Work poems
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Madam’s Past History
© Langston Hughes
My name is Johnson—
Madam Alberta K.
The Madam stands for business.
I’m smart that way.
To Joanna
© William Wordsworth
AMID the smoke of cities did you pass
The time of early youth; and there you learned,
Deola Thinking
© Cesare Pavese
Deola passes her mornings sitting in a cafe,
and nobody looks at her. Everyone’s rushing to work,
Sad Wine (II)
© Cesare Pavese
The hard thing’s to sit without being noticed.
Everything else will come easy. Three sips
"The Spacious Firmament"
© Joseph Addison
In Reason's Ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious Voice,
For ever singing, as they shine,
The Hand that made us is Divine.
An Easy Goin' Feller
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ther' ain't no use in all this strife,
An' hurryin', pell-mell, right thro' life.
Sappho
© James Wright
The twilight falls; I soften the dusting feathers,
And clean again.
The house has lain and moldered for three days.
The windows smeared with rain, the curtains torn,
The mice come in,
The kitchen blown with cold.
Effort at Speech Between Two People
© Katha Pollitt
: Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now?
I will tell you all. I will conceal nothing.
When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit
who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair :
a pink rabbit : it was my birthday, and a candle
burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy.
Veil, lord, mine eyes till she be past
© George Wither
Veil, Lord, mine eyes till she be past,
When Folly tempts my sight;
Morte d'Arthur
© Alfred Tennyson
To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere:
"It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus,
Aidless, alone, and smitten thro' the helm.
A little thing may harm a wounded man.
Yet I thy hest will all perform at full,
Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word."
The Ghost
© Richard Harris Barham
There stands a City,- neither large nor small,
Its air and situation sweet and pretty;
The Black Destrier. A Ballad Of The Third Crusade
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
FIRST 'mid the lion Richard's host,
Sir Aymer fought in Holy Land;
And they loved him well for his honest heart,
And they feared, for his stalwart hand.
Living Among the Dead
© William Matthews
To love the dead is easy.
They are final, perfect.
But to love a child
is sometimes to fail at love
while the dead look on
with their abstract sorrow.
Caliban upon Setebos
© Robert Browning
'Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match,
But not the stars; the stars came otherwise;
Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that:
Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon,
And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same.
Essay on Psychiatrists
© Robert Pinsky
It's crazy to think one could describe them—
Calling on reason, fantasy, memory, eyes and ears—
As though they were all alike any more
Fragment 5: Whom should I choose for my Judge?
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
What is the meed of thy Song? 'Tis the ceaseless, the thousandfold Echo
Which from the welcoming Hearts of the Pure repeats and prolongs it,
Each with a different Tone, compleat or in musical fragments.
