On The High Price Of Fish

William Cowper turns the humdrum complaint about expensive fish into something unexpectedly delightful in this satirical verse. Written in the voice of an exasperated housewife or merchant, the poem catalogs the rising costs of seafood with mock desperation, piling on absurd justifications and theatrical outrage over catches that grow smaller and prices that grow larger. Cowper's genius lies in taking such a trivial grievance and treating it with epic seriousness, creating humor through the gap between the subject's triviality and its speaker's grand indignation. The poem captures something timeless: that particular frustration of watching prices climb while value seems to shrink, rendered here in 18th-century British specificity but instantly recognizable to any modern reader who has grumbled at the grocery store. Cowper was known for elevating ordinary life into poetry, and this piece does exactly that, transforms the mundane into something worth laughing about.