Work poems
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Out At Plough
© William Barnes
Though cool avore the sheenèn sky
Do vall the sheädes below the copse,
Chiquita
© Francis Bret Harte
Beautiful! Sir, you may say so. Thar isn't her match in the county;
Is thar, old gal,--Chiquita, my darling, my beauty?
Feel of that neck, sir,--thar's velvet! Whoa! steady,--ah, will you,
you vixen!
Whoa! I say. Jack, trot her out; let the gentleman look at her paces.
The Troubadour. Canto 2
© Letitia Elizabeth Landon
THE first, the very first; oh! none
Can feel again as they have done;
In love, in war, in pride, in all
The planets of life's coronal,
However beautiful or bright,--
What can be like their first sweet light?
The Artist as an Old Man
© Erica Jong
He has come to like his resignation.
In his sketch books, ink-dark cossacks hear
the snorts of horses in the crunch of snow.
His pen alone recalls that years ago,
one horseman set his teeth and aimed his spear
which, poised, seemed pointed straight to pierce the sun.
Orpheus
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
What wondrous sound is that, mournful and faint,
But more melodious than the murmuring wind
Which through the columns of a temple glides?
Beachy Head
© Charlotte Turner Smith
ON thy stupendous summit, rock sublime !
That o'er the channel rear'd, half way at sea
Vision Of Columbus - Book 1
© Joel Barlow
Oh, lend thy friendly shroud to veil my sight,
That these pain'd eyes may dread no more the light,
These welcome shades conclude my instant doom,
And this drear mansion moulder to a tomb
The Glendy Burk
© Stephen C. Foster
Ho! for Lou'siana!
I'm bound to leave dis town;
I'll take my duds and tote 'em on my back
When de Glendy Burk comes down.
The Call
© Lucy Maud Montgomery
Mother of her who is close to my heart
Cease to chide!
For no small thing must I wander afar
From the tender arms and lips of my bride
My love with eyes like the glowing star
In the twilight sky apart.
The Princess (prologue)
© Alfred Tennyson
Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun
Spread the Truth!
© Henry Lawson
BRAVE the anger of the wealthy! Scorn their bitter lying spite!
Tell the Truth in simple language, when you know that you are right!
And theyll read it by the slush-lamps in the station huts at night,
Domestic Work, 1937
© Natasha Trethewey
Windows and doors flung wide,
curtains two-stepping
forward and back, neck bones
bumping in the pot, a choir
of clothes clapping on the line.
Letter Home
© Natasha Trethewey
--New Orleans, November 1910Four weeks have passed since I left, and still
I must write to you of no work. I've worn down
the soles and walked through the tightness
of my new shoes calling upon the merchants,
Against A Sickness: To The Female Double Principle God
© Alan Dugan
She said: Im god and all
of this and that world and love
Jinny the Just
© Matthew Prior
Releas'd from the noise of the butcher and baker
Who, my old friends be thanked, did seldom forsake her,
And from the soft duns of my landlord the Quaker,
The Centerarian's Story
© Walt Whitman
GIVE me your hand, old Revolutionary;
The hill-top is nigh-but a few steps, (make room, gentlemen
Up the path you have follow'd me well, spite of your hundred and
extra years;
You can walk, old man, though your eyes are almost done;
Your faculties serve you, and presently I must have them serve me.
The Seasons: Winter
© James Thomson
OH! bear me then to high, embowering, Shades;
To twilight Groves, and visionary Vales;
To weeping Grottos, and to hoary Caves;
Where Angel-Forms are seen, and Voices heard,
Sigh'd in low Whispers, that abstract the Soul,
From outward Sense, far into Worlds remote.
