I may be a little sappy, but I think that almost everyone is doing the best he or she can, despite all sorts of obstacles. This poem by Jonathan Holden introduces us to a young car salesman, who is trying hard, perhaps too hard. Holden is the past poet laureate of Kansas and poet in residence at Kansas State University in Manhattan.

Car Showroom

In The British Museum

© Robert Laurence Binyon

Shafts of light, that poured from the August sun,
Glowed on long red walls of the gallery cool;
Fell upon monstrous visions of ages gone,
Still, smiling Sphinx, winged and bearded Bull.

Expectation

© Paul Laurence Dunbar

You 'll be wonderin' whut 's de reason

I 's a grinnin' all de time,

Just a Love Letter

© Henry Cuyler Bunner

NEW YORK, July 20, 1883.
DEAR GIRL:
The town goes on as though
It thought you still were in it;

Sonnet XIX. To A Friend, Who Asked How I Felt When The Nurse First Presented My Infant To Me

© Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Charles! my slow heart was only sad, when first
I scanned that face of feeble infancy;
For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst
All I had been, and all my babe might be!

Roses

© Edgar Albert Guest

When God first viewed the rose He'd made

He smiled, and thought it passing fair;

One Day I Got A Missive

© Eugene Field

One day I got a missive

Writ in a dainty hand,

Casey's Table D'Hote

© Eugene Field

Oh, them days on Red Hoss Mountain, when the skies wuz fair 'nd blue,

When the money flowed like likker, 'nd the folks wuz brave 'nd true!

Song. "Yet once again, but once, before we sever"

© Frances Anne Kemble

Yet once again, but once, before we sever,

Fill we one brimming cup,it is the last!

I like you calm, as if you were absent

© Pablo Neruda

I like you calm, as if you were absent,
and you hear me far-off, and my voice does not touch you.
It seems that your eyelids have taken to flying:
it seems that a kiss has sealed up your mouth.

Ode to Duty

. Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!

O Duty! if that name thou love

St. Anthony The Reformer

No fear lest praise should make us proud!
We know how cheaply that is won;
The idle homage of the crowd
Is proof of tasks as idly done.

Elegy XV: A Tale of a Citizen and his Wife

© John Donne

I SING no harm, good sooth, to any wight,

To lord or fool, cuckold, beggar, or knight,

The Eyes

© Ezra Pound

Rest Master, for we be a-weary, weary
And would feel the fingers of the wind
Upon these lids that lie over us
Sodden and lead-heavy.

Ruth

© Henry Lawson

Are the fields of my fancy less fair through a window thats narrowed and barred?
Are the morning stars dimmed by the glare of the gas-light that flares in the yard?
No! And what does it matter to me if to-morrow I sail from the land?
I am free, as I never was free! I exult in my loneliness grand!