A sonnet on Robinson Crusoe

Let me break my writer’s block once more with a poem:

Young Robinson was born a Romantic
To dour Christian parents, hard-working and content
To remain at home, never crossing the Atlantic
Where he, tempest-tossed, found life progressing without his consent;
Leaving him first enslaved, then escaped, with life
And limb intact but little else; forced to start anew
In Brazil. Sugar could make a man rich, but instead new strife
When work is not enough: another ocean voyage leaves Crusoe’s life askew.
Stranded on a desert beach, Crusoe gives Defoe a chance
To run through civilization’s course, beginning with the hunt
Through agriculture and religion, until he’s a king with no pants
But goatskin breeches: God’s grace slow to come, but in a torrent.
Decades spent on the Isle of Despair might weary him body and mind,
But it was early life wasted; solitary contemplation and toil the best use of Robinson’s time.