DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Oven Bird
by Robert Lee Frost

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
Cancelled Passage Of Mont Blanc.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

There is a voice, not understood by all,
Sent from these desert-caves. It is the roar
Of the rent ice-cliff which the sunbeams call,
Plunging into the vale - it is the blast
Descending on the pines - the torrents pour...
After Long Grief And Pain.
by Madison Julius Cawein

There is a place hung o'er with summer boughs
And drowsy skies wherein the gray hawk sleeps;
Where waters flow, within whose lazy deeps,
Like silvery prisms that the winds arouse,
The minnows twinkle; where the bells of cows
Tinkle the stillness, and the bob-white keeps
Calling from meadows where the reaper reaps,
And children's laughter haunts an old-time house;
A place where life wears ever an honest smell
Of hay and honey, sun and elder-bloom - 
Like some dear, modest girl - within her hair:
Where, with our love for comrade, we may dwell
Far from the city's strife whose cares consume - 
Oh, take my hand and let me lead you there.
Forgotten Songs.
by Kate Seymour Maclean

There is a splendid tropic flower which flings
Its fiery disc wide open to the core--
One pulse of subtlest fragrance--once a life
That rounds a century of blossoming things
And dies, a flower's apotheosis: nevermore
To send up in the sunshine, in sweet strife
With all the winds, a fountain of live flame,
A winged censer in the starlight swung
Once only, flinging all its wealth abroad
To the wide deserts without shore or name
And dying, like a lovely song, once sung
By some dead poet, music's wandering ghost,
Aeons ago blown oat of life and lost,
Remembered only in the heart of God.
Lethe
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
There is a scent of roses and spilt wine
Between the moonlight and the laurel coppice;
The marble idol glimmers on its shrine,
White as a star, among a heaven of poppies.
Here all my life lies like a spilth of wine.
There is a mouth of music like a lute,
A nightingale that sigheth to one flower;
Between the falling flower and the fruit,
Where love hath died, the music of an hour.
II.
To sit alone with memory and a rose;
To dwell with shadows of whilom romances;
To make one hour of a year of woes
And walk on starlight, in ethereal trances,
With love's lost face fair as a moon-white rose,
To shape from music and the scent of buds
Love's spirit and its presence of sweet fire,
Between the heart's wild burning and the blood's,
Is part of life and of the soul's desire.
III.
There is a song to silence and the stars,
Between the forest and the temple's arches;
And down the stream of night, like nenuphars,
The tossing fires of the revellers' torches.
Here all my life waits lonely as the stars.
Shall not one hour of all those hours suffice
For resignation God hath given as dower?
Between the summons and the sacrifice
One hour of love, th' eternity of an hour?
IV.
The shrine is shattered and the bird is gone;
Dark is the house of music and of bridal;
The stars are stricken and the storm comes on;
Lost in a wreck of roses lies the idol,
Sad as the memory of a joy that's gone.
To dream of perished gladness and a kiss,
Waking the last chord of love's broken lyre,
Between remembering and forgetting, this
Is part of life and of the soul's desire.
There Is A Shame Of Nobleness
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

There is a shame of nobleness
Confronting sudden pelf, --
A finer shame of ecstasy
Convicted of itself.
A best disgrace a brave man feels,
Acknowledged of the brave, --
One more "Ye Blessed" to be told;
But this involves the grave.
The Battle Of Chateauguay.
by W. M. MacKeracher

There is a valley where the wheat fields wave
In autumn like a gold ymolten sea;
There is a river whose cool waters lave
Sweet-scented gardens, groves, and rolling lea,
And homes of people worthy to be free;
There is a name whose sound is like a song
On lips of its own maidens - Chateauguay;
Yet mighty as the combat of the strong,
And glorious as the march of Freedom over Wrong.
And here they fought; and each encountered ten,
With war-steed and artillery arrayed;
But righteous was their cause, and they were men, -
Dark plumes of Iroquois, and Scotia's plaid,
But most, the brothers of the arm which made
Napoleon terrible with triumphing.
Between the foe and heaven they knelt and prayed,
Then, rising, heard their leader's summons ring -
"Such is our duty to our God - now for our King!"
Again they knelt; but now 'twas not to pray;
A murd'rous volley crashes from their line;
But tenfold thunder mocks their mimic fray;
From furious gun and flashing carabine,
Like roaring billows and the driving brine,
The glut is backward hurled. Hurrah! 'tis vain!
The vengeful fools, like men who war in wine,
Intoxicate with madness, overfain
For blood, have fired o'erhead, and not a man is slain.
Meantime, the valiant hero of the fight
Upon his flank had foiled another foe,
Who now, retreating back in broken plight,
Dismayed the rest with vision of their woe. -
To see and seize, the leader is not slow;
He rushes to his buglers, bids them fast
Withdraw into the woods, advance and blow -
"As for your lives this effort were the last! -
Yea, blow as Britain's throne depended on your blast!"
Away they ran, and, wheeling, sharply blew
The wide-mouthed din obedient to his word:
Afar to north and south the echoes flew;
The Indian child was startled, and the bird
Affrighted from its peaceful nest; it stirred
The sluggish waters of the swart Outarde.
Aghast, the Southron a great army heard,
And fled before the visionary sword,
As fled the Syrian host, deceived by Israel's Lord.
Back! cravens, back! in ignominy fly!
Back to your homes, your country, and your slaves!
But thou art holy ground, and ne'er shall die
Thy virtue and thy fame while still Time saves
His best. And still shall states when conquest craves
From thee the salutary lesson learn,
The poet call thy heroes from their graves,
To thee the warrior point, the patriot turn,
Thou last of Freedom's fields - Canadian Bannockburn!
A Forest Child
by Madison Julius Cawein

There is a place I search for still,
Sequestered as the world of dreams,
A bushy hollow, and a hill
That whispers with descending streams,
Cool, careless waters, wandering down,
Like Innocence who runs to town,
Leaving the wildwood and its dreams,
And prattling like the forest streams.
But still in dreams I meet again
The child who bound me, heart and hand,
And led me with a wildflower chain
Far from our world, to Faeryland:
Who made me see and made me know
The lovely Land of Long-Ago,
Leading me with her little hand
Into the world of Wonderland.
The years have passed: how far away
The day when there I met the child,
The little maid, who was a fay,
Whose eyes were dark and undefiled
And crystal as a woodland well,
That holds within its depths a spell,
Enchantments, featured like a child,
A dream, a poetry undefiled.
Around my heart she wrapped her hair,
And bound my soul with lips and eyes,
And led me to a cavern, where
Grey Legend dwelt in kingly guise,
Her kinsman, dreamier than the moon,
Who called her Fancy, read her rune,
And bade her with paternal eyes
Divest herself of her disguise.
And still I walk with her in dreams,
Though many years have passed since then,
And that high hill and its wild streams
Are lost as is that faery glen.
And as the years go swiftly by
I find it harder, when I try,
To meet with her, who led me then
Into the wildness of that glen.
A Shallow Stream.
by W. M. MacKeracher

There is a stream to northward, thinly spread
Over a shelving, many-fissured shale,
That brawls and blusters in its shallow bed,
And ends its course inglorious in a swale.
Its babble stirs the laughter of the hills;
The rooted mountains mock its fume and fret;
And all the summer long the idle mills
Wait wearily with water-wheel unwet.
Let us not waste our lives in froth and foam
And unavailing vanity of noise;
"Still waters deepest run" - the ancient gnome
Pricks well our sham, conceited bubble-toys;
Who serve best here in God's great halidome
Have volume, depth, serenity and poise.
Sonnet. Silence.
by Thomas Hood

There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave - under the deep deep sea,
Or in wide desert where no life is found,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;
No voice is hush'd - no life treads silently,
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free.
That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls
Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox, or wild hy'na, calls,
And owls, that flit continually between,
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan, - 
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.
Love Of Jerusalem
by Yehuda Amichai

There is a street where they sell only red meat
And there is a street where they sell only clothes and perfumes. And there
is a day when I see only cripples and the blind
And those covered with leprosy, and spastics and those with twisted lips.
Here they build a house and there they destroy
Here they dig into the earth
And there they dig into the sky,
Here they sit and there they walk
Here they hate and there they love.
But he who loves Jerusalem
By the tourist book or the prayer book
is like one who loves a women
By a manual of sex positions.
In The South.
by James Whitcomb Riley

There is a princess in the South
About whose beauty rumors hum
Like honey-bees about the mouth
Of roses dewdrops falter from;
And O her hair is like the fine
Clear amber of a jostled wine
In tropic revels; and her eyes
Are blue as rifts of Paradise.
Such beauty as may none before
Kneel daringly, to kiss the tips
Of fingers such as knights of yore
Had died to lift against their lips:
Such eyes as might the eyes of gold
Of all the stars of night behold
With glittering envy, and so glare
In dazzling splendor of despair.
So, were I but a minstrel, deft
At weaving, with the trembling strings
Of my glad harp, the warp and weft
Of rondels such as rapture sings, -
I'd loop my lyre across my breast,
Nor stay me till my knee found rest
In midnight banks of bud and flower
Beneath my lady's lattice-bower.
And there, drenched with the teary dews,
I'd woo her with such wondrous art
As well might stanch the songs that ooze
Out of the mockbird's breaking heart;
So light, so tender, and so sweet
Should be the words I would repeat,
Her casement, on my gradual sight,
Would blossom as a lily might.
Punch.
by Richard Hunter

There is a queer dolly named Punch,
Who has a remarkable hunch.
The tip of his nose
Is red as a rose,
And that's how you know Mister Punch.
Prologue (Kentucky Poems)
by Madison Julius Cawein

There is a poetry that speaks
Through common things: the grasshopper,
That in the hot weeds creaks and creaks,
Says all of summer to my ear:
And in the cricket's cry I hear
The fireside speak, and feel the frost
Work mysteries of silver near
On country casements, while, deep lost
In snow, the gatepost seems a sheeted ghost.
And other things give rare delight:
Those guttural harps the green-frogs tune,
Those minstrels of the falling night,
That hail the sickle of the moon
From grassy pools that glass her lune:
Or, - all of August in its loud
Dry cry, - the locust's call at noon,
That tells of heat and never a cloud
To veil the pitiless sun as with a shroud.
The rain, - whose cloud dark-lids the moon,
The great white eyeball of the night, - 
Makes music for me; to its tune
I hear the flowers unfolding white,
The mushroom growing, and the slight
Green sound of grass that dances near;
The melon ripening with delight;
And in the orchard, soft and clear,
The apple redly rounding out its sphere.
The grigs make music as of old,
To which the fairies whirl and shine
Within the moonlight's prodigal gold,
On woodways wild with many a vine:
When all the wilderness with wine
Of stars is drunk, I hear it say - 
'Is God restricted to confine
His wonders only to the day,
That yields the abstract tangible to clay?'
And to my ear the wind of Morn, - 
When on her rubric forehead far
One star burns big, - lifts a vast horn
Of wonder where all murmurs are:
In which I hear the waters war,
The torrent and the blue abyss,
And pines, - that terrace bar on bar
The mountain side, - like lovers' kiss,
And whisper words where naught but grandeur is.
The jutting crags, - all iron-veined
With ore, - the peaks, where eagles scream,
That pour their cataracts, rainbow-stained,
Like hair, in many a mountain stream,
Can lift my soul beyond the dream
Of all religions; make me scan
No mere external or extreme,
But inward pierce the outward plan
And learn that rocks have souls as well as man.
Prologue
by Madison Julius Cawein

There is a poetry that speaks
Through common things: the grasshopper,
That in the hot weeds creaks and creaks,
Says all of summer to my ear:
And in the cricket's cry I hear
The fireside speak, and feel the frost
Work mysteries of silver near
On country casements, while, deep lost
In snow, the gatepost seems a sheeted ghost.
And other things give rare delight:
Those guttural harps the green-frogs tune,
Those minstrels of the falling night,
That hail the sickle of the moon
From grassy pools that glass her lune:
Or, all of August in its loud
Dry cry, the locust's call at noon,
That tells of heat and never a cloud
To veil the pitiless sun as with a shroud.
The rain, whose cloud dark-lids the moon,
The great white eyeball of the night,
Makes music for me; to its tune
I hear the flowers unfolding white,
The mushroom growing, and the slight
Green sound of grass that dances near;
The melon ripening with delight;
And in the orchard, soft and clear,
The apple redly rounding out its sphere.
The grigs make music as of old,
To which the fairies whirl and shine
Within the moonlight's prodigal gold,
On woodways wild with many a vine:
When all the wilderness with wine
Of stars is drunk, I hear it say
'Is God restricted to confine
His wonders only to the day,
That yields the abstract tangible to clay?'
And to my ear the mind of Morn,
When on her rubric forehead far
One star burns big, lifts a vast horn
Of wonder where all murmurs are:
In which I hear the waters war,
The torrent and the blue abyss,
And pines, that terrace bar on bar
The mountain side, like lovers' kiss,
And whisper words where naught but grandeur is.
The jutting crags, all iron-veined
With ore, the peaks, where eagles scream,
That pour their cataracts, rainbow-stained,
Like hair, in many a mountain stream,
Can lift my soul beyond the dream
Of all religions; make me scan
No mere external or extreme,
But inward pierce the outward plan
And learn that rocks have souls as well as man.
The Tower-Room
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There is a room serene and fair,
All palpitant with light and air;
Free from the dust, world's noise and fuss - 
God's Tower-room in each of us.
Oh! many a stair our feet must press,
And climb from self to selflessness,
Before we reach that radiant room
Above the discord and the gloom.
So many, many stairs to climb,
But mount them gently - take your time;
Rise leisurely, nor strive to run - 
Not so the mightiest feats are done.
Well doing of the little things:
Repression of the word that stings;
The tempest of the mind made still
By victory of the God-like will.
The hated task performed in love - 
All these are stairs that wind above
The things that trouble and annoy,
Up to the Tower-room of joy.
Rise leisurely; the stairs once trod
Reveal the mountain peaks of God;
And from its upper room the soul
Sees all, in one united whole.
Metaphor
by Paul Cameron Brown

There is a star near
the hinge of planets,
a barn under
a cow's lick of moon - 
plausible people
moving thru an
airless universe.
Pay attention to the frond of lilac
. . . limestone troughs upon which
thickets of Indian scalp &
devil's paintbrush soar
to the horizon
and, afterwards,
little creeks run
with the sparrows of evening time
in step to tiny boatmen
that echo enamelled snails
from the very consonants of earth.
Rustle of leaves,
some might argue
breathless gasps
to intone the savagery
of little seasonal voices
cut off
mid-stream.
A spate of bees,
early colonizers
deflower blossoms and
strip-mine lava butter of erupting
hard-shell tulips:
such careless penetrations - 
volcanic intrusions entomb
their hairy bodies caked with
the iron-lung of blackened soot petals,
each a cough drop
on the heaving breath
of a declining afternoon.
The Arbour.
by John Clare

There is a wilder'd spot delights me well,
Pent in a corner of my native vale,
Where tiny blossoms with a purple bell
Shiver their beauties to the autumn-gale.
'Tis one of those mean arbours that prevail
With manhood's weakness, still to seek and love
For what is past:--Destruction's axe did fail
To cut it down with its companion grove.
Though but a trifling thorn, oft shelt'ring warm
A brood of summer birds, by nature led
To seek for covert in a hasty storm;
I often think it lifts its lonely cares,
In piteous bloom where all the rest are fled,
Like a poor warrior the rude battle spares.
Listening
by John Frederick Freeman

There is a place of grass
With daisies like white pools,
Or shining islands in a sea
Of brightening waves.
Swallows, darting, brush
The waves of gentle green,
As though a wide still lake it were,
Not living grass.
Evening draws over all,
Grass and flowers and sky,
And one rich bird prolongs the sweet
Of day on the edge of dark.
The grass is dim, the stars
Lean down the height of heaven;
And the trees, listening in all their leaves,
Scarce-breathing stand.
Nothing is as it was:
The bird on the bough sings on;
The night, pure from the cloud of day,
Is listening.
Epilogue Intended To Have Been Spoken For 'She Stoops To Conquer'
by Oliver Goldsmith

There is a place, so Ariosto sings,
A treasury for lost and missing things;
Lost human wits have places assign'd them,
And they, who lose their senses, there may find them.
But where's this place, this storehouse of the age?
The Moon, says he: but 'I' affirm the Stage:
At least in many things, I think, I see
His lunar, and our mimic world agree.
Both shine at night, for, but at Foote's alone,
We scarce exhibit till the sun goes down.
Both prone to change, no settled limits fix,
And sure the folks of both are lunatics.
But in this parallel my best pretence is,
That mortals visit both to find their senses.
To this strange spot, Rakes, Macaronies, Cits
Come thronging to collect their scatter'd wits.
The gay coquette, who ogles all the day,
Comes here at night, and goes a prude away.
Hither the affected city dame advancing,
Who sighs for operas, and dotes on dancing,
Taught by our art her ridicule to pause on,
Quits the 'Ballet', and calls for 'Nancy Dawson'.
The Gamester too, whose wit's all high or low,
Oft risks his fortune on one desperate throw,
Comes here to saunter, having made his bets,
Finds his lost senses out, and pay his debts.
The Mohawk too with angry phrases stored,
As 'D , Sir,' and 'Sir, I wear a sword';
Here lesson'd for a while, and hence retreating,
Goes out, affronts his man, and takes a beating.
Here come the sons of scandal and of news,
But find no sense for they had none to lose.
Of all the tribe here wanting an adviser
Our Author's the least likely to grow wiser;
Has he not seen how you your favour place,
On sentimental Queens and Lords in lace?
Without a star, a coronet or garter,
How can the piece expect or hope for quarter?
No high-life scenes, no sentiment: the creature
Still stoops among the low to copy nature.
Yes, he's far gone: and yet some pity fix,
The English laws forbid to punish lunatics.
Song
by John Collings Squire, Sir

There is a wood where the fairies dance
All night long in a ring of mushrooms daintily,
By each tree bole sits a squirrel or a mole,
And the moon through the branches darts.
Light on the grass their slim limbs glance,
Their shadows in the moonlight swing in quiet unison,
And the moon discovers that they all have lovers,
But they never break their hearts.
They never grieve at all for sands that run,
They never know regret for a deed that's done,
And they never think of going to a shed with a gun
At the rising of the sun.
Riflemen Form!
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

There is a sound of thunder afar,
Storm in the South that darkens the day!
Storm of battle and thunder of war!
Well if it do not roll our way.
Storm, Storm, Riflemen form!
Ready, be ready against the storm!
Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen form!
Be not deaf to the sound that warns,
Be not gull'd by a despot's plea!
Are figs of thistles? or grapes of thorns?
How can a despot feel with the Free?
Form, Form, Riflemen Form!
Ready, be ready to meet the storm!
Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen form!
Let your reforms for a moment go!
Look to your butts, and take good aims!
Better a rotten borough or so
Than a rotten fleet and a city in flames!
Storm, Storm, Riflemen form!
Ready, be ready against the storm!
Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen form!
Form, be ready to do or die!
Form in Freedom's name and the Queen's
True we have got'such a faithful ally
That only the Devil can tell what he means.
Form, Form, Riflemen Form
Ready, be ready to meet the storm!
Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen form!
Happy Valley." {66}
by Francis William Lauderdale Adams

There is a valley green that lies
'Mid hills, the summer's bower.
The many coloured butterflies
Flutter from flower to flower.
And round one lush green side of it,
In gardened homes are laid,
With grief and care compassionate,
The people of the dead.
There all the voicing summer day
They sing, the happy rills.
No noisy sound awakes away
The echo of the hills.
The Three Quiet Gentlemen
by Henry Lawson

There is a quiet gentleman a-motoring in France
(Oh, don't you hear the honking of a British motor-car?), 
Like any quiet gentleman that you may meet by chance,
Who doesn't wear a uniform, and doesn't sport a star.
Another quiet gentleman is sitting by his side
(Oh, do you hear the 'shuffling feet' tonight in Gay Paree?), 
The honking of their motor-car, when they go for a ride,
Is louder than the biggest gun that's made in Germany.
Another quiet gentleman, who's very like the first
(Oh, don't you hear the tinkle of the sleigh-bells on the snow?)
Is riding out in Russia now to watch the best and worst.
Oh, hear the bells of Petrograd a-ringing soft and low, 
The Christmas bells of Petrograd, that hail the birth of Christ;
The sleigh-bells from the opera that hail the birth of Sin, 
While eyes of men are dried in Hell and hearts of men are iced, 
Are louder than the loudest blare that's blaring in Berlin.
Fragment: Love'S Tender Atmosphere.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

There is a warm and gentle atmosphere
About the form of one we love, and thus
As in a tender mist our spirits are
Wrapped in the ... of that which is to us
The health of life's own life -
Autumn
by Walter De La Mare

There is a wind where the rose was;
Cold rain where sweet grass was;
And clouds like sheep
Stream o'er the steep
Grey skies where the lark was.
Nought gold where your hair was;
Nought warm where your hand was;
But phantom, forlorn,
Beneath the thorn,
Your ghost where your face was.
Sad winds where your voice was;
Tears, tears where my heart was;
And ever with me,
Child, ever with me,
Silence where hope was.