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Famous Moil Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Moil poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous moil poems. These examples illustrate what a famous moil poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Burns, Robert
...ould enjoy it, O.


No help, nor hope, nor view had I, nor person to befriend me, O;
So I must toil, and sweat, and moil, and labour to sustain me, O;
To plough and sow, to reap and mow, my father bred me early, O;
For one, he said, to labour bred, was a match for Fortune fairly, O.


Thus all obscure, unknown, and poor, thro’ life I’m doom’d to wander, O,
Till down my weary bones I lay in everlasting slumber, O:
No view nor care, but shun whate’er might breed me pain...Read more of this...



by Burns, Robert
...gh;
 The black’ning trains o’ craws to their repose:
 The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes,—
This night his weekly moil is at an end,
 Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,
And weary, o’er the moor, his course does hameward bend.


At length his lonely cot appears in view,
 Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;
Th’ expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through
 To meet their dead, wi’ flichterin noise and glee.Read more of this...

by Allingham, William
...to, where the spring 
Of tremulous tears, arising unespied, 
Became a holy well that durst not glide 
Into the day with moil or murmuring; 
Whereto, as if to some unlawful thing, 
He sto]e, musing or praying at its side. 

But in the sun he sang with cheerful heart, 
Of coloured season and the whirling sphere, 
Warm household habitude and human mirth, 
The whole faith-blooded mystery of earth; 
And I, who had his secret, still could hear 
The grotto's whisper low through ...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...alking tremendous through the fields of time.
MAN is unborn. To-morrow he is born,
Flame-like to hover o'er the moil and grime,
Striving, aspiring till the shame is gone,
Sowing a million flowers, where now we mourn—
Laying new, precious pavements with a song,
Founding new shrines, the good streets to adorn.
I have seen lovers by those new-built walls
Clothed like the dawn in orange, gold and red.
Eyes flashing forth the glory-light of love
Under the wreaths t...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...cast symmetry 
With the torn troubled form I know as thine, 
That profile, placid as a brow divine, 
With continents of moil and misery? 

And can immense Mortality but throw 
So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme 
Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies? 

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show, 
Nation at war with nation, brains that teem, 
Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?...Read more of this...



by Brooke, Rupert
...n;
And earth is shaken, and all evils creep
About her ways.
Oh, now to know you sleep!
Out of the whirling blinding moil, alone,
Out of the slow grim fight,
One thought to wing -- to you, asleep,
In some cool room that's open to the night
Lying half-forward, breathing quietly,
One white hand on the white
Unrumpled sheet, and the ever-moving hair
Quiet and still at length! . . .

Your magic and your beauty and your strength,
Like hills at noon or sunlight on a ...Read more of this...

by Scott, Duncan Campbell
...e of silent things,
That work for the world alway,
Neither for fear nor for pay,
And when labor is over, rest.

The moil of our fretted life
Is borne anew to the soul,
Borne with its cark and strife,
Its burden of care and dread,
Its glories elusive and strange;
And the weight of the weary whole
Presses it down, till we cry:
Where is the fruit of our deeds?
Why should we struggle to build
Towers against death on the plain?
All things possess their lives
Save man, whose ta...Read more of this...

by Ingelow, Jean
...
No judgment past withdraws that boon from you,
      Nor granteth it to me.
"Still must I plod, and still in cities moil;
  From precious leisure, learned leisure far,
Dull my best self with handling common soil;
      Yet mine those honors are.
"Mine they are called; they are a name which means,
  'This man had steady pulses, tranquil nerves:
Here, as in other fields, the most he gleans
      Who works and never swerves.
"We measure not his mind; we cannot tell
...Read more of this...

by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...st,
From an o'erfull heart, without aim or art;
'T is a song of the merriest.
O ye who toil in the town,
And ye who moil in the mart,
Hear the artless song, and your faith made strong
Shall renew your joy of heart.
Oh, poor were the worth of the world
If never a song were heard,—
If the sting of grief had no relief,
And never a heart were stirred.
So, long as the streams run down,
And as long as the robins trill,
Let us taunt old Care with a merry air,
And sing ...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...cheerful zest
 Some saintly truth.

Because I cannot do the things
I used to, comfort round me clings,
And from the moil of market brings
 Me rich release;
So welcome age with tranquil mind;
Even infirmities are kind,
And in our frailing we may find
 Life's crown of peace....Read more of this...

by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...ler, 
Stiller the note of the birds on the hill; 
Dusty and dim are the eyes of the miller, 
Deaf are his ears with the moil of the mill. 

Years may go by, and the wheel in the river 
Wheel as it wheels for us, children, to-day, 
Wheel and keep roaring and foaming for ever 
Long after all of the boys are away. 

Home for the Indies and home from the ocean, 
Heroes and soldiers we all will come home; 
Still we shall find the old mill wheel in motion, 
Turning and chur...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt's for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...he ivory room,
And at her side an amorous red-lipped boy
Trimming with dainty hand his helmet's plume,
And far away the moil, the shout, the groan,
As Hector shielded off the spear and Ajax hurled the stone;

Of winged Perseus with his flawless sword
Cleaving the snaky tresses of the witch,
And all those tales imperishably stored
In little Grecian urns, freightage more rich
Than any gaudy galleon of Spain
Bare from the Indies ever! these at least bring back again,

For well I...Read more of this...

by Brooke, Rupert
...n;
And earth is shaken, and all evils creep
About her ways.
Oh, now to know you sleep!
Out of the whirling blinding moil, alone,
Out of the slow grim fight,
One thought to wing -- to you, asleep,
In some cool room that's open to the night
Lying half-forward, breathing quietly,
One white hand on the white
Unrumpled sheet, and the ever-moving hair
Quiet and still at length! . . . 

Your magic and your beauty and your strength,
Like hills at noon or sunlight on a...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...There are strange things done in the midnight sun
 By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
 That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen ***** sights,
 But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
 I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roa...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...ef.
Your Life shall sweat 'twixt anvil and hot forge,
An armorer working at the sword of grief.
Your Life shall moil i' the ground, and plant his seed,
A farmer foisoning a huge crop of grief.
Your Life shall chaffer in the market-place,
A merchant trading in the goods of grief.
Your Life shall go to battle with his bow,
A soldier fighting in defence of grief.
By every rudder that divides the seas,
Tall Grief shall stand, the helmsman of the ship.
By e...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...own-meadows green
After the toil
And battle and pain.

Incense is pouring
Like the spring rain
Down on the mob
That moil through the street.
Blessed are they
Who behold it and gain
Power made more mighty
Thro' every defeat.

Builders, toil on.
Make all complete.
Make Springfield wonderful.
Make her renown
Worthy this day,
Till, at God's feet,
Tranced, saved forever,
Waits the white town.

Censers are swinging
Over the town,
Censers gigantic!
Look o...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...April and piercing the marrow like flame.

Wrapt in the wave of that music, with weariness more than of earth,
The moil of my centuries filled me; and gone like a sea-covered stone
Were the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the memories of the whole of my mirth,
And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.

In the roots of the grasses, the sorrels, I laid my body as low;
And the pearl-pale Niamh lay by me, her brow on the midst of my br...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...o fare thus fervid to what daily toil
Employs thy spirit in that larger Land
Where thou art gone; to strive, but not to moil
In nothings that do mar the artist's hand,
Not drudge unriched, as grain rots back to soil, --
No profit out of death, -- going, yet still at stand, --

Giving what life is here in hand to-day
For that that's in to-morrow's bush, perchance, --
Of this year's harvest none in the barn to lay,
All sowed for next year's crop, -- a dull advance
In curves tha...Read more of this...

by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...ife's cantineer!

Some song that shall be suppling oil
To weary muscles strained with toil,
Shall hearten for the daily moil,
Or widely read
Make sweet for him that tills the soil
His daily bread.

Such songs in my flushed hours I dream
(High thought) instead of armour gleam
Or warrior cantos ream by ream
To load the shelves -
Songs with a lilt of words, that seem
To sing themselves....Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs