Work poems
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Spring - The First Pastoral ; or Damon
© Alexander Pope
Daphnis.
O Love! for Sylvia let me gain the prize,
And make my tongue victorious as her eyes;
No lambs or sheep for victims I'll impart,
Thy victim, Love, shall be the shepherd's heart.
Notes To Be Left In A Cornerstone
© Stephen Vincent Benet
So, always, there were the streets and the high, clear light
And it was a crowded island and a great city;
They built high up in the air.
Mollymook
© Dale Harcombe
All week, in this rented house,
sea spray and whispers of wind
weave through the eucalypts,
like a Sondheim melody.
One Of The Signers
© John Greenleaf Whittier
O storied vale of Merrimac
Rejoice through all thy shade and shine,
And from his century's sleep call back
A brave and honored son of thine.
Rule, Britannia! (With Variations)
© James Thomson
When Britain first, at heaven's command,
Arose from out the azure main;
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian Angels sung this strain:
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves.
Seed-Time And Harvest
© Ada Cambridge
Fret not thyself so sorely, heart of mine,
For that the pain hath roughly broke thy rest,-
That thy wild flowers lie dead upon thy breast,
Whereon the cloud-veiled sun hath ceased to shine.
The Ax-Helve
© Robert Frost
I've known ere now an interfering branch
Of alder catch my lifted ax behind me.
But that was in the woods, to hold my hand
From striking at another alder's roots,
Epistle To Mrs Teresa Blount.[On Her Leaving The Town After The Coronation]
© Alexander Pope
As some fond virgin, whom her mother's care
Drags from the town to wholesome country air,
In the Home Stretch
© Robert Frost
Never was I beladied so before.
Would evidence of having been called lady
More than so many times make me a lady
In common law, I wonder.
A Hundred Collars
© Robert Frost
Lancaster bore him--such a little town,
Such a great man. It doesn't see him often
Of late years, though he keeps the old homestead
And sends the children down there with their mother
A Brook in the City
© Robert Frost
The firm house lingers, though averse to square
With the new city street it has to wear A number in.
But what about the brook That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength
Mr. What's-His-Name
© James Whitcomb Riley
They called him Mr. What's-his-name:
From where he was, or why he came,
Or when, or what he found to do,
Nobody in the city knew.
The Mountain
© Robert Frost
The mountain held the town as in a shadow
I saw so much before I slept there once:
I noticed that I missed stars in the west,
Where its black body cut into the sky.
Artillerie
© George Herbert
As I one ev'ning sat before my cell,
Me thought a starre did shoot into my lap.
The Housekeeper
© Robert Frost
I let myself in at the kitchen door.
"It's you," she said. "I can't get up. Forgive me
Not answering your knock. I can no more
Let people in than I can keep them out.
The Hill Wife
© Robert Frost
One ought not to have to care
So much as you and I
Care when the birds come round the house
To seem to say good-bye;
The Code
© Robert Frost
There were three in the meadow by the brook
Gathering up windrows, piling cocks of hay,
With an eye always lifted toward the west
Where an irregular sun-bordered cloud
Snow
© Robert Frost
The three stood listening to a fresh access
Of wind that caught against the house a moment,
Gulped snow, and then blew free againthe Coles
Dressed, but dishevelled from some hours of sleep,
Meserve belittled in the great skin coat he wore.
Paul's Wife
© Robert Frost
To drive Paul out of any lumber camp
All that was needed was to say to him,
"How is the wife, Paul?"--and he'd disappear.
Some said it was because be bad no wife,
After The Fashion of An Old Emblem
© George MacDonald
I have long enough been working down in my cellar,
Working spade and pick, boring-chisel and drill;
I long for wider spaces, airy, clear-dark, and stellar:
Successless labour never the love of it did fill.
