Poetry · Chapter
Prayer: To Those of the Ever-Greedy Eyes explained
A prayer-like poem contrasting the greedy tsars who claim all earthly wealth with the toiling hands and lowly saints who labor without reward, asking the Creator to grant the humble long life and paradise while the powerful hoard material g
What happens
A prayer-like poem contrasting the greedy tsars who claim all earthly wealth with the toiling hands and lowly saints who labor without reward, asking the Creator to grant the humble long life and paradise while the powerful hoard material goods.
Themes in this chapter
Social Injustice and Class
The poem starkly divides society into greedy tsars who possess all earthly goods and the toiling hands who receive nothing but the reward of labor.
Faith and Hypocrisy
The prayer addresses the Creator, asking for paradise for the lowly, while the tsars are called 'gods of earth'—a critique of the hypocrisy of earthly power claiming divine sanction.
Characters to notice
- Unknown
The speaker of the prayer, representing the voice of the oppressed toiling class.
Key passages
“To those of the ever-greedy eyes, Gods of earth, the Tsars, Are the ploughs and the ships, And all good things of earth”
The tsars, with their insatiable greed, own all the tools and wealth of the world.
Establishes the central contrast between the ruling class and the laborers.
“To toiling hands, To toiling brains Is given to plough the barren field, To think, to sow, and take no rest And reap the fields anon. Such the reward of toiling hands.”
Workers and thinkers are only given the endless task of laboring on unproductive land, with no rest or reward beyond the harvest itself.
Highlights the exploitation of the working class.
“All good things of earth Are for these gods, the Tsars, Ploughs and ships, All wealth of earth For us—good lack! Is left to love our brothers.”
All material wealth belongs to the tsars, while we are left with nothing but the ability to love one another.
Concludes with a bitter irony: the poor have only brotherly love as their possession.