DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
After The Curfew
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Play is over. While the light
Yet lingers in the darkening hall,
I come to say a last Good-night
Before the final Exeunt all.
We gathered once, a joyous throng:
The jovial toasts went gayly round;
With jest, and laugh, and shout, and song,
We made the floors and walls resound.
We come with feeble steps and slow,
A little band of four or five,
Left from the wrecks of long ago,
Still pleased to find ourselves alive.
Alive! How living, too, are they
Whose memories it is ours to share!
Spread the long table's full array, - 
There sits a ghost in every chair!
One breathing form no more, alas!
Amid our slender group we see;
With him we still remained "The Class," - 
Without his presence what are we?
The hand we ever loved to clasp, - 
That tireless hand which knew no rest, - 
Loosed from affection's clinging grasp,
Lies nerveless on the peaceful breast.
The beaming eye, the cheering voice,
That lent to life a generous glow,
Whose every meaning said "Rejoice,"
We see, we hear, no more below.
The air seems darkened by his loss,
Earth's shadowed features look less fair,
And heavier weighs the daily cross
His willing shoulders helped us bear.
Why mourn that we, the favored few
Whom grasping Time so long has spared
Life's sweet illusions to pursue,
The common lot of age have shared?
In every pulse of Friendship's heart
There breeds unfelt a throb of pain, - 
One hour must rend its links apart,
Though years on years have forged the chain.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
So ends "The Boys," - a lifelong play.
We too must hear the Prompter's call
To fairer scenes and brighter day
Farewell! I let the curtain fall.
The Poplar Field.
by William Cowper

The poplars are fell'd, farewell to the shade,
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade;
The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.
Twelve years had elapsed since I last took a view
Of my favourite field, and the bank where they grew;
And now in the grass behold they are laid,
And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade.
The blackbird has fled to another retreat,
Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat,
And the scene where his melody charm'd me before
Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more.
My fugitive years are all hasting away,
And I must ere long lie as lowly as they,
With a turf on my breast, and a stone at my head,
Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.
'Tis a sight to engage me, if anything can,
To muse on the perishing pleasures of man;
Though his life be a dream, his enjoyments, I see,
Have a being less durable even than he.[1]
On Tasso In Prison (Eug'ne Delacroix's painting)
by Charles Baudelaire

The poet in his cell, unkempt and sick,
who crushes underfoot a manuscript,
measures, with a gaze that horror has inflamed,
the stair of madness where his soul was maimed.
The intoxicating laughter that fills his prison
with the absurd and the strange, swamps his reason.
Doubt surrounds him, and ridiculous fear,
hideous and multiform, circles near.
That genius pent up in a foul sty,
those spectres, those grimaces, the cries,
whirling, in a swarm, about his hair,
that dreamer, whom his lodging's terrors bare,
such are your emblems, Soul, singer of songs obscure,
whom Reality suffocates behind four walls!
The Poet
by Abram Joseph Ryan

The Poet is the loneliest man that lives;
Ah me! God makes him so --
The sea hath its ebb and flow,
He sings his songs -- but yet he only gives
In the waves of the words of his art
Only the ~foam~ of his heart.
Its sea rolls on forever, evermore,
Beautiful, vast, and deep;
Only his ~shallowest~ thoughts touch the shore
Of Speech; his ~deepest~ sleep.
The foam that crests the wave is pure and white;
The ~foam~ is not the ~wave~;
The wave is not the sea -- ~it rolls~ forever on;
The winding shores will crave
A kiss from ev'ry wavelet on the deep;
~Some come~; some always ~sleep~.
Translations. - The Philosophers. (From Schiller.)
by George MacDonald

The principle whence everything
To life and shape ascended--
The pulley whereon Zeus the ring
Of Earth, which else in sherds would spring,
Has carefully suspended--
To genius I yield him a claim
Who fathoms for me what its name,
Save I withdraw its curtain:
It is--ten is not thirteen.
That snow makes cold, that fire burns,
That man on two feet goeth,
That in the heavens the sun sojourns--
This much the man who logic spurns
Through his own senses knoweth;
But metaphysics who has got,
Knows he that burneth, freezeth not;
Knows 'tis the moist that wetteth,
And 'tis the rough that fretteth.
Great Homer sings his epic high;
The hero fronts his dangers;
The brave his duty still doth ply--
And did it while, I won't deny,
Philosophers were strangers:
But grant by heart and brain achiev'd
What Locke and Des Cartes ne'er conceiv'd--
By them yet, as behov'd,
It possible was prov'd.
Strength for the Right is counted still;
Bold laughs the strong hyena;
Who rule not, servants' parts must fill;
It goes quite tolerably ill
Upon this world's arena;
But how it would be, if the plan
Of the universe now first began,
In many a moral system
All men may read who list 'em.
"Man needs with man must linked be
To reach the goal of growing;
In the whole only worketh he;
Many drops go to make the sea;
Much water sets mills going.
Then with the wild wolves do not stand,
But knit the state's enduring band:"
From doctor's chair thus, tranquil,
Herr Pufendorf and swan-quill.
But since to all, what doctors say
Flies not as soon as spoken,
Nature will use her mother-way,
See that her chain fly not in tway,
The circle be not broken:
Meantime, until the world's great round
Philosophy in one hath bound,
She keeps it on the move, sir,
By hunger and by love, sir.
Forest Spittle
by Paul Cameron Brown

The preciseness of that little moment,
bowler eyes in hot, top rays
effervescent through
spongy forest gloom,
the wet of the happy
unreconciled with the dry outside.
Champions of Liberty.
by George Pope Morris

The pride of all our chivalry,
The name of Worth will stand,
While throbs the pulse of liberty
Within his native land:
The wreath his brow was formed to wear,
A nation's tears will freshen there.
The young companion of his fame,
In war and peace allied,
With garlands woven round his name,
Reposes at his side:
Duncan, whose deeds for evermore
Will live amid his cannon's roar.
Gates, in his country's quarrel bold,
When she to arms appealed,
Sought like the Christian knights of old,
His laurels on the field:
Where victory rent the welkin-dome,
He earned--a sepulchre at home.
The drum-beat of the bannered brave,
The requiem and the knell,
The volley o'er the soldier's grave,
His comrades' last farewell,
Are tributes rendered to the dead,
And sermons to the living read.
But there's a glory brighter far
Than all that earth has given;
A beacon, like the index-star,
That points the way to heaven:
It is a life well spent--its close
The cloudless sundown of repose.
That such was theirs for whom we mourn,
These obsequies attest;
And though in sorrow they are borne
Unto their final rest,
A guide will their example be
To future champions of the free.
Bide A Wee
by Louisa May Alcott

'The puir auld folk at home, ye mind,
Are frail and failing sair;
And weel I ken they'd miss me, lad,
Gin I come hame nae mair.
The grist is out, the times are hard,
The kine are only three;
I canna leave the auld folk now.
We'd better bide a wee.
'I fear me sair they're failing baith;
For when I sit apart,
They talk o' Heaven so earnestly,
It well nigh breaks my heart.
So, laddie, dinna urge me now,
It surely winna be;
I canna leave the auld folk yet.
We'd better bide a wee.'
The Prairie-Grass Dividing
by Walt Whitman

The prairie-grass dividing its special odor breathing,
I demand of it the spiritual corresponding,
Demand the most copious and close companionship of men,
Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings,
Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious,
Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and command leading, not following,
Those with a never-quell'd audacity those with sweet and lusty flesh, clear of taint,
Those that look carelessly in the faces of Presidents and Governors, as to say, Who are you?
Those of earth-born passion, simple, never-constrain'd, never obedient,
Those of inland America.
A Song Of The Princess
by Sara Teasdale

The princess has her lovers,
A score of knights has she,
And each can sing a madrigal,
And praise her gracefully.
But Love that is so bitter
Hath put within her heart
A longing for the scornful knight
Who silent stands apart.
And tho' the others praise and plead,
She maketh no reply,
Yet for a single word from him,
I ween that she would die.
A Pleasant Invective Against Printing
by Henry Austin Dobson

"Flee fro the PREES, and dwelle with sothfastnesse."--CHAUCER, Balade de Bon Conseil.
The Press is too much with us, small and great:
We are undone of chatter and on dit,
Report, retort, rejoinder, repartee,
Mole-hill and mare's nest, fiction up-to-date,
Babble of booklets, bicker of debate,
Aspect of A., and attitude of B.--
A waste of words that drive us like a sea,
Mere derelict of Ourselves, and helpless freight!
"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness!"
Some region unapproachable of Print,
Where never cablegram could gain access,
And telephones were not, nor any hint
Of tidings new or old, but Man might pipe
His soul to Nature,--careless of the Type!
The Happy Printer
by Henry Austin Dobson

"Hoc est vivere."--MARTIAL.
The Printer's is a happy lot:
Alone of all professions,
No fateful smudges ever blot
His earliest "impressions."
The outgrowth of his youthful ken
No cold obstruction fetters;
He quickly learns the "types" of men,
And all the world of "letters."
With "forms" he scorns to compromise;
For him no "rule" has terrors;
The "slips" he makes he can "revise"--
They are but "printers' errors."
From doubtful questions of the "Press"
He wisely holds aloof;
In all polemics, more or less,
His argument is "proof."
Save in their "case," with High and Low,
Small need has he to grapple!
Without dissent he still can go
To his accustomed "Chapel,"[1]
From ills that others scape or shirk,
He rarely fails to rally;
For him, his most "composing" work
Is labour of the "galley."
Though ways be foul, and days are dim,
He makes no lamentation;
The primal "fount" of woe to him
Is--want of occupation:
And when, at last, Time finds him grey
With over-close attention,
He solves the problem of the day,
And gets an Old Age pension.
William O'Kelly
by James Stephens

The Protecting Tree
Of the men of the land of F'l!
What aileth thee,
And why is it that all
About thee grieves?
Alas, O Tree of the Leaves!
Here is thy rhyme:
Thy bloom is lightened;
And if thy fruit be withered
Thy root hath not tightened
At the same time.
Not since the Gael was sold
At Aughrim.    Not since to cold,
Dull death went Owen Roe;
Not since the drowning of Clann Adam in the days of Noe
Brought men to hush,
Has such a tale of woe come to us
In such a rush.
The true flower of the blood of the place is fallen:
The true clean-wheat of the Gael is reaped.
Destruction be upon Death,
For he has come and taken from our tree
The topmost blackberry!
Obedience.
by Robert Herrick

The power of princes rests in the consent
Of only those who are obedient:
Which if away, proud sceptres then will lie
Low, and of thrones the ancient majesty.
The Philosophers.
by Friedrich Schiller

The principle by which each thing
Toward strength and shape first tended, 
The pulley whereon Zeus the ring
Of earth, that loosely used to swing,
With cautiousness suspended, 
he is a clever man, I vow,
Who its real name can tell me now,
Unless to help him I consent 
'Tis: ten and twelve are different!
Fire burns, 'tis chilly when it snows,
Man always is two-footed, 
The sun across the heavens goes, 
This, he who naught of logic knows
Finds to his reason suited.
Yet he who metaphysics learns,
Knows that naught freezes when it burns 
Knows that what's wet is never dry, 
And that what's bright attracts the eye.
Old Homer sings his noble lays,
The hero goes through dangers;
The brave man duty's call obeys,
And did so, even in the days
When sages yet were strangers 
But heart and genius now have taught
What Locke and what Descartes never thought;
By them immediately is shown
That which is possible alone.
In life avails the right of force.
The bold the timid worries;
Who rules not, is a slave of course,
Without design each thing across
Earth's stage forever hurries.
Yet what would happen if the plan
Which guides the world now first began,
Within the moral system lies
Disclosed with clearness to our eyes.
"When man would seek his destiny,
Man's help must then be given;
Save for the whole, ne'er labors he, 
Of many drops is formed the sea, 
By water mills are driven;
Therefore the wolf's wild species flies, 
Knit are the state's enduring ties."
Thus Puffendorf and Feder, each
Is, ex cathedra, wont to teach.
Yet, if what such professors say,
Each brain to enter durst not,
Nature exerts her mother-sway,
Provides that ne'er the chain gives way,
And that the ripe fruits burst not.
Meanwhile, until earth's structure vast
Philosophy can bind at last,
'Tis she that bids its pinion move,
By means of hunger and of love!
The Queen's Last Ride
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

(Written on the day of Queen Victoria's funeral)
The Queen is taking a drive to-day,
They have hung with purple the carriage-way,
They have dressed with purple the royal track
Where the Queen goes forth and never comes back.
Let no man labour as she goes by
On her last appearance to mortal eye:
With heads uncovered let all men wait
For the Queen to pass, in her regal state.
Army and Navy shall lead the way
For that wonderful coach of the Queen's to-day.
Kings and Princes and Lords of the land
Shall ride behind her, a humble band;
And over the city and over the world
Shall the Flags of all Nations be half-mast-furled,
For the silent lady of royal birth
Who is riding away from the Courts of earth,
Riding away from the world's unrest
To a mystical goal, on a secret quest.
Though in royal splendour she drives through town,
Her robes are simple, she wears no crown:
And yet she wears one, for, widowed no more,
She is crowned with the love that has gone before,
And crowned with the love she has left behind
In the hidden depths of each mourner's mind.
Bow low your heads - lift your hearts on high - 
The Queen in silence is driving by!
The Princess
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

The princess looked down from her bower high,
The youth blew his horn as he lingered thereby.
"Be quiet, O youth, will forever you blow?
It hinders my thoughts, that would far away go,
Now, when sets the sun."
The princess looked down from her bower high,
The youth ceased his blowing, his horn he laid by.
"Why are you so quiet? Now more shall you blow,
It lifts all my thoughts, that would far away go,
Now, when sets the sun."
The princess looked down from her bower high,
The youth blew again, as he lingered thereby.
Then weeping, she whispered: "O God, let me know
The name of this sorrow that burdens me so! - 
Now has set the sun."
The Park
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The prosperous and beautiful
To me seem not to wear
The yoke of conscience masterful,
Which galls me everywhere.
I cannot shake off the god;
On my neck he makes his seat;
I look at my face in the glass,--
My eyes his eyeballs meet.
Enchanters! Enchantresses!
Your gold makes you seem wise;
The morning mist within your grounds
More proudly rolls, more softly lies.
Yet spake yon purple mountain,
Yet said yon ancient wood,
That Night or Day, that Love or Crime,
Leads all souls to the Good.
Effects At A Distance.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The queen in the lofty hall takes her place,
The tapers around her are flaming;
She speaks to the page: "With a nimble pace
Go, fetch me my purse for gaming.
'Tis lying, I'll pledge,
On my table's edge."
Each nerve the nimble boy straineth,
And the end of the castle soon gaineth.
The fairest of maidens was sipping sherbet
Beside the queen that minute;
Near her mouth broke the cup, and she got so wet!
The very devil seem'd in it
What fearful distress
'Tis spoilt, her gay dress.
She hastens, and ev'ry nerve straineth,
And the end of the castle soon gaineth.
The boy was returning, and quickly came,
And met the sorrowing maiden;
None knew of the fact, and yet with Love's flame,
Those two had their hearts full laden.
And, oh the bliss
Of a moment like this!
Each falls on the breast of the other,
With kisses that well nigh might smother.
They tear themselves asunder at last,
To her chamber she hastens quickly,
To reach the queen the page hies him fast,
Midst the swords and the fans crowded thickly.
The queen spied amain
On his waistcoat a stain;
For nought was inscrutable to her,
Like Sheba's queen Solomon's wooer.
To her chief attendant she forthwith cried
"We lately together contended,
And thou didst assert, with obstinate pride,
That the spirit through space never wended, 
That traces alone
By the present were shown, 
That afar nought was fashion'd not even
By the stars that illumine you heaven.
"Now see! while a goblet beside me they drain'd,
They spilt all the drink in the chalice;
And straightway the boy had his waistcoat stain'd
At the furthermost end of the palace. 
Let them newly be clad!
And since I am glad
That it served as a proof so decided,
The cost will by me be provided."
The Wild Common
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

THE quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,
Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame;
Above them, exultant, the pee-wits are sweeping:
They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim.
Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie
Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten down to the quick.
Are they asleep? - Are they alive? - Now see, when I
Move my arms the hill bursts and heaves under their spurting kick.
The common flaunts bravely; but below, from the rushes
Crowds of glittering king-cups surge to challenge the blossoming bushes;
There the lazy streamlet pushes
Its curious course mildly; here it wakes again, leaps, laughs, and gushes.
Into a deep pond, an old sheep-dip,
Dark, overgrown with willows, cool, with the brook ebbing through so slow,
Naked on the steep, soft lip
Of the bank I stand watching my own white shadow quivering to and fro.
What if the gorse flowers shrivelled and kissing were lost?
Without the pulsing waters, where were the marigolds and the songs of the brook?
If my veins and my breasts with love embossed
Withered, my insolent soul would be gone like flowers that the hot wind took.
So my soul like a passionate woman turns,
Filled with remorseful terror to the man she scorned, and her love
For myself in my own eyes' laughter burns,
Runs ecstatic over the pliant folds rippling down to my belly from the breast-lights above.
Over my sunlit skin the warm, clinging air,
Rich with the songs of seven larks singing at once, goes kissing me glad.
And the soul of the wind and my blood compare
Their wandering happiness, and the wind, wasted in liberty, drifts on and is sad.
Oh but the water loves me and folds me,
Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me as though it were living blood,
Blood of a heaving woman who holds me,
Owning my supple body a rare glad thing, supremely good.
Caroline Chisholm
by Henry Kendall

'A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command.'
The priests and the Levites went forth, to feast at the courts of the Kings;
They were vain of their greatness and worth, and gladdened with glittering things;
They were fair in the favour of gold, and they walked on, with delicate feet,
Where, famished and faint with the cold, the women fell down in the street.
The Priests and the Levites looked round, all vexed and perplexed at the cries
Of the maiden who crouched to the ground with the madness of want in her eyes;
And they muttered 'Few praises are earned when good hath been wrought in the dark;
While the backs of the people are turned, we choose not to loiter nor hark.'
Moreover they said 'It is fair that our deeds in the daylight should shine:
If we feasted you, who would declare that we gave you our honey and wine.'
They gathered up garments of gold, and they stepped with their delicate feet,
And the women who famished with cold, were left with the snow in the street.
The winds and the rains were abroad the homeless looked vainly for alms;
And they prayed in the dark to the Lord, with agony clenched in their palms,
'There is none of us left that is whole,' they cried, through their faltering breath,
'We are clothed with a sickness of soul, and the shape of the shadow of death.'
He heard them, and turned to the earth! 'I am pained,' said the Lord, 'at the woe
Of my children so smitten with dearth; but the night of their trouble shall go.'
He called on His Chosen to come: she listened, and hastened to rise;
And He charged her to build them a home, where the tears should be dried from their eyes.
God's servant came forth from the South: she told of a plentiful land;
And wisdom was set in her mouth, and strength in the thews of her hand.
She lifted them out of their fear, and they thought her their Moses and said:
'We shall follow you, sister, from here to the country of sunshine and bread.'
She fed them, and led them away, through tempest and tropical heat,
Till they reached the far regions of day, and sweet-scented spaces of wheat.
She hath made them a home with her hand, and they bloom like the summery vines;
For they eat of the fat of the land, and drink of its glittering wines.
The Power Of Armies Is A Visible Thing
by William Wordsworth

The power of Armies is a visible thing,
Formal and circumscribed in time and space;
But who the limits of that power shall trace
Which a brave People into light can bring
Or hide, at will, for freedom combating
By just revenge inflamed? No foot may chase,
No eye can follow, to a fatal place
That power, that spirit, whether on the wing
Like the strong wind, or sleeping like the wind
Within its awful caves. From year to year
Springs this indigenous produce far and near;
No craft this subtle element can bind,
Rising like water from the soil, to find
In every nook a lip that it may cheer.
Winter Dusk
by R. K. Munkittrick

The prospect is bare and white,
And the air is crisp and chill;
While the ebon wings of night
Are spread on the distant hill.
The roar of the stormy sea
Seem the dirges shrill and sharp
That winter plays on the tree - 
His wild 'olian harp.
In the pool that darkly creeps
In ripples before the gale,
A star like a lily sleeps
And wiggles its silver tail.
R. K. Munkittrick.
Preface to The Englishman and Other Poems - The Queen's Last Ride
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

(Written on the day of Queen Victoria's funeral)
The Queen is taking a drive to-day,
They have hung with purple the carriage-way,
They have dressed with purple the royal track
Where the Queen goes forth and never comes back.
Let no man labour as she goes by
On her last appearance to mortal eye;
With heads uncovered let all men wait
For the Queen to pass in her regal state.
Army and Navy shall lead the way
For that wonderful coach of the Queen's to-day.
Kings and Princes and Lords of the land
Shall ride behind her, a humble band;
And over the city and over the world
Shall the Flags of all Nations be half-mast-furled,
For the silent lady of royal birth
Who is riding away from the Courts of earth,
Riding away from the world's unrest
To a mystical goal, on a secret quest.
Though in royal splendour she drives through town,
Her robes are simple, she wears no crown:
And yet she wears one, for widowed no more,
She is crowned with the love that has gone before,
And crowned with the love she has left behind
In the hidden depths of each mourner's mind.
Bow low your heads - lift your hearts on high - 
The Queen in silence is driving by!