hapless circumstances, bear a connotation that relate them with death and stillness.
The Complaints of the Poor | Lines 37-44
We met a girl; her dress was loose
And sunken was her eye,
Who with the wanton’s hollow voice
Address’d the passers by;
I ask’d her what there was in guilt
That could her heart allure
To shame, disease, and late remorse?
She answer’d, she was poor.
They then meet a young girl, and the poet implies she is thin and malnourished. Her loose dress means that it is ill-fitting, and she is too thin for it. Her sunken eyes reaffirm this. It is also implied that this girl is a prostitute and that she roams the streets looking for work. Therefore, the poet asks her what is it in guilt that is capable of attracting her to disease and shame, and all she says is that she is poor. Poverty is indeed the mother of all vice. The element of contrast is also deployed in this stanza where the lonely girl selling her body to strangers is contrasted to the mother with two children in the previous stanzas. Poverty doesn’t care about their different situations and treats them equally – with utter ruthlessness.
The Complaints of the Poor | Lines 45-48
I turn’d me to the rich man then
For silently stood he,
You ask’d me why the Poor complain,
And these have answer’d thee.
Now, the poet turns back to the rich man. The poet does not explain any further, because the situation of the people they met, and the testimonials they received is enough for anyone to understand the suffering that has befallen the poor, and the reason behind their “complaints”. The rich man gets his answers by listening to the poor explain their suffering. The silence of the rich man may imply that he is ashamed or understanding a new way of living that he has never experienced.
The rich man is a silent spectator throughout this poem, and this is a reflection of his detachment from reality. There is no connection made between the rich and the poor, as the rich man does not speak to them, and only watches and listens.
The poet uses repetition of certain phrases to emphasize them. In every question that he asks, he repeats that it is a cold night while asking what the person is doing outside. This is to emphasize that even in this terrible weather, the people have nowhere else to go. They are forced to try and find some food, or some charity while roaming unprotected in the frozen streets.
He also repeats “I ask’d” when speaking of each meeting. This emphasizes two things. One, it shows us that he is in conversation with the people who are suffering and is actively getting answers from them for the rich man to understand. Two, it shows that only the poet is part of these conversations and that the rich man does not initiate or participate.
Lastly, he repeats the word “Therefore” in every answer given by the people they meet. It pushes the thought that they have been forced into this situation, and there are many reasons for them to be out in the biting cold trying to live. They each have their individual problems, and therefore, they are out in the cold dark streets begging for help and money.
The Complaints of the Poor begins with a question posed by a rich man and the answer that one receives by witnessing the very situation of the poor. In this regard, the contrast between the rich and the poor becomes particularly significant as the poem was published in 1798 when the effects of the Industrial Revolution was increasingly being felt in the social fabric of the times. The society had begun exhibiting signs of class divide like never before. The idea of the “poor” turned into a fiercely debated topic, a glimpse of which can be seen here. Southey grappled with the changing times he lived in and this poem may be read as a social commentary in response to socio-economic upheavals of the time. Southey’s interest in bridging this gap can be gauged by the fact that at one point, he teamed up with Samuel Taylor Coleridge to craft a scheme of pantisocracy— a grand plan to establish egalitarian settlement in North America. Some more information on this may be found here.
The Complaints of the Poor | About the poet
Robert Southey, born in 1774 in Bristol, was one of the most versatile writers of the Romantic period. His prose is more well-known than his poetry, though he was made a Poet Laureate in 1813. His association with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth also contributes to his popularity in the world of literature.
His style of poetry is characterized by clarity and ease. Some of his famous work includes “Joan of Arc” and “Roderick, the Last of the Goths”. He died in 1843, in London.
Southey was a very controversial person, and he and Lord Byron hated each other to the point of enmity.
