Complaint

A lament or satiric attack on social evils, such as Chaucer's "Complaint to his Purse," the opening of the Wakefield Master's "Second Shepherd's Play," or Shakespeare's "A Lover's Complaint." Not to be confused with a poet's grumbling about weather or writing, such as Ezra Pound's "Ancient Music" or Chaucer's "The lyf so short, the craft so longe to lerne."