Mark R.Slaughter
Work, sleep, work, sleep,
Work, sleep, work, sleep,
Work, sleep, work, sleep,
Work:
Work, sleep, work, sleep,
Work, sleep, work, sleep,
Work, sleep, work, sleep,
Work.
Oh free me please with gentle ease
From work, sleep, work, sleep, work!
This odium, pounding tedium
Of my work, sleep, work, sleep, work.
Just whisk me off to lands afar
From work, sleep, work, sleep, work—
That grinding train of rhythmic pain
Called ‘Work, sleep, work, sleep, work.’
Poor neural circuits fizzle and pop
In work, sleep, work, sleep, work,
In trying to make some sense of all this
Work, sleep, work, sleep, work.
But Hark! I see a golden gleam—
A saving spirit of hope:
‘You’re fired! ’He screams.What news to bear,
This wondrous hangman’s rope!
So now I’m free, released from all this
Work, sleep, work, sleep, work—
Eternal peace and rest for me, no
Work, sleep, work, sleep, work.
1.Please, share with your group members, your personal choice between an unchanged but stable life and an adventurous but unstable life.Tell why.
2.Try to translate the last but second stanza of the poem into Chinese.Pay special attention to the metrical form and rhyme scheme of the poem.
For Fun
Works to Read
1. Past and Present:It is a book byThomas Carlyle.It combinesmedievalhistory with criticism of 19th-century British society.Carlyle wrote it in seven weeks as a respite from the harassing labor of writingCromwell.He was inspired by the recently published Chronicles of the Abbey of Saint Edmund’s Bury, which had been written byJocelin of Brakelondat the close of the 12th century.
2. Songs of Innocence and of Experience: It is an illustrated collection of poems byWilliam Blake.It appeared in two phases.A few first copies were printed and illuminated by William Blake himself in 1789; five years later he bound these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.