Work poems
/ page 252 of 355 /Sordello: Book the Fourth
© Robert Browning
Meantime Ferrara lay in rueful case;
The lady-city, for whose sole embrace
An Inscription - For Stratfield Saye
© Samuel Rogers
These are the groves a grateful people gave
For noblest service; and from age to age,
May they, to such as come with listening ear,
Relate the story! Sacred is their shade;
Blake's Victory
© Andrew Marvell
The Peak's proud height the Spaniards all admire,
Yet in their breasts carry a pride much high'r.
Only to this vast hill a power is given,
At once both to inhabit earth and heaven.
But this stupendous prospect did not near,
Make them admire, so much as they did fear.
From the Commemoration Ode
© Harriet Monroe
WASHINGTON
WHEN dreaming kings, at odds with swift paced time,
The Sluggard
© Isaac Watts
'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I heard him complain,
"You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again."
As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed,
Turns his sides and his shoulders and his heavy head.
On Mr. Milton's Paradise Lost
© Andrew Marvell
When I beheld the Poet blind, yet bold,
In slender Book his vast Design unfold,
Messiah Crown'd, Gods Reconcil'd Decree,
Rebelling Angels, the Forbidden Tree,
Last Instructions to a Painter
© Andrew Marvell
Here, Painter, rest a little, and survey
With what small arts the public game they play.
For so too Rubens, with affairs of state,
His labouring pencil oft would recreate.
An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland
© Andrew Marvell
The forward youth that would appear
Must now forsake his Muses dear,
Nor in the shadows sing
His numbers languishing.
Thoughts in a Garden
© Andrew Marvell
HOW vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays,
And their uncessant labours see
Crown'd from some single herb or tree,
Moses In The Bulrushes. A Sacred Drama
© Hannah More
Hebrew Woman.
Jochebed, Mother of Moses.
Miriam, his Sister.
Upon Appleton House, to My Lord Fairfax
© Andrew Marvell
Within this sober Frame expect
Work of no Forrain Architect;
That unto Caves the Quarries drew,
And Forrests did to Pastures hew;
The Child Of The Islands - Winter
© Caroline Norton
I.
ERE the Night cometh! On how many graves
Rests, at this hour, their first cold winter's snow!
Wild o'er the earth the sleety tempest raves;
First Anniversary
© Andrew Marvell
Like the vain curlings of the watery maze,
Which in smooth streams a sinking weight does raise,
So Man, declining always, disappears
In the weak circles of increasing years;
And his short tumults of themselves compose,
While flowing Time above his head does close.
The Garden
© Andrew Marvell
How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the Palm, the Oke, or Bayes;
And their uncessant Labours see
Crown'd from some single Herb or Tree,
The Killing Place
© Edgar Albert Guest
Were hiking along at a two-forty pace
We 're making life seem like a man-killing race,
With our nerves all on edge and our jaws firmly set
We go rushing along; with our brows lined with sweat
And our cheeks pale and drawn every minute we dash,
And the goal that we 're after is merely more cash.
Psalm 111 part 1
© Isaac Watts
Songs of immortal praise belong
To my almighty God;
He has my heart, and he my tongue,
To spread his name abroad.
Another Version
© Lisel Mueller
Our trees are aspens, but people
mistake them for birches;
they think of us as characters
in a Russian novel, Kitty and Levin
For A Thirteenth Birthday
© Lisel Mueller
You have read War and Peace.
Now here is Sister Carrie,
not up to Tolstoy; still
it will second the real world:
Delicatessen
© Joyce Kilmer
Why is that wanton gossip Fame
So dumb about this man's affairs?
Why do we titter at his name
Who come to buy his curious wares?