DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Mind's Diet
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

No life worth naming ever comes to good
If always nourished on the selfsame food;
The creeping mite may live so if he please,
And feed on Stilton till he turns to cheese,
But cool Magendie proves beyond a doubt,
If mammals try it, that their eyes drop out.
No reasoning natures find it safe to feed,
For their sole diet, on a single creed;
It spoils their eyeballs while it spares their tongues,
And starves the heart to feed the noisy lungs.
When the first larvae on the elm are seen,
The crawling wretches, like its leaves, are green;
Ere chill October shakes the latest down,
They, like the foliage, change their tint to brown;
On the blue flower a bluer flower you spy,
You stretch to pluck it - 'tis a butterfly;
The flattened tree-toads so resemble bark,
They're hard to find as Ethiops in the dark;
The woodcock, stiffening to fictitious mud,
Cheats the young sportsman thirsting for his blood;
So by long living on a single lie,
Nay, on one truth, will creatures get its dye;
Red, yellow, green, they take their subject's hue, - 
Except when squabbling turns them black and blue!
Citizen of the World
by Alfred Joyce Kilmer (Joyce)

No longer of Him be it said
"He hath no place to lay His head."
In every land a constant lamp
Flames by His small and mighty camp.
There is no strange and distant place
That is not gladdened by His face.
And every nation kneels to hail
The Splendour shining through Its veil.
Cloistered beside the shouting street,
Silent, He calls me to His feet.
Imprisoned for His love of me
He makes my spirit greatly free.
And through my lips that uttered sin
The King of Glory enters in.
Prologue.  A Sense of Humor
by Vachel Lindsay

(Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children)
No man should stand before the moon
To make sweet song thereon,
With dandified importance,
His sense of humor gone.
Nay, let us don the motley cap,
The jester's chastened mien,
If we would woo that looking-glass
And see what should be seen.
O mirror on fair Heaven's wall,
We find there what we bring.
So, let us smile in honest part
And deck our souls and sing.
Yea, by the chastened jest alone
Will ghosts and terrors pass,
And fays, or suchlike friendly things,
Throw kisses through the glass.
Contrasts.
by Madison Julius Cawein

No eve of summer ever can attain
The gladness of that eve of late July,
When 'mid the roses, filled with musk and rain,
Against the wondrous topaz of the sky,
I met you, leaning on the pasture bars, - 
While heaven and earth grew conscious of the stars.
No night of blackest winter can repeat
The bitterness of that December night,
When at your gate, gray-glittering with sleet,
Within the glimmering square of window-light,
We parted, - long you clung unto my arm, - 
While heaven and earth surrendered to the storm.
Mrs. Merdle Discourseth Of Things Earthly.
by Horatio Alger, Jr.

No matter how costly or flimsy her dresses,
The angel you honor with your kind attentions;
No matter how foolish her wardrobe inventions,
You love her, or say so, from slipper to tresses;
But, presto! you call her the greatest of sinners,
Though smiling, she treats you to badly cooked dinners;
Which proves where the seat is of men's best affections,
With which 'pon their honor they extol us as wives,
And treat us at dinner with sagest reflections,
Of beauty, and duty we owe all our lives
To you, noble lords, of this mundane creation;
Which, judging from some things they tell us,
Was made for the creatures of this trading nation,
Who make it a business to buy us and sell us,
Like 'Erie,' or 'Central,' or other such stocks;
With care, when they bid for a very 'Miss Nancy,'
That she's of a stock that the brokers call 'fancy,'
Or else has a pocket 'chuck full of the rocks'--
The rocks that are wrecking each day of their sailing,
More fortunes than ever in ocean were swallowed;
Where 'ventures' of marriage their victims impaling
With mammon and mis'ry together have wallowed.
It's Only A Way He's Got
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

(As sung by the camp fire.)
No doubt the saying's all abroad,
And rattling through the land.
We hear it at the mangle, too,
With 'What are you going to stand?'
I'm sure I don't know which to choose,
There's really such a lot'
But I hope my song you'll not refuse,
For it's only a way I've got.
Chorus: Tol, lol, litter, tol, lol.
Tol, lol, the rol, lay.
In Sydney town a gal I met,
Her dress was rather gay,
I think the place, it was Pitt Street,
Or somewhere near that way.
Says she, 'The night is very cold,
Pray, stand a drop of Hot.
I hope my freedom you'll excuse,
For it's only a way I've got.'
Chorus: Tol, lol, &c.
The drink we soon put out of sight,
And off for home did walk,
When a fellow came up and quite polite
To her began to talk.
He drew my ticker from my fob,
And bolted like a shot.
Says she, 'Oh, take no notice, Bob,
It's only a way he's got.'
Chorus: Tol, lol, &c.
Says I, 'I'll soon catch you, my chap,'
And arter him I flies,
When another stepped up and knocked my hat
Completely o'er my eyes.
He from my pocket drew my purse,
And off with it did trot;
Says she, 'It's well it is no worse,
But it's only a way he's got.'
Chorus: Tol, lol, &c.
A little further on we went.
I had got rather shy.
Then a butcher ran his tray
Right bang into my eye.
The fellow said it was my fault,
Called me a drunken sot.
Then, like a thief, he slunk away,
'Twas only a way he'd got!
Chorus: Tol, lol, &c.
Now, as we walked along the street,
A lot of chaps we met.
I saw they on a game were bent;
Says they, 'How fat you get!'
I got from them some ugly pokes,
They made me a regular Scot.
They said, 'Oh, never mind our jokes,
It's only a way we've got!'
Chorus: Tol, lol, &c.
I have grown tired of Sydney town
Since I've lost all my cash,
And so will up the country go,
And tell them of my smash.
Oh, then we'll have such lots of fun,
I'll court Miss Polly Scott;
And if she asks me what I mean
I'll tell her it's a way I've got.
Chorus: Tol, lol, &c.
Crotalus
by Bret Harte (Francis)

No life in earth, or air, or sky;
The sunbeams, broken silently,
On the bared rocks around me lie,
Cold rocks with half-warmed lichens scarred,
And scales of moss; and scarce a yard
Away, one long strip, yellow-barred.
Lost in a cleft! 'Tis but a stride
To reach it, thrust its roots aside,
And lift it on thy stick astride!
Yet stay! That moment is thy grace!
For round thee, thrilling air and space,
A chattering terror fills the place!
A sound as of dry bones that stir
In the dead Valley! By yon fir
The locust stops its noonday whir!
The wild bird hears; smote with the sound,
As if by bullet brought to ground,
On broken wing, dips, wheeling round!
The hare, transfixed, with trembling lip,
Halts, breathless, on pulsating hip,
And palsied tread, and heels that slip.
Enough, old friend! 'tis thou. Forget
My heedless foot, nor longer fret
The peace with thy grim castanet!
I know thee! Yes! Thou mayst forego
That lifted crest; the measured blow
Beyond which thy pride scorns to go,
Or yet retract! For me no spell
Lights those slit orbs, where, some think, dwell
Machicolated fires of hell!
I only know thee humble, bold,
Haughty, with miseries untold,
And the old Curse that left thee cold,
And drove thee ever to the sun,
On blistering rocks; nor made thee shun
Our cabin's hearth, when day was done,
And the spent ashes warmed thee best;
We knew thee, silent, joyless guest
Of our rude ingle. E'en thy quest
Of the rare milk-bowl seemed to be
Naught but a brother's poverty,
And Spartan taste that kept thee free
From lust and rapine. Thou! whose fame
Searchest the grass with tongue of flame,
Making all creatures seem thy game;
When the whole woods before thee run,
Asked but when all was said and done
To lie, untrodden, in the sun!
Song. On Peace.
by William Cowper

Written in the summer of 1783, at the request of Lady Austen, who gave the sentiment.
Air''My fond Shepherds of late.'
No longer I follow a sound;
No longer a dream I pursue;
O happiness! not to be found,
Unattainable treasure, adieu!
I have sought thee in splendour and dress,
In the regions of pleasure and taste;
I have sought thee, and seem'd to possess,
But have proved thee a vision at last.
An humble ambition and hope
The voice of true wisdom inspires;
'Tis sufficient, if peace be the scope,
And the summit of all our desires.
Peace may be the lot of the mind
That seeks it in meekness and love;
But rapture and bliss are confined
To the glorified spirits above.
Critic And Poet.
by Emma Lazarus

An Apologue.
("Poetry must be simple, sensuous, or impassioned; this man is neither simple, sensuous, nor impassioned; therefore he is not a poet.")
No man had ever heard a nightingale,
When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred
To study and define - what is a bird,
To classify by rote and book, nor fail
To mark its structure and to note the scale
Whereon its song might possibly be heard.
Thus far, no farther; - so he spake the word.
When of a sudden, - hark, the nightingale!
Oh deeper, higher than he could divine
That all-unearthly, untaught strain!    He saw
The plain, brown warbler, unabashed.    "Not mine"
(He cried) "the error of this fatal flaw.
No bird is this, it soars beyond my line,
Were it a bird, 't would answer to my law."
A Calendar Of Sonnets - April
by Helen Hunt Jackson

No days such honored days as these! When yet
Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide
For some fair thing which should forever bide
On earth, her beauteous memory to set
In fitting frame that no age could forget,
Her name in lovely April's name did hide,
And leave it there, eternally allied
To all the fairest flowers Spring did beget.
And when fair Aphrodite passed from earth,
Her shrines forgotten and her feasts of mirth,
A holier symbol still in seal and sign,
Sweet April took, of kingdom most divine,
When Christ ascended, in the time of birth
Of spring anemones, in Palestine.
The Sonnets LXXI - No longer mourn for me when I am dead
by William Shakespeare

No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O! if, I say you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
But let your love even with my life decay;
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.
The Will Makes The Work; Or, Consent Makes The Cure.
by Robert Herrick

No grief is grown so desperate, but the ill
Is half way cured if the party will.
No Man Without Money
by Robert Herrick

No man such rare parts hath, that he can swim,
If favour or occasion help not him.
Abraham Lincoln.
by Pamela S. Vining, (J. C. Yule)

No martyr-blood hath ever flowed in vain! - 
No patriot bled, that proved not freedom's gain!
Those tones, which despots heard with fear and dread
From living lips, ring sterner from the dead;
And he who dies, lives, oft, more truly so
Than had he never felt the untimely blow.
And so with him thus, in an instant, hurled
From earthly hopes and converse with the world.
Each trickling blood-drop shall, with sudden power
Achieve the work of years in one short hour,
And his faint death-sigh more strong arms unite
In stern defence of Freedom and of Right,
Than all he could have said by word or pen,
In a whole life of threescore years and ten!
Dead! fell assassin! did you think him dead,
When, with unmurmuring lips, he bowed his head,
While round him bent pale, stricken-hearted men?
Never more grandly did he live than then!
Never that voice had such unmeasured power
To fire men's souls, as in that solemn hour,
When, on a startled world's affrighted ear,
"E'er so with tyrants!" rang out wildly clear.
And the red bolt that pierced his quiv'ring brain
Maddened a million hearts with burning pain!
Dead? - frenzied demon of the lash and whip,
What time you let your dogs of ruin slip
At his unguarded throat with raurd'rous cry,
And passion-howl of rage and agony? - 
Nay: - in that deathful hour, from shore to shore,
Men heard his voice who never heard before;
And, pale with horror by his bloody clay,
Vowed from that hour his mandate to obey, - 
Nor rest till all your fiends of Crime and Lust,
'Neath Freedom's heel, lie weltering in the dust!
Dead? dead? - Nay! - 'tis not thus that good men die!
Tis thus they win fame's immortality!
Thus does their every utt'rance grow sublime, - 
A voice of power, - a watchword for all time! - 
And the dead arm a mightier scepter sways,
Than his, who, living, half a world obeys!
Sleep, uncorrupted Patriot! faithful one!
Friend of the friendless! Freedom's martyred son!
Henceforth no land shall call thee all its own, - 
The World, Humanity, the bruised and lone, - 
The oppressed and burdened ones of every clime
Shall claim thee theirs, and bless thee thro' all time,
And "are, and shall be free!" from shore to shore
Speed grandly on till serfdom is no more,
And gentle brotherhood our sorrowing race
Link man to man in warm and true embrace!
Temptations.
by Robert Herrick

No man is tempted so but may o'ercome,
If that he has a will to masterdom.
Crepuscular
by John Collings Squire, Sir

No creature stirs in the wide fields.
The rifted western heaven yields
The dying sun's illumination.
This is the hour of tribulation
When, with clear sight of eve engendered,
Day's homage to delusion rendered,
Mute at her window sits the soul.
Clouds and skies and lakes and seas,
Valleys and hills and grass and trees,
Sun, moon, and stars, all stand to her
Limbs of one lordless challenger,
Who, without deigning taunt or frown.
Throws a perennial gauntlet down:
"Come conquer me and take thy toll."
No cowardice or fear she knows,
But, as once more she girds, there grows
An unresign'd hopelessness
From memory of former stress.
Head bent, she muses whilst he waits:
How with such weapons dint his plates?
How quell this vast and sleepless giant
Calmly, immortally defiant,
How fell him, bind him, and control
With a silver cord and a golden bowl?
England
by Walter De La Mare

No lovelier hills than thine have laid
My tired thoughts to rest:
No peace of lovelier valleys made
Like peace within my breast.
Thine are the woods whereto my soul,
Out of the noontide beam,
Flees for a refuge green and cool
And tranquil as a dream.
Thy breaking seas like trumpets peal;
Thy clouds - how oft have I
Watched their bright towers of silence steal
Into infinity!
My heart within me faults to roam
In thought even far from thee:
Thine be the grave whereto I come,
And thine my darkness be.
Never Too Late To Die.
by Robert Herrick

No man comes late unto that place from whence
Never man yet had a regredience.
The Two Adventurers And The Talisman.
by Jean de La Fontaine

[1]
No flowery path to glory leads.
This truth no better voucher needs
Than Hercules, of mighty deeds.
Few demigods, the tomes of fable
Reveal to us as being able
Such weight of task-work to endure:
In history, I find still fewer.
One such, however, here behold - 
A knight by talisman made bold,
Within the regions of romance,
To seek adventures with the lance.
There rode a comrade at his ride,
And as they rode they both espied
This writing on a post: - 
"Wouldst see, sir valiant knight,
A thing whereof the sight
No errant yet can boast?
Thou hast this torrent but to ford,
And, lifting up, alone,
The elephant of stone
Upon its margin shored,
Upbear it to the mountain's brow,
Round which, aloft before thee now,
The misty chaplets wreathe - 
Not stopping once to breathe."
One knight, whose nostrils bled,
Betokening courage fled,
Cried out, 'What if that current's sweep
Not only rapid be, but deep!
And grant it cross'd, - pray, why encumber
One's arms with that unwieldy lumber,
An elephant of stone?
Perhaps the artist may have done
His work in such a way, that one
Might lug it twice its length;
But then to reach yon mountain top,
And that without a breathing stop,
Were surely past a mortal's strength - 
Unless, indeed, it be no bigger
Than some wee, pigmy, dwarfish figure,
Which one would head a cane withal; - 
And if to this the case should fall,
The adventurer's honour would be small!
This posting seems to me a trap,
Or riddle for some greenish chap;
I therefore leave the whole to you.'
The doubtful reasoner onward hies.
With heart resolved, in spite of eyes,
The other boldly dashes through;
Nor depth of flood nor force
Can stop his onward course.
He finds the elephant of stone;
He lifts it all alone;
Without a breathing stop,
He bears it to the top
Of that steep mount, and seeth there
A high-wall'd city, great and fair.
Out-cried the elephant - and hush'd;
But forth in arms the people rush'd.
A knight less bold had surely fled;
But he, so far from turning back,
His course right onward sped,
Resolved himself to make attack,
And die but with the bravest dead.
Amazed was he to hear that band
Proclaim him monarch of their land,
And welcome him, in place of one
Whose death had left a vacant throne!
In sooth, he lent a gracious ear,
Meanwhile expressing modest fear,
Lest such a load of royal care
Should be too great for him to bear.
And so, exactly, Sixtus[2] said,
When first the pope's tiara press'd his head;
(Though, is it such a grievous thing
To be a pope, or be a king?)
But days were few before they read it,
That with but little truth he said it.
Blind Fortune follows daring blind.
Oft executes the wisest man,
Ere yet the wisdom of his mind
Is task'd his means or end to scan.
To My Mother
by John Frederick Freeman

No foreign tribute from a stranger-hand,
Mother, I bring thee, whom not Heaven's songs
Would as an alien reach.... Ah, but how far
From Heaven's least heavenly is the changing note
And changing fancy of these fitful cries!
Mother, forgive them, as the best of me
Has ever pleaded only for thy pardon,
Not for thy praise.
Mother, there is a love
Men give to wives and children, lovers, friends;
There is a love which some men give to God.
Ah! between this, I think, and that last love,
Last and too-late-discovered love of God,
There shines--and nearer to the love of God--
The love a man gives only to his mother,
Whose travail of dear thought has never end
Until the End. Oh that my mouth had words
Comfortable as thy kisses to the boy
Who loved while he forgot thee! Now I love,
Sundered and far, with daily heart's remembrance
The face the wind brings to me, the sun lights,
The birds and waters sing; the face of thee
Whom I love with a love like love of God.
Another Of The Same. (Obedience.)
by Robert Herrick

No man so well a kingdom rules as he
Who hath himself obeyed the sovereignty.
The River Duddon - A Series Of Sonnets, 1820. - XI - The Faery Chasm
by William Wordsworth

No fiction was it of the antique age:
A sky-blue stone, within this sunless cleft,
Is of the very footmarks unbereft
Which tiny Elves impressed; on that smooth stage
Dancing with all their brilliant equipage
In secret revels, haply after theft
Of some sweet Babe, Flower stolen, and coarse Weed left
For the distracted Mother to assuage
Her grief with, as she might! But, where, oh! where
Is traceable a vestige of the notes
That ruled those dances wild in character?
Deep underground? Or in the upper air,
On the shrill wind of midnight? or where floats
O'er twilight fields the autumnal gossamer?
The Freebooter,
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

No door has my house,
No house has my door;
And in and out ever
I carry my store.
No grate has my kitchen,
No kitchen my grate;
Yet roasts it and boils it
Both early and late.
My bed has no trestles,
My trestles no bed;
Yet merrier moments
No mortal e'er led.
My cellar is lofty,
My barn is full deep,
From top to the bottom, 
There lie I and sleep.
And soon as I waken,
All moves on its race;
My place has no fixture,
My fixture no place.
No Fault In Women
by Robert Herrick

No fault in women, to refuse
The offer which they most would chuse.
No fault: in women, to confess
How tedious they are in their dress;
No fault in women, to lay on
The tincture of vermilion;
And there to give the cheek a dye
Of white, where Nature doth deny.
No fault in women, to make show
Of largeness, when they're nothing so;
When, true it is, the outside swells
With inward buckram, little else.
No fault in women, though they be
But seldom from suspicion free;
No fault in womankind at all,
If they but slip, and never fall.
For ***
by Victoria Mary Sackville-West

No eyes shall see the poems that I write
For you; not even yours; but after long
Forgetful years have passed on our delight
Some hand may chance upon a dusty song
Of those fond days when every spoken word
Was sweet, and all the fleeting things unspoken
Yet sweeter, and the music half unheard
Murmured through forests as a charm unbroken.
It is the plain and ordinary page
Of two who loved, sole-spirited and clear.
Will you, O stranger of another age,
Not grant a human and compassionate tear
To us, who each the other held so dear?
A single tear fraternal, sadly shed,
Since that which was so living, is so dead.
No Labor-Saving Machine
by Walt Whitman

No labor-saving machine,
Nor discovery have I made;
Nor will I be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest to found a hospital or library,
Nor reminiscence of any deed of courage, for America,
Nor literary success, nor intellect--nor book for the book-shelf;
Only a few carols, vibrating through the air, I leave,
For comrades and lovers.
No Coward Soul Is Mine
by Emily Bronte

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world,s storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear.
O God within my breast.
Almighty ever-present Deity!
Life , that in me has rest,
As I Undying Life, have power in thee!
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts, unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thy infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.
Though Earth and moon were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every Existence would exist in thee.
There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Since thou art Being and Breath,
And what thou art may never be destroyed.
At Mass
by Vachel Lindsay

No doubt to-morrow I will hide
My face from you, my King.
Let me rejoice this Sunday noon,
And kneel while gray priests sing.
It is not wisdom to forget.
But since it is my fate
Fill thou my soul with hidden wine
To make this white hour great.
My God, my God, this marvelous hour
I am your son I know.
Once in a thousand days your voice
Has laid temptation low.
Eel-Grass
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

No matter what I say,
All that I really love
Is the rain that flattens on the bay,
And the eel-grass in the cove;
The jingle-shells that lie and bleach
At the tide-line, and the trace
Of higher tides along the beach:
Nothing in this place.