Work poems
/ page 117 of 355 /
Litany for Dictatorships
© Stephen Vincent Benet
For all those beaten, for the broken heads,
The fosterless, the simple, the oppressed,
The ghosts in the burning city of our time ...
Old Mates
© David McKee Wright
. I came up to-night to the station, the tramp had been longish and cold,
My swag ain't too heavy to carry, but then I begin to get old.
I came through this way to the diggings - how long will that be ago now?
Thirty years! how the country has altered, and miles of it under the plough,
And Jack was my mate on the journey - we both run away from the sea;
He's got on in the world and I haven't, and now he looks sideways on me.
Liberated Lady 1999
© Sheldon Allan Silverstein
Shes a liberated lady and shes lookin out for herself.
And she dont need your protection,
And she does not want your help.
And if youre lookin for some pretty flower,
You better go look somewhere else,
Cause I warn you, shes a liberated lady.
Of Heaven
© John Bunyan
Heaven is a place, also a state,
It doth all things excel,
No man can fully it relate,
Nor of its glory tell.
Metamorphoses: Book The Seventh
© Ovid
The End of the Seventh Book.
Translated into English verse under the direction of
Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison,
William Congreve and other eminent hands
Irelands Vow
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
Come! Liberty, come! we are ripe for thy coming-
Come freshen the hearts where thy rival has trod-
Come, richest and rarest!-come, purest and fairest!-
Come, daughter of Science!-come, gift of the God!
God Neither Known Nor Loved By The World
© William Cowper
Ye linnets, let us try, beneath this grove,
Which shall be loudest in our Maker's praise!
In quest of some forlorn retreat I rove,
For all the world is blind, and wanders from his ways.
1946-47
© Jibanananda Das
Thousands of Bengali villages, silent and powerless, sink into
hopelessness and lightlessness.
When the sun sets, a certain lovely haired darkness
Comes to fix her hair in-a bun-but by whose hands?
The Brothers
© Richard Monckton Milnes
'Tis true, that we can sometimes speak of Death,
Even of the Deaths of those we love the best,
Without dismay or terror; we can sit
In serious calm beneath deciduous trees,
The Solitary Reaper
© William Wordsworth
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
The Hill Of San Sebastian
© William Henry Drummond
Good job I was cryin' quiet den, an' Louis
can't hear at all
But I kiss de poor feller an' laugh, an' never
say not'ing-me.
Business
© Sam Walter Foss
"How is business?" asks the young man of the Spirit of the Years;
"Tell me of the modern output from the factories of fate,
And what jobs are waiting for me, waiting for me and my peers.
What's the outlook? What's the prospect? Are the wages small or great?"
His Gippsland Girl
© William Henry Ogilvie
Now, money was scarce and work was slack
And love to his heart Crept in,
As My Uncle Used To Say
© James Whitcomb Riley
I've thought a power on men and things,
As my uncle ust to say,--
A Pilgrim's Way
© Rudyard Kipling
I do not look for holy saints to guide me on my way,
Or male and female devilkins to lead my feet astray.
If these are added, I rejoice--if not, I shall not mind,
So long as I have leave and choice to meet my fellow-kind.
For as we come and as we go (and deadly-soon go we!)
The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!
