Monday, November 16, 2015

"[The golf links lie so near the mill]" by Sarah Cleghorn

Sarah Cleghorn lived from 1876 to 1959. She was a member of the naturalist literary movement. She published her first poetry collection in 1917 and her second in 1945.

The meaning of "[The golf links lie so near the mill]" is reliant almost entirely on two words, "laboring" and "play". Using these two words, the author reverses her reader's expectations regarding adults and children to point out the injustice of child labor. Normally, one would expect children to be playing and men to be laboring. However, in this poem it is the children who are laboring and the men who are playing. The exact wording of these two phrases also emphasizes the reversal of expectations. The men are not described as simply "playing" golf but "at play", a phrase usually used to describe children rather than adults. On the other hand, the children are not described as "working" but as "laboring", a word which is more negative as it carries with it the idea of child labor. The author's use of the words "play" and "laboring" shows that this situation is unjust. The reversal of expectations shows that the children should not be working, yet the adults, despite being right next door to the children, are doing nothing about the situation. Furthermore, it is possible that the adults are directly responsible for the plight of the children. The sport which they are playing, golf, is associated with wealth. Therefore, it is possible that some of the adults are managers or factory owners of either this particular mill or other similar locations which employ children. This poem is a powerful criticism of the use of child labor during the industrial revolution, and it achieves most of this effect using only two words.

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