DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Song Of The Universal
by Walt Whitman

Come, said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
Sing me the Universal.
In this broad Earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
Nestles the seed Perfection.
By every life a share, or more or less,
None born but it is born conceal'd or unconceal'd, the seed is waiting.
Lo! keen-eyed, towering Science!
As from tall peaks the Modern overlooking,
Successive, absolute fiats issuing.
Yet again, lo! the Soul above all science;
For it, has History gather'd like a husk around the globe;
For it, the entire star-myriads roll through the sky.
In spiral roads, by long detours,
(As a much-tacking ship upon the sea,)
For it, the partial to the permanent flowing,
For it, the Real to the Ideal tends.
For it, the mystic evolution;
Not the right only justified what we call evil also justified.
Forth from their masks, no matter what,
From the huge, festering trunk from craft and guile and tears,
Health to emerge, and joy joy universal.
Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow,
Out of the bad majority the varied, countless frauds of men and States,
Electric, antiseptic yet cleaving, suffusing all,
Only the good is universal.
Over the mountain growths, disease and sorrow,
An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering,
High in the purer, happier air.
From imperfection's murkiest cloud,
Darts always forth one ray of perfect light,
One flash of Heaven's glory.
To fashion's, custom's discord,
To the mad Babel-din, the deafening orgies,
Soothing each lull, a strain is heard, just heard,
From some far shore, the final chorus sounding.
O the blest eyes! the happy hearts!
That see that know the guiding thread so fine,
Along the mighty labyrinth!
And thou, America!
For the Scheme's culmination its Thought, and its Reality,
For these, (not for thyself,) Thou hast arrived.
Thou too surroundest all;
Embracing, carrying, welcoming all, Thou too, by pathways broad and new,
To the Ideal tendest.
The measur'd faiths of other lands the grandeurs of the past,
Are not for Thee but grandeurs of Thine own;
Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all,
All eligible to all.
All, all for Immortality!
Love, like the light, silently wrapping all!
Nature's amelioration blessing all!
The blossoms, fruits of ages orchards divine and certain;
Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual Images ripening.
Give me, O God, to sing that thought!
Give me give him or her I love, this quenchless faith
In Thy ensemble. Whatever else withheld, withhold not from us,
Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space;
Health, peace, salvation universal.
Is it a dream?
Nay, but the lack of it the dream,
And, failing it, life's lore and wealth a dream,
And all the world a dream.
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet XXXIX
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

Come, Sleepe! O Sleepe, the certaine knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balme of woe,
The poor mans wealth, the prisoners release,
Th' indifferent iudge betweene the high and low!
With shield of proofe shield me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts Despaire at me doth throw.
O make in me those ciuil wars to cease;
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillowes, sweetest bed,
A chamber deafe of noise and blind of light,
A rosie garland and a weary hed:
And if these things, as being thine in right,
Moue not thy heauy grace, thou shalt in me,
Liuelier then else-where, Stellaes image see.
New Grand Exhibition Of Models Of The Two Houses Of Parliament.
by Thomas Moore

Come, step in, gentlefolks, here ye may view
An exact and natural representation
(Like Siburn's Model of Waterloo[1])
Of the Lords and Commons of this here nation.
There they are--all cut out in cork--
The "Collective Wisdom" wondrous to see;
My eyes! when all them heads are at work,
What a vastly weighty consarn it must be.
As for the "wisdom,"--that may come anon;
Tho', to say truth, we sometimes see
(And I find the phenomenon no uncommon 'un)
A man who's M.P. with a head that's M.T.
Our Lords are rather too small, 'tis true;
But they do well enough for Cabinet shelves;
And, besides,--what's a man with creeturs to do
That make such werry small figures themselves?
There--don't touch those lords, my pretty dears--(Aside.)
Curse the children!--this comes of reforming a nation:
Those meddling young brats have so damaged my peers,
I must lay in more cork for a new creation.
Them yonder's our bishops--"to whom much is given,"
And who're ready to take as much more as you please:
The seers of old time saw visions of heaven,
But these holy seers see nothing but Sees.
Like old Atlas[2](the chap, in Cheapside, there below,)
'Tis for so much per cent, they take heaven on their shoulders;
And joy 'tis to know that old High Church and Co.,
Tho' not capital priests, are such capital-holders.
There's one on 'em, Phillpotts, who now is away,
As we're having him filled with bumbustible stuff,
Small crackers and squibs, for a great gala-day,
When we annually fire his Right Reverence off.
'Twould do your heart good, ma'am, then to be by,
When, bursting with gunpowder, 'stead of with bile,
Crack, crack, goes the bishop, while dowagers cry,
"How like the dear man, both in matter and style!"
Should you want a few Peers and M.P.s, to bestow,
As presents to friends, we can recommend these:--
Our nobles are come down to nine-pence, you know,
And we charge but a penny a piece for M.P.s.
Those of bottle-corks made take most with the trade,
(At least 'mong such as my Irish writ summons,)
Of old whiskey corks our O'Connells are made,
But those we make Shaws and Lefroys of, are rum 'uns.
So, step in, gentlefolks, etc.
Da Capo.
To The Painter, To Draw Him A Picture.
by Robert Herrick

Come, skilful Lupo, now, and take
Thy bice, thy umber, pink, and lake;
And let it be thy pencil's strife,
To paint a Bridgeman to the life:
Draw him as like too, as you can,
An old, poor, lying, flattering man:
His cheeks bepimpled, red and blue;
His nose and lips of mulberry hue.
Then, for an easy fancy, place
A burling iron for his face:
Next, make his cheeks with breath to swell,
And for to speak, if possible:
But do not so, for fear lest he
Should by his breathing, poison thee.
The Catalogue.
by Thomas Moore

"Come, tell me," says Rosa, as kissing and kist,
One day she reclined on my breast;
"Come, tell me the number, repeat me the list
"Of the nymphs you have loved and carest."--
Oh Rosa! 'twas only my fancy that roved,
My heart at the moment was free;
But I'll tell thee, my girl, how many I've loved,
And the number shall finish with thee.
My tutor was Kitty; in infancy wild
She taught me the way to be blest;
She taught me to love her, I loved like a child,
But Kitty could fancy the rest.
This lesson of dear and enrapturing lore
I have never forgot, I allow:
I have had it by rote very often before,
But never by heart until now.
Pretty Martha was next, and my soul was all flame,
But my head was so full of romance
That I fancied her into some chivalry dame,
And I was her knight of the lance.
But Martha was not of this fanciful school,
And she laughed at her poor little knight;
While I thought her a goddess, she thought me a fool,
And I'll swear she was most in the right.
My soul was now calm, till, by Cloris's looks,
Again I was tempted to rove;
But Cloris, I found, was so learned in books
That she gave me more logic than love.
So I left this young Sappho, and hastened to fly
To those sweeter logicians in bliss,
Who argue the point with a soul-telling eye,
And convince us at once with a kiss.
Oh! Susan was then all the world unto me,
But Susan was piously given;
And the worst of it was, we could never agree
On the road that was shortest to Heaven.
"Oh, Susan!" I've said, in the moments of mirth,
"What's devotion to thee or to me?
"I devoutly believe there's a heaven on earth,
"And believe that that heaven's in thee!"
The Mountain Road
by Enid Derham

Coming down the mountain road
Light of heart and all alone,
I caught from every rill that flowed
A rapture of its own.
Heart and mind sang on together,
Rhymes began to meet and run
In the windy mountain weather
And the winter sun.
Clad in freshest light and sweet
Far and far the city lay
With her suburbs at her feet
Round the laughing bay.
Like an eagle lifted high
Half the radiant world I scanned,
Till the deep unclouded sky
Circled sea and land.
No more was thought a weary load,
Older comforts stirred within,
Coming down the mountain road
The earth and I were kin.
To .......
by Thomas Moore

Come, take thy harp--'tis vain to muse
Upon the gathering ills we see;
Oh! take thy harp and let me lose
All thoughts of ill in hearing thee.
Sing to me, love!--Though death were near,
Thy song could make my soul forget--
Nay, nay, in pity, dry that tear,
All may be well, be happy yet.
Let me but see that snowy arm
Once more upon the dear harp lie,
And I will cease to dream of harm,
Will smile at fate, while thou art nigh.
Give me that strain of mournful touch
We used to love long, long ago,
Before our hearts had known as much
As now, alas! they bleed to know.
Sweet notes! they tell of former peace,
Of all that looked so smiling then,
Now vanished, lost--oh, pray thee cease,
I cannot bear those sounds again.
Art thou, too, wretched? Yes, thou art;
I see thy tears flow fast with mine--
Come, come to this devoted heart,
'Tis breaking, but it still is thine!
The Launch.
by H. P. Nichols

Come, sister Ellen, get your hat
And come away with me;
My boat, all rigged with mast and sail,
I want you so to see!
Do you upon the landing stand,
While here I'll kneel and blow,
So that the little "Water-witch"
Beneath the arch may go.
There! there! she's off! how fast she goes
Across the river wide!
I'd love to sit in her myself,
And o'er the water glide.
When I'm a man I'll have a boat,
And every sunny day,
We'll take a long and pleasant sail,
Till daylight fades away.
The Night Cometh
by John Alexander McCrae

Cometh the night.    The wind falls low,
The trees swing slowly to and fro:
Around the church the headstones grey
Cluster, like children strayed away
But found again, and folded so.
No chiding look doth she bestow:
If she is glad, they cannot know;
If ill or well they spend their day,
Cometh the night.
Singing or sad, intent they go;
They do not see the shadows grow;
"There yet is time," they lightly say,
"Before our work aside we lay";
Their task is but half-done, and lo!
Cometh the night.
Ghost Raddled.
by Robert von Ranke Graves

"Come, surly fellow, come!    A song!"
What, madmen?    Sing to you?
Choose from the clouded tales of wrong
And terror I bring to you.
Of a night so torn with cries,
Honest men sleeping
Start awake with glaring eyes,
Bone-chilled, flesh creeping.
Of spirits in the web hung room
Up above the stable,
Groans, knockings in the gloom,
The dancing table.
Of demons in the dry well
That cheep and mutter,
Clanging of an unseen bell,
Blood choking the gutter.
Of lust frightful, past belief,
Lurking unforgotten,
Unrestrainable endless grief
From breasts long rotten.
A song?    What laughter or what song
Can this house remember?
Do flowers and butterflies belong
To a blind December?
Come, Ye Disconsolate. (Air.--German.)
by Thomas Moore

Come, ye disconsolate, where'er you languish,
Come, at God's altar fervently kneel;
Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish--
Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.
Joy of the desolate, Light of the straying,
Hope, when all others die, fadeless and pure,
Here speaks the Comforter, in GOD'S name saying--
"Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot cure."
Go, ask the infidel, what boon he brings us
What charm for aching hearts he can reveal,
Sweet as that heavenly promise Hope sings us--
"Earth has no sorrow that GOD cannot heal."
The Road Back
by Madison Julius Cawein

Come, walk with me and Memory;
And let us see what we shall see:
A wild green lane of stones and weeds
That to a wilder woodland leads.
An old board gate, the lichens crust,
Whose ancient hinges croak with rust.
A vale; a creek; and a bridge of planks,
And the wild sunflowers that wall its banks:
A path that winds through shine and shade
To a ferned and wildflowered forest glade;
Where, out of a grotto, a voice replies
With a faint hollo to your voice that cries:
And every wind that passes seems
A foot that follows from Lands o' Dreams.
A voice, a foot, and a shadow, too,
That whispers of things your childhood knew:
A girl that waited, a boy that came,
And an old beech tree where he carved her name;
Where still he sees her, whom still he hears
Bidding him come through the long-gone years. . . .
How oft she beckons your heart and mine
From the farmhouse window trailed deep with vine,
And porched with roses! where all must know
She used to live in the long-ago.
The farmhouse there at the end o' the lane,
With the sunset twinkling its windowpane;
Where she smiles as she smiled in the Long-ago,
The farmer's daughter you used to know,
Who has not changed to your heart for years,
Though her face you often see through tears:
Who wears her youth, as she did of old,
As a princess weareth a crown of gold.
The little sweetheart, you know for truth,
Who lives for aye in the Land of Youth;
Who never dies; who is always fair,
With eyes of mischief and tomboy hair:
Whom your heart still follows and worships, it seems,
Forever and aye in the Land o' Dreams.
The Night Cometh
by John McCrae

Cometh the night. The wind falls low,
The trees swing slowly to and fro:
Around the church the headstones grey
Cluster, like children strayed away
But found again, and folded so.
No chiding look doth she bestow:
If she is glad, they cannot know;
If ill or well they spend their day,
Cometh the night.
Singing or sad, intent they go;
They do not see the shadows grow;
"There yet is time," they lightly say,
"Before our work aside we lay";
Their task is but half-done, and lo!
Cometh the night.
To The Rev. F.D. Maurice
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

January, 1854
Come, when no graver cares employ,
Godfather, come and see your boy:
Your presence will be sun in winter,
Making the little one leap for joy.
For, being of that honest few,
Who give the Fiend himself his due,
Should eighty-thousand college-councils
Thunder 'Anathema,' friend, at you;
Should all our churchmen foam in spite
At you, so careful of the right,
Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome
(Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight;
Where, far from noise and smoke of town,
I watch the twilight falling brown
All round a careless-order'd garden
Close to the ridge of a noble down.
You'll have no scandal while you dine,
But honest talk and wholesome wine,
And only hear the magpie gossip
Garrulous under a roof of pine:
For groves of pine on either hand,
To break the blast of winter, stand;
And further on, the hoary Channel
Tumbles a billow on chalk and sand;
Where, if below the milky steep
Some ship of battle slowly creep,
And on thro' zones of light and shadow
Glimmer away to the lonely deep,
We might discuss the Northern sin
Which made a selfish war begin;
Dispute the claims, arrange the chances;
Emperor, Ottoman, which shall win:
Or whether war's avenging rod
Shall lash all Europe into blood;
Till you should turn to dearer matters,
Dear to the man that is dear to God;
How best to help the slender store,
How mend the dwellings, of the poor;
How gain in life, as life advances,
Valour and charity more and more.
Come, Maurice, come: the lawn as yet
Is hoar with rime, or spongy-wet;
But when the wreath of March has blossom'd,
Crocus, anemone, violet,
Or later, pay one visit here,
For those are few we hold as dear;
Nor pay but one, but come for many,
Many and many a happy year.
Songs Set To Music: 4. Set By Mr. Smith
by Matthew Prior

Come, weep no more, for 'tis in vain;
Torment not thus your pretty heart;
Think, Flavia, we may meet again,
As well as that we now must part.
You sigh and weep; the gods neglect
That precious dew your eyes let fall;
Our joy and grief with like respect
They mind, and that is not at all.
We pray, in hopes they will be kind,
As if they did regard our state;
They hear, and the return we find
Is, that no prayers can alter Fate.
Then clear your brow, and look more gay;
Do not yourself to grief resign;
Who knows but that those powers may
The pair they now have parted join?
But since they have thus cruel been,
And could such constant lovers sever,
I dare not trust, lest, now they're in,
They should divide us two for ever.
Then, Flavia, come, and let us grieve,
Remembering, though, upon what score;
This our last parting look believe,
Believe we must embrace no more.
Yet should our sun shine out at last,
And Fortune, without more deceit,
Throw but one reconciling cast,
To make two wandering lovers meet;
How great then would our pleasures be
To find heaven kinder than believed,
And we, who had no hopes to see
Each other, to be thus deceived!
But say, should heaven bring no relief;
Suppose our sun should never rise;
Why, then, what's due to such a grief
We've paid already with our eyes.
Speculation.
by William Schwenck Gilbert

Comes a train of little ladies
From scholastic trammels free,
Each a little bit afraid is,
Wondering what the world can be!
Is it but a world of trouble 
Sadness set to song?
Is its beauty but a bubble
Bound to break ere long?
Are its palaces and pleasures
Fantasies that fade?
And the glories of its treasures
Shadow of a shade?
Schoolgirls we, eighteen and under,
From scholastic trammels free,
And we wonder how we wonder! 
What on earth the world can be!
Come, Walk With Me
by Emily Bronte

Come, walk with me,
There's only thee
To bless my spirit now
We used to love on winter nights
To wander through the snow;
Can we not woo back old delights?
The clouds rush dark and wild
They fleck with shade our mountain heights
The same as long ago
And on the horizon rest at last
In looming masses piled;
While moonbeams flash and fly so fast
We scarce can say they smiled
Come walk with me, come walk with me;
We were not once so few
But Death has stolen our company
As sunshine steals the dew
He took them one by one and we
Are left the only two;
So closer would my feelings twine
Because they have no stay but thine
'Nay call me not, it may not be
Is human love so true?
Can Friendship's flower droop on for years
And then revive anew?
No, though the soil be wet with tears,
How fair soe'er it grew
The vital sap once perished
Will never flow again
And surer than that dwelling dread,
The narrow dungeon of the dead
Time parts the hearts of men'
Sunday.
by Thomas Gent

Come, thou blessed day of rest!
Soother of the tortured breast,
Wearied souls release from toil,
Life's eternal sad turmoil;
How I love thy tuneful bells
Which a welcome story tells!
Bids the wanderer rest and pray
On this peaceful holy-day.
All creation seems to pause--
Man, uncatechized by laws,
Looks to God with grateful eyes,
In such blessed sympathies,
All his rebel nature dies!
See the monster crime hath made,
Resting from his restless trade,
Unfit to live, afraid to die,
Hear his deep unconscious sigh,
See his former horrid mien,
Changed to the bright, serene,
View him on his BIBLE rest,
Care no longer gnaws his breast;
Heaven, in mercy, let him live,
Religion, such the peace you give!
A Faun's Song.
by Bliss Carman (William)

Cool! cool! cool!
Cool and sweet
The feel of the moss at my feet!
And sweet and cool
The touch of the wind, of the wind!
Cool wind out of the blue,
At the touch of you
A little wave crinkles and flows
All over me down to my toes.
"Coo-loo! Coo-loo!"
Hear the doves in the tree-tops croon.
"Coo-loo! Coo-loo!"
Love comes soon.
"June! June!"
The veery sings,
Sings and sings,
"June! June!"--
A pretty tune!
Wind with your weight of perfume,
Bring me the bluebells' bloom!
Contented Wi' Little.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "Lumps o' Pudding."
I.
Contented wi' little, and cantie wi' mair,
Whene'er I forgather wi' sorrow end care,
I gie them a skelp, as they're creepin alang,
Wi' a cog o' guid swats, and an auld Scottish sang.
II.
I whyles claw the elbow o' troublesome thought;
But man is a sodger, and life is a faught:
My mirth and guid humour are coin in my pouch,
And my freedom's my lairdship nae monarch dare touch.
III.
A towmond o' trouble, should that be my fa',
A night o' guid fellowship sowthers it a':
When at the blithe end o' our journey at last,
Wha the deil ever thinks o' the road he has past?
IV.
Blind chance, let her snapper and stoyte on her way;
Be't to me, be't frae me, e'en let the jade gae:
Come ease, or come travail; come pleasure or pain;
My warst word is - "Welcome, and welcome again!"
Translations From Catullus. Carm. II.
by Thomas Moore

pauca nunciate meae puellae.
Comrades and friends! with whom, where'er
The fates have willed thro' life I've roved,
Now speed ye home, and with you bear
These bitter words to her I've loved.
Tell her from fool to fool to run,
Where'er her vain caprice may call;
Of all her dupes not loving one,
But ruining and maddening all.
Bid her forget--what now is past--
Our once dear love, whose rain lies
Like a fair flower, the meadow's last.
Which feels the ploughshare's edge and dies!
Her Reproach
by Thomas Hardy

Con the dead page as 'twere live love: press on!
Cold wisdom's words will ease thy track for thee;
Aye, go; cast off sweet ways, and leave me wan
To biting blasts that are intent on me.
But if thy object Fame's far summits be,
Whose inclines many a skeleton o'erlies
That missed both dream and substance, stop and see
How absence wears these cheeks and dims these eyes!
It surely is far sweeter and more wise
To water love, than toil to leave anon
A name whose glory-gleam will but advise
Invidious minds to quench it with their own,
And over which the kindliest will but stay
A moment, musing, "He, too, had his day!"
WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS,
1867.
The End.
by Robert Herrick

Conquer we shall, but we must first contend;
'Tis not the fight that crowns us, but the end.
Dusk
by Madison Julius Cawein

Corn-colored clouds upon a sky of gold,
And 'mid their sheaves, - where, like a daisy-bloom
Left by the reapers to the gathering gloom,
The star of twilight glows, - as Ruth, 'tis told,
Dreamed homesick 'mid the harvest fields of old,
The Dusk goes gleaning color and perfume
From Bible slopes of heaven, that illume
Her pensive beauty deep in shadows stoled.
Hushed is the forest; and blue vale and hill
Are still, save for the brooklet, sleepily
Stumbling the stone with one foam-fluttering foot:
Save for the note of one far whippoorwill,
And in my heart her name, - like some sweet bee
Within a rose, - blowing a faery flute.
Great-Heart
by Rudyard Kipling

Theodore Roosevelt
"The interpreter then called for a man-servant of his, one Great-Heart." - Bunyan's' Pilgrim's Progess.
Concerning brave Captains
Our age hath made known
For all men to honour,
One standeth alone,
Of whom, o'er both oceans,
Both peoples may say:
"Our realm is diminished
With Great-Heart away."
In purpose unsparing,
In action no less,
The labours he praised
He would seek and profess
Through travail and battle,
At hazard and pain....
And our world is none the braver
Since Great-Heart was ta'en!
Plain speech with plain folk,
And plain words for false things,
Plain faith in plain dealing
'Twixt neighbours or kings,
He used and he followed,
However it sped....
Oh, our world is none more honest
Now Great-Heart is dead!
The heat of his spirit
Struck warm through all lands;
For he loved such as showed
'Emselves men of their hands;
In love, as in hate,
Paying home to the last....
But our world is none the kinder
Now Great-Heart hath passed!
Hard-schooled by long power,
Yet most humble of mind
Where aught that he was
Might advantage mankind.
Leal servant, loved master,
Rare comrade, sure guide....
Oh, our world is none the safer
Now Great-Heart hath died!
Let those who would handle
Make sure they can wield
His far-reaching sword
And his close-guarding shield:
For those who must journey
Henceforward alone
Have need of stout convoy
Now Great-Heart is gone.