Prelude
Prelude - meaning Summary
Kinship Across Cultures
The poem asserts intimate solidarity between the speaker and distant peoples whose lives he has shared. He claims participation in food, drink, labor, death and joy, stressing communal experience across seas. The closing lines admit he has shaped those experiences into tales for a sheltered audience, acknowledging that humorous telling masks a deeper, serious truth known to those he describes.
Read Complete AnalysesI have eaten your bread and salt. I have drunk your water and wine. In deaths ye died I have watched beside, And the lives ye led were mine. Was there aught that I did not share In vigil or toil or ease, -- One joy or woe that I did not know, Dear hearts across the seas? I have written the tale of our life For a sheltered people's mirth, In jesting guise -- but ye are wise, And ye know what the jest is worth.
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