By constantly tormenting them with reminders of the lice in their children’s hair, the School Physician first brought their hatred down on him, But by this familiarity they grew used to him, and so, at last, took him for their friend and adviser.
Where this text comes from
First published in Sour Grapes: A Book of Poems (1921). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]
Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-12.
Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/william-carlos-williams_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).
Earlier sources (6)
This poem as JSON or plain text . Line anchors #L1–#L9.
Cite this poem
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963).
“The Poor.” First published in Sour Grapes: A Book of Poems (1921).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/william-carlos-williams/the-poor/.
Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.
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