Fragment: ‘what Men Gain Fairly'
The speaker accepts that people should retain fairly acquired gains and that their children may inherit idleness, stating that private injustice may serve the general good. Those who gain through armed wrongdoing, fraud, or base compliance may be dispossessed and disgraced like a convicted thief stripped of stolen clothing.
By Percy Bysshe Shelley · Genre: Political Poetry, Moral Poetry · 96 words
First lines
What men gain fairly-that they should possess, / And children may inherit idleness, / From him who earns it-This is understood; / Private injustice may be general good. / But he who gains by base and armed wrong, / Or guilty fraud, or base compliances, / May be despoiled; even as a stolen dress / Is stripped from a convicted thief; and he / Left in the nakedness of infamy.
Genres
- Political Poetry — The verse distinguishes legitimate possession and inheritance from gains whose wrongful acquisition warrants dispossession.
- Moral Poetry — The speaker judges ways of acquiring property and compares the disgrace of wrongful gain to a convicted thief losing stolen clothing.
Tags
property · inheritance · ill-gotten gains · fraud · dispossession · poetic fragment
What this Textopian page supports
Fragment: ‘what Men Gain Fairly' is listed on Textopian as a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, dated Date unknown.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Political Poetry, Moral Poetry
- Length: 96 words
- Structure: 1 section, 1 paragraphs
Good citation fit
- Work identity for Fragment: ‘what Men Gain Fairly' by Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
- Readability and classroom-planning context
- Passage-specific claims should cite the exact /read/ URL for the relevant chapter or paragraph