DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
To - .
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

1.
One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
2.
I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not, -
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?
The Alchemy Of Grief - (Twelve Translations From Charles Baudelaire)
by John Collings Squire, Sir

One, Nature! burns and makes thee bright,
One gives thee weeds to mourn withal;
And what to one is burial
Is to the other life and light.
The unknown Hermes who assists
And alway fills my heart with fear
Makes me the mighty Midas' peer
The saddest of the alchemists.
Through him I make gold changeable
To dross, and paradise to hell;
Clouds for its corpse-cloths I descry.
A stark dead body I love well,
And in the gleaming fields on high
I build immense sarcophagi.
The Fallow Deer At The Lonely House
by Thomas Hardy

One without looks in to-night
Through the curtain-chink
From the sheet of glistening white;
One without looks in to-night
As we sit and think
By the fender-brink.
We do not discern those eyes
Watching in the snow;
Lit by lamps of rosy dyes
We do not discern those eyes
Wondering, aglow,
Fourfooted, tiptoe.
The Ass And The Little Dog.
by Jean de La Fontaine

[1]
One's native talent from its course
Cannot be turned aside by force;
But poorly apes the country clown
The polish'd manners of the town.
Their Maker chooses but a few
With power of pleasing to imbue;
Where wisely leave it we, the mass,
Unlike a certain fabled ass,
That thought to gain his master's blessing
By jumping on him and caressing.
'What!' said the donkey in his heart;
'Ought it to be that puppy's part
To lead his useless life
In full companionship
With master and his wife,
While I must bear the whip?
What doth the cur a kiss to draw?
Forsooth, he only gives his paw!
If that is all there needs to please,
I'll do the thing myself, with ease.'
Possess'd with this bright notion, - 
His master sitting on his chair,
At leisure in the open air, - 
He ambled up, with awkward motion,
And put his talents to the proof;
Upraised his bruised and batter'd hoof,
And, with an amiable mien,
His master patted on the chin,
The action gracing with a word - 
The fondest bray that e'er was heard!
O, such caressing was there ever?
Or melody with such a quaver?
'Ho! Martin![2] here! a club, a club bring!'
Out cried the master, sore offended.
So Martin gave the ass a drubbing, - 
And so the comedy was ended.
Brock.
by Charles Sangster

OCTOBER 13TH, 1859.*
One voice, one people, one in heart
And soul, and feeling, and desire!
Re-light the smouldering martial fire,
Sound the mute trumpet, strike the lyre,
The hero deed can not expire,
The dead still play their part.
Raise high the monumental stone!
A nation's fealty is theirs,
And we are the rejoicing heirs,
The honored sons of sires whose cares
We take upon us unawares,
As freely as our own.
We boast not of the victory,
But render homage, deep and just,
To his - to their - immortal dust,
Who proved so worthy of their trust
No lofty pile nor sculptured bust
Can herald their degree.
No tongue need blazon forth their fame - 
The cheers that stir the sacred hill
Are but mere promptings of the will
That conquered then, that conquers still;
And generations yet shall thrill
At Brock's remembered name.
Some souls are the Hesperides
Heaven sends to guard the golden age,
Illuming the historic page
With records of their pilgrimage;
True Martyr, Hero, Poet, Sage;
And he was one of these.
Each in his lofty sphere sublime
Sits crowned above the common throng,
Wrestling with some Pythonic wrong,
In prayer, in thunder, thought, or song;
Briarcus-limbed, they sweep along,
The Typhons of the time.
Nursery Rhyme. XL. Literal
by Unknown

One, two,
Buckle my shoe;
Three, four,
Shut the door;
Five, six,
Pick up sticks;
Seven, eight,
Lay them straight;
Nine, ten,
A good fat hen;
Eleven, twelve,
Who will delve?
Thirteen, fourteen,
Maids a courting;
Fifteen, sixteen,
Maids a kissing;
Seventeen, eighteen,
Maids a waiting;
Nineteen, twenty,
My stomach's empty.
Nursery Rhyme. CCCII. Games.
by Unknown

[Used in Somersetshire in counting out the game of pee-wip or pee wit.]
One-ery, two-ery, hickary, hum,
Fillison, follison, Nicholson, John,
Quever, quauver, Irish Mary,
Stenkarum, stankarum, buck!
Only A Box.
by William McKendree Carleton

[From Arthur Selwyn's Note-book.]
[Only A Box.]
Only a box, secure and strong,
Rough, and wooden, and six feet long,
Lying here in the drizzling rain,
Waiting to take the up-bound train.
Only its owner, just inside,
Cold, and livid, and glassy-eyed;
Little to him if the train be late!
Nothing has he to do but wait.
Only an open grave, somewhere,
Heady to close when he gets there;
Turfs and grasses and flowerets sweet,
Ready to press him 'neath their feet.
Only a band of friends at home,
Waiting to see the traveller come;
Naught he will tell of distant lands;
He cannot even press their hands.
He has no stories weird and bright,
He has no gifts for a child's delight;
He did not come with anything;
He had not even himself to bring.
Yet they will softly him await,
And he will move about in state;
They will give him, when he appears,
Love, and pity, and tender tears.
Only a box, secure and strong,
Rough and wooden, and six feet long;
Angels guide that soulless breast
Into a long and peaceful rest!
The Proud Poet
by Alfred Joyce Kilmer (Joyce)

(For Shaemas O Sheel)
One winter night a Devil came and sat upon my bed,
His eyes were full of laughter for his heart was full of crime.
"Why don't you take up fancy work, or embroidery?" he said,
"For a needle is as manly a tool as a pen that makes a rhyme!"
"You little ugly Devil," said I, "go back to Hell
For the idea you express I will not listen to:
I have trouble enough with poetry and poverty as well,
Without having to pay attention to orators like you.
"When you say of the making of ballads and songs that it is woman's work
You forget all the fighting poets that have been in every land.
There was Byron who left all his lady-loves to fight against the Turk,
And David, the Singing King of the Jews, who was born with a sword in his hand.
It was yesterday that Rupert Brooke went out to the Wars and died,
And Sir Philip Sidney's lyric voice was as sweet as his arm was strong;
And Sir Walter Raleigh met the axe as a lover meets his bride,
Because he carried in his soul the courage of his song.
"And there is no consolation so quickening to the heart
As the warmth and whiteness that come from the lines of noble poetry.
It is strong joy to read it when the wounds of the spirit smart,
It puts the flame in a lonely breast where only ashes be.
It is strong joy to read it, and to make it is a thing
That exalts a man with a sacreder pride than any pride on earth.
For it makes him kneel to a broken slave and set his foot on a king,
And it shakes the walls of his little soul with the echo of God's mirth.
"There was the poet Homer had the sorrow to be blind,
Yet a hundred people with good eyes would listen to him all night;
For they took great enjoyment in the heaven of his mind,
And were glad when the old blind poet let them share his powers of sight.
And there was Heine lying on his mattress all day long,
He had no wealth, he had no friends, he had no joy at all,
Except to pour his sorrow into little cups of song,
And the world finds in them the magic wine that his broken heart let fall.
"And these are only a couple of names from a list of a thousand score
Who have put their glory on the world in poverty and pain.
And the title of poet's a noble thing, worth living and dying for,
Though all the devils on earth and in Hell spit at me their disdain.
It is stern work, it is perilous work, to thrust your hand in the sun
And pull out a spark of immortal flame to warm the hearts of men:
But Prometheus, torn by the claws and beaks whose task is never done,
Would be tortured another eternity to go stealing fire again."
Alchemy Of Suffering
by Charles Baudelaire

One's ardour, Nature, makes you bright,
One finds within you mourning, grief!
What speaks to one of tombs and death
Says to the other, Splendour! Life!
Mystical Hermes, help to me,
Intimidating though you are,
You make me Midas' counterpart,
No sadder alchemist than he;
My gold is iron by your spell,
And paradise turns into hell;
I see in winding-sheets of clouds
A dear cadaver in its shroud,
And there upon celestial strands
I raise huge tombs above the sands.
The Call To Bran
by Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory

One time Bran, son of Febal, was out by himself near his dun, and he heard music behind him. And it kept always after him, and at last he fell asleep with the sweetness of the sound. And when he awoke from his sleep he saw beside him a branch of silver, and it having white blossoms, and the whiteness of the silver was the same as the whiteness of the blossoms. And he brought the branch in his hand into the royal house, and when all his people were with him they saw a woman with strange clothing standing in the house. And she began to make a song for Bran, and all the people were looking at her and listening to her, and it is what she said: I bring a branch of the apple-tree from Emhain, from the far island around which are the shining horses of the Son of Lir. A delight of the eyes is the plain where the hosts hold their games: curragh racing against chariot in the Silver-White Plain to the south.
There are feet of white bronze under it, shining through life and time; a comely level land through the length of the world's age, and many blossoms falling on it.
There is an old tree there with blossoms, and birds calling from among them; every colour is shining there. Delight is common, and music in the Gentle Voiced Plain, in the Silver Cloud Plain to the south. There is nothing hard or rough, but sweet music striking on the ear; keening is not used, or treachery, in the tilled familiar land.
To be without grief, without sorrow, without death, without any sickness, without weakness; that is the sign of Emhain; it is not a common wonder that is.
There is nothing to liken its mists to, the sea washes the wave against the land; brightness falls from its hair.
Golden chariots in the Plain of the Sea, rising up to the sun with the tide; silver chariots and bronze chariots on the Plain of Sports.
It is a day of lasting weather, silver is dropping on the land; a pure white cliff on the edge of the sea, getting its warmth from the sun.
The host race over the Plain of Sports; it is beautiful and not weak their game is; death or the ebbing of the tide will not come to them in the Many-coloured Land.
There will come at sunrise a fair man, lighting up the level lands; he rides upon the plain that is beaten by the waves, he stirs the sea till it is like blood. An army will come over the clear sea, rowing to the stone that is in sight, that has a hundred sounds of music.
It sings a song to the army; it is not sad through the length of time; it increases music with hundreds singing together; they do not look for death or the ebb-tide.
Would You Believe It?
by Ellis Parker Butler

One year ago I wished that I
A banker great might be
With a hundred million dollars
And financial majesty;
A mighty Wall Street banker
With a whopping lot of power
And an income of somewhere around
A thousand plunks per hour;
A solid Wall Street banker
With securities in sacks
And with clever men to show me
How to pay no income tax;
A wealthy Wall Street banker
Who raked in cash like hay;
I wished that just a year ago'
And I wish the same today
Nursery Rhyme. CCLXXVII. Games.
by Unknown

[Rhymes used by children to decide who is to begin a game.]
One-ery, two-ery,
Ziccary zan;
Hollow bone, crack a bone,
Ninery, ten:
Spittery spot,
It must be done;
Twiddleum twaddleum,
Twenty-one.
Hink spink, the puddings stink,
The fat begins to fry,
Nobody at home, but jumping Joan,
Father, mother, and I.
Stick, stock, stone dead,
Blind man can't see,
Every knave will have a slave,
You or I must be he.
Rhymes And Rhythms - XVI
by William Ernest Henley

One with the ruined sunset,
The strange forsaken sands,
What is it waits and wanders
And signs with desperate hands?
What is it calls in the twilight,
Calls as its chance were vain?
The cry of a gull sent seaward
Or the voice of an ancient pain?
The red ghost of the sunset,
It walks them as its own,
These dreary and desolate reaches . . .
But O that it walked alone!
Clouded Sky
by Charles Baudelaire

One would say your gaze was a misted screen:
your strange eyes (are they blue, grey or green?)
changeable, tender, dreamy, cruel, and again
echoing the indolence and pallor of heaven.
You bring me those blank days, mild and hazy,
that melt bewitched hearts into weeping,
when twisted, stirred by some unknown hurt,
our over-stretched nerves mock the numbed spirit.
Often you resemble the loveliest horizons
lit by the suns of foggy seasons....
how splendid you are, a dew-wet country,
inflamed by the rays of a misted sky!
O dangerous woman, o seductive glow,
will I someday adore your frost and snow,
and learn to draw, from implacable winter
sharp-edged as steel or ice, new pleasure?
A Bit Of Coast
by Madison Julius Cawein

One tree, storm-twisted, like an evil hag,
The sea-wind in its hair, beside a path
Waves frantic arms, as if in wild-witch wrath
At all the world. Gigantic, grey as slag,
Great boulders shoulder through the hills, or crag
The coast with danger, monster-like, that lifts
Huge granite, round which wheel the gulls and swifts,
And at whose base the rotting sea-weeds drag.
Inward the hills are wooded; valley-cleft;
Tangled with berries; vistaed dark with pines;
At whose far end, as 'twere within a frame,
Some trail of water that the ocean left
Gleams like a painting where one white sail shines,
Lit with the sunset's poppy-coloured flame.
Composed During A Storm
by William Wordsworth

One who was suffering tumult in his soul,
Yet failed to seek the sure relief of prayer,
Went forth, his course surrendering to the care
Of the fierce wind, while mid-day lightnings prowl
Insidiously, untimely thunders growl;
While trees, dim-seen, in frenzied numbers, tear
The lingering remnant of their yellow hair,
And shivering wolves, surprised with darkness, howl
As if the sun were not. He raised his eye
Soul-smitten; for, that instant, did appear
Large space ('mid dreadful clouds) of purest sky,
An azure disc, shield of Tranquillity;
Invisible, unlooked-for, minister
Of providential goodness ever nigh!
A Little Child Shall Lead Them
by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Only a little scrap of blue
Preserved with loving care,
But earth has not a brilliant hue
To me more bright and fair.
Strong drink, like a raging demon,
Laid on my heart his hand,
When my darling joined with others
The Loyal Legion * band.
But mystic angels called away
My loved and precious child,
And o'er life's dark and stormy way
Swept waves of anguish wild.
This badge of the Loyal Legion
We placed upon her breast,
As she lay in her little coffin
Taking her last sweet rest.
To wear that badge as a token
She earnestly did crave,
So we laid it on her bosom
To wear it in the grave.
Where sorrow would never reach her
Nor harsh words smite her ear;
Nor her eyes in death dimmed slumber
Would ever shed a tear.
"What means this badge?" said her father,
Whom we had tried to save;
Who said, when we told her story,
"Don't put it in the grave."
We took the badge from her bosom
And laid it on a chair;
And men by drink deluded
Knelt by that badge in prayer.
And vowed in that hour of sorrow
From drink they would abstain;
And this little badge became the wedge
Which broke their galling chain.
And lifted the gloomy shadows
That overspread my life,
And flooding my home with gladness,
Made me a happy wife.
And this is why this scrap of blue
Is precious in my sight;
It changed my sad and gloomy home
From darkness into light.
Glory-Roses.
by Theodore Harding Rand

"Only a penny, Sir!"
A child held to my view
A bunch of "glory-roses," red
As blood, and wet with dew.
(O earnest little face,
With living light in eye,
Your roses are too fair for earth,
And you seem of the sky!)
"My beauties, Sir!" he said,
"Only a penny, too!"
His face shone in their ruddy glow
A Rafael cherub true.
"Yestreen their hoods were close
About their faces tight,
But ere the sun was up, I saw
That God had come last night.
"O Sir, to see them then!
The bush was all aflame! - 
O yes, they're glory-roses, Sir,
That is their holy name.
"Only a penny, Sir!" - 
Heaven seemed across the way!
I took the red, red beauties home - 
Roses to me for aye!
For aye, that radiant voice
As if from heaven it came - 
"O yes, they're glory-roses, Sir,
That is their holy name!"
Unsatisfied
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Only a housemaid!" She looked from the kitchen, - 
Neat was the kitchen and tidy was she;
There at her window a sempstress sat stitching;
"Were I a sempstress, how happy I'd be!"
"Only a Queen!" She looked over the waters, - 
Fair was her kingdom and mighty was she;
There sat an Empress, with Queens for her daughters;
"Were I an Empress, how happy I'd be!"
Still the old frailty they all of them trip in!
Eve in her daughters is ever the same;
Give her all Eden, she sighs for a pippin;
Give her an Empire, she pines for a name!
Dawn
by Rupert Brooke

(From the train between Bologna and Milan, second class.)
Opposite me two Germans snore and sweat.
Through sullen swirling gloom we jolt and roar.
We have been here for ever: even yet
A dim watch tells two hours, two aeons, more.
The windows are tight-shut and slimy-wet
With a night's foetor. There are two hours more;
Two hours to dawn and Milan; two hours yet.
Opposite me two Germans sweat and snore. . . .
One of them wakes, and spits, and sleeps again.
The darkness shivers. A wan light through the rain
Strikes on our faces, drawn and white. Somewhere
A new day sprawls; and, inside, the foul air
Is chill, and damp, and fouler than before. . . .
Opposite me two Germans sweat and snore.
Only A Dream
by James Whitcomb Riley

Only a dream!
Her head is bent
Over the keys of the instrument,
While her trembling fingers go astray
In the foolish tune she tries to play.
He smiles in his heart, though his deep, sad eyes
Never change to a glad surprise
As he finds the answer he seeks confessed
In glowing features, and heaving breast.
Only a dream!
Though the fete is grand,
And a hundred hearts at her command,
She takes no part, for her soul is sick
Of the Coquette's art and the Serpent's trick, -
She someway feels she would like to fling
Her sins away as a robe, and spring
Up like a lily pure and white,
And bloom alone for HIM to-night.
Only a dream
That the fancy weaves.
The lids unfold like the rose's leaves,
And the upraised eyes are moist and mild
As the prayerful eyes of a drowsy child.
Does she remember the spell they once
Wrought in the past a few short months?
Haply not - yet her lover's eyes
Never change to the glad surprise.
Only a dream!
He winds her form
Close in the coil of his curving arm,
And whirls her away in a gust of sound
As wild and sweet as the poets found
In the paradise where the silken tent
Of the Persian blooms in the Orient, -
While ever the chords of the music seem
Whispering sadly, - "Only a dream!"
Quiet
by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Only the footprints of the partridge run
Over the billowy drifts on the mountain-side;
And now on level wings the brown birds glide
Following the snowy curves, and in the sun
Bright birds of gold above the stainless white
They move, and as the pale blue shadows move,
With them my heart glides on in golden flight
Over the hills of quiet to my love.
Storm-shaken, racked with terror through the long
Tempestuous night, in the quiet blue of morn
Love drinks the crystal airs, and peace newborn
Within his troubled heart, on wings aglow
Soars into rapture, as from the quiet snow
The golden birds; and out of silence, song.
Knight-Errant
by Madison Julius Cawein

Onward he gallops through enchanted gloom.
The spectres of the forest, dark and dim,
And shadows of vast death environ him
Onward he spurs victorious over doom.
Before his eyes that love's far fires illume
Where courage sits, impregnable and grim
The form and features of her beauty swim,
Beckoning him on with looks that fears consume.
The thought of her distress, her lips to kiss,
Mails him with triple might; and so at last:
To Lust's huge keep he comes; its giant wall,
Wild-towering, frowning from the precipice;
And through its gate, borne like a bugle blast,
O'er night and hell he thunders to his all.
To Heaven
by Robert Herrick

Open thy gates
To him who weeping waits,
And might come in,
But that held back by sin.
Let mercy be
So kind, to set me free,
And I will straight
Come in, or force the gate.
Trifles
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Only a spar from a broken ship
Washed in by a careless wave;
But it brought back the smile of a vanished lip,
And his past peered out of the grave.
Only a leaf that an idle breeze
Tossed at her passing feet;
But she seemed to stand under the dear old trees,
And life again was sweet.
Only the bar of a tender strain
They sang in days gone by;
But the old love woke in her heart again,
The love they had sworn should die.
Only the breath of a faint perfume
That floated up from a rose;
But the bolts slid back from a marble tomb,
And I looked on a dear dead face.
Who vaunts the might of a human will,
When a perfume or a sound
Can wake a Past that we bade lie still,
And open a long closed wound?
Two Kopjes
by Rudyard Kipling

Only two African kopjes,
Only the cart-tracks that wind
Empty and open between 'em,
Only the Transvaal behind;
Only an Aldershot column
Marching to conquer the land . . .
Only a sudden and solemn
Visit, unarmed, to the Rand.
Then scorn not the African kopje,
The kopje that smiles in the heat,
The wholly unoccupied kopje,
The home of Cornelius and Piet.
You can never be sure of your kopje,
But of this be you blooming well sure,
A kopje is always a kopje,
And a Boojer is always a Boer!
Only two African kopjes,
Only the vultures above,
Only baboons, at the bottom,
Only some buck on the move;
Only a Kensington draper
Only pretending to scout . . .
Only bad news for the paper,
Only another knock-out.
Then mock not the African kopje, 
And rub not your flank on its side,
The silent and simmering kopje,
The kopje beloved by the guide.
You can never be, etc.
Only two African kopjes,
Only the dust of their wheels,
Only a bolted commando,
Only our guns at their heels . . .
Only a little barb-wire,
Only a natural fort,
Only "by sections retire,"
Only "regret to report! "
Then mock not the .African kopje,
Especially when it is twins,
One sharp and one table-topped kopje
For that's where the trouble begins.
You never can be, etc.
Only two African kopjes
Baited the same as before, 
Only we've had it so often,
Only we're taking no more . . .
Only a wave to our troopers,
Only our flanks swinging past,
Only a dozen voorloopers,.
Only we've learned it at last!
Then mock not the African kopje,
But take off your hat to the same,
The patient, impartial old kopje,
The kopje that taught us the game!
For all that we knew in the Columns,
And all they've forgot on the Staff,
We learned at the Fight o' Two Kopjes,
Which lasted two years an' a half.
0 mock not the African kopje,
Not even when peace has been signed, 
The kopje that isn't a kopje, 
The kopje that copies its kind.
You can never be sure of your kopje,
But of this be you blooming well sure,
That a kopje is always a kopje,
And a Boojer is always a Boer!