Work poems
/ page 286 of 355 /
Sonnet XXXV. Life And Death. 7.
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
THE wish behind the thought is the soul's star
Of faith, and out of earth we build our heaven.
Life to each unschooled child of time has given
A fairy wand with which he thinks to unbar
As the Team's Head- Brass
© Edward Thomas
As the team's head-brass flashed out on the turn
The lovers disappeared into the wood.
I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm
That strewed the angle of the fallow, and
Italy : 8. The Brothers
© Samuel Rogers
In the same hour the breath of life receiving,
They came together and were beautiful;
But, as they slumbered in their mother's lap,
How mournful was their beauty! She would sit,
A Sketch
© George Gordon Byron
But to the theme, now laid aside too long,
The baleful burthen of this honest song,
Though all her former functions are no more,
She rules the circle which she served before.
Sunthin' In The Pastoral Line
© James Russell Lowell
Now I wuz settin' where I'd ben, it seemed,
An' ain't sure yit whether I rally dreamed,
Nor, ef I did, how long I might ha' slep',
When I hearn some un stompin' up the step,
An' lookirz' round, ef two an' two make four,
I see a Pilgrim Father in the door.
North Country
© Kenneth Slessor
North Country, filled with gesturing wood,
With trees that fence, like archers' volleys,
The flanks of hidden valleys
Where nothing's left to hide
James Garber
© Edgar Lee Masters
Do you remember, passer-by, the path
I wore across the lot where now stands the opera house,
Hasting with swift feet to work through many years?
Take its meaning to heart:
Ida Frickey
© Edgar Lee Masters
Nothing in life is alien to you:
I was a penniless girl from Summum
Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River.
All the houses stood before me with closed doors
In The Arc Of Your Mallet
© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
Don't go anywhere without me.
Let nothing happen in the sky apart from me,
E.C. Culbertson
© Edgar Lee Masters
Is it true, Spoon River,
That in the hall-way of the New Court House
There is a tablet of bronze
Containing the embossed faces
Harry Carey Goodhue
© Edgar Lee Masters
You never marveled, dullards of Spoon River,
When Chase Henry voted against the saloons
To revenge himself for being shut off.
But none of you was keen enough
On Fayrford Windowes
© William Strode
I know no paynt of poetry
Can mend such colourd Imag'ry
In sullen inke: yet Fayrford, I
May relish thy fayre memory.
Mickey M'Grew
© Edgar Lee Masters
It was just like everything else in life:
Something outside myself drew me down,
My own strength never failed me.
Why, there was the time I earned the money
With Mercy for the Greedy
© Anne Sexton
I pray to its shadow,
that gray place
where it lies on your letter… deep, deep.
I detest my sins and I try to believe
in The Cross. I touch its tender hips, its dark jawed face,
its solid neck, its brown sleep.
Report From Paradise
© Zbigniew Herbert
In paradise the work week is fixed at thirty hours
salaries are higher prices steadily go down
manual labour is not tiring (because of reduced gravity)
chopping wood is no harder than typing
the social system is stable and the rulers are wise
really in paradise one is better off than in whatever country
Gustav Richter
© Edgar Lee Masters
After a long day of work in my hot-houses
Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side
Your dreams may be abruptly ended.
I was among my flowers where some one
Ballad of Reading Gaol II
© Oscar Wilde
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
Henry Phipps
© Edgar Lee Masters
I was the Sunday school superintendent,
The dummy president of the wagon works
And the canning factory,
Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique;
Exempt
© Edgar Albert Guest
They have said you needn't go to the front to face the foe;
They have left you with your women and your children safe at home;
Josiah Tompkins
© Edgar Lee Masters
I was well known and much beloved
And rich, as fortunes are reckoned
In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked.
That was the home for me,
