The Complaints of Poverty Summary & Analysis
by Nicholas James

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Nicholas James's "The Complaints of Poverty" rails against the terrible circumstances faced by the 18th-century British poor. In this particular excerpt, the poem describes the day-to-day difficulties of poverty, from hunger to cold to illness—and observes that the well-to-do often have little or no sympathy for those who suffer from such hardships. The heartless wealthy, the poem suggests, often treat their less fortunate neighbors as little more than criminals: poverty means enduring not just physical pain, but cruelty and neglect. James published this poem in his 1742 collection Poems on Several Occasions. The poem is written in heroic couplets, or rhyming pairs of lines written in iambic pentameter.

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