Business poems
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Screw-Guns
© Rudyard Kipling
Smokin' my pipe on the mountings, sniffin' the mornin' cool,
I walks in my old brown gaiters along o' my old brown mule,
With seventy gunners be'ind me, an' never a beggar forgets
It's only the pick of the Army that handles the dear little pets -- 'Tss! 'Tss!
The Post That Fitted
© Rudyard Kipling
Ere the seamer bore him Eastward, Sleary was engaged to marry
An attractive girl at Tunbridge, whom he called "my little Carrie."
Sleary's pay was very modest; Sleary was the other way.
Who can cook a two-plate dinner on eight poor rupees a day?
Poor Honest Men
© Rudyard Kipling
Your jar of Virginny
Will cost you a guinea,
Which you reckon too much by five shillings or ten;
But light your churchwarden
And judge it according,
When I've told you the troubles of poor honest men.
Pagett, M.P.
© Rudyard Kipling
The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where eath tooth-point goes.
The butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to that toad.
One Viceroy Resigns
© Rudyard Kipling
So here's your Empire. No more wine, then?
Good.
We'll clear the Aides and khitmatgars away.
(You'll know that fat old fellow with the knife --
The Mary Gloster
© Rudyard Kipling
I've paid for your sickest fancies; I've humoured your crackedest whim --
Dick, it's your daddy, dying; you've got to listen to him!
Good for a fortnight, am I? The doctor told you? He lied.
I shall go under by morning, and -- Put that nurse outside.
The Liner She's a Lady
© Rudyard Kipling
The Liner she's a lady, an' she never looks nor 'eeds --
The Man-o'-War's 'er 'usband, an' 'e gives 'er all she needs;
But, oh, the little cargo-boats, that sail the wet seas roun',
They're just the same as you an' me a-plyin' up an' down!
The Lesson
© Rudyard Kipling
Not on a single issue, or in one direction or twain,
But conclusively, comprehensively, and several times and
again,
The Land
© Rudyard Kipling
When Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald,
In the days of Diocletian owned our Lower River-field,
He called to him Hobdenius-a Briton of the Clay,
Saying: "What about that River-piece for layin'' in to hay?"
In the Neolithic Age
© Rudyard Kipling
I the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage
For food and fame and woolly horses' pelt.
I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,
And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.
To Sir Henry Wotton At His Going Ambassador To Venice
© John Donne
AFTER those reverend papers, whose soul is
Our good and great king's loved hand and fear'd name ;
By which to you he derives much of his,
And, how he may, makes you almost the same,
Eddi's Service
© Rudyard Kipling
Eddi, priest of St. Wilfrid
In his chapel at Manhood End,
Ordered a midnight service
For such as cared to attend.
Cruisers
© Rudyard Kipling
As our mother the Frigate, bepainted and fine,
Made play for her bully the Ship of the Line;
So we, her bold daughters by iron and fire,
Accost and decoy to our masters' desire.
The Craftsman
© Rudyard Kipling
Once, after long-drawn revel at The Mermaid,
He to the overbearing Boanerges
Jonson, uttered (if half of it were liquor,
Blessed be the vintage!)
I'd Back Again the World
© Henry Lawson
Id back against the world,
When darkest shadows fall
Oh, shes the little woman
Id back against them all.
Faith
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
I'S a-gittin' weary of de way dat people do,
De folks dat's got dey 'ligion in dey fiahplace an' flue;
Of The Nature Of Things: Book V - Part 07 - Beginnings Of Civilization
© Lucretius
Afterwards,
When huts they had procured and pelts and fire,
And when the woman, joined unto the man,
Withdrew with him into one dwelling place,
The Caterpillar
© Robert Graves
Under this loop of honeysuckle,
A creeping, coloured caterpillar,
I gnaw the fresh green hawthorn spray,
I nibble it leaf by leaf away.
Call It a Good Marriage
© Robert Graves
Call it a good marriage -
For no one ever questioned
Her warmth, his masculinity,
Their interlocking views;
Aurora Leigh: Book One
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I, alas,
A wild bird scarcely fledged, was brought to her cage,
And she was there to meet me. Very kind.
Bring the clean water, give out the fresh seed.
