There’s Still Enough!

There still is plenty for the hand
That’s horned with honest labour,
Indeed enough, and some to spare,
To help a needy neighbour.
And there are happy sunny hours
If we could only find them,
As spreading leaves will hide the flowers
That brightly bloom behind them.
There’s yet enough for all to live,
Neath freedom’s glorious treasure;
There’s joy and love enough to give
Our hearts their fill of pleasure.
E’en though the soul be racked with woe.
The body pain enduring,
Yet health shall through the system flow,
Long life and strength ensuring,
For Hall’s unrivalled Tonic pills
Are found to be unfailing;
When sickness with her thousand ills,
Our system is assailing.
They paint with bloom the pallid cheek,
The lowest spirits cheering;
And by their virtues, to the weak
Strength soon will be appearing.
Then try these matchless pills to-day,
To ease your load of sorrow;
The clouds shall then be swept away,
And pleasure beam to-morrow.

Title:There’s Still Enough!

Author:Unknown

Publication:Bolton Guardian

Published in:

Date:February 1st 1862

Keywords:hunger, poverty

Commentary

This advertisement poem is remarkable in that usually in this genre the product placement comes in the closing lines but here it situated in the middle of the poem. Published at the beginning of the first year of the Cotton Famine, the poem suggests that there is still enough food to be generated from the land to feed the population, and uses this point about the health of the nation to link to its sponsoring product of ‘Hall’s Tonic Pills’. Before pharmaceutical regulation or any kind of an integrated health system, products such as this were common in the shops of Britain, and the fact that so many newspaper advertisements featured them gives an indication of their commercial success. – SR