Little Brothers of the Ground
Little ants in leafy wood,Bound by gentle Brotherhood,While ye gaily gather spoil,Men are ground by the wheel of toil;While ye follow Blessed Fates,Men are shriveled up with hates;Or they lie with sheeted Lust,And they eat the bitter dust.
Ye are fraters in your hall,Gay and chainless, great and small;All are toilers in the field,All are sharers in the yield.But we mortals plot and planHow to grind the fellow-man;Glad to find him in a pit,If we get some gain of it.So with us, the sons of Time,Labor is a kind of crime,For the toilers have the least,While the idlers lord the feast.Yes, our workers they are bound,Pallid captives to the ground;Jeered by traitors, fooled by knaves,Till they stumble into graves.
How appears to tiny eyesAll this wisdom of the wise?
Words in this poem
- gaily adv.
- Merrily; showily. See gaily. [From Gay.]
- lust v. i.
- To list; to like. [AS. lystan. See Lust, n., and cf. List to choose.]
- chainless a.
- Having no chain; not restrained or fettered.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Little Brothers of the Ground is in the public domain. This text is taken from The man with the hoe, and other poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #67012; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edwin Markham, Little Brothers of the Ground, in The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems (1899), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #67012, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/markham-man-with-hoe/little-brothers-of-the-ground.html, id L24740.
Form and metre
Little Brothers of the Ground is 26 lines in 3 verse paragraphs. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AABBCCDD woodA · brotherhoodA · spoilB · toilB · fatesC · hatesC · lustD · dustD
- 2 AABBCCDDEEFFGGHH hallA · smallA · fieldB · yieldB · planC · manC · pitD · itD · timeE · crimeE · leastF · feastF · boundG · groundG · knavesH · gravesH
- 3 AA eyesA · wiseA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Little ants in leafy wood, | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| Bound by gentle Brotherhood, | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| While ye gaily gather spoil, | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| Men are ground by the wheel of toil; | 8 | ········ |
| While ye follow Blessed Fates, | 7 | ··/˘·˘· |
| Men are shriveled up with hates; | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Or they lie with sheeted Lust, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| And they eat the bitter dust. | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Ye are fraters in your hall, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Gay and chainless, great and small; | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| All are toilers in the field, | 7 | ······· |
| All are sharers in the yield. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| But we mortals plot and plan | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| How to grind the fellow-man; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Glad to find him in a pit, | 7 | ······· |
| If we get some gain of it. | 7 | ······· |
| So with us, the sons of Time, | 7 | ······· |
| Labor is a kind of crime, | 7 | /˘····· |
| For the toilers have the least, | 7 | ······· |
| While the idlers lord the feast. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Yes, our workers they are bound, | 7 | ·//˘··· |
| Pallid captives to the ground; | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| Jeered by traitors, fooled by knaves, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Till they stumble into graves. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| How appears to tiny eyes | 7 | ·˘/·/˘· |
| All this wisdom of the wise? | 7 | ··/˘··· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.