Business poems
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The Prime of Life
© Henry Lawson
OH, the strength of the toil of those twenty years, with father, and master, and men!
And the clearer brain of the business man, who has held his own for ten:
Oh, the glorious freedom from business fears, and the rest from domestic strife!
The past is dead, and the future assured, and Im in the prime of life!
America
© Allen Ginsberg
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
The Ostrich-Punching of Arroyo Al
© Arthur Chapman
I was broke in Arizony, and was gloomy as a tomb
When I got a chance at punchin' for an outfit called Star-Plume;
I did n't ask no wherefores, but jest lit out with my tarp,
As happy as an angel with the newest make o' harp.
Business
© Edgar Albert Guest
BUSINESS is business," he said to me,
As he gave me short weight in my pound of tea.
Above The Gaspereau
© Bliss William Carman
How still through the sweet summer sun, through the soft summer rain,
They have stood there awaiting the summons should bid them attain
The freedom of knowledge, the last touch of truth to explain
The great golden gist of their brooding, the marvellous train
Of thought they have followed so far, been so strong to sustain,
The white gospel of sun and the long revelations of rain!
Break of Day (another of the same)
© John Donne
'Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise, because 'tis light?
Did we lie down, because 'twas night?
Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither
Should in despite of light keep us together.
Invocation to the Social Muse
© Archibald MacLeish
It is true also that we here are Americans:
That we use the machines: that a sight of the god is unusual:
That more people have more thoughts: that there are
An Offering for Patricia
© Anthony Evan Hecht
The work has been going forward with the greatest difficulty, chiefly because I cannot concentrate. I have no feeling about whether what I am writing is good or bad, and the whole business is totally without excitement and pleasure for me. And I am sure I know the reason. It’s that I can’t stand leaving unresolved my situation with Pat. I hear from her fairly frequently, asking when I plan to come back, and she knows that I am supposed to appear at the poetry reading in the middle of January. It is not mainly loneliness I feel, though I feel it; but I have been lonely before. It is quite frankly the feeling that nothing is really settled between us, and that in the mean time I worry about how things are going to work out. This has made my work more difficult than it has ever been before.
Hymn to Science
© Mark Akenside
But first with thy resistless light,
Disperse those phantoms from my sight,
Those mimic shades of thee;
The scholiast's learning, sophist's cant,
The visionary bigot's rant,
The monk's philosophy.
Hudibras: Part 3 - Canto III
© Samuel Butler
What made thee, when they all were gone,
And none but thou and I alone,
To act the Devil, and forbear
To rid me of my hellish fear?
Dr. Booker T. Washington to the National Negro Business League
© Joseph Seamon Cotter
’Tis strange indeed to hear us plead
For selling and for buying
When yesterday we said: “Away
With all good things but dying.”
Meary-Anns Child
© William Barnes
Meary-Ann wer alwone wi' her beäby in eärms,
In her house wi' the trees over head,
Vor her husban' wer out in the night an' the storms,
In his business a-tweilèn vor bread;
An' she, as the wind in the elems did roar,
Did grievy vor Robert all night out o' door.
Paradise Lost: Book I (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
So spake th' Apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but rackt with deep despare:
And him thus answer'd soon his bold Compeer.
Metropolitan
© John Fuller
In cities there are tangerine briefcases on the down-platform
and jet parkas on the up-platform; in the mother of cities
there is equal anxiety at all terminals.
West a business breast, North a morose jig, East a false
Five Poems From “Helen: A Revision”
© Jack Spicer
Nothing is known about Helen but her voice
Strange glittering sparks
Lighting no fires but what is reechoed
Rechorded, set on the icy sea.
The Bounty
© Derek Walcott
Between the vision of the Tourist Board and the true
Paradise lies the desert where Isaiah’s elations
force a rose from the sand. The thirty-third canto
