Take Up The Household Burden.

Take up the household burden,
    No iron rule of kings,
But make your family understand
    That you are running things,
Don't storm around and bluster,
    And don't get mad and swear
If in the soup is floating--
    A rag and a hank of hair.

Take up the household burden
    In patience to abide,
To curse the irate grocer
    And make your wife confide
By open speech and simple
    And hundred times made plain
How she has sought to profit
    In spending all you gain.

Take up the household burden--
    The little baby boy,
And walk the floor in anguish
    And don't let it annoy.
For when the kid seems sleepy
    And you are feeling "sold,"
There comes a cry from baby boy
    That makes your blood run cold.

Take up the household burden
    And try and be a man,
Just simply grin and bear it
    And do the best you can.
Come now and try your manhood
    And let the future go,
And listen to your elders--
    They've tried it and they know.

Edwin C. Ranck

Edwin C. Ranck was an American lyricist noted for his work in the early 20th century. He was a prolific writer and his lyrics were often characterized by their humor and wit. One of his standout works is the poem 'The Optimist', which reflects his positive outlook on life. Beyond that, little is known about his personal life or career. He remains a somewhat obscure figure in literary history.

Edwin C. Ranck

Keep Tryin'.

Edwin C. Ranck, Simple Poetry

Why The Mole Is Blind.

Edwin C. Ranck, Simple Poetry

Nocturne.

Edwin C. Ranck, Simple Poetry

The Lobster.

Edwin C. Ranck, 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.

The White Man's Burden

Take up the White man's burden
Send forth the best ye breed
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man's burden
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times mad plain.
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden
The savage wars of peace
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden

Rudyard

Keep Tryin'.

When you're feelin' blue as ink
    An' your spirits 'gin to sink,
Don't be weak an' take a drink
    But
    Keep Tryin'.

There are times when all of us
    Get riled up and start a muss,
But there ain't no use to cuss,
    Just
    Keep Tryin'.

When things seem to go awry,
    And the sun deserts your sky,
Don't sit down somewhere and cry,
    But
    Keep Tryin'.

Everybody honors grit,
    Men who never whine a bit--
Men who tell the world, "I'm IT"
    And
    Keep Tryin'.

Get a hustle on you NOW,
    Make a great, big solemn vow
That you'll win out anyhow,
    And
    Keep Tryin'.

All the world's a battlefield
    Where the true man is revealed,
But the ones who never yie...

Edwin C. Ranck

The Workingman.

    God bless the brawny arms of toil,
        The noble hearts and royal hands,
    That plow the plain and seed the soil,
        And grow the grains of laughing lands!
    King in the blessed vales of life
        Where perfect pleasures first began,
    May blessings come with raptures rife
        To crown the humble workingman!

    His kingdoms wave with bannered corn
        And meadows bright with fairy bloom,
    While duties of his heart are born
        Where sylvan shadows hide the gloom;
    Sweet Nature fills his heart with health,
        While rustic warbles lead his soul
    Where rill and fountain sing by stealth
        And breezes soft with music roll.

    He lives where simple wishes throng,
        And give contentment to...

Freeman Edwin Miller

To The Theoretical Selector

Would you be the King, the strong man, first in council and in toil,
To the men who war with nature for possession of the soil?
Take an axe upon your shoulder, take a billy and a rug,
And go forward in the forest where no man has cut and dug,
Where the scrub-ferns grow like magic, and the gum-trees you must fell
Have their topmost boughs in heaven, and their tap-roots deep as hell.

Take the land the Powers would cheerfully devote to Smith or Brown,
Two miles or more from water and a hundred miles from town;
Fell, and scrub, and hew, and hunger, and when seven weeks are gone
You may have a clearing large enough to build a hut upon.
Then you furnish it with saplings and you carpet it with loam,
And you bring the kids and missus to their charming country home!

Rising ear...

Edward

Jacob

My sons, and ye the children of my sons,
Jacob your father goes upon his way,
His pilgrimage is being accomplished.
Come near and hear him ere his words are oer.
Not as my fathers or his fathers days,
As Isaacs days or Abrahams, have been mine;
Not as the days of those that in the field
Walked at the eventide to meditate,
And haply, to the tent returning, found
Angels at nightfall waiting at their door.
They communed, Israel wrestled with the Lord.
No, not as Abrahams or as Isaacs days,
My sons, have been Jacob your fathers days,
Evil and few, attaining not to theirs
In number, and in worth inferior much.
As a man with his friend, walked they with God,
In His abiding presence they abode,
And all their acts were open to His face.
But I have ha...

Arthur Hugh Clough

The Suicide

    "Curse thee, Life, I will live with thee no more!
    Thou hast mocked me, starved me, beat my body sore!
    And all for a pledge that was not pledged by me,
    I have kissed thy crust and eaten sparingly
    That I might eat again, and met thy sneers
    With deprecations, and thy blows with tears,--
    Aye, from thy glutted lash, glad, crawled away,
    As if spent passion were a holiday!
    And now I go.    Nor threat, nor easy vow
    Of tardy kindness can avail thee now
    With me, whence fear and faith alike are flown;
    Lonely I came, and I depart alone,
    And know not where nor unto whom I go;
    But that thou canst not follow me I know."

    Thus I to Life, and ceased; but through my brain
    My thought ran still, until I spake again:<...

Edna St. Vincent Millay