Beggar to Beggar Cried
Beggar to Beggar Cried - meaning Summary
Desires of a Restless Beggar
The poem records a beggar’s repeated, feverish soliloquy about escaping poverty through travel, marriage, and respectability. His wishes—health by the sea, a ‘‘comfortable wife and house,’’ moderation in beauty and wealth—are both practical and contradictory, revealing anxieties about desire, self-image, and social aspiration. The recurring line "Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck" frames these fantasies as compulsive wish-making that undercuts their seriousness and highlights the gap between longing and reality.
Read Complete Analyses'Time to put off the world and go somewhere And find my health again in the sea air,' Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck, 'And make my soul before my pate is bare.- 'And get a comfortable wife and house To rid me of the devil in my shoes,' Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck, 'And the worse devil that is between my thighs.' And though I'd marry with a comely lass, She need not be too comely - let it pass,' Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck, 'But there's a devil in a looking-glass.' 'Nor should she be too rich, because the rich Are driven by wealth as beggars by the itch,' Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck, 'And cannot have a humorous happy speech.' 'And there I'll grow respected at my ease, And hear amid the garden's nightly peace.' Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck, 'The wind-blown clamour of the barnacle-geese.'
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