DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Occasioned By The Battle Of Waterloo - February 1816.
by William Wordsworth

The Bard, whose soul is meek as dawning day,
Yet trained to judgments righteously severe,
Fervid, yet conversant with holy fear,
As recognising one Almighty sway:
He, whose experienced eye can pierce the array
Of past events; to whom, in vision clear,
The aspiring heads of future things appear,
Like mountain-tops whose mists have rolled away
Assoiled from all encumbrance of our time,
He only, if such breathe, in strains devout
Shall comprehend this victory sublime;
Shall worthily rehearse the hideous rout,
The triumph hail, which from their peaceful clime
Angels might welcome with a choral shout!
In Memoriam. - Miss Anna M. Seymour,
by Lydia Howard Sigourney

Died at Hartford, August 24th, 1860.
The beauteous brow, the form of grace,
With all their youthful charms,
The hand that woke the pencil's power,
And bore to penury's lowly bower,
The never-wearied alms,
The sweet, sweet voice that duly cheer'd
A grateful Sabbath train,
The uprais'd eye that taught them more
Of Heaven, than all their student lore,
Must ne'er return again.
She took her flight as from the cage
Enfranchised warblers glide,
Though friends were dear, and life was fair,
She saw her Saviour standing there,
Beyond rough Jordan's tide.
Praise, praise to Him, whose faithful hand
Prepared her glorious place,
For us is loss,--for her release,
The robe of rest, the home of peace,--
For us, the pilgrim race.
Praise,--praise for her,--though love and grief
Still mournful vigil kept,--
The tear-wet incense He will take
Who at the grave, for friendship's sake,
In holy sadness wept.
Dolly
by Robert Bloomfield

"Ingenuous trust, and confidence of Love."
The Bat began with giddy wing
His circuit round the Shed, the Tree;
And clouds of dancing Gnats to sing
A summer-night's serenity.
Darkness crept slowly o'er the East!
Upon the Barn-roof watch'd the Cat;
Sweet breath'd the ruminating Beast
At rest where DOLLY musing sat.
A simple Maid, who could employ
The silent lapse of Evening mild,
And lov'd its solitary joy;
For Dolly was Reflection's child.
He who had pledg'd his word to be
Her life's dear guardian, far away,
The flow'r of Yeoman Cavalry,
Bestrode a Steed with trappings gay.
And thus from memory's treasur'd sweets,
And thus from Love's pure fount she drew
That peace, which busy care defeats,
And bids our pleasures bloom anew.
Six weeks of absence have I borne
Since HENRY took his fond farewell:
The charms of that delightful morn
My tongue could thus for ever tell.
He at my Window whistling loud,
Arous'd my lightsome heart to go:
Day, conqu'ring climb'd from cloud to cloud;
The fields all wore a purple glow.
We stroll'd the bordering flow'rs among:
One hand the Bridle held behind;
The other round my waist was flung:
Sure never Youth spoke half so kind!
The rising Lark I could but hear;
And jocund seem'd the song to be:
But sweeter sounded in my ear,
'Will Dolly still be true to me!'
From the rude Dock my skirt had swept
A fringe of clinging burrs so green;
Like them our hearts still closer crept,
And hook'd a thousand holds unseen.
High o'er the road each branching bough
Its globes of silent dew had shed;
And on the pure-wash'd sand below
The dimpling drops around had spread.
The sweet-brier op'd its pink-ey'd rose,
And gave its fragrance to the gale;
Though modest flow'rs may sweets disclose;
More sweet was HENRY'S earnest tale.
He seem'd, methought, on that dear morn,
To pour out all his heart to me;
As if, the separation borne,
The coming hours would joyless be,
A bank rose high beside the way,
And full against the Morning Sun;
Of heay'nly blue there Violets gay
His hand invited one by.
The posy with a smile he gave;
I saw his meaning in his eyes:
The withered treasure still I have;
My bosom holds the fragrant prize.
With his last kiss he would have vow'd;
But blessings crouding forc'd their way:
Then mounted he his Courser proud;
His time elaps'd, he could not stay.
Then first I felt the parting pang; - 
Sure the worst pang the Lover feels!
His Horse unruly from me sprang,
The pebbles flew beneath his heels;
Then down the road his vigour tried,
His rider gazing, gazing still;
'My dearest, I'll be true,' he cried: - 
And, if he lives, I'm sure he will.
Then haste, ye hours, haste, Eve and Morn,
Yet strew your blessings round my home:
Ere Winter's blasts shall strip the thorn
My promis'd joy, my love, will come.
Her Hair
by James Whitcomb Riley

The beauty of her hair bewilders me -
Pouring adown the brow, its cloven tide
Swirling about the ears on either side
And storming round the neck tumultuously:
Or like the lights of old antiquity
Through mullioned windows, in cathedrals wide
Spilled moltenly o'er figures deified
In chastest marble, nude of drapery.
And so I love it. Either unconfined;
Or plaited in close braidings manifold;
Or smoothly drawn; or indolently twined
In careless knots whose coilings come unrolled
At any lightest kiss; or by the wind
Whipped out in flossy ravellings of gold.
In Barracks
by Siegfried Loraine Sassoon

The barrack-square, washed clean with rain,
Shines wet and wintry-grey and cold.
Young Fusiliers, strong-legged and bold,
March and wheel and march again.
The sun looks over the barrack gate,
Warm and white with glaring shine,
To watch the soldiers of the Line
That life has hired to fight with fate.
Fall out: the long parades are done.
Up comes the dark; down goes the sun.
The square is walled with windowed light.
Sleep well, you lusty Fusiliers;
Shut your brave eyes on sense and sight,
And banish from your dreamless ears
The bugle's lying notes that say,
"Another night; another day."
Field Path
by John Clare

The beams in blossom with their spots of jet
Smelt sweet as gardens wheresoever met;
The level meadow grass was in the swath;
The hedge briar rose hung right across the path,
White over with its flowers--the grass that lay
Bleaching beneath the twittering heat to hay
Smelt so deliciously, the puzzled bee
Went wondering where the honey sweets could be;
And passer-bye along the level rows
Stoopt down and whipt a bit beneath his nose.
In The Lane
by John Frederick Freeman

The birds return,
The blossom brightens again the cherry bough.
The hedges are green again
In the airless lane,
And hedge and blossom and bird call, Now, now, now!
O birds, return!
Who will care if the blossom die on the bough,
Or the hedge be bare again
In the screaming lane?
For what they were these are not, are not now.
The one gone makes
All that remain seem strange and lonely now.
She will not walk here again
In the blossoming lane:--
And there's a dead bough in every blossoming bough.
The Bird, Let Loose. (Air.--Beethoven.)
by Thomas Moore

The bird, let loose in eastern skies,[1]
When hastening fondly home,
Ne'er stoops to earth her wing, nor flies
Where idle warblers roam.
But high she shoots thro' air and light,
Above all low delay,
Where nothing earthly bounds her flight,
Nor shadow dims her way.
So grant me, GOD, from every care
And stain of passion free,
Aloft, thro' Virtue's purer air,
To hold my course to Thee!
No sin to cloud, no lure to stay
My Soul, as home she springs;--
Thy Sunshine on her joyful way,
Thy Freedom in her wings!
On Mrs. Montague's Feather-Hangings.
by William Cowper

The birds put off their every hue
To dress a room for Montagu.
The peacock sends his heavenly dyes,
His rainbows and his starry eyes;
The pheasant plumes, which round enfold
His mantling neck with downy gold;
The cock his arch'd tail's azure show;
And, river-blanch'd, the swan his snow.
All tribes beside of Indian name,
That glossy shine, or vivid flame,
Where rises, and where sets the day,
Whate'er they boast of rich and gay,
Contribute to the gorgeous plan,
Proud to advance it all they can.
This plumage neither dashing shower,
Nor blasts, that shake the dripping bower,
Shall drench again or discompose,
But, screen'd from every storm that blows,
It boasts a splendour ever new,
Safe with protecting Montagu.
To the same patroness resort,
Secure of favour at her court,
Strong Genius, from whose forge of thought
Forms rise, to quick perfection wrought,
Which, though new-born, with vigour move,
Like Pallas springing arm'd from Jove'
Imagination scattering round
Wild roses over furrow'd ground,
Which Labour of his frown beguile,
And teach Philosophy a smile'
Wit flashing on Religion's side,
Whose fires, to sacred truth applied,
The gem, though luminous before,
Obtrude on human notice more,
Like sunbeams on the golden height
Of some tall temple playing bright'
Well tutor'd Learning, from his books
Dismiss'd with grave, not haughty, looks,
Their order on his shelves exact,
Not more harmonious or compact
Than that to which he keeps confined
The various treasures of his mind'
All these to Montagu's repair,
Ambitious of a shelter there.
There Genius, Learning, Fancy, Wit,
Their ruffled plumage calm refit
(For stormy troubles loudest roar
Around their flight who highest soar),
And in her eye, and by her aid,
Shine safe without a fear to fade.
She thus maintains divided sway
With yon bright regent of the day;
The Plume and Poet both we know
Their lustre to his influence owe;
And she the works of Ph'bus aiding,
Both Poet saves and Plume from fading.
The Old Man Dreams.
by Madison Julius Cawein

The blackened walnut in its spicy hull
Rots where it fell;
And, in the orchard, where the trees stand full,
The pear's ripe bell
Drops; and the log-house in the bramble lane,
From whose low door
Stretch yellowing acres of the corn and cane,
He sees once more.
The cat-bird sings upon its porch of pine;
And o'er its gate,
All slender-podded, twists the trumpet-vine,
A leafy weight;
And in the woodland, by the spring, mayhap,
With eyes of joy
Again he bends to set a rabbit-trap,
A brown-faced boy.
Then, whistling, through the underbrush he goes,
Out of the wood,
Where, with young cheeks, red as an Autumn rose,
Beneath her hood,
His sweetheart waits, her school-books on her arm;
And now it seems
Beside his chair he sees his wife's fair form - 
The old man dreams.
The Blue Bell
by Emily Bronte

The blue bell is the sweetest flower
That waves in summer air;
Its blossoms have the mightiest power
To soothe my spirit's care.
There is a spell in purple heath
Too wildly, sadly dear;
The violet has a fragrant breath
But fragrance will not cheer.
The trees are bare, the sun is cold;
And seldom, seldom seen;
The heavens have lost their zone of gold
The earth its robe of green;
And ice upon the glancing stream
Has cast its sombre shade
And distant hills and valleys seem
In frozen mist arrayed
The blue bell cannot charm me now
The heath has lost its bloom,
The violets in the glen below
They yield no sweet perfume.
But though I mourn the heather-bell
'Tis better far, away;
I know how fast my tears would swell
To see it smile today;
And that wood flower that hides so shy
Beneath the mossy stone
Its balmy scent and dewy eye:
'Tis not for them I moan.
It is the slight and stately stem,
The blossom's silvery blue,
The buds hid like a sapphire gem
In sheaths of emerald hue.
'Tis these that breathe upon my heart
A calm and softening spell
That if it makes the tear-drop start
Has power to soothe as well.
For these I weep, so long divided
Through winter's dreary day,
In longing weep, but most when guided
On withered banks to stray.
If chilly then the light should fall
Adown the dreary sky
And gild the dank and darkened wall
With transient brilliancy,
How do I yearn, how do I pine
For the time of flowers to come,
And turn me from that fading shine
To mourn the fields of home
Double Ballade Of The Nothingness Of Things
by William Ernest Henley

The big teetotum twirls,
And epochs wax and wane
As chance subsides or swirls;
But of the loss and gain
The sum is always plain.
Read on the mighty pall,
The weed of funeral
That covers praise and blame,
The -isms and the -anities,
Magnificence and shame:-
'O Vanity of Vanities!'
The Fates are subtile girls!
They give us chaff for grain.
And Time, the Thunderer, hurls,
Like bolted death, disdain
At all that heart and brain
Conceive, or great or small,
Upon this earthly ball.
Would you be knight and dame?
Or woo the sweet humanities?
Or illustrate a name?
O Vanity of Vanities!
We sound the sea for pearls,
Or drown them in a drain;
We flute it with the merles,
Or tug and sweat and strain;
We grovel, or we reign;
We saunter, or we brawl;
We answer, or we call;
We search the stars for Fame,
Or sink her subterranities;
The legend's still the same:-
'O Vanity of Vanities!'
Here at the wine one birls,
There some one clanks a chain.
The flag that this man furls
That man to float is fain.
Pleasure gives place to pain:
These in the kennel crawl,
While others take the wall.
SHE has a glorious aim,
HE lives for the inanities.
What comes of every claim?
O Vanity of Vanities!
Alike are clods and earls.
For sot, and seer, and swain,
For emperors and for churls,
For antidote and bane,
There is but one refrain:
But one for king and thrall,
For David and for Saul,
For fleet of foot and lame,
For pieties and profanities,
The picture and the frame:-
'O Vanity of Vanities!'
Life is a smoke that curls -
Curls in a flickering skein,
That winds and whisks and whirls
A figment thin and vain,
Into the vast Inane.
One end for hut and hall!
One end for cell and stall!
Burned in one common flame
Are wisdoms and insanities.
For this alone we came:-
'O Vanity of Vanities!'
Envoy
Prince, pride must have a fall.
What is the worth of all
Your state's supreme urbanities?
Bad at the best's the game.
Well might the Sage exclaim:-
'O Vanity of Vanities!'
Evening Hymn.
by H. P. Nichols

The bird within its nest
Has sung its evening hymn,
And I must go to quiet rest,
As the bright west grows dim.
I see the twinkling star,
That, when the sun has gone,
Is shining out the first afar,
To tell us day is done.
If on this day I've been
A selfish, naughty child,
May God forgive the wrong I've done,
And make me kind and mild.
May he still bless and keep
My father, mother dear;
And may the eye that cannot sleep
Watch o'er our pillows here,
And guard us from all ill,
Through this long, silent night,
And bring us, by His holy will,
To see the morning light.
Sinners
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

The big mountains sit still in the afternoon light
Shadows in their lap;
The bees roll round in the wild-thyme with delight.
We sitting here among the cranberries
So still in the gap
Of rock, distilling our memories
Are sinners! Strange! The bee that blunders
Against me goes off with a laugh.
A squirrel cocks his head on the fence, and wonders
What about sin? - For, it seems
The mountains have
No shadow of us on their snowy forehead of dreams
As they ought to have. They rise above us
Dreaming
For ever. One even might think that they love us.
Little red cranberries cheek to cheek,
Two great dragon-flies wrestling;
You, with your forehead nestling
Against me, and bright peak shining to peak - 
There's a love-song for you! - Ah, if only
There were no teeming
Swarms of mankind in the world, and we were less lonely!
MAYRHOFEN
Temptation.
by William Cowper

The billows swell, the winds are high,
Clouds overcast my wintry sky;
Out of the depths to thee I call, -
My fears are great, my strength is small.
O Lord, the pilot's part perform,
And guard and guide me through the storm,
Defend me from each threatening ill,
Control the waves, - say, 'Peace, be still.'
Amidst the roaring of the sea,
My soul still hangs her hope on thee;
Thy constant love, thy faithful care,
Is all that saves me from despair.
Dangers of every shape and name
Attend the followers of the Lamb,
Who leave the world's deceitful shore,
And leave it to return no more.
Though tempest-toss'd and half a wreck,
My Saviour through the floods I seek;
Let neither winds nor stormy main
Force back my shatter'd bark again.
Black Eyes.
by A. H. Laidlaw

The Blue Eye will do if the courting is through
And the way of the marriage is sunny,
And it helps in the fun till the sweet life is done
If the girl brings a mint of good money.
But when aft or before the good parson's front door,
With calm or a storm on the track;
For Love red, red hot, with the ducats or not,
There is never an eye like the Black.
The Hazel is true to you all the way through,
And it burns with a light warm and steady;
Only if it is Fred that she has in her head,
It is burning for no one but Freddie.
But the Black Eye will veer and stake kingdoms to spear
Whatever it likes on the track,
And as a love-lance to its lord in the dance
There is never an eye like the Black.
Here then is good health and without or with wealth
To the deep raven eye of my charmer!
It's a heavenly spell when it loves very well,
Only when it does not it is warmer.
And it's little I care, only so I get there,
Whichever I find on the track,
For Heaven or Hell in its magical spell
There is never an eye like the Black.
An Elective Course
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Lines Found Among The Papers Of A Harvard Undergraduate
The bloom that lies on Fanny's cheek
Is all my Latin, all my Greek;
The only sciences I know
Are frowns that gloom and smiles that glow;
Siberia and Italy
Lie in her sweet geography;
No scholarship have I but such
As teaches me to love her much.
Why should I strive to read the skies,
Who know the midnight of her eyes?
Why should I go so very far
To learn what heavenly bodies are!
Not Berenice's starry hair
With Fanny's tresses can compare;
Not Venus on a cloudless night,
Enslaving Science with her light,
Ever reveals so much as when
SHE stares and droops her lids again.
If Nature's secrets are forbidden
To mortals, she may keep them hidden.
AEons and aeons we progressed
And did not let that break our rest;
Little we cared if Mars o'erhead
Were or were not inhabited;
Without the aid of Saturn's rings
Fair girls were wived in those far springs;
Warm lips met ours and conquered us
Or ere thou wert, Copernicus!
Graybeards, who seek to bridge the chasm
'Twixt man to-day and protoplasm,
Who theorize and probe and gape,
And finally evolve an ape--
Yours is a harmless sort of cult,
If you are pleased with the result.
Some folks admit, with cynic grace,
That you have rather proved your case.
These dogmatists are so severe!
Enough for me that Fanny's here,
Enough that, having long survived
Pre-Eveic forms, she HAS arrived--
An illustration the completest
Of the survival of the sweetest.
Linnaeus, avaunt! I only care
To know what flower she wants to wear.
I leave it to the addle-pated
To guess how pinks originated,
As if it mattered! The chief thing
Is that we have them in the Spring,
And Fanny likes them. When they come,
I straightway send and purchase some.
The Origin of Plants--go to!
Their proper end _I_ have in view.
O loveliest book that ever man
Looked into since the world began
Is Woman! As I turn those pages,
As fresh as in the primal ages,
As day by day I scan, perplext,
The ever subtly changing text,
I feel that I am slowly growing
To think no other work worth knowing.
And in my copy--there is none
So perfect as the one I own--
I find no thing set down but such
As teaches me to love it much.
The Philosophers
by Michael Earls

The best of true philosophers
Are the children, after all,--
The children with laughing hearts
And the serious field and ball:
They have a bowl and bubbles,
And hours where rainbows are;
They find, if ever the sun is hid,
In every dark a star.
But, O, the sorry men that make
The wise books of our day!
They cannot smile athwart a cloud,
When black thoughts lead astray;
They cannot add a simple sum,
But talk like drunken men,
And shut their eyes to keep out God
When spring comes in again.
Far simpler than the Rule of Three
Are the laws of earth and sky;
Yet fools will muddle all true thought,
And pride will have its cry;
The banners with their deadly words
Go reeling on unfurled,
And sin and sadness march along
To the heartbreak of the world.
The Big Baboon
by Hilaire Belloc

The Big Baboon is found upon
The plains of Cariboo:
He goes about with nothing on
(A shocking thing to do).
But if he dressed up respectably
And let his whiskers grow,
How like this Big Baboon would be
To Mister So-and-so!
They
by Siegfried Loraine Sassoon

The Bishop tells us: "When the boys come back
They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
In a just cause: they lead the last attack
On Anti-Christ; their comrade's blood has bought
New right to breed an honourable race.
They have challenged Death and dared him face to face."
"We're none of us the same!" the boys reply.
"For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find
A chap who's served that hasn't found some change."
And the Bishop said; "The ways of God are strange!"
Sonnet: - IV.
by Charles Sangster

The birds are singing merrily, and here
A squirrel claims the lordship of the woods,
And scolds me for intruding.    At my feet
The tireless ants all silently proclaim
The dignity of labour.    In my ear
The bee hums drowsily; from sweet to sweet
Careering, like a lover weak in aim.
I hear faint music in the solitudes;
A dreamlike melody that whispers peace
Imbues the calmy forest, and sweet rills
Of pensive feeling murmur through my brain,
Like ripplings of pure water down the hills
That slumber in the moonlight.    Cease, oh, cease!
Some day my weary heart will coin these into pain.
The End Of The Summer
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The birds laugh loud and long together
When Fashion's followers speed away
At the first cool breath of autumn weather.
Why, this is the time, cry the birds, to stay!
When the deep calm sea and the deep sky over
Both look their passion through sun-kissed space,
As a blue-eyed maid and her blue-eyed lover
Might each gaze into the other's face.
Oh! this is the time when careful spying
Discovers the secrets Nature knows.
You find when the butterflies plan for flying
(Before the thrush or the blackbird goes),
You see some day by the water's edges
A brilliant border of red and black;
And then off over the hills and hedges
It flutters away on the summer's track.
The shy little sumacs, in lonely places,
Bowed all summer with dust and heat,
Like clean-clad children with rain-washed faces,
Are dressed in scarlet from head to feet.
And never a flower had the boastful summer,
In all the blossoms that decked her sod,
So royal hued as that later comer
The purple chum of the goldenrod.
Some chill grey dawn you note with grieving
That the King of Autumn is on his way.
You see, with a sorrowful, slow believing,
How the wanton woods have gone astray.
They wear the stain of bold caresses,
Of riotous revels with old King Frost;
They dazzle all eyes with their gorgeous dresses,
Nor care that their green young leaves are lost.
A wet wind blows from the East one morning,
The wood's gay garments looked draggled out.
You hear a sound, and your heart takes warning -
The birds are planning their winter route.
They wheel and settle and scold and wrangle,
Their tempers are ruffled, their voices loud;
Then whirr -and away in a feathered tangle,
To fade in the south like a passing cloud.
Envoi
A songless wood stripped bare of glory -
A sodden moor that is black and brown;
The year has finished its last love-story:
Oh! let us away to the gay bright town.
The Raven Wishing To Imitate The Eagle.
by Jean de La Fontaine

[1]
The bird of Jove bore off a mutton,
A raven being witness.
That weaker bird, but equal glutton,
Not doubting of his fitness
To do the same with ease,
And bent his taste to please,
Took round the flock his sweep,
And mark'd among the sheep,
The one of fairest flesh and size,
A real sheep of sacrifice - 
A dainty titbit bestial,
Reserved for mouth celestial.
Our gormand, gloating round,
Cried, 'Sheep, I wonder much
Who could have made you such.
You're far the fattest I have found;
I'll take you for my eating.'
And on the creature bleating
He settled down. Now, sooth to say,
This sheep would weigh
More than a cheese;
And had a fleece
Much like that matting famous
Which graced the chin of Polyphemus;[2]
So fast it clung to every claw,
It was not easy to withdraw.
The shepherd came, caught, caged, and, to their joy,
Gave croaker to his children for a toy.
Ill plays the pilferer the bigger thief;
One's self one ought to know; - in brief,
Example is a dangerous lure;
Death strikes the gnat, where flies the wasp secure.