Government poems
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The Silent Ones
© Robert William Service
I'm just an ordinary chap
Who comes home to his tea,
And mostly I don't care a rap
What people think of me;
God's Vagabond
© Robert William Service
A passion to be free
Has ever mastered me;
To none beneath the sun
Will I bow down,--not one
Shall leash my liberty.
Aunt Jane
© Robert William Service
When Aunt Jane died we hunted round,
And money everywhere we found.
How much I do not care to say,
But no death duties will we pay,
And Aunt Jane will be well content
We bilked the bloody Government.
Freedom's Fool
© Robert William Service
To hell with Government I say;
I'm sick of all the piddling pack.
I'd like to scram, get clean away,
And never, nevermore come back.
Class-Mates
© Robert William Service
Joe Giles went in for grabbing gold,
And grovelled in the dirt;
He, too, looks prematurely old,
His gastric ulcers hurt:
Although he has a heap of dough.
I do not envy Joe.
Paradise Regained: The Fourth Book
© John Milton
Perplexed and troubled at his bad success
The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,
Discovered in his fraud, thrown from his hope
So oft, and the persuasive rhetoric
Paradise Lost: Book 12
© John Milton
As one who in his journey bates at noon,
Though bent on speed; so here the Arch-Angel paused
Betwixt the world destroyed and world restored,
If Adam aught perhaps might interpose;
Paradise Lost: Book 10
© John Milton
Mean while the heinous and despiteful act
Of Satan, done in Paradise; and how
He, in the serpent, had perverted Eve,
Her husband she, to taste the fatal fruit,
Comus
© John Milton
The ATTENDANT SPIRIT, afterwards in the habit of THYRSIS.
COMUS, with his Crew.
The LADY.
FIRST BROTHER.
SECOND BROTHER.
SABRINA, the Nymph.
Trinity Place
© Carl Sandburg
THE GRAVE of Alexander Hamilton is in Trinity yard at the end of Wall Street.
The grave of Robert Fulton likewise is in Trinity yard where Wall Street stops.
The Mayor of Gary
© Carl Sandburg
I ASKED the Mayor of Gary about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week.
And the Mayor of Gary answered more workmen steal time on the job in Gary than any other place in the United States.
Go into the plants and you will see men sitting around doing nothingmachinery does everything, said the Mayor of Gary when I asked him about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week.
And he wore cool cream pants, the Mayor of Gary, and white shoes, and a barber had fixed him up with a shampoo and a shave and he was easy and imperturbable though the government weather bureau thermometer said 96 and children were soaking their heads at bubbling fountains on the street corners.
Snow
© Carl Sandburg
SNOW took us away from the smoke valleys into white mountains, we saw velvet blue cows eating a vermillion grass and they gave us a pink milk.
Snow changes our bones into fog streamers caught by the wind and spelled into many dances.
Legends
© Carl Sandburg
CLOWNS DYINGFIVE circus clowns dying this year, morning newspapers told their lives, how each one horizontal in a last gesture of hands arranged by an undertaker, shook thousands into convulsions of laughter from behind rouge-red lips and powder-white face.
STEAMBOAT BILLWhen the boilers of the Robert E. Lee exploded, a steamboat winner of many races on the Mississippi went to the bottom of the river and never again saw the wharves of Natchez and New Orleans.
And a legend lives on that two gamblers were blown toward the sky and during their journey laid bets on which of the two would go higher and which would be first to set foot on the turf of the earth again.
Government
© Carl Sandburg
Everywhere I saw that Government is a thing made of
men, that Government has blood and bones, it is
many mouths whispering into many ears, sending
telegrams, aiming rifles, writing orders, saying
"yes" and "no."
Death Snips Proud Men
© Carl Sandburg
DEATH is stronger than all the governments because the governments are men and men die and then death laughs: Now you see em, now you dont.
Death is stronger than all proud men and so death snips proud men on the nose, throws a pair of dice and says: Read em and weep.
To The Pious Memory Of The Accomplished Young Lady Mrs. Anne Killigrew
© John Dryden
Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the Blest;
Whose palms, new pluck'd from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Ode
© John Dryden
Now all those charms, that blooming grace,
That well-proportioned shape, and beauteous face,
Shall never more be seen by mortal eyes;
In earth the much-lamented virgin lies!
Not wit nor piety could Fate prevent;
The Medal
© John Dryden
Thus inborn broils the factions would engage,
Or wars of exiled heirs, or foreign rage,
Till halting vengeance overtook our age,
And our wild labours, wearied into rest,
Reclined us on a rightful monarch's breast.
Absalom And Achitophel
© John Dryden
Him staggering so when Hell's dire agent found,
While fainting virtue scarce maintain'd her ground,
He pours fresh forces in, and thus replies:
