Percy Bysshe Shelley: Fragment: 'What Men Gain Fairly'.

Updated May 6, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

Fragment: 'What Men Gain Fairly'.

(Perhaps connected with that immediately preceding (Forman).-ED.)

Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition.

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.
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