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Ballad Of Worldy Wealth Essay

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The poem “A Ballad Of Worldy Wealth” by Andrew Lang, is set out to try to help people understand the truth about money and how people used it in the late 1800's. Lang tries to describe in his poem that money is both used for good and bad, it depends on what you use it for. The poem uses both repetition and end rhyme to clearly state what it is that Lang is trying to say. Lang speaks of Soldiers, priests and captains and tell what they use the money for. The theme, in my opinion, is showing that people will only do things for money, even if they don't want to. However, the poem shows how the use of money will bring corruption with the people who use the amount of money they have to show their pride. The type of poem that Lang has written is a ballad. Which is three stanzas (a verse) with eight lines in each stanza. At the end of each stanza it states the following; “Youth, health, and Paradise.” However money cannot buy immortality (live forever), immunity to all diseases (it can buy medicine, to help with the pain) nor can it buy paradise, which I believe is to be heaven. …show more content…

One example of how they used it for good would be line number 13 “marches soldiers to and fro.” This would follow along with how the soldiers used their money, which was probably for food, supplies and transportation as well as money for fighting. But an example of the bad use of money would be in the line number 14, directly under 13, after the good. This lines states “gaineth ladies with sweet eyes.” This is a very poor use of money, instead of finding wives, they would pay women to make love to them (even if the women despised them, they often needed the

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