Hope poems
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Give All To Love
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit, and the muse;
Nothing refuse.
Eternity
© James Lee Jobe
for C. G. Macdonald, 1956-2006
Charlie, sunrise is a three-legged mongrel dog,going deaf, already blind in one eye,answering to the unlikely name, 'Lucky.'
The sky, at gray-blue dawn, is a football field painted by smiling artists. Each artist has 3 arms, 3 hands, 3 legs.One leg drags behind, leaving a trail, leaving a mark.
The future resembles a cloudy dream where the ghosts of all your lifetry to tell you something, but what?
Redbud Trail - Winter
© James Lee Jobe
Once up on the ridge, the view takes me,
Brushy Sky High Mountain looms above
like an overanxious parent, the creek sings
old songs for the valley oaks, for the deer grass.
Less muddy, I kick my boots a little cleaner
on a rock that is maybe as old as the earth.
The Story Of Our Lives
© Mark Strand
1
We are reading the story of our lives
which takes place in a room.
The room looks out on a street.
The Old Timer's Steeplechase
© Andrew Barton Paterson
There was never a fence the tracks to guard, --
Some straggling posts defined 'em:
And the day was hot, and the drinking hard,
Till none of the stewards could see a yard
Before nor yet behind 'em!
Saltbush Bill, J.P.
© Andrew Barton Paterson
That Edward Rex, confiding in
His known integrity,
By hand and seal on parchment skin
Had made hiim a J.P.
Under the Shadow of Kiley's Hill
© Andrew Barton Paterson
This is the place where they all were bred;
Some of the rafters are standing still;
Now they are scattered and lost and dead,
Every one from the old nest fled,
Out of the shadow of Kiley's Hill.
On Kiley's Run
© Andrew Barton Paterson
The roving breezes come and go
On Kiley's Run,
The sleepy river murmurs low,
And far away one dimly sees
The Road to Hogan's Gap
© Andrew Barton Paterson
Well, run that right-hand ridge along
It aint, to say, too steep
Theres two fresh tracks might put you wrong
Where blokes went out with sheep.
The Story of Mongrel Grey
© Andrew Barton Paterson
We might have sold him, but someone heard
He was bred out back on a flooded run,
Where he learnt to swim like a waterbird;
Midnight or midday were all as one --
In the flooded ground he would find his way;
Nothing could puzzle old Mongrel Grey.
With the Cattle
© Andrew Barton Paterson
The drought is down on field and flock,
The river-bed is dry;
And we must shift the starving stock
Before the cattle die.
The Last Trump
© Andrew Barton Paterson
"If you had drawn their leading spade
It meant a certain win!
But no! By Pembroke's mighty shade
The thirteenth trump you went and played
And let their diamonds in!
The City of Dreadful Thirst
© Andrew Barton Paterson
The stranger came from Narromine and made his little joke--
"They say we folks in Narromine are narrow-minded folk.
But all the smartest men down here are puzzled to define
A kind of new phenomenon that came to Narromine.
Song of the Artesian Water
© Andrew Barton Paterson
Now the stock have started dying, for the Lord has sent a drought;
But we're sick of prayers and Providence -- we're going to do without;
With the derricks up above us and the solid earth below,
We are waiting at the lever for the word to let her go.
A Walgett Episode
© Andrew Barton Paterson
The sunburnt stranger was gaunt and brown,
But it soon appeared that he meant to flout
The iron law of the country town,
Which is -- that the stranger has got to shout:
"If he will not shout we must take him down,"
Remarked the yokels of Walgett Town.
Driver Smith
© Andrew Barton Paterson
"Wherever the rifle bullets flash and the Maxims raise a din,
It's here you'll find the Medical men a-raking the wounded in --
A-raking 'em in like human flies -- and a driver smart like me
Will find some scope for his extra skill in the ranks of the A.M.C."
Song of the Future
© Andrew Barton Paterson
"I care for nothing, good nor bad,
My hopes are gone, my pleasures fled,
I am but sifting sand," he said:
What wonder Gordon's songs were sad!
Song of the Wheat
© Andrew Barton Paterson
We have sung the song of the droving days,
Of the march of the travelling sheep;
By silent stages and lonely ways
Thin, white battalions creep.
The Sausage Candidate-A Tale of the Elections
© Andrew Barton Paterson
Our fathers, brave men were and strong,
And whisky was their daily liquor;
They used to move the world along
In better style than now -- and quicker.
The Mylora Elopement
© Andrew Barton Paterson
Pondering o'er his predilection, Jimmy watched McGrath, the boss,
Riding past his lone selection, looking for a station 'oss
That was running in the ranges with a mob of outlaws wild.
Mac the time of day exchanges -- off goes Jim to see his child;
