Legal poems
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Solomon on the Vanity of the World, A Poem. In Three Books. - Pleasure. Book II.
© Matthew Prior
My full design with vast expense achieved,
I came, beheld, admired, reflected, grieved:
I chid the folly of my thoughtless haste,
For, the work perfected, the joy was past.
The Witch's Frolic
© Richard Harris Barham
Thou mayest have read, my little boy Ned,
Though thy mother thine idlesse blames,
In Doctor Goldsmith's history book,
Of a gentleman called King James,
In quilted doublet, and great trunk breeches,
Who held in abhorrence tobacco and witches.
Recovering Amid The Farms
© Jack Gilbert
Every morning the sad girl brings her three sheep
and two lambs laggardly to the top of the valley,
past my stone hut and onto the mountain to graze.
She turned twelve last year and it was legal
The Criminal V
© Khalil Gibran
A young man of strong body, weakened by hunger, sat on the walker's portion of the street stretching his hand toward all who passed, begging and repeating his hand toward all who passed, begging and repeating the sad song of his defeat in life, while suffering from hunger and from humiliation
Smoke Off
© Sheldon Allan Silverstein
In the laid back California town of sunny San Raphael
Lived a girl named Pearly Sweetcake you probly knew her well
Paradise Lost : Book XII.
© John Milton
As one who in his journey bates at noon,
Though bent on speed; so here the Arch-Angel paused
Injustice of the Courts
© Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer
Whites alone upon the jury in a number of the states,
Thus they crush a helpless Negro with their prejudicial hates;
Legal ills they thrust upon him, and the tale is passing sad
Equal rights with white men? Never! Color-phobia makes them mad.
The Present
© Philip Levine
The day comes slowly in the railyard
behind the ice factory. It broods on
one cinder after another until each
glows like lead or the eye of a dog
Juggling Jerry
© George Meredith
Pitch here the tent, while the old horse grazes:
By the old hedge-side we'll halt a stage.
It's nigh my last above the daisies:
My next leaf'll be man's blank page.
I Do, I Will, I Have
© Ogden Nash
How wise I am to have instructed the butler
to instruct the first footman to instruct the second
footman to instruct the doorman to order my carriage;
I am about to volunteer a definition of marriage.
Gentle Gaoler
© Robert William Service
Being a gaoler I'm supposed
To be a hard-boiled guy;
Yet never prison walls enclosed
A kinder soul than I:
Passing my charges precious pills
To end their ills.
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;
Samson Agonistes
© John Milton
Chor: In seeking just occasion to provoke
The Philistine, thy Countries Enemy,
Thou never wast remiss, I hear thee witness:
Yet Israel still serves with all his Sons.
Poetical Essay
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
Millions to fight compell'd, to fight or die
In mangled heaps on War's red altar lie . . .
When the legal murders swell the lists of pride;
When glory's views the titled idiot guide
Feelings Of A Republican On The Fall Of Bonaparte
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan
To think that a most unambitious slave,
Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave
Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne
Attack On The Ad-Man
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
This trumpeter of nothingness, employed
To keep our reason dull and null and void.
This man of wind and froth and flux will sell
The wares of any who reward him well.
Lenten Thoughts of a High Anglican
© John Betjeman
Isn't she lovely, "the Mistress"?
With her wide-apart grey-green eyes,
The droop of her lips and, when she smiles,
Her glance of amused surprise?
Self-Acquaintance
© William Cowper
Dear Lord! accept a sinful heart,
Which of itself complains,
And mourns, with much and frequent smart,
The evil it contains.
The Heart Healed and Changed by Mercy
© William Cowper
Sin enslaved me many years,
And led me bound and blind;
Till at length a thousand fears
Came swarming o'er my mind.
The Man Who Was Away
© Andrew Barton Paterson
The widow sought the lawyer's room with children three in tow,
She told the lawyer man her tale in tones of deepest woe.
She said, "My husband took to drink for pains in his inside,
And never drew a sober breath from then until he died.
