Could any native speakers help me out, please?
I'm trying to translate The Song of The Mad Minstrel by Robert Howard. I'm doing fine except for one line. Could you please explain me what does it exactly mean?:
Laughing man's labor to scorn, weaving a web for his feet.
whole paragraph for context:
I am the rust on the corn, I am the smut on the wheat,
Laughing man's labor to scorn, weaving a web for his feet.
I am canker and mildew and blight, danger and death and decay;
The rot of the rain by night, the blast of the sun by day.
whole text for even more context:
http://eldar.cz/myf/pub/adom/mad_minstrels_confessison.html
ESL here, how don't you understand the line? It seems pretty obvious to me. The minstrel (ie, the narrator) is destructive and nihilistic, so he laughs at the people who work, he is scornful towards their efforts and he is weaving webs around people's legs - metaphorically he is saying that he is undermining their work, causing them problems.
>>9645995
Scorn rhymes with corn and feet rhymes with wheat, that's what he is saying.
>>9646106
I don't think he's laughing at them. Scorning isn't the same as mocking. I'd say he's a necessary part of life and aware of that rather than being proud of it or happy about it.
>>9646106
I'm especially confused about the word 'labor'
is the Minstrel saying he is a labor of a man?
Is the man weaving a web for his own feet, or is the Minstrel doing it to him?
Is a labor leading to scorn?
I believe, that the best help for me would be to rewrite this sentence with some new words.
>>9646144
Like >>9646128 says, he's not quite laughing.
>Laughing man's labor to scorn
might be easier to look at grammatically. The subject comes from the first line of the paragraph,
>I am the rust on the corn
so that we continue it to
>I am... laughing
then the object is man's labor, which is unusual for the verb laughing and I think the source of the problems. "to scorn" acts like a result or a purpose clause.
Paraphrasing:
>I laugh at everyone's hard work until everything they've done just looks feeble and insignificant, and I spend my time tripping up people trying to go about their work.
>>9646239
oh, I finally get it. Yes, you were 100% right about the source of my confusion.
Thank you kind anon, you brighten my days.