Work poems
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The Sisters
© John Greenleaf Whittier
ANNIE and Rhoda, sisters twain,
Woke in the night to the sound of rain,
The Task: Book IV. -- The Winter Evening
© William Cowper
Hark! tis the twanging horn oer yonder bridge,
That with its wearisome but needful length
Olney Hymn 21: Sardis
© William Cowper
"Write to Sardis," saith the Lord,
"And write what He declares,
Sonnet XLI. George Ripley
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
WARM, generous and young in heart and brain,
A wise, ripe scholar of the antique mould,
Had he but chosen he might have enrolled
His name among philosophers who gain
The Prophecy Of Capys
© Thomas Babbington Macaulay
X.
So marched they along the lake;
They marched by fold and stall,
By cornfield and by vineyard,
Unto the old man's hall.
Once Below A Time
© Dylan Thomas
My silly suit, hardly yet suffered for,
Around some coffin carrying
Birdman or told ghost I hung.
And the owl hood, the heel hider,
Claw fold and hole for the rotten
Head, deceived, I believed, my maker,
On An Anniversary
© John Millington Synge
[After reading the dates in a book of Lyrics.]
With Fifteen-ninety or Sixteen-sixteen
The Holy Island
© William Henry Drummond
Dey call it de Holy Islan'
W'ere de lighthouse stan' alone,
Ode
© William Wordsworth
I
IMAGINATION--ne'er before content,
But aye ascending, restless in her pride
From all that martial feats could yield
Prosopopoia : or, Mother Hubbards Tale
© Edmund Spenser
Yet he the name on him would rashly take,
Maugre the sacred Muses, and it make
A servant to the vile affection
Of such, as he depended most upon;
And with the sugrie sweete thereof allure
Chast Ladies eares to fantasies impure.
Sunday After Ascension
© John Keble
The Earth that in her genial breast
Makes for the down a kindly nest,
Where wafted by the warm south-west
It floats at pleasure,
Yields, thankful, of her very best,
To nurse her treasure:
Sonnet LVI. Music And Poetry. 2.
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
YET words though weak are all that poets own
Wherewith their muse translates that kindred muse
Of Harmony, whose subtle forms and hues
Float in the unlanguaged poesy of Tone.
The Builders
© Ebenezer Elliott
Spring, summer, autumn, winter,
Come duly, as of old;
Winds blow, suns set, and morning saith,
"Ye hills, put on your gold."
Life Is A Dream - Act III
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
FIRST SOLDIER [within]. He is here within this tower.
Dash the door from off its hinges;
Enter all
Jerry
© Carl Sandburg
Six years I worked in a knitting mill at a machine
And then I married Jerry, the iceman, for a change.
A Small Moment by Cornelius Eady: American Life in Poetry #197 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
I suspect that one thing some people have against reading poems is that they are so often so serious, so devoid of joy, as if we poets spend all our time brooding about mutability and death and never having any fun. Here Cornelius Eady, who lives and teaches in Indiana, offers us a poem of pure pleasure.
Work-Girls' Holiday
© Lesbia Harford
A lady has a thousand ways
Of doing nothing all her days,
And so she thinks that they're well spent,
She can be idle and content.
Ballad of Reading Gaol - I
© Oscar Wilde
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
The Way of Wooing
© William Schwenck Gilbert
A maiden sat at her window wide,
Pretty enough for a Prince's bride,
