DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The African Chief.
by William Cullen Bryant

Chained in the market-place he stood,
A man of giant frame,
Amid the gathering multitude
That shrunk to hear his name,
All stern of look and strong of limb,
His dark eye on the ground:
And silently they gazed on him,
As on a lion bound.
Vainly, but well, that chief had fought,
He was a captive now,
Yet pride, that fortune humbles not,
Was written on his brow.
The scars his dark broad bosom wore,
Showed warrior true and brave;
A prince among his tribe before,
He could not be a slave.
Then to his conqueror he spake,
"My brother is a king;
Undo this necklace from my neck,
And take this bracelet ring,
And send me where my brother reigns,
And I will fill thy hands
With store of ivory from the plains,
And gold-dust from the sands."
"Not for thy ivory nor thy gold
Will I unbind thy chain;
That bloody hand shall never hold
The battle-spear again.
A price thy nation never gave
Shall yet be paid for thee;
For thou shalt be the Christian's slave,
In lands beyond the sea."
Then wept the warrior chief, and bade
To shred his locks away;
And one by one, each heavy braid
Before the victor lay.
Thick were the platted locks, and long,
And closely hidden there
Shone many a wedge of gold among
The dark and crisped hair.
"Look, feast thy greedy eye with gold
Long kept for sorest need:
Take it, thou askest sums untold,
And say that I am freed.
Take it, my wife, the long, long day,
Weeps by the cocoa-tree,
And my young children leave their play,
And ask in vain for me."
"I take thy gold, but I have made
Thy fetters fast and strong,
And ween that by the cocoa shade
Thy wife will wait thee long."
Strong was the agony that shook
The captive's frame to hear,
And the proud meaning of his look
Was changed to mortal fear.
His heart was broken, crazed his brain:
At once his eye grew wild;
He struggled fiercely with his chain,
Whispered, and wept, and smiled;
Yet wore not long those fatal bands,
And once, at shut of day,
They drew him forth upon the sands,
The foul hyena's prey.
Celebrate
by Anna Akhmatova

Celebrate our anniversary ' can't you see
tonight the snowy night of our first winter
comes back again in every road and tree -
that winter night of diamantine splendour.
Steam is pouring out of yellow stables,
the Moika river's sinking under snow,
the moonlight's misted as it is in fables,
and where we are heading ' I don't know.
There are icebergs on the Marsovo Pole.
The Lebyazh'ya's crazed with crystal art.....
Whose soul can compare with my soul,
if joy and fear are in my heart? -
And if your voice, a marvellous bird's,
quivers at my shoulder, in the night,
and the snow shines with a silver light,
warmed by a sudden ray, by your words?
The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit
by Vachel Lindsay

A Broadside distributed in Springfield, Illinois
Censers are swinging
Over the town;
Censers are swinging,
Look overhead!
Censers are swinging,
Heaven comes down.
City, dead city,
Awake from the dead!
Censers, tremendous,
Gleam overhead.
Wind-harps are ringing,
Wind-harps unseen - 
Calling and calling: - 
"Wake from the dead.
Rise, little city,
Shine like a queen."
Soldiers of Christ
For battle grow keen.
Heaven-sent winds
Haunt alley and lane.
Singing of life
In town-meadows green
After the toil
And battle and pain.
Incense is pouring
Like the spring rain
Down on the mob
That moil through the street.
Blessed are they
Who behold it and gain
Power made more mighty
Thro' every defeat.
Builders, toil on.
Make all complete.
Make Springfield wonderful.
Make her renown
Worthy this day,
Till, at God's feet,
Tranced, saved forever,
Waits the white town.
Censers are swinging
Over the town,
Censers gigantic!
Look overhead!
Hear the winds singing: - 
"Heaven comes down.
City, dead city,
Awake from the dead."
The Wind Of The World
by George MacDonald

Chained is the Spring. The Night-wind bold
Blows over the hard earth;
Time is not more confused and cold,
Nor keeps more wintry mirth.
Yet blow, and roll the world about--
Blow, Time, blow, winter's Wind!
Through chinks of time heaven peepeth out,
And Spring the frost behind.
Dum Nos Fata Sinunt, Oculos Satiemus Amore.
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

Dum nos fata sinunt, oculos satiemus Amore.--PROPERTIUS
Cease smiling, Dear! a little while be sad,
Here in the silence, under the wan moon;
Sweet are thine eyes, but how can I be glad,
Knowing they change so soon?
For Love's sake, Dear, be silent! Cover me
In the deep darkness of thy falling hair:
Fear is upon me and the memory
Of what is all men's share.
O could this moment be perpetuate!
Must we grow old, and leaden-eyed and gray,
And taste no more the wild and passionate
Love sorrows of to-day?
Grown old, and faded, Sweet! and past desire,
Let memory die, lest there be too much ruth,
Remembering the old, extinguished fire
Of our divine, lost youth.
O red pomegranate of thy perfect mouth!
My lips' life-fruitage, might I taste and die
Here in thy garden, where the scented south
Wind chastens agony;
Reap death from thy live lips in one long kiss,
And look my last into thine eyes and rest:
What sweets had life to me sweeter than this
Swift dying on thy breast?
Or, if that may not be, for Love's sake, Dear!
Keep silence still, and dream that we shall lie,
Red mouth to mouth, entwined, and always hear
The south wind's melody,
Here in thy garden, through the sighing boughs,
Beyond the reach of time and chance and change,
And bitter life and death, and broken vows,
That sadden and estrange.
To William Lloyd Garrison
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Champion of those who groan beneath
Oppression's iron hand:
In view of penury, hate, and death,
I see thee fearless stand.
Still bearing up thy lofty brow,
In the steadfast strength of truth,
In manhood sealing well the vow
And promise of thy youth.
Go on, for thou hast chosen well;
On in the strength of God!
Long as one human heart shall swell
Beneath the tyrant's rod.
Speak in a slumbering nation's ear,
As thou hast ever spoken,
Until the dead in sin shall hear,
The fetter's link be broken!
I love thee with a brother's love,
I feel my pulses thrill,
To mark thy Spirit soar above
The cloud of human ill.
My heart hath leaped to answer thine,
And echo back thy words,
As leaps the warrior's at the shine
And flash of kindred swords!
They tell me thou art rash and vain,
A searcher after fame;
That thou art striving but to gain
A long-enduring name;
That thou hast nerved the Afric's hand
And steeled the Afric's heart,
To shake aloft his vengeful brand,
And rend his chain apart.
Have I not known thee well, and read
Thy mighty purpose long?
And watched the trials which have made
Thy human spirit strong?
And shall the slanderer's demon breath
Avail with one like me,
To dim the sunshine of my faith
And earnest trust in thee?
Go on, the dagger's point may glare
Amid thy pathway's gloom;
The fate which sternly threatens there
Is glorious martyrdom!
Then onward with a martyr's zeal;
And wait thy sure reward
When man to man no more shall kneel,
And God alone be Lord!
William Tell. - A Sonnet.
by William Cullen Bryant

Chains may subdue the feeble spirit, but thee,
Tell, of the iron heart! they could not tame!
For thou wert of the mountains; they proclaim
The everlasting creed of liberty.
That creed is written on the untrampled snow,
Thundered by torrents which no power can hold,
Save that of God, when he sends forth his cold,
And breathed by winds that through the free heaven blow.
Thou, while thy prison walls were dark around,
Didst meditate the lesson Nature taught,
And to thy brief captivity was brought
A vision of thy Switzerland unbound.
The bitter cup they mingled, strengthened thee
For the great work to set thy country free.
Prefixed to Chapman's Translation of Hesiod's Georgics (1618). - To my worthy friend Mr. George Chapman, and his translated Hesiod.
by Michael Drayton

Chapman; We finde by thy past-prized fraught,
What wealth thou dost vpon this Land conferre;
Th'olde Grecian Prophets hither that hast brought,
Of their full words the true interpreter:
And by thy trauell, strongly hast exprest
The large dimensions of the English tongue;
Deliuering them so well, the first and best,
That to the world in Numbers euer sung.
Thou hast vnlock'd the treasury, wherein
All Art, and knowledge haue so long been hidden:
Which, till the gracefull Muses did begin
Here to inhabite, was to vs forbidden.
In blest Elizivm (in a place most fit)
Vnder that tree due to the Delphian God,
Mus'us, and that Iliad Singer sit,
And neare to them that noble Hesiod,
Smoothing their rugged foreheads; and do smile,
After so many hundred yeares to see
Their Poems read in this farre westerne Ile,
Translated from their ancient Greeke, by thee;
Each his good Genius whispering in his eare,
That with so lucky, and auspicious fate
Did still attend them, whilst they liuing were,
And gaue their Verses such a lasting date.
Where slightly passing by the Thespian spring,
Many long after did but onely sup;
Nature, then fruitfull, forth these men did bring,
To fetch deep Rowses from Ioues plentious cup.
In thy free labours (friend) then rest content,
Feare not Detraction, neither fawne on Praise:
When idle Censure all her force hath spent,
Knowledge can crowne her self with her owne Baies.
Their Lines, that haue so many liues outworne,
Cleerely expounded shall base Enuy scorne.
Propinquity Needed
by Charles Battell Loomis

Celestine Silvousplait Justine de Mouton Rosalie,
A coryph'e who lived and danced in naughty, gay Paree,
Was every bit as pretty as a French girl e'er can be
(Which isn't saying much).
Maurice Boulanger (there's a name that would adorn a king),
But Morris Baker was the name they called the man I sing.
He lived in New York City in the Street that's labeled Spring
(Chosen because it rhymed).
Now Baker was a lonesome youth and wanted to be wed,
And for a wife, all over town he hunted, it is said;
And up and down Fifth Avenue he ofttimes wander'd
(He was a peripatetic Baker, he was).
And had he met Celestine, not a doubt but Cupid's darts
Would in a trice have wounded both of their fond, loving hearts;
But he has never left New York to stray in foreign parts
(Because he hasn't the price).
And she has never left Paree and so, of course, you see
There's not the slightest chance at all she'll marry Morris B.
For love to get well started, really needs propinquity
(Hence my title).
Charles Battell Loomis.
Celia
by Alexander Pope

Celia, we know, is sixty-five,
Yet Celia's face is seventeen;
Thus winter in her breast must live,
While summer in her face is seen.
How cruel Celia's fate, who hence
Our heart's devotion cannot try;
Too pretty for our reverence,
Too ancient for our gallantry!
Change.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Changed? Yes, I will confess it - I have changed.
I do not love in the old fond way.
I am your friend still - time has not estranged
One kindly feeling of that vanished day.
But the bright glamour which made life a dream,
The rapture of that time, its sweet content,
Like visions of a sleeper's brain they seem - 
And yet I cannot tell you how they went.
Why do you gaze with such accusing eyes
Upon me, dear? Is it so very strange
That hearts, like all things underneath God's skies
Should sometimes feel the influence of change?
The birds, the flowers, the foliage of the trees,
The stars which seem so fixed and so sublime,
Vast continents and the eternal seas - 
All these do change with ever-changing time.
The face our mirror shows us year on year
Is not the same; our dearest aim or need,
Our lightest thought or feeling, hope or fear,
All, all the law of alteration heed.
How can we ask the human heart to stay
Content with fancies of Youth's earliest hours?
The year outgrows the violets of May,
Although, maybe, there are no fairer flowers.
And life may hold no sweeter love than this,
Which lies so cold, so voiceless, and so dumb.
And shall I miss it, dear? Why, yes, we miss
The violets always - till the roses come!
To Music, To Becalm A Sweet Sick Youth
by Robert Herrick

Charms, that call down the moon from out her sphere,
On this sick youth work your enchantments here!
Bind up his senses with your numbers, so
As to entrance his pain, or cure his woe.
Fall gently, gently, and a-while him keep
Lost in the civil wilderness of sleep:
That done, then let him, dispossess'd of pain,
Like to a slumbering bride, awake again.
Lines Written Under The Picture Of The Celebrated Miss Burns.
by Robert Burns

Cease, ye prudes, your envious railings,
Lovely Burns has charms, confess:
True it is, she had one failing,
Had a woman ever less?
A Song For St. Cecilia's Day
by Joseph Addison

I.
Cecilia, whose exalted hymns
With joy and wonder fill the blest,
In choirs of warbling seraphims
Known and distinguish'd fom the rest;
Attend, harmonious saint, and see
Thy vocal sons of harmony;
Attend, harmonious saint, and hear our prayers;
Enliven all our earthly airs,
and, as thou sing'st thy God, teach us to sing of thee:
Tune every string and every tongue,
Be thou the Muse and subject of our song.
II.
Let all Cecilia's praise proclaim,
Enploy the echo in her name.
Hark how the flutes and trumpets raise,
At bright Cecilia's name, their lays;
The organ labours in her praise.
Cecilia's name does all our numbers grace,
From every voice the tuneful accents fly,
In soaring trebles now it rises high,
And now it sinks, and dwells upon the base.
Cecilia's name through all the notes we sing,
The work of every skilful tongue
The sound of every trembling string,
The sound and triumph of our song.
III.
For ever consecrate the day,
To music and Cecilia;
Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have below.
Music can noble hints impart,
Engender fury, kindle love;
With unsuspected eloquence can move,
And manage all the man with secret art.
When Orpheus strikes the trembling lyre
The streams stand still, the stones admire;
The listening savages advance,
The world and lamb around him trip
The bears in aukward measures leap,
And tigers mingle in the dance
The moving woods attended as he played    
And Rhodope was left without a shade.
IV.
Music religious heats inspires,    
It wakes the soul, and lifts it high,
And wings it with sublime desires,
And fits it to bespeak the Deity.
Th' Almighty listens to a tuneful tongue,
And seems well-pleas'd and courted with a song.
Soft moving sounds and heavenly airs
Give forece to every word, and recommend our prayers
When time itself shall be no more,
And all things in confusion hurl'd,
Music shall then exert its power,
And sound survive the ruins of the world:
Then saints and angels shall agree
In one eternal jubilee:
All heaven shall echo with their hymns divine,
And God himself with pleasure see
The whole creation in a chorus join.
Chorus
Consecrate the place and day,
To music and Cecilia Let no rough winds approach, nor dare
Invade the hallow'd bounds,
Nor rudely shake the tuneful air,
Nor spoil the fleeting sounds.
Nor mournful sigh nor groan be heard,
But gladness dwell on every tongue;
Whilst all, with voice and strings prepar'd,
Keep u; the loud harmonious song.
And imitate the blest above,
In joy, and harmony, and love.
The Temporary The All
by Thomas Hardy

Change and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime,
Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen;
Wrought us fellow-like, and despite divergence,
Friends interlinked us.
"Cherish him can I while the true one forthcome -
Come the rich fulfiller of my prevision;
Life is roomy yet, and the odds unbounded."
So self-communed I.
Thwart my wistful way did a damsel saunter,
Fair, the while unformed to be all-eclipsing;
"Maiden meet," held I, "till arise my forefelt
Wonder of women."
Long a visioned hermitage deep desiring,
Tenements uncouth I was fain to house in;
"Let such lodging be for a breath-while," thought I,
"Soon a more seemly.
"Then, high handiwork will I make my life-deed,
Truth and Light outshow; but the ripe time pending,
Intermissive aim at the thing sufficeth."
Thus I . . . But lo, me!
Mistress, friend, place, aims to be bettered straightway,
Bettered not has Fate or my hand's achieving;
Sole the showance those of my onward earth-track -
Never transcended!
Shadow and Light
by Arthur Hugh Clough

Cease, empty Faith, the Spectrum saith,
I was, and lo, have been;
I, God, am nought: a shade of thought,
Which, but by darkness seen,
Upon the unknown yourselves have thrown,
Placed it and light between.
At morning's birth on darkened earth,
And as the evening sinks,
Awfully vast abroad is cast
The lengthened form that shrinks
And shuns the sight in midday light,
And underneath you slinks.
From barren strands of wintry lands
Across the seas of time,
Borne onward fast ye touch at last
An equatorial clime;
In equatorial noon sublime
At zenith stands the sun,
And lo, around, far, near, are found
Yourselves, and Shadow none.
A moment! yea! but when the day
At length was perfect day!
A moment! so! and light we know
With dark exchanges aye,
Nor morn nor eve shall shadow leave
Your sunny paths secure,
And in your sight that orb of light
Shall humbler orbs obscure.
And yet withal, 'tis shadow all
Whate'er your fancies dream,
And I (misdeemed) that was, that seemed,
Am not, whate'er I seem.
Cecily Parsley
by Helen Beatrix Potter

Cecily Parsley lived in a pen,
And brewed good ale for gentlemen;
Gentlemen came every day,
Till Cecily Parsley ran away.
Epitaph On Wilberforce
by Thomas Oldham

Champion of justice and humanity,
He toil'd, through life, to set the Negro free:
At length, Britannia spoke the godlike word
Burst were the bonds, the shouts of Freedom heard!
Thy life-bonds, too, O Wilberforce! were riven,
Thy task was done, it was thy call to heaven!
The River Duddon - A Series Of Sonnets, 1820. - VII - Change Me, Some God
by William Wordsworth

"Change me, some God, into that breathing rose!"
The love-sick Stripling fancifully sighs,
The envied flower beholding, as it lies
On Laura's breast, in exquisite repose;
Or he would pass into her bird, that throws
The darts of song from out its wiry cage;
Enraptured, could he for himself engage
The thousandth part of what the Nymph bestows;
And what the little careless innocent
Ungraciously receives. Too daring choice!
There are whose calmer mind it would content
To be an unculled floweret of the glen,
Fearless of plough and scythe; or darkling wren
That tunes on Duddon's banks her slender voice.
Upon Center, A Spectacle-Maker With A Flat Nose.
by Robert Herrick

Center is known weak-sighted, and he sells
To others store of helpful spectacles.
Why wears he none? Because we may suppose,
Where leaven wants, there level lies the nose.
Nursery Rhyme. DLXXXI. Natural History.
by Unknown

Charley Warley had a cow.
Black and white about the brow;
Open the gate and let her go through,
Charley Warley's old cow!
Imitation Of Catullus. To Himself.
by Thomas Moore

Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire, etc.
Cease the sighing fool to play;
Cease to trifle life away;
Nor vainly think those joys thine own,
Which all, alas, have falsely flown.
What hours, Catullus, once were thine.
How fairly seemed thy day to shine,
When lightly thou didst fly to meet
The girl whose smile was then so sweet--
The girl thou lovedst with fonder pain
Than e'er thy heart can feel again.
Ye met--your souls seemed all in one,
Like tapers that commingling shone;
Thy heart was warm enough for both,
And hers, in truth, was nothing loath.
Such were the hours that once were thine;
But, ah! those hours no longer shine.
For now the nymph delights no more
In what she loved so much before;
And all Catullus now can do,
Is to be proud and frigid too;
Nor follow where the wanton flies,
Nor sue the bliss that she denies.
False maid! he bids farewell to thee,
To love, and all love's misery;
The heyday of his heart is o'er,
Nor will he court one favor more.
Fly, perjured girl!--but whither fly?
Who now will praise thy cheek and eye?
Who now will drink the syren tone,
Which tells him thou art all his own?
Oh, none:--and he who loved before
Can never, never love thee more.
*             *             *             *             *
"Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more!"
--ST. JOHN, chap. viii.
Oh woman, if through sinful wile
Thy soul hath strayed from honor's track,
'Tis mercy only can beguile,
By gentle ways, the wanderer back.
The stain that on thy virtue lies,
Washed by those tears, not long will stay;
As clouds that sully morning skies
May all be wept in showers away.
Go, go, be innocent,--and live;
The tongues of men may wound thee sore;
But Heaven in pity can forgive,
And bids thee "go, and sin no more!"
At The "Cock" Tavern.
by Horace Smith

Champagne doth not a luncheon make,
Nor caviare a meal;
Men gluttonous and rich may take
These till they make them ill.
If I've potatoes to my chop,
And after that have cheese,
Angels in Pond & Spiers's shop
Serve no such luxuries.
The Shooting-Range And The Cemetery.
by Charles Baudelaire

"Cemetery View Inn" "A queer sign," said our traveller to himself; "but it raises a thirst! Certainly the keeper -o f this inn appreciates Horace and the poet pupils of Epicurus. Perhaps he even apprehends the profound philosophy of those old Egyptians who had no feast without its skeleton, or some emblem of life's brevity."
He entered: drank a glass of beer in presence of the tombs; and slowly smoked a cigar. Then, his phantasy driving him, he went down into the cemetery, where the grass was so tall and inviting; so brilliant in the sunshine.
The light and heat, indeed, were so furiously intense that one had said the drunken sun wallowed upon a carpet of flowers that had fattened upon the corruption beneath.
The air was heavy with vivid rumours of life the life of things infinitely small and broken at intervals by the crackling of shots from a neighbouring shooting-range, that exploded with a sound as of champagne corks to the burden of a hollow symphony.
And then, beneath a sun which scorched the brain, and in that atmosphere charged with the ardent perfume of death, he heard a voice whispering out of the tomb where he sat. And this voice said: "Accursed be your rifles and targets, you turbulent living ones, who care so little for the dead in their divine repose! Accursed be your ambitions and calculations, importunate mortals who study the arts of slaughter near the sanctuary of Death himself! Did you but know how easy the prize to win, how facile the end to reach, and how all save Death is naught, not so greatly would you fatigue yourselves, O ye laborious alive; nor would you so often vex the slumber of them that long ago reached the End - the only true end of life detestable!"
Nursery Rhyme. DCXVI. Relics.
by Unknown

Charley wag,
Eat the pudding and left the bag.
Sonnet XVIII. An Evening In November, Which Had Been Stormy, Gradually Clearing Up, In A Mountainous Country.
by Anna Seward

Ceas'd is the rain; but heavy drops yet fall
From the drench'd roof; - yet murmurs the sunk wind
Round the dim hills; can yet a passage find
Whistling thro' yon cleft rock, and ruin'd wall.
The swoln and angry torrents heard, appal,
Tho' distant. - A few stars, emerging kind,
Shed their green, trembling beams. - With lustre small,
The moon, her swiftly-passing clouds behind,
Glides o'er that shaded hill. - Now blasts remove
The shadowing clouds, and on the mountain's brow,
Full-orb'd, she shines. - Half sunk within its cove
Heaves the lone boat, with gulphing sound; - and lo!
Bright rolls the settling lake, and brimming rove
The vale's blue rills, and glitter as they flow.
Epigram After Having Seen Several Bad Paintings Of The Death Of Sir John Moore
by Thomas Oldham

Cease, daubers! profane not the theme, I implore ye!
But leave him, O leave him alone with his glory!
*        *        *        *        *
Man's owl-eyed reason Popish Priests assert
Can't safely bear the gospel's heavenly light;
Therefore, with kindest zeal, they do their best
To keep their flocks in unillumined night.
*        *        *        *        *
'The brokers of the Stock-Exchange
Are nicknamed bears and bulls; how strange!
What reason, Sir, to call them so?'
Ma'am, see their manners, you will know.