Work poems
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Fable Or History
© Victor Marie Hugo
Possessed of royal appetite, and feeling rather thin,
A monkey one day dressed himself in a tiger's skin
Griselda: A Society Novel In Verse - Chapter IV
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
How shall I take up this vain parable
And ravel out its issue? Heaven and Hell,
The principles of good and evil thought,
Embodied in our lives, have blindly fought
Minor Litany
© Stephen Vincent Benet
This is for those who work and those who may not,
For those who suddenly come to a locked door,
And the work falls out of their hands;
For those who step off the pavement into hell,
Having not observed the red light and the warning signals
Because they were busy or ignorant or proud.
Limerick: There was an Old Man of Vesuvius,
© Edward Lear
There was an Old Man of Vesuvius,
Who studied the works of Vitruvius;
When the flames burnt his book,
To drinking he took,
That morbid Old Man of Vesuvius.
On The Misery Of Soldiers
© Confucius
Yellow now is all the grass;
All the days in marching pass.
On the move is every man;
Hard work, far and near, they plan.
The Lament Of Tasso
© George Gordon Byron
I.
Long years!--It tries the thrilling frame to bear
And eagle-spirit of a child of Song--
Long years of outrage, calumny, and wrong;
The Columbiad: Book II
© Joel Barlow
High o'er his world as thus Columbus gazed,
And Hesper still the changing scene emblazed,
Round all the realms increasing lustre flew,
And raised new wonders to the Patriarch's view.
The Complaint Of The Goddess Of The Glaciers To Doctor Darwin
© Helen Maria Williams
WHILE o'er the Alpine cliffs I musing stray'd,
And gaz'd on nature, in her charms severe,
The last soft beam of parting day display'd
The Glacier-Goddess, on her crystal sphere.
The Farmer's Boy - Winter
© Robert Bloomfield
If now in beaded rows drops deck the spray,
While _Phoebus_ grants a momentary ray,
Let but a cloud's broad shadow intervene,
And stiffen'd into gems the drops are seen;
And down the furrow'd oak's broad southern side
Streams of dissolving rime no longer glide.
Of Imputed Righteousness
© John Bunyan
Now, if thou wouldst inherit righteousness,
And so sanctification possess
Belshazzar. A Sacred Drama
© Hannah More
Persons of the Drama :--
Belshazzar, King of Babylon.
Nitocris, the Queen-Mother.
Courtiers, Astrologers, Parasites.
Daniel, the Jewish Prophet.
Captive Jews, &c. &c.
The Marshes of Glynn
© Sidney Lanier
Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire, --
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves, --
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good; --
We Who Stay At Home
© Edgar Albert Guest
When you were just our little boy, on many a night we crept
Unto your cot and watched o'er you, and all the time you slept.
We tucked the covers round your form and smoothed your pillow, too,
And sometimes stooped and kissed your cheeks, but that you never knew.
Just as we came to you back then through many a night and day,
Our spirits now shall come to you--to kiss and watch and pray.
Hymn 37 part 2
© Isaac Watts
Do I believe what Jesus saith,
And think his gospel true?
Lord, make me bold to own my faith,
And practise virtue too.
The Happy Days When I Wer Young
© William Barnes
O valley dear! I wish that I
'D a-liv'd in former times, to die
Wi' all the happy souls that trod
Thy turf in peäce, an' died to God;
Or gone wi' them that laugh'd an' zung
In happy days when I wer young!
