Work poems
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Banking Coal
© Jean Toomer
Whoever it was who brought the first wood and coal
To start the Fire, did his part well;
Our Hired Girl
© James Whitcomb Riley
Our hired girl, she's 'Lizabuth Ann;
An' she can cook best things to eat!
Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee
© Henry Van Dyke
Joyful, joyful we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love,
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, hail Thee as the sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness, drive the dark of doubt away;
Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day.
The Gallows
© John Greenleaf Whittier
I.
THE suns of eighteen centuries have shone
Since the Redeemer walked with man, and made
The fisher's boat, the cavern's floor of stone,
An April Fool
© Alfred Austin
I sallied afield when the bud first swells,
And the sun first slanteth hotly,
And I came on a yokel in cap and bells,
And a suit of saffron motley.
Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, Painted by Sir George Beaumont
© André Breton
I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.
Rule Britannia
© James Thomson
When Britain first, at heaven's command,
Arose from out the azure main,
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sung this strain—
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves."
My mother’s body
© Marge Piercy
The dark socket of the year
the pit, the cave where the sun lies down
and threatens never to rise,
when despair descends softly as the snow
covering all paths and choking roads:
Parkinson’s Disease
© Washington Allston
While spoon-feeding him with one hand
she holds his hand with her other hand,
To Sir George Howland Beaumont, Bart From the South-West Coast Or Cumberland 1811
© William Wordsworth
FAR from our home by Grasmere's quiet Lake,
From the Vale's peace which all her fields partake,
Here on the bleakest point of Cumbria's shore
We sojourn stunned by Ocean's ceaseless roar;
The Pet-Lamb
© William Wordsworth
THE dew was falling fast, the stars began to blink;
I heard a voice; it said, "Drink, pretty creature, drink!"
And, looking o'er the hedge, before me I espied
A snow-white mountain-lamb with a Maiden at its side.
Monte Cassino. Terra Di Lavoro. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The Fourth)
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Beautiful valley! through whose verdant meads
Unheard the Garigliano glides along;--
The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds,
The river taciturn of classic song.
Sonnet. "Spirit of all sweet sounds! who in mid air"
© Frances Anne Kemble
Spirit of all sweet sounds! who in mid air
Sittest enthroned, vouchsafe to hear my prayer!
The Mariner's Cave
© Jean Ingelow
Once on a time there walked a mariner,
That had been shipwrecked;-on a lonely shore,
And the green water made a restless stir,
And a great flock of mews sped on before.
He had nor food nor shelter, for the tide
Rose on the one, and cliffs on the other side.
An Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland, Considered as the Subject of Poetry
© William Taylor Collins
Home, thou return'st from Thames, whose Naiads long
Have seen thee ling'ring, with a fond delay,
Creole
© Robert Pinsky
I’m tired of the gods, I’m pious about the ancestors: afloat
In the wake widening behind me in time, the restive devisers.
Paul Bunyan
© Sheldon Allan Silverstein
He rode through the woods on a big blue ox,
He had fists as hard as choppin' blocks,
Five hundred pounds and nine feet tall...that's Paul.
Nineteen-Fourteen: The Dead
© Rupert Brooke
Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain,
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,
And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have come into our heritage.
What I Have Seen #3
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
I saw two youths: both were fair in the face,
They had set out foot to foot in life's race;
But one said to the other, "I say now, my brother,
You are going a little too slow;
The world will look on, and say, 'See Josy John,'
We must put on more style, now, you know."
