Poetry & Analysis
Selected John Imrie Poems
Featured PoemsNo Pockets in a Shroud
Oh, brother! why this grasping mood,
When Want and Hunger cry aloud?
Then use your wealth in doing good,—
There are no pockets in a shroud!
Oh, brother! why this haughty air,
And over-bearing manner proud;
The poor are God’s peculiar care,—
There are no pockets in a shroud!
Remember him of old, who gave
His food to dogs, while Lazarus stood,
Beseeching help his life to save,
While Dives—the glutton, wasted food!
His fate be thine! O wealthy man!
If thou neglect thy power for good;
God hath ordained it in His plan,—
There are no pockets in a shroud!
The wheel of Fortune quickly turns—
Thy children yet may lack for food:
God pity him who mercy spurns,
And wraps his treasures in a shroud!
God bless the man whose heart can bleed
With sympathy for sorrow’s crowd,
And helps the poor in time of need—
There are no pockets in a shroud!
Do not the suffering ones forget,
Thy praises they shall sing aloud;
Their tears of gratitude shall wet
The grass that grows above thy shroud!
Plain Explanation No Pockets in a Shroud: Meaning and Summary
The poem warns wealthy people against hoarding while hunger and suffering remain visible. Death makes accumulated possessions unusable, because a burial shroud has no pockets in which wealth can be carried.
Imrie supports the warning through the biblical story of Lazarus and the rich man. Fortune can also reverse, leaving present wealth insecure. The better legacy is gratitude from people helped in time of need.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Wealth and responsibility: Possession creates power to relieve need.
- Mortality: Death separates people from accumulated goods.
- Compassion: A valuable heart can “bleed” with another person’s suffering.
- Reversal of fortune: Wealth is unstable, and descendants may later need help.
- Legacy: Gratitude and mercy outlast stored treasure.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is confrontational, compassionate and prophetic. Direct questions challenge pride and grasping behavior.
The mood is serious and urgent, though the closing image of gratitude introduces moral hope.
Close Reading Stanza-by-Stanza Explanation
Stanza 1
Hunger’s cry exposes the selfishness of hoarding. The refrain introduces death as the final limit of possession.
Stanza 2
Economic pride is condemned because the poor remain under divine care.
Stanza 3
The poem recalls Lazarus begging while a rich man wastes food, providing a moral example of neglected need.
Stanza 4
The wealthy reader is warned that unused power for good can lead to the same spiritual fate.
Stanza 5
Fortune turns like a wheel. Future children may experience the hunger presently ignored.
Stanza 6
The compassionate person is blessed for helping the poor at the right time.
Stanza 7
Grateful tears water the grass above the giver’s grave, becoming a final image of living legacy.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
Want and Hunger cry aloud, Fortune turns a wheel and a sympathetic heart bleeds. These personifications make social suffering impossible to dismiss as abstraction.
Shroud, grave grass and tears create funeral imagery. Wealth is contrasted with the simple cloth in which every body is buried.
Interpretation Symbols and Their Meaning
- Pockets: The imagined ability to retain property beyond death.
- Shroud: Mortality and equality in death.
- Wheel of Fortune: Sudden reversal of social and economic position.
- Bleeding heart: Compassion responsive to pain.
- Grateful tears: A legacy created through mercy.
- Grass above the grave: Memory continuing after death.
Poetic Form No Pockets in a Shroud Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The poem contains seven quatrains with an ABAB rhyme scheme. The recurring “shroud” rhyme links words such as “aloud,” “proud” and “crowd.”
The title statement operates as a refrain in four stanzas and remains conceptually present throughout the others. Biblical example, social warning and positive legacy form the poem’s argumentative progression.
Craft Literary Devices in No Pockets in a Shroud
- Refrain: The title line repeatedly limits the value of hoarding.
- Metaphor: Fortune is a wheel, and compassion is a bleeding heart.
- Personification: Want and Hunger cry; Fortune turns.
- Biblical allusion: Lazarus and Dives provide a moral precedent.
- Rhetorical questions: The speaker directly challenges the wealthy reader.
- Irony: A person may guard treasure that cannot accompany the body.
Critical Reading AP Lit-Style Central Argument
Imrie makes mortality an economic argument: because the shroud cannot carry wealth, possession gains moral value only through use. The poem replaces private accumulation with a public legacy measured in relieved hunger and grateful memory.
The Poet’s Work and Wages
What work are the poets doing?
Teaching men to live;
Not like slaves with scourges driven,
But like men, with powers God-given,
Using them for God and Heaven,
Gaining while they give!
What work are the poets doing?
Teaching men to think:
That this life is man’s probation,
Fitting for a nobler station,
Rising higher in creation
Up from Chaos’ brink!
What work are the poets doing?
Teaching men to see:
God in Nature every hour,
Beauty in each leaf and flower,
Wonders wrought by sun and shower,
Winds, and waves, and sea!
What work are the poets doing?
Teaching men to love:
Drawing nearer man to man,
Doing all the good we can,
Working out “the golden plan”
Taught by God above!
What, then, are the poet’s wages?
To be loved of men:
More than gold is approbation,
Praise inspires his emulation,
Naught he cares for wealth or station,
Contra—love of men!
Does the poet love his calling?
Note his answer true:
“More than Ophir’s golden treasures,
More than earth’s alluring pleasures,—
Love I Music’s rhythmic measures?
More than life I do!”
Plain Explanation The Poet’s Work and Wages: Meaning and Summary
The poem asks what poets contribute and answers through four verbs: they teach people to live, think, see and love. Poetry encourages agency, moral development, attention to natural beauty and closer human connection.
The poet’s wages are not primarily financial. Approval, affection and the joy of rhythmic language matter more than gold or social station. The poem therefore defines artistic labor as service rewarded by meaningful reception.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Social purpose of poetry: Poetry teaches ways of living and relating.
- Intellectual awakening: Poets help readers think beyond chaos and habit.
- Attention to nature: Art reveals beauty and divine wonder in ordinary things.
- Human fellowship: Poetry draws people nearer to one another.
- Art versus money: Love and approval become the poet’s true wages.
- Vocation: The poet values the calling more than external reward.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is proud, idealistic and celebratory. Imrie treats poetry as useful labor rather than private decoration.
The mood is uplifting. Repeated questions create anticipation, and every answer enlarges the poet’s social role.
Close Reading Stanza-by-Stanza Explanation
Stanza 1
Poetry teaches active living based on God-given power rather than slavery to force.
Stanza 2
Poets stimulate thought and help humanity rise from chaos toward a nobler condition.
Stanza 3
Poetry trains perception. Leaves, flowers, sun, rain, wind and sea become sources of beauty and divine wonder.
Stanza 4
Poetry teaches love by bringing people closer and encouraging good action.
Stanza 5
The poem asks about payment. Human approval and love are valued above money or rank.
Stanza 6
The poet directly declares love for musical language greater than legendary treasure or earthly pleasure.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
The poem combines labor, education, ascent and natural imagery. Scourges represent forced life, while rising from chaos presents thought as upward movement.
Nature becomes a text containing leaves, flowers, sun, shower, winds, waves and sea. Poetry teaches readers how to see that text.
Interpretation Symbols and Their Meaning
- Scourges: Life driven by coercion rather than human agency.
- Chaos’ brink: Ignorance and undeveloped thought.
- Leaf and flower: Ordinary beauty made visible through poetry.
- Golden plan: A divine pattern of love and service.
- Wages: The rewards received for artistic labor.
- Ophir’s treasure: Legendary material wealth surpassed by poetic vocation.
Poetic Form The Poet’s Work and Wages Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The poem contains six sestets. Each begins with a question and develops through closely linked internal and end rhymes. The repeated sequence gives the poem the pattern of a public address or responsive song.
The first four stanzas define work; the final two define wages and personal commitment. This division separates poetry’s benefit to society from its reward to the poet.
Craft Literary Devices in The Poet’s Work and Wages
- Repetition: “What work are the poets doing?” creates a structural refrain.
- Rhetorical questions: Questions organize the poem’s defense of poetry.
- Metaphor: Poetry is work, approval is wages and thought rises from chaos.
- Enumeration: Live, think, see and love summarize poetry’s functions.
- Biblical allusion: Ophir represents immense material treasure.
- Contrast: Love of art is placed above wealth and station.
Critical Reading AP Lit-Style Central Argument
Imrie adopts the language of labor and payment to defend poetry against the assumption that usefulness must be material. By defining the poet’s work as enlarging life, thought, sight and love, he makes human transformation the product and human affection the wage.
Reader Questions
Frequently Asked Questions About John Imrie Poems
Who was John Imrie?
John Imrie was a Scottish-born Canadian poet, printer and publisher. He was born in Glasgow in 1846, moved to Canada in 1871 and became known for poems about friendship, home, work, faith, kindness, nature and everyday moral conduct.
What is Emblems of Friendship about?
The poem defines friendship through five symbols: a golden band, silken cord, beacon-light, iron shield and gift of God. Together they represent connection, tenderness, guidance, protection and blessing.
What does the golden band symbolize in Emblems of Friendship?
The golden band symbolizes a valuable and lasting bond that links separate lives, hearts and hands.
What is the meaning of The Golden Rule by John Imrie?
The poem teaches that kindness should shape speech and action. Human hearts are fragile, people share one journey, and life becomes morally successful when others are treated as one wishes to be treated.
What is the message of One Day at a Time?
The poem advises readers to face work and worry at the scale of the present day. A worthy lifetime is formed by patient labor, faith and love practiced one day at a time.
What does better to wear out than rot mean?
In “Is This Life Worth Living?” the phrase means that it is better to use one’s abilities fully in work and service than to preserve them through inactivity until they decay unused.
What does the Polar Star symbolize in The Star of Love?
The Polar Star symbolizes constant guidance. Just as sailors use it to navigate, the poem suggests that love directs people through darkness and difficulty toward home and belonging.
Why does John Imrie call wisdom the currency of Heaven?
The metaphor presents wisdom as a form of value greater than money. It enriches the heart and mind, improves the use of time and prepares a person for useful living.
What is the refuge in The Believer’s Refuge?
The refuge is trust in God and Christ. It is represented through an enduring rock, a strong arm and a place of peace that supports the believer during fear, sorrow and social opposition.
What do the withered flowers symbolize in Too Late! Too Late!?
The withered flowers symbolize affection, trust and opportunities for kindness that have been lost through delay or careless treatment.
What does Live It Down mean in John Imrie’s poem?
It means answering false accusations through consistent, honest conduct over time. The poem also says genuine errors should be confessed rather than hidden.
How is nature a temple in John Imrie’s poem?
Birdsong, waterfalls, woods, hills and echoes form a place of worship outside a building. The natural world helps the speaker pray, recover strength and feel divine presence.
What does there are no pockets in a shroud mean?
The phrase means that wealth cannot be carried beyond death. The poem therefore urges people to use money for compassion and assistance while they are alive.
What does John Imrie say is the work of poets?
In “The Poet’s Work and Wages,” poets teach people to live, think, see and love. Their true payment is not wealth but the affection and approval of readers.
What literary devices does John Imrie commonly use?
Imrie frequently uses extended metaphor, symbolism, personification, refrains, direct moral questions, regular rhyme and images drawn from navigation, nature, work, home and faith.
Are John Imrie’s poems in the public domain?
The cited 1906 edition is in the public domain in the United States, and John Imrie died in 1902. Copyright rules can vary by country, so publishers outside the United States should check local law.
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