"Think, ye masters, iron-hearted, / Lolling at your jovial boards, / Think how many backs have smarted / For the sweets your cane affords."
— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Date
June, 1788
Metaphor
"Think, ye masters, iron-hearted, / Lolling at your jovial boards, / Think how many backs have smarted / For the sweets your cane affords."
Metaphor in Context
Why did all creating Nature
Make the plant for which we toil?
Sighs must fan it, tears must water,
Sweat of ours must dress the soil.
Think, ye masters, iron-hearted,
Lolling at your jovial boards,
Think how many backs have smarted
For the sweets your cane affords.
Make the plant for which we toil?
Sighs must fan it, tears must water,
Sweat of ours must dress the soil.
Think, ye masters, iron-hearted,
Lolling at your jovial boards,
Think how many backs have smarted
For the sweets your cane affords.
Categories
Provenance
Searching "heart" and "iron" in HDIS (Poetry)
Citation
At least 19 entries in ECCO and ESTC (1788, 1789, 1790, 1791, 1793, 1795, 1796, 1798, 1799, 1800).
Originally appeared in the London General Magazine, ed. T. Bellamy II (June 1788), 323-4. See also "The Negro's Complaint" Stuart's Star, and Evening Advertiser, No. 43 (Thursday, April 2, 1789). <Link to Burney Collection>
Also See Poems by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple, Esq. In Two Volumes. (London: Printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul's Church-Yard, 1798), 1:331-3.<Link to ECCO>
Text from Cowper, William, The Poems of William Cowper, 3 vols, Ed. John D. Baird and Charles Ryskamp (Oxford: Oxford UP: 1980), III.
Originally appeared in the London General Magazine, ed. T. Bellamy II (June 1788), 323-4. See also "The Negro's Complaint" Stuart's Star, and Evening Advertiser, No. 43 (Thursday, April 2, 1789). <Link to Burney Collection>
Also See Poems by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple, Esq. In Two Volumes. (London: Printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul's Church-Yard, 1798), 1:331-3.<Link to ECCO>
Text from Cowper, William, The Poems of William Cowper, 3 vols, Ed. John D. Baird and Charles Ryskamp (Oxford: Oxford UP: 1980), III.
Date of Entry
06/07/2005
