Re-read the poem, thinking of the author’s protest against the sufferings of the poor and the selfishness of the rich. What do you think of the poem?
COLLATERAL READINGS
The Singing Man and Other Poems Josephine
Preston Peabody
The Piper "
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The Singing Leaves "
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Fortune and Men’s Eyes
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The Wolf of Gubbio "
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The Man with the Hoe Edwin Markham
THE DANCE OF THE BON-ODORI
LAFCADIO HEARN
(From Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Volume I, Chapter VI)
I
At last, from the verge of an enormous ridge, the roadway suddenly slopes down into a vista of high peaked roofs of thatch and green-mossed eaves—into a village like a colored print out of old Hiroshige’s picture-books, a village with all its tints and colors precisely like the tints and colors of the landscape in which it lies. This is Kami-Ichi, in the land of Hoki.
We halt before a quiet, dingy little inn, whose host, a very aged man, comes forth to salute me; while a silent, gentle crowd of villagers, mostly children and women, gather about the kuruma to see the stranger, to wonder at him, even to touch his clothes with timid smiling curiosity. One glance at the face of the old inn-keeper decides me to accept his invitation. I must remain here until to-morrow: my runners are too wearied to go farther to-night.
Weather-worn as the little inn seemed without, it is delightful within. Its polished stairway and balconies are speckless, reflecting like mirror-surfaces the bare feet of the maid-servants; its luminous rooms are fresh and sweet-smelling as when their soft mattings were first laid down. The carven pillars of the alcove (toko) in my chamber, leaves and flowers chiseled in some black rich wood, are wonders; and the kakemono