Legal poems

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Edith Cavell

© Robert Laurence Binyon

She was binding the wounds of her enemies when they came—  

 The lint in her hand unrolled.  

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On The Report Of A Monument To Be Erected In Westminster Abbey, To The Memory Of A Late Author (Chur

© James Beattie

Bufo, begone! with thee may Faction's fire,
That hatch'd thy salamander-fame, expire.
Fame, dirty idol of the brainless crowd,
What half-made moon-calf can mistake for good!

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249. Sappho Redivivus: A Fragment

© Robert Burns

BY all I lov’d, neglected and forgot,
No friendly face e’er lights my squalid cot;
Shunn’d, hated, wrong’d, unpitied, unredrest,
The mock’d quotation of the scorner’s jest!

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113. A Dedication to Gavin Hamilton, Esq.

© Robert Burns

The Poet, some guid angel help him,
Or else, I fear, some ill ane skelp him!
He may do weel for a’ he’s done yet,
But only—he’s no just begun yet.

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106. To Gavin Hamilton, Esq., Mauchline, recommending a Boy

© Robert Burns

I HOLD it, sir, my bounden duty
To warn you how that Master Tootie,
Alias, Laird M’Gaun,
Was here to hire yon lad away

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144. A Winter Night

© Robert Burns

WHEN biting Boreas, fell and dour,
Sharp shivers thro’ the leafless bow’r;
When Phoebus gies a short-liv’d glow’r,
Far south the lift,

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A New Year's Time At Willards's

© James Whitcomb Riley

There's old man Willards; an' his wife;
An' Marg'et-- S'repty's sister--; an'
There's me-- an' I'm the hired man;
An' Tomps McClure, you better yer life!

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M'Fingal - Canto II

© John Trumbull


"T' evade these crimes of blackest grain
You prate of liberty in vain,
And strive to hide your vile designs
In terms abstruse, like school-divines.

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The Miller's Tale

© Geoffrey Chaucer

1. Pilate, an unpopular personage in the mystery-plays of the
middle ages, was probably represented as having a gruff, harsh
voice.

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Fit the Sixth ( Hunting of the Snark )

© Lewis Carroll

He dreamed that he stood in a shadowy Court,
Where the Snark, with a glass in its eye,
Dressed in gown, bands, and wig, was defending a pig
On the charge of deserting its sty.

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The Palace of Humbug

© Lewis Carroll

I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And each damp thing that creeps and crawls
Went wobble-wobble on the walls.

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Marrying the Hangman

© Margaret Atwood

She has been condemned to death by hanging. A man
may escape this death by becoming the hangman, a
woman by marrying the hangman. But at the present
time there is no hangman; thus there is no escape.

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The Legatee

© Ambrose Bierce

In fair San Francisco a good man did dwell,
And he wrote out a will, for he didn't feel well.
Said he: "It is proper, when making a gift,
To stimulate virtue by comforting thrift."

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The Canon Of Aughrim

© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

You ask me of English honour, whether your Nation is just?
Justice for us is a word divine, a name we revere,
Alas, no more than a name, a thing laid by in the dust.
The world shall know it again, but not in this month or year.

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Canto XXXVI

© Ezra Pound

A Lady asks me

    I speak in season

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The Hunting of the Snark

© Lewis Carroll

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
 As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
 By a finger entwined in his hair.

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Jim Crow Cars

© Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer

If within the cruel Southland you have chanced to take a ride,
You the Jim Crow cars have noticed, how they crush a Negro's pride,
How he pays a first class passage and a second class receives,
Gets the worst accommodations ev'ry friend of truth believes.

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A Derry on a Cove

© Henry Lawson

‘Why don’t you go to work?’ he said (he muttered, ‘Why don’t you?’).
‘Yer honer knows as well as me there ain’t no work to do.
‘And when I try to find a job I’m shaddered by a trap—
‘It’s awful when the p’leece has got a derry on a chap.’