DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
In Town
by Edward Dyson

Out of work and out of money,out of friends that means, you bet,
Out of firewood, togs and tucker, out of everything but debt,
And I loathe the barren pavements, and the crowds a fellow meets,
And the maddening repetition of the suffocating streets.
With their stinks my soul is tainted, and the tang is on my tongue
Of that sour and smoky suburb and the push we're thrown among,
And I sicken at the corners polished free of paint and mirk
By the shoulders of the men who're always hanging round for work.
Home,good Lord! a three-roomed hovel 'twixt a puddle and a drain,
In harmonious connection on the left with Liver Lane,
Where a crippled man is dying, and a horde of children fight,
And a woman in the horrors howls remorsefully at night.
It has stables close behind it, and an ash-heap for a lawn,
And is furnished with the tickets of the things we have in pawn;
And all day the place is haunted by a melancholy crowd
Who beg everything or borrow, and to steal are not too proud.
Through the day come weary women, too, with famine-haunted eyes,
Hawking things that are not wanted,things that no one ever buys.
And I hate the prying neighbours, in their animal content,
And the devilish persistence of the man who wants the rent.
I, who cared for none, and faltered at no work a man might do,
Felt a fierce delight possess me when the trucks went surging through,
When the flood raced in the sluices, or the giant gums swung round
'Fore my axe, and flung their mighty limbs all mangled on the ground,
I who hewed and built and burrowed, and who asked no man to give
When a strong arm was excuse enough for venturing to live,
I am creeping by the gutters, with a simper and a smirk,
To the Fates in spats and toppers for the privilege of work.
Far away the hills are all aflame; the blossom golden fair
Streams up the gladdened ranges, and its scent is everywhere,
And the kiddies of the settlers on the creek are red and sweet,
Whilst my youngsters have the sallowness and savour of the street.
To escape these endless vaults of brick, and pitch a tent out back,
If I get a chance I'll graft until my very sinews crack.
Meanwhile may all the angels up in Paradise look down
On a man of sin who died not, but was damned and sent to town.
Into The Twilight
by William Butler Yeats

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh heart again in the gray twilight,
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
Your mother Eire is always young,
Dew ever shining and twilight gray;
Though hope fall from you and love decay,
Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.
Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
For there the mystical brotherhood
Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
And river and stream work out their will;
And God stands winding His lonely horn,
And time and the world are ever in flight;
And love is less kind than the gray twilight,
And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.
The Great Grey Plain
by Henry Lawson

Out West, where the stars are brightest,
Where the scorching north wind blows,
And the bones of the dead gleam whitest,
And the sun on a desert glows,
Yet within the selfish kingdom
Where man starves man for gain,
Where white men tramp for existence,
Wide lies the Great Grey Plain.
No break in its awful horizon,
No blur in the dazzling haze,
Save where by the bordering timber
The fierce, white heat-waves blaze,
And out where the tank-heap rises
Or looms when the sunlights wane,
Till it seems like a distant mountain
Low down on the Great Grey Plain.
No sign of a stream or fountain,
No spring on its dry, hot breast,
No shade from the blazing noontide
Where a weary man might rest.
Whole years go by when the glowing
Sky never clouds for rain,
Only the shrubs of the desert
Grow on the Great Grey Plain.
From the camp, while the rich man's dreaming,
Come the `traveller' and his mate,
In the ghastly dawnlight seeming
Like a swagman's ghost out late;
And the horseman blurs in the distance,
While still the stars remain,
A low, faint dust-cloud haunting
His track on the Great Grey Plain.
And all day long from before them
The mirage smokes away,
That daylight ghost of an ocean
Creeps close behind all day
With an evil, snake-like motion,
As the waves of a madman's brain:
'Tis a phantom NOT like water
Out there on the Great Grey Plain.
There's a run on the Western limit
Where a man lives like a beast,
And a shanty in the mulga
That stretches to the East;
And the hopeless men who carry
Their swags and tramp in pain,
The footmen must not tarry
Out there on the Great Grey Plain.
Out West, where the stars are brightest,
Where the scorching north wind blows,
And the bones of the dead seem whitest,
And the sun on a desert glows,
Out back in the hungry distance
That brave hearts dare in vain,
Where beggars tramp for existence,
There lies the Great Grey Plain.
'Tis a desert not more barren
Than the Great Grey Plain of years,
Where a fierce fire burns the hearts of men,
Dries up the fount of tears:
Where the victims of a greed insane
Are crushed in a hell-born strife,
Where the souls of a race are murdered
On the Great Grey Plain of Life!
Cornish Lullaby
by Eugene Field

Out on the mountain over the town,
All night long, all night long,
The trolls go up and the trolls go down,
Bearing their packs and crooning a song;
And this is the song the hill-folk croon,
As they trudge in the light of the misty moon,--
This is ever their dolorous tune:
"Gold, gold! ever more gold,--
Bright red gold for dearie!"
Deep in the hill the yeoman delves
All night long, all night long;
None but the peering, furtive elves
See his toil and hear his song;
Merrily ever the cavern rings
As merrily ever his pick he swings,
And merrily ever this song he sings:
"Gold, gold! ever more gold,--
Bright red gold for dearie!"
Mother is rocking thy lowly bed
All night long, all night long,
Happy to smooth thy curly head
And to hold thy hand and to sing her song;
'T is not of the hill-folk, dwarfed and old,
Nor the song of the yeoman, stanch and bold,
And the burden it beareth is not of gold;
But it's "Love, love!--nothing but love,--
Mother's love for dearie!"
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part II. - XXXV - Cranmer
by William Wordsworth

Outstretching flameward his upbraided hand
(O God of mercy, may no earthly Seat
Of judgment such presumptuous doom repeat!)
Amid the shuddering throng doth Cranmer stand;
Firm as the stake to which with iron band
His frame is tied; firm from the naked feet
To the bare head. The victory is complete;
The shrouded Body to the Soul's command
Answers with more than Indian fortitude,
Through all her nerves with finer sense endued,
Till breath departs in blissful aspiration:
Then, 'mid the ghastly ruins of the fire,
Behold the unalterable heart entire,
Emblem of faith untouched, miraculous attestation!
Excelsior
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Over his head were the maple buds,
And over the tree was the moon,
And over the moon were the starry studs
That drop from the angels' shoon.
The Burning Of Chicago.
by Kate Seymour Maclean

Out of the west a voice--a shudder of horror and pity;
Quivers along the pulses of all the winds that blow;--
Woe for the fallen queen, for the proud and beautiful city.
Out of the North a cry--lamentation and mourning and woe.
Dust and ashes and darkness her splendour and brightness cover,
Like clouds above the glory of purple mountain peaks;
She sits with her proud head bowed, and a mantle of blackness over--
She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks.
The city of gardens and palaces, stately and tall pavilions,
Roofs flashing back the sunlight, music and gladness and mirth,
Whose streets were full of the hum and roar of the toiling millions,
Whose merchantmen were princes, and the honourable of the earth:
Whose traders came from the islands--from far off summer places,
Bringing spices and pearls, and the furs and skins of beasts.
Men from the frozen North, and men with fierce dark faces,
Full of the desert fire, and the untamed life of the East.
Treasures of gems and gold, of statues and flowers and fountains,
Vases of onyx and jasper from Indian emperors sent;
Pictures out of the heart of tropical sunlit mountains,
Of rocks of porphyry piled at the gates of the Occident.
Dusk-brown sons of the forest, hunters of deer and of bison,
And the almond-eyed child of the sun met in her busy streets,
With waifs from the banks of the Indus, and the ancient river Pison--
Lands of the date and the palm, and the citron's hoarded sweets.
The surging tide of the prairie rolled its billows of blossom
Against her mighty walls, and beat at her hundred gates;
The riches of all the world were poured into her bosom,
Kings were her mighty men, and lords, and potentates.
She sat in her place by the sea, and the swift-sailing ships obeyed her.
Full freighted with corn and wheat their purple sails unfurled,
Far-off in the morning land, and the isles beyond the equator;
Out of her heaped-up garners she scattered the bread of the world.
As her pride and her beauty were perfect, so desolation and mourning,
Swift and sudden, and sure her utter destruction came,
The heavens above were dark with the smoke of her awful burning,
And the earth and the sea were lighted with the fierceness of her flame.
Behold oh, England! oh, Europe! and see is there any    sorrow
Like hers who sits in silence among her children slain,
Oh, blackness of woe and ruin! can any future morrow
Bring back to the shrouded city her glory and crown again!
Aye, subtle and wonderful links of human love and pity,
Ye have bridged the sea of ruin, and spanned it with a span!
She shall rise again from her ashes and build a fairer city,
With a larger faith in God, and the Brotherhood of Man,
The Lost House
by George MacDonald

Out of thy door I run to do the thing
That calls upon me. Straight the wind of words
Whoops from mine ears the sounds of them that sing
About their work, "My God, my father-king!"
I turn in haste to see thy blessed door,
But, lo, a cloud of flies and bats and birds,
And stalking vapours, and vague monster-herds
Have risen and lighted, rushed and swollen between!
Ah me! the house of peace is there no more.
Was it a dream then?--Walls, fireside, and floor,
And sweet obedience, loving, calm, and free,
Are vanished--gone as they had never been!
I labour groaning. Comes a sudden sheen!--
And I am kneeling at my father's knee,
Sighing with joy, and hoping utterly.
Misery
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

Out of this oubliette between the mountains
five valleys go, five passes like gates;
three of them black in shadow, two of them bright
with distant sunshine;
and sunshine fills one high valley bed,
green grass shining, and little white houses
like quartz crystals,
little, but distinct a way off.
Why don't I go?
Why do I crawl about this pot, this oubliette,
stupidly?
Why don't I go?
But where?
If I come to a pine-wood, I can't say
Now I am arrived!
What are so many straight trees to me!
STERZING
The Legend Of Heinz Von Stein
by Charles G. Leland

Out rode from his wild, dark castle
The terrible Heinz von Stein;
He came to the door of a tavern
And gazed on its swinging sign.
He sat himself down at a table,
And growled for a bottle of wine;
Up came with a flask and a corkscrew
A maiden of beauty divine.
Then, seized with a deep love-longing,
He uttered, "O damosel mine,
Suppose you just give a few kisses
To the valorous Ritter von Stein!"
But she answered, "The kissing business
Is entirely out of my line;
And I certainly will not begin it
On a countenance ugly as thine!"
Oh, then the bold knight was angry,
And cursed both coarse and fine;
And asked, "How much is the swindle
For your sour and nasty wine?"
And fiercely he rode to the castle
And sat himself down to dine;
And this is the dreadful legend
Of the terrible Heinz von Stein.
Charles Godfrey Leland.
In The Storm
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
Over heaven clouds are drifted;
In the trees the wind-witch cries;
By her sieve the rain is sifted,
And the clouds at times are rifted
By her mad broom as she flies.
Love, there's lightning in the skies,
Swift, as, in your face uplifted,
Leaps the heart-thought to your eyes.
Little face, where I can trace
Dreams for which those eyes are pages,
Whose young magic here assuages
All the heart-storm and alarm.
II.
Now the thunder tramples slowly,
Like a king, down heaven's arc;
And the clouds, like armies wholly
Vanquished, break; and, white as moly,
Sweeps the queen moon on the dark.
Love, a bird wakes; is't the lark?
Sweet as in your bosom holy
Sings the heart that now I hark.
All my soul that song makes whole,
That young song I hear it singing,
Calm and peace for ever bringing
To my heart's storm and alarm.
God's Green Book
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
Out, out in the open fields,
Where the great, green book of God,
The book that its wisdom yields
To each soul that is not a clod,
Lies wide for the world to read,
I would go; and in flower and weed,
That letter the lines of the grass,
Would read of a better creed
Than that which the town-world has.
II.
Too long in the city streets,
The alleys of grime and sin,
Have I heard the iron beats
Of the heart of toil; whose din
And the throb of whose wild unrest
Have stunned the song in my breast,
Have marred its music and slain
The bird that was once its guest,
And my soul would find it again.
III.
Out there where the great, green book,
Whose leaves are the grass and trees,
Lies open; where each may look,
May muse and read as he please;
The book, that is gilt with gleams,
Whose pages are ribboned with streams;
That says what our souls would say
Of beauty that 's wrought of dreams
And buds and blossoms of May.
Aner Clute
by Edgar Lee Masters

Over and over they used to ask me,
While buying the wine or the beer,
In Peoria first, and later in Chicago,
Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived
How I happened to lead the life,
And what was the start of it.
Well, I told them a silk dress,
And a promise of marriage from a rich man - 
(It was Lucius Atherton).
But that was not really it at all.
Suppose a boy steals an apple
From the tray at the grocery store,
And they all begin to call him a thief,
The editor, minister, judge, and all the people - 
"A thief," "a thief," "a thief," wherever he goes
And he can't get work, and he can't get bread
Without stealing it, why the boy will steal.
It's the way the people regard the theft of the apple
That makes the boy what he is.
Buffalo Country
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

Out where the grey streams glide,
Sullen and deep and slow,
And the alligators slide
From the mud to the depths below
Or drift on the stream like a floating death,
Where the fever comes on the south wind's breath,
There is the buffalo.
Out of the big lagoons,
Where the Regia lilies float,
And the Nankin heron croons
With a deep ill-omened note,
In the ooze and the mud of the swamps below
Lazily wallows the buffalo,
Buried to nose and throat.
From the hunter's gun he hides
In the jungle's dark and damp,
Where the slinking dingo glides
And the flying foxes camp;
Hanging like myriad fiends in line
Where the trailing creepers twist and twine
And the sun is a sluggish lamp.
On the edge of the rolling plains
Where the coarse cane grasses swell,
Lush with the tropic rains
In the noontide's drowsy spell,
Slowly the buffalo grazes through
Where the brolgas dance, and the jabiru
Stands like a sentinel.
All that the world can know
Of the wild and the weird is here,
Where the black men come and go
With their boomerang and spear,
And the wild duck darken the evening sky
As they fly to their nests in the reed beds high
When the tropic night is near.
Act'on 1
by Arthur Hugh Clough

Over a mountain slope with lentisk, and with abounding
Arbutus, and the red oak overtufted, 'mid a noontide
Now glowing fervidly, the Leto-born, the divine one,
Artemis, Arcadian wood-rover, alone, hunt-weary,
Unto a dell cent'ring many streamlets her foot unerring
Had guided. Platanus with fig-tree shaded, a hollow,
Shaded a waterfall, where pellucid yet abundant
Streams from perpetual full-flowing sources a current:
Lower on either bank in sunshine flowered the oleanders:
Plenteous under a rock green herbage here to the margin
Grew with white poplars overcrowning. She thither arrived,
Unloosening joyfully the vest enfolded upon her,
Swift her divine shoulders discovering, swiftly revealing
Her maidenly bosom and all her beauty beneath it,
To the river water overflowing to receive her
Yielded her ambrosial nakedness. But with an instant
Conscious, with the instant the' immortal terrific anger
Flew to the guilty doer: that moment, where amid amply
Concealing plane-leaves he the' opportunity pursued,
Long vainly, possessed, unwise, Act'on, of hunters,
Hapless of Arcadian, and most misguided of hunters,
Knew the divine mandate, knew fate directed upon him.
He, to the boughs crouching, with dreadful joy the desired one
Had viewed descending, viewed as in a dream, disarraying,
And the unclad shoulders awestruck, awestruck let his eyes see
The maidenly bosom, but not dim fear fell upon them
Not more had witnessed. Not, therefore, less the forest through
Ranging, their master ceasing thenceforth to remember,
With the instant together came trooping, as to devour him,
His dogs from the ambush. Transformed suddenly before them,
He fled, an antlered stag wild with terror to the mountain.
She, the liquid stream in, her limbs carelessly reclining,
The flowing waters collected grateful about her.
Where the Dead Men Lie
by Barcroft Boake

Out on the wastes of the Never Never
That's where the dead men lie!
There where the heat-waves dance forever
That's where the dead men lie!
That's where the Earth's loved sons are keeping
Endless tryst: not the west wind sweeping
Feverish pinions can wake their sleeping
Out where the dead men lie!
Where brown Summer and Death have mated
That's where the dead men lie!
Loving with fiery lust unsated
That's where the dead men lie!
Out where the grinning skulls bleach whitely
Under the saltbush sparkling brightly;
Out where the wild dogs chorus nightly
That's where the dead men lie!
Deep in the yellow, flowing river
That's where the dead men lie!
Under the banks where the shadows quiver
That's where the dead men he!
Where the platypus twists and doubles,
Leaving a train of tiny bubbles.
Rid at last of their earthly troubles
That's where the dead men lie!
East and backward pale faces turning
That's how the dead men lie!
Gaunt arms stretched with a voiceless yearning
That's how the dead men lie!
Oft in the fragrant hush of nooning
Hearing again their mother's crooning,
Wrapt for aye in a dreamful swooning
That's how the dead men lie!
Only the hand of Night can free them
That's when the dead men fly!
Only the frightened cattle see them
See the dead men go by!
Cloven hoofs beating out one measure,
Bidding the stockmen know no leisure
That's when the dead men take their pleasure!
That's when the dead men fly!
Ask, too, the never-sleeping drover:
He sees the dead pass by;
Hearing them call to their friends the plover,
Hearing the dead men cry;
Seeing their faces stealing, stealing,
Hearing their laughter, pealing, pealing,
Watching their grey forms wheeling, wheeling
Round where the cattle lie!
Strangled by thirst and fierce privation
That's how the dead men die!
Out on 'Moneygrub's' farthest station
That's how the dead men die!
Hard-faced greybeards, youngsters caflow;
Some mounds cared for, some left fallow;
Some deep down, yet others shallow.
Some having but the sky.
'Moneygrub', as he sips his claret,
Looks with complacent eye
Down at his watch-chain, eighteen carat
There, in his club, hard by:
Recks not that every link is stamped with
Names of the men whose limbs are cramped with
Too long lying in grave-mould, cramped with
Death where the dead men lie.
Fairly Weel-off.
by John Hartley

Ov whooalsum food aw get mi fill, - 
Ov drink aw seldom want a gill;
Aw've clooas to shield me free throo harm,
Should winds be cold or th' sun be warm.
Aw rarely have a sickly spell, - 
Mi appetite aw'm fain to tell
Ne'er plays noa scurvy tricks on me,
Nowt ivver seems to disagree.
Aw've wark, as mich as aw can do, - 
Sometimes aw laik a day or two, - 
Mi wage is nobbut small, but yet,
Aw manage to keep aght o' debt.
Mi wife, God bless her! ivvery neet
Has slippers warmin for mi feet;
An th' hearthstun cleean, an th' drinkin laid,
An th' teah's brew'd an th' tooast is made.
An th' childer weshed, an fairly dressed,
Wi' health an happiness are blest;
An th' youngest, tho' aw say't misen,
Is th' grandest babby ivver seen.
Aw've friends, tho' humble like misen,
They're gradely, upright, workin-men,
They're nooan baght brains oth' sooart they're on; - 
They do what's reight as near's they con.
Aw tak small stock i' politics,
For lib'ral shams an tooary tricks,
Have made me daat 'em one an all; - 
Ther words are big, but deeds are small.
Aw goa to th' chapil, yet confess
Aw'm somewhat daatful, moor or less,
For th' chaps at cracks up gloory soa,
Ne'er seem in onny haste to goa.
To me, religion seems quite plain; - 
Aw cause noa fellow-mortal pain,
Aw do a kind act when aw can,
An hooap to dee an honest man.
Aw hooap to live till old an gray,
An when th' time comes to goa away,
Aw feel convinced some place ther'll be,
Just fit for sich a chap as me.
Green fields, an trees, an brooks, an flaars,
Are treasures we can all call awrs,
An when hooam is earth's fairest spot
One should be thankful for his lot.
Aw'm nooan contented, - nay, net aw!
Aw nivver con be tho' aw try;
But aw enjoy th' gooid things aw have,
An if aw for moor blessins crave,
It's more for th' sake o'th' wife an bairns,
To spare them my life's ups an daans.
Well, yo may laff, an sneerin say,
Aw'm praad an selfish i' mi way; - 
Maybe aw am, - but yo'll agree,
Ther's few fowk better off nor me.
Lachesis
by Victor James Daley

Over a slow-dying fire,
Dreaming old dreams, I am sitting;
The flames leap up and expire;
A woman sits opposite knitting.
I've taken a Fate to wife;
She knits with a half-smile mocking
Me, and my dreams, and my life,
All into a worsted stocking.
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet LXXXVIII
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

Out, traytor Absence, dar'st thou counsell me
From my deare captainesse to run away,
Because in braue array heere marcheth she,
That, to win mee, oft shewes a present pay?
Is faith so weake? or is such force in thee?
When sun is hid, can starres such beames display?
Cannot heau'ns food, once felt, keepe stomakes free
From base desire on earthly cates to pray?
Tush, Absence; while thy mistes eclipse that light,
My orphan sense flies to the inward sight,
Where memory sets forth the beames of loue;
That, where before hart lou'd and eyes did see,
In hart both sight and loue now coupled be:
Vnited pow'rs make each the stronger proue.
The Purpose
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Over and over the task was set,
Over and over I slighted the work,
But ever and alway I knew that yet
I must face and finish the toil I shirk.
Over and over the whip of pain
Has spurred and punished with blow on blow;
As ever and alway I tried in vain
To shun the labour I hated so.
Over and over I came this way
For just one purpose:    O stubborn soul!
Turn with a will to your work to-day,
And learn the lesson of SELF-CONTROL.
Discord In Childhood
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

Outside the house an ash-tree hung its terrible whips,
And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the tree
Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship's
Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously.
Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slender lash
Whistling delirious rage, and the dreadful sound
Of a thick lash booming and bruising, until it drowned
The other voice in a silence of blood, 'neath the noise of the ash.
Open Windows
by Sara Teasdale

Out of the window a sea of green trees
Lift their soft boughs like the arms of a dancer,
They beckon and call me, "Come out in the sun!"
But I cannot answer.
I am alone with Weakness and Pain,
Sick abed and June is going,
I cannot keep her, she hurries by
With the silver-green of her garments blowing.
Men and women pass in the street
Glad of the shining sapphire weather,
But we know more of it than they,
Pain and I together.
They are the runners in the sun,
Breathless and blinded by the race,
But we are watchers in the shade
Who speak with Wonder face to face.