The Challenge by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The speaker recalls a Spanish legend in which Don Diego de Ordonez challenges all Zamora as traitors after King Sanchez is slain. He compares this challenge to the accusations of starving millions, whose cries he hears while sitting amid banquet festivities. Contrasting plenty indoors with hunger outside, he ends with an image of Christ lying dead in the camp of famine.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Poetry, Social Criticism · 381 words
First lines
I have a vague remembrance / Of a story, that is told / In some ancient Spanish legend / Or chronicle of old.
It was when brave King Sanchez / Was before Zamora slain, / And his great besieging army / Lay encamped upon the plain.
Genres
- Poetry — Eleven rhymed quatrains move from a remembered challenge at Zamora to the speaker's experience of banquets and hunger.
- Social Criticism — The starving millions accuse the prosperous as traitors, while the speaker contrasts indoor feasting with cold, hunger, and despair outside.
Tags
hunger · poverty · banquets · social inequality · Spanish legend · Christian imagery
What this Textopian page supports
The Challenge is listed on Textopian as a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Poetry, Social Criticism
- Length: 381 words
- Structure: 1 section, 11 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
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