DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Protest
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Who say my hea't ain't true to you?
Dey bettah heish dey mouf.
I knows I loves you thoo an' thoo
In watah time er drouf.
I wush dese people 'd stop dey talkin',
Don't mean no mo' dan chicken's squawkin':
I guess I knows which way I's walkin',
I knows de norf f'om souf.
I does not love Elizy Brown,
I guess I knows my min'.
You allus try to tek me down
Wid evaht'ing you fin'.
Ef dese hyeah folks will keep on fillin'
Yo' haid wid nonsense, an' you's willin'
I bet some day dey 'll be a killin'
Somewhaih along de line.
O' cose I buys de gal ice-cream,
Whut else I gwine to do?
I knows jes' how de t'ing 'u'd seem
Ef I 'd be sho't wid you.
On Sunday, you's at chu'ch a-shoutin',
Den all de week you go 'roun' poutin'--
I's mighty tiahed o' all dis doubtin',
I tell you cause I's true.
H.M.S. 'Foudroyant'
by Arthur Conan Doyle

[Being an humble address to Her Majesty's Naval advisers, who sold Nelson's old flagship to the Germans for a thousand pounds.]
Who says the Nation's purse is lean,
Who fears for claim or bond or debt,
When all the glories that have been
Are scheduled as a cash asset?
If times are black and trade is slack,
If coal and cotton fail at last,
We've something left to barter yet -
Our glorious past.
There's many a crypt in which lies hid
The dust of statesman or of king;
There's Shakespeare's home to raise a bid,
And Milton's house its price would bring.
What for the sword that Cromwell drew?
What for Prince Edward's coat of mail?
What for our Saxon Alfred's tomb?
They're all for sale!
And stone and marble may be sold
Which serve no present daily need;
There's Edward's Windsor, labelled old,
And Wolsey's palace, guaranteed.
St. Clement Danes and fifty fanes,
The Tower and the Temple grounds;
How much for these? Just price them, please,
In British pounds.
You hucksters, have you still to learn,
The things which money will not buy?
Can you not read that, cold and stern
As we may be, there still does lie
Deep in our hearts a hungry love
For what concerns our island story?
We sell our work--perchance our lives,
But not our glory.
Go barter to the knacker's yard
The steed that has outlived its time!
Send hungry to the pauper ward
The man who served you in his prime!
But when you touch the Nation's store,
Be broad your mind and tight your grip.
Take heed! And bring us back once more
Our Nelson's ship.
And if no mooring can be found
In all our harbours near or far,
Then tow the old three-decker round
To where the deep-sea soundings are;
There, with her pennon flying clear,
And with her ensign lashed peak high,
Sink her a thousand fathoms sheer.
There let her lie!
The World's Age
by Charles Kingsley

Who will say the world is dying?
Who will say our prime is past?
Sparks from Heaven, within us lying,
Flash, and will flash till the last.
Fools! who fancy Christ mistaken;
Man a tool to buy and sell;
Earth a failure, God-forsaken,
Anteroom of Hell.
Still the race of Hero-spirits
Pass the lamp from hand to hand;
Age from age the Words inherits - 
'Wife, and Child, and Fatherland.'
Still the youthful hunter gathers
Fiery joy from wold and wood;
He will dare as dared his fathers
Give him cause as good.
While a slave bewails his fetters;
While an orphan pleads in vain;
While an infant lisps his letters,
Heir of all the age's gain;
While a lip grows ripe for kissing;
While a moan from man is wrung;
Know, by every want and blessing,
That the world is young.
1849.
Love's Distresses.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Who will hear me? Whom shall I lament to?
Who would pity me that heard my sorrows?
Ah, the lip that erst so many raptures
Used to taste, and used to give responsive,
Now is cloven, and it pains me sorely;
And it is not thus severely wounded
By my mistress having caught me fiercely,
And then gently bitten me, intending
To secure her friend more firmly to her:
No, my tender lip is crack'd thus, only
By the winds, o'er rime and frost proceeding,
Pointed, sharp, unloving, having met me.
Now the noble grape's bright juice commingled
With the bee's sweet juice, upon the fire
Of my hearth, shall ease me of my torment.
Ah, what use will all this be, if with it
Love adds not a drop of his own balsam?
Observation.
by Robert Herrick

Who to the north, or south, doth set
His bed, male children shall beget.
God, Soul, And World.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Who trusts in God,
Fears not His rod.
-
This truth may be by all believed:
Whom God deceives, is well deceived.
-
How? when? and where? No answer comes from high;
Thou wait'st for the Because, and yet thou ask'st not Why?
-
If the whole is ever to gladden thee,
That whole in the smallest thing thou must see.
-
Water its living strength first shows,
When obstacles its course oppose.
-
Transparent appears the radiant air,
Though steel and stone in its breast it may bear;
At length they'll meet with fiery power,
And metal and stones on the earth will shower.
Whate'er a living flame may surround,
No longer is shapeless, or earthly bound.
'Tis now invisible, flies from earth,
And hastens on high to the place of its birth.
Early Love
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

Who says I wrong thee, my half-opened rose?
Little he knows of thee or me, or love. - 
I am so tender of thy fragile youth,
Yea, in my hours of wildest ecstasy,
Keeping close-bitted each careering sense.
Only I give mine eyes unmeasured law
To feed them where they will, and their delight
Was curbed at first, until thy tender shame
Died in the bearing of thy first born joy.
I am not cruel, my half-opened rose,
Though in the sunshine of my own desire
I have uncurled thy petals to the light
And fed the tendrils of thy dawning sense
With delicate caresses, till they leave
Thee tremulous with the newness of thy joy,
Sharing thy lover's fire with innocent flame.
Others will wrong thee, that I well foresee,
Being a man, knowing my fellow men,
And they who, knowing, would blame my love of thee
Contentedly will see thy beauty given,
When the world judges thou art ripe to wed, - 
To the rough rites of marriage, to the pain
And grievous weariness of child-getting, - 
This shall be right and licit in their eyes - 
But it would break my heart, were I alive.
Yea, this will be; many will doubtless share
The rose whose bud has been my one delight,
And I shall not be there to shield my flower.
Yet, I have taught thee of the ways of men,
Much I have learnt in cities and in courts,
Winnowed to suit thy tender brain, - is thine,
Thus Life shall find thee, not all unprepared
To face its callous, subtle cruelties.
Still, - it will profit little; I discern
Thou art of those whose love will prove their curse,
- Thou sayest thou lovest me, to thy delight?
Nay, little one, it is not love as yet.
Dear as thou art, and lovely, thou canst not love,
Thy later loves shall show the truth of this.
Ay, by some subtle signs I know full well
That thou art capable of that great love
Whose glory has the light of unknown heavens,
And makes hot Hell for those who harbour it.
Naught I can say could save thee from thyself,
Ah, were I half my age!    Yet even that,
Had been too old for thy sweet thirteenth year.
Still, thou art happy now, and glad thine eyes,
When, as the lilac evening gains the sky,
I lay thee, 'twixt thine own soft hair and me,
Kissing thy senses into soft delight.
Ruffling the petals of my half-closed rose
With tender touches, and perpetual care
That no wild moment of mine own delight
Deep in the flower's heart, - should set the fruit.
Ah, in the days to come, it well may be,
When thou shalt see thy beauty stained and torn
By the harsh sequel of some future love,
Thy thoughts shall stray to thy first lover's grave,
And thou shalt murmur, "Ay, but that was love.
They were most wrong who said he did me wrong.
Only I was too young to understand."
The Carrier Pigeon.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Oh! qu'est-ce que c'est donc que l'Inconnu.")
[January, 1871.]
Who then - oh, who, is like our God so great,
Who makes the seed expand beneath the mountain's weight;
Who for a swallow's nest leaves one old castle wall,
Who lets for famished beetles savory apples fall,
Who bids a pigmy win where Titans fail, in yoke,
And, in what we deem fruitless roar and smoke,
Makes Etna, Chimborazo, still His praises sing,
And saves a city by a word lapped 'neath a pigeon's wing!
On Giles And Joan
by Ben Jonson

Who says that Giles and Joan at discord be?
Th' observing neighbors no such mood can see.
Indeed, poor Giles repents he married ever,
But that his Joan doth too. And Giles would never
By his free will be in Joan's company;
No more would Joan he should. Giles riseth early,
And having got him out of doors is glad;
The like is Joan. But turning home is sad,
And so is Joan. Ofttimes, when Giles doth find
Harsh sights at home, Giles wisheth he were blind:
All this doth Joan. Or that his long-yearned life
Were quite outspun. The like wish hath his wife.
The children that he keeps Giles swear are none
Of his begetting; and so swears his Joan.
In all affections she concurreth still.
If now, with man and wife, to will and nill
The self-same things a note of concord be,
I know no couple better can agree.
Who Goes With Fergus?
by William Butler Yeats

Who will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood's woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.
And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love's bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.
To A Gipsy Child By The Sea-Shore
by Matthew Arnold

Douglas, Isle of Man
Who taught this pleading to unpractis'd eyes?
Who hid such import in an infant's gloom?
Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise?
What clouds thy forehead, and fore-dates thy doom?
Lo! sails that gleam a moment and are gone;
The swinging waters, and the cluster'd pier.
Not idly Earth and Ocean labour on,
Nor idly do these sea-birds hover near.
But thou, whom superfluity of joy
Wafts not from thine own thoughts, nor longings vain,
Nor weariness, the full-fed soul's annoy;
Remaining in thy hunger and thy pain:
Thou, drugging pain by patience; half averse
From thine own mother's breast, that knows not thee;
With eyes that sought thine eyes thou didst converse,
And that soul-searching vision fell on me.
Glooms that go deep as thine I have not known:
Moods of fantastic sadness, nothing worth.
Thy sorrow and thy calmness are thine own:
Glooms that enhance and glorify this earth.
What mood wears like complexion to thy woe?
His, who in mountain glens, at noon of day,
Sits rapt, and hears the battle break below?
Ah! thine was not the shelter, but the fray.
What exile's, changing bitter thoughts with glad?
What seraph's, in some alien planet born?
No exile's dream was ever half so sad,
Nor any angel's sorrow so forlorn.
Is the calm thine of stoic souls, who weigh
Life well, and find it wanting, nor deplore:
But in disdainful silence turn away,
Stand mute, self-centred, stern, and dream no more?
Or do I wait, to hear some grey-hair'd king
Unravel all his many-colour'd lore:
Whose mind hath known all arts of governing,
Mus'd much, lov'd life a little, loath'd it more?
Down the pale cheek long lines of shadow slope.
Which years, and curious thought, and suffering give
Thou hast foreknown the vanity of hope,
Foreseen thy harvest, yet proceed'st to live.
O meek anticipant of that sure pain
Whose sureness grey-hair'd scholars hardly learn!
What wonder shall time breed, to swell thy strain?
What heavens, what earth, what suns shalt thou discern?
Ere the long night, whose stillness brooks no star,
Match that funereal aspect with her pall,
I think, thou wilt have fathom'd life too far,
Have known too much, or else forgotten all.
The Guide of our dark steps a triple veil
Betwixt our senses and our sorrow keeps:
Hath sown with cloudless passages the tale
Of grief, and eas'd us with a thousand sleeps.
Ah! not the nectarous poppy lovers use,
Not daily labour's dull. Lethaean spring,
Oblivion in lost angels can infuse
Of the soil'd glory, and the trailing wing;
And though thou glean. what strenuous gleaners may,
In the throng'd fields where winning comes by strife;
And though the just sun gild, as all men pray,
Some reaches of thy storm-vext stream of life;
Though that blank sunshine blind thee: though the cloud
That sever'd the world's march and thine, is gone:
Though ease dulls grace, and Wisdom be too proud
To halve a lodging that was all her own:
Once, ere the day decline, thou shalt discern,
Oh once, ere night, in thy success, thy chain.
Ere the long evening close, thou shalt return,
And wear this majesty of grief again.
To An Unknown Bust In The British Museum.
by Henry Austin Dobson

"Sermons in stones."
Who were you once? Could we but guess,
We might perchance more boldly
Define the patient weariness
That sets your lips so coldly;
You "lived," we know, for blame and fame;
But sure, to friend or foeman,
You bore some more distinctive name
Than mere "B. C.,"--and "Roman"?
Your pedestal should help us much.
Thereon your acts, your title,
(Secure from cold Oblivion's touch!)
Had doubtless due recital;
Vain hope!--not even deeds can last!
That stone, of which you're minus,
Maybe with all your virtues past
Endows ... a TIGELLINUS!
We seek it not; we should not find.
But still, it needs no magic
To tell you wore, like most mankind,
Your comic mask and tragic;
And held that things were false and true,
Felt angry or forgiving,
As step by step you stumbled through
This life-long task ... of living!
You tried the cul-de-sac of Thought;
The montagne Russe of Pleasure;
You found the best Ambition brought
Was strangely short of measure;
You watched, at last, the fleet days fly,
Till--drowsier and colder--
You felt MERCURIUS loitering by
To touch you on the shoulder.
'Twas then (why not?) the whim would come
That howso Time should garble
Those deeds of yours when you were dumb,
At least you'd live--in Marble;
You smiled to think that after days,
At least, in Bust or Statue,
(We all have sick-bed dreams!) would gaze,
Not quite incurious, at you.
We gaze; we pity you, be sure!
In truth, Death's worst inaction
Must be less tedious to endure
Than nameless petrifaction;
Far better, in some nook unknown,
To sleep for once--and soundly,
Than still survive in wistful stone,
Forgotten more profoundly!
Laws.
by Robert Herrick

Who violates the customs, hurts the health,
Not of one man, but all the commonwealth.
Cosmos
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who saw the hid beginnings
When Chaos and Order strove,
Or who can date the morning.
The purple flaming of love?
I saw the hid beginnings
When Chaos and Order strove,
And I can date the morning prime
And purple flame of love.
Song breathed from all the forest,
The total air was fame;
It seemed the world was all torches
That suddenly caught the flame.
*             *             *
Is there never a retroscope mirror
In the realms and corners of space
That can give us a glimpse of the battle
And the soldiers face to face?
Sit here on the basalt courses
Where twisted hills betray
The seat of the world-old Forces
Who wrestled here on a day.
*             *             *
When the purple flame shoots up,
And Love ascends his throne,
I cannot hear your songs, O birds,
For the witchery of my own.
And every human heart
Still keeps that golden day
And rings the bells of jubilee
On its own First of May.
The Traveller
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Reply to Rudyard Kipling's "He travels the fastest who travels alone."
Who travels alone with his eyes on the heights,
Though he laughs in the day time oft weeps in the nights;
For courage goes down at the set of the sun,
When the toil of the journey is all borne by one.
He speeds but to grief though full gaily he ride
Who travels alone without love at his side.
Who travels alone without lover or friend
But hurries from nothing, to naught at the end.
Though great be his winnings and high be his goal,
He is bankrupt in wisdom and beggared in soul.
Life's one gift of value to him is denied
Who travels alone without love at his side.
It is easy enough in this world to make haste
If one live for that purpose - but think of the waste;
For life is a poem to leisurely read,
And the joy of the journey lies not in its speed.
Oh! vain his achievement and petty his pride
Who travels alone without love at his side.
Written in Cananore
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

I
Who was it held that Love was soothing or sweet?
Mine is a painful fire, at its whitest heat.
Who said that Beauty was ever a gentle joy?
Thine is a sword that flashes but to destroy.
Though mine eyes rose up from thy Beauty's banquet, calm and refreshed,
My lips, that were granted naught, can find no rest.
My soul was linked with thine, through speech and silent hours,
As the sound of two soft flutes combined, or the scent of sister flowers.
But the body, that wretched slave of the Sultan, Mind,
Who follows his master ever, but far behind,
Nothing was granted him, and every rebellious cell
Rises up with angry protest, "It is not well!
Night is falling; thou hast departed; I am alone;
And the Last Sweetness of Love thou hast not given - I have not known!"
II
Somewhere, Oh, My Beloved One, the house is standing,
Waiting for thee and me; for our first caresses.
It may be a river-boat, or a wave-washed landing,
The shade of a tree in the jungle's dim recesses,
Some far-off mountain tent, ill-pitched and lonely,
Or the naked vault of the purple heavens only.
But the Place is waiting there; till the Hour shall show it,
And our footsteps, following Fate, find it and know it.
Where we shall worship the greatest of all the Gods in his pomp and power, - 
I sometimes think that I shall not care to survive that hour!
The Bow-Leg Boy
by Eugene Field

Who should come up the road one day
But the doctor-man in his two-wheel shay!
And he whoaed his horse and he cried "Ahoy!
I have brought you folks a bow-leg boy!
Such a cute little boy!
Such a funny little boy!
Such a dear little bow-leg boy!"
He took out his box and he opened it wide,
And there was the bow-leg boy inside!
And when they saw that cunning little mite,
They cried in a chorus expressive of delight:
"What a cute little boy!
What a funny little boy!
What a dear little bow-leg boy!"
Observing a strict geometrical law,
They cut out his panties with a circular saw;
Which gave such a stress to his oval stride
That the people he met invariably cried:
"What a cute little boy!
What a funny little boy!
What a dear little bow-leg boy!"
They gave him a wheel and away he went
Speeding along to his heart's content;
And he sits so straight and he pedals so strong
That the folks all say as he bowls along:
"What a cute little boy!
What a funny little boy!
What a dear little bow-leg boy!"
With his eyes aflame and his cheeks aglow,
He laughs "aha" and he laughs "oho";
And the world is filled and thrilled with the joy
Of that jolly little human, the bow-leg boy--
The cute little boy!
The funny little boy!
The dear little bow-leg boy!
If ever the doctor-man comes my way
With his wonderful box in his two-wheel shay,
I'll ask for the treasure I'd fain possess--
Now, honest Injun! can't you guess?
Why, a cute little boy--
A funny little boy--
A dear little bow-leg boy!
Autumn Treasure
by Richard Le Gallienne

Who will gather with me the fallen year,
This drift of forgotten forsaken leaves,
Ah! who give ear
To the sigh October heaves
At summer's passing by!
Who will come walk with me
On this Persian carpet of purple and gold
The weary autumn weaves,
And be as sad as I?
Gather the wealth of the fallen rose,
And watch how the memoried south wind blows
Old dreams and old faces upon the air,
And all things fair.
To Russia
by Joaquin Miller

Who tamed your lawless Tartar blood?
What David bearded in her den
The Russian bear in ages when
You strode your black, unbridled stud,
A skin-clad savage of your steppes?
Why, one who now sits low and weeps,
Why, one who now wails out to you,
The Jew, the Jew, the homeless Jew.
Who girt the thews of your young prime
And bound your fierce divided force?
Why, who but Moses shaped your course
United down the grooves of time?
Your mighty millions all to-day
The hated, homeless Jew obey.
Who taught all poetry to you?
The Jew, the Jew, the hated Jew.
Who taught you tender Bible tales
Of honey-lands, of milk and wine?
Of happy, peaceful Palestine?
Of Jordan's holy harvest vales?
Who gave the patient Christ? I say,
Who gave your Christian creed? Yea, yea,
Who gave your very God to you?
Your Jew! Your Jew! Your hated Jew!
London Types - XI. Drum-Major
by William Ernest Henley

Who says Drum-Major says a man of mould,
Shaking the meek earth with tremendous tread,
And pacing still, a triumph to behold,
Of his own spine at least two yards ahead!
Attorney, grocer, surgeon, broker, duke - 
His calling may be anything, who comes
Into a room, his presence a rebuke
To the dejected, as the pipes and drums
Inspired his port! - who mounts his office stairs
As though he led great armies to the fight!
His bulk itself's pure genius, and he wears
His avoirdupois with so much fire and spright
That, though the creature stands but five feet five,
You take him for the tallest He alive.
"Who Robbed The Woods,"
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Who robbed the woods,
The trusting woods?
The unsuspecting trees
Brought out their burrs and mosses
His fantasy to please.
He scanned their trinkets, curious,
He grasped, he bore away.
What will the solemn hemlock,
What will the fir-tree say?
The Hammock's Complaint
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Who thinks how desolate and strange
To me must seem the autumn's change,
When housed in attic or in chest,
A lonely and unwilling guest,
I lie through nights of bleak December,
And think in silence, and remember.
I think of hempen fields, where I
Once played with insects floating by,
And joyed alike in sun and rain,
Unconscious of approaching pain.
I dwell upon my later lot,
Where, swung in some secluded spot
Between two tried and trusted trees,
All summer long I wooed the breeze.
With song of bee and call of bird
And lover's secrets overheard,
And sight and scent of blooming flowers,
To fill the happy sunlight's hours.
When verdant fields grow bare and brown,
When forest leaves come raining down,
When frost has mated with the weather
And all the birds go south together,
When drying boats turn up their keels,
Who wonders how the hammock feels?
The River Duddon - A Series Of Sonnets, 1820. - XXX - Who Swerves From Innocence, Who Makes Divorce
by William Wordsworth

Who swerves from innocence, who makes divorce
Of that serene companion, a good name,
Recovers not his loss; but walks with shame,
With doubt, with fear, and haply with remorse:
And oft-times he who, yielding to the force
Of chance-temptation, ere his journey end,
From chosen comrade turns, or faithful friend
In vain shall rue the broken intercourse.
Not so with such as loosely wear the chain
That binds them, pleasant River! to thy side:
Through the rough copse wheel thou with hasty stride;
I choose to saunter o'er the grassy plain,
Sure, when the separation has been tried,
That we, who part in love, shall meet again.
Verses.
by Robert Herrick

Who will not honour noble numbers, when
Verses out-live the bravest deeds of men?