![]() He wrote ‘Refugee Blues’ about the many Jewish immigrants who had fled to the US, and especially New York, from persecution in Europe. Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-73) was born in Yorkshire, England but later moved to the United States. And dreams are delicate and vulnerable – hence ‘Tread softly’. If I were a god, I could take the heavenly sky and make a blanket out of it for you.īut I’m only a poor man, and obviously the idea of making the sky into a blanket is silly and out of the question, so all I have of any worth are my dreams. The gist of this poem, one of Yeats’s most popular poems, is straightforward: if I were a rich man, I’d give you the world and all its treasures. Yeats, ‘ He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’. ![]() Dickinson meets somebody – based on Sue, a real woman she met – whose brilliance and grace make her realise how ‘poor’ she is next to her… ![]() In little wealths – as girls could boast –Īlthough this poem uses poverty and wealth as symbols for something more spiritual and personal, it’s a fine poem and so deserves to figure in our pick of the best poverty poems. This poem about poverty was written by a poet who is not much read now, although she also gave us one of the most famous children’s rhymes in English.Įmily Dickinson, ‘ Your Riches taught me Poverty’. Given the exploitation of cheap labour still occurring around the world, this poem remains all too topical. ![]() ‘Work! work! work! / While the cock is crowing aloof! / And work - work - work, / Till the stars shine through the roof!’Īll day, every day, the woman slaves away at her stitching, yet she remains in ‘poverty, hunger, and dirt’. First published in 1843, ‘The Song of the Shirt’ takes its title from the song the woman sings to herself as she works hard at her stitching, making shirts from dawn till – well, beyond dusk. ![]()
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