"The Complaints of Poverty" is Nicholas James's long tirade against the sufferings of the poor and the selfish cruelty of the upper classes in 18th-century Britain. Supposedly spoken by a chorus of the poor themselves, the poem ends up sounding a lot more like an outside observer's outraged remarks on what poverty does to people.

The poem's form—elegant heroic couplets—suggests that this is a poem meant to make a political point. Heroic couplets are paired rhyming lines of iambic pentameter—that is, lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Here's how that sounds in the first two lines of this excerpt:

When win- | ter's rage | upon | the cot- | tage falls,
And the | wind rush- | es through | the gap- | ing walls,

Notice that the second line here plays with its rhythms, pushing two stresses together into a spondee (a foot with a strong DUM-DUM rhythm) to capture the force of that awful wind against those inadequate walls.

Heroic couplets were a popular form among 18th-century poets, admired both for their elegance and their flexibility. In choosing this form, James seems to be directing this poem to an educated audience that knows something about stylish poetry—an audience, the poem will suggest, that could also probably be doing a little more to help out its less fortunate neighbors.

The first lines of this excerpt describe day-to-day life for a poor family in 18th-century Britain. When "winter's rage" comes along, the speaker says (in a moment of personification that suggests the very seasons are cruel to the poor), an already difficult situation gets even worse. Besides cold winds that rush through the "gaping," cracked-open walls of the poor's cottages, both food and fuel become scarce. Living on a paltry "ninepence," families can't afford to feed their children.

The speaker evokes this predicament through spare, straightforward, indignant imagery:

With hunger pinched and cold, the children cry;
The gathered sticks but little warmth afford,
And half-supplied the platter meets the board.

The image of children "pinched" by hunger and cold suggests both that the children look pinched (in the sense of "scrawny and starved") and that they feel as if they're being pinched by their hunger pangs and the cruel, nippy winds. The "half-supplied," scanty plate their parents can provide them isn't nearly enough to fill their bellies or keep the cold from their little bones.

Powerful anaphora frames these lines as well:

When winter's rage upon the cottage falls,
And the wind rushes through the gaping walls,
When ninepence must their daily wants supply,
With hunger pinched and cold, the children cry;

The repeated "when" here feels grim, suggesting that these sufferings come around every winter, horribly predictable.

Already, readers get a flavor of Nicholas James's argumentative style. In spite of its fluent and orderly form, this poem won't sound elevated or intricate. Rather, it will paint a straightforward picture of how the 18th-century poor lived and died—and dare its better-off readers to look away.