He's None the Worse for That (1866)

AUTHOR: Alcott, William Andrus

KEYWORDS: food and diet, dress, environment

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):
This short poem values a life that is simple and humble in all respects: coarse food, simple dress, plain housing, honest work, and moral uprightness. The brevity of the poem and Alcott's use of simple iambic tetrameter support his celebration of a life in which “conscience guides the heart and hand.” Such a life, the poem claims, is the life enjoyed by the “sons of toil.” Such a man, in turn, “tends to the loom, and tills the land” while wearing but a “homespun suit,” just as his wife does without “satin gowns of black or green.” A “humble cot” is all such a family needs. As the poem's third and final stanza states, “True worth is not a thing of dress, / Of splendour, wealth, or classic lore; / Would that these trappings we loved less, / And clung to honest worth the more.” As the poem's title suggests, people who live so are none the worse for it.