DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Preludium To Europe
by William Blake

The nameless shadowy female rose from out the breast of Orc,
Her snaky hair brandishing in the winds of Enitharmon;
And thus her voice arose:
'O mother Enitharmon, wilt thou bring forth other sons?
To cause my name to vanish, that my place may not be found,
For I am faint with travail,
Like the dark cloud disburden'd in the day of dismal thunder.
My roots are brandish'd in the heavens, my fruits in earth beneath
Surge, foam and labour into life, first born and first consum'd!
Consumed and consuming!
Then why shouldst thou, accursed mother, bring me into life?
I wrap my turban of thick clouds around my lab'ring head,
And fold the sheety waters as a mantle round my limbs;
Yet the red sun and moon
And all the overflowing stars rain down prolific pains.
Unwilling I look up to heaven, unwilling count the stars:
Sitting in fathomless abyss of my immortal shrine
I seize their burning power
And bring forth howling terrors, all devouring fiery kings,
Devouring and devoured, roaming on dark and desolate mountains,
In forests of eternal death, shrieking in hollow trees.
Ah mother Enitharmon!
Stamp not with solid form this vig'rous progeny of fires.
I bring forth from my teeming bosom myriads of flames,
And thou dost stamp them with a signet; then they roam abroad
And leave me void as death.
Ah! I am drown'd in shady woe and visionary joy.
And who shall bind the infinite with an eternal band?
To compass it with swaddling bands? and who shall cherish it
With milk and honey?
I see it smile, and I roll inward, and my voice is past.'
She ceased, and roll'd her shady clouds
Into the secret place.
Aftermath.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

The murmuring of bees has ceased;
But murmuring of some
Posterior, prophetic,
Has simultaneous come, --
The lower metres of the year,
When nature's laugh is done, --
The Revelations of the book
Whose Genesis is June.
Improvisations: Light And Snow: 15
by Conrad Potter Aiken

The music of the morning is red and warm;
Snow lies against the walls;
And on the sloping roof in the yellow sunlight
Pigeons huddle against the wind.
The music of evening is attenuated and thin
The moon seen through a wave by a mermaid;
The crying of a violin.
Far down there, far down where the river turns to the west,
The delicate lights begin to twinkle
On the dusky arches of the bridge:
In the green sky a long cloud,
A smouldering wave of smoky crimson,
Breaks in the freezing wind: and above it, unabashed,
Remote, untouched, fierly palpitant,
Sings the first star.
A Skeltoniad
by Michael Drayton

The Muse should be sprightly,
Yet not handling lightly
Things graue; as much loath,
Things that be slight, to cloath
Curiously: To retayne
The Comelinesse in meane,
Is true Knowledge and Wit.
Not me forc'd Rage doth fit,
That I thereto should lacke
Tabacco, or need Sacke,
Which to the colder Braine
Is the true Hyppocrene;
Nor did I euer care
For great Fooles, nor them spare.
Vertue, though neglected,
Is not so deiected,
As vilely to descend
To low Basenesse their end;
Neyther each ryming Slaue
Deserues the Name to haue
Of Poet: so the Rabble
Of Fooles, for the Table,
That haue their Iests by Heart,
As an Actor his Part,
Might assume them Chayres
Amongst the Muses Heyres.
Parnassus is not clome
By euery such Mome;
Vp whose steep side who swerues,
It behoues t' haue strong Nerues:
My Resolution such,
How well, and not how much
To write, thus doe I fare,
Like some few good that care
(The euill sort among)
How well to liue, and not how long.
Montes Scripturarum: The Mounts Of The Scriptures.
by Robert Herrick

The mountains of the Scriptures are, some say,
Moses, and Jesus, called Joshua:
The prophets, mountains of the Old are meant,
Th' apostles, mounts of the New Testament.
Stars
by John Frederick Freeman

The naked stars, deep beyond deep,
Burn purely through the nerv'd night.
Over the narrow sleep
Of men tired of light;
Deep within deep, as clouds behind
Huge grey clouds hidden gleaming rise,
Untroubled by sharp wind
In cold desert skies.
Cold deserts now with infinite host
Of gathered spears at watch o'er small
Armies of men lost
In glooms funereal.
O bitter light, all-threatening stars,
O tired ghosts of men that sleep
After stern mortal wars
'Neath skies chill and steep.
These mortal hills, this flickering sea,
This shadowy and thoughtful night,
Throb with infinity,
Burn with immortal light.
Not On It
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

The new chum's polo pony was the smartest pony yet,
The owner backed it for the Cup for all that he could get.
The books were laying fives to one, in tenners; and you bet
He was on it.
The bell was rung, the nags came out their quality to try,
The band played, "What Ho! Robbo!" as our hero cantered by,
The people in the Leger Stand cried out, "Hi, mister, hi!
Are you on it?"
They watched him as the flag went down; his fate is quickly told,
The pony gave a sudden spring, and off the rider rolled.
The pony finished first all right, but then our hero bold
Was not on it.
The Ascetic
by Victor James Daley

The narrow, thorny path he trod.
'Enter into My joy,' said God.
The sad ascetic shook his head;
'I've lost all taste for joy,' he said.
A Million More
by Hanford Lennox Gordon

The nation calls aloud again,
For Freedom wounded writhes in pain.
Gird on your armor, Northern men;
Drop scythe and sickle, square and pen;
A million bayonets gleam and flash;
A thousand cannon peal and crash;
Brothers and sons have gone before;
A million more! a million more!
Fire and sword! aye, sword and fire!
Let war be fierce and grim and dire;
Your path be marked by flame and smoke,
And tyrant's bones and fetters broke:
Stay not for foe's uplifted hand;
Sheathe not the sword; quench not the brand
Till Freedom reign from shore to shore,
Or might 'mid ashes smoke and gore.
If leader stay the vengeance-rod,
Let him beware the wrath of God;
The maddened millions long his trust
Will crush his puny bones to dust,
And all the law to guide their ire
Will be the law of blood and fire.
Come, then the shattered ranks implore 
A million more a million more!
Form and file and file and form;
This war is but God's thunder-storm
To purify our cankered land
And strike the fetter from the hand.
Forced by grim fate our Chief at last
Shall blow dear Freedom's bugle-blast;
And then shall rise from shore to shore
Four millions more four millions more.[CS]
Offerings (A Movement In Four Parts)
by Paul Cameron Brown

The night is folly without the moon,
trees blank space against a frontal sky
where lattice work from a bled fish reveals
skeletal markings will not administer
the red jack of hearts to a mistress sea.
Most fickle, the ways of a cockroach
(I don't recommend them) to offerings
of white linen, cold squares atop
a stone diamonded floor.
Palaver shacks drone in ghostly light
communicating some message about eel runs
up the black river, the equivalent brush
of tombstones against dark nightsoil.
Tiny bars open as cubicles.
proverbial flashes of the coming evening,
haciendas to count every blessing.
The road to such places
snarls a dusty pleasure
and will heat thin blood
to boil in the daylight hours.
II
Sweat corrodes the cork's emplacement
about green bottlenecks,
its azure breath tossing back
pools of sparse liquid.
I picture ships placed within such bottles
as bannisters along corrugated highways,
seawater rusting from within the steamfitters's
tonsorial edge.
Haze thickens as sails blur to an artist's brush,
then squiggles in the oilpaint of memory    - 
her sides fashioning red wounds as pigment
surfacing from robotical crustaceans
lancing the bottom of a deeper crevice.
III
My steps clank to the gaoler's key
to become, within, handmaidens to thorned plants
acting as fuselage along the building's exterior.
Afar, a white seagull sits as a bespectacled tourist
gracing a buoy like a madras shirt.
Early stars in an afternoon sky
are expansive in Chateau Lafitte finery,
the Rothschilds of the universe playing
a cosmic baccarat.
A girl in a brandy snifter of a dress    - 
dark, sensual, runs through tomes of my mind.
It's a hall of mirrors there;
the radiating glass of the sea,
twilight splendour in tall grass,
the hands of thick mahogany chairs
grimacing against perspiring walls.
I sponge water like a good midshipman
off the brow of a leaking vessel.
Nowhere are there signs of more than
partial seepage though smoke in the
back corridors exists from the fiery aguandine.
IV
Green palms unfurl as flags
to the accordian of my eyes,
blinking back the strong belt of sunlight
that precisely floods the room.
Sailors jostle this crowd of memories,
some surly lipped with broad tattoes.
A naked mermaid presses her thighs 'gainst
memory door, then winks as the
stellar crust of oblivion takes me.
***************************************
In sleep, waterfront toughs are transformed
to storeowners that smile, exchange pleasantries in
Saba.
(French gendarmes embrace on the other side
clustering like starfish on the twin breasts of a beach.)
I devour cups not of riverwater in this cell
but the best pink champagne at the captain's
reception.
With hatfuls of intermittent rest,
blurred outlines recede into mists
thin as General Winter's treasured April snows.
The bony M of a hatpin,
the passkey to better redress of fortune    - 
the turnstills, concealed within lavabeds of
bladegrass.
beckon upon the return voyage home.
The Thorn Tree
by Madison Julius Cawein

The night is sad with silver and the day is glad with gold,
And the woodland silence listens to a legend never old,
Of the Lady of the Fountain, whom the faery people know,
With her limbs of samite whiteness and her hair of golden glow,
Whom the boyish South Wind seeks for and the girlish-stepping Rain;
Whom the sleepy leaves still whisper men shall never see again:
She whose Vivien charms were mistress of the magic Merlin knew,
That could change the dew to glowworms and the glowworms into dew.
There's a thorn tree in the forest, and the faeries know the tree,
With its branches gnarled and wrinkled as a face with sorcery;
But the Maytime brings it clusters of a rainy fragrant white,
Like the bloom-bright brows of beauty or a hand of lifted light.
And all day the silence whispers to the sun-ray of the morn
How the bloom is lovely Vivien and how Merlin is the thorn:
How she won the doting wizard with her naked loveliness
Till he told her daemon secrets that must make his magic less.
How she charmed him and enchanted in the thorn-tree's thorns to lie
Forever with his passion that should never dim or die:
And with wicked laughter looking on this thing which she had done,
Like a visible aroma lingered sparkling in the sun:
How she stooped to kiss the pathos of an elf-lock of his beard,
In a mockery of parting and mock pity of his weird:
But her magic had forgotten that"who bends to give a kiss
Will but bring the curse upon them of the person whose it is":
So the silence tells the secret. And at night the faeries see
How the tossing bloom is Vivien, who is struggling to be free,
In the thorny arms of Merlin, who forever is the tree.
The New Convert.
by William Cowper

The new-born child of gospel grace,
Like some fair tree when summer's nigh,
Beneath Emmanuel's shining face
Lifts up his blooming branch on high.
No fears he feels, he sees no foes,
No conflict yet his faith employs,
Nor has he learnt to whom he owes
The strength and peace his soul enjoys.
But sin soon darts its cruel sting,
And comforts sinking day by day:
What seem'd his own, a self-fed spring,
Proves but a brook that glides away.
When Gideon arm'd his numerous host,
The Lord soon made his numbers less;
And said, 'Lest Israel vainly boast,[1]
'My arm procured me this success.''
Thus will he bring our spirits down,
And draw our ebbing comforts low,
That, saved by grace, but not our own,
We may not claim the praise we owe.
Joy In The Morning
by Joseph Horatio Chant

The night of affliction, with its long hours of sadness,
Will soon pass away to be remembered no more;
And the weeping will end in a morning of gladness;
For no sorrow is known on the evergreen shore.
In this world we shall have tribulation and sorrow;
'Tis enough for the subject to be as his king;
But if we are faithful, joy will come with the morrow,
And with the blood-washed a new song shall we sing.
Don Juan In Hell
by James Elroy Flecker

(from Baudelaire.)
The night Don Juan came to pay his fees
To Charon, by the caverned water's shore,
A beggar, proud-eyed as Antisthenes,
Stretched out his knotted fingers on the oar.
Mournful, with drooping breasts and robes unsewn
The shapes of women swayed in ebon skies,
Trailing behind him with a restless moan
Like cattle herded for a sacrifice.
Here, grinning for his wage, stood Sganarelle,
And here Don Luis pointed, bent and dim,
To show the dead who lined the holes of Hell,
This was that impious son who mocked at him.
The hollow-eyed, the chaste Elvira came,
Trembling and veiled, to view her traitor spouse.
Was it one last bright smile she thought to claim,
Such as made sweet the morning of his vows?
A great stone man rose like a tower on board,
Stood at the helm and cleft the flood profound:
But the calm hero, leaning on his sword,
Gazed back, and would not offer one look round.
The Voices Of The Death Chamber.
by Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

The night lamp is faintly gleaming
Within my chamber still,
And the heavy shades of midnight
Each gloomy angle fill,
And my worn and weary watchers
Scarce dare to move or weep,
For they think that I am buried
In deep and quiet sleep.
But, hush! what are those voices
Heard on the midnight air,
Of strange celestial sweetness,
Breathing of love and prayer?
Nearer they grow and clearer,
I hear now what they say - 
To the Kingdom of God's glory,
They're calling me away!
See my gentle mother softly
To me approaches now,
What is the change she readeth
Upon my pale damp brow?
She clasps her hands in anguish
Whose depth no words might say?
Has she, too, heard the voices
That are calling me away?
The father fond of my children,
First sole love of my youth,
The loving, the gentle hearted,
And full of manly truth,
Is kneeling now beside me,
Beseeching me to stay - 
Oh! 'tis agony to tell him
They're calling me away.
If earthly love could conquer
The mighty power of Death,
His love would stay the current
Of failing strength and breath!
That voice whose tender fondness
So long has been my stay
Should tempt me from the voices
That are calling me away.
Ah! they bring my children to me,
That loved and lovely band,
And with wistful awe-struck faces,
Around my couch they stand,
And I strain each gentle darling
To me with wailing cry,
As I for the first time murmur:
"My God! 'tis hard to die!"
But, O hark! Those strains of Heaven,
Sound louder in mine ear,
Whisp'ring: "Thy God, Thy Father,
Will guard those children dear."
Louder they grow, now drowning
All sounds of mortal birth,
And in wild triumphant sweetness
Bear me aloft from earth!
The Legend Of Cooee Gully
by Henry Lawson

The night came down thro' Deadman's Gap,
Where the ghostly saplings bent
Before a wind that tore the fly
From many a digger's tent.
Dark as pitch, and the rain rushed past
On a wind that howled again;
And we crowded into the only but
That stood on the hillside then.
The strong pine rafters creaked and strained,
'Til we thought that the roof would go;
And we felt the box-bark walls bend in
And bulge like calico.
A flood had come from the gorges round:
Thro' the gully's bed it poured.
Down many a deep, deserted shaft
The yellow waters roared.
The scene leapt out when the lightning flashed
And shone with a ghastly grey;
And the night sprang back to the distant range
'Neath a sky as bright as day.
Then the darkness closed like a trap that was sprung,
And the night grew black as coals,
And we heard the ceaseless thunder
Of the water down the holes.
And now and then like a cannon's note
That sounds in the battle din,
We heard the louder thunder spring
From a shaft, when the sides fell in.
We had gathered close to the broad but fire
To yarn of the by-gone years,
When a coo-ee that came from the flooded grounds
Fell sharp on our startled ears.
We sprang to our feet, for well we knew
That in speed lay the only hope;
One caught and over his shoulder threw
A coil of yellow rope.
Then, blinded oft by the lightning's flash,
Down the steep hillside we sped,
And at times we slipped on the sodden path
That ran to the gully's bed.
And on past many a broken shaft
All reckless of risk we ran,
For the wind still brought in spiteful gusts
The cry of the drowning man.
But the cooeying ceased when we reached the place;
And then, ere a man could think,
We heard the treacherous earth give way
And fall from a shaft's black brink.
And deep and wide the rotten side
Slipped into the hungry hole,
And the phosphorus leapt and vanished
Like the flight of the stranger's soul.
And still in the sound of the rushing rain,
When the night comes dark and drear,
From the pitch-black side of that gully wide
The coo-ee you'll hear and hear.
Coo-ee, coo-e-e-e, low and eerily,
It whispers afar and drear,
And then to the heart like an icy dart
It strikes thro' the startled ear!
Dreader than wrung from the human tongue
It shrieks o'er the sound of the rain,
And back on the hill when the wind is still
It whispers and dies again.
And on thro' the night like the voice of a sprite
That tells of a dire mishap
It echoes around in the gully's bound
And out thro' Deadman's Gap.
Song
by James Thomson -  (Bysshe Vanolis)

"The Nightingale was not yet heard,
For the Rose was not yet blown."1
His heart was quiet as a bird
Asleep in the night alone,
And never were its pulses stirred
To breathe or joy or moan:
The Nightingale was not yet heard
For the Rose was not yet blown.
Then She bloomed forth before his sight
In passion and in power,
And filled the very day with light,
So glorious was her dower;
And made the whole vast moonlit night
As fragrant as a bower:
The young, the beautiful, the bright,
The splendid peerless Flower.
Whereon his heart was like a bird
When Summer mounts his throne,
And all its pulses thrilled and stirred
To songs of joy and moan,
To every most impassioned word
And most impassioned tone;
The Nightingale at length was heard
For the Rose at length was blown.
A Short Sermon.
by James Barron Hope

"He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord."
The night-wind comes in sudden squalls:
The ruddy fire-light starts and falls
Fantastically on the walls.
The bare trees all their branches wave;
The frantic wind doth howl and rave,
Like prairie-wolf above a grave.
The moon looks out; but cold and pale,
And seeming scar'd at this wild gale
Draws o'er her pallid face a veil.
In vain I turn the poet's page--
In vain consult some ancient sage--
I hear alone the tempest rage.
The shutters tug at hinge and bar--
The windows clash with frosty jar--
The child creeps closer to "Papa."
And now, I almost start aghast,
The clamor rises thick and fast,
Surely a troop of fiends drove past!
That last shock shook the oaken door.
Sounding like billows on the shore,
On such a night God shield the poor!
God shield the poor to-night, who stay
In piteous homes! who, if they pray,
Ask thee, oh God! for bread and day!
Think! think! ye men who daily wear
"Purple and linen"--ye whose hair
Flings perfume on the temper'd air.
Think! think! I say, aye! start and think
That many tremble on death's brink--
Dying for want of meat and drink.
When tatter'd poor folk meet your eyes,
Think, friend, like Christian, in this wise,
Each one is Christ hid in disguise.
Then when you hear the tempest's roar
That thunders at your carv'd door,
Know that, it knocketh for the poor.
The Evening Of The Holiday.
by Giacomo Leopardi

The night is mild and clear, and without wind,
And o'er the roofs, and o'er the gardens round
The moon shines soft, and from afar reveals
Each mountain-peak serene. O lady, mine,
Hushed now is every path, and few and dim
The lamps that glimmer through the balconies.
Thou sleepest! in thy quiet rooms, how light
And easy is thy sleep! No care thy heart
Consumes; and little dost thou know or think,
How deep a wound thou in my heart hast made.
Thou sleepest; I to yonder heaven turn,
That seems to greet me with a loving smile,
And to that Nature old, omnipotent,
That doomed me still to suffer. "I to thee
All hope deny," she said, "e'en hope; nor may
Those eyes of thine e'er shine, save through their tears."
This was a holiday; its pleasures o'er,
Thou seek'st repose; and happy in thy dreams
Recallest those whom thou hast pleased to-day,
And those who have pleased thee: not I, indeed, - 
I hoped it not, - unto thy thoughts occur.
Meanwhile, I ask, how much of life remains
To me; and on the earth I cast myself,
And cry, and groan. How wretched are my days,
And still so young! Hark, on the road I hear,
Not far away, the solitary song
Of workman, who returns at this late hour,
In merry mood, unto his humble home;
And in my heart a cruel pang I feel,
At thought, how all things earthly pass away,
And leave no trace behind. This festal day
Hath fled; a working-day now follows it,
And all, alike, are swept away by Time.
Where is the glory of the antique nations now?
Where now the fame of our great ancestors?
The empire vast of Rome, the clash of arms?
Now all is peace and silence, all the world
At rest; their very names are heard no more.
E'en from my earliest years, when we
Expect so eagerly a holiday,
The moment it was past, I sought my couch,
Wakeful and sad; and at the midnight hour,
When I the song heard of some passer-by,
That slowly in the distance died away,
The same deep anguish felt I in my heart.
The night is freezing fast,
by Alfred Edward Housman

The night is freezing fast,
To-morrow comes December;
And winterfalls of old
Are with me from the past;
And chiefly I remember
How Dick would hate the cold.
Fall, winter, fall; for he,
Prompt hand and headpiece clever,
Has woven a winter robe,
And made of earth and sea
His overcoat for ever,
And wears the turning globe.
Night And Rain
by Madison Julius Cawein

The night has set her outposts there
Of wind and rain;
And to and fro, with ragged hair,
At intervals they search the pane.
The fir-trees, creepers redly climb,
That seem to bleed,
Like old conspirators in crime,
Drip, whispering of some desperate deed.
'Tis as if wild skirts, flying fast,
Besieged the house;
The wittol grass, bent to the blast,
Whines as if witches held carouse.
And now dark feet steal to the door
And tap and tip,
Shuffle, and then go on once more
The eaves keep a persistent drip.
And then a skurry, and a bound;
Wild feet again?
A wind-wrenched tree that to the ground
Sweeps instantly its weight of rain.
What is it, finger on its lip,
That up and down
Treads, with dark raiment all a-drip,
Trailing a tattered leaf of gown?
"O father, I am frightened! See!
There, at the pane!"
"Hush! hush! my child, 'tis but a tree
That tosses in the wind and rain."
A rumble, as it were, of hoofs,
And hollow call:
"O father, what rolls on the roofs,
That sounds like some dark funeral?"
"Hush! hush! my child; it is the storm
The autumn wind."
"But, father, see! what is that form?
There! wild against the window-blind."
"It is the firelight in the room."
The father sighed.
And then the child:"'Twas dark as doom,
And had the face of her who died."
Other Stars.
by Juliana Horatia Ewing

The night is dark, and yet it is not quite:
Those stars are hid that other orbs may shine;
Twin stars, whose rays illuminate the night,
And cheer her gloom, but only deepen mine;
For these fair stars are not what they do seem,
But vanish'd eyes remember'd in a dream.
The night is dark, and yet it brings no rest;
Those eager eyes gaze on and banish sleep;
Though flaming Mars has lower'd his crimson crest,
And weary Venus pales into the deep,
These two with tender shining mock my woe
From out the distant heaven of long ago.
The night is dark, and yet how bright they gleam!
Oh! empty vision of a vanish'd light!
Sweet eyes! must you for ever be a dream
Deep in my heart, and distant from my sight?
For could you shine as once you shone before,
The stars might hide their rays for evermore!