DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
A Poet's Wooing
by James Whitcomb Riley

I woo'd a woman once,
But she was sharper than an eastern wind.
- TENNYSON.
"What may I do to make you glad,
To make you glad and free,
Till your light smiles glance
And your bright eyes dance
Like sunbeams on the sea?
Read some rhyme that is blithe and gay
Of a bright May morn and a marriage day?"
And she sighed in a listless way she had, -
"Do not read - it will make me sad!"
"What shall I do to make you glad -
To make you glad and gay,
Till your eyes gleam bright
As the stars at night
When as light as the light of day
Sing some song as I twang the strings
Of my sweet guitar through its wanderings?"
And she sighed in the weary way she had, -
"Do not sing - it will make me sad!"
"What can I do to make you glad -
As glad as glad can be,
Till your clear eyes seem
Like the rays that gleam
And glint through a dew-decked tree? -
Will it please you, dear, that I now begin
A grand old air on my violin?"
And she spoke again in the following way, -
"Yes, oh yes, it would please me, sir;
I would be so glad you'd play
Some grand old march - in character, -
And then as you march away
I will no longer thus be sad,
But oh, so glad - so glad - so glad!"
Flattery.
by Robert Herrick

What is't that wastes a prince? example shows,
'Tis flattery spends a king, more than his foes.
Memorials Of A Tour On The Continent, 1820 - XVI. - Scene On The Lake Of Brientz
by William Wordsworth

"What know we of the Blest above
But that they sing and that they love?"
Yet, if they ever did inspire
A mortal hymn, or shaped the choir,
Now, where those harvest Damsels float
Homeward in their rugged Boat,
(While all the ruffling winds are fled
Each slumbering on some mountain's head)
Now, surely, hath that gracious aid
Been felt, that influence is displayed.
Pupils of Heaven, in order stand
The rustic Maidens, every hand
Upon a Sister's shoulder laid,
To chant, as glides the boat along,
A simple, but a touching, song;
To chant, as Angels do above,
The melodies of Peace in love!
The Grasshopper
by Madison Julius Cawein

What joy you take in making hotness hotter,
In emphasising dulness with your buzz,
Making monotony more monotonous!
When Summer comes, and drouth hath dried the water
In all the creeks, we hear your ragged rasp
Filling the stillness. Or, as urchins beat
A stagnant pond whereon the bubbles gasp,
Your switch-like music whips the midday heat.
O bur of sound caught in the Summer's hair,
We hear you everywhere!
We hear you in the vines and berry-brambles,
Along the unkempt lanes, among the weeds,
Amid the shadeless meadows, gray with seeds,
And by the wood 'round which the rail-fence rambles,
Sawing the sunlight with your sultry saw.
Or, like to tomboy truants, at their play
With noisy mirth among the barn's deep straw,
You sing away the careless summer-day.
O brier-like voice that clings in idleness
To Summer's drowsy dress!
You tramp of insects, vagrant and unheeding,
Improvident, who of the summer make
One long green mealtime, and for winter take
No care, aye singing or just merely feeding!
Happy-go-lucky vagabond, 'though frost
Shall pierce, ere long, your green coat or your brown,
And pinch your body, let no song be lost,
But as you lived into your grave go down
Like some small poet with his little rhyme,
Forgotten of all time.
Riches.
by Madison Julius Cawein

What mines the morning heavens unfold!
What far Alaskas of the skies!
That, veined with elemental gold,
Sierra on Sierra rise.
Heap up the gold of all the world,
The ore that makes men fools and slaves;
What is it to the gold, cloud-curled,
That rivers through the sunset's caves!
Search Earth for riches all who will,
The gold that soils, that turns to dust
Be mine the wealth no thief can steal,
The gold of God that can not rust.
The Scribe
by Walter De La Mare

What lovely things
Thy hand hath made:
The smooth-plumed bird
In its emerald shade,
The seed of the grass,
The speck of stone
Which the wayfaring ant
Stirs - and hastes on!
Though I should sit
By some tarn in thy hills,
Using its ink
As the spirit wills
To write of Earth's wonders,
Its live, willed things,
Flit would the ages
On soundless wings.
Ere unto Z
My pen drew nigh;
Leviathan told,
And the honey-fly:
And still would remain
My wit to try
My worn reeds broken,
The dark tarn dry,
All words forgotten - 
Thou, Lord, and I.
Life
by Victor James Daley

What know we of the dead, who say these things,
Or of the life in death below the mould,
What of the mystic laws that rule the old
Gray realms beyond our poor imaginings
Where death is life? The bird with spray-wet wings
Knows more of what the deeps beneath him hold.
Let be: warm hearts shall never wax a-cold,
But burn in roses through eternal springs:
For all the vanished fruit and flower of Time
Are flower and fruit in worlds we cannot see,
And all we see is as a shadow-mime
Of things unseen, and Time that comes to flee
Is but the broken echo of a rhyme
In God's great epic of Eternity.
Mi Old Umberel
by John Hartley

What matters if some fowk deride,
An point wi' a finger o' scorn?
Th' time wor tha wor lukt on wi' pride,
Befooar mooast o'th' scoffers wor born.
But aw'll ne'er turn mi back on a friend,
Tho' old-fashioned an grey like thisen;
But aw'll try to cling to thi to th' end,
Tho' thart nobbut an old umberel.
Whear wod th' young ens 'at laff be to-day,
But for th' old ens they turn into fun?
Who wor wearm thersen bent an grey,
When their days had hardly begun.
Ther own youth will quickly glide past;
If they live they'll ail grow old thersel;
An they'll long for a true friend at last,
Tho' its nobbut an old umberel.
Tha's grown budgey, an faded, an worn,
Yet thi inside is honest an strong;
But thi coverin's tattered an torn,
An awm feeard 'at tha cannot last long.
But when th' few years 'at's left us have run,
An to th' world we have whispered farewells;
May they say at my duty wor done,
As weel as mi old umberel's
Playing At Soldiers.
by Thomas Hood

"Who'll serve the King?"
What little urchin is there never
Hath had that early scarlet fever,
Of martial trappings caught?
Trappings well call'd - because they trap
And catch full many a country chap
To go where fields are fought!
What little urchin with a rag
Hath never made a little flag
(Our plate will show the manner),
And wooed each tiny neighbor still,
Tommy or Harry, Dick or Will,
To come beneath the banner!
Just like that ancient shape of mist,
In Hamlet, crying "'List, oh, 'list!"
Come, who will serve the king,
And strike frog-eating Frenchmen dead,
And cut off Bonyparty's head? - 
And all that sort of thing.
So used I, when I was a boy,
To march with military toy,
And ape the soldier's life; - 
And with a whistle or a hum,
I thought myself a Duke of Drum
At least, or Earl of Fife.
With gun of tin and sword of lath,
Lord! how I walk'd in glory's path
With regimental mates,
By sound of trump and rub-a dubs - 
To 'siege the washhouse - charge the tubs - 
Or storm the garden gates.
Ah me! my retrospective soul!
As over memory's muster-roll
I cast my eyes anew,
My former comrades all the while
Rise up before me, rank and file,
And form in dim review.
Ay, there they stand, and dress in line,
Lubbock, and Fenn, and David Vine,
And dark "Jamaeky Forde!"
And limping Wood, and "Cockey Hawes,"
Our captain always made, because
He had a real sword!
Long Lawrence, Natty Smart, and Soame,
Who said he had a gun at home,
But that was all a brag;
Ned Ryder, too, that used to sham
A prancing horse, and big Sam Lamb
That would hold up the flag!
Tom Anderson, and "Dunny White,"
Who never right-abouted right,
For he was deaf and dumb;
Jack Pike, Jem Crack, and Sandy Gray,
And Dickey Bird, that wouldn't play
Unless he had the drum.
And Peter Holt, and Charley Jepp,
A chap that never kept the step - 
No more did "Surly Hugh;"
Bob Harrington, and "Fighting Jim" - 
We often had to halt for him,
To let him tie his shoe.
"Quarrelsome Scott," and Martin Dick,
That kill'd the bantam cock, to stick
The plumes within his hat;
Bill Hook, and little Tommy Grout,
That got so thump'd for calling out
"Eyes right!" to "Squinting Matt."
Dan Simpson, that, with Peter Dodd,
Was always in the awkward squad,
And those two greedy Blakes
That took our money to the fair,
To buy the corps a trumpet there,
And laid it out in cakes.
Where are they now? - an open war
With open mouth declaring for? - 
Or fall'n in bloody fray?
Compell'd to tell the truth I am,
Their fights all ended with the sham, - 
Their soldiership in play.
Brave Soame sends cheeses out in trucks,
And Martin sells the cock he plucks,
And Jepp now deals in wine;
Harrington bears a lawyer's bag,
And warlike Lamb retains his flag,
But on a tavern sign.
They tell me Cockey Hawes's sword
Is seen upon a broker's board:
And as for "Fighting Jim,"
In Bishopsgate, last Whitsuntide,
His unresisting cheek I spied
Beneath a Quaker brim!
Quarrelsome Scott is in the church,
For Ryder now your eye must search
The marts of silk and lace - 
Bird's drums are filled with figs, and mute,
And I - I've got a substitute
To Soldier in my place!
Cruelty And Love
by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

What large, dark hands are those at the window
Lifted, grasping in the yellow light
Which makes its way through the curtain web
At my heart to-night?
Ah, only the leaves! So leave me at rest,
In the west I see a redness come
Over the evening's burning breast -
For now the pain is numb.
The woodbine creeps abroad
Calling low to her lover:
The sunlit flirt who all the day
Has poised above her lips in play
And stolen kisses, shallow and gay
Of dalliance, now has gone away
- She woos the moth with her sweet, low word,
And when above her his broad wings hover
Then her bright breast she will uncover
And yield her honey-drop to her lover.
Into the yellow, evening glow
Saunters a man from the farm below,
Leans, and looks in at the low-built shed
Where hangs the swallow's marriage bed.
The bird lies warm against the wall.
She glances quick her startled eyes
Towards him, then she turns away
Her small head, making warm display
Of red upon the throat. Her terrors sway
Her out of the nest's warm, busy ball,
Whose plaintive cries start up as she flies
In one blue stoop from out the sties
Into the evening's empty hall.
Oh, water-hen, beside the rushes
Hide your quaint, unfading blushes,
Still your quick tail, and lie as dead,
Till the distance covers his dangerous tread.
The rabbit presses back her ears,
Turns back her liquid, anguished eyes
And crouches low: then with wild spring
Spurts from the terror of the oncoming
To be choked back, the wire ring
Her frantic effort throttling:
Piteous brown ball of quivering fears!
Ah soon in his large, hard hands she dies,
And swings all loose to the swing of his walk.
Yet calm and kindly are his eyes
And ready to open in brown surprise
Should I not answer to his talk
Or should he my tears surmise.
I hear his hand on the latch, and rise from my chair
Watching the door open: he flashes bare
His strong teeth in a smile, and flashes his eyes
In a smile like triumph upon me; then careless-wise
He flings the rabbit soft on the table board
And comes towards me: ah, the uplifted sword
Of his hand against my bosom, and oh, the broad
Blade of his hand that raises my face to applaud
His coming: he raises up my face to him
And caresses my mouth with his fingers, smelling grim
Of the rabbit's fur! God, I am caught in a snare
I know not what fine wire is round my throat,
I only know I let him finger there
My pulse of life, letting him nose like a stoat
Who sniffs with joy before he drinks the blood:
And down his mouth comes to my mouth, and down
His dark bright eyes descend like a fiery hood
Upon my mind: his mouth meets mine, and a flood
Of sweet fire sweeps across me, so I drown
Within him, die, and find death good.
The Frontier Line
by Arthur Conan Doyle

What marks the frontier line?
Thou man of India, say!
Is it the Himalayas sheer,
The rocks and valleys of Cashmere,
Or Indus as she seeks the south
From Attoch to the fivefold mouth?
'Not that! Not that!'
Then answer me, I pray!
What marks the frontier line?
What marks the frontier line?
Thou man of Burmah, speak!
Is it traced from Mandalay,
And down the marches of Cathay,
From Bhamo south to Kiang-mai,
And where the buried rubies lie?
'Not that! Not that!'
Then tell me what I seek:
What marks the frontier line?
What marks the frontier line?
Thou Africander, say!
Is it shown by Zulu kraal,
By Drakensberg or winding Vaal,
Or where the Shire waters seek
Their outlet east at Mozambique?
'Not that! Not that!
There is a surer way
To mark the frontier line.'
What marks the frontier line?
Thou man of Egypt, tell!
Is it traced on Luxor's sand,
Where Karnak's painted pillars stand,
Or where the river runs between
The Ethiop and Bishareen?
'Not that! Not that!
By neither stream nor well
We mark the frontier line.
'But be it east or west,
One common sign we bear,
The tongue may change, the soil, the sky,
But where your British brothers lie,
The lonely cairn, the nameless grave,
Still fringe the flowing Saxon wave.
'Tis that! 'Tis where
THEY lie--the men who placed it there,
That marks the frontier line.'
What Little Things!
by Madison Julius Cawein

From "One Day and Another"
What little things are those
That hold our happiness!
A smile, a glance, a rose
Dropped from her hair or dress;
A word, a look, a touch,
These are so much, so much.
An air we can't forget;
A sunset's gold that gleams;
A spray of mignonette,
Will fill the soul with dreams
More than all history says,
Or romance of old days.
For of the human heart,
Not brain, is memory;
These things it makes a part
Of its own entity;
The joys, the pains whereof
Are the very food of love.
The Toad-Eater.
by Robert Burns

What of earls with whom you have supt,
And of dukes that you dined with yestreen?
Lord! a louse, Sir, is still but a louse,
Though it crawl on the curl of a queen.
Literary Lady, The
by Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan

What motley cares Corilla's mind perplex,
Whom maids and metaphors conspire to vex!
In studious dishabille behold her sit,
A lettered gossip and a household wit;
At once invoking, though for different views,
Her gods, her cook, her milliner and muse.
Round her strewed room a frippery chaos lies,
A checkered wreck of notable and wise,
Bills, books, caps, couplets, combs, a varied mass,
Oppress the toilet and obscure the glass;
Unfinished here an epigram is laid,
And there a mantua-maker's bill unpaid.
There new-born plays foretaste the town's applause,
There dormant patterns pine for future gauze.
A moral essay now is all her care,
A satire next, and then a bill of fare.
A scene she now projects, and now a dish;
Here Act the First, and here, Remove with Fish.
Now, while this eye in a fine frenzy rolls,
That soberly casts up a bill for coals;
Black pins and daggers in one leaf she sticks,
And tears, and threads, and bowls, and thimbles mix.
A Miltonic Exercise
by Henry Austin Dobson

(TERCENTENARY, 1608-1908)
"Stops of various Quills."--LYCIDAS.
What need of votive Verse
To strew thy Laureat Herse
With that mix'd Flora of th' Aonian Hill?
Or Mincian vocall Reed,
That Cam and Isis breed,
When thine own Words are burning in us still?
Bard, Prophet, Archimage!
In this Cash-cradled Age,
We grate our scrannel Musick, and we dote:
Where is the Strain unknown,
Through Bronze or Silver blown,
That thrill'd the Welkin with thy woven Note?
Yes,--"we are selfish Men":
Yet would we once again
Might see Sabrina braid her amber Tire;
Or watch the Comus Crew
Sweep down the Glade; or view
Strange-streamer'd Craft from Javan or Gadire!
Or could we catch once more,
High up, the Clang and Roar
Of Angel Conflict,--Angel Overthrow;
Or, with a World begun,
Behold the young-ray'd Sun
Flame in the Groves where the Four Rivers go!
Ay me, I fondly dream!
Only the Storm-bird's Scream
Foretells of Tempest in the Days to come;
Nowhere is heard up-climb
The lofty lyric Rhyme,
And the "God-gifted Organ-voice" is dumb.[1]
Cromwell's Statue1
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

What needs our Cromwell stone or bronze to say
His was the light that lit on England's way
The sundawn of her time-compelling power,
The noontide of her most imperial day?
His hand won back the sea for England's dower;
His footfall bade the Moor change heart and cower;
His word on Milton's tongue spake law to France
When Piedmont felt the she-wolf Rome devour.
From Cromwell's eyes the light of England's glance
Flashed, and bowed down the kings by grace of chance,
The priest-anointed princes; one alone
By grace of England held their hosts in trance.
The enthroned Republic from her kinglier throne
Spake, and her speech was Cromwell's. Earth has known
No lordlier presence. How should Cromwell stand
With kinglets and with queenlings hewn in stone?
Incarnate England in his warrior hand
Smote, and as fire devours the blackening brand
Made ashes of their strengths who wrought her wrong,
And turned the strongholds of her foes to sand.
His praise is in the sea's and Milton's song;
What praise could reach him from the weakling throng
That rules by leave of tongues whose praise is shame
Him, who made England out of weakness strong?
There needs no clarion's blast of broad-blown fame
To bid the world bear witness whence he came
Who bade fierce Europe fawn at England's heel
And purged the plague of lineal rule with flame.
There needs no witness graven on stone or steel
For one whose work bids fame bow down and kneel;
Our man of men, whose time-commanding name
Speaks England, and proclaims her Commonweal.
Sonnet. Written In A Copy Of Falconer's "Shipwreck."
by William Lisle Bowles

What pale and bleeding youth, whilst the fell blast
Howls o'er the wreck, and fainter sinks the cry
Of struggling wretches ere, o'erwhelmed, they die,
Yet floats upborne upon the driving mast!
O poor Arion! has thy sweetest strain,
That charmed old ocean's wildest solitude,
At this dread hour his waves' dark might subdued!
Let sea-maids thy reclining head sustain,
And wipe the blood and briny drops that soil
Thy features; give once more the wreathed shell
To ring with melody! Ah, fruitless toil!
O'er thy devoted head the tempests swell,
More loud relentless ocean claims his spoil:
Peace! and may weeping sea-maids sing thy knell!
Sung On A By-Way
by George William Russell

What of all the will to do?
It has vanished long ago,
For a dream-shaft pierced it through
From the Unknown Archer's bow.
What of all the soul to think?
Some one offered it a cup
Filled with a diviner drink,
And the flame has burned it up.
What of all the hope to climb?
Only in the self we grope
To the misty end of time:
Truth has put an end to hope.
What of all the heart to love?
Sadder than for will or soul,
No light lured it on above;
Love has found itself the whole.
Re-Voyage
by Emily Pauline Johnson

What of the days when we two dreamed together?
Days marvellously fair,
As lightsome as a skyward floating feather
Sailing on summer air - 
Summer, summer, that came drifting through
Fate's hand to me, to you.
What of the days, my dear? I sometimes wonder
If you too wish this sky
Could be the blue we sailed so softly under,
In that sun-kissed July;
Sailed in the warm and yellow afternoon,
With hearts in touch and tune.
Have you no longing to re-live the dreaming,
Adrift in my canoe?
To watch my paddle blade all wet and gleaming
Cleaving the waters through?
To lie wind-blown and wave-caressed, until
Your restless pulse grows still?
Do you not long to listen to the purling
Of foam athwart the keel?
To hear the nearing rapids softly swirling
Among their stones, to feel
The boat's unsteady tremor as it braves
The wild and snarling waves?
What need of question, what of your replying?
Oh! well I know that you
Would toss the world away to be but lying
Again in my canoe,
In listless indolence entranced and lost,
Wave-rocked, and passion tossed.
Ah me! my paddle failed me in the steering
Across love's shoreless seas;
All reckless, I had ne'er a thought of fearing
Such dreary days as these,
When through the self-same rapids we dash by,
My lone canoe and I.
Kiss, The
by Thomas Oldham

"What other men have dared, I dare,"
He said. "I'm daring, too:
And tho' they told me to beware,
One kiss I'll take from you.
"Did I say one? Forgive me, dear;
That was a grave mistake,
For when I've taken one, I fear,
One hundred more I'll take.
"'Tis sweet one kiss from you to win,
But to stop there? Oh, no!
One kiss is only to begin;
There is no end, you know."
The maiden rose from where she sat
And gently raised her head:
"No man has ever talked like that,
You may begin," she said.
A Well.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

What mystery pervades a well!
The water lives so far,
Like neighbor from another world
Residing in a jar.
The grass does not appear afraid;
I often wonder he
Can stand so close and look so bold
At what is dread to me.
Related somehow they may be, --
The sedge stands next the sea,
Where he is floorless, yet of fear
No evidence gives he.
But nature is a stranger yet;
The ones that cite her most
Have never passed her haunted house,
Nor simplified her ghost.
To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her, know her less
The nearer her they get.
Human Life
by Matthew Arnold

What mortal, when he saw,
Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend,
Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:
'I have kept uninfring'd my nature's law;
The inly-written chart thou gayest me
To guide me, I have steer'd by to the end'?
Ah! let us make no claim
On life's incognizable sea
To too exact a steering of our way!
Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim
If some fair coast has lured us to make stay,
Or some friend hail'd us to keep company !
Aye, we would each fain drive
At random, and not steer by rule!
Weakness! and worse, weakness bestow'd in vain!
Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive,
We rush by coasts where we had lief remain;
Man cannot, though he would, live chance's fool.
No! as the foaming swathe
Of torn-up water, on the main,
Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar
On either side the black deep-furrow'd path
Cut by an onward-labouring vessel's prore,
And never touches the ship-side again;
Even so we leave behind,
As, charter'd by some unknown Powers,
We stem across the sea of life by night,
The joys which were not for our use design'd,
The friends to whom we had no natural right,
The homes that were not destined to be ours.
On Shakespeare.
by John Milton

What needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones,
Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid
Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame,
What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.
For whilst to th'sharne of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the Leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,
Those Delphick lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,
Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving;
And so Sepulcher'd in such pomp dost lie,
That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.
To Mistress Pyrrha I
by Eugene Field

What perfumed, posie-dizened sirrah,
With smiles for diet,
Clasps you, O fair but faithless Pyrrha,
On the quiet?
For whom do you bind up your tresses,
As spun-gold yellow,--
Meshes that go with your caresses,
To snare a fellow?
How will he rail at fate capricious,
And curse you duly,
Yet now he deems your wiles delicious,--
You perfect, truly!
Pyrrha, your love's a treacherous ocean;
He'll soon fall in there!
Then shall I gloat on his commotion,
For I have been there!