BUSINESS POEMS

Home

Years I had been from home,
And now, before the door
I dared not open, lest a face
I never saw before
.....

Emily Dickinson

A Servant To Servants

I didn't make you know how glad I was
To have you come and camp here on our land.
I promised myself to get down some day
And see the way you lived, but I don't know!
.....

Robert Frost

Reconstruction

So, the bank has bust it's boiler! And in six or seven year
It will pay me all my money back -- of course!
But the horse will perish waiting while the grass is germinating,
And I reckon I'll be something like the horse.
.....

Banjo Paterson

A Little Bread'a Crust'a Crumb

159

A little bread-a crust-a crumb-
A little trust-a demijohn-
.....

Emily Dickinson

A Rainy Day

Oh, what a blessed interval
A rainy day may be!
No lightning flash nor tempest roar,
But one incessant, steady pour
.....

Hattie Howard

To A Bird At Dawn

O bird that somewhere yonder sings,
In the dim hour 'twixt dreams and dawn,
Lone in the hush of sleeping things,
In some sky sanctuary withdrawn;
.....

Richard Le Gallienne

Do Not Shed A Tear

DO NOT SHED A TEAR

I shall fight alone, all alone--
The battle against my Satan,
.....

Mohammad Younus

A Railroad Eclogue

Father: What brought thee back, lad?

Son: Father! the same feet
As took me brought me back, I warrant ye.
.....

Walter Savage Landor

Departmental

An ant on the tablecloth
Ran into a dormant moth
Of many times his size.
He showed not the least surprise.
.....

Robert Frost

Poems For Piraye (9 To 10 O-clock Poems)

Remembering you is good
in prison
amid the news
of victory and death
.....

Nazim Hikmet

My Life

None of your business
Something of my business
My life changes like seasons
And I don’t need your opinions,
.....

Fihaal

Absalom And Achitophel

In pious times, ere priest-craft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin;
When man, on many, multipli'd his kind,
Ere one to one was cursedly confin'd:
.....

John Dryden

Died Of Wounds

His wet white face and miserable eyes
Brought nurses to him more than groans and sighs:
But hoarse and low and rapid rose and fell
His troubled voice: he did the business well.
.....

Siegfried Sassoon

Summer

Winter is cold-hearted,
Spring is yea and nay,
Autumn is a weathercock
Blown every way:
.....

Christina Rossetti

The Working Monarch

Rising early in the morning,
We proceed to light the fire,
Then our Majesty adorning
In its work-a-day attire,
.....

William Schwenck Gilbert

Letter To Maria Gisborne

The spider spreads her webs, whether she be
In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;
The silk-worm in the dark green mulberry leaves
His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;
.....

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Parliament Hill Fields

ale as china
The round sky goes on minding its business.
Your absence is inconspicuous;
Nobody can tell what I lack.
.....

Sylvia Plath

To Think Of Time

To think of time, of all that retrospection!
To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward!

Have you guess'd you yourself would not continue?
.....

Walt Whitman

The Italian In England

That second time they hunted me
From hill to plain, from shore to sea,
And Austria, hounding far and wide
Her blood-hounds through the countryside,
.....

Robert Browning

A Modest Request

Complied With After The Dinner At President Everett's Inauguration

Scene, - a back parlor in a certain square,
Or court, or lane, - in short, no matter where;
.....

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Died Of Wounds

His wet, white face and miserable eyes
Brought nurses to him more than groans and sighs:
But hoarse and low and rapid rose and fell
His troubled voice: he did the business well.
.....

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon

A Song Of Winter Weather

It isn't the foe that we fear;
It isn't the bullets that whine;
It isn't the business career
Of a shell, or the bust of a mine;
.....

Robert Service

Youth And Art

1 It once might have been, once only:
2 We lodged in a street together,
3 You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely,
4 I, a lone she-bird of his feather.
.....

Robert Browning

Er Commercio Libbero (the Free Trade)

Be'? So' pputtana, venno la mi' pelle:
Fo la miggnotta, si, sto ar cancelletto:
Lo pijo in quello largo e in quello stretto:
C'è gnent'antro da dì? Che cose belle!
.....

Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli

Goodbye To Tolerance

Genial poets, pink-faced
earnest witsâ??
you have given the world
some choice morsels,
.....

Denise Levertov

The Pied Piper Of Hamelin

A Child's Story

Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
.....

Robert Browning

The Vanishing Red

He is said to have been the last Red man
In Acton. And the Miller is said to have laughed-
If you like to call such a sound a laugh.
But he gave no one else a laugher's license.
.....

Robert Frost

An Octopus

of ice. Deceptively reserved and flat,
it lies “in grandeur and in mass”
beneath a sea of shifting snow-dunes;
dots of cyclamen-red and maroon on its clearly defined
.....

Marianne Moore

Why Was Cupid A Boy

Why was Cupid a boy,
And why a boy was he?
He should have been a girl,
For aught that I can see.
.....

William Blake

Ode On A Distant Prospect Of Eton College

Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,
That crown the watery glade,
Where grateful Science still adores
Her Henry's holy shade;
.....

Thomas Gray

Chums

HUSBAND and wife for fourteen years!
And just like children now,
As fond of one another as
The day they took their vow.
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

Good-bye, And Keep Cold

This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark
And cold to an orchard so young in the bark
Reminds me of all that can happen to harm
An orchard away at the end of the farm
.....

Robert Frost

Man

Weighing the steadfastness and state
Of some mean things which here below reside,
Where birds like watchful clocks the noiseless date
And intercourse of times divide;
.....

Henry Vaughan

Dad

When I was a kid,
Smiles filled my face,
Even with porridge for lunch,
I still felt comforted,
.....

Brian Dredan

The Elder Brother.

Centrick, in London noise, and London follies,
Proud Covent Garden blooms, in smoky glory;
For chairmen, coffee-rooms, piazzas, dollies,
Cabbages, and comedians, fame'd in story!
.....

George Colman

The Call

*O you who believe! When the call is proclaimed for the prayer on Friday, come to the remembrance of Allah and Salat and leave off business that is better for you if you don't know (Q62v9-12)*

*THE CALL*

.....

Paciolo Pen Saint

The Housekeeper

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.
.....

Robert Frost

The Deserted Village

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visits paid,
And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed:
.....

Oliver Goldsmith

A Complaint

There is a change-and I am poor;
Your love hath been, nor long ago,
A fountain at my fond heart's door,
Whose only business was to flow;
.....

William Wordsworth

Ode: Intimations Of Immortality From Recollections Of Early Childhood

The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
(Wordsworth, “My Heart Leaps Up”)
.....

William Wordsworth

Mannahatta

I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon, lo! upsprang the aboriginal name!

Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient;
.....

Walt Whitman

Tam O'shanter

A Tale

“Of Brownyis and of Bogilis full is this Buke.”
-Gawin Douglas.
.....

Robert Burns

The Odyssey: Book 17

When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared,
Telemachus bound on his sandals and took a strong spear that suited
his hands, for he wanted to go into the city. “Old friend,” said he to
the swineherd, “I will now go to the town and show myself to my
.....

Homer

The Odyssey: Book 20

Ulysses slept in the cloister upon an undressed bullock's hide, on
the top of which he threw several skins of the sheep the suitors had
eaten, and Eurynome threw a cloak over him after he had laid himself
down. There, then, Ulysses lay wakefully brooding upon the way in
.....

Homer

The Odyssey: Book 05

And now, as Dawn rose from her couch beside Tithonus-harbinger of
light alike to mortals and immortals-the gods met in council and with
them, Jove the lord of thunder, who is their king. Thereon Minerva
began to tell them of the many sufferings of Ulysses, for she pitied
.....

Homer

Comus

A Masque Presented At Ludlow Castle, 1634, Before

The Earl Of Bridgewater, Then President Of Wales.

.....

John Milton

Scorn

You business men with your large desks with your stenographers and your bell-boys and your private telephones I say to you these are the four walls of your cage.
You are tame as canaries with your small bird-brains where lurks the evil worm you are fat from being over-fed you know not the lean wild sunbirds that arrow down paths of fire.
I despise you. I am too hard to pity you. I would hang you on the gallows of the Stock Exchange. I would flay you with taxes. I would burn you alive with Wall Street Journals. I wouild condemn you to an endless round of bank banquets. I deride you. I mock at you. I laugh you to scorn.

.....

Harry Crosby

Lines

Addressed to Jonathan Wingle, Esq.

In summer time we roam o'er dingle,
But winter draws us round the ingle ;
.....

James Mcintyre

Hope

Hope is a word
Written deep in the heart &
Thoughts of every human being,
That makes our mentality firm.
.....

Norbu Dorji

An Essay On Man: Epistle I.

THE DESIGN.

Having proposed to write some pieces on human life and manners, such as (to use my Lord Bacon's expression) come home to men's business and bosoms, I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering man in the abstract, his nature and his state; since, to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end and purpose of its being.

.....

Alexander Pope