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On the Lord General Fairfax at the Siege of Colchester
© John Milton
Fairfax, whose name in arms through Europe rings Filling each mouth with envy, or with praise, And all her jealous monarchs with amaze And rumours loud, that daunt remotest kings;Thy firm unshak'n virtue ever brings Victory home, though new rebellions raise Their hydra heads, and the false north displays Her brok'n league, to imp their serpent wings:O yet a nobler task awaits thy hand; For what can war but endless war still breed? Till Truth and Right from Violence be freed,And Public Faith clear'd from the shameful brand Of Public Fraud
Tom Deadlight (1810)
© Herman Melville
During a tempest encountered homeward-bound from the Mediterranean, a grizzled petty-officer, one of the two captains of the forecastle, dying at night in his hammock, swung in the sick-bay under the tiered gun-decks of the British Dreadnought, 98, wandering in his mind, though with glimpses of sanity, and starting up at whiles, sings by snatches his good-bye and last injunctions to two messmates, his watchers, one of whom fans the fevered tar with the flap of his old sou'-wester
Young Canada, or Jack's as Good as his Master
© McLachlan Alexander
I love this land of forest grand! The land where labour's free;Let others roam away from home, Be this the land for me!Where no one moils, and strains and toils, That snobs may thrive the faster;And all are free, as men should be, And Jack's as good's his master!
Where none are slaves, that lordly knaves May idle all the year;For rank and caste are of the past,-- They'll never flourish here!And Jew or Turk if he'll but work, Need never fear disaster;He reaps the crop he sowed in hope, For Jack's as good's his master
We Lean on One Another
© McLachlan Alexander
Oh, come and listen while I sing A song of human nature;For, high or low, we're all akin To ev'ry human creature:We're all the children of the same, The great, the "mighty mother,"And from the cradle to the grave We lean on one another
Ontario
© McLachlan Alexander
O far away from my forest home,In the land of the stranger I must roam;And sigh amid flowers and trailing vines,For mine own rude land of lakes and pines
Jottings of New York: A Descriptive Poem
© William Topaz McGonagall
Oh mighty City of New York! you are wonderful to behold,Your buildings are magnificent, the truth be it told,They were the only thing that seemed to arrest my eye,Because many of them are thirteen storeys high
Posted as Missing
© John Masefield
Under all her topsails she trembled like a stag,The wind made a ripple in her bonny red flag;They cheered her from the shore and they cheered her from the pier,And under all her topsails she trembled like a deer
Cape Horn Gospel -- I
© John Masefield
"I was in a hooker once," said Karlssen,"And Bill, as was a seaman, died,So we lashed him in an old tarpaulinAnd tumbled him across the side;And the fun of it was that all his gear wasDivided up among the crewBefore that blushing human error,Our crawling little captain, knew
Prairie Graveyard
© Marriott Anne
Wind mutters thinly on the sagging wirebinding the graveyard from the gouged dirt road,bends thick-bristled Russian thistle,sifts listless dustinto cracks in hard grey ground
Lincoln, Man of the People [1922 version]
© Edwin Markham
When the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind HourGreatening and darkening as it hurried on,She left the Heaven of Heroes and came downTo make a man to meet the mortal need
The Day-Labourer
© Macpherson Jay
Time is a labourer on God’s farm,And keeps His living things from harm
