Poetry & Analysis
Nixon Waterman Poems
Featured PoemsDo It Now!
If you have a task worth doing,
Do it now!
In delay there’s danger brewing,
Do it now!
Don’t you be a “by-and-byer”
And a sluggish patience-trier;
If there’s aught you would acquire,
Do it now!
If you’d earn a prize worth owning,
Do it now!
Drop all waiting and postponing,
Do it now!
Say, “I will!” and then stick to it,
Choose your purpose and pursue it,
There’s but one right way to do it,
Do it now!
All we have is just this minute,
Do it now!
Find your duty and begin it,
Do it now!
Surely you’re not always going
To be “a going-to-be”; and knowing
You must some time make a showing,
Do it now!
Plain Explanation Do It Now!: Meaning and Summary
The poem attacks procrastination through a repeated command. Delay is not presented as neutral waiting; it allows danger to grow and turns a person into a permanent “going-to-be.”
Waterman links immediacy with purpose. The reader should identify a worthwhile duty, begin it and continue rather than repeatedly postponing the first action.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Procrastination: Delay threatens work before it begins.
- Present time: The current minute is the only time available for action.
- Commitment: Beginning must be followed by persistence.
- Duty: Urgency should serve a worthwhile purpose, not random activity.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is commanding, lively and impatient with excuses.
The mood is urgent but upbeat; rhyme and repetition make action feel energetic rather than anxious.
Close Reading Stanza-by-Stanza Explanation
Stanza 1
The speaker warns that delay creates danger and mocks habitual postponement.
Stanza 2
A valuable prize requires purpose, pursuit and continuity.
Stanza 3
The present minute becomes the only reliable possession. Identity must move from future intention to current deed.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
Danger is imagined as something “brewing” during delay, while a prize waits to be earned. The poem otherwise relies on action verbs rather than scenic imagery.
Delay behaves like an active threat, and time is treated as a possession limited to one minute.
Interpretation Symbols and Their Meaning
- Brewing danger: Consequences accumulating during inaction.
- Prize: A worthwhile result produced by action.
- This minute: The only point where intention can become behavior.
- Going-to-be: Identity trapped permanently in preparation.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
Three octaves use a repeating pattern of short imperative refrain lines and longer rhymed statements. “Do it now!” appears four times per stanza.
The refrain interrupts every possible development, imitating the immediate action it demands.
Craft Literary Devices
- Refrain: Repeated “Do it now!” creates insistence.
- Imperative: Commands dominate the poem.
- Wordplay: “By-and-byer” and “going-to-be” turn postponement into character types.
- Personification: Danger brews.
- Alliteration: “Purpose and pursue” reinforces forward movement.
Critical Reading AP Lit-Style Central Argument
The refrain does more than communicate urgency; it repeatedly prevents the poem itself from drifting into delay. Waterman makes form perform argument, turning each interruption into a miniature beginning.
A Cure for Trouble
Trouble is looking for some one to trouble!
Who will partake of his worrisome wares?
Where shall he tarry and whom shall he harry
At morning and night with his burden of cares?
They who have hands that are idle and empty,
They without purpose to build and to bless;
They who invite him with scowls that delight him
Are they who shall dwell in the House of Distress.
Trouble is looking for some one to trouble!
I’ll tell you how all his plans to eclipse:
When he draws near you be sure he shall hear you
A-working away with a song on your lips.
Look at him squarely and laugh at his coming;
Say you are busy and bid him depart;
He will not tease you to stay if he sees you
Have tasks in your hands and a hope in your heart.
Trouble is looking for some one to trouble!
I shall not listen to aught he shall say;
Out of life’s duty shall blossom in beauty
A grace and a glory to gladden the way.
I shall have faith in the gifts of the Giver;
I shall be true to my purpose and plan;
Good cheer abounding and love all-surrounding,
I shall keep building the best that I can.
Plain Explanation A Cure for Trouble: Meaning and Summary
Trouble is imagined as a traveling salesman searching for someone willing to receive his burdens. Idle hands, lack of purpose and habitual scowling make a welcoming home for him.
The “cure” is not denial of real difficulty. It is purposeful work, song, hope, faith and continued building. These habits prevent worry from becoming the central occupation of life.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Purposeful activity: Useful work limits the space available for anxious fixation.
- Attitude: Hope and good cheer alter the experience of trouble.
- Faith: Trust in the Giver supports continued effort.
- Self-direction: The speaker chooses what receives attention.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is comic, defiant and encouraging. Trouble is reduced from an overwhelming force to an unwanted visitor.
The mood grows from playful warning to confident affirmation.
Close Reading Stanza-by-Stanza Explanation
Stanza 1
Trouble looks for idle and purposeless hosts, eventually placing them in the “House of Distress.”
Stanza 2
Work, song, laughter and hope become practical ways to refuse the visitor.
Stanza 3
The speaker states a personal program of duty, faith, love and constructive effort.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
Wares, burdens, houses, hands, hearts, flowers and building create commercial and domestic imagery.
Trouble is fully personified: he searches, sells, tarries, harasses, delights and teases.
Interpretation Symbols and Their Meaning
- Worrisome wares: Thoughts of anxiety offered for repeated attention.
- Idle hands: Lack of constructive purpose.
- House of Distress: A life organized around worry.
- Task and song: Productive attention joined with hopeful spirit.
- Blossom: Beauty emerging from duty.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
Three octaves use an ABABCDCD tendency with frequent internal rhyme, especially “tarry/harry” and “abounding/all-surrounding.”
Every stanza begins with the same personified statement, then develops diagnosis, defense and resolution.
Craft Literary Devices
- Personification: Trouble becomes a traveling intruder.
- Extended metaphor: Anxiety is merchandise offered to a household.
- Anaphora: The title statement opens every stanza.
- Internal rhyme: Closely paired sounds give comic momentum.
- Symbolism: House, hands, task and blossom represent mental habits.
Critical Reading AP Lit-Style Central Argument
Waterman makes trouble dependent on hospitality: it gains power when a person gives it room, attention and identity. The poem’s comic personification restores agency by allowing the speaker to reject the visitor and choose constructive purpose instead.
A Smile and a Task
Keep a smile on your lips; it is better
To joyfully, hopefully try
For the end you would gain, than to fetter
Your life with a moan and a sigh.
There are clouds in the firmament ever
The beauty of heaven to mar,
Yet night so profound there is never
But somewhere is shining a star.
Keep a task in your hands; you must labor;
By deeds is true happiness won;
For stranger and friend and for neighbor,
Rejoice there is much to be done.
Endeavor by crowning life’s duty
With joy-giving song and with smile,
To make the world fuller of beauty
Because you are in it a while.
Plain Explanation A Smile and a Task: Meaning and Summary
The poem joins positive feeling with useful work. A smile without a task might become shallow, while labor without hope may become heavy. Together they create a practical form of happiness.
Waterman defines happiness through deeds performed for strangers, friends and neighbors. The goal is to leave the world more beautiful during one’s limited time in it.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Cheerful effort: Hope and labor strengthen one another.
- Service: Work gains meaning through benefit to others.
- Resilience: Stars remain even when clouds and darkness dominate.
- Limited time: A brief life can still add beauty.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is warm, encouraging and practical. It avoids claiming that darkness does not exist.
The mood is hopeful and active, moving from sky imagery to hands and community.
Close Reading Stanza-by-Stanza Explanation
Stanza 1
Joyful effort is preferred to self-confining complaint. Clouds may mar the sky, but some star remains.
Stanza 2
The poem moves from attitude to action. Happiness is won through deeds that make shared life more beautiful.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
Clouds, heaven, night and star provide the emotional landscape; lips, hands and song bring it into human conduct.
A moan can “fetter” life, while duty can wear a crown of song and smile.
Interpretation Symbols and Their Meaning
- Smile: Hopeful attitude and social warmth.
- Task: Useful responsibility.
- Clouds and night: Difficulty and discouragement.
- Star: Remaining possibility within darkness.
- Crown: Joy giving dignity to ordinary duty.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
Two octaves generally follow an ABABCDCD pattern. The matched opening commands—“Keep a smile” and “Keep a task”—create balance.
The first stanza establishes inner attitude; the second converts that attitude into outward service.
Craft Literary Devices
- Parallelism: Smile on the lips and task in the hands form complementary instructions.
- Metaphor: Complaint fetters life, and joy crowns duty.
- Symbolism: Star and clouds represent hope and hardship.
- Contrast: Moan and sigh are opposed to song and smile.
- Imperative: Repeated “Keep” makes the advice continuous.
Critical Reading AP Lit-Style Central Argument
Waterman refuses to choose between optimism and labor. By pairing a smile with a task, the poem argues that authentic happiness is neither passive mood nor joyless duty, but hopeful action directed toward a shared world.
The Sculptor
I am the sculptor: I, myself, the clay,
Of which I am to fashion, as I will,
In deed and in desire, day by day,
The pattern of my purpose, good or ill.
In breathless bronze nor the insensate stone
Must my enduring passion find its goal;
Within the living statue I enthrone
That essence of eternity, the soul.
Nor space nor time that soul of yearning bars;
It flashes to the zenith of the sky,
And dwelling mid the mystery of the stars,
Aspires to answer the Eternal Why.
It loves the pleasing note of lute and lyre,
The lily’s purple, the red rose’s glow;
It wonders at the witchery of the fire,
And marvels at the magic of the snow.
“Who taught,” it asks, “the ant to build her nest?
The bee her cells? the hermit thrush to sing?
The dove to plume his iridescent breast?
The butterfly to paint his gorgeous wing?
The spider how to spin so wondrous wise?
The nautilus to form his chambered shell?
The carrier-pigeon under alien skies,
Who taught him how his homeward course to tell?”
By force or favor it would win from fate
The sacred secret of the blood and breath:
Learn all the hidden springs of love and hate,
And gain dominion over life and death.
In every feature of this sculptured face
Of spirit and of substance, I must mold
The shining symbol of a grander grace;
The hope toward which the centuries have rolled.
Oh, hands of mine that the unnumbered years
Evolved from hoof and wing and claw and fin,
‘T is ours to bring from out the stress and tears,
A godlike figure fashioned from within.
Plain Explanation The Sculptor: Meaning and Summary
The speaker is both artist and material. Instead of shaping bronze or stone, the speaker shapes a living self through repeated deeds and desires. Character is therefore an ongoing creative work.
The soul’s curiosity reaches from beauty in music and nature to questions about instinct, evolution, love, hatred, life and death. The final stanza places human hands within a vast natural history and gives them responsibility for fashioning a higher figure from within.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Self-creation: Character is formed by daily choices.
- Soul and body: Human identity joins spirit with evolved physical form.
- Wonder and inquiry: Curiosity reaches toward nature’s hidden causes.
- Evolution: Hands inherit a long history from earlier forms of life.
- Moral aspiration: The self may be fashioned toward grace or harm.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is philosophical, ambitious and reverent. The speaker combines confidence in agency with wonder before mystery.
The mood expands from focused self-examination to cosmic curiosity and evolutionary awe.
Close Reading Stanza-by-Stanza Explanation
Stanza 1
The controlling metaphor is established: the self shapes the self, and the soul is enthroned within a living statue.
Stanza 2
The soul moves beyond material limits through art, color, fire, snow and the stars.
Stanza 3
A sequence of questions considers instinct and design across animals and natural forms.
Stanza 4
The speaker seeks ultimate knowledge while accepting responsibility to mold spirit and substance toward grace.
Stanza 5
Human hands are placed within evolution and assigned the inward work of creating a more godlike figure.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
Sculpture supplies clay, bronze, stone, statue, face, mold and figure. Cosmic and natural images include stars, flowers, fire, snow, insects, birds, shells, blood and breath.
The soul flashes, dwells, loves, wonders, asks and seeks. Fate possesses secrets, while centuries appear to roll toward hope.
Interpretation Symbols and Their Meaning
- Sculptor: Conscious will and moral agency.
- Clay: The changeable self shaped through habit.
- Living statue: Human character embodied in action.
- Stars and Eternal Why: Intellectual and spiritual mystery.
- Hands: Evolved capacity for deliberate creation.
- Godlike figure: An ethical ideal formed from within.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The poem contains four octaves followed by a concluding quatrain. Most sections use an ABABCDCD pattern, giving philosophical thought a controlled formal movement.
The scale widens steadily: individual will, soul, universe, natural life, ultimate knowledge and evolutionary responsibility.
Craft Literary Devices
- Extended metaphor: Self-development is sculpture.
- Personification: The soul acts as an explorer and questioner.
- Rhetorical questions: The animal catalogue dramatizes wonder rather than supplying easy answers.
- Symbolism: Clay, statue and hands represent possibility and agency.
- Allusion to evolution: Hoof, wing, claw and fin place humanity within natural development.
- Paradox: Artist and material occupy the same person.
Critical Reading AP Lit-Style Central Argument
Waterman’s paradox of the self as both sculptor and clay makes freedom inseparable from responsibility. The evolutionary ending expands private character-building into the latest stage of natural history, suggesting that consciousness inherits the task of shaping what instinct alone could not complete.
Reader Questions
Questions Readers Ask About Nixon Waterman
Who was Nixon Waterman?
Nixon Waterman was an American newspaper writer, humorist and poet born in 1859. His verse often combines practical moral advice with rhyme, wordplay and familiar objects. He died in 1944.
What is Nixon Waterman’s most famous poem?
“A Rose to the Living” is generally his most recognized poem. Its message is to give appreciation while a person is alive rather than waiting to offer elaborate tribute after death.
What does a rose to the living is more mean?
It means that a modest expression of love offered at the right time is more valuable to its recipient than an expensive memorial offered too late.
What is the message of What Have We Done Today?
The poem says that future plans for kindness are not enough. Character must be demonstrated through actions performed in the present day.
Is If I Knew You and You Knew Me the title of a poem?
The phrase is the memorable first line of Waterman’s poem “To Know All Is to Forgive All.” Readers commonly search for the poem under both wordings.
What is the meaning of To Know All Is to Forgive All?
The poem suggests that deeper knowledge of another person’s heart, motives and struggles would reduce conflict and make forgiveness easier.
What does the postage stamp symbolize in Stick to It?
The stamp symbolizes persistence. It remains attached to its task until it reaches the destination, becoming a humorous model for finishing work.
What is the secret of success in Nixon Waterman’s poem?
The berry-picking story defines success as concentrated effort. Choosing one worthwhile task and completing it produces more than constantly searching for a better option.
What is the lesson of Right Here and Just Now?
The poem teaches that imagined success in another time or place is an excuse unless a person begins working under present conditions.
What is the difference between Couldn’t and Could?
The two characters begin with the same opportunities. Could attempts, builds and persists, while Couldn’t repeatedly treats difficulty as proof that effort is impossible.
What does deliver the goods mean in the poem?
It means completing the responsibility one has accepted. The phrase applies to every occupation and social position, not only business.
What is Waterman’s cure for trouble?
The poem recommends purposeful work, hope, song, faith and constructive attention. Trouble grows stronger when worry becomes a person’s main occupation.
How are a smile and a task connected?
The smile represents hope and the task represents useful work. Waterman argues that happiness grows when a hopeful spirit is joined with service.
What does the clay symbolize in The Sculptor?
The clay symbolizes the changeable self. Because the speaker is both sculptor and clay, daily choices shape the character being created.
What literary devices does Nixon Waterman use?
Waterman frequently uses refrain, personification, puns, extended metaphors, rhetorical questions, direct commands, parallel structure and symbols drawn from work and ordinary objects.
Are Nixon Waterman’s poems in the public domain?
The poems reproduced here come from books published before 1931 and are in the public domain in the United States. Publishers in other countries should check their local copyright rules.
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