Abstract
This paper will argue that rather than using neoclassical forms and topoi as a means of garnering influence, pleasing patrons, or, in the case of couplet verse, ease of “memorability,” these Romantic period laboring-class poets also found in working both “against and within” Augustan modes and ideologies a unique and powerful way of understanding and writing their modern lives, and of addressing their cultural masters. Their use of neoclassical modes in every case is related to a democratic impulse, more powerful than a belief in that great eighteenth-century maxim poeta nascitur non fit. We will see, in exploring the topoi of labor, gratitude, and the prospect view, that Hands, Yearsley, and Bloomfield desired to close the social and professional distance between laboring-class and refined poet.