Labour — Capital — Land



IN that rich Archipelago of sea
With fiery hills, thick woods wherein the mias
Browses along the trees, and god-like men
Leave monuments of speech too large for us,
There are strange forest-trees. Far up, their roots
Spread from the central trunk, and settle down
Deep in the life-fed earth, seventy feet below.
In the past days here grew another tree,
On whose high fork the parasitic seed
Fell and sprang up, and finding life and strength
In the disease, decrepitude and death
Of that it fed on, utterly consumed it,
And stands the monument of Nature's crime!
So Labour with his parasites, the two
Great swollen Robbers, Land and Capital,
Stands to the gaze of men but as a heap
Of rotted dust whose only use must be
To rich the roots of the proud stem that killed it!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

42 sec read
33

Quick analysis:

Scheme AABCDEFAGHIJKLMNAJ
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 761
Words 142
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 18

Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Francis William Lauderdale Adams was an essayist poet dramatist novelist and journalist who produced a large volume of work in his short life more…

All Francis William Lauderdale Adams poems | Francis William Lauderdale Adams Books

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