Rhymed Proverbs
Rhymed Proverbs
Original Text
John Robert Colombo, Selected Poems (Windsor: Black Moss Press, 1982): 87; and now in All the Poems of John Robert Colombo (Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2005).
1Give and spend,
2And God will send.
3God help the rich, the poor can beg.
4A black hen will lay a white egg.
5Open not your door when the devil knocks.
6Hell is wherever heaven is not.
7That must be true which all men say.
8He that cannot pay let him pray.
9An old fox needs not be taught tricks.
10Many sands will sink a ship.
11By wisdom peace, by peace plenty.
12Old bees yield no honey.
13Close sits my shirt, but closer my skin.
14Sorrow is good for nothing but sin.
15He who oweth is all in the wrong.
16A borrowed loan should come laughing home.
17Two of a trade seldom agree.
18Make a virtue out of necessity.
19Nobody is fond of fading flowers.
20Never fish in troubled waters.
21It is a long lane that has no turning.
22There is no royal road to learning.
23In the end,
24All things will mend.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2010
Rhyme
Form
Special Copyright
"Rhymed Proverbs" from <i>All the Poems of John Robert Colombo</i>, copyright 2005 by John Robert Colombo. Reprinted by permission of the author.