Work poems
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Amours De Voyage, Canto I
© Arthur Hugh Clough
I am to tell you, you say, what I think of our last new acquaintance.
Well, then, I think that George has a very fair right to be jealous.
I do not like him much, though I do not dislike being with him.
He is what people call, I suppose, a superior man, and
Certainly seems so to me; but I think he is terribly selfish.
The Mound By The Lake
© Herman Melville
The grass shall never forget this grave.
When homeward footing it in the sun
The Deacon's Masterpiece Or, The Wonderful
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.
Logic is logic. That's all I say.
Come After Jinny
© Sheldon Allan Silverstein
He'll be comin' down the road at the break of day
His head thrown back and his guns tied low
He's comin' after Jinny wants to take her away but I ain't gonna let her go
'Monstre' Balloon
© Richard Harris Barham
Oh! fie! Mister Nokes,- for shame, Mister Nokes!
To be poking your fun at us plain-dealing folks -
Sir, this isn't a time to be cracking your jokes,
And such jesting, your malice but scurvily cloaks;
Such a trumpery tale every one of us smokes,
And we know very well your whole story's a hoax!-
Hem And Haw
© Bliss William Carman
Hem and Haw were the sons of sin,
Created to shally and shirk;
Hem lay 'round and Haw looked on
While God did all the work.
Practicing Time
© Edgar Albert Guest
Always whenever I want to play
I've got to practice an hour a day,
Reality
© Emma Lazarus
These things alone endure;
"They are the solid facts," that we may grasp,
Leading us on and upward if we clasp
And hold them firm and sure.
Stable by Claudia Emerson Andrews: American Life in Poetry #26 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
Descriptive poetry depends for its effects in part upon the vividness of details. Here the Virginia poet, Claudia Emerson, describes the type of old building all of us have seen but may not have stopped to look at carefully. And thoughtfully.
Stable
Custer: Book Third
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Were every red man slaughtered in a day,
Still would that sacrifice but poorly pay
For one insulted woman captive's woes.
Sonnet LXXXIII. The Sea View
© Charlotte Turner Smith
THE upland shepherd, as reclined he lies
On the soft turf that clothes the mountain brow,
Marks the bright sea-line mingling with the skies;
Or from his course celestial, sinking slow,
To The Additional Examiner For 1875
© James Clerk Maxwell
Queen Cram went straying
Where Tait was swaying,
Book Third [Residence at Cambridge]
© William Wordsworth
IT was a dreary morning when the wheels
Rolled over a wide plain o'erhung with clouds,
And nothing cheered our way till first we saw
The long-roofed chapel of King's College lift
Turrets and pinnacles in answering files,
Extended high above a dusky grove.
A Slight Misunderstanding at the Jasper Gate
© Henry Lawson
Oh, do you hear the argument, far up above the skies?
The voice of old Saint Peter, in expostulation rise?
Wordsworth
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Dear friends, who read the world aright,
And in its common forms discern
A beauty and a harmony
The many never learn!
Seventy-Six
© William Cullen Bryant
What heroes from the woodland sprung,
When, through the fresh awakened land,
The thrilling cry of freedom rung,
And to the work of warfare strung
The yeoman's iron hand!
Truth
© William Cowper
Man, on the dubious waves of error toss'd,
His ship half founder'd, and his compass lost,
Afterwards by David Baker: American Life in Poetry #133 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
It may be that we are most alone when attending funerals, at least that's how it seems to me. By alone I mean that even among throngs of mourners we pull back within ourselves and peer out at life as if through a window. David Baker, an Ohio poet, offers us a picture of a funeral that could be anybody's.
Afterwards
A short ride in the van, then the eight of us
there in the heatâwhite shirtsleeves sticking,
the women's gloves offâfanning our faces.
The workers had set up a big blue tent
Metamorphoses: Book The Fifth
© Ovid
The End of the Fifth Book.
Translated into English verse under the direction of
Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison,
William Congreve and other eminent hands
