Work poems
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The Progress of Spring
© Alfred Tennyson
THE groundflame of the crocus breaks the mould,
Fair Spring slides hither o'er the Southern sea,
The Benefit Of Trouble
© Edgar Albert Guest
IF LIFE were rosy and skies were blue
And never a cloud appeared,
If every heart that you loved proved true,
And never a friendship seared;
If there were no troubles to fret your soul,
You never would struggle to gain your goal.
Wind-Clouds And Star-Drifts
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
Here am I, bound upon this pillared rock,
Prey to the vulture of a vast desire
That feeds upon my life. I burst my bands
And steal a moment's freedom from the beak,
The clinging talons and the shadowing plumes;
Then comes the false enchantress, with her song;
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam 251-500 (Whinfield Translation)
© Omar Khayyám
Are you depressed? Then take of bhang one grain,
Of rosy grape-juice take one pint or twain;
Sufis, you say, must not take this or that,
Then go and eat the pebbles off the plain!
Paradise Lost : Book IV.
© John Milton
O, for that warning voice, which he, who saw
The Apocalypse, heard cry in Heaven aloud,
To the Clerk of the Weather
© Jessie Pope
Dear Sir, we've had enough.
Do you forget, I think you do, perhaps,
Our temperate position on the maps?
Daily we mourn the collar's swift collapse,
The limp and wrinkled cuff.
The Golden Yesterday
© Roderic Quinn
AFTER a spell of chill, grey weather,
(Green, O green, are the feet of Spring!)
The heaven is here of flower and feather,
Of wild red blossom and flashing wing.
High-Worthy Mister!
© James Russell Lowell
Zekle crep' up, quite unbeknown,
An' peeked in thru the winder,
An' there sot Huldy all alone,
'ith no one nigh to hender.
Any Saint
© Francis Thompson
His shoulder did I hold
Too high that I, o'erbold
Weak one,
Should lean thereon.
Psalm 138
© Isaac Watts
[With all my powers of heart and tongue
I'll praise my Maker in my song:
Angels shall hear the notes I raise,
Approve the song, and join the praise.
Apology For Bad Dreams
© Robinson Jeffers
I
In the purple light, heavy with redwood, the slopes drop seaward,
The Hall Of Justice
© George Crabbe
Take, take away thy barbarous hand,
And let me to thy Master speak;
Remit awhile the harsh command,
And hear me, or my heart will break.
The Atoning Yesterday
© Louise Imogen Guiney
And if from skyey minsters now unhoused,
Earth's massy workings at the forge we hear,
The black roll of the congregated sea,
And war's live hoof: O yet, last year, last year
We were the lark-lulled shepherdlings, that drowsed
Grave-deep, at noon, in grass of Arcady!
As On A Holiday
© Friedrich Hölderlin
As on a holiday, when a farmer
Goes out to look at his fields, in the morning,
Creation
© Sophus Niels Christen Claussen
I am unborn as yet, but am delivered giving birth.
From the life in my work I sense the life in myself,
robbed of this mirror, I am as good as laid in earth.
'The Aeneid of Virgil: Book 5
© Publius Vergilius Maro
MEANTIME the Trojan cuts his watry way,
Fixd on his voyage, thro the curling sea;
Thou Art Indeed Just
© Gerard Manley Hopkins
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leav{`e}d how thick! lac{`e}d they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build - but not I build; no, but strain,
Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
The Waster's Presentiment
© Robert Fuller Murray
I shall be spun. There is a voice within
Which tells me plainly I am all undone;
For though I toil not, neither do I spin,
I shall be spun.
