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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
L'ENVOI-TO MY PICK AND SHOVEL, by PATRICK MACGILL Poet's Biography First Line: When the last, long shift will be laboured, and the Last Line: When the last long shift will be laboured and the lying time will be burst. Subject(s): Death; Labor & Laborers; Shovels; Dead, The; Work; Workers | |||
When the last, long shift will be laboured, and the lying time will be burst, And we go as picks or shovels, navvies or nabobs, must, When you go up on the scrap-heap and I go down to the dust, Will ever a one remember the times our voices rung, When you were limber and lissome, and I was lusty and young? Remember the jobs we've laboured, the heartful songs we've sung? Perhaps some mortal in speaking will give us a kindly thought— "There is a muck-pile they shifted, here is a place where they wrought." But maybe our straining and striving and singing will go for nought, When you go up on the scrap-heap, and I go down to the dust— (Little children of labour, food for the worms and the rust,) When the last long shift will be laboured and the lying time will be burst. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AFTER WORKING SIXTY HOURS AGAIN FOR WHAT REASON by HICOK. BOB DAY JOB AND NIGHT JOB by ANDREW HUDGINS BIXBY'S LANDING by ROBINSON JEFFERS ON BUILDING WITH STONE by ROBINSON JEFFERS LINES FROM A PLUTOCRATIC POETASTER TO A DITCH-DIGGER by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS IN CALIFORNIA: MORNING, EVENING, LATE JANUARY by DENISE LEVERTOV |
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