Those who survived the Great Depression of the 1930s have a tough, no-nonsense take on what work is. If when I was young I'd told my father I was looking for fulfilling work, he would have looked at me as if I'd just arrived from Mars. Here the Pennsylvania poet, Jan Beatty, takes on the voice of her father to illustrate the thinking of a generation of Americans.

A Rhymed Lesson (Urania)

© Oliver Wendell Holmes

Are angel faces, silent and serene,
Bent on the conflicts of this little scene,
Whose dream-like efforts, whose unreal strife,
Are but the preludes to a larger life?

Further Language From Truthful James

© Francis Bret Harte

Do I sleep? do I dream?
Do I wonder and doubt?
Are things what they seem?
Or is visions about?
Is our civilization a failure?
Or is the Caucasian played out?

Magnificence

© John Skelton

What I say herke a worde.
Fansy.
Do away I say the deuylles torde.
Counterfet coun.

Properzia Rossi

© Felicia Dorothea Hemans

Tell me no more, no more

Of my soul's lofty gifts! Are they not vain

Requiescat In Pace

© Jean Ingelow

O my heart, my heart is sick awishing and awaiting:
The lad took up his knapsack, he went, he went his way;
And I looked on for his coming, as a prisoner through the grating
Looks and longs and longs and wishes for its opening day.

The Progress Of Refinement. Part I.

© Henry James Pye

Rous'd by those honors cull'd by Glory's hand
To dress the Victor on the Olympic sand,
With active toil each ardent stripling tries
To bind his forehead with the immortal prize;
Hence strength and beauty deck the Grecian race,
And manly labor gives them manly grace.

The Lordship Of Corfu

They vowed a vow methinks ne'er vowed before,
The while their galley, strangely laden, bore
Down the south wind, which freshly blew from shore.

Colin Clouts Come Home Againe

Colin Clouts Come Home Againe

THe shepheards boy (best knowen by that name)

Stray Birds 21 - 30

21

THEY throw their shadows before them

The Restoration Of The Works Of Art In Italy

Vain dream! degraded Rome! thy noon is o'er,
Once lost, thy spirit shall revive no more.
It sleeps with those, the sons of other days,
Who fix'd on thee the world's adoring gaze;
Those, blest to live, while yet thy star was high,
More blest, ere darkness quench'd its beam, to die!

BRIGHT as a morn of spring,

That jubilates along the earth,

Floretty's Musical Contribution

And then some one
Of the loud-wrangling boys said--"_Course_ they's none
No more, _these_ days!--They's Fairies _ust_ to be,
But they're all dead, a hunderd years!" said he.