A Psalm of Labouring Life
Franklin P. Adams 1881 (Chicago, Illinois) – 1960 (New York City, New York)
Tell me not, in doctored numbers,
Life is but a name for work!
For the labour that encumbers
Me I wish that I could shirk.
Life is phony! Life is rotten!
And the wealthy have no soul;
Why should you be picking cotton,
Why should I be mining coal?
Not employment and not sorrow
Is my destined end or way;
But to act that each tomorrow
Finds me idler than today.
Work is long, and plutes are lunching;
Money is the thing I crave;
But my heart continues punching
Funeral time-clocks to the grave.
In the world's uneven battle,
In the swindle known as life,
Be not like the stockyard's cattle--
Stick your partner with the knife!
Trust no boss, however pleasant!
Capital is but a curse!
Strike,--strike in the living present!
Fill, oh fill the bulging purse.!
Lives of strikers all remind us
We can make our lives a crime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Bills for double overtime.
Charges that, perhaps another,
Working for a stingy ten
Bucks a day, some mining brother
Seeing, shall walk out again.
Let us, then, be up and striking,
Discontent with all of it;
Still undoing, still disliking,
Learn to labour--and to quit.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:01 min read
- 36 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ KLKL MNMN OPOP GQGQ |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,119 |
Words | 204 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
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"A Psalm of Labouring Life" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/14094/a-psalm-of-labouring-life>.
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