DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Sonnet XCIV.
by Anna Seward

All is not right with him, who ill sustains
Retirement's silent hours. - Himself he flies,
Perchance from that insipid equipoise,
Which always with the hapless mind remains
That feels no native bias; never gains
One energy of will, that does not rise
From some external cause, to which he hies
From his own blank inanity. - When reigns,
With a strong, cultur'd mind, this wretched hate
To commune with himself, from thought that tells
Of some lost joy, or dreaded stroke of Fate
He struggles to escape; - or sense that dwells
On secret guilt towards God, or Man, with weight
Thrice dire, the self-exiling flight impels.
Unrest.
by Archibald Lampman

All day upon the garden bright
The sun shines strong,
But in my heart there is no light,
Or any song.
Voices of merry life go by,
Adown the street;
But I am weary of the cry
And drift of feet.
With all dear things that ought to please
The hours are blessed,
And yet my soul is ill at ease,
And cannot rest.
Strange spirit, leave me not too long,
Nor stint to give,
For if my soul have no sweet song,
It cannot live.
Hallowmas
by Madison Julius Cawein

All hushed of glee,
The last chill bee
Clings wearily
To the dying aster.
The leaves drop faster:
And all around, red as disaster,
The forest crimsons with tree on tree.
A butterfly,
The last to die,
Wings heavily by,
Weighed down with torpor.
The air grows sharper;
And the wind in the trees, like some sad harper,
Sits and sorrows with sigh on sigh.
The far crows call;
The acorns fall;
And over all
The Autumn raises
Dun mists and hazes,
Through which her soul, it seemeth, gazes
On ghosts and dreams in carnival.
The end is near;
The dying Year
Leans low to hear
Her own heart breaking,
And Beauty taking
Her flight, and all my dreams forsaking
My soul, bowed down 'mid the sad and sere.
The Dream-Bridge
by Clark Ashton Smith

All drear and barren seemed the hours,
That passed rain-swept and tempest-blown.
The dead leaves fell like brownish notes
Within the rain's grey monotone.
There came a lapse between the showers;
The clouds grew rich with sunset gleams;
Then o'er the sky a rainbow sprang -
A bridge unto the Land of Dreams.
Life
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

All in the dark we grope along,
And if we go amiss
We learn at least which path is wrong,
And there is gain in this.
We do not always win the race
By only running right;
We have to tread the mountain's base
Before we reach its height.
The Christs alone no errors made;
So often had they trod
The paths that lead through light and shade,
They had become as God.
As Krishna, Buddha, Christ again,
They passed along the way,
And left those mighty truths which men
But dimly grasp to-day.
But he who loves himself the last
And knows the use of pain,
Though strewn with errors all his past,
He surely shall attain.
Some souls there are that needs must taste
Of wrong, ere choosing right;
We should not call those years a waste
Which led us to the light.
Private Property
by Aldous Leonard Huxley

All fly - yet who is misanthrope? - 
The actual men and things that pass
Jostling, to wither as the grass
So soon: and (be it heaven's hope,
Or poetry's kaleidoscope,
Or love or wine, at feast, at mass)
Each owns a paradise of glass
Where never a yearning heliotrope
Pursues the sun's ascent or slope;
For the sun dreams there, and no time is or was.
Like fauns embossed in our domain,
We look abroad, and our calm eyes
Mark how the goatish gods of pain
Revel; and if by grim surprise
They break into our paradise,
Patient we build its beauty up again.
Lines Written In Windsor Forest.
by Alexander Pope

All hail, once pleasing, once inspiring shade,
Scene of my youthful loves, and happier hours!
Where the kind Muses met me as I stray'd,
And gently press'd my hand, and said, 'Be ours!--
Take all thou e'er shalt have, a constant Muse:
At Court thou mayst be liked, but nothing gain;
Stocks thou mayst buy and sell, but always lose;
And love the brightest eyes, but love in vain.'
The Reformer
by John Greenleaf Whittier

All grim and soiled and brown with tan,
I saw a Strong One, in his wrath,
Smiting the godless shrines of man
Along his path.
The Church, beneath her trembling dome,
Essayed in vain her ghostly charm:
Wealth shook within his gilded home
With strange alarm.
Fraud from his secret chambers fled
Before the sunlight bursting in:
Sloth drew her pillow o'er her head
To drown the din.
"Spare," Art implored, "yon holy pile;
That grand, old, time-worn turret spare;"
Meek Reverence, kneeling in the aisle,
Cried out, "Forbear!"
Gray-bearded Use, who, deaf and blind,
Groped for his old accustomed stone,
Leaned on his staff, and wept to find
His seat o'erthrown.
Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes,
O'erhung with paly locks of gold,
"Why smite," he asked in sad surprise,
"The fair, the old?"
Yet louder rang the Strong One's stroke,
Yet nearer flashed his axe's gleam;
Shuddering and sick of heart I woke,
As from a dream.
I looked: aside the dust-cloud rolled,
The Waster seemed the Builder too;
Upspringing from the ruined Old
I saw the New.
'T was but the ruin of the bad,
The wasting of the wrong and ill;
Whate'er of good the old time had
Was living still.
Calm grew the brows of him I feared;
The frown which awed me passed away,
And left behind a smile which cheered
Like breaking day.
The grain grew green on battle-plains,
O'er swarded war-mounds grazed the cow;
The slave stood forging from his chains
The spade and plough.
Where frowned the fort, pavilions gay
And cottage windows, flower-entwined,
Looked out upon the peaceful bay
And hills behind.
Through vine-wreathed cups with wine once red,
The lights on brimming crystal fell,
Drawn, sparkling, from the rivulet head
And mossy well.
Through prison walls, like Heaven-sent hope,
Fresh breezes blew, and sunbeams strayed,
And with the idle gallows-rope
The young child played.
Where the doomed victim in his cell
Had counted o'er the weary hours,
Glad school-girls, answering to the bell,
Came crowed with flowers.
Grown wiser for the lesson given,
I fear no longer, for I know
That, where the share is deepest driven,
The best fruits grow.
The outworn rite, the old abuse,
The pious fraud transparent grown,
The good held captive in the use
Of wrong alone,
These wait their doom, from that great law
Which makes the past time serve to-day;
And fresher life the world shall draw
From their decay.
Oh, backward-looking son of time!
The new is old, the old is new,
The cycle of a change sublime
Still sweeping through.
So wisely taught the Indian seer;
Destroying Seva, forming Brahm,
Who wake by turns Earth's love and fear,
Are one, the same.
Idly as thou, in that old day
Thou mournest, did thy sire repine;
So, in his time, thy child grown gray
Shall sigh for thine.
But life shall on and upward go;
Th' eternal step of Progress beats
To that great anthem, calm and slow,
Which God repeats.
Take heart! the Waster builds again,
A charm'd life old Goodness hath;
The tares may perish, but the grain
Is not for death.
God works in all things; all obey
His first propulsion from the night:
Wake thou and watch! the world is gray
With morning light
Natural Magic
by Robert Browning

All I can say is, I saw it!
The room was as bare as your hand.
I locked in the swarth little lady, I swear,
From the head to the foot of her, well, quite as bare!
'No Nautch shall cheat me,' said I, 'taking my stand
At this bolt which I draw!' And this bolt, I withdraw it,
And there laughs the lady, not bare, but embowered
With, who knows what verdure, o'erfruited, o'erflowered?
Impossible! Only, I saw it!
All I can sing is, I feel it!
This life was as blank as that room;
I let you pass in here. Precaution, indeed?
Walls, ceiling and floor, not a chance for a weed!
Wide opens the entrance: where's cold now, where's gloom?
No May to sow seed here, no June to reveal it,
Behold you enshrined in these blooms of your bringing,
These fruits of your bearing, nay, birds of your winging!
A fairy-tale! Only, I feel it!
All In The Golden Afternoon
by Lewis Carroll

All in the golden afternoon
Full leisurely we glide;
For both our oars, with little skill,
By little arms are plied,
While little hands make vain pretense
Our wanderings to guide.
Ah, cruel Three! In such an hour,
Beneath such dreamy weather,
To beg a tale of breath too weak
To stir the tiniest feather!
Yet what can one poor voice avail
Against three tongues together?
Imperious Prima flashes forth
Her edict to 'begin it'
In gentler tones Secunda hopes
'There will be nonsense in it'
While Tertia interrupts the tale
Not more than once a minute.
Anon, to sudden silence won,
In fancy they pursue
The dream-child moving through a land
Of wonders wild and new,
In friendly chat with bird or beast
And half believe it true.
And ever, as the story drained
The wells of fancy dry,
And faintly strove that weary one
To put the subject by,
'The rest next time' 'It is next time!'
The happy voices cry.
Thus grew the tale of Wonderland:
Thus slowly, one by one,
Its quaint events were hammered out
And now the tale is done,
And home we steer, a merry crew,
Beneath the setting sun.
Alice! a childish story take,
And with a gentle hand
Lay it where Childhood's dreams are twined
In Memory's mystic band,
Like pilgrim's withered wreath of flowers
Plucked in a far-off land.
Menace.
by Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey)

All green and fair the Summer lies,
Just budded from the bud of Spring,
With tender blue of wistful skies,
And winds which softly sing.
Her clock has struck its morning hours;
Noon nears--the flowery dial is true;
But still the hot sun veils its powers,
In deference to the dew.
Yet there amid the fresh new green,
Amid the young broods overhead,
A single scarlet branch is seen,
Swung like a banner red;
Tinged with the fatal hectic flush
Which, when October frost is in the near,
Flames on each dying tree and bush,
To deck the dying year.
And now the sky seems not so blue,
The yellow sunshine pales its ray,
A sorrowful, prophetic hue
Lies on the radiant day,
As mid the bloom and tenderness
I catch that scarlet menace there,
Like a gray sudden wintry tress
Set in a child's bright hair.
The birds sing on, the roses blow,
But like a discord heard but now,
A stain upon the petal's snow
Is that one sad, red bough.
Barbara Allen's Cruelty
by George Wharton Edwards

All in the merry month of May,
When green buds they were swelling,
Young Jemmy Grove on his death-bed lay
For love o' Barbara Allen.
He sent his man unto her then,
To the town where she was dwelling:
"O haste and come to my master dear,
If your name be Barbara Allen."
Slowly, slowly rase she up,
And she cam' where he was lying;
And when she drew the curtain by,
Says, "Young man, I think you're dying."
"O it's I am sick, and very, very sick,
And it's a' for Barbara Allen."
"O the better for me ye'se never be,
Tho' your heart's blude were a-spilling!
"O dinna ye min', young man," she says,
"When the red wine ye were filling,
That ye made the healths gae round and round
And ye slighted Barbara Allen?"
He turn'd his face unto the wa',
And death was wi' him dealing:
"Adieu, adieu, my dear friends a';
Be kind to Barbara Allen."
As she was walking o'er the fields,
She heard the dead-bell knelling;
And every jow the dead-bell gave,
It cried, "Woe to Barbara Allen!"
"O mother, mother, mak' my bed,
To lay me down in sorrow.
My love has died for me to-day,
I'll die for him to-morrow."
The Harp's Song
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

All day, all day in a calm like death
The harp hung waiting the sea wind's breath.
When the western sky flushed red with shame
At the sun's bold kiss, the sea wind came.
Said the harp to the breeze, Oh, breathe as soft
As the ring-dove cooes from its nest aloft.
I am full of a song that mothers croon
When their wee ones tire of their play at noon.
Though a harp may feel 'tis a silent thing
Till the breeze arises and bids it sing.
Said the wind to the harp, Nay, sing for me
The wail of the dead that are lost at sea.
I caught their cry as I came along,
And I hurried to find you and teach you the song.
Oh, the heart is the harp, and love is the breeze,
And the song is ever what love may please.
Prologue
by Lewis Carroll

All in the golden afternoon
Full leisurely we glide;
For both our oars, with little skill,
By little arms are plied,
While little hands make vain pretense
Our wanderings to guide.
Ah, cruel Three! In such an hour
Beneath such dreamy weather,
To beg a tale of breath too weak
To stir the tiniest feather!
Yet what can one poor voice avail
Against three tongues together?
Imperious Prima flashes forth
Her edict `to begin it':
In gentler tones Secunda hopes
`There will be nonsense in it!'
While Tertia interrupts the tale
Not more than once a minute.
Anon, to sudden silence won,
In fancy they pursue
The dream-child moving through a land
Of wonders wild and new,
In friendly chat with bird or beast,
And half believe it true.
And ever, as the story drained
The wells of fancy dry,
And faintly strove that weary one
To put the subject by
`The rest next time' `It is next time!'
The happy voices cry.
Thus grew the tale of Wonderland:
Thus slowly, one by one,
Its quaint events were hammered out,
And now the tale is done,
And home we steer, a merry crew,
Beneath the setting sun.
Alice! A childish story take,
And with a gentle hand,
Lay it where Childhoood's dreams are twined
In Memory's mystic band,
Like pilgrim's wither'd wreath of flowers
Pluck'd in a far-off land.
Any Other Time
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

All of us play our very best game,
Any other time.
Golf or billiards, it's all the same,
Any other time.
Lose a match and you always say,
"Just ny luck! I was 'off' today!
I could have beaten him quite half-way,
Any other time!"
After a fiver you ought to go,
Any other time.
Every man that you ask says "Oh,
Any other time.
Lend you a fiver? I'd lend you two,
But I'm overdrawn and my bills are due,
Wish you'd ask me, now, mind you do,
Any other time!"
Fellows will ask you out to dine,
Any other time.
"Not tonight for we're twenty-nine,
Any other time.
Not tomorrow, for cook's on strike;
Not next day, I'll be out on the bike;
Just drop in whenever you like
Any other time!"
Seasick passengers like the sea,
Any other time.
"Something . . I ate . . disagreed . . with . . me!
Any other time.
Ocean-travelling is .. simply bliss,
Must be my . . liver . . has gone amiss . .
Why, I would . . laugh . . at a sea . . like this,
Any other time!"
Most of us mean to be better men,
Any other time:
Regular upright characters then,
Any other time.
Yet somehow as the years go by
Still we gamble and drink and lie,
When it comes to the last we'll want to die,
Any other time!
Song Of The Night At Daybreak
by Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell

All my stars forsake me,
And the dawn-winds shake me.
Where shall I betake me?
Whither shall I run
Till the set of sun,
Till the day be done?
To the mountain-mine,
To the boughs o' the pine,
To the blind man's eyne,
To a brow that is
Bowed upon the knees,
Sick with memories.
Charlotte Bront''S Grave.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

All overgrown by cunning moss,
All interspersed with weed,
The little cage of 'Currer Bell,'
In quiet Haworth laid.
This bird, observing others,
When frosts too sharp became,
Retire to other latitudes,
Quietly did the same,
But differed in returning;
Since Yorkshire hills are green,
Yet not in all the nests I meet
Can nightingale be seen.
Gathered from many wanderings,
Gethsemane can tell
Through what transporting anguish
She reached the asphodel!
Soft fall the sounds of Eden
Upon her puzzled ear;
Oh, what an afternoon for heaven,
When 'Bront'' entered there!
Spring
by Alfred Lichtenstein

All men are now greedy,
All women are shouting,
Hide yourself in your hump,
Remain alone -
The Treasure-Digger
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

All my weary days I pass'd
Sick at heart and poor in purse.
Poverty's the greatest curse,
Riches are the highest good!
And to end my woes at last,
Treasure-seeking forth I sped.
"Thou shalt have my soul instead!"
Thus I wrote, and with my blood.
Ring round ring I forthwith drew,
Wondrous flames collected there,
Herbs and bones in order fair,
Till the charm had work'd aright.
Then, to learned precepts true,
Dug to find some treasure old,
In the place my art foretold
Black and stormy was the night.
Coming o'er the distant plain,
With the glimmer of a star,
Soon I saw a light afar,
As the hour of midnight knell'd.
Preparation was in vain.
Sudden all was lighted up
With the lustre of a cup
That a beauteous boy upheld.
Sweetly seem'd his eves to laugh
Neath his flow'ry chaplet's load;
With the drink that brightly glow'd,
He the circle enter'd in.
And he kindly bade me quaff:
Then methought "This child can ne'er,
With his gift so bright and fair,
To the arch-fiend be akin."
"Pure life's courage drink!" cried he:
"This advice to prize then learn, 
Never to this place return
Trusting in thy spells absurd;
Dig no longer fruitlessly.
Guests by night, and toil by day!
Weeks laborious, feast-days gay!
Be thy future magic-word!
All Lovely Things
by Conrad Potter Aiken

All lovely things will have an ending,
All lovely things will fade and die,
And youth, that's now so bravely spending,
Will beg a penny by and by.
Fine ladies soon are all forgotten,
And goldenrod is dust when dead,
The sweetest flesh and flowers are rotten
And cobwebs tent the brightest head.
Come back, true love! Sweet youth, return!
But time goes on, and will, unheeding,
Though hands will reach, and eyes will yearn,
And the wild days set true hearts bleeding.
Come back, true love! Sweet youth, remain!
But goldenrod and daisies wither,
And over them blows autumn rain,
They pass, they pass, and know not whither.
Song Of The Night At Daybreak
by Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell

All my stars forsake me,
And the dawn-winds shake me.
Where shall I betake me?
Whither shall I run
Till the set of sun,
Till the day be done?
To the mountain-mine,
To the boughs o' the pine,
To the blind man's eyne,
To a brow that is
Bowed upon the knees,
Sick with memories.
I Want To Die In My Own Bed
by Yehuda Amichai

All night the army came up from Gilgal
To get to the killing field, and that's all.
In the ground, warf and woof, lay the dead.
I want to die in My own bed.
Like slits in a tank, their eyes were uncanny,
I'm always the few and they are the many.
I must answer. They can interrogate My head.
But I want to die in My own bed.
The sun stood still in Gibeon. Forever so, it's willing
to illuminate those waging battle and killing.
I may not see My wife when her blood is shed,
But I want to die in My own bed.
Samson, his strength in his long black hair,
My hair they sheared when they made me a hero
Perforce, and taught me to charge ahead.
I want to die in My own bed.
I saw you could live and furnish with grace
Even a lion's den, if you've no other place.
I don't even mind to die alone, to be dead,
But I want to die in My own bed.
The Ghost's Story
by Duncan Campbell Scott

All my life long I heard the step
Of some one I would know,
Break softly in upon my days
And lightly come and go.
A foot so brisk I said must bear
A heart that's clean and clear;
If that companion blithe would come,
I should be happy here.
But though I waited long and well,
He never came at all,
I grew aweary of the void,
Even of the light foot-fall.
From loneliness to loneliness
I felt my spirit grope - 
At last I knew the uttermost,
The loneliness of hope.
And just upon the border land,
Where flesh and spirit part,
I knew the secret foot-fall was
The beating of my heart.
The Beech-Nut Gatherer.
by Pamela S. Vining, (J. C. Yule)

All over the earth like a mantle,
Golden, and green, and grey,
Crimson, and scarlet, and yellow,
The Autumn foliage lay; - 
The sun of the Indian Summer
Laughed at the bare old trees
As they shook their leafless branches
In the soft October breeze.
Gorgeous was every hill-side,
And gorgeous every nook,
And the dry, old log was gorgeous,
Spanning the little brook;
Its holiday robes, the forest
Had suddenly cast to earth,
And, as yet, seemed scarce to miss, them,
In its plenitude of mirth.
I walked where the leaves the softest,
The brightest, and goldenest lay,
And I thought of a forest hill-side,
And an Indian Summer day, - 
Of an eager, little child-face
O'er the fallen leaves that bent,
As she gathered her cup of beech nuts,
With innocent content.
I thought of the small, brown fingers
Gleaning them one by one,
With the partridge drumming near her
In the forest bare and dun,
And the jet-black squirrel, winking
His saucy, jealous eye
At those tiny, pilfering fingers,
From his sly nook up on high
Ah, barefooted little maiden
With thy bonnetless, sun-burnt brow,
Thou glean'st no more on the hill-side - 
Where art thou gleaning now?
I knew by the lifted glances
Of thy dark, imperious eye,
That the tall trees bending o'er thee
Would not shelter thee by and by.
The cottage by the brookside,
With its mossy roof is gone; - 
The cattle have left the uplands,
The young lambs left the lawn; - 
Gone are thy blue-eyed sister,
And thy brother's laughing brow;
And the beech-nuts He ungathered
On the lonely hill-side now.
What have the returning seasons
Brought to thy heart since then,
In thy long and weary wand'rings
In the paths of busy men? - 
Has the Angel of grief, or of gladness,
Set his seal upon thy brow?
Maiden, joyous or tearful,
Where art thou gleaning now?
The Morning Pool
by Clark Ashton Smith

All night the pool held mysteries,
Vague depths of night that lay in dream,
Where phantoms of the pale-white stars
Wandered, with darkness-tangled gleam.
And now it holds the limpid light
And shadeless azure of the skies,
Wherein, like some enclasp'd gem,
The morning's golden glamour lies.
Nursery Rhyme. DXV. Natural History.
by Unknown

All of a row,
Bend the bow,
Shot at a pigeon,
And killed a crow.
Flood-Tide.
by Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey)

All night the thirsty beach has listening lain,
With patience dumb,
Counting the slow, sad moments of her pain;
Now morn has come,
And with the morn the punctual tide again.
I hear the white battalions down the bay
Charge with a cheer;
The sun's gold lances prick them on their way,--
They plunge, they rear,--
Foam-plumed and snowy-pennoned, they are here!
The roused shore, her bright hair backward blown,
Stands on the verge
And waves a smiling welcome, beckoning on
The flying surge,
While round her feet, like doves, the billows crowd and urge.
Her glad lips quaff the salt, familiar wine;
Her spent urns fill;
All hungering creatures know the sound, the sign,--
Quiver and thrill,
With glad expectance crowd and banquet at their will.
I, too, the rapt contentment join and share;
My tide is full;
There is new happiness in earth, in air:
All beautiful
And fresh the world but now so bare and dull.
But while we raise the cup of bliss so high,
Thus satisfied,
Another shore beneath a sad, far sky
Waiteth her tide,
And thirsts with sad complainings still denied.
On earth's remotest bound she sits and waits
In doubt and pain;
Our joy is signal for her sad estates;
Like dull refrain
Marring our song, her sighings rise in vain.
To each his turn--the ebb-tide and the flood,
The less, the more--
God metes his portions justly out, I know;
But still before
My mind forever floats that pale and grieving shore.
Perfectness.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

All perfect things are saddening in effect.
The autumn wood robed in its scarlet clothes,
The matchless tinting on the royal rose
Whose velvet leaf by no least flaw is flecked,
Love's supreme moment, when the soul unchecked
Soars high as heaven, and its best rapture knows - 
These hold a deeper pathos than our woes,
Since they leave nothing better to expect.
Resistless change, when powerless to improve,
Can only mar. The gold will pale to gray;
Nothing remains tomorrow as to-day;
The lose will not seem quite so fait, and love
Must find its measures of delight made less.
Ah, how imperfect is all Perfectness!