Famous Office Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Office poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous office poems. These examples illustrate what a famous office poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Thomas, Dylan
...d sugar fags, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird
by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and
women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles
their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all
the front parlors; there was sherry and w...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...bucks.
You've got it made if you take the wafer,
take some wine,
take some bucks,
the green papery song of the office.
What a jello she could make with it,
the fives, the tens, the twenties,
all in a goo to feed the baby.
Andrew Jackson as an hors d'oeuvre,
la de dah.
I wish I were the U.S. Mint,
turning it all out,
turtle green
and monk black.
Who's that at the podium
in black and white,
blurting into the mike?
Ms. Dog.
...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...guish, said,
"O Master, show me who these peoples be,
And if those tonsured shades that left we see
Held priestly office ere they joined the dead."
He answered, "These, who with such squinting eyes
Regarded God's providing, that they spent
In waste immoderate, indicate their guilt
In those loud barkings that ye hear. They spilt
Their wealth distemperate; and those they meet
Who cry 'Why loose ye?' avarice ruled: they bent
Their minds on earth to s...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...A maple tree?"
"Because my name is Maple?"
"Isn't it Mabel? I thought it was Mabel."
"No doubt you've heard the office call me Mabel.
I have to let them call me what they like."
They were both stirred that he should have divined
Without the name her personal mystery.
It made it seem as if there must be something
She must have missed herself. So they were married,
And took the fancy home with them to live by.
They went on pilgrimage once to her ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...commands above,
Who hates me, and hath hither thrust me down
Into this gloom of Tartarus profound,
To sit in hateful office here confined,
Inhabitant of Heaven and heavenly born--
Here in perpetual agony and pain,
With terrors and with clamours compassed round
Of mine own brood, that on my bowels feed?
Thou art my father, thou my author, thou
My being gav'st me; whom should I obey
But thee? whom follow? Thou wilt bring me soon
To that new world of light and bliss, ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ure. But know that in the soul
Are many lesser faculties, that serve
Reason as chief; among these Fancy next
Her office holds; of all external things
Which the five watchful senses represent,
She forms imaginations, aery shapes,
Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames
All what we affirm or what deny, and call
Our knowledge or opinion; then retires
Into her private cell, when nature rests.
Oft in her absence mimick Fancy wakes
To imitate her; but, misjoi...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...
At joust and tournament; then marshall'd feast
Serv'd up in hall with sewers and seneshals;
The skill of artifice or office mean,
Not that which justly gives heroick name
To person, or to poem. Me, of these
Nor skill'd nor studious, higher argument
Remains; sufficient of itself to raise
That name, unless an age too late, or cold
Climate, or years, damp my intended wing
Depress'd; and much they may, if all be mine,
Not hers, who brings it nightly to my ear. ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...from the north to call
Decrepit winter; from the south to bring
Solstitial summer's heat. To the blanc moon
Her office they prescribed; to the other five
Their planetary motions, and aspects,
In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite,
Of noxious efficacy, and when to join
In synod unbenign; and taught the fixed
Their influence malignant when to shower,
Which of them rising with the sun, or falling,
Should prove tempestuous: To the winds they set
Their corner...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...he Philistian Lords for
Samson's redemption; who in the mean while is visited by other
persons; and lastly by a publick Officer to require coming to the
Feast before the Lords and People, to play or shew his strength in
thir presence; he at first refuses, dismissing the publick officer with
absolute denyal to come; at length perswaded inwardly that this
was from God, he yields to go along with him, who came now the
second time with great threatnings to fetch him; the Chorus y...Read more of this...
by
Berman, David
...u're not working
on a self-portrait or anything.
I'm watching my dog have nightmares,
twitching and whining on the office floor
and I try to imagine what beast
has cornered him in the meadow
where his dreams are set.
I'm just letting the day be what it is:
a place for a large number of things
to gather and interact --
not even a place but an occasion
a reality for real things.
Friends warned me not to get too psychedelic
or religious with this piece:
"They won'...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...he salt-lick or orange glade, or under conical firs;
Through the gymnasium—through the curtain’d saloon—through the
office or public hall;
Pleas’d with the native, and pleas’d with the
foreign—pleas’d with the new and old;
Pleas’d with women, the homely as well as the handsome;
Pleas’d with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks
melodiously;
Pleas’d with the tune of the choir of the white-wash’d church;
Pleas’d with the earnest words of the sweati...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...r small,
She was to do nothing at all.
There was already this man in his post,
This in his station, and that in his office,
And the Duke's plan admitted a wife, at most,
To meet his eye, with the other trophies,
Now outside the hall, now in it,
To sit thus, stand thus, see and be seen,
At the proper place in the proper minute,
And die away the life between.
And it was amusing enough, each infraction
Of rule---(but for after-sadness that came)
To hear the consummate se...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...mark,
2.31 Nor studious was, Kings favours how to buy,
2.32 With costly presents, or base flattery;
2.33 No office coveted, wherein I might
2.34 Make strong my self and turn aside weak right.
2.35 No malice bare to this or that great Peer,
2.36 Nor unto buzzing whisperers gave ear.
2.37 I gave no hand, nor vote, for death, of life.
2.38 I'd nought to do, 'twixt Prince, and peoples' strife.
2.39 No Statist I: nor Marti'list i...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...no doubt, to procure
A second-hand dagger-proof coat--
So the Baker advised it-- and next, to insure
Its life in some Office of note:
This the Banker suggested, and offered for hire
(On moderate terms), or for sale,
Two excellent Policies, one Against Fire,
And one Against Damage From Hail.
Yet still, ever after that sorrowful day,
Whenever the Butcher was by,
The Beaver kept looking the opposite way,
And appeared unaccountably shy.
II.--THE BELLMAN'S SP...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...service,
To drudge and draw, what so men would devise*. *order
And, shortly of this matter for to sayn,
He fell in office with a chamberlain,
The which that dwelling was with Emily.
For he was wise, and coulde soon espy
Of every servant which that served her.
Well could he hewe wood, and water bear,
For he was young and mighty for the nones*, *occasion
And thereto he was strong and big of bones
To do that any wight can him devise.
A year or two he was in thi...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...us preaches,—and why should he not?
For the dues of his cure are the placket and pot;
And 'tis right of his office poor laymen to lurch
Who infringe the domains of our good Mother Church.
Yet whoop, bully-boys! off with your liquor,
Sweet Marjorie 's the word and a fig for the vicar!
VI.
The warder's challenge, heard without,
Stayed in mid-roar the merry shout.
A soldier to the portal went,—
'Here is old Bertram, s...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...e her portals to this Guelph,
While I am guard, may I be damn'd myself!
L
'Sooner will I with Cerberus exchange
My office (and his no sinecure)
Than see this royal Bedlam bigot range
The azure fields of heaven, of that be sure!'
'Saint!' replied Satan, 'you do well to avenge
The wrongs he made your satellites endure;
And if to this exchange you should be given,
I'll try to coax our Cerberus up to heaven!'
LI
Here Michael interposed: 'Good saint! and devil!
Pray...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...e said: "I fancy,
You're Bertie's Australian cousin Nancy.
He toId me to tell you that he'd be late
At the Foreign Office and not to wait
Supper for him, but to go with me,
And try to behave as if I were he."
I should have told him on the spot
That I had no cousin—that I was not
Australian Nancy—that my name
Was Susan Dunne, and that I came
From a small white town on a deep-cut bay
In the smallest state in the U.S.A.
I meant to tell him, but chan...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...br>
So that the clerkes* be not with me wroth, *scholars
I say this, that they were made for both,
That is to say, *for office, and for ease* *for duty and
Of engendrure, there we God not displease. for pleasure*
Why should men elles in their bookes set,
That man shall yield unto his wife her debt?
Now wherewith should he make his payement,
If he us'd not his silly instrument?
Then were they made upon a creature
To purge urine, and eke for engendrure.
But I say not th...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...SECOND VOICE:
When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it.
I watched the men walk about me in the office. They were so flat!
There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--and the cold angels, the abstractions.
I sat at my desk in my stockings, my high heels,
And the man I work for laug...Read more of this...
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