DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Deep-Sea Cables
by Rudyard Kipling

The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar,
Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are.
There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep,
Or the great grey level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep.
Here in the womb of the world, here on the tie-ribs of earth
Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beat,
Warning, sorrow and gain, salutation and mirth,
For a Power troubles the Still that has neither voice nor feet.
They have wakened the timeless Things; they have killed their father Time;
Joining hands in the gloom, a league from the last of the sun.
Hush! Men talk to-day o'er the waste of the ultimate slime,
And a new Word runs between: whispering, "Let us be one!"
After A Lecture On Keats
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Purpureos spargam flores."
The wreath that star-crowned Shelley gave
Is lying on thy Roman grave,
Yet on its turf young April sets
Her store of slender violets;
Though all the Gods their garlands shower,
I too may bring one purple flower.
Alas! what blossom shall I bring,
That opens in my Northern spring?
The garden beds have all run wild,
So trim when I was yet a child;
Flat plantains and unseemly stalks
Have crept across the gravel walks;
The vines are dead, long, long ago,
The almond buds no longer blow.
No more upon its mound I see
The azure, plume-bound fleur-de-lis;
Where once the tulips used to show,
In straggling tufts the pansies grow;
The grass has quenched my white-rayed gem,
The flowering "Star of Bethlehem,"
Though its long blade of glossy green
And pallid stripe may still be seen.
Nature, who treads her nobles down,
And gives their birthright to the clown,
Has sown her base-born weedy things
Above the garden's queens and kings.
Yet one sweet flower of ancient race
Springs in the old familiar place.
When snows were melting down the vale,
And Earth unlaced her icy mail,
And March his stormy trumpet blew,
And tender green came peeping through,
I loved the earliest one to seek
That broke the soil with emerald beak,
And watch the trembling bells so blue
Spread on the column as it grew.
Meek child of earth! thou wilt not shame
The sweet, dead poet's holy name;
The God of music gave thee birth,
Called from the crimson-spotted earth,
Where, sobbing his young life away,
His own fair Hyacinthus lay.
The hyacinth my garden gave
Shall lie upon that Roman grave!
Presage
by Violet Jacob

The year declines, and yet there is
A clearness, as of hinted spring;
And chilly, like a virgin's kiss,
The cold light touches everything.
The world seems dazed with purity,
There hangs, this spell-bound afternoon,
Beyond the naked cherry tree
The new-wrought sickle of the moon.
What is this thraldom, pale and still,
That holds so passionless a sway?
Lies death in this ethereal chill,
New life, or prelude of decay?
In the frail rapture of the sky
There bodes, transfigured, far aloof,
The veil that hides eternity,
With life for warp and death for woof.
We see the presage - not with eyes,
But dimly, with the shrinking soul - 
Scarce guessing, in this fateful guise,
The glory that enwraps the whole,
The light no flesh may apprehend,
Lent but to spirit-eyes, to give
Sign of that splendour of the end
That none may look upon and live.
Old Age
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The young see heaven - but to the old who wait
The final call, the hills of youth arise
More beautiful than shores of Paradise.
Beside a glowing and voracious grate
A dozing couple dream of yesterday;
The islands of a vanished past appear,
Bringing forgotten names and faces near;
While lost in mist, the present fades away.
The fragrant winds of tender memories blow
Across the gardens of the "Used-to-be!"
They smile into each other's eyes, and see
The bride and bridegroom of the long ago.
And tremulous lips, pressed close to faded cheek
Love's silent tale of deathless passion speak.
The Young Lieutenant
by Edward Dyson

The young lieutenant's face was grey.
As came the day.
The watchers saw it lifting white
And ghostlike from the pool of night.
His eyes were wide and strangely lit.
Each thought in that unhallowed pit:
'I, too, may seem like one who dies
With wide, set eyes.'
He stood so still we thought it death,
For through the breath
Of reeking shell we came, and fire,
To hell, unlit, of blood and mire.
Tianced in a chill delirium
We wondered, though our lips were dumb
What precious thing his fingers pressed
Against his breast.
His left hand clutched so lovingly
What none might see.
All bloodless were his lips beneath
The straight, white, rigid clip of teeth.
His eyes turned to the distance dim;
Our sleepless eyes were all on him.
He stirred; we aped a phantom cheer.
The hour was here!
The young lieutenant blew his call.
'God keep us all!'
He whispered softly. Out he led;
And over the vale of twisted dead,
Close holding that dear thing, he went.
On through the storm we followed, bent
To pelt of iron and the rain
Of flame and pain.
His wan face like a lodestar glowed
Down that black road,
And deep among the torn and slain
We drove, and twenty times again
He squared us to the charging hordes.
His word was like a hundred swords.
And still a hand the treasure pressed
Against his breast.
Our gain we held. Up flamed the sun.
'The ridge is won,'
He calmly said, and, with a sigh,
'Thank God, a man is free to die!'
He smiled at this, and so he passed.
His secret prize we knew at last,
For through his hand the jewel's red,
Fierce lustre bled.
Autumn
by Richard Le Gallienne

The year grows still again, the surging wake
Of full-sailed summer folds its furrows up,
As after passing of an argosy
Old Silence settles back upon the sea,
And ocean grows as placid as a cup.
Spring, the young morn, and Summer, the strong noon,
Have dreamed and done and died for Autumn's sake:
Autumn that finds not for a loss so dear
Solace in stack and garner hers too soon -
Autumn, the faithful widow of the year.
Autumn, a poet once so full of song,
Wise in all rhymes of blossom and of bud,
Hath lost the early magic of his tongue,
And hath no passion in his failing blood.
Hear ye no sound of sobbing in the air?
'Tis his. Low bending in a secret lane,
Late blooms of second childhood in his hair,
He tries old magic, like a dotard mage;
Tries spell and spell, to weep and try again:
Yet not a daisy hears, and everywhere
The hedgerow rattles like an empty cage.
He hath no pleasure in his silken skies,
Nor delicate ardours of the yellow land;
Yea, dead, for all its gold, the woodland lies,
And all the throats of music filled with sand.
Neither to him across the stubble field
May stack nor garner any comfort bring,
Who loveth more this jasmine he hath made,
The little tender rhyme he yet can sing,
Than yesterday, with all its pompous yield,
Or all its shaken laurels on his head.
William Forster
by John Greenleaf Whittier

The years are many since his hand
Was laid upon my head,
Too weak and young to understand
The serious words he said.
Yet often now the good man's look
Before me seems to swim,
As if some inward feeling took
The outward guise of him.
As if, in passion's heated war,
Or near temptation's charm,
Through him the low-voiced monitor
Forewarned me of the harm.
Stranger and pilgrim! from that day
Of meeting, first and last,
Wherever Duty's pathway lay,
His reverent steps have passed.
The poor to feed, the lost to seek,
To proffer life to death,
Hope to the erring, to the weak
The strength of his own faith.
To plead the captive's right; remove
The sting of hate from Law;
And soften in the fire of love
The hardened steel of War.
He walked the dark world, in the mild,
Still guidance of the Light;
In tearful tenderness a child,
A strong man in the right.
From what great perils, on his way,
He found, in prayer, release;
Through what abysmal shadows lay
His pathway unto peace,
God knoweth : we could only see
The tranquil strength he gained;
The bondage lost in liberty,
The fear in love unfeigned.
And I, my youthful fancies grown
The habit of the man,
Whose field of life by angels sown
The wilding vines o'erran,
Low bowed in silent gratitude,
My manhood's heart enjoys
That reverence for the pure and good
Which blessed the dreaming boy's.
Still shines the light of holy lives
Like star-beams over doubt;
Each sainted memory, Christlike, drives
Some dark possession out.
O friend! O brother I not in vain
Thy life so calm and true,
The silver dropping of the rain,
The fall of summer dew!
How many burdened hearts have prayed
Their lives like thine might be
But more shall pray henceforth for aid
To lay them down like thee.
With weary hand, yet steadfast will,
In old age as in youth,
Thy Master found thee sowing still
The good seed of His truth.
As on thy task-field closed the day
In golden-skied decline,
His angel met thee on the way,
And lent his arm to thine.
Thy latest care for man, thy last
Of earthly thought a prayer,
Oh, who thy mantle, backward cast,
Is worthy now to wear?
Methinks the mound which marks thy bed
Might bless our land and save,
As rose, of old, to life the dead
Who touched the prophet's grave
Autumn In Cornwall
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

The year lies fallen and faded
On cliffs by clouds invaded,
With tongues of storms upbraided,
With wrath of waves bedinned;
And inland, wild with warning,
As in deaf ears or scorning,
The clarion even and morning
Rings of the south-west wind.
The wild bents wane and wither
In blasts whose breath bows hither
Their grey-grown heads and thither,
Unblest of rain or sun;
The pale fierce heavens are crowded
With shapes like dreams beclouded,
As though the old year enshrouded
Lay, long ere life were done.
Full-charged with oldworld wonders,
From dusk Tintagel thunders
A note that smites and sunders
The hard frore fields of air;
A trumpet stormier-sounded
Than once from lists rebounded
When strong men sense-confounded
Fell thick in tourney there.
From scarce a duskier dwelling
Such notes of wail rose welling
Through the outer darkness, telling
In the awful singer's ears
What souls the darkness covers,
What love-lost souls of lovers,
Whose cry still hangs and hovers
In each man's born that hears.
For there by Hector's brother
And yet some thousand other
He that had grief to mother
Passed pale from Dante's sight;
With one fast linked as fearless,
Perchance, there only tearless;
Iseult and Tristram, peerless
And perfect queen and knight.
A shrill-winged sound comes flying
North, as of wild souls crying
The cry of things undying,
That know what life must be;
Or as the old year's heart, stricken
Too sore for hope to quicken
By thoughts like thorns that thicken,
Broke, breaking with the sea.
In Memoriam. - Mrs. Charles N. Cadwallader,
by Lydia Howard Sigourney

Died at Philadelphia, July 2nd, 1859, five weeks after her marriage.
The year rolls round, and brings again
The bright, auspicious day,
The marriage scene, the festive cheer,
The group serenely gay,
The hopes that nurs'd by sun and shower
O'er youth's fair trellis wound,
And in that consecrated rite
Their full fruition found.
But One unseen amid the throng
Drew near with purpose fell,
And lo! the orange-flowers were changed
To mournful asphodel.
Five sabbaths walk'd the beautiful
Her chosen lord beside,
But ere the sixth illumed the sky
She was that dread One's bride.
Yet call her not the bride of Death
Though in his bed she sleeps,
And broidering Myrtle richly green
O'er her cold pillow creeps:
She hath a bower where angels dwell,
A mansion with the blest,
For Jesus whom she trusted here,
Receiv'd her to His rest.
Wlld Nosegay.
by John Clare

The yellow lambtoe I have often got,
Sweet creeping o'er the banks in summer-time,
And totter-grass, in many a trembling knot;
And robb'd the molehill of its bed of thyme:
And oft with anxious feelings would I climb
The waving willow-row, a stick to trim,
To reach the water-lily's tempting flower
That on the surface of the pool did swim:
I've stretch'd, and tried vain schemes for many an hour;
And scrambled up the hawthorn's prickly bower,
For ramping woodbines and blue bitter-sweet.
Still Summer blooms, these flowers appear again;
But, ah, the question's useless to repeat,
When will the feelings come I witness'd then?
The Dying Year.
by Eugene Field

The year has been a tedious one--
A weary round of toil and sorrow,
And, since it now at last is gone,
We say farewell and hail the morrow.
Yet o'er the wreck which time has wrought
A sweet, consoling ray is shimmered--
The one but compensating thought
That literary life has glimmered.
Struggling with hunger and with cold
The world contemptuously beheld 'er;
The little thing was one year old--
But who'd have cared had she been elder?
The Book Of Urizen: Chapter IX
by William Blake

1.
Then the Inhabitants of those Cities:
Felt their Nerves change into Marrow
And hardening Bones began
In swift diseases and torments,
In throbbings & shootings & grindings
Thro' all the coasts; till weaken'd
The Senses inward rush'd shrinking,
Beneath the dark net of infection.
2.
Till the shrunken eyes clouded over
Discernd not the woven hipocrisy
But the streaky slime in their heavens
Brought together by narrowing perceptions
Appeard transparent air; for their eyes
Grew small like the eyes of a man
And in reptile forms shrinking together
Of seven feet stature they remaind
3.
Six days they shrunk up from existence
And on the seventh day they rested
And they bless'd the seventh day, in sick hope:
And forgot their eternal life
4.
And their thirty cities divided
In form of a human heart
No more could they rise at will
In the infinite void, but bound down
To earth by their narrowing perceptions
They lived a period of years
Then left a noisom body
To the jaws of devouring darkness
5.
And their children wept, & built
Tombs in the desolate places,
And form'd laws of prudence, and call'd them
The eternal laws of God
6.
And the thirty cities remaind
Surrounded by salt floods, now call'd
Africa: its name was then Egypt.
7.
The remaining sons of Urizen
Beheld their brethren shrink together
Beneath the Net of Urizen;
Perswasion was in vain;
For the ears of the inhabitants,
Were wither'd, & deafen'd, & cold:
And their eyes could not discern,
Their brethren of other cities.
8.
So Fuzon call'd all together
The remaining children of Urizen:
And they left the pendulous earth:
They called it Egypt, & left it.
9.
And the salt ocean rolled englob'd.
To A Friend.
by Thomas Frederick Young

The youthful joys of vanish'd years,
The joys e'en now we share,
Have something of a sacred bliss,
Which time can not impair.
For when the years of youth have gone,
Its joys and hopes have flown,
The mem'ry clings with fond embrace - 
Those joys are still our own.
Then, as I write these words for you, - 
This earnest wish I pen:
That you may think but pleasant thoughts - 
When life's liv'd o'er again.
May nought of sorrow, or of woe,
Invade to wound or pain,
And may the joys that we have shar'd
Be bright in mem'ry's train.
Elegy II On the Death of the University Beadle at Cambridge.1
by John Milton

Thee, whose refulgent staff and summons clear,
Minerva's flock longtime was wont t'obey,
Although thyself an herald, famous here,
The last of heralds, Death, has snatch'd away.
He calls on all alike, nor even deigns
To spare the office that himself sustains.
Thy locks were whiter than the plumes display'd
By Leda's paramour2 in ancient time,
But thou wast worthy ne'er to have decay'd,
Or, Aeson-like,3 to know a second prime,
Worthy for whom some Goddess should have won
New life, oft kneeling to Apollo's son.4
Commission'd to convene with hasty call
The gowned tribes, how graceful wouldst thou stand!
So stood Cyllenius5 erst in Priam's hall,
Wing-footed messenger of Jove's command,
And so, Eurybates6 when he address'd
To Peleus' son Atrides' proud behest.
Dread Queen of sepulchres! whose rig'rous laws
And watchful eyes, run through the realms below,
Oh, oft too adverse to Minerva's cause,
Too often to the Muse not less a foe,
Chose meaner marks, and with more equal aim
Pierce useless drones, earth's burthen and its shame!
Flow, therefore, tears for Him from ev'ry eye,
All ye disciples of the Muses, weep!
Assembling, all, in robes of sable dye,
Around his bier, lament his endless sleep,
And let complaining Elegy rehearse
In every School her sweetest saddest verse.
A Rector's Memory
by Rudyard Kipling

The, Gods that are wiser than Learning
But kinder than Life have made sure
No mortal may boast in the morning
That even will find him secure.
With naught for fresh faith or new trial,
With little unsoiled or unsold,
Can the shadow go back on the dial,
Or a new world be given for the old?
But he knows not that time shall awaken,
As he knows not what tide shall lay bare,
The heart of a man to be taken,
Taken and changed unaware.
He shall see as he tenders his vows
The far, guarded City arise,
The power of the North 'twixt Her brows,
The steel of the North in Her eyes;
The sheer hosts of Heaven above,
The grey warlock Ocean beside;
And shall feel the full centuries move
To Her purpose and pride.
Though a stranger shall he understand,
As though it were old in his blood,
The lives that caught fire 'neath Her hand,
The fires that were tamed to Her mood.
And the roar of the wind shall refashion,
And the wind-driven torches recall,
The passing of Time and the passion
Of Youth over all!
And, by virtue of magic unspoken
(What need She should utter Her power?)
The frost at his heart shall be broken
And his spirit be changed in that hour,
Changed and renewed in that hour!
The Rain-Crow.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Thee freckled August, dozing hot and blonde
Oft 'neath a wheat-stack in the white-topped mead - 
In her full hair brown ox-eyed daisies wound - 
O water-gurgler, lends a sleepy heed:
Half-lidded eyes a purple iron-weed
Blows slimly o'er; beyond, a path-found pond
Basks flint-bright, hedged with pink-plumed pepper-grasses,
A coigne for vainest dragonflies, which glasses
Their blue in diamond.
Oft from some dusty locust, that thick weaves
With crescent pulse-pods its thin foliage gray,
Thou, - o'er the shambling lane, which past the sheaves
Of sun-tanned oats winds, red with rutty clay,
One league of rude rail-fence, - some panting day,
When each parched meadow quivering vapor grieves,
Nature's Astrologist, dost promise rain,
In seeping language of the thirsty plain,
Cool from the burning leaves.
And, in good faith, aye! best of faith, art true;
And welcome that rune-chuckled forecasting,
When up the faded fierceness of scorched blue
Strong water-carrier winds big buckets bring,
Black with stored freshness: how their dippers ring
And flash and rattle! lavishing large dew
On tall, good-humored corn that, streaming wet,
Laughs long; while woods and leas, shut in a net
Of mist, dream vague in view.
And thou, safe-hous'd in some pawpaw bower
Of close, broad, gold-green leaves, contented art
In thy prediction, fall'n within the hour;
While fuss the brown bees hiveward from the heart
Of honey-filtering bloom; beneath the cart
Droop pompous barnyard cocks damped by the shower:
And deep-eyed August, bonnetless, a beech
Hugs in disheveled beauty, safe from reach
On starry moss and flower.
The Bear & The Bees
by Walter Crane

"Their honey I'll have when I please;
Who cares for such small things as Bees?"
Said the Bear; but the stings
Of these very small things
Left him not very much at his ease.
The Weakest United May Be Strong To Avenge
A Roundel of Rabelais
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Theleme is afar on the waters, adrift and afar,
Afar and afloat on the waters that flicker and gleam,
And we feel but her fragrance and see but the shadows that mar
Theleme.
In the sun-coloured mists of the sunrise and sunset that steam
As incense from urns of the twilight, her portals ajar
Let pass as a shadow the light of the sound of a dream.
But the laughter that rings from her cloisters that know not a bar
So kindles delight in desire that the souls in us deem
He erred not, the seer who discerned on the seas as a star
Theleme.
The Zigzag Zealous Zebra
by Edward Lear

The Zigzag Zealous Zebra,
who carried five Monkeys on his back all
the way to Jellibolee.
Canada Our Home, 1883.
by James McIntyre

The following response to Canada our home was given at a banquet of the Caledonian Society, Ingersoll:
In responding to the sentiment Canada our home perhaps it would be appropriate to point out the prominent and distinguishing characteristics between the land of our nativity and the land of our adoption. In this Canada of ours we have no bonny blooming heath, no banks and braes covered o'er with daisies and gowans, no fragrant hedges showering down white spray in the May time, no whin and broom prodigal in their gaiety of yellow flowers, no hills nor glens where fairies gambol in pleasant and harmless sport, no grand ruins of ancient cathedrals and castles, no feathered songsters like the mavis and blackbird.
Full oft we did enraptured hark
To heavenly song of the skylark.
But Canada is a young giant in its infancy with the noblest chain of lakes in the world on its frontier, and the most magnificent river the St. Lawrence. This land also possesses the largest fertile wilderness on the globe, but it is one which will ere many years have passed away, blossom like a garden, and where naught but grass and flowers now grow in wild luxuriance. Soon the husbandman will plow and sow and reap a rich reward in yellow golden grain. Domestic cattle quiet will graze where now the Buffalos roam and in spots now covered o'er with Indian wigwams, where white men never trod cities will occupy their sites with busy trade and millions flock from eastern lands to take possession of the great Northwest. Then Winnipeg perchance may be the capital of the Dominion. In the day foretold when this indeed shall be the "Greater Britain" with Ontario's towns for workshops for this vast prairie land.
Then poets will arise and high their lays will soar,
Worthy of the muse of a Burns or a Moore,
A Shakespeare and a Milton, the great and the wise,
Will sing of the glories of our northern skies,
Of its lakes and rivers and its mountains grand,
Of its fertile plains and great prairie land,
A fit theme for song this empire gigantic,
Whose arms stretch from Pacific to Atlantic.
The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - On The Lord's Prayer. No. 3.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Allor potrete orar.
Then shall ye pray with every hour that flies;
Thy kingdom come, and let Thy will be done
On earth as in the spheres above the sun,
When all we hoped and wished shall bless our eyes.
Poets shall see their Age of Gold arise,
Fairer than feigned in hymn or orison;
Yea, all the realm by Adam's sin undone
Shall be restored in sinless Paradise.
Philosophers shall govern for their own
That perfect commonwealth whereof they write,
The which on earth as yet was never known.
Judah to Sion shall return with might
Of greater wonders than shook Pharaoh's throne,
From Babylon, to bless the prophets' sight.
A Sonnet Of Perilla.
by Robert Herrick

Then did I live when I did see
Perilla smile on none but me.
But, ah! by stars malignant crossed,
The life I got I quickly lost;
But yet a way there doth remain
For me embalm'd to live again,
And that's to love me; in which state
I'll live as one regenerate.
To -----
by Friedrich Schiller

Thee would I choose as my teacher and friend. Thy living example
Teaches me, thy teaching word wakens my heart unto life.
The Queen of Bubbles
by Vachel Lindsay

[Written for a picture]
The Youth speaks: - 
"Why do you seek the sun
In your bubble-crown ascending?
Your chariot will melt to mist.
Your crown will have an ending."
The Goddess replies: - 
"Nay, sun is but a bubble,
Earth is a whiff of foam - 
To my caves on the coast of Thule
Each night I call them home.
Thence Faiths blow forth to angels
And loves blow forth to men - 
They break and turn to nothing
And I make them whole again.
On the crested waves of chaos
I ride them back reborn:
New stars I bring at evening
For those that burst at morn:
My soul is the wind of Thule
And evening is the sign - 
The sun is but a bubble,
A fragile child of mine."