Five-Per-Cent
Because I have ten thousand pounds I sit upon my stern,
And leave my living tranquilly for other folks to earn.
For in some procreative way that isn't very clear,
Ten thousand pounds will breed, they say, five hundred every year.
So as I have a healthy hate of economic strife,
I mean to stand aloof from it the balance of my life.
And yet with sympathy I see the grimy son of toil,
And heartly congratulate the tiller of the soil.
I like the miner in the mine, the sailor on the sea,
Because up to five hundred pounds they sail and mine for me.
For me their toil is taxed unto that annual extent,
According to the holy shibboleth of Five-per-Cent.
So get ten thousand pounds, my friend, in any way you can.
And leave your future welfare to the noble Working Man.
He'll buy you suits of Harris tweed, an Airedale and a car;
Your golf clubs and your morning Times, your whisky and cigar.
He'll cosily install you in a cottage by a stream,
With every modern comfort, and a garden that's a dream>
Or if your tastes be urban, he'll provide you with a flat,
Secluded from the clamour of the proletariat.
With pictures, music, easy chairs, a table of good cheer,
A chap can manage nicely on five hundred pounds a year.
And though around you painful signs of industry you view,
Why should you work when you can make your money work for you?
So I'll get down upon my knees and bless the Working Man,
Who offers me a life of ease through all my mortal span;
Whose loins are lean to make me fat, who slaves to keep me free,
Who dies before his prime to let me round the century;
Whose wife and children toil in urn until their strength is spent,
That I may live in idleness upon my five-per-cent.
And if at times they curse me, why should I feel any blame?
For in my place I know that they would do the very same.
Aye, though hey hoist a flag that's red on Sunday afternoon,
Just offer them ten thousand pounds and see them change their tune.
So I'll enjoy my dividends and live my life with zest,
And bless the mighty men who first - invented Interest.
poem by Robert William Service
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Related quotes
99 Lbs
Written by: d. bryant
Twenty-five pounds of pure cane sugar
Shes got in each and every kiss
You wouldnt know what Im talking bout
If you never had a love like this
Well, I dont mean to be frank with you all
Its a natural fact
Good things come wrapped up in small, small packages now
Well you cant argue with that
Oh, oh, yeah
Ninety-nine pounds of natural born goodness
Ninety-nine pounds of soul, oh, oh
Ninety-nine pounds of natural born goodness
Ninety-nine pounds of soul
Twenty-five pounds of tenderness
She got in each and every touch
Twenty-five pounds of understanding my woman
cause I was the one running round town worrying too much
Twenty-four pounds of sunday
That I cant see, yeah
And it all adds up to ninety-nine big pounds
Oh, Im talking about a feline friend
Ninety-nine pounds of natural born goodness
Ninety-nine pounds of soul
Ninety-nine pounds of natural born goodness
Ninety-nine pounds of soul
Ninety-nine pounds of natural born goodness
Ninety-nine pounds of soul
Ninety-nine pounds of natural born goodness
Ninety-nine pounds of soul
Ninety-nine pounds of natural born goodness
Ninety-nine pounds of soul
Ninety-nine pounds of natural born goodness
Ninety-nine pounds of soul
song performed by by Black Crowes
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Weigh
Id like to cut your head off so I could weigh it, what do ya say?
Five pounds, six, pounds, seven pounds
Id like to go to your house and gather all your razors and pick all the
Little prickly hairs so I can weigh them, what do ya say?
Five pounds, six pounds, seven pounds
Id like to gather all your friends and squish them all into a small
Swimming pool so I can weigh them, what do ya say?
Five pounds, six pounds, seven pounds
Why weigh on a sunny day?
So much to do so why, why weigh?
On a sunny day, why wei-igh-hey?
Why weigh, why weigh?
Id like to hear my options, so I can weigh them, what do ya say?
Five pounds, six pounds, seven pounds
Why weigh on a sunny day?
So much to do, so why, why weigh?
On a sunny day, why wei-gh-hey?
Why
Oh why[x11]
Why weigh?
song performed by by Phish
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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99 Pounds
I tell ya shes a heart breaker
And you cant tell me she aint
Theres a little devil in her
Under all that powder and paint
And she can hang you up every night
And get you so uptight
Shes 99 pounds, I said 99 pounds,
Shes 99 pounds of some kind of dynomite
I tell you half a ton of sugar aint half as sweet as her
She can change and rearrange you
Till you cant tell what you were
And it dont even pay to fight
cause she dont know wrong from right
Shes 99 pounds, I said 99 pounds,
Shes 99 pounds of some kind of dynomite
And she may look like an angel
But shes made out of tnt
Shes a little bitty thing and she ? ? ? ?
Yeah but when she holds you tight
Shes some kind of outa sight
Shes 99 pounds, I said 99 pounds,
I said 99 pounds of some kind of dynomite
I said 99 pounds, I said 99 pounds,
song performed by by Monkees
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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One Hundred Thousand Marching
One hundred thousand marching
One hundred thousand men
One hundred thousand heading
To a place and a time when
One hundred thousand dying
One hundred thousand cold
One hundred thousand praying
Forever young and never old
One hundred thousand lives were lost
One hundred thousand felt the pain
One hundred thousand maimed and slaughtered
And yet those armies march again.
poem by David Keig
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Props 'n Pounds
KURT LODER - MTV NEWS:
"Here is someone that's obviously playing rock and roll who is also a
funk artist, who covered a lot of categories that which artists have
been separating for so long and brought them together purposely ... ."
Props n pounds
Props n pounds
Love 4 one another is the only sound 2day
Positivity is the only way
Chorus:
Props n pounds
Props n pounds
Love 4 one another is the only sound 2day
Negative people don't get to play
Props n pounds
Props n pounds
Why you wanna holler when you know what the bible say
Positivity is the only way
Once again when the coin is tossed
And lands upon the sea
Unsuspecting lives are lost
They didn't have to be
When the book is opened
and The Son condemns them all
Pagan holidays,crucifixes
$100 tears will fall
Chorus :
(hey)
(no play)
(you know it)
All the ones still in the game
Never give me pounds
Egotists to proud to say the opposite of found
Worrying about the validity of the rulers crown
When everyone ought 2 be in line giving props n pounds
Chorus:
(hey hey hey)
(ooow)
Props n pounds
Props n pounds
Props n pounds
Once again when the money get tossed
Never gonna see npg floss
Keeping you happy is the only cost
Love God and everyone or your life will be lost
Listen to the words that will save every one
Safe sex campaign talking about a gun
With CON as the prefix, suffix be the DOM
(dumb)
Look at them both and tell me something
What's in the Trojan Horse? Lubrication.
Nothing goes in my woman except The Son
REWIND
KURT LODER / MTV NEWS:
" ... I mean he's just one of the greatest live performers there is but
all this other stuff, the attitude, going on around it. I mean you can
be a great musician and not have the right kind of approach. And Prince
has the right approach 2. ...I think the gift of simplicity is like a
keynote of art I mean, he doesn't he knows when to stop - usually ...."
Props n pounds
Props n pounds
Props n pounds
Props n pounds
Chorus :
(U better choose right, U better choose right before your life get lost)
Yeah
Props N Pounds.
song performed by by Prince
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I realized that in those nine seasons I started out at about 225 pounds and I felt, you know, full figured fabulous woman but in those seasons I gained 75 pounds up to over 300 pounds all in front of the nation.
quote by Star Jones
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Beat the plowshare
Pound the drum
Of war to come
Rhythm on steel
Red from the forge
Forms the sword
To carry to war
The sledge makes beat
On thinning edge
As it pounds
pounds
pounds
pounds
It sounds the drum
Of war to come
Soon it will be echoed
By marching men
cries of battle
Sounds of war
The sword will lead
Before the flag
Followed by the sound
Of drums
Pounding
Pounding
To war
Today, I beat my plowshare
And I listen to the drum
poem by James Timothy Jarrett
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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A Thousand Miles Away
Hurrah for the Roma railway! Hurrah for Cobb and Co.,
And oh! for a good fat horse or two to carry me Westward Ho
To carry me Westward Ho! my boys, that's where the cattle stray
On the far Barcoo, where they eat nardoo, a thousand miles away.
Chorus
Then give your horses rein across the open plain,
We'll ship our meat both sound and sweet, nor care what some folks say;
And frozen we'll send home the cattle that now roam
On the far Barcoo and the Flinders too, a thousand miles away.
Knee-deep in grass we've got to pass—for the truth I'm bound to tell
Where in three weeks the cattle get as fat as they can swell
As fat as they can swell, my boys; a thousand pounds they weigh,
On the far Barcoo, where they eat nardoo, a thousand miles away.
No Yankee hide e'er grew outside such beef as we can freeze;
No Yankee pastures make such steers as we send o'er the sea
As we send o'er the seas, my boys, a thousand pounds they weigh
From the far Barcoo, where they eat nardoo, a thousand miles away.
poem by Andrew Barton Paterson
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What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.
quote by Samuel Johnson
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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What makes all doctrines plain and clear- About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was prov'd true before Prove false again Two hundred more.
quote by Samuel Butler
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I thought I had too much money to be happy and normal. Thousand of pounds is just too much for a working person to handle all of a sudden, and I felt I didn't deserve it.
quote by Peter Green
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Makes Me Want To Cry
Just a few facts
that should make you want to cry…
Four thousand per cent markup
On each bottle of water you buy
Four per cent of all U.S. energy is consumed
In the making of plastic
So I’m guessin’ that our average person
Doesn’t think the energy crises is drastic
Doesn’t even matter
what you’re putting in it
One hundred forty four thousand
plastic bags are used every minute
At least four billion bottles
purchased in 2010
An amount that’s quite
Impossible to truly comprehend
Twelve per cent of all plastic
Is turned into solid trash
Which we then convert into big smelly piles
And then try to find a place to stash
And speaking of taste there’s
one thing that you oughta’
Know about your spring
and mountain pure bottled water
And that’s one not so surprising fact
That most of your prized mountain,
and your precious spring water
Comes into your bottles from an ordinary tap
At least four hundred million barrels of oil
Used to make plastic bottles and bags in 2010
Look at the bright side, at least we’ve made a lot of Arabs happy…
In Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Iran!
So maybe it’s the shape or maybe the cachet
That works it’s insidious seduction… (but stop and think!)
A hundred watt bulb can burn eleven hours
On the energy wasted on just one bottle’s production
Eighty percent of marine garbage is plastic
Two hundred species at risk from plastic waste
But what’s a few species? Let’s not be drastic!
We certainly wouldn’t want to act in haste.
Three hundred thousand pounds per square kilometer
Floating in the Pacific alone
So we oughta’ start thinking about using the Atlantic
When we start thinking of tossing our old cell phone
So when you buy your next bottled water
There’s one thought I’d like to plant under your nose
It takes only a few seconds to make one plastic bottle
But takes four hundred fifty…years to decompose
poem by David Whalen
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There Must Be An Easier Way
To earn one's living there must be an easier way
Than working in a menial job for menial pay
You age so fast your hair prematurely gray
And you must work hard till your retirement day.
When you ask the boss for a raise his answer no
For a raise in pay you must have more to show
The unemployed are many and the jobs are few
And there's plenty more to do the job you do.
At 5.30 a m each work day from bed I rise
Before daylight has lit the morning skies
Then long drive to work in smoky old work van
Such is the lot of the common working man.
The chap next door seems better off than I
He does not work yet life he does enjoy
Whilst I'm at work he rest at home in bed
And he doesn't look deprived or underfed
With six year old son and a non working wife
He live an easy and a stress free life
And I've heard it said that he's never worked a day
But good luck to him is all that I can say.
I do not receive or seek sympathy
For there are many far worse off than me
But living life would be a lot more fun
If I did not have to rise before the sun
poem by Francis Duggan
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The Grand Scheme of Things
How important I feel, invincible!
Then, I read they found a nebula; a white illuminate;
An interfuse of gaseous light, hung from the galatic ceiling.
Deep within the deepest dark of darkest night is the forming
Of a new star, seven thousand light years away,
Its gas-cloud formation towering six trillion miles.
I, with an average weight of one-hundred-seventy-five pounds;
Standing five feet ten and one-half inches tall; a life span of
Approximatly seventy-five year, have suddenly been struck
With the realization of how supercilious I am in the grand scheme
of things.
(Free Verse)
poem by Lynn W. Petty
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Lovely White Flowers
He went inside the cafe where they used to sit together.
It was here, three months ago, that his friend told him:
'We're completely broke -so hard up, the two of us,
that we're stuck with the cheapest places.
I can't go around with you any more -it's no use hiding the fact.
I've got to tell you, somebody else is after me.'
The 'somebody else' had promised him two suits, some silk handkerchiefs.
He himself, to get his friend back,
went through hell rounding up twenty pounds.
His friend came back to him for the twenty pounds-
but along with that, for their old intimacy,
their old love, for the deep feeling between them.
The 'somebody else' was a liar, a real bum:
he'd ordered only one suit for his friend,
and that under pressure, after much begging.
But now he doesn't want the suits any longer,
he doesn't want the silk handkerchiefs at all,
or twenty pounds, or twenty piastres even.
Sunday they buried him, at ten in the morning.
Sunday they buried him, almost a week ago.
He laid flowers on his cheap coffin,
lovely white flowers, very much in keeping
with his beauty, his twenty-two years.
When he went to the cafe that evening
he happened to have some vital business there
to that same cafe where they used to go together,
it was a knife in his heart,
that dead cafe where they used to go together.
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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The Joining
Three different women - three different cases
All gave birth to satin and laces.
One black, one oriental, one white
What they had in common was they all
Gave birth the same night.
The BLACK child was six pounds three
Brown eyes and as beautiful as can be.
The ORIENTAL child was five pounds nine
Jet black hair and looking fine.
The WHITE child was eight pounds three
Blue eyes, blond hair, skin fair.
All confined to the same ward and about five feet apart
All loving mothers with the kindest of hearts.
They all talked for hours on end
And made a pact that they would remain friends.
To their surprise they all lived close by.
Every weekend their families would get together
And it seemed that life couldn't get better.
And every year on the girls birthday
They'd get together to celebrate.
NOW! The point that I want you to see
Is if they could do it, WHY can't we?
Why can't all nations put aside their bigotry and hate
And join together to celebrate, just what GOD has given
And make this life on earth worth living.
poem by Louis Rams
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I had only played five games in my senior year in high school. I was not large enough. Hell, when I graduated, I was about five foot four and weighed 120 pounds. I didn't go with the Dodgers until spring training of 1940 and I weighed all of 155 pounds soaking wet.
quote by Pee Wee Reese
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Very good wine was bought at ten pounds per pipe, the contract price; but the superior quality was fifteen pounds; and some of this was not much inferior to the best London Madeira.
quote by William Bligh
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I went from 118 pounds to 135 pounds in a few months. But, I still didn't know anything about food.
quote by Warren Cuccurullo
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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On the Service
Some people so generously, so freely, so nobly, so eloquently, so obviously provide you with two pounds of the most, very helpful, even vital assistance, on the service.
but underneath they have given you ten pounds of hurt, anxiety and doubt.
The are more than
Passive aggressive,
rocks in food,
sand in your drink,
They are hate in love.
Hate pretending to be kindness, generosity, and love.
poem by Michael Kavuoti
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