Famous Workman Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Workman poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous workman poems. These examples illustrate what a famous workman poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...me while the art I unfold.
Here's a book full of words; one can choose as he fancies,
As a painter his tint, as a workman his tool;
Just think! all the poems and plays and romances
Were drawn out of this, like the fish from a pool!
You can wander at will through its syllabled mazes,
And take all you want, not a copper they cost,--
What is there to hinder your picking out phrases
For an epic as clever as "Paradise Lost"?
Don't mind if the index of sense is at zero,
Use...Read more of this...
by
Donne, John
...ar falls that, thou falls which it bore,
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.
On a round ball
A workman, that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afrique, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, All;
So doth each tear,
Which thee doth wear,
A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mixed with mine do overflow
This world—by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so.
O more than moon,
Draw not up seas to drown me ...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...es both old and young,
Able and weak, affects the very brutes
And birds--how say I? flowers of the field--
As a wise workman recognizes tools
In a master's workshop, loving what they make.
Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb:
Only impatient, let him do his best,
At ignorance and carelessness and sin--
An indignation which is promptly curbed:
As when in certain travels I have feigned
To be an ignoramus in our art
According to some preconceived design,
And hap...Read more of this...
by
Crane, Stephen
...Ay, workman, make me a dream,
A dream for my love.
Cunningly weave sunlight,
Breezes, and flowers.
Let it be of the cloth of meadows.
And -- good workman --
And let there be a man walking thereon....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ily routine of your own or any man’s life—the shop, yard, store, or
factory;
These shows all near you by day and night—workman! whoever you are, your daily life!
In that and them the heft of the heaviest—in them far more than you estimated, and
far
less
also;
In them realities for you and me—in them poems for you and me;
In them, not yourself—you and your Soul enclose all things, regardless of estimation;
In them the development good—in them, all themes and hints....Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...brows in steel,
And leaves the trading shore;
The shepherd leaves his mellow pipe,
And sounds the trumpet shrill;
The workman throws his hammer down
To heave the bloody bill.
Like the tall ghost of Barraton
Who sports in stormy sky,
Gwin leads his host, as black as night
When pestilence does fly,
With horses and with chariots--
And all his spearmen b 1000 old
March to the sound of mournful song,
Like clouds around him roll'd.
Gwin lifts his hand--the nations halt...Read more of this...
by
Coleridge, Mary Elizabeth
...n mortal thing.
But the sun streams in at the cottage door
That stands where once the palace stood.
And the workman, toiling to earn his food,
Was never a king before....Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...all morrows doth roll,
Cry good and past-good and most heavenly morrow, lord Sun.
O Artisan born in the purple, -- Workman Heat, --
Parter of passionate atoms that travail to meet
And be mixed in the death-cold oneness, -- innermost Guest
At the marriage of elements, -- fellow of publicans, -- blest
King in the blouse of flame, that loiterest o'er
The idle skies yet laborest fast evermore, --
Thou, in the fine forge-thunder, thou, in the beat
Of the heart of a man, thou ...Read more of this...
by
Lindsay, Vachel
...TRUE Love is founded in rocks of Remembrance
In stones of Forbearance and mortar of pain.
The workman lays wearily granite on granite,
And bleeds for his castle, 'mid sunshine and rain.
Love is not velvet, not all of it velvet,
Not all of it banners, not gold-leaf alone.
'Tis stern as the ages and old as Religion.
With Patience its watchword and Law for its throne....Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...ltered and undiminished
in value, even although they may be for the moment tarnished by
the hands of the less skilful workman who first endeavours to transplant
them to a foreign soil....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...s, groups,
Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands.
3
What do you hear, Walt Whitman?
I hear the workman singing, and the farmer’s wife singing;
I hear in the distance the sounds of children, and of animals early in the day;
I hear quick rifle-cracks from the riflemen of East Tennessee and Kentucky, hunting on
hills;
I hear emulous shouts of Australians, pursuing the wild horse;
I hear the Spanish dance, with castanets, in the chestnut shade, to the...Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...loosed
His belt, and near the shoulder bared his arm,
And show'd a sign in faint vermilion points
Prick'd; as a cunning workman, in Pekin,
Pricks with vermilion some clear porcelain vase,
An emperor's gift--at early morn he paints,
And all day long, and, when night comes, the lamp
Lights up his studious forehead and thin hands--
So delicately prick'd the sign appear'd
On Sohrab's arm, the sign of Rustum's seal.
It was that griffin, which of old rear'd Zal,
Rustum's great ...Read more of this...
by
Bible, The
...prince's daughter!
the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the
hands of a cunning workman.
22:007:002 Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor:
thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies.
22:007:003 Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.
22:007:004 Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools
in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbi...Read more of this...
by
Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...we struck no blow, Gwenvrewi lives perhaps;
To makebelieve my mood was—mock. O I might think so
But here, here is a workman from his day’s task sweats.
Wiped I am sure this was; it seems not well; for still,
Still the scarlet swings and dances on the blade.
So be it. Thou steel, thou butcher,
I c?n scour thee, fresh burnish thee, sheathe thee in thy dark lair; these drops
Never, never, never in their blue banks again.
The woeful, Cradock, O the woeful word...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...n romantic and it's nice to sing about,
There's a lot of patriotism that the land could do without --
Sort of BRITISH WORKMAN nonsense that shall perish in the scorn
Of the drover who is driven and the shearer who is shorn,
Of the struggling western farmers who have little time for rest,
And are ruined on selections in the sheep-infested West;
Droving songs are very pretty, but they merit little thanks
From the people of a country in possession of the Banks.
And ...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...seems they sing,
Even though coppering is not an easy thing.
What a splendid specimen of humanity is a true British workman,
Say the people of the Three Towns,
As they walk about the dockyard
To the sound of the evening church-bells.
And so artistic, too, each one tells his neighbour.
What immense taste and labour!
Miss Jessie Prime, in a pink silk bonnet,
Titters with delight as her eyes fall upon it,
When she steps lightly down from Lawyer Green's whisky;
Such a...Read more of this...
by
Swift, Jonathan
...To move it out from yonder corner;
But leave it standing full in sight
For you to exercise your spite.
In vain, the workman shewed his wit
With rings and hinges counterfeit
To make it seem in this disguise
A cabinet to vulgar eyes;
For Strephon ventured to look in,
Resolved to go through thick and thin;
He lifts the lid, there needs no more:
He smelt it all the time before.
As from within Pandora's box,
When Epimetheus oped the locks,
A sudden universal crew
Of humane...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...these rude bones to us, are we to her
That will be.' 'Dare we dream of that,' I asked,
'Which wrought us, as the workman and his work,
That practice betters?' 'How,' she cried, 'you love
The metaphysics! read and earn our prize,
A golden brooch: beneath an emerald plane
Sits Diotima, teaching him that died
Of hemlock; our device; wrought to the life;
She rapt upon her subject, he on her:
For there are schools for all.' 'And yet' I said
'Methinks I have not ...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...r'd,
Thou wouldest have our labour all for nought.
The highe God, that all this world hath wrought,
Saith, that the workman worthy is his hire
Thomas, nought of your treasure I desire
As for myself, but that all our convent
To pray for you is aye so diligent:
And for to builde Christe's owen church.
Thomas, if ye will learne for to wirch,* *work
Of building up of churches may ye find
If it be good, in Thomas' life of Ind.
Ye lie here full of anger and of ire,
...Read more of this...
by
Benet, Stephen Vincent
...nds were cinnabar,
Where first two men spread wings for flight and dared the hawk afar.
There stands the cunning workman, the crafty past all praise,
The man who chained the Minotaur, the man who built the Maze.
His young son is beside him and the boy's face is a light,
A light of dawn and wonder and of valor infinite.
Their great vans beat the cloven air, like eagles they mount up,
Motes in the wine of morning, specks in a crystal cup,
And lest his wing...Read more of this...
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