Work poems
/ page 109 of 355 /
Habeas Corpus
© Helen Hunt Jackson
* (Unfinished here.)
Ah, well, friend Death, good friend thou art;
I shall be free when thou art through.
Take all there is - take hand and heart;
There must be somewhere work to do.
His Bit
© Katharine Lee Bates
GALLANTLY swung the old carpenter up to his door,
Drums and fifes in his tread,
Soldierly
© Edgar Albert Guest
The glory of a soldierand a soldier's not a saint
Is the way he does his duty without grumbling or complaint;
His work's not always pleasant, but he does it rain or shine,
And he grabs a bit of glory when he's fighting in the line;
But the lesson that he teaches every day to me an' you
Is the way to do a duty that we do not like to do.
Herrenston
© William Barnes
Zoo then the leädy an' the squier,
At Chris'mas, gather'd girt an' small,
Goatsucker
© Sylvia Plath
So fables say the Goatsucker moves, masked from men's sight
In an ebony air, on wings of witch cloth,
Well-named, ill-famed a knavish fly-by-night,
Yet it never milked any goat, nor dealt cow death
And shadows only-cave-mouth bristle beset-
Cockchafers and the wan, green luna moth.
A Satire Against The Citizens Of London
© Henry Howard
London, hast thou accused me
Of breach of laws, the root of strife?
"To look across at Moira gives me pleasure"
© Lesbia Harford
To look across at Moira gives me pleasure.
She has a red tape measure.
Her dress is black and all the workroom's dreary,
And I am weary.
Hey diddle diddle
© Roald Dahl
Hey diddle diddle
We're all on the fiddle
And never get up until noon.
We only take cash
Which we carefully stash
And we work by the light of the moon.
Lost And Found
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
"Whither art thou gone, fair Una?
Una fair, the moon is gleaming;
A Royal Princess
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
I, a princess, king-descended, decked with jewels, gilded, drest,
Would rather be a peasant with her baby at her breast,
For all I shine so like the sun, and am purple like the west.
The Muses Threnodie: Third Muse
© Henry Adamson
These be the first memorials of a bridge,
Good Monsier, that we truely can alledge.
Thus spoke good Gall, and I did much rejoyce
To hear him these antiquities disclose;
Which I remembering now, of force must cry
Gall, sweetest Gall, what ailed thee to die?
Idyll II. The Sorceress
© Theocritus
Lady, farewell: turn ocean-ward thy steeds:
As I have purposed, so shall I fulfil.
Farewell, thou bright-faced Moon! Ye stars, farewell,
That wait upon the car of noiseless Night.
Sonnets to the Sundry Notes of Music
© William Shakespeare
I.
IT was a lording's daughter, the fairest one of three,
That liked of her master as well as well might be,
Till looking on an Englishman, the fair'st that eye could see,
Her fancy fell a-turning.
The Modest Jazz-Bird
© Vachel Lindsay
The Jazz-bird sings a barnyard song
A cock-a-doodle bray,
A jingle-bells, a boiler works,
A he-man's roundelay.
Reflections
© Jean Ingelow
What change has made the pastures sweet
And reached the daisies at my feet,
And cloud that wears a golden hem?
This lovely world, the hills, the sward—
They all look fresh, as if our Lord
But yesterday had finished them.
