What shall I give my children? who are poor,
Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land.

The speaker’s question—“What shall I give my children?”—frames poverty not only as material lack but as a crisis of inheritance: what can be passed on when society has already judged the children “the leastwise of the land.” The diction of “adjudged” suggests an official or quasi-legal verdict, implying that deprivation is socially ratified rather than accidental. The line break after “poor” heightens the pause of helplessness before the harsher social labeling arrives. The quote thus points to a parent’s struggle to offer dignity, protection, or possibility in a world structured to deny those gifts, making the “gift” as much moral and political as economic.