DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Sand Of The Desert In An Hour-Glass
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A handful of red sand, from the hot clime
Of Arab deserts brought,
Within this glass becomes the spy of Time,
The minister of Thought.
How many weary centuries has it been
About those deserts blown!
How many strange vicissitudes has seen,
How many histories known!
Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite
Trampled and passed it o'er,
When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight
His favorite son they bore.
Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare,
Crushed it beneath their tread;
Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air
Scattered it as they sped;
Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth
Held close in her caress,
Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith
Illumed the wilderness;
Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms
Pacing the Dead Sea beach,
And singing slow their old Armenian psalms
In half-articulate speech;
Or caravans, that from Bassora's gate
With westward steps depart;
Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate,
And resolute in heart!
These have passed over it, or may have passed!
Now in this crystal tower
Imprisoned by some curious hand at last,
It counts the passing hour,
And as I gaze, these narrow walls expand;
Before my dreamy eye
Stretches the desert with its shifting sand,
Its unimpeded sky.
And borne aloft by the sustaining blast,
This little golden thread
Dilates into a column high and vast,
A form of fear and dread.
And onward, and across the setting sun,
Across the boundless plain,
The column and its broader shadow run,
Till thought pursues in vain.
The vision vanishes!    These walls again
Shut out the lurid sun,
Shut out the hot, immeasurable plain;
The half-hour's sand is run!
Already!
by Charles Baudelaire

A hundred times already the sun had leaped, radiant or saddened, from the immense cup of the sea whose rim could scarcely be seen; a hundred times it had again sunk, glittering or morose, into its mighty bath of twilight. For many days we had contemplated the other side of the firmament, and deciphered the celestial alphabet of the antipodes. And each of the passengers sighed and complained. One had said that the approach of land only exasperated their sufferings. "When, then," they said, "shall we cease to sleep a sleep broken by the surge, troubled by a wind that snores louder than we? When shall we be able to eat at an unmoving table?"
There were those who thought of their own firesides, who regretted their sullen, faithless wives, and their noisy progeny. All so doted upon the image of the absent land, that I believe they would have eaten grass with as much enthusiasm as the beasts.
At length a coast was signalled, and on approaching we saw a magnificent and dazzling land. It seemed as though the music of life flowed therefrom in a vague murmur; and the banks, rich with all kinds of growths, breathed, for leagues around, a delicious odour of flowers and fruits.
Each one therefore was joyful; his evil humour left him. Quarrels were forgotten, reciprocal wrongs forgiven, the thought of duels was blotted out of the memory, and rancour fled away like smoke.
I alone was sad, inconceivably sad. Like a priest from whom one has torn his divinity, I could not, without heartbreaking bitterness, leave this so monstrously seductive ocean, this sea so infinitely various in its terrifying simplicity, which seemed to contain in itself and represent by its joys, and attractions, and angers, and smiles, the moods and agonies and ecstasies of all souls that have lived, that live, and that shall yet live.
In saying good-bye to this incomparable beauty I felt as though I had been smitten to death; and that is why when each of my companions said: "Atlast!
"I could only cry "Already!"
Here meanwhile was the land, the land with its noises, its passions, its commodities, its festivals: a land rich and magnificent, full of promises, that sent to us a mysterious perfume of rose and musk, and from whence the music of life flowed in an amorous murmuring.
Salut Aux Blessis
by Joseph Horatio Chant

A group of mounted officers
Ride up and fall in line;
Their gleaming swords hang at their sides,
Chevrons their arms entwine;
They bare their heads as pass along
A train of wounded men,
Their shattered comrades from the field
They ne'er may meet again.
"Salut aux Blessis!" loud they cry.
The wounded soldiers hear,
And for a time forget their pain,
And swell the lusty cheer.
Thus should it be in other lines;
The men who lead the van
Should e'er accord a brother's cheer
To every wounded man.
The "rank and file" the wounds receive;
Sometimes the leader, too;
But honest wounds none should despise;
The bearer may be true.
He stood his ground 'gainst mighty odds,
And dared the shot and shell;
So bare your heads, ye scarless ones,
And say, "Thou hast done well!"
Lovers How They Come And Part
by Robert Herrick

A Gyges ring they bear about them still,
To be, and not seen when and where they will;
They tread on clouds, and though they sometimes fall,
They fall like dew, and make no noise at all:
So silently they one to th' other come,
As colours steal into the pear or plum,
And air-like, leave no pression to be seen
Where'er they met, or parting place has been.
San Cristobal
by Paul Cameron Brown

A gypsy sits in a taverna
joking with a sailor
who has left
bridges and maidens
along islets connecting
many a storied sea.
Ducats tumble from a
cloth bag the way
the gypsy remembers
caravans and the
remembrance of gold
steeled against
warm flesh in
moonlight of his native
Umbria.
Lavender is the coat of dreams
along navy blue hemmings
the colour of the gypsy's
eyes, the blood's
colour progeny whose
men of wealth
both are related to.
The gypsy stares at the taverna
wall and the ducats gleaming
to outside rain.
Men joke at rail depots
where in a like fashion water
splashes mud into little
arches up a riverbank.
Neither has the shallows of
minnows at his command.
Bunched up stubble in the wind
cannot fathom lies
or gender hope    - 
it is lhe province
of the mind,
the coinage of perhaps
a Spaniard on discovering
San Cristobal, one's own
sieglo oro in fortune
squandered in sunlight
with only the sweating
Appolosa still straining
on this, the last
taverna ride.
The Solitary's Wine
by Charles Baudelaire

A handsome woman's tantalizing gaze
Gliding our way as softly as the beam
The sinuous moon sends out in silver sheen
Across the lake to bathe her careless rays;
His purse of cash, the gambler's last relief;
A flaming kiss from slender Adeline;.
Music, which sounds a faint, unnerving whine
That seems the distant cry of human grief,
Great jug, all these together are not worth
The penetrating balms within your girth
Saved for the pious poet's thirsting soul;
You pour out for him youth, and life, and hope
And pride, the treasure of the beggar folk,
Which makes us like the Gods, triumphant, whole!
A Hate-Song.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

A hater he came and sat by a ditch,
And he took an old cracked lute;
And he sang a song which was more of a screech
'Gainst a woman that was a brute.
Oneata
by Alan Seeger

A hilltop sought by every soothing breeze
That loves the melody of murmuring boughs,
Cool shades, green acreage, and antique house
Fronting the ocean and the dawn; than these
Old monks built never for the spirit's ease
Cloisters more calm - not Cluny nor Clairvaux;
Sweet are the noises from the bay below,
And cuckoos calling in the tulip-trees.
Here, a yet empty suitor in thy train,
Beloved Poesy, great joy was mine
To while a listless spell of summer days,
Happier than hoarder in each evening's gain,
When evenings found me richer by one line,
One verse well turned, or serviceable phrase.
Odessa
by John Charles McNeill

A horror of great darkness over them,
No cloud of fire to guide and cover them,
Beasts for the shambles, tremulous with dread,
They crouch on alien soil among their dead.
"Thy shield and thy exceeding great reward,"
This was thine ancient covenant, O Lord,
Which, sealed with mirth, these many thousand years
Is black with blood and blotted out with tears.
Have these not toiled through Egypt's burning sun,
And wept beside the streams of Babylon,
Led from thy wilderness of hill and glen
Into a wider wilderness of men?
Life bore them ever less of gain than loss,
Before and since Golgotha's piteous Cross,
And surely, now, their sorrow hath sufficed
For all the hate that grew from love of Christ!
Thou great God-heart, heed thou thy people's cry,
Bare-browed and empty-handed where they die,
Sea-sundered from wall-girt Jerusalem,
There being no sword that wills to succor them,--
And Miriam's song, long hushed, will rise to thee,
And all thy people lift their eyes to thee,
When, for the darkness' horror over them,
Thou comest, a cloud of light to cover them.
Beauty And The Artist.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Al cor di zolfo.
A heart of flaming sulphur, flesh of tow,
Bones of dry wood, a soul without a guide
To curb the fiery will, the ruffling pride
Of fierce desires that from the passions flow;
A sightless mind that weak and lame doth go
Mid snares and pitfalls scattered far and wide;--
What wonder if the first chance brand applied
To fuel massed like this should make it glow?
Add beauteous art, which, brought with us from heaven,
Will conquer nature;--so divine a power
Belongs to him who strives with every nerve.
If I was made for art, from childhood given
A prey for burning beauty to devour,
I blame the mistress I was born to serve.
Distance
by Theodosia Garrison

A hundred miles between us
Could never part us more
Than that one step you took from me
What time my need was sore.
A hundred years between us
Might hold us less apart
Than that one dragging moment
Wherein I knew your heart.
Now what farewell is needed
To all I held most dear,
So far and far you are from me
I doubt if you could hear.
Serenade
by Paul Cameron Brown

A green flotilla,
verdant armada
stone hand encased
in an arm of ocean
off blue-grotto bay.
Something avuncular where land
meets sea
- underdog, whipped cur,
adult "son" posturing to the elder,
pontificating man.
Melaque after dark
or was it Aguascalientes'?
Monterrey at sunset
prior to "the" pop festival
or Morelia, on eve
of feasts to that native patriot'?
Vera Cruz, 1915, at the height of
American occupation
with Pershing tailing the hirsute Pancho
Villa in Sinaloa
outdated rock & gunboat diplomacy
- no longer exotic fare
plate of frivoles,
fried banana
Mahi-Mahi.
On the palette,
dreams are fickle,
subject to "drunk
and disorderly resisting
arrest," outmoded and
fuzzy with age.
Policeman of the Olmec intellect,
you dance late on feather boas
this Mariachis of the soul
with glittering purse and yellow,
travelling nectar Tequila.
France, The 18th Year Of These States
by Walt Whitman

A great year and place;
A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother's heart closer than any yet.
I walk'd the shores of my Eastern Sea,
Heard over the waves the little voice,
Saw the divine infant, where she woke, mournfully wailing, amid the roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling buildings;
Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running--nor from the single corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne away in the tumbrils;
Was not so desperate at the battues of death--was not so shock'd at the repeated fusillades of the guns.
Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution?
Could I wish humanity different?
Could I wish the people made of wood and stone?
Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?
O Liberty! O mate for me!
Here too the blaze, the grape-shot and the axe, in reserve, to fetch them out in case of need;
Here too, though long represt, can never be destroy'd;
Here too could rise at last, murdering and extatic;
Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.
Hence I sign this salute over the sea,
And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism,
But remember the little voice that I heard wailing--and wait with perfect trust, no matter how long;
And from to-day, sad and cogent, I maintain the bequeath'd cause, as for all lands,
And I send these words to Paris with my love,
And I guess some chansonniers there will understand them,
For I guess there is latent music yet in France--floods of it;
O I hear already the bustle of instruments--they will soon be drowning all that would interrupt them;
O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march,
It reaches hither--it swells me to joyful madness,
I will run transpose it in words, to justify it,
I will yet sing a song for you, Ma Femme.
Sonnets From The Portuguese XXV
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A heavy heart, Belov'd, have I borne
From year to year until I saw thy face,
And sorrow after sorrow took the place
Of all those natural joys as lightly worn
As the stringed pearls, each lifted in its turn
By a beating heart at dance-time. Hopes apace
Were changed to long despairs, till God's own grace
Could scarcely lift above the world forlorn
My heavy heart. Then thou didst bid me bring
And let it drop adown thy calmly great
Deep being! Fast it sinketh, as a thing
Which its own nature does precipitate,
While thine doth close above it, mediating
Betwixt the stars and the unaccomplished fate.
Poe.
by James McIntyre

A great enchanter too is Poe,
His bells do so harmonious flow,
Wondrous mystery of his raven
On our minds is 'ere engraven,
His wierd, wonderful romances
Imagination oft entrances.
Dusk In War Time
by Sara Teasdale

A half-hour more and you will lean
To gather me close in the old sweet way
But oh, to the woman over the sea
Who will come at the close of day?
A half-hour more and I will hear
The key in the latch and the strong, quick tread
But oh, the woman over the sea
Waiting at dusk for one who is dead!
Nursery Rhyme. CIV. Proverbs.
by Unknown

[Proverbial many years ago, when the guinea in gold was of a higher value than its nominal representative in silver,]
A guinea it would sink,
And a pound it would float;
Yet I'd rather have a guinea,
Than your one pound note.
To Neptune
by Oliver Herford

A health to King Neptune,
The boss of the wave!
Who sits on the Ocean
And makes it behave.
Come fill up your bumpers
And take a long pull!
When he's calm he's not dry--
When he rolls, he's not full.
Whether sober or rough,
He's always a sport,
And we'll never stop toasting him
Till we're in port.
A jolly old salt,
Though he smile or he frown.
So here's to King Neptune!
Fill up! Drink her down!
Syrinx
by Henry Kendall

A heap of low, dark, rocky coast,
Unknown to foot or feather!
A sea-voice moaning like a ghost;
And fits of fiery weather!
The flying Syrinx turned and sped
By dim, mysterious hollows,
Where night is black, and day is red,
And frost the fire-wind follows.
Strong, heavy footfalls in the wake
Came up with flights of water:
The gods were mournful for the sake
Of Ladon's lovely daughter.
For when she came to spike and spine,
Where reef and river gather,
Her feet were sore with shell and chine;
She could not travel farther.
Across a naked strait of land
Blown sleet and surge were humming;
But trammelled with the shifting sand,
She heard the monster coming!
A thing of hoofs and horns and lust:
A gaunt, goat-footed stranger!
She bowed her body in the dust
And called on Zeus to change her;
And called on Hermes, fair and fleet,
And her of hounds and quiver,
To hide her in the thickets sweet
That sighed above the river.
So he that sits on flaming wheels,
And rules the sea and thunder,
Caught up the satyr by the heels
And tore his skirts asunder.
While Arcas, of the glittering plumes,
Took Ladon's daughter lightly,
And set her in the gracious glooms
That mix with moon-mist nightly;
And touched her lips with wild-flower wine,
And changed her body slowly,
Till, in soft reeds of song and shine,
Her life was hidden wholly.
A Little Poem
by George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)

A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;
But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.
And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.
All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.
But girl's bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.
It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.
I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;
And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn't born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?
The Preceptor.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Homme chauve et noir.")
[XIX., May, 1839.]
A gruesome man, bald, clad in black,
Who kept us youthful drudges in the track,
Thinking it good for them to leave home care,
And for a while a harsher yoke to bear;
Surrender all the careless ease of home,
And be forbid from schoolyard bounds to roam;
For this with blandest smiles he softly asks
That they with him will prosecute their tasks;
Receives them in his solemn chilly lair,
The rigid lot of discipline to share.
At dingy desks they toil by day; at night
To gloomy chambers go uncheered by light,
Where pillars rudely grayed by rusty nail
Of heavy hours reveal the weary tale;
Where spiteful ushers grin, all pleased to make
Long scribbled lines the price of each mistake.
By four unpitying walls environed there
The homesick students pace the pavements bare.
E.E. FREWER
The Foolish Harebell
by George MacDonald

A harebell hung her wilful head:
"I am tired, so tired! I wish I was dead."
She hung her head in the mossy dell:
"If all were over, then all were well!"
The Wind he heard, and was pitiful,
And waved her about to make her cool.
"Wind, you are rough!" said the dainty Bell;
"Leave me alone--I am not well."
The Wind, at the word of the drooping dame,
Sighed to himself and ceased in shame.
"I am hot, so hot!" she moaned and said;
"I am withering up; I wish I was dead!"
Then the Sun he pitied her woeful case,
And drew a thick veil over his face.
"Cloud go away, and don't be rude,"
She said; "I do not see why you should!"
The Cloud withdrew. Then the Harebell cried,
"I am faint, so faint!--and no water beside!"
The Dew came down its millionfold path:
She murmured, "I did not want a bath!"
The Dew went up; the Wind softly crept;
The Night came down, and the Harebell slept.
A boy ran past in the morning gray,
Plucked the Harebell, and threw her away.
The Harebell shivered, and sighed, "Oh! oh!
I am faint indeed! Come, dear Wind, blow."
The Wind blew gently, and did not speak.
She thanked him kindly, but grew more weak.
"Sun, dear Sun, I am cold!" she said.
He shone; but lower she drooped her head.
"O Rain, I am withering! all the blue
Is fading out of me!--come, please do!"
The Rain came down as fast as he could,
But for all his good will he could do her no good.
She shuddered and shrivelled, and moaning said,
"Thank you all kindly!" and then she was dead.
Let us hope, let us hope when she comes next year
She'll be simple and sweet! But I fear, I fear!
To
by Henry Kendall

A handmaid to the genius of thy song
Is sweet, fair Scholarship. 'Tis she supplies
The fiery spirit of the passioned eyes
With subtle syllables, whose notes belong
To some chief source of perfect melodies;
And glancing through a laurelled, lordly throng
Of shining singers, lo! my vision flies
To William Shakespeare! He it is whose strong,
Full, flute-like music haunts thy stately verse.
A worthy Levite of his court thou art!
One sent among us to defeat the curse
That binds us to the Actual. Yea, thy part,
Oh, lute-voiced lover! is to lull the heart
Of love repelled, its darkness to disperse.
The Fly And The Game.
by Jean de La Fontaine

A knight of powder-horn and shot
Once fill'd his bag - as I would not,
Unless the feelings of my breast
By poverty were sorely press'd - 
With birds and squirrels for the spits
Of certain gormandizing cits.
With merry heart the fellow went
Direct to Mr. Centpercent,
Who loved, as well was understood,
Whatever game was nice and good.
This gentleman, with knowing air,
Survey'd the dainty lot with care,
Pronounced it racy, rich, and rare,
And call'd his wife, to know her wishes
About its purchase for their dishes.
The lady thought the creatures prime,
And for their dinner just in time;
So sweet they were, and delicate,
For dinner she could hardly wait.
But now there came - could luck be worse? - 
Just as the buyer drew his purse,
A bulky fly, with solemn buzz,
And smelt, as an inspector does,
This bird and that, and said the meat - 
But here his words I won't repeat - 
Was anything but fit to eat.
'Ah!' cried the lady, 'there's a fly
I never knew to tell a lie;
His coat, you see, is bottle-green;
He knows a thing or two I ween;
My dear, I beg you, do not buy:
Such game as this may suit the dogs.'
So on our peddling sportsman jogs,
His soul possess'd of this surmise,
About some men, as well as flies:
A filthy taint they soonest find
Who are to relish filth inclined.
The Waking Year.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

A lady red upon the hill
Her annual secret keeps;
A lady white within the field
In placid lily sleeps!
The tidy breezes with their brooms
Sweep vale, and hill, and tree!
Prithee, my pretty housewives!
Who may expected be?
The neighbors do not yet suspect!
The woods exchange a smile --
Orchard, and buttercup, and bird --
In such a little while!
And yet how still the landscape stands,
How nonchalant the wood,
As if the resurrection
Were nothing very odd!
Return Of The Heroes
by Siegfried Loraine Sassoon

A lady watches from the crowd,
Enthusiastic, flushed, and proud.
"Oh! there's Sir Henry Dudster! Such a splendid leader!
How pleased he looks! What rows of ribbons on his tunic!
Such dignity.... Saluting.... (Wave your flag ... now, Freda!)...
Yes, dear, I saw a Prussian General once, - at Munich.
"Here's the next carriage!... Jack was once in Leggit's Corps;
That's him!... I think the stout one is Sir Godfrey Stoomer.
They must feel sad to know they can't win any more
Great victories!... Aren't they glorious men?... so full of humour!"
Time
by George MacDonald

A lang-backit, spilgie, fuistit auld carl
Gangs a' nicht rakin athort the warl
Wi' a pock on his back, luikin hungry an' lean,
His crook-fingert han' aye followin his e'en:
He gathers up a'thing that canna but fa'--
Intil his bag wi' 't, an' on, an' awa!
Soot an' snaw! soot an' snaw!--
Intil his bag wi' 't, an' on, an' awa!
But whan he comes to the wa' o' the warl,
Spangs up it, like lang-leggit spidder, the carl;
Up gangs his pock wi' him, humpit ahin,
For naething fa's oot 'at ance he pat in;
Syne he warstles doon ootside the flamin wa',
His bag 'maist the deith o' him, pangt like a ba';
Soot an' snaw! soot an' snaw!
His bag 'maist throttlin him, pangt like a ba'!
Doon he draps weary upon a laigh rock,
Flingin aside him his muckle-mou'd pock:
An' there he sits, his heid in his han',
Like a broken-hertit, despairin man;
Him air his pock no bonny, na, na!
Him an' his pock an ugsome twa!
Soot an' snaw! soot an' snaw!
Him an' his pock an ugsome twa!
But sune 's the first ray o' the sunshine bare
Lichts on the carl, what see ye there?
An angel set on eternity's brink,
Wi' e'en to gar the sun himsel blink;
By his side a glintin, glimmerin urn,
Furth frae wha's mou rins a liltin burn:--
Soot an' snaw! soot an' snaw!
The dirt o' the warl rins in glory awa!