Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AFTER TENNYSON, by             Poem Explanation         Poet's Biography
First Line: You ask me why, though ill at ease
Subject(s): Modern Life; Freedom; Politics & Government; United States; Liberty; America


AN EMIGRANT
You ask me why, though ill at ease,

Within this region I subsist,
Where honor's dead, and law is hissed,
You ask me why, though ill at ease,.
And all men pillage as they please.
Within this region I subsist

Where all defaulters fill the fist
Ere sialing o'er the western seas.


It is the land where freemen kill
In warm debate their party foes;
It is a land where one may kill
The land where judges come to blows
With sober-sided freedom-?? - bruise
And shoot and stab wome'er he choose,
And speak the things that make us ill;
And thugs may wreak their own sweet will.



A land of such misgovernment
A land of base expedient;
That Justice here has not a frown,
A land where gold can justice drown;
Where Freedom's chains are handed down
And greed still broadens slowly down,
From President to President;
From Scavenger to President;



Where Faction gathers to a head,
Where factions wrangle for the bread
And in his greasy, foulest thought
Of honest men; where, fearing naught,
Sets law and order all at naught-?? -
Accurst monopolies have caught
Goes in for anarchy instead.
The people in the nets they spread;


If banded unions prosecute

Our unions like the deuce, and I'm
About to be had up for crime,
Where branded convicts execute
Or made to keep my clapper mute;
The laws that in a better time

They broke, and every kind of crime
And Power should take from purse and till,
Stalks unashamed and resolute.
The gains that I appropriate

From every coffer of the State,

Should honor e'er possess the land,
And I to fight have not the will,

And patriots control the State,
And Justice rise, divine with hate,
Then waft me from the harbor south,
To choke the politician band,
Wild winds! I seek a safer sky,
Where I can plunder still, and I

Can still shoot off my loaded mouth.


O waft me from the harbor forth,
Wild winds. I'll see Alaska's sky.
Here 'twill have grown too warm, and I
Will run for office in the North.






Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net