Home ⇒ 📌William Henry Davies ⇒ In the Country
In the Country
This life is sweetest; in this wood
I hear no children cry for food;
I see no woman, white with care;
No man, with muscled wasting here.
No doubt it is a selfish thing
To fly from human suffering;
No doubt he is a selfish man,
Who shuns poor creatures, sad and wan.
But ’tis a wretched life to face
Hunger in almost every place;
Cursed with a hand that’s empty, when
The heart is full to help all men.
Can I admire the statue great,
When living men starve at its feet!
Can I admire the park’s green tree,
A roof for homeless misery!
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- The Burns Statue This Statue, I must confess, is magnificent to see, And I hope will long be appreciated by the people of Dundee; It has been beautifully made by Sir John Steell, And I hope the pangs of hunger he will never feel. This statue is most elegant in its design, And I hope will defy all […]...
- Satire II:The Country Mouse and the Town Mouse MY mother’s maids, when they did sew and spin, They sang sometime a song of the field mouse, That for because her livelood was but thin [livelihood] Would needs go seek her townish sister’s house. She thought herself endured to much pain: The stormy blasts her cave so sore did souse That when the furrows […]...
- Summer In The Country One shows me how to lie down in a field of clover. Another how to slip my hand under her Sunday skirt. Another how to kiss with a mouth full of blackberries. Another how to catch fireflies in jar after dark. Here is a stable with a single black mare And the proof of God’s […]...
- Winter in the Country Sweet life! how lovely to be here And feel the soft sea-laden breeze Strike my flushed face, the spruce’s fair Free limbs to see, the lesser trees’ Bare hands to touch, the sparrow’s cheep To heed, and watch his nimble flight Above the short brown grass asleep. Love glorious in his friendly might, Music that […]...
- The Country Clown Bred in distant woods, the clown Brings all his country airs to town; The odd address, with awkward grace, That bows with half-averted face; The half-heard compliments, whose note Is swallow’d in the trembling throat; The stiffen’d gait, the drawling tone, By which his native place is known; The blush, that looks by vast degrees, […]...
- THE COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTER I. A MASTER of a country school Jump’d up one day from off his stool, Inspired with firm resolve to try To gain the best society; So to the nearest baths he walk’d, And into the saloon he stalk’d. He felt quite. startled at the door, Ne’er having seen the like before. To the first […]...
- A Letter from Artemesia in the Town to Chloe in the Country Chloe, In verse by your command I write. Shortly you’ll bid me ride astride, and fight: These talents better with our sex agree Than lofty flights of dangerous poetry. Amongst the men, I mean the men of wit (At least they passed for such before they writ), How many bold adventureers for the bays, Proudly […]...
- My Country in Darkness After the wolves and before the elms The bardic order ended in Ireland. Only a few remained to continue A dead art in a dying land: This is a man On the road from Youghal to Cahirmoyle. He has no comfort, no food and no future. He has no fire to recite his friendless measures […]...
- This country nurtured hope This country nurtured hope decayed, The politician cruises on a 4WD guzzler, The thief. Feeling the base of his belly. There is a slum in my heart But I cannot relocate it to my foot Nor hand nor back Its rusted tin makeshifts make my blood flow slow. War has filled my heart with bullets, […]...
- Five For Country Music I. Insomnia The bulb at the front door burns and burns. If it were a white rose it would tire of blooming Through another endless night. The moon knows the routine; It beats the bushes from east to west And sets empty-handed. Again the one She is waiting for has outrun the moon. II. Old […]...
- North Country North Country, filled with gesturing wood, With trees that fence, like archers’ volleys, The flanks of hidden valleys Where nothing’s left to hide But verticals and perpendiculars, Like rain gone wooden, fixed in falling, Or fingers blindly feeling For what nobody cares; Or trunks of pewter, bangled by greedy death, Stuck with black staghorns, quietly […]...
- The Country of the Blind Hard light bathed them-a whole nation of eyeless men, Dark bipeds not aware how they were maimed. A long Process, clearly, a slow curse, Drained through centuries, left them thus. At some transitional stage, then, a luckless few, No doubt, must have had eyes after the up-to-date, Normal type had achieved snug Darkness, safe from […]...
- Tools for life Has life ever dumped you in a heap? Perhaps you’ve found self belief so strongly Reinforcing that doubt never enters it, Nor divorces you from your own reality. While I admire conviction I see it an Affliction of the blessed, sign of the righteously Possessed and indeed, a decent place to serve A sentence for […]...
- South Country After the whey-faced anonymity Of river-gums and scribbly-gums and bush, After the rubbing and the hit of brush, You come to the South Country As if the argument of trees were done, The doubts and quarrelling, the plots and pains, All ended by these clear and gliding planes Like an abrupt solution. And over the […]...
- Town and Country Here, where love’s stuff is body, arm and side Are stabbing-sweet ‘gainst chair and lamp and wall. In every touch more intimate meanings hide; And flaming brains are the white heart of all. Here, million pulses to one centre beat: Closed in by men’s vast friendliness, alone, Two can be drunk with solitude, and meet […]...
- THE COUNTRY LIFE TO THE HONOURED MR ENDYMION PORTER, GROOM OF THE BED-CHAMBER TO HIS MAJESTY Sweet country life, to such unknown, Whose lives are others’, not their own! But serving courts and cities, be Less happy, less enjoying thee. Thou never plough’st the ocean’s foam To seek and bring rough pepper home: Nor to the Eastern Ind […]...
- A COUNTRY LIFE:TO HIS BROTHER, MR THOMAS HERRICK Thrice, and above, blest, my soul’s half, art thou, In thy both last and better vow; Could’st leave the city, for exchange, to see The country’s sweet simplicity; And it to know and practise, with intent To grow the sooner innocent; By studying to know virtue, and to aim More at her nature than her […]...
- Up The Country I am back from up the country very sorry that I went Seeking for the Southern poets’ land whereon to pitch my tent; I have lost a lot of idols, which were broken on the track, Burnt a lot of fancy verses, and I’m glad that I am back. Further out may be the pleasant […]...
- A Country Life A bird that I don’t know, Hunched on his light-pole like a scarecrow, Looks sideways out into the wheat The wind waves under the waves of heat. The field is yellow as egg-bread dough Except where (just as though they’d let It live for looks) a locust billows In leaf-green and shade-violet, A standing mercy. […]...
- On the Ruins of a Country Inn WHERE now these mingled ruins lie A temple once to Bacchus rose, Beneath whose roof, aspiring high, Full many a guest forgot his woes. No more this dome, by tempests torn, Affords a social safe retreat; But ravens here, with eye forlorn, And clustering bats henceforth will meet. The Priestess of this ruined shrine, Unable […]...
- My country need not change her gown My country need not change her gown, Her triple suit as sweet As when ’twas cut at Lexington, And first pronounced “a fit.” Great Britain disapproves, “the stars”; Disparagement discreet, There’s something in their attitude That taunts her bayonet....
- The Country Of Marriage I. I dream of you walking at night along the streams Of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs Of birds opening around you as you walk. You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep. II. This comes after silence. Was it something I said That bound me […]...
- Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...
- HIS CONTENT IN THE COUNTRY HERE, Here I live with what my board Can with the smallest cost afford; Though ne’er so mean the viands be, They well content my Prue and me: Or pea or bean, or wort or beet, Whatever comes, Content makes sweet. Here we rejoice, because no rent We pay for our poor tenement; Wherein we […]...
- Nell Barnes They lived apart for three long years, Bill Barnes and Nell his wife; He took his joy from other girls, She led a wicked life. Yet ofttimes she would pass his shop, With some strange man awhile; And, looking, meet her husband’s frown With her malicious smile. Until one day, when passing there, She saw […]...
- Hilaire Belloc – The South Country When I am living in the Midlands That are sodden and unkind, I light my lamp in the evening: My work is left behind; And the great hills of the South Country Come back into my mind. The great hills of the South Country They stand along the sea; And it’s there walking in the […]...
- On A Ruined house In A Romantic Country And this reft house is that the which he built, Lamented Jack! And here his malt he pil’d, Cautious in vain! These rats that squeak so wild, Squeak, not unconscious of their father’s guilt. Did ye not see her gleaming thro’ the glade? Belike, ’twas she, the maiden all forlorn. What though she milk no […]...
- When All My Five And Country Senses See When all my five and country senses see, The fingers will forget green thumbs and mark How, through the halfmoon’s vegetable eye, Husk of young stars and handfull zodiac, Love in the frost is pared and wintered by, The whispering ears will watch love drummed away Down breeze and shell to a discordant beach, And, […]...
- The Country Justice TWO lawyers to their cause so well adhered, A country justice quite confused appeared, By them the facts were rendered so obscure With which the truth remained he was not sure. At length, completely tired, two straws he sought Of diff’rent lengths, and to the parties brought. These in his hand he held: the plaintiff […]...
- The Never-Never Country By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed, By railroad, coach, and track By lonely graves of our brave dead, Up-Country and Out-Back: To where ‘neath glorious the clustered stars The dreamy plains expand My home lies wide a thousand miles In the Never-Never Land. It lies beyond the farming belt, Wide wastes of scrub and plain, A […]...
- For The Country THE DREAM This has nothing to do with war Or the end of the world. She Dreams there are gray starlings On the winter lawn and the buds Of next year’s oranges alongside This year’s oranges, and the sun Is still up, a watery circle Of fire settling into the sky At dinner time, but […]...
- My Country My Country The love of field and coppice Of green and shaded lanes, Of ordered woods and gardens Is running in your veins. Strong love of grey-blue distance, Brown streams and soft, dim skies I know, but cannot share it, My love is otherwise. I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of […]...
- Yellow One pearly day of early May I strolled upon the sand, And saw, say half-a-mile away A man with gun in hand; A dog was cowering to his will, As slow he sought to creep Upon a dozen ducks so still They seemed to be asleep, When like a streak the dog dashed out, The […]...
- 377. Song-The Country Lass IN simmer, when the hay was mawn, And corn wav’d green in ilka field, While claver blooms white o’er the lea And roses blaw in ilka beild! Blythe Bessie in the milking shiel, Says-“I’ll be wed, come o’t what will”: Out spake a dame in wrinkled eild; “O’ gude advisement comes nae ill. “It’s ye […]...
- Dear Harp of my Country Dear Harp of my Country! in darkness I found thee, The cold chain of Silence had hung o’er thee long. When proudly, my own Island Harp, I unbound thee, And gave all thy chords to light, freedom, and song. The warm lay of love and the light note of gladness Have waken’d thy fondest, thy […]...
- An American in Europe ‘Tis fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down Among the famous palaces and cities of renown, To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings, But now I think I’ve had enough of antiquated things. So it’s home again, and home again, America for me! My heart is turning […]...
- Weeds White with daisies and red with sorrel And empty, empty under the sky!- Life is a quest and love a quarrel- Here is a place for me to lie. Daisies spring from damned seeds, And this red fire that here I see Is a worthless crop of crimson weeds, Cursed by farmers thriftily. But here, […]...
- Glasgow Beautiful city of Glasgow, with your streets so neat and clean, Your stateley mansions, and beautiful Green! Likewise your beautiful bridges across the River Clyde, And on your bonnie banks I would like to reside. Chorus Then away to the west to the beautiful west! To the fair city of Glasgow that I like the […]...
- The Child Dying Unfriendly friendly universe, I pack your stars into my purse, And bid you so farewell. That I can leave you, quite go out, Go out, go out beyond all doubt, My father says, is the miracle. You are so great, and I so small: I am nothing, you are all: Being nothing, I can take […]...
- Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning […]...