Work poems
/ page 112 of 355 /The Town Between
© Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
A WALL impregnable surrounds
The Town wherein I dwell;
No man may scale it and it has
Two gates that guard it well.
As A Strong Bird On Pinious Free
© Walt Whitman
. As a strong bird on pinions free,
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
Such be the thought I'd think to-day of thee, America,
Such be the recitative I'd bring to-day for thee.
A Poetical Version Of A Letter From Facob Behmen
© John Byrom
TIS Mans own Nature, which in its own Life,
Or Centre, stands in Enmity and Strife,
Andante Con Moto
© William Ernest Henley
Forth from the dust and din,
The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare,
To The Germans
© Tadeusz Borowski
Don't walk in the street,don't eat, don't live,
backbreaking work is all you're allowed,
and beware the sign that bares its teeth:
"Only for Germans, others keep out."
Andrew Rykmans Prayer
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Andrew Rykman's dead and gone;
You can see his leaning slate
In the graveyard, and thereon
Read his name and date.
Bobs
© Jessie Pope
The call came in the stormy night,
Beneath a stranger's sky.
The soldier of a life-long fight,
Still fighting, went to die.
Sonnet 10
© Richard Barnfield
Thus was my loue, thus was my Ganymed,
(Heauens ioy, worlds wonder, natures fairest work,
Recollection
© Ada Cambridge
A wave-worn boulder, with green sea-moss wrapping
A silken mantle o'er its jagged sides;
And silvery, seething waters softly lapping
Through gulfs and channels hollow'd by the tides:
Epistle (to the author of The Three Impostors)
© Voltaire
I see from afar that era coming, those happy days,
When philosophy, enlightening humanity,
Must lead them in peace to the feet of the common master;
Frightful fanaticism will tremble to appear there:
There will be less dogma with more virtue.
Poem For The Two Hundred And Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Founding Of Harvard College
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
Thou whose bold flight would leave earth's vulgar crowds,
And like the eagle soar above the clouds,
Must feel the pang that fallen angels know
When the red lightning strikes thee from below!
A Panegyric Of The Dean In The Person Of A Lady In The North
© Jonathan Swift
Resolved my gratitude to show,
Thrice reverend Dean, for all I owe,
Too long I have my thanks delay'd;
Your favours left too long unpaid;
The Broomstick Train; Or, The Return Of The Witches
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
I don't feel sure of his being good,
But he happened to be in a pleasant mood,--
As fiends with their skins full sometimes are,--
(He'd been drinking with "roughs" at a Boston bar.)
So what does he do but up and shout
To a graybeard turnkey, "Let 'em out!"
The Bestiary: or Orpheuss Procession
© Guillaume Apollinaire
Admire the vital power
And nobility of line:
Its the voice that the light made us understand here
That Hermes Trismegistus writes of in Pimander.
Deborah
© Thomas Parnell
O King subdu'd! O Woman born to fame!
O Wake my fancy for the glorious theme,
O wake my fancy with the sense of praise,
O wake with warblings of triumphant lays.
The Land you rise in sultry suns invade,
But where you rise to sing you'le find a shade.
Old And New: A Parable
© Charles Kingsley
See how the autumn leaves float by decaying,
Down the wild swirls of the rain-swollen stream.
So fleet the works of men, back to their earth again;
Ancient and holy things fade like a dream.
To The Birds
© Peter McArthur
HOW dare you sing such cheerful notes?
You show a woful lack of taste;
How dare you pour from happy throats
Such merry songs with raptured haste,
While all our poets wail and weep,
And readers sob themselves to sleep?
About The Nightingale
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In stale blank verse a subject stale
I send per post my Nightingale;
And like an honest bard, dear Wordsworth,
You'll tell me what you think, my Bird's worth.