Money poems
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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'.
The Professional Wanderer
© Henry Lawson
When youve knocked about the countrybeen away from home for years;
When the past, by distance softened, nearly fills your eyes with tears
You are haunted oft, wherever or however you may roam,
By a fancy that you ought to go and see the folks at home.
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.
I'll tell you what you Wanderers
© Henry Lawson
I'll tell you what you wanderers, who drift from town to town;
Don't look into a good girl's eyes, until you've settled down.
It's hard to go away alone and leave old chums behind-
It's hard to travel steerage when your tastes are more refined-
The City Bushman
© Henry Lawson
It was pleasant up the country, City Bushman, where you went,
For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent;
And you curse the trams and buses and the turmoil and the push,
Though you know the squalid city needn't keep you from the bush;
But we lately heard you singing of the `plains where shade is not',
And you mentioned it was dusty -- `all was dry and all was hot'.
The Drover's Sweetheart
© Henry Lawson
An hour before the sun goes down
Behind the ragged boughs,
I go across the little run
And bring the dusty cows;
Jack Dunn of Nevertire
© Henry Lawson
It chanced upon the very day we'd got the shearing done,
A buggy brought a stranger to the West-o'-Sunday Run;
He had a round and jolly face, and he was sleek and stout,
He drove right up between the huts and called the super out.
Lines For A Grave-Stone
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
Man alive, that mournst thy lot,
Desiring what thou hast not got,
Money, beauty, love, what not;
The Iron Wedding Rings
© Henry Lawson
In these days of peace and money, free to all the Commonweal,
There are ancient dames in Buckland wearing wedding rings of steel;
Wedding rings of steel and iron, worn on wrinkled hands and old,
And the wearers would not give them, not for youth nor wealth untold.
Breadfruit
© Philip Larkin
Boys dream of native girls who bring breadfruit,
Whatever they are,
As bribes to teach them how to execute
Sixteen sexual positions on the sand;
Send No Money
© Philip Larkin
Standing under the fobbed
Impendent belly of Time
Tell me the truth, I said,
Teach me the way things go.
A Story At Dusk
© Ada Cambridge
An evening all aglow with summer light
And autumn colour-fairest of the year.
Nothing To Be Said
© Philip Larkin
For nations vague as weed,
For nomads among stones,
Small-statured cross-faced tribes
And cobble-close families
In mill-towns on dark mornings
Life is slow dying.
Homage To A Government
© Philip Larkin
Next year we are to bring all the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.
Money
© Philip Larkin
Quarterly, is it, money reproaches me:
'Why do you let me lie here wastefully?
I am all you never had of goods and sex,
You could get them still by writing a few cheques.'
Toads
© Philip Larkin
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Crying For Bread
© Henry Clay Work
"On! driver, on! they have all gone before us,
And I will not be late at the ball," Beauty said;
And wintry winds echoed her answer in chorus
With poor little Theodore crying for bread!
Poor little Theodore crying for bread!
The Rebel Scot
© John Cleveland
Yet wonder not at this their happy choice,
The serpent's fatal still to Paradise.
Sure, England hath the hemorrhoids, and these
On the north postern of the patient seize
Like leeches; thus they physically thirst
After our blood, but in the cure shall burst!
Carol Of Occupations
© Walt Whitman
COME closer to me;
Push close, my lovers, and take the best I possess;
Yield closer and closer, and give me the best you possess.
