Car poems
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For'ard'
© Henry Lawson
It is stuffy in the steerage where the second-classers sleep,
For there's near a hundred for'ard, and they're stowed away like sheep, --
They are trav'lers for the most part in a straight 'n' honest path;
But their linen's rather scanty, an' there isn't any bath --
The Great Grey Plain
© Henry Lawson
Out West, where the stars are brightest,
Where the scorching north wind blows,
And the bones of the dead gleam whitest,
And the sun on a desert glows --
Trooper Campbell
© Henry Lawson
One day old Trooper Campbell
Rode out to Blackman's Run,
His cap-peak and his sabre
Were glancing in the sun.
Sweeney
© Henry Lawson
It was somewhere in September, and the sun was going down,
When I came, in search of `copy', to a Darling-River town;
`Come-and-have-a-drink' we'll call it -- 'tis a fitting name, I think --
And 'twas raining, for a wonder, up at Come-and-have-a-drink.
Hermann And Dorothea - V. Polyhymnia
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
THE COSMOPOLITE.
BUT the Three, as before, were still sitting and talking together,
The Song Of Old Joe Swallow
© Henry Lawson
When I was up the country in the rough and early days,
I used to work along ov Jimmy Nowlett's bullick-drays;
Then the reelroad wasn't heered on, an' the bush was wild an' strange,
An' we useter draw the timber from the saw-pits in the range --
Load provisions for the stations, an' we'd travel far and slow
Through the plains an' 'cross the ranges in the days of long ago.
Come, Pretty School-Girl!
© Henry Clay Work
On this rolling planet ever have you seen
A home so like a palace waiting for its queen? -
A dwelling place so fair,
So fill'd with treasures rare,
As the little white cottage on Evergreen Square?
Marshall's Mate
© Henry Lawson
You almost heard the surface bake, and saw the gum-leaves turn --
You could have watched the grass scorch brown had there been grass to burn.
In such a drought the strongest heart might well grow faint and weak --
'Twould frighten Satan to his home -- not far from Dingo Creek.
The Flour Bin
© Henry Lawson
By Lawson's Hill, near Mudgee,
On old Eurunderee
The place they called "New Pipeclay",
Where the diggers used to be
Yam by Bruce Guernsey : American Life in Poetry #238 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Though some teacher may have made you think that all poetry is deadly serious, chock full of coded meanings and obscure symbols, poems, like other works of art, can be delightfully playful. Here Bruce Guernsey, who divides his time between Illinois and Maine, plays with a common yam.
Yam
September On Jessore Road
© Allen Ginsberg
Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
No place to shit but sand channel ruts
Peter Anderson And Co.
© Henry Lawson
They tried everything and nothing 'twixt the shovel and the press,
And were more or less successful in their ventures -- mostly less.
Once they ran a country paper till the plant was seized for debt,
And the local sinners chuckle over dingy copies yet.
Dan, The Wreck
© Henry Lawson
Manner puts a man in mind of
Old club balls and evening dress,
Ugly with a handsome kind of
Ugliness.
Cameron's Heart
© Henry Lawson
The diggings were just in their glory when Alister Cameron came,
With recommendations, he told me, from friends and a parson `at hame';
He read me his recommendations -- he called them a part of his plant --
The first one was signed by an Elder, the other by Cameron's aunt.
The meenister called him `ungodly -- a stray frae the fauld o' the Lord',
And his aunt set him down as a spendthrift, `a rebel at hame and abroad'.
My sister Lifes overflowing today
© Boris Pasternak
My sister Lifes overflowing today,
spring rain shattering itself like glass,
Tom Moody
© William Henry Ogilvie
Death had beckoned with grisly hand
To the finest Whip in hunting-land.
The Man Who Raised Charlestown
© Henry Lawson
They were hanging men in Buckland who would not cheer King George
The parson from his pulpit and the blacksmith from his forge;
They were hanging men and brothers, and the stoutest heart was down,
When a quiet man from Buckland rode at dusk to raise Charlestown.
The Vagabond
© Henry Lawson
And I had a love -- 'twas a love to prize --
But I never went back again . . .
I have seen the light of her kind brown eyes
In many a face since then.
In The Days When The World Was Wide
© Henry Lawson
The world is narrow and ways are short, and our lives are dull and slow,
For little is new where the crowds resort, and less where the wanderers go;
Greater, or smaller, the same old things we see by the dull road-side --
And tired of all is the spirit that sings
of the days when the world was wide.
