Poems
“Let Mammon’s sons with visage lean”
Let Mammon’s sons with visage lean,
Restless and vigilant and keen,
Whose thought is but to buy and sell,
In the hot toiling city dwell,
Give me to walk on mountains bare,
Give me to breathe the open air,
To hear the village children’s mirth
To see the beauty of the earth —
In wood and wild, but lake and sea,
To dwell with foot and spirit free —
Restless and vigilant and keen,
Whose thought is but to buy and sell,
In the hot toiling city dwell,
Give me to walk on mountains bare,
Give me to breathe the open air,
To hear the village children’s mirth
To see the beauty of the earth —
In wood and wild, but lake and sea,
To dwell with foot and spirit free —
Analysis (ai): The poem contrasts materialism with natural simplicity, rejecting urban commerce in favor of rural freedom and spiritual clarity. The critique of Mammon worship aligns with Romantic-era skepticism toward industrialization.
- Imagery and Diction: Clean, elemental imagery—mountains, lakes, woods—emphasizes purity and space, opposing the constricted, “hot toiling” city. The phrase “visage lean” suggests moral and physical depletion.
- Form and Structure: Eight quatrains in iambic tetrameter with an ABAB rhyme scheme reflect conventional hymn-like patterns common in early 19th-century poetry, reinforcing moral earnestness.
- Author’s Broader Work: Compared to Howitt’s other nature-focused poems, this one shows stronger class-consciousness, positioning nature as both refuge and ethical alternative, a theme less prominent in her domestic or religious verses.
- Historical Context: While many Romantic writers exalted nature, Howitt’s gender and Quaker background inform a quieter, less egotistical voice than contemporaries like Wordsworth or Byron, focusing on communal rural joy over individual sublime experience.
- Less-Discussed Angle: Rather than simply glorifying escape, the poem subtly frames rural access as a moral privilege, implying that true freedom requires both geographic and spiritual detachment from systems of exchange.
- Reception and Obscurity: Though not among her best-known works, it captures Howitt’s recurring tension between social realism and idealism, standing out for its direct economic critique—a rarity in her otherwise gentle lyrical mode.
Mary Howitt
(1799 – 1888)
Mary Howitt
(12 March 1799 – 30 January 1888) was an English writer, editor, translator and a pioneer of the women’s rights movement in the UK. She is most known as the author of the famous poem The Spider and the Fly. She translated several works by Hans Christian Andersen and Frederika Bremer. Some of her works were written in conjunction with her husband, William Howitt. Many, in verse and prose, were intended for young people.
