Strength poems
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At the Edge of Town by Don Welch: American Life in Poetry #56 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-20
© Ted Kooser
When I complained about some of the tedious jobs I had as a boy, my mother would tell me, Ted, all work is honorable. In this poem, Don Welch gives us a man who's been fixing barbed wire fences all his life.
At the Edge of Town
Hard to know which is more gnarled,
the posts he hammers staples into
or the blue hummocks which run
across his hands like molehills.
Jubilate Agno: Fragment B, Part 2
© Christopher Smart
LET PETER rejoice with the MOON FISH who keeps up the life in the waters by night.
Let Andrew rejoice with the Whale, who is array'd in beauteous blue and is a combination of bulk and activity.
To The British Channel
© Robert Bloomfield
Roll, roll thy white waves, and enveloped in foam,
Pour thy tides round the echoing shore;
Thou guard of Old Englandmy country, my home!
And my soul shall rejoice in the roar!
Cyder: Book I
© John Arthur Phillips
What Soil the Apple loves, what Care is due
To Orchats, timeliest when to press the Fruits,
Thy Gift, Pomona, in Miltonian Verse
Adventrous I presume to sing; of Verse
Nor skill'd, nor studious: But my Native Soil
Invites me, and the Theme as yet unsung.
An Inventor
© Augusta Davies Webster
I thought this time 'twas done at last,
the workings perfected, the life in it;
and there's the flaw again, the petty flaw,
the fretting small impossibility
that has to be made possible.
A Battle Prayer
© Edgar Albert Guest
God of battles, be with us now:
Guard our sons from the lead of shame,
Watch our sons when the cannons flame,
Let them not to a tyrant bow.
Two Voices
© Edith Nesbit
COUNTRY
'SWEET are the lanes and the hedges, the fields made red with the clover,
Table Talk
© William Cowper
A. You told me, I remember, glory, built
On selfish principles, is shame and guilt;
Against Fruition
© Abraham Cowley
No; thou'rt a fool, I'll swear, if e'er thou grant;
Much of my veneration thou must want,
Herenowour age of socialism!...
© Boris Pasternak
Herenowour age of socialism!
Here in the thick of life below.
Today in the name of things to be
Into the future forth we go.
Hymn
© Sir Henry Newbolt
O Lord Almighty, Thou whose hands
Despair and victory give;
In whom, though tyrants tread their lands,
The souls of nations live;
A Story Of Doom: Book III.
© Jean Ingelow
Above the head of great Methuselah
There lay two demons in the opened roof
Invisible, and gathered up his words;
For when the Elder prophesied, it came
About, that hidden things were shown to them,
And burdens that he spake against his time.
You Gote-herd Gods
© Sir Philip Sidney
You Gote-herd Gods, that loue the grassie mountaines,
You Nimphes that haunt the springs in pleasant vallies,
You Satyrs ioyde with free and quiet forests,
Vouchsafe your silent eares to playning musique,
Which to my woes giues still an early morning;
And drawes the dolor on till wery euening.
Design And Performance
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
They float before my soul, the fair designs
Which I would body forth to life and power,
Marmion: Introduction to Canto III.
© Sir Walter Scott
Like April morning clouds, that pass,
With varying shadow, o'er the grass,
