DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Years Of The Modern
by Walt Whitman

Years of the modern! years of the unperform'd!
Your horizon rises, I see it parting away for more august dramas;
I see not America only, I see not only Liberty's nation, but other nations preparing;
I see tremendous entrances and exits, I see new combinations, I see the solidarity of races;
I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world's stage;
(Have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? are the acts suitable to them closed?)
I see Freedom, completely arm'd, and victorious, and very haughty, with Law on one side, and Peace on the other,
A stupendous Trio, all issuing forth against the idea of caste;
What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?
I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions;
I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken;
I see the landmarks of European kings removed;
I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, (all others give way;)
Never were such sharp questions ask'd as this day;
Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God;
Lo! how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest;
His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere, he colonizes the Pacific, the archipelagoes;
With the steam-ship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the wholesale engines of war,
With these, and the world-spreading factories, he interlinks all geography, all lands;
What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of you, passing under the seas?
Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe?
Is humanity forming, en-masse?, for lo! tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim;
The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war;
No one knows what will happen next, such portents fill the days and nights;
Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to pierce it, is full of phantoms;
Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me;
This incredible rush and heat, this strange extatic fever of dreams, O years!
Your dreams, O year, how they penetrate through me! (I know not whether I sleep or wake!)
The perform'd America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me,
The unperform'd, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me.
Autumn Days.
by Will Carleton

Yellow, mellow, ripened days,
Sheltered in a golden coating;
O'er the dreamy, listless haze,
White and dainty cloudlets floating;
Winking at the blushing trees,
And the sombre, furrowed fallow;
Smiling at the airy ease
Of the southward-flying swallow.
Sweet and smiling are thy ways,
Beauteous, golden, Autumn days!
Shivering, quivering, tearful days,
Fretfully and sadly weeping;
Dreading still, with anxious gaze,
Icy fetters round thee creeping;
O'er the cheerless, withered plain,
Woefully and hoarsely calling;
Pelting hail and drenching rain
On thy scanty vestments falling.
Sad and mournful are thy ways,
Grieving, wailing, Autumn days!
To Marguriet
by Matthew Arnold

Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour 
Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain 
Oh might our marges meet again!
Who order'd, that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool'd?
Who renters vain their deep desire? 
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.
Year Of Meteors, 1859 '60
by Walt Whitman

Year of meteors! brooding year!
I would bind in words retrospective, some of your deeds and signs;
I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad;
I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the scaffold in Virginia;
(I was at hand, silent I stood, with teeth shut close, I watch'd;
I stood very near you, old man, when cool and indifferent, but trembling with age and your unheal'd wounds, you mounted the scaffold;)
I would sing in my copious song your census returns of The States,
The tables of population and products, I would sing of your ships and their cargoes,
The proud black ships of Manhattan, arriving, some fill'd with immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold;
Songs thereof would I sing, to all that hitherward comes would I welcome give;
And you would I sing, fair stripling! welcome to you from me, sweet boy of England!
Remember you surging Manhattan's crowds, as you pass'd with your cortege of nobles?
There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attachment;
I know not why, but I loved you... (and so go forth little song,
Far over sea speed like an arrow, carrying my love all folded,
And find in his palace the youth I love, and drop these lines at his feet;)
Nor forget I to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my bay,
Well-shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she was 600 feet long,
Her, moving swiftly, surrounded by myriads of small craft, I forget not to sing;
Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north, flaring in heaven;
Nor the strange huge meteor procession, dazzling and clear, shooting over our heads,
(A moment, a moment long, it sail'd its balls of unearthly light over our heads,
Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;)
Of such, and fitful as they, I sing, with gleams from them would I gleam and patch these chants;
Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good! year of forebodings! year of the youth I love!
Year of comets and meteors transient and strange!, lo! even here, one equally transient and strange!
As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this book,
What am I myself but one of your meteors?
Song. Fanny, Dearest.
by Thomas Moore

Yes! had I leisure to sigh and mourn,
Fanny dearest, for thee I'd sigh;
And every smile on my cheek should turn
To tears when thou art nigh.
But between love and wine and sleep,
So busy a life I live,
That even the time it would take to weep
Is more than my heart can give.
Then wish me not to despair and pine,
Fanny, dearest of all the dears!
The Love that's ordered to bathe in wine,
Would be sure to take cold in tears.
Reflected bright in this heart of mine,
Fanny dearest, thy image lies;
But ah! the mirror would cease to shine,
If dimmed too often with sighs.
They lose the half of beauty's light,
Who view it thro' sorrow's tear;
And 'tis but to see thee truly bright
That I keep my eye-beams clear.
Then wait no longer till tears shall flow--
Fanny, dearest! the hope is vain;
If sunshine cannot dissolve thy snow,
I shall never attempt it with rain.
Autumn.
by Marietta Holley

Yes! yes! I dare say it is so,
And you should be pitied, but how could I know,
Watching alone by the moon-lit bay;
But that is past for many a day,
For the woman that loved, died years ago,
Years ago.
She had loving eyes, with a wistful look
In their depths that day, and I know you took
Her face in your hands and read it o'er,
As if you should never see it more;
You were right, for she died long years ago,
Years ago.
Had I trusted you - for trust, you know
Will keep love's fire forever aglow;
Then what would have mattered storm or sun,
But the watching - the waiting, all is done;
For the woman that loved, died years ago,
Years ago.
Yes; I think you are constant, true and good,
I am tired, and would love you if I could;
I am tired, oh, friend, tired out; and yet,
Can we make sweet morn of the dim sunset?
The woman that loved, died years ago,
Years ago.
Not a pulse of my heart is stirred by you,
No; even your tears cannot move me now;
So leave me alone, what is said is said,
What boots your prayers, she is dead! is dead!
The woman you loved, long years ago,
Years ago.
Fanny, Dearest.
by Thomas Moore

Yes! had I leisure to sigh and mourn,
Fanny, dearest, for thee I'd sigh;
And every smile on my cheek should turn
To tears when thou art nigh.
But, between love, and wine, and sleep,
So busy a life I live,
That even the time it would take to weep
Is more than my heart can give.
Then bid me not to despair and pine,
Fanny, dearest of all the dears!
The Love that's ordered to bathe in wine,
Would be sure to take cold in tears.
Reflected bright in this heart of mine,
Fanny, dearest, thy image lies;
But, ah, the mirror would cease to shine,
If dimmed too often with sighs.
They lose the half of beauty's light,
Who view it through sorrow's tear;
And 'tis but to see thee truly bright
That I keep my eye-beam clear.
Then wait no longer till tears shall flow,
Fanny, dearest--the hope is vain;
If sunshine cannot dissolve thy snow,
I shall never attempt it with rain.
There Stands A City.
by Charles Stuart Calverley

INGOLDSBY.
Year by year do Beauty's daughters,
In the sweetest gloves and shawls,
Troop to taste the Chattenham waters,
And adorn the Chattenham balls.
'Nulla non donanda lauru'
Is that city: you could not,
Placing England's map before you,
Light on a more favoured spot.
If no clear translucent river
Winds 'neath willow-shaded paths,
"Children and adults" may shiver
All day in "Chalybeate baths:"
If "the inimitable Fechter"
Never brings the gallery down,
Constantly "the Great Protector"
There "rejects the British crown:"
And on every side the painter
Looks on wooded vale and plain
And on fair hills, faint and fainter
Outlined as they near the main.
There I met with him, my chosen
Friend - the 'long' but not 'stern swell,' {15a}
Faultless in his hats and hosen,
Whom the Johnian lawns know well:-
Oh my comrade, ever valued!
Still I see your festive face;
Hear you humming of "the gal you'd
Left behind" in massive bass:
See you sit with that composure
On the eeliest of hacks,
That the novice would suppose your
Manly limbs encased in wax:
Or anon, - when evening lent her
Tranquil light to hill and vale, -
Urge, towards the table's centre,
With unerring hand, the squail.
Ah delectablest of summers!
How my heart - that "muffled drum"
Which ignores the aid of drummers -
Beats, as back thy memories come!
Oh, among the dancers peerless,
Fleet of foot, and soft of eye!
Need I say to you that cheerless
Must my days be till I die?
At my side she mashed the fragrant
Strawberry; lashes soft as silk
Drooped o'er saddened eyes, when vagrant
Gnats sought watery graves in milk:
Then we danced, we walked together;
Talked - no doubt on trivial topics;
Such as Blondin, or the weather,
Which "recalled us to the tropics."
But - oh! in the deuxtemps peerless,
Fleet of foot, and soft of eye! -
Once more I repeat, that cheerless
Shall my days be till I die.
And the lean and hungry raven,
As he picks my bones, will start
To observe 'M. N.' engraven
Neatly on my blighted heart.
Years
by Walter Savage Landor

Years, many parti-colour'd years,
Some have crept on, and some have flown
Since first before me fell those tears
I never could see fall alone.
Years, not so many, are to come,
Years not so varied, when from you
One more will fall: when, carried home,
I see it not, nor hear Adieu.
The Fudge Family In Paris Letter  XI. From Phelim Connor To ----.
by Thomas Moore

Yes, 'twas a cause, as noble and as great
As ever hero died to vindicate--
A Nation's right to speak a Nation's voice,
And own no power but of the Nation's choice!
Such was the grand, the glorious cause that now
Hung trembling on NAPOLEON'S single brow;
Such the sublime arbitrament, that poured,
In patriot eyes, a light around his sword,
A hallowing light, which never, since the day
Of his young victories, had illumed its way!
Oh 'twas not then the time for tame debates,
Ye men of Gaul, when chains were at your gates;
When he, who late had fled your Chieftain's eye.
As geese from eagles on Mount Taurus fly,[1]
Denounced against the land, that spurned his chain,
Myriads of swords to bind it fast again--
Myriads of fierce invading swords, to track
Thro' your best blood his path of vengeance back;
When Europe's Kings, that never yet combined
But (like those upper Stars, that, when conjoined,
Shed war and pestilence,) to scourge mankind,
Gathered around, with hosts from every shore,
Hating NAPOLEON much, but Freedom more,
And, in that coming strife, appalled to see
The world yet left one chance for liberty!--
No, 'twas not then the time to weave a net
Of bondage round your Chief; to curb and fret
Your veteran war-horse, pawing for the fight,
When every hope was in his speed and might--
To waste the hour of action in dispute,
And coolly plan how freedom's boughs should shoot,
When your Invader's axe was at the root!
No sacred Liberty! that God, who throws,
Thy light around, like His own sunshine, knows
How well I love thee and how deeply hate
All tyrants, upstart and Legitimate--
Yet, in that hour, were France my native land,
I would have followed, with quick heart and hand,
NAPOLEON, NERO--ay, no matter whom--
To snatch my country from that damning doom,
That deadliest curse that on the conquered waits--
A Conqueror's satrap, throned within her gates!
True, he was false--despotic--all you please--
Had trampled down man's holiest liberties--
Had, by a genius, formed for nobler things
Than lie within the grasp of vulgar Kings,
But raised the hopes of men--as eaglets fly
With tortoises aloft into the sky--
To dash them down again more shatteringly!
All this I own--but still
Recollections
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

I.
Years upon years, as a course of clouds that thicken
Thronging the ways of the wind that shifts and veers,
Pass, and the flames of remembered fires requicken
Years upon years.
Surely the thought in a man's heart hopes or fears
Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken
Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up springs of tears.
Ah, but the strength of regrets that strain and sicken,
Yearning for love that the veil of death endears,
Slackens not wing for the wings of years that quicken
Years upon years.
II.
Years upon years, and the flame of love's high altar
Trembles and sinks, and the sense of listening ears
Heeds not the sound that it heard of love's blithe psalter
Years upon years.
Only the sense of a heart that hearkens hears,
Louder than dreams that assail and doubts that palter,
Sorrow that slept and that wakes ere sundawn peers.
Wakes, that the heart may behold, and yet not falter,
Faces of children as stars unknown of, spheres
Seen but of love, that endures though all things alter,
Years upon years.
III.
Years upon years, as a watch by night that passes,
Pass, and the light of their eyes is fire that sears
Slowly the hopes of the fruit that life amasses
Years upon years.
Pale as the glimmer of stars on moorland meres
Lighten the shadows reverberate from the glasses
Held in their hands as they pass among their peers.
Lights that are shadows, as ghosts on graveyard grasses,
Moving on paths that the moon of memory cheers,
Shew but as mists over cloudy mountain passes
Years upon years.
Autumn Days.
by William McKendree Carleton

Yellow, mellow, ripened days,
Sheltered in a golden coating;
O'er the dreamy, listless haze,
White and dainty cloudlets floating;
Winking at the blushing trees,
And the sombre, furrowed fallow;
Smiling at the airy ease
Of the southward-flying swallow.
Sweet and smiling are thy ways,
Beauteous, golden, Autumn days!
Shivering, quivering, tearful days,
Fretfully and sadly weeping;
Dreading still, with anxious gaze,
Icy fetters round thee creeping;
O'er the cheerless, withered plain,
Woefully and hoarsely calling;
Pelting hail and drenching rain
On thy scanty vestments falling.
Sad and mournful are thy ways,
Grieving, wailing, Autumn days!
The Sphinx
by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

Yellowish-grey sand, soft at the top, hard, grating below ... sand without end, where-ever one looks.
And above this sandy desert, above this sea of dead dust, rises the immense head of the Egyptian sphinx.
What would they say, those thick, projecting lips, those immutable, distended, upturned nostrils, and those eyes, those long, half-drowsy, half-watchful eyes under the double arch of the high brows?
Something they would say. They are speaking, truly, but only Oedipus can solve the riddle and comprehend their mute speech.
Stay, but I know those features ... in them there is nothing Egyptian.
White, low brow, prominent cheek-bones, nose short and straight, handsome mouth and white teeth, soft moustache and curly beard, and those wide-set, not large eyes ... and on the head the cap of hair parted down the middle.... But it is thou, Karp, Sidor, Semyon, peasant of Yaroslav, of Ryazan, my countryman, flesh and blood, Russian! Art thou, too, among the sphinxes?
Wouldst thou, too, say somewhat? Yes, and thou, too, art a sphinx.
And thy eyes, those colourless, deep eyes, are speaking too ... and as mute and enigmatic is their speech.
But where is thy Oedipus?
Alas! it's not enough to don the peasant smock to become thy Oedipus, oh Sphinx of all the Russias!
Dec. 1878.
Fragment.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Posthumous Fragments Of Margaret Mcholson.
Being Poems found amongst the Papers of that noted Female who attempted the life of the King in 1786. Edited by John Fitzvictor.
[The "Posthumous Fragments", published at Oxford by Shelley, appeared in November, 1810.]
Fragment.
Yes! all is past - swift time has fled away,
Yet its swell pauses on my sickening mind;
How long will horror nerve this frame of clay?
I'm dead, and lingers yet my soul behind.
Oh! powerful Fate, revoke thy deadly spell,
And yet that may not ever, ever be,
Heaven will not smile upon the work of Hell;
Ah! no, for Heaven cannot smile on me;
Fate, envious Fate, has sealed my wayward destiny.
I sought the cold brink of the midnight surge,
I sighed beneath its wave to hide my woes,
The rising tempest sung a funeral dirge,
And on the blast a frightful yell arose.
Wild flew the meteors o'er the maddened main,
Wilder did grief athwart my bosom glare;
Stilled was the unearthly howling, and a strain,
Swelled mid the tumult of the battling air,
'Twas like a spirit's song, but yet more soft and fair.
I met a maniac - like he was to me,
I said - 'Poor victim, wherefore dost thou roam?
And canst thou not contend with agony,
That thus at midnight thou dost quit thine home?'
'Ah there she sleeps: cold is her bloodless form,
And I will go to slumber in her grave;
And then our ghosts, whilst raves the maddened storm,
Will sweep at midnight o'er the wildered wave;
Wilt thou our lowly beds with tears of pity lave?'
'Ah! no, I cannot shed the pitying tear,
This breast is cold, this heart can feel no more -
But I can rest me on thy chilling bier,
Can shriek in horror to the tempest's roar.'
Year That Trembled
by Walt Whitman

Year that trembled and reel'd beneath me!
Your summer wind was warm enough, yet the air I breathed froze me;
A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken'd me;
Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself;
Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled?
And sullen hymns of defeat?
Ponchontas
by Paul Cameron Brown

Years ago, when life was too violent for any to live very old, the Spirit invented a ruse to give great age to Man.
Late one fall, Ponchontas was keeping a slow fire to smoke his strips of salmon. It occurred to him that by stoking the flames gently with bits of chips, the fire would burn not only smoother, but more evenly.
Ponchontas held the block firmly and brought his axe to play on the extended limb. Suddenly, his grip faltered and the blade struck flesh drawing blood. Panicky, he thrashed about the sand scattering it into the face of the fire. Quite by accident, you see, as his foot only convulsed the pain his bleeding arm felt. One by one, the blood fell in drops then trickles, rivulets until a veritable torrent seemed loosed. Ponchontas screamed till the woods listened. The spirit that governs the pulp of the wood and the sap to rise took pity on Ponchontas. It curdled the sap to thick resins in the chopped wood and the gummy resin fell to the forest floor. As it lay so glutenous, the Earth Mother was also quickened to show sympathy. This she did by touching the marrow of the hurting wood. By a thick chain of being, Ponchontas felt his skin harden. The painful throb soon began to leave the wound and the scar healed. Immediately, he was on his knees imploring the spirits. He begged what small favour he might return. The reply was instantaneous.
"Liberate three husks in your crib."
Then, with much saying and thoughts multiplying forth within his head, he gave word to the council of Voices. Once dispatched, the three ears lost their kernels giving old women to this day their namesake of beady eyes. The abandoned husks became their withered forms and sacks of corn were found to be "old bags." The empty rinds became harridans' cancelled lives. Tares in the fruit were seen as the trials and vicissitudes of this life, wormholes as their tears. So, in an act of mercy, old women and crones were born saving future generations the misery of living too old.
To this day, an old woman often has a husky voice and an ear for medicine.
From The Italian Of Michael Angelo
by William Wordsworth

Yes! hope may with my strong desire keep pace,
And I be undeluded, unbetrayed;
For if of our affections none finds grace
In sight of Heaven, then, wherefore hath God made
The world which we inhabit? Better plea
Love cannot have, than that in loving thee
Glory to that eternal Peace is paid,
Who such divinity to thee imparts
As hallows and makes pure all gentle hearts.
His hope is treacherous only whose love dies
With beauty, which is varying every hour;
But, in chaste hearts uninfluenced by the power
Of outward change, there blooms a deathless flower,
That breathes on earth the air of paradise.
Sonnets From The Portuguese XXXIII
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Yes, call me by my pet-name! let me hear
The name I used to run at, when a child,
From innocent play, and leave the cowslips plied,
To glance up in some face that proved me dear
With the look of its eyes. I miss the clear
Fond voices which, being drawn and reconciled
Into the music of Heaven's undefiled,
Call me no longer. Silence on the bier,
While I call God, call God! so let thy mouth
Be heir to those who are now exanimate.
Gather the north flowers to complete the south,
And catch the early love up in the late.
Yes, call me by that name, and I, in truth,
With the same heart, will answer and not wait.
Lines To A Lady, On Hearing Her Sing "Cushlamachree."
by Joseph Rodman Drake

Yes! heaven protect thee, thou gem of the ocean;
Dear land of my sires, though distant thy shores;
Ere my heart cease to love thee, its latest emotion,
The last dying throbs of its pulse must be o'er.
And dark were the bosom, and cold and unfeeling,
That tamely could listen unmoved at the call,
When woman, the warm soul of melody stealing,
Laments for her country and sighs o'er its fall.
Sing on, gentle warbler, the tear-drop appearing
Shall fall for the woes of the queen of the sea;
And the spirit that breathes in the harp of green Erin,
Descending, shall hail thee her "Cushlamachree."
Love-Doubt.
by Archibald Lampman

Yearning upon the faint rose-curves that flit
About her child-sweet mouth and innocent cheek,
And in her eyes watching with eyes all meek
The light and shadow of laughter, I would sit
Mute, knowing our two souls might never knit;
As if a pale proud lily-flower should seek
The love of some red rose, but could not speak
One word of her blithe tongue to tell of it.
For oh, my Love was sunny-lipped and stirred
With all swift light and sound and gloom not long
Retained; I, with dreams weighed, that ever heard
Sad burdens echoing through the loudest throng
She, the wild song of some May-merry bird;
I, but the listening maker of a song.