DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
He And She
by William Butler Yeats

As the moon sidles up
Must she sidle up,
As trips the scared moon
Away must she trip:
"His light had struck me blind
Dared I stop'.
She sings as the moon sings:
"I am I, am I;
The greater grows my light
The further that I fly'.
All creation shivers
With that sweet cry
The Voice
by Matthew Arnold

As the kindling glances,
Queen-like and clear,
Which the bright moon lances
From her tranquil sphere
At the sleepless waters
Of a lonely mere,
On the wild whirling waves, mournfully, mournfully,
Shiver and die.
As the tears of sorrow
Mothers have shed
Prayers that tomorrow
Shall in vain be sped
When the flower they flow for
Lies frozen and dead
Fall on the throbbing brow, fall on the burning breast,
Bringing no rest.
Like bright waves that fall
With a lifelike motion
On the lifeless margin of the sparkling Ocean;
A wild rose climbing up a mouldering wall
A gush of sunbeams through a ruined hall
Strains of glad music at a funeral
So sad, and with so wild a start
To this deep-sobered heart,
So anxiously and painfully,
So drearily and doubtfully,
And oh, with such intolerable change
Of thought, such contrast strange,
O unforgotten voice, thy accents come,
Like wanderers from the world's extremity,
Unto their ancient home!
In vain, all, all in vain,
They beat upon mine ear again,
Those melancholy tones so sweet and still.
Those lute-like tones which in the bygone year
Did steal into mine ear
Blew such a thrilling summons to my will,
Yet could not shake it;
Made my tost heart its very life-blood spill,
Yet could not break it.
Song
by Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell

As the inhastening tide doth roll,
Dear and desired, along the whole
Wide shining strand, and floods the caves,
Your love comes filling with happy waves
The open sea-shore of my soul.
But inland from the seaward spaces,
None knows, not even you, the places
Brimmed, at your coming, out of sight,
--The little solitudes of delight
This tide constrains in dim embraces.
You see the happy shore, wave-rimmed,
But know not of the quiet dimmed
Rivers your coming floods and fills,
The little pools 'mid happier hills,
My silent rivulets, over-brimmed.
What, I have secrets from you?    Yes.
But, visiting Sea, your love doth press
And reach in further than you know,
And fills all these; and when you go,
There's loneliness in loneliness.
Epigram[1]
by Jonathan Swift

As Thomas was cudgell'd one day by his wife,
He took to the street, and fled for his life:
Tom's three dearest friends came by in the squabble,
And saved him at once from the shrew and the rabble;
Then ventured to give him some sober advice - 
But Tom is a person of honour so nice,
Too wise to take counsel, too proud to take warning,
That he sent to all three a challenge next morning.
Three duels he fought, thrice ventur'd his life;
Went home, and was cudgell'd again by his wife.
On Going Unnoticed
by Robert Lee Frost

As vain to raise a voice as a sigh
In the tumult of free leaves on high.
What are you in the shadow of trees
Engaged up there with the light and breeze?
Less than the coral-root you know
That is content with the daylight low,
And has no leaves at all of its own;
Whose spotted flowers hang meanly down.
You grasp the bark by a rugged pleat,
And look up small from the forest's feet.
The only leaf it drops goes wide,
Your name not written on either side.
You linger your little hour and are gone,
And still the wood sweep leafily on,
Not even missing the coral-root flower
You took as a trophy of the hour.
The Universal Route
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

As we journey along, with a laugh and a song,
We see, on youth's flower-decked slope,
Like a beacon of light, shining fair on the sight,
The beautiful Station of Hope.
But the wheels of old Time roll along as we climb,
And our youth speeds away on the years;
And with hearts that are numb with life's sorrows we come
To the mist-covered Station of Tears.
Still onward we pass, where the milestones, alas!
Are the tombs of our dead, to the West,
Where glitters and gleams, in the dying sunbeams,
The sweet, silent Station of Rest.
All rest is but change, and no grave can estrange
The soul from its Parent above;
And, scorning the rod, it soars back to its God,
To the limitless City of Love.
As Toilsome I Wander'd
by Walt Whitman

As toilsome I wander'd Virginia's woods,
To the music of rustling leaves, kick'd by my feet, (for 'twas autumn,)
I mark'd at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier,
Mortally wounded he, and buried on the retreat, (easily all could I understand;)
The halt of a mid-day hour, when up! no time to lose--yet this sign left,
On a tablet scrawl'd and nail'd on the tree by the grave,
Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.
Long, long I muse, then on my way go wandering;
Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life;
Yet at times through changeful season and scene, abrupt, alone, or in the crowded street,
Comes before me the unknown soldier's grave--comes the inscription rude in Virginia's woods,
Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.
The Surprise
by William Barnes

As there I left the road in May,
And took my way along a ground,
I found a glade with girls at play,
By leafy boughs close-hemmed around,
And there, with stores of harmless joys,
They plied their tongues, in merry noise:
Though little did they seem to fear
So queer a stranger might be near;
Teeh-hee! Look here! Hah! ha! Look there!
And oh! so playsome, oh! so fair.
And one would dance as one would spring,
Or bob or bow with leering smiles,
And one would swing, or sit and sing,
Or sew a stitch or two at whiles,
And one skipped on with downcast face,
All heedless, to my very place,
And there, in fright, with one foot out,
Made one dead step and turned about.
Heeh, hee, oh! oh! ooh! oo! Look there!
And oh! so playsome, oh! so fair.
Away they scampered all, full speed,
By boughs that swung along their track,
As rabbits out of wood at feed,
At sight of men all scamper back.
And one pulled on behind her heel,
A thread of cotton, off her reel,
And oh! to follow that white clue,
I felt I fain could scamper too.
Teeh, hee, run here. Eeh! ee! Look there!
And oh! so playsome, oh! so fair.
Success
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

As we gaze up life's slope, as we gaze
In the morn, ere the dewdrops are dry,
What splendour hangs over the ways,
What glory gleams there in the sky,
What pleasures seem waiting us, high
On the peak of that beauteous slope,
What rainbow-hued colours of hope,
As we gaze!
As we climb up the hill, as we climb,
Our hearts, our illusions, are rent:
For Fate, who is spouse of old Time,
Is jealous of youth and content.
With brows that are brooding and bent
She shadows our sunlight of gold,
And the way grows lonely and cold
As we climb.
As we toil on, through trouble and pain,
There are hands that will shelter and feed;
But once let us dare to ATTAIN -
They will bruise our bare hearts till they bleed.
'Tis the worst of all crimes to succeed,
Know this as ye feast on a crust,
Know this in the darkness and dust,
Ye who climb.
As we stand on the heights of success,
Lo! success seems as sad as defeat!
Through the lives we may succour and bless
Alone may its litter turn sweet!
And the world lying there at our feet,
With its cavilling praise and its sneer,
We must pity, condone, but not hear,
Where we stand.
As we live on those heights, we must live
With the courage and pride of a god;
For the world, it has nothing to give
But the scourge of the lash and the rod.
Our thoughts must be noble and broad,
Our purpose must challenge men's gaze,
While we seek not their blame or their praise
As we live.
As Vanquished Erin.
by Thomas Moore

As vanquished Erin wept beside
The Boyne's ill-fated river,
She saw where Discord, in the tide,
Had dropt his loaded quiver.
"Lie hid," she cried, "ye venomed darts,
"Where mortal eye may shun you;
"Lie hid--the stain of manly hearts,
"That bled for me, is on you."
But vain her wish, her weeping vain,--
As Time too well hath taught her--
Each year the Fiend returns again,
And dives into that water;
And brings, triumphant, from beneath
His shafts of desolation,
And sends them, winged with worse than death,
Through all her maddening nation.
Alas for her who sits and mourns,
Even now, beside that river--
Unwearied still the Fiend returns,
And stored is still his quiver.
"When will this end, ye Powers of Good?"
She weeping asks for ever;
But only hears, from out that flood,
The Demon answer, "Never!"
John Hancock Otis
by Edgar Lee Masters

As to democracy, fellow citizens,
Are you not prepared to admit
That I, who inherited riches and was to the manor born,
Was second to none in Spoon River
In my devotion to the cause of Liberty?
While my contemporary, Anthony Findlay,
Born in a shanty and beginning life
As a water carrier to the section hands,
Then becoming a section hand when he was grown,
Afterwards foreman of the gang, until he rose
To the superintendency of the railroad,
Living in Chicago,
Was a veritable slave driver,
Grinding the faces of labor,
And a bitter enemy of democracy.
And I say to you, Spoon River,
And to you, O republic,
Beware of the man who rises to power
From one suspender.
Bergen
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

(See Note 19)
As thou sittest there
Skerry-bound and fair,
Mountains high around and ocean's deep before thee,
On thee casts her spell
Saga, that shall tell
Once again the wonders of our land.
Honor is thy due,
"Bergen never new,"
Ancient and unaging as thy Holberg's humor;
Once kings sought thine aid, - 
Mighty now in trade, - 
First to fly the flag of liberty.
Oft in proud array,
As a sunshine-day
Breaks forth from thy rain and fog wind-driven,
Thou didst come with men
Or great deeds again,
When the clouds were darkest o'er our land.
Thy soul was the ground,
Wit-enriched and sound,
Whence there sprang stout thoughts to make our country's harvest,
Whence our arts exist,
In their birth-hour kissed
By thy nature, somber, large, and strong.
In thy mountain-hall
Learned our painter, Dahl;
Wand'ring on thy strands our poet dreamed, Welhaven;
All thy morning's gold
Ole Bull ensouled,
Greeted on thy bay by all the world.
With thy sea-wide sway
Thou hast might for aye,
Fjords of blue convey thy life-blood through our country.
Norway's spirit thou
Dost with joy endow, - 
Great thy past, no less thy future great.
The Lost Statesman
by John Greenleaf Whittier

As they who, tossing midst the storm at night,
While turning shoreward, where a beacon shone,
Meet the walled blackness of the heaven alone,
So, on the turbulent waves of party tossed,
In gloom and tempest, men have seen thy light
Quenched in the darkness. At thy hour of noon,
While life was pleasant to thy undimmed sight,
And, day by day, within thy spirit grew
A holier hope than young Ambition knew,
As through thy rural quiet, not in vain,
Pierced the sharp thrill of Freedom's cry of pain,
Man of the millions, thou art lost too soon!
Portents at which the bravest stand aghast,
The birth-throes of a Future, strange and vast,
Alarm the land; yet thou, so wise and strong,
Suddenly summoned to the burial bed,
Lapped in its slumbers deep and ever long,
Hear'st not the tumult surging overhead.
Who now shall rally Freedom's scattering host?
Who wear the mantle of the leader lost?
Who stay the march of slavery? He whose voice
Hath called thee from thy task-field shall not lack
Yet bolder champions, to beat bravely back
The wrong which, through his poor ones, reaches Him:
Yet firmer hands shall Freedom's torchlights trim,
And wave them high across the abysmal black,
Till bound, dumb millions there shall see them and rejoice
In The Quiet Days - An Old-Year Song
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

As through the forest, disarrayed
By chill November, late I strayed,
A lonely minstrel of the wood
Was singing to the solitude
I loved thy music, thus I said,
When o'er thy perch the leaves were spread
Sweet was thy song, but sweeter now
Thy carol on the leafless bough.
Sing, little bird! thy note shall cheer
The sadness of the dying year.
When violets pranked the turf with blue
And morning filled their cups with dew,
Thy slender voice with rippling trill
The budding April bowers would fill,
Nor passed its joyous tones away
When April rounded into May:
Thy life shall hail no second dawn, - 
Sing, little bird! the spring is gone.
And I remember - well-a-day! - 
Thy full-blown summer roundelay,
As when behind a broidered screen
Some holy maiden sings unseen
With answering notes the woodland rung,
And every tree-top found a tongue.
How deep the shade! the groves how fair!
Sing, little bird! the woods are bare.
The summer's throbbing chant is done
And mute the choral antiphon;
The birds have left the shivering pines
To flit among the trellised vines,
Or fan the air with scented plumes
Amid the love-sick orange-blooms,
And thou art here alone, - alone, - 
Sing, little bird! the rest have flown.
The snow has capped yon distant hill,
At morn the running brook was still,
From driven herds the clouds that rise
Are like the smoke of sacrifice;
Erelong the frozen sod shall mock
The ploughshare, changed to stubborn rock,
The brawling streams shall soon be dumb, - 
Sing, little bird! the frosts have come.
Fast, fast the lengthening shadows creep,
The songless fowls are half asleep,
The air grows chill, the setting sun
May leave thee ere thy song is done,
The pulse that warms thy breast grow cold,
Thy secret die with thee, untold
The lingering sunset still is bright, - 
Sing, little bird! 't will soon be night.
1874.
Nursery Rhyme. CCCCL. Love And Matrimony.
by Unknown

As Tommy Snooks and Bessy Brooks
Were walking out one Sunday,
Says Tommy Snooks to Bessy Brooks,
"To-morrow will be Monday."
The Dance (A Song)
by Rupert Brooke

As the Wind, and as the Wind,
In a corner of the way,
Goes stepping, stands twirling,
Invisibly, comes whirling,
Bows before, and skips behind,
In a grave, an endless play
So my Heart, and so my Heart,
Following where your feet have gone,
Stirs dust of old dreams there;
He turns a toe; he gleams there,
Treading you a dance apart.
But you see not. You pass on.
Pride Allowable In Poets.
by Robert Herrick

As thou deserv'st, be proud; then gladly let
The Muse give thee the Delphic coronet.
Farewell To A Singer. On Her Marriage
by Robert Fuller Murray

As those who hear a sweet bird sing,
And love each song it sings the best,
Grieve when they see it taking wing
And flying to another nest:
We, who have heard your voice so oft,
And loved it more than we can tell,
Our hearts grow sad, our voices soft,
Our eyes grow dim, to say farewell.
It is not kind to leave us thus;
Yet we forgive you and combine,
Although you now bring grief to us,
To wish you joy, for auld lang syne.
Old Tunes
by Sara Teasdale

As the waves of perfume, heliotrope, rose,
Float in the garden when no wind blows,
Come to us, go from us, whence no one knows;
So the old tunes float in my mind,
And go from me leaving no trace behind,
Like fragrance borne on the hush of the wind.
But in the instant the airs remain
I know the laughter and the pain
Of times that will not come again.
I try to catch at many a tune
Like petals of light fallen from the moon,
Broken and bright on a dark lagoon,
But they float away, for who can hold
Youth, or perfume or the moon's gold?
Mummia
by Rupert Brooke

As those of old drank mummia
To fire their limbs of lead,
Making dead kings from Africa
Stand pandar to their bed;
Drunk on the dead, and medicined
With spiced imperial dust,
In a short night they reeled to find
Ten centuries of lust.
So I, from paint, stone, tale, and rhyme,
Stuffed love's infinity,
And sucked all lovers of all time
To rarify ecstasy.
Helen's the hair shuts out from me
Verona's livid skies;
Gypsy the lips I press; and see
Two Antonys in your eyes.
The unheard invisible lovely dead
Lie with us in this place,
And ghostly hands above my head
Close face to straining face;
Their blood is wine along our limbs;
Their whispering voices wreathe
Savage forgotten drowsy hymns
Under the names we breathe;
Woven from their tomb, and one with it,
The night wherein we press;
Their thousand pitchy pyres have lit
Your flaming nakedness.
For the uttermost years have cried and clung
To kiss your mouth to mine;
And hair long dust was caught, was flung,
Hand shaken to hand divine,
And Life has fired, and Death not shaded,
All Time's uncounted bliss,
And the height o' the world has flamed and faded,
Love, that our love be this!
Chinatown-I
by Paul Cameron Brown

As they are crawling up to you
think of Angor Wat
the sweating walls
cold in stone
steam broiling in the jungle;
or, that most ancient of men,
the Chinese beggar
the thin rinds of his skin
like scented apples or
kimonos slipped off to dry
Dead Leaves
by James Whitcomb Riley

DAWN
As though a gipsy maiden with dim look,
Sat crooning by the roadside of the year,
So, Autumn, in thy strangeness, thou art here
To read dark fortunes for us from the book
Of fate; thou flingest in the crinkled brook
The trembling maple's gold, and frosty-clear
Thy mocking laughter thrills the atmosphere,
And drifting on its current calls the rook
To other lands.    As one who wades, alone,
Deep in the dusk, and hears the minor talk
Of distant melody, and finds the tone,
In some wierd way compelling him to stalk
The paths of childhood over, - so I moan,
And like a troubled sleeper, groping, walk.
DUSK
The frightened herds of clouds across the sky
Trample the sunshine down, and chase the day
Into the dusky forest-lands of gray
And somber twilight.    Far, and faint, and high
The wild goose trails his harrow, with a cry
Sad as the wail of some poor castaway
Who sees a vessel drifting far astray
Of his last hope, and lays him down to die.
The children, riotous from school, grow bold
And quarrel with the wind, whose angry gust
Plucks off the summer hat, and flaps the fold
Of many a crimson cloak, and twirls the dust
In spiral shapes grotesque, and dims the gold
Of gleaming tresses with the blur of rust.
NIGHT
Funereal Darkness, drear and desolate,
Muffles the world.    The moaning of the wind
Is piteous with sobs of saddest kind;
And laughter is a phantom at the gate
Of memory.    The long-neglected grate
Within sprouts into flame and lights the mind
With hopes and wishes long ago refined
To ashes, - long departed friends await
Our words of welcome: and our lips are dumb
And powerless to greet the ones that press
Old kisses there.    The baby beats its drum,
And fancy marches to the dear caress
Of mother-arms, and all the gleeful hum
Of home intrudes upon our loneliness.
In Memoriam
by Louise Chandler Moulton

As the wind at play with a spark
Of fire that glows through the night;
As the speed of the soaring lark
That wings to the sky his flight - 
So swiftly thy soul has sped
In its upward wonderful way,
Like the lark when the dawn is red,
In search of the shining day.
Thou art not with the frozen dead
Whom earth in the earth we lay,
While the bearers softly tread,
And the mourners kneel and pray;
From thy semblance, dumb and stark,
The soul has taken its flight - 
Out of the finite dark,
Into the infinite Light.
Nursery Rhyme. DXL. Natural History.
by Unknown

As titty mouse sat in the witty to spin,
Pussy came to her and bid her good ev'n,
"Oh, what are you doing, my little 'oman?"
"A spinning a doublet for my gude man."
"Then shall I come to thee and wind up thy thread,"
"Oh no, Mrs. Puss, you'll bite off my head."
Sonnet X.
by Fernando Ant'nio Nogueira Pessoa

As to a child, I talked my heart asleep
With empty promise of the coming day,
And it slept rather for my words made sleep
Than from a thought of what their sense did say.
For did it care for sense, would it not wake
And question closer to the morrow's pleasure?
Would it not edge nearer my words, to take
The promise in the meting of its measure?
So, if it slept, 'twas that it cared but for
The present sleepy use of promised joy,
Thanking the fruit but for the forecome flower
Which the less active senses best enjoy.
Thus with deceit do I detain the heart
Of which deceit's self knows itself a part.
Thought
by Walt Whitman

As they draw to a close,
Of what underlies the precedent songs of my aims in them;
Of the seed I have sought to plant in them;
Of joy, sweet joy, through many a year, in them;
(For them for them have I lived In them my work is done;)
Of many an aspiration fond of many a dream and plan,
Of you, O mystery great! to place on record faith in you, O death!
To compact you, ye parted, diverse lives!
To put rapport the mountains, and rocks, and streams,
And the winds of the north, and the forests of oak and pine,
With you, O soul of man.
His Own Epitaph.
by Robert Herrick

As wearied pilgrims, once possest
Of long'd-for lodging, go to rest,
So I, now having rid my way,
Fix here my button'd staff and stay.
Youth, I confess, hath me misled;
But age hath brought me right to bed.
As The Time Draws Nigh
by Walt Whitman

As the time draws nigh, glooming, a cloud,
A dread beyond, of I know not what, darkens me.
I shall go forth,
I shall traverse The States awhile--but I cannot tell whither or how long;
Perhaps soon, some day or night while I am singing, my voice will suddenly cease.
O book, O chants! must all then amount to but this?
Must we barely arrive at this beginning of us?... And yet it is enough, O soul!
O soul! we have positively appear'd--that is enough.
As Thro' The Land At Eve We Went
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

As thro' the land of eve we went,
And pluck'd the ripen'd ears,
We fell out, my wife and I,
O, we fell out, I know not why,
And kiss'd again with tears.
And blessings on the falling out 
That all the more endears,
When we fall out with those we love
And kiss'd again with tears!
For when we came where lies the child
We lost in other years,
There above the little grave,
O, there above the little grave,
We kiss'd again with tears.
Song From 'The Princess'
by Robert Fuller Murray

As through the street at eve we went
(It might be half-past ten),
We fell out, my friend and I,
About the cube of x+y,
And made it up again.
And blessings on the falling out
Between two learned men,
Who fight on points which neither knows,
And make it up again!
For when we came where stands an inn
We visit now and then,
There above a pint of beer,
Oh there above a pint of beer,
We made it up again.
No Rival Like the Past
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

As those who eat a Luscious Fruit, sunbaked,
Full of sweet juice, with zest, until they find
It finished, and their appetite unslaked,
And so return and eat the pared-off rind; - 
We, who in Youth, set white and careless teeth
In the Ripe Fruits of Pleasure while they last,
Later, creep back to gnaw the cast-off sheath,
And find there is no Rival like the Past.
As We Look Back (Rondeau)
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

As we look back at our lost Used-to-Be,
'The light that never was on land or sea'
Touches the distant mountain peaks with gold,
And through the glass of memory we behold
Such blossoms as grow not on any lea.
The double leaf upon the poplar tree
Turns up its silver side to you and me,
And glow-worm lanterns light the lonely wold
As we look back.
No sounds we hear but echoes of young glee;
No winds we feel but west winds blowing free,
From those fair isles that seem a thousandfold
More beautiful than in the days of old;
And all the clouds that hang above them flee,
As we look back.
A Character.
by Samuel Rogers

As thro' the hedge-row shade the violet steals,
And the sweet air its modest leaf reveals;
Her softer charms, but by their influence known,
Surprise all hearts, and mould them to her own.