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The Atlantic Monthly/Volume 1/Number 1/The Chartist's Complaint

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For other versions of this work, see The Chartist's Complaint.
The Atlantic Monthly (1857)
The Chartist's Complaint by Ralph Waldo Emerson
408717The Atlantic Monthly — The Chartist's Complaint1857Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Chartist's Complaint.

Day! hast thou two faces,
Making one place two places?
One, by humble farmer seen,
Chill and wet, unlighted, mean,
Useful only, triste and damp,
Serving for a laborer's lamp?
Have the same mists another side,
To be the appanage of pride,
Gracing the rich man's wood and lake,
His park where amber mornings break,
And treacherously bright to show
His planted isle where roses glow?
O Day! and is your mightiness
A sycophant to smug success?
Will the sweet sky and ocean broad
Be fine accomplices to fraud?
O Sun! I curse thy cruel ray!
Back, back to chaos, harlot Day!

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

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