The meaning of the second stanza of the poem is that the working person is being treated in an ungodly way--in a way that God never intended. While God created people to rule over the land and seas, to search the heavens, and to contemplate eternity, the working person lives in a way that is degraded and different from God's design for him or her. While God's dream was to create people as exalted beings, people live in a way that is worse than how creatures in hell live. The state of the working person is a living critique of the world's greed and of omens of bad things to come. In essence, the way working people, such as farmers, are treated in is direct contradiction to God's design for them.
Does anybody know the etymology of the phrase "sweet dreams"? I tried googling but did not find anything satisfying. Is this a relatively new phrase of the modern world or has this been in use for some time? I think it's the latter one. Answer The OED has the interjection as "a farewell to someone going to bed" from the 20th century: 1908 Sears Roebuck Catal. 198/1 Tenor Solos..Good Bye, Sweet Dreams, Good Bye. But it goes back until at least the 19th and possibly 18th centuries. John Wolcot, writing under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar, used it in his poem "Orson and Ellen; A Legendary Tale" published in 1801: Also from 1801 in The infernal Quixote (Page 287) by Charles Lucas: In the March 1776 of The Universal Magazine was published "The Serenade. A Pastoral Tale. From the German of Gesner" , where the shepherd Daphnis watches over his beloved as she sleeps and sings: The same tale appears in 1776's as Idyl XI, " Daphnis ...
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