Work poems
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The Rivals; Or The Showman's Ruse
© James Whitcomb Riley
TOMMY (to JOHNNY).
Guess 'at Billy haint got back,--
Can't see nothin' through the crack---
Can't hear nothin' neither--No!
. . . Thinks he's got the dandy show,
Don't he?
XLVI From 'La Pell De Brau'
© Salvador Espriu
Sometimes it is necessary and right
for a man to die for a people.
Men and Women
© James Kenneth Stephen
. IN THE BACKS.
As I was strolling lonely in the Backs,
I met a woman whom I did not like.
I did not like the way the woman walked:
The Song against Grocers
© Gilbert Keith Chesterton
God made the wicked Grocer
For a mystery and a sign,
Sleep Did Come Wi The Dew
© William Barnes
O when our zun's a-zinkèn low,
How soft's the light his feäce do drow
One Talent
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In a napkin smooth and white,
Hidden from all mortal sight,
My one talent lies to-night.
All For The Best
© Edgar Albert Guest
Things mostly happen for the best.
However hard it seems to-day,
Mattens
© George Herbert
I cannot ope mine eyes,
But thou art ready there to catch
My morning-soul and sacrifice:
Then we must needs for that day make a match.
Under a Statue of Peisander, Who Wrote the Labours of Heracles
© Theocritus
He whom ye gaze on was the first
That in quaint song the deeds rehearsed
Of him whose arm was swift to smite,
Who dared the lion to the fight:
The Flag of our Destinies
© Henry Lawson
With our boundaries swung to the circling seas and a nation named to the world!
And the six-starred flag of our destinies on every port unfurled!
God grant from Greed or the dust of sleep or the right by a lie maintained
From all save our blood, if we must, well keep the silver and blue unstained!
Before Action
© Leon Gellert
We always had to do our work at night.
I wondered why we had to be so sly.
I wondered why we couldn't have our fight
Under the open sky.
Unwritten Books
© Henry Lawson
It always seems the same old story
No matter what grand heights are won
We die with out best work unwritten,
We die with out best work undone.
Thomas Winterbottom Hance
© William Schwenck Gilbert
IN all the towns and cities fair
On Merry England's broad expanse,
No swordsman ever could compare
With THOMAS WINTERBOTTOM HANCE.
Louisiana Line by Betty Adcock: American Life in Poetry #129 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
North Carolina poet, Betty Adcock, has written scores of beautiful poems, almost all of them too long for this space. Here is an example of her shorter work, the telling description of a run-down border town.
Louisiana Line
The wooden scent of wagons,
the sweat of animalsâthese places
keep everythingâbreath of the cotton gin,
black damp floors of the icehouse.
Excelsior
© Francis Bret Harte
The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Eastern village passed
A youth who bore, through dust and heat,
A stencil-plate, that read complete--"SAPOLIO."
Piano Lessons
© William Matthews
Sometimes the music is locked
in the earth's body, matter-
of-fact, transforming itself.
"Not Known"
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
On receiving through the Post-Office a Returned Letter from an old
residence, marked on the envelope, "Not Known."
