Man Carrying Bale

The tough hand closes gently on the load;
Out of the mind, a voice
Calls 'Lift!' and the arms, remembering well their work,
Lengthen and pause for help.
Then a slow ripple flows from head to foot
While all the muscles call to one another:
'Lift! 'and the bulging bale
Floats like a butterfly in June.

So moved the earliest carrier of bales,
And the same watchful sun
Glowed through his body feeding it with light.
So will the last one move,
And halt, and dip his head, and lay his load
Down, and the muscles will relax and tremble.
Earth, you designed your man
Beautiful both in labour and repose.

Harold Monro

Harold Edward Monro was a British poet, born on March 14, 1879, in Brussels, Belgium. He is best known for being the proprietor of the Poetry Bookshop in London, which helped many poets get published. His work often portrayed urban and modern life. Monro was also an editor and publisher, significantly contributing to the early 20th-century literary scene. He died on March 16, 1932, in London.

Harold Monro

Child Of Dawn

Harold Monro, Simple Poetry

Goldfish

Harold Monro, Simple Poetry

Unknown Country

Harold Monro, Simple Poetry

The Nightingale Near The House

Harold Monro, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Gravity

I

Fit for perpetual worship is the power
That holds our bodies safely to the earth.

When people talk of their domestic gods,
Then privately I think of You.

We ride through space upon your shoulders
Conveniently and lightly set,
And, so accustomed, we relax our hold,
Forget the gentle motion of your body -
But You do not forget.

Sometimes you breathe a little faster,
Or move a muscle:
Then we remember you, O Master.


II

When people meet in reverent groups
And sing to their domestic God,
You, all the time, dear tyrant, (How I laugh!)
Could, without effort, place your hand among them,
And sprinkle them about the desert.

But all your ways are carefully ordered,
For you have never questioned duty.

Harold Monro

Song Of The Old Bullock-Driver

Far back in the days when the blacks used to ramble
In long single file neath the evergreen tree,
The wool-teams in season came down from Coonamble,
And journeyed for weeks on their way to the sea,
Twas then that our hearts and our sinews were stronger,
For those were the days when the bushman was bred.
We journeyed on roads that were rougher and longer
Than roads where the feet of our grandchildren tread.

With mates who have gone to the great Never-Never,
And mates whom Ive not seen for many a day,
I camped on the banks of the Cudgegong River
And yarned at the fire by the old bullock-dray.
I would summon them back from the far Riverina,
From days that shall be from all others distinct,
And sing to the sound of an old concertina
Their rugged old songs wher...

Henry Lawson

Song Of The Old Bullock-Driver

Far back in the days when the blacks used to ramble
In long single file neath the evergreen tree,
The wool-teams in season came down from Coonamble,
And journeyed for weeks on their way to the sea,
Twas then that our hearts and our sinews were stronger,
For those were the days when the bushman was bred.
We journeyed on roads that were rougher and longer
Than roads where the feet of our grandchildren tread.

With mates who have gone to the great Never-Never,
And mates whom Ive not seen for many a day,
I camped on the banks of the Cudgegong River
And yarned at the fire by the old bullock-dray.
I would summon them back from the far Riverina,
From days that shall be from all others distinct,
And sing to the sound of an old concertina
Their rugged old songs wher...

Henry Lawson

Thoughts At A Railway Station.

'Tis but a box, of modest deal;
Directed to no matter where:
Yet down my cheek the teardrops steal -
Yes, I am blubbering like a seal;
For on it is this mute appeal,
"With care."

I am a stern cold man, and range
Apart: but those vague words "With care"
Wake yearnings in me sweet as strange:
Drawn from my moral Moated Grange,
I feel I rather like the change
Of air.

Hast thou ne'er seen rough pointsmen spy
Some simple English phrase - "With care"
Or "This side uppermost" - and cry
Like children? No? No more have I.
Yet deem not him whose eyes are dry
A bear.

But ah! what treasure hides beneath
That lid so much the worse for wear?
A ring perhaps - a rosy wreath -
A photograph by Vernon Heath -
Some matron's temporar...

Charles Stuart Calverley

The Last Watch

Comrades, comrades, have me buried
Like a warrior of the sea,
With a flag across my breast
And my sword upon my knee.

Steering out from vanished headlands
For a harbor on no chart,
With the winter in the rigging,
With the ice-wind in my heart,

Down the bournless slopes of sea-room,
With the long gray wake behind,
I have sailed my cruiser steady
With no pilot but the wind.

Battling with relentless pirates
From the lower seas of Doom,
I have kept the colors flying
Through the roar of drift and gloom.

Scudding where the shadow foemen
Hang about us grim and stark,
Broken spars and shredded canvas,
We are racing for the dark.

Sped and blown abaft the sunset
Like a shriek the storm has caught;
But the helm ...

Bliss Carman

Biography

When I am buried, all my thoughts and acts
Will be reduced to lists of dates and facts,
And long before this wandering flesh is rotten
The dates which made me will be all forgotten;
And none will know the gleam there used to be
About the feast days freshly kept by me,
But men will call the golden hour of bliss
'About this time,' or 'shortly after this.'

Men do not heed the rungs by which men climb
Those glittering steps, those milestones upon time,
Those tombstones of dead selves, those hours of birth,
Those moments of the soul in years of earth.
They mark the height achieved, the main result,
The power of freedom in the perished cult,
The power of boredom in the dead man's deeds
Not the bright moments of the sprinkled seeds.

By many waters and on ...

John Masefield