Work poems
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Hudibras: Part 3 - Canto III
© Samuel Butler
What made thee, when they all were gone,
And none but thou and I alone,
To act the Devil, and forbear
To rid me of my hellish fear?
A Color of the Sky
© Tony Hoagland
Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,
driving over the hills from work.
There are the dark parts on the road
when you pass through clumps of wood
and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,
but that doesn’t make the road an allegory.
The Two Elizabeths
© John Greenleaf Whittier
AMIDST Thuringia's wooded hills she dwelt,
A high-born princess, servant of the poor,
Sweetening with gracious words the food she dealt
To starving throngs at Wartburg's blazoned door.
Another Insane Devotion
© Gerald Stern
This was gruesome—fighting over a ham sandwich
with one of the tiny cats of Rome, he leaped
Paradise Lost : Book X.
© John Milton
Mean while the heinous and despiteful act
Of Satan, done in Paradise; and how
The Troubadour. Canto 4
© Letitia Elizabeth Landon
But he was safe!--that very day
Farewell, it had been her's to say;
And he was gone to his own land,
To seek another maiden's hand.
Love Song: I and Thou
© Alan Dugan
Nothing is plumb, level, or square:
the studs are bowed, the joists
Olney Hymn 54: Love Constraining To Obedience
© William Cowper
No strength of nature can suffice
To serve the Lord aright:
And what she has she misapplies,
For want of clearer light.
Echoes Of Love's House
© William Morris
Love gives every gift whereby we long to live
Love takes every gift, and nothing back doth give.
When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
© Patrick Kavanagh
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
A Greeting
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Thrice welcome from the Land of Flowers
And golden-fruited orange bowers
L'Envoi
© James Russell Lowell
Whether my heart hath wiser grown or not,
In these three years, since I to thee inscribed,
Sonnet CXI: O, for my Sake do you with Fortune Chide
© William Shakespeare
O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
Consistency
© Eugene Field
Should painter attach to a fair human head
The thick, turgid neck of a stallion,
Or depict a spruce lass with the tail of a bass,
I am sure you would guy the rapscallion.
Address For The Opening Of The Fifth Avenue Theatre
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
HANG out our banners on the stately tower
It dawns at last--the long-expected hour!
The steep is climbed, the star-lit summit won,
The builder's task, the artist's labor done;
Before the finished work the herald stands,
And asks the verdict of your lips and hands!
Three Years She Grew
© André Breton
Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown;
This Child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A Lady of my own.
Ovid in the Third Reich
© Geoffrey Hill
I love my work and my children. God
Is distant, difficult. Things happen.
Too near the ancient troughs of blood
Innocence is no earthly weapon.
