The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
-by Sarah N. Cleghorn
Proves how little words can have huge impact. This is a small poem of social class. Industrialization and sweatshops are the first things to come to my mind. Why pay men minimum wage when children can be forced to do it for $1 an hour? Laboring children and playing men are the only topics discussed, anymore words said within this poem would of bothered it I believe. By bothered I think I mean it would of added annoyance? It would become to "wordy?" The Innocent poem with huge impact effect would be diminished, leaving a smaller impact? Any of the above, I say.
The poem has a sing song effect to it which was done purposefully. It has a touch of irony in it. It resembles a kids melody while describing men at play. It is used as another mechanism to explain how reversed the roles are of these people!
Although the poem is small there is a lot of imagery. Imagining small children working it sweat shops while watching grown men play in a large green field right in front of them, it's horrible.
I think you get what she was trying to say, and the way in which she was trying to say it.
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