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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
WORKMEN, by FLORA SHUFELT RIVOLA
First Line: A carpenter lived quietly and died
Last Line: —christian century
Subject(s): Carpenters; Crucifixion; Jesus Christ; Labor & Laborers; Jesus Christ - Crucifixion; Work; Workers
First Line: A carpenter lived quietly and died
Last Line: —christian century
Subject(s): Carpenters; Crucifixion; Jesus Christ; Labor & Laborers; Jesus Christ - Crucifixion; Work; Workers
A carpenter lived quietly and died;
The wood his two hands touched he loved to see
Shaped into thought; a plain stool's symmetry
Gave quiet joy. Far more than once he tried
Before the Beauty dreamed stood forth. Beside
His bench he saw the slow-grown, long-felled tree
Become at last the table's top—where he
Ate bread with Judas, and was crucified.
How can it matter here, our jumbled lot,
If eyes glimpse loveliness and give it shape,
Though days on days the weary see it not,
Though it be captured and again escape?
The Workman labors: give me patient days,
With eyes for beauty in carved wood's slow ways.
—CHRISTIAN CENTURY
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