DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
In The Orchard (The Adventures Of Seumas Beg)
by James Stephens

There was a giant by the Orchard Wall
Peeping about on this side and on that,
And feeling in the trees: he was as tall
As the big apple tree, and twice as fat:
His beard was long, and bristly-black, and there
Were leaves and bits of grass stuck in his hair.
He held a great big club in his right hand,
And with the other felt in every tree
For something that he wanted.    You could stand
Beside him and not reach up to his knee
So mighty big he was, I feared he would
Turn round, and trample down to where I stood.
I tried to get away, but, as I slid
Under a bush, he saw me, and he bent
Far down and said, "Where is the Princess hid?"
I pointed to a place, and off he went, 
But while he searched I turned and simply flew
Round by the lilac bushes back to you.
There Was A Boy
by William Wordsworth

There was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs
And islands of Winander! many a time,
At evening, when the earliest stars began
To move along the edges of the hills,
Rising or setting, would he stand alone,
Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;
And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands
Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,
Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls
That they might answer him. And they would shout
Across the watery vale, and shout again,
Responsive to his call, with quivering peals,
And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud
Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild
Of jocund din! And, when there came a pause
Of silence such as baffled his best skill:
Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received
Into the bosom of the steady lake.
This boy was taken from his mates, and died
In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old.
Pre-eminent in beauty is the vale
Where he was born and bred: the churchyard hangs
Upon a slope above the village-school;
And through that churchyard when my way has led
On summer-evenings, I believe that there
A long half-hour together I have stood
Mute looking at the grave in which he lies!
The Fairy In Winter
by Walter De La Mare

There was a Fairy - flake of winter - 
Who, when the snow came, whispering, Silence,
Sister crystal to crystal sighing,
Making of meadow argent palace,
Night a star-sown solitude,
Cried 'neath her frozen eaves, "I burn here!"
Wings diaphanous, beating bee-like,
Wand within fingers, locks enspangled,
Icicle foot, lip sharp as scarlet,
She lifted her eyes in her pitch-black hollow - 
Green as stalks of weeds in water - 
Breathed: stirred.
Rilled from her heart the ichor, coursing,
Flamed and awoke her slumbering magic.
Softlier than moth's her pinions trembled;
Out into blackness, light-like, she flittered,
Leaving her hollow cold, forsaken.
In air, o'er crystal, rang twangling night-wind.
Bare, rimed pine-woods murmured lament.
Geordie
by Frank Sidgwick

The Text is from Johnson's Museum, communicated by Robert Burns.
The Story.--Some editors have identified the hero of the ballad with George Gordon, fourth earl of Huntly, but upon what grounds it is difficult to see.
There are two English broadside ballads, of the first and second halves respectively of the seventeenth century, which are either the originals of, or copies from, the Scottish ballad, which exists in many variants. The earlier is concerned with 'the death of a worthy gentleman named George Stoole,' 'to a delicate Scottish tune,' and the second is called 'The Life and Death of George of Oxford. To a pleasant tune, called Poor Georgy.' One of the Scottish versions has a burden resembling that of 'George Stoole.'
The 'battle in the north' and Sir Charles Hay are not identified.
GEORDIE
1.
There was a battle in the north,
And nobles there was many,
And they hae killed Sir Charlie Hay,
And they laid the wyte on Geordie.
2.
O he has written a lang letter,
He sent it to his lady:
'Ye maun cum up to Enbrugh town,
To see what word's o' Geordie.'
3.
When first she look'd the letter on,
She was both red and rosy;
But she had na read a word but twa
Till she wallowt like a lily.
4.
'Gar get to me ray gude grey steed;
My menyie a' gae wi' me;
For I shall neither eat nor drink
Till Enbrugh town shall see me.'
5.
And she has mountit her gude grey steed,
Her menyie a' gaed wi' her,
And she did neither eat nor drink
Till Enbrugh town did see her,
6.
And first appear'd the fatal block,
And syne the aix to head him,
And Geordie cumin' down the stair,
And bands o' airn upon him.
7.
But tho' he was chain'd in fetters strang,
O' airn and steel sae heavy,
There was na ane in a' the court
Sae bra' a man as Geordie.
8.
O she's down on her bended knee;
I wat she's pale and weary:
'O pardon, pardon, noble king,
And gie me back my dearie!
9.
'I hae born seven sons to my Geordie dear,
The seventh ne'er saw his daddie,
O pardon, pardon, noble king,
Pity a waefu' lady!'
10.
'Gar bid the headin'-man mak haste,'
Our king reply'd fu' lordly:
'O noble king, tak a' that's mine,
But gie me back my Geordie!'
11.
The Gordons cam, the Gordons ran,
And they were stark and steady,
And ay the word amang them a'
Was 'Gordons, keep you ready!'
12.
An aged lord at the king's right hand
Says 'Noble king, but hear me;
Gar her tell down five thousand pound,
And gie her back her dearie.'
13.
Some gae her marks, some gae her crowns,
Some gae her dollars many,
And she's tell'd down five thousand pound,
And she's gotten again her dearie.
14.
She blinkit blythe in her Geordie's face,
Says 'Dear I've bought thee, Geordie;
But there sud been bluidy bouks on the green
Or I had tint my laddie.'
15.
He claspit her by the middle sma',
And he kist her lips sae rosy:
'The fairest flower o' woman-kind
Is my sweet bonnie lady!'
The Nympholept
by Alan Seeger

There was a boy - not above childish fears - 
With steps that faltered now and straining ears,
Timid, irresolute, yet dauntless still,
Who one bright dawn, when each remotest hill
Stood sharp and clear in Heaven's unclouded blue
And all Earth shimmered with fresh-beaded dew,
Risen in the first beams of the gladdening sun,
Walked up into the mountains. One by one
Each towering trunk beneath his sturdy stride
Fell back, and ever wider and more wide
The boundless prospect opened. Long he strayed,
From dawn till the last trace of slanting shade
Had vanished from the canyons, and, dismayed
At that far length to which his path had led,
He paused - at such a height where overhead
The clouds hung close, the air came thin and chill,
And all was hushed and calm and very still,
Save, from abysmal gorges, where the sound
Of tumbling waters rose, and all around
The pines, by those keen upper currents blown,
Muttered in multitudinous monotone.
Here, with the wind in lovely locks laid bare,
With arms oft raised in dedicative prayer,
Lost in mute rapture and adoring wonder,
He stood, till the far noise of noontide thunder,
Rolled down upon the muffled harmonies
Of wind and waterfall and whispering trees,
Made loneliness more lone. Some Panic fear
Would seize him then, as they who seemed to hear
In Tracian valleys or Thessalian woods
The god's hallooing wake the leafy solitudes;
I think it was the same: some piercing sense
Of Deity's pervasive immanence,
The Life that visible Nature doth indwell
Grown great and near and all but palpable . . .
He might not linger, but with winged strides
Like one pursued, fled down the mountain-sides - 
Down the long ridge that edged the steep ravine,
By glade and flowery lawn and upland green,
And never paused nor felt assured again
But where the grassy foothills opened. Then,
While shadows lengthened on the plain below
And the sun vanished and the sunset-glow
Looked back upon the world with fervid eye
Through the barred windows of the western sky,
Homeward he fared, while many a look behind
Showed the receding ranges dim-outlined,
Highland and hollow where his path had lain,
Veiled in deep purple of the mountain rain.
Dead Men's Love
by Rupert Brooke

There was a damned successful Poet;
There was a Woman like the Sun.
And they were dead. They did not know it.
They did not know their time was done.
They did not know his hymns
Were silence; and her limbs,
That had served Love so well,
Dust, and a filthy smell.
And so one day, as ever of old,
Hands out, they hurried, knee to knee;
On fire to cling and kiss and hold
And, in the other's eyes, to see
Each his own tiny face,
And in that long embrace
Feel lip and breast grow warm
To breast and lip and arm.
So knee to knee they sped again,
And laugh to laugh they ran, I'm told,
Across the streets of Hell . . .
And then
They suddenly felt the wind blow cold,
And knew, so closely pressed,
Chill air on lip and breast,
And, with a sick surprise,
The emptiness of eyes.
The Priest And The Corpse (Prose Fable)
by Jean de La Fontaine

There was a funeral. The dead body was progressing sadly towards its last resting place; and following rather gladly, was the priest who meant to bury it as soon as possible.
The dead man, in a leaden coffin, was borne in a coach, and was properly shrouded in that robe the dead always wear be it summer or winter. As for the priest, he sat near it, intoning as hard as he could all sorts of orisons, psalms, lessons, verses, and responses, in the hope that the more he gave the more would be paid for. "Leave it to me, Mr. Deadman," his actions seemed to say. "I'll give you a nice selection; a little of everything. It's only a matter of fees, you know." And the Rev. John Crow kept his eye on his silent charge as if he expected some one would make off with it. "Mr. Deadman," his looks proclaimed, "by you I shall receive so and so much in money, so and so much in wax candles, and, possibly, a little more in incidental profits.
On the strength of these calculations he promised himself a quarter-cask of the best wine the neighbourhood could offer. Beyond that he settled that a certain very attractive niece of his, as well as his housekeeper Paquette, should both have new dresses.
Whilst these pleasant and generous thoughts were running in his mind there came a terrific shock. The car overturned. The Rev. John Crow's head was broken by the coffin which fell upon him. Alas for the poor priest! he went to heaven with the parishioner he thought only to bury.
In reality, life over and over again is nothing but the fate of the Rev. John Crow who counted on his dead, and of Perrette who counted on her chickens.
Sing Heigh-Ho!
by Charles Kingsley

There sits a bird on every tree;
Sing heigh-ho!
There sits a bird on every tree,
And courts his love as I do thee;
Sing heigh-ho, and heigh-ho!
Young maids must marry.
There grows a flower on every bough;
Sing heigh-ho!
There grows a flower on every bough,
Its petals kiss - I'll show you how:
Sing heigh-ho, and heigh-ho!
Young maids must marry.
From sea to stream the salmon roam;
Sing heigh-ho!
From sea to stream the salmon roam;
Each finds a mate, and leads her home;
Sing heigh-ho, and heigh-ho!
Young maids must marry.
The sun's a bridegroom, earth a bride;
Sing heigh-ho!
They court from morn till eventide:
The earth shall pass, but love abide.
Sing heigh-ho, and heigh-ho!
Young maids must marry.
Eversley, 1847.
The Dorchester Giant
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

There was a giant in time of old,
A mighty one was he;
He had a wife, but she was a scold,
So he kept her shut in his mammoth fold;
And he had children three.
It happened to be an election day,
And the giants were choosing a king
The people were not democrats then,
They did not talk of the rights of men,
And all that sort of thing.
Then the giant took his children three,
And fastened them in the pen;
The children roared; quoth the giant, "Be still!"
And Dorchester Heights and Milton Hill
Rolled back the sound again.
Then he brought them a pudding stuffed with plums,
As big as the State-House dome;
Quoth he, "There 's something for you to eat;
So stop your mouths with your 'lection treat,
And wait till your dad comes home."
So the giant pulled him a chestnut stout,
And whittled the boughs away;
The boys and their mother set up a shout,
Said he, "You 're in, and you can't get out,
Bellow as loud as you may."
Off he went, and he growled a tune
As he strode the fields along;
'T is said a buffalo fainted away,
And fell as cold as a lump of clay,
When he heard the giant's song.
But whether the story 's true or not,
It is n't for me to show;
There 's many a thing that 's twice as queer
In somebody's lectures that we hear,
And those are true, you know.
What are those lone ones doing now,
The wife and the children sad?
Oh, they are in a terrible rout,
Screaming, and throwing their pudding about,
Acting as they were mad.
They flung it over to Roxbury hills,
They flung it over the plain,
And all over Milton and Dorchester too
Great lumps of pudding the giants threw;
They tumbled as thick as rain.
Giant and mammoth have passed away,
For ages have floated by;
The suet is hard as a marrow-bone,
And every plum is turned to a stone,
But there the puddings lie.
And if, some pleasant afternoon,
You 'll ask me out to ride,
The whole of the story I will tell,
And you shall see where the puddings fell,
And pay for the punch beside.
The Soarer
by Helen Leah Reed

There soars a warbler toward high Heaven,
His course seems sure and straight; - 
So speeds an arrow from the bow-string,
Yet who can read his fate!
For while he carols like a seraph
Bound for a radiant star
Mayhap the fowler's eye, relentless,
Has doomed him from afar.
A longer life the crawling snail hath
Than thou - O wanderer bright - 
Ah, let the sluggard crawl in safety,
Thine is the realm of light!
Like thee a soaring soul's in peril,
Yet its one hour is worth
A whole Eternity of grovelling
Closer to grimy earth.
An Impression Received From A Symphony
by John Collings Squire, Sir

There was a day, when I, if that was I,
Surrendered lay beneath a burning sky,
Where overhead the azure ached with heat,
And many red fierce poppies splashed the wheat;
Motion was dead, and silence was complete,
And stains of red fierce poppies splashed the wheat,
And as I lay upon a scent-warm bank,
I fell away, slipped back from earth, and sank,
I lost the place of sky and field and tree,
One covering face obscured the world for me,
And for an hour I knew eternity,
For one fixed face suspended Time for me.
O had those eyes in that extreme of bliss
Shed one more wise and culminating kiss,
My end had come, nor had I lived to quail,
Frightened and dumb as things must do that fail,
And in this last black devil-mocking gale,
Battered and dumb to fight the dark and fail.
The Mountain Castle.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There stands on yonder high mountain
A castle built of yore,
Where once lurked horse and horseman
In rear of gate and of door.
Now door and gate are in ashes,
And all around is so still;
And over the fallen ruins
I clamber just as I will.
Below once lay a cellar,
With costly wines well stor'd;
No more the glad maid with her pitcher
Descends there to draw from the hoard.
No longer the goblet she places
Before the guests at the feast;
The flask at the meal so hallow'd
No longer she fills for the priest.
No more for the eager squire
The draught in the passage is pour'd;
No more for the flying present
Receives she the flying reward.
For all the roof and the rafters,
They all long since have been burn'd,
And stairs and passage and chapel
To rubbish and ruins are turn'd.
Yet when with lute and with flagon,
When day was smiling and bright,
I've watch'd my mistress climbing
To gain this perilous height,
Then rapture joyous and radiant
The silence so desolate brake,
And all, as in days long vanish'd,
Once more to enjoyment awoke;
As if for guests of high station
The largest rooms were prepared;
As if from those times so precious
A couple thither had fared;
As if there stood in his chapel
The priest in his sacred dress,
And ask'd: "Would ye twain be united?"
And we, with a smile, answer'd, "Yes!"
And songs that breath'd a deep feeling,
That touched the heart's innermost chord,
The music-fraught mouth of sweet echo,
Instead of the many, outpour'd.
And when at eve all was hidden
In silence unbroken and deep,
The glowing sun then look'd upwards,
And gazed on the summit so steep.
And squire and maiden then glitter'd
As bright and gay as a lord,
She seized the time for her present,
And he to give her reward.
Nursery Rhyme. XLVIII. Tales.
by Unknown

There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile:
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.
In Memoriam. - Martha Agnes Bonner,
by Lydia Howard Sigourney

Child of RobERT BONNER, Esq., died at New York, April 28th, 1859, aged 13 months.
There was a cradling lent us here,
To cheer our lot,
It was a cherub in disguise,
But yet our dim and earth-bow'd eyes
Perceiv'd it not.
Its voice was like the symphony
That lute-strings lend,
Yet tho' our hearts the music hail'd
As a sweet breath of heaven, they fail'd
To comprehend.
It linger'd till each season fill'd
Their perfect round,
The vernal bud, the summer-rose,
Autumnal gold, and wintry snows
Whitening the ground.
But when again reviving Spring
Thro' flowers would roam,
And the white cherry blossoms stirr'd
Neath the soft wing of chirping bird,
A call from angel-harps was heard,
"Cherub,--come home."
Gargaphie
by Madison Julius Cawein

"Succinct' sacra Dian'."
Ovid
I.
There the ragged sunlight lay
Tawny on thick ferns and gray
On dark waters: dimmer,
Lone and deep, the cypress grove
Bowered mystery and wove
Braided lights, like those that love
On the pearl plumes of a dove
Faint to gleam and glimmer.
II.
There centennial pine and oak
Into stormy cadence broke:
Hollow rocks gloomed, slanting,
Echoing in dim arcade,
Looming with long moss, that made
Twilight streaks in tatters laid:
Where the wild hart, hunt-affrayed,
Plunged the water, panting.
III.
Poppies of a sleepy gold
Mooned the gray-green darkness rolled
DOWN its vistas, making
Wisp-like blurs of flame. And pale
Stole the dim deer down the vale:
And the haunting nightingale
Throbbed unseen the olden tale
All its wild heart breaking.
IV.
There the hazy serpolet,
Dewy cistus, blooming wet,
Blushed on bank and bowlder;
There the cyclamen, as wan
As first footsteps of the dawn,
Carpeted the spotted lawn:
Where the nude nymph, dripping drawn,
Basked a wildflower shoulder.
V.
In the citrine shadows there
What tall presences and fair,
Godlike, stood! or, gracious
As the rock-rose there that grew,
Delicate and dim as dew,
Stepped from boles of oaks, and drew
Faunlike forms to follow, who
Filled the forest spacious!
VI.
Guarding that B'otian
Valley so no foot of man
Soiled its silence holy
With profaning tread save one,
The Hyantian: Act'on,
Who beheld, and might not shun
Pale Diana's wrath; undone
By his own mad folly.
VII.
Lost it lies that valley: sleeps
In serene enchantment; keeps
Beautiful its banished
Bowers that no man may see;
Fountains that her deity
Haunts, and every rock and tree
Where her hunt goes swinging free
As in ages vanished.
Ben Apfelgarten
by Eugene Field

There was a certain gentleman, Ben Apfelgarten called,
Who lived way off in Germany a many years ago,
And he was very fortunate in being very bald
And so was very happy he was so.
He warbled all the day
Such songs as only they
Who are very, very circumspect and very happy may;
The people wondered why,
As the years went gliding by,
They never heard him once complain or even heave a sigh!
The women of the province fell in love with genial Ben,
Till (may be you can fancy it) the dickens was to pay
Among the callow students and the sober-minded men--
With the women-folk a-cuttin' up that way!
Why, they gave him turbans red
To adorn his hairless head,
And knitted jaunty nightcaps to protect him when abed!
In vain the rest demurred--
Not a single chiding word
Those ladies deigned to tolerate--remonstrance was absurd!
Things finally got into such a very dreadful way
That the others (oh, how artful) formed the politic design
To send him to the reichstag; so, one dull November day,
They elected him a member from the Rhine!
Then the other members said:
"Gott im Himmel! what a head!"
But they marvelled when his speeches they listened to or read;
And presently they cried:
"There must be heaps inside
Of the smooth and shiny cranium his constituents deride!"
Well, when at last he up 'nd died--long past his ninetieth year--
The strangest and the most lugubrious funeral he had,
For women came in multitudes to weep upon his bier--
The men all wond'ring why on earth the women had gone mad!
And this wonderment increased
Till the sympathetic priest
Inquired of those same ladies: "Why this fuss about deceased?"
Whereupon were they appalled,
For, as one, those women squalled:
"We doted on deceased for being bald--bald--bald!"
He was bald because his genius burnt that shock of hair away
Which, elsewise, clogs one's keenness and activity of mind;
And (barring present company, of course) I'm free to say
That, after all, it's intellect that captures womankind.
At any rate, since then
(With a precedent in Ben),
The women-folk have been in love with us bald-headed men!
Break Of Day
by Siegfried Loraine Sassoon

There seemed a smell of autumn in the air
At the bleak end of night; he shivered there
In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay,
Legs wrapped in sand-bags, - lumps of chalk and clay
Spattering his face. Dry-mouthed, he thought, "To-day
We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why,
Zero's at nine; how bloody if I'm done in
Under the freedom of that morning sky!"
And then he coughed and dozed, cursing the din.
Was it the ghost of autumn in that smell
Of underground, or God's blank heart grown kind,
That sent a happy dream to him in hell? - 
Where men are crushed like clods, and crawl to find
Some crater for their wretchedness; who lie
In outcast immolation, doomed to die
Far from clean things or any hope of cheer,
Cowed anger in their eyes, till darkness brims
And roars into their heads, and they can hear
Old childish talk, and tags of foolish hymns.
He sniffs the chilly air; (his dreaming starts).
He's riding in a dusty Sussex lane
In quiet September; slowly night departs;
And he's a living soul, absolved from pain.
Beyond the brambled fences where he goes
Are glimmering fields with harvest piled in sheaves,
And tree-tops dark against the stars grown pale;
Then, clear and shrill, a distant farm-cock crows;
And there's a wall of mist along the vale
Where willows shake their watery-sounding leaves.
He gazes on it all, and scarce believes
That earth is telling its old peaceful tale;
He thanks the blessed world that he was born ...
Then, far away, a lonely note of the horn.
They're drawing the Big Wood! Unlatch the gate,
And set Golumpus going on the grass:
He knows the corner where it's best to wait
And hear the crashing woodland chorus pass;
The corner where old foxes make their track
To the Long Spinney; that's the place to be.
The bracken shakes below an ivied tree,
And then a cub looks out; and "Tally-o-back!"
He bawls, and swings his thong with volleying crack, - 
All the clean thrill of autumn in his blood,
And hunting surging through him like a flood
In joyous welcome from the untroubled past;
While the war drifts away, forgotten at last.
Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim
Of twilight stares along the quiet weald,
And the kind, simple country shines revealed
In solitudes of peace, no longer dim.
The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light,
Then stretches down his head to crop the green.
All things that he has loved are in his sight;
The places where his happiness has been
Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.
*        *        *        *        *
Hark! there's the horn: they're drawing the Big Wood.