Work poems
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The Combat. By Etty
© Letitia Elizabeth Landon
THEY fled,--for there was for the brave
Left only a dishonour'd grave.
The Sleepers
© Walt Whitman
I WANDER all night in my vision,
Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and
stopping,
Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers,
Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory,
Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.
He Gives His Beloved Certain Rhymes
© William Butler Yeats
Fasten your hair with a golden pin,
And bind up every wandering tress;
I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:
It worked at them, day out, day in,
Building a sorrowful loveliness
Out of the battles of old times.
Spirit Whose Work Is Done
© Walt Whitman
SPIRIT whose work is done! spirit of dreadful hours!
Ere, departing, fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets;
Dives In Torment
© Robert Norwood
THIS was my failure, who thought that the feast
Rivalled the rapture of bird on the wing;
Rivalled the lily all robed like a priest;
Smoke of the pollen when Rose-censers swing.
Your Hand
© Paul Celan
Your Hand full of Hours, you came to me and I said:
Your Hair is not brown.
So you lifted it, lightly, onto the Balance of Grief, it was
Heavier than I
The Hands That Hang Down
© Ada Cambridge
O Lord, I am so tired!
My heart is sick and sore.
I work, and work, and do no good-
And I can try no more!
Buddha In The Workroom
© Lesbia Harford
Sometimes the skirts I push through my machine
Spread circlewise, strong petalled lobe on lobe,
And look for the rapt moment of a dream
Like Buddha's robe.
The Australian Marseillaise
© Henry Lawson
We are marching on and onward
To the silver-streak of dawn,
To the dynasty of mankind
We are marching on.
A Tryst
© Celia Thaxter
From out the desolation of the North
An iceberg took it away,
From its detaining comrades breaking forth,
And traveling night and day.
The Borough. Letter X: Clubs And Social Meetings
© George Crabbe
Next is the Club, where to their friends in town
Our country neighbours once a month come down;
We term it Free-and-Easy, and yet we
Find it no easy matter to be free:
E'en in our small assembly, friends among,
Are minds perverse, there's something will be
Looks A-Knowd Avore
© William Barnes
While zome, a-gwaïn from pleäce to pleäce,
Do daily meet wi' zome new feäce,
The Highway To Fame
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
In every man this world doth hold
Two selves are cast in that human mould.
If he hearken but to the voice of one,
Then heaven is his when his work is done;
But if to the other his ear doth turn,
Despair in his heart shall for ever burn.
The Debate In The Sennit
© James Russell Lowell
SOT TO A NUSRY RHYME
'Here we stan' on the Constitution, by thunder!
Psalm LXXXVI. (86)
© John Milton
Thy gracious ear, O Lord, encline,
O hear me I thee pray,
For I am poor, and almost pine
With need, and sad decay.
The Good Of It
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
SOME men strut proudly, all purple and gold,
Hiding queer deeds 'neath a cloak of good fame;
I creep along, braving hunger and cold,
To keep my heart stainless as well as my name;
So, so, where is the good of it?
Holy Sonnet I: Thou Hast Made Me
© John Donne
Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
An Instance Of Dyspepsia
© Eli Siegel
I
There is a man of fifty-four years;
He has dyspepsia, it appears;
He chooses his food carefully,
