DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Girl Graduates.
by William Schwenck Gilbert

They intend to send a wire
To the moon;
And they'll set the Thames on fire
Very soon;
Then they learn to make silk purses
With their rigs
From the ears of Lady Circe's
Piggy-wigs.
And weazels at their slumbers
They'll trepan;
To get sunbeams from cucumbers
They've a plan.
They've a firmly rooted notion
They can cross the Polar Ocean,
And they'll find Perpetual Motion
If they can!
These are the phenomena
That every pretty domina
Hopes that we shall see
At this Universitee!
As for fashion, they forswear it,
So they say,
And the circle they will square it
Some fine day;
Then the little pigs they're teaching
For to fly;
And the niggers they'll be bleaching
Bye and bye!
Each newly joined aspirant
To the clan
Must repudiate the tyrant
Known as Man;
They mock at him and flout him,
For they do not care about him,
And they're "going to do without him"
If they can!
These are the phenomena
That every pretty domina
Hopes that we shall see
At this Universitee!
Story of Lilavanti
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

They lay the slender body down
With all its wealth of wetted hair,
Only a daughter of the town,
But very young and slight and fair.
The eyes, whose light one cannot see,
Are sombre doubtless, like the tresses,
The mouth's soft curvings seem to be
A roseate series of caresses.
And where the skin has all but dried
(The air is sultry in the room)
Upon her breast and either side,
It shows a soft and amber bloom.
By women here, who knew her life,
A leper husband, I am told,
Took all this loveliness to wife
When it was barely ten years old.
And when the child in shocked dismay
Fled from the hated husband's care
He caught and tied her, so they say,
Down to his bedside by her hair.
To some low quarter of the town,
Escaped a second time, she flew;
Her beauty brought her great renown
And many lovers here she knew,
When, as the mystic Eastern night
With purple shadow filled the air,
Behind her window framed in light,
She sat with jasmin in her hair.
At last she loved a youth, who chose
To keep this wild flower for his own,
He in his garden set his rose
Where it might bloom for him alone.
Cholera came; her lover died,
Want drove her to the streets again,
And women found her there, who tried
To turn her beauty into gain.
But she who in those garden ways
Had learnt of Love, would now no more
Be bartered in the market place
For silver, as in days before.
That former life she strove to change;
She sold the silver off her arms,
While all the world grew cold and strange
To broken health and fading charms.
Till, finding lovers, but no friend,
Nor any place to rest or hide,
She grew despairing at the end,
Slipped softly down a well and died.
And yet, how short, when all is said,
This little life of love and tears!
Her age, they say, beside her bed,
To-day is only fifteen years.
Marriage Song
by George MacDonald

"They have no more wine!" she said.
But they had enough of bread;
And the vessels by the door
Held for thirst a plenteous store:
Yes, enough; but Love divine
Turned the water into wine!
When should wine like water flow,
But when home two glad hearts go!
When, in sacred bondage bound,
Soul in soul hath freedom found!
Such the time when, holy sign,
Jesus turned the water wine.
Good is all the feasting then;
Good the merry words of men;
Good the laughter and the smiles;
Good the wine that grief beguiles;--
Crowning good, the Word divine
Turning water into wine!
Friends, the Master with you dwell!
Daily work this miracle!
When fair things too common grow,
Bring again their heavenly show!
Ever at your table dine,
Turning water into wine!
So at last you shall descry
All the patterns of the sky:
Earth a heaven of short abode;
Houses temples unto God;
Water-pots, to vision fine,
Brimming full of heavenly wine.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - XLV - Continued
by William Wordsworth

They dreamt not of a perishable home
Who thus could build. Be mine, in hours of fear
Or groveling thought, to seek a refuge here;
Or through the aisles of Westminster to roam:
Where bubbles burst, and folly's dancing foam
Melts, if it cross the threshold; where the wreath
Of awe-struck wisdom droops: or let my path
Lead to that younger Pile, whose sky-like dome
Hath typified by reach of daring art
Infinity's embrace; whose guardian crest,
The silent Cross, among the stars shall spread
As now, when She hath also seen her breast
Filled with mementos, satiate with its part
Of grateful England's overflowing Dead.
Fragment of an Indian Poem.
by George Pope Morris

*        *        *        *        *        *
They come!--Be firm--in silence rally!
The long-knives our retreat have found!
Hark!--their tramp is in the valley,
And they hem the forest round!
The burdened boughs with pale scouts quiver,
The echoing hills tumultuous ring,
While across the eddying river
Their barks, like foaming war-steeds, spring!
The blood-hounds darken land and water;
They come--like buffaloes for slaughter!
See their glittering ranks advancing,
See upon the free winds dancing
Pennon proud and gaudy plume.
The strangers come in evil hour,
In pomp, and panoply, and power!
But, while upon our tribes they lower,
Think they our manly hearts will cower
To meet a warrior's doom?
Right they forget while strength they feel;
Our veins they drain, our land they steal;
And should the vanquished Indian kneel,
They spurn him from their sight!
Be set for ever in disgrace
The glory of the red-man's race,
If from the foe we turn our face,
Or safety seek in flight!
They come--Up, and upon them braves!
Fight for your alters and your graves!
Drive back the stern, invading slaves,
In fight till now victorious!
Like lightning from storm-clouds on high,
The hurtling, death-winged arrows fly,
And wind-rows of pale warriors die!--
Oh! never was the sun's bright eye
Looked from his hill-tops in the sky
Upon a field so glorious!
*        *        *        *        *        *
They're gone--again the red-men rally;
With dance and song the woods resound:
The hatchet's buried in the valley;
No foe profanes our hunting-ground!
The green leaves on the blithe boughs quiver,
The verdant hills with song-birds ring,
While our bark-canoes the river
Skim like swallows on the wing.
Mirth pervades the land and water,
Free from famine, sword, and slaughter.
*        *        *        *        *        *
Let us, by this gentle river,
Blunt the axe and break the quiver,
While, as leaves upon the spray,
Peaceful flow our cares away.
*        *        *        *        *        *
Yet, alas! the hour is brief
Left for either joy or grief!
All on earth that we inherit
From the hands of the Great Spirit--
Wigwam, hill, plain, lake, and field--
To the white-man must we yield;
For, like sun-down on the waves,
We are sinking to our graves!
From this wilderness of wo
Like the caravan we go,
Leaving all our groves and streams
For the far-off land of dreams.
There are prairies waving high,
Boundless as the sheeted sky,
Where our fathers' spirits roam,
And the red-man has a home.
Let tradition tell our story.
As we fade in cloudless glory,
As we seek the land of rest
Beyond the borders of the west,
No eye but ours may look upon--
WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN.
*        *        *        *        *        *
The Beautiful Blue Danube.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

They drift down the hall together;
He smiles in her lifted eyes;
Like waves of that mighty river,
The strains of the "Danube" rise.
They float on its rhythmic measure
Like leaves on a summer-stream;
And here, in this scene of pleasure,
I bury my sweet, dead dream.
Through the cloud of her dusky tresses,
Like a star, shines out her face,
And the form his strong arm presses
Is sylph like in its grace.
As a leaf on the bounding river
Is lost in the seething sea,
I know that forever and ever
My dream is lost to me.
And still the viols are playing
That grand old wordless rhyme;
And still those two ate swaying
In perfect tune and time.
If the great bassoons that mutter,
If the clarinets that blow,
Were given a voice to utter
The secret things they know,
Would the lists of the slam who slumber
On the Danube's battle-plains
The unknown hosts outnumber
Who die 'neath the "Danube's" strains?
Those fall where cannons rattle,
'Mid the rain of shot and shell;
But these, in a fiercer battle,
Find death in the music's swell.
With the river's roar of passion
Is blended the dying groan;
But here, in the halls of fashion,
Hearts break, and make no moan.
And the music, swelling and sweeping,
Like the river, knows it all;
But none are counting or keeping
The lists of these who fall.
Time To Go.
by Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey)

They know the time to go!
The fairy clocks strike their inaudible hour
In field and woodland, and each punctual flower
Bows at the signal an obedient head
And hastes to bed.
The pale Anemone
Glides on her way with scarcely a good-night;
The Violets tie their purple nightcaps tight;
Hand clasped in hand, the dancing Columbines,
In blithesome lines,
Drop their last courtesies,
Flit from the scene, and couch them for their rest;
The Meadow Lily folds her scarlet vest
And hides it 'neath the Grasses' lengthening green;
Fair and serene,
Her sister Lily floats
On the blue pond, and raises golden eyes
To court the golden splendor of the skies,--
The sudden signal comes, and down she goes
To find repose,
In the cool depths below,
A little later, and the Asters blue
Depart in crowds, a brave and cheery crew;
While Golden-rod, still wide awake and gay,
Turns him away,
Furls his bright parasol,
And, like a little hero, meets his fate.
The Gentians, very proud to sit up late,
Next follow. Every Fern is tucked and set
'Neath coverlet,
Downy and soft and warm.
No little seedling voice is heard to grieve
Or make complaints the folding woods beneath;
No lingerer dares to stay, for well they know
The time to go.
Teach us your patience, brave,
Dear flowers, till we shall dare to part like you,
Willing God's will, sure that his clock strikes true,
That his sweet day augurs a sweeter morrow,
With smiles, not sorrow.
Wendell P. Bloyd
by Edgar Lee Masters

They first charged me with disorderly conduct,
There being no statute on blasphemy.
Later they locked me up as insane
Where I was beaten to death by a Catholic guard.
My offense was this:
I said God lied to Adam, and destined him
To lead the life of a fool,
Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good.
And when Adam outwitted God by eating the apple
And saw through the lie,
God drove him out of Eden to keep him from taking
The fruit of immortal life.
For Christ's sake, you sensible people,
Here's what God Himself says about it in the book of Genesis:
"And the Lord God said, behold the man
Is become as one of us" (a little envy, you see),
"To know good and evil" (The all-is-good lie exposed):
"And now lest he put forth his hand and take
Also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever:
Therefore the Lord God sent Him forth from the garden of Eden." (The
reason I believe God crucified His Own Son
To get out of the wretched tangle is, because it sounds just like Him. )
The Dead Man Walking
by Thomas Hardy

They hail me as one living,
But don't they know
That I have died of late years,
Untombed although?
I am but a shape that stands here,
A pulseless mould,
A pale past picture, screening
Ashes gone cold.
Not at a minute's warning,
Not in a loud hour,
For me ceased Time's enchantments
In hall and bower.
There was no tragic transit,
No catch of breath,
When silent seasons inched me
On to this death . . .
- A Troubadour-youth I rambled
With Life for lyre,
The beats of being raging
In me like fire.
But when I practised eyeing
The goal of men,
It iced me, and I perished
A little then.
When passed my friend, my kinsfolk
Through the Last Door,
And left me standing bleakly,
I died yet more;
And when my Love's heart kindled
In hate of me,
Wherefore I knew not, died I
One more degree.
And if when I died fully
I cannot say,
And changed into the corpse-thing
I am to-day;
Yet is it that, though whiling
The time somehow
In walking, talking, smiling,
I live not now.
The Crocuses.
by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

They heard the South wind sighing
A murmur of the rain;
And they knew that Earth was longing
To see them all again.
While the snow-drops still were sleeping
Beneath the silent sod;
They felt their new life pulsing
Within the dark, cold clod.
Not a daffodil nor daisy
Had dared to raise its head;
Not a fairhaired dandelion
Peeped timid from its bed;
Though a tremor of the winter
Did shivering through them run;
Yet they lifted up their foreheads
To greet the vernal sun.
And the sunbeams gave them welcome.
As did the morning air
And scattered o'er their simple robes
Rich tints of beauty rare.
Soon a host of lovely flowers
From vales and woodland burst;
But in all that fair procession
The crocuses were first.
First to weave for Earth a chaplet
To crown her dear old head;
And to beautify the pathway
Where winter still did tread.
And their loved and white haired mother
Smiled sweetly 'neath the touch,
When she knew her faithful children
Were loving her so much.
In The Royal Academy.
by Henry Austin Dobson

HUGH (on furlough).
HELEN (his cousin).
HELEN.
They have not come! And ten is past,--
Unless, by chance, my watch is fast;
--Aunt Mabel surely told us "ten."
HUGH.
I doubt if she can do it, then.
In fact, their train....
HELEN.
That is,--you knew.
How could you be so treacherous, Hugh?
HUGH.
Nay;--it is scarcely mine, the crime,
One can't account for railway-time!
Where shall we sit? Not here, I vote;--
At least, there's nothing here of note.
HELEN.
Then here we'll stay, please. Once for all,
I bar all artists,--great and small!
From now until we go in June
I shall hear nothing but this tune:--
Whether I like Long's "Vashti," or
Like Leslie's "Naughty Kitty" more;
With all that critics, right or wrong,
Have said of Leslie and of Long....
No. If you value my esteem,
I beg you'll take another theme;
Paint me some pictures, if you will,
But spare me these, for good and ill....
HUGH.
"Paint you some pictures!" Come, that's kind!
You know I'm nearly colour-blind.
HELEN.
Paint then, in words. You did before;
Scenes at--where was it? Dustypoor?
You know....
HUGH (with an inspiration).
I'll try.
HELEN.
But mind they're pretty
Not "hog hunts." ...
HUGH.
You shall be Committee,
And say if they are "out" or "in."
HELEN.
I shall reject them all. Begin.
HUGH.
Here is the first. An antique Hall
(Like Chanticlere) with panelled wall.
A boy, or rather lad. A girl,
Laughing with all her rows of pearl
Before a portrait in a ruff.
He meanwhile watches....
HELEN.
That's enough,
It wants "verve," "brio," "breadth," "design," ...
Besides, it's English. I decline.
HUGH.
This is the next. 'Tis finer far:
A foaming torrent (say Braemar).
A pony, grazing by a boulder,
Then the same pair, a little older,
Left by some lucky chance together.
He begs her for a sprig of heather....
HELEN.
--"Which she accords with smile seraphic."
I know it,--it was in the "Graphic."
Declined.
HUGH.
Once more, and I forego
All hopes of hanging, high or low:
Behold the hero of the scene,
In bungalow and palankeen....
HELEN.
What!--all at once! But that's absurd;--
Unless he's Sir Boyle Roche's bird!
HUGH.
Permit me--'Tis a Panorama,
In which the person of the drama,
Mid orientals dusk and tawny,
Mid warriors drinking brandy pawnee,
Mid scorpions, dowagers, and griffins,
In morning rides, at noon-day tiffins,
In every kind of place and weather,
Is solaced ... by a sprig of heather.
(More seriously.)
He puts that faded scrap before
The "Rajah," or the "Koh-i-noor"....
He would not barter it for all
Benares, or the Taj-Mahal....
It guides,--directs his every act,
And word, and thought--In short--in fact--
I mean ...
(Opening his locket.)
Look, Helen, that's the heather!
(Too late! Here come both Aunts together.)
HELEN.
What heather, Sir?
(After a pause.)
And why ... "too late?"
--Aunt Dora, how you've made us wait!
Don't you agree that it's a pity
Portraits are hung by the Committee?
Drifting Away: A Fragment
by Charles Kingsley

They drift away. Ah, God! they drift for ever.
I watch the stream sweep onward to the sea,
Like some old battered buoy upon a roaring river,
Round whom the tide-waifs hang - then drift to sea.
I watch them drift - the old familiar faces,
Who fished and rode with me, by stream and wold,
Till ghosts, not men, fill old beloved places,
And, ah! the land is rank with churchyard mold.
I watch them drift - the youthful aspirations,
Shores, landmarks, beacons, drift alike.
. . . . .
I watch them drift - the poets and the statesmen;
The very streams run upward from the sea.
. . . . . .
Yet overhead the boundless arch of heaven
Still fades to night, still blazes into day.
. . . . .
Ah, God!    My God!    Thou wilt not drift away
November 1867.
Second Sight
by Madison Julius Cawein

They lean their faces to me through
Green windows of the woods;
Their white throats sweet with honey-dew
Beneath low leafy hoods - 
No dream they dream but hath been true
Here in the solitudes.
Star trillium, in the underbrush,
In whom Spring bares her face;
Sun eglantine, that breathes the blush
Of Summer's quiet grace;
Moon mallow, in whom lives the hush
Of Autumn's tragic pace.
For one hath heard the dryad's sighs
Behind the covering bark;
And one hath felt the satyr's eyes
Gleam in the bosky dark;
And one hath seen the naiad rise
In waters all a-spark.
I bend my soul unto them, stilled
In worship man hath lost;
The old-world myths that science killed
Are living things almost
To me through these whose forms are filled
With Beauty's pagan ghost.
And through new eyes I seem to see
The world these live within, - 
A shuttered world of mystery,
Where unreal forms begin
The real of ideality
That has no unreal kin.
The Quarrel.
by James Whitcomb Riley

They faced each other: Topaz-brown
And lambent burnt her eyes and shot
Sharp flame at his of amethyst. - 
"I hate you!    Go, and be forgot
As death forgets!" their glitter hissed
(So seemed it) in their hatred.    Ho!
Dared any mortal front her so? - 
Tempestuous eyebrows knitted down - 
Tense nostril, mouth - no muscle slack, - 
And black - the suffocating black - 
The stifling blackness of her frown!
Ah! but the lifted face of her!
And the twitched lip and tilted head!
Yet he did neither wince nor stir, - 
Only - his hands clenched; and, instead
Of words, he answered with a stare
That stammered not in aught it said,
As might his voice if trusted there.
And what - what spake his steady gaze? - 
Was there a look that harshly fell
To scoff her? - or a syllable
Of anger? - or the bitter phrase
That myrrhs the honey of love's lips,
Or curdles blood as poison drips?
What made their breasts to heave and swell
As billows under bows of ships
In broken seas on stormy days?
We may not know - nor they indeed - 
What mercy found them in their need.
A sudden sunlight smote the gloom;
And round about them swept a breeze,
With faint breaths as of clover-bloom;
A bird was heard, through drone of bees, - 
Then, far and clear and eerily,
A child's voice from an orchard-tree - 
Then laughter, sweet as the perfume
Of lilacs, could the hearing see.
And he - O Love! he fed thy name
On bruis'd kisses, while her dim
Deep eyes, with all their inner flame,
Like drowning gems were turned on him.
The Unknowing
by Theodosia Garrison

They do not know the awful tears we shed,
The tender treasures that we keep and kiss;
They could not be so still--our quiet dead
In knowing this.
They do not know what time we turn to fill
Love's empty chalice with a cheaper bliss;
They could not be so still--so very still
In knowing this.
Beast And Man In India
by Rudyard Kipling

Written for John Lockwood Kipling's
They killed a Child to please the Gods
In Earth's young penitence,
And I have bled in that Babe's stead
Because of innocence.
I bear the sins of sinful men
That have no sin of my own,
They drive me forth to Heaven's wrath
Unpastured and alone.
I am the meat of sacrifice, 
The ransom of man's guilt,
For they give my life to the altar-knife
Wherever shrine is built.
The Goat.
Between the waving tufts of jungle-grass,
Up from the river as the twilight falls,
Across the dust-beclouded plain they pass
On to the village walls.
Great is the sword and mighty is the pen,
But over all the labouring ploughman's blade,
For on its oxen and its husbandmen
An Empire's strength is laid.
The Oxen.
The torn boughs trailing o'er the tusks aslant,
The saplings reeling in the path he trod,
Declare his might--our lord the Elephant, 
Chief of the ways of God.
The black bulk heaving where the oxen pant,
The bowed head toiling where the guns careen,
Declare our might, our slave the Elephant,
And servant of the Queen.
The Elephant.
Dark children of the mere and marsh,
Wallow and waste and lea,
Outcaste they wait at the village gate
With folk of low degree.
Their pasture is in no man's land,
Their food the cattle's scorn;
Their rest is mire and their desire
The thicket and the thorn.
But woe to those that break their sleep,
And woe to those that dare
To rouse the herd-bull from his keep,
The wild boar from his lair!
Pigs and Buffaloes.
The beasts are very wise,
Their mouths are clean of lies,
They talk one to the other,
Bullock to bullock's brother
Resting after their labours,
Each in stall with his neighbours.
But man with goad and whip,
Breaks up their fellowship,
Shouts in their silky ears
Filling their soul with fears.
When he has ploughed the land,
He says: "They understand."
But the beasts in stall together,
Freed from the yoke and tether,
Say as the torn flanks smoke:
"Nay, 'twas the whip that spoke."
The Ballet
by Thomas Hardy

They crush together - a rustling heap of flesh -
Of more than flesh, a heap of souls; and then
They part, enmesh,
And crush together again,
Like the pink petals of a too sanguine rose
Frightened shut just when it blows.
Though all alike in their tinsel livery,
And indistinguishable at a sweeping glance,
They muster, maybe,
As lives wide in irrelevance;
A world of her own has each one underneath,
Detached as a sword from its sheath.
Daughters, wives, mistresses; honest or false, sold, bought;
Hearts of all sizes; gay, fond, gushing, or penned,
Various in thought
Of lover, rival, friend;
Links in a one-pulsed chain, all showing one smile,
Yet severed so many a mile!
Death.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

1.
They die - the dead return not - Misery
Sits near an open grave and calls them over,
A Youth with hoary hair and haggard eye -
They are the names of kindred, friend and lover,
Which he so feebly calls - they all are gone -
Fond wretch, all dead! those vacant names alone,
This most familiar scene, my pain -
These tombs - alone remain.
2.
Misery, my sweetest friend - oh, weep no more!
Thou wilt not be consoled - I wonder not!
For I have seen thee from thy dwelling's door
Watch the calm sunset with them, and this spot
Was even as bright and calm, but transitory,
And now thy hopes are gone, thy hair is hoary;
This most familiar scene, my pain -
These tombs - alone remain.
NOTE:
_5 calls editions 1839; called 1824.
Hail!--And Farewell!
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

They died that we might live,--
Hail!--And Farewell!
--All honour give
To those who, nobly striving, nobly fell,
That we might live!
That we might live they died,--
Hail!--And Farewell!
--Their courage tried,
By every mean device of treacherous hate,
Like Kings they died.
Eternal honour give,--
Hail!--And Farewell!--
--To those who died,
In that full splendour of heroic pride,
That we might live!