The poem’s speaker introduces Miniver Cheevy as a “child of scorn” (Line 1). This phrase has two possible meanings. It suggests that instead of being a typical happy and carefree child, Miniver was a product of disparagement, a way to literalize the idea that he had innate contempt for the world around him. The phrase also implies that Miniver was scorned in his childhood by others. Both interpretations provide a sense of Miniver as a bitter outcast who has been at odds with society since birth. Further, the absence of a past tense verb before “child of scorn” makes it clear that Miniver has not grown out of this childhood predilection.

Miniver “grew lean” while “assail[ing] the seasons” (Line 2), living in conflict with the natural ebbs and flows of life through time. He is not made strong by this adversity, however, as he only grows more fragile with passing time. Miniver’s fragility is demonstrated in the next lines, in which he still regrets the fact of his birth, for only the vaguest of “reasons” (Line 3).

In the remaining stanzas of the poem, the speaker unfolds Miniver’s ultimate problem. His inner torment comes from being an anachronism who lives in a world of daydreams of a mythic golden age, desperately wishing he was born in an earlier era.