DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Lover In Hell
by Stephen Vincent Benet

Eternally the choking steam goes up
From the black pools of seething oil....
How merry
Those little devils are! They've stolen the pitchfork
From Bel, there, as he slept... Look! -- oh look, look!
They've got at Nero! Oh it isn't fair!
Lord, how he squeals! Stop it... it's, well -- indecent!
But funny!... See, Bel's waked. They'll catch it now!
... Eternally that stifling reek arises,
Blotting the dome with smoky, terrible towers,
Black, strangling trees, whispering obscene things
Amongst their branches, clutching with maimed hands,
Or oozing slowly, like blind tentacles
Up to the gates; higher than that heaped brick
Man piled to smite the sun. And all around
Are devils. One can laugh... but that hunched shape
The face one stone, like those Assyrian kings!
One sees in carvings, watching men flayed red
Horribly laughable in leaps and writhes;
That face -- utterly evil, clouded round
With evil like a smoke -- it turns smiles sour!
... And Nero there, the flabby cheeks astrain
And sweating agony... long agony...
Imperishable, unappeasable
For ever... well... it droops the mouth. Till I
Look up.
There's one blue patch no smoke dares touch.
Sky, clear, ineffable, alive with light,
Always the same...
Before, I never knew
Rest and green peace.
She stands there in the sun.
... It seems so quaint she should have long gold wings.
I never have got used -- folded across
Her breast, or fluttering with fierce, pure light,
Like shaken steel. Her crown too. Well, it's queer!
And then she never cared much for the harp
On earth. Here, though...
She is all peace, all quiet,
All passionate desires, the eloquent thunder
Of new, glad suns, shouting aloud for joy,
Over fresh worlds and clean, trampling the air
Like stooping hawks, to the long wind of horns,
Flung from the bastions of Eternity...
And she is the low lake, drowsy and gentle,
And good words spoken from the tongues of friends,
And calmness in the evening, and deep thoughts,
Falling like dreams from the stars' solemn mouths.
All these.
They said she was unfaithful once.
Or I remembered it -- and so, for that,
I lie here, I suppose. Yes, so they said.
You see she is so troubled, looking down,
Sorrowing deeply for my torments. I
Of course, feel nothing while I see her -- save
That sometimes when I think the matter out,
And what earth-people said of us, of her,
It seems as if I must be, here, in heaven,
And she --
... Then I grow proud; and suddenly
There comes a splatter of oil against my skin,
Hurting this time. And I forget my pride:
And my face writhes.
Some day the little ladder
Of white words that I build up, up, to her
May fetch me out. Meanwhile it isn't bad....
But what a sense of humor God must have!
Qu'Est Qu'Il Dit [1]
by Charles Kingsley

Espion aile de la jeune amante
De l'ombre des palmiers pourquoi ce cri?
Laisse en paix le beau garcon plaider et vaincre - 
Pourquoi, pourquoi demander 'Qu'est qu'il dit?'
'Qu'est qu'il dit?'    Ce que tu dis toi-meme
Chaque mois de ce printemps eternel;
Ce que disent les papillons qui s'entre-baisent,
Ce que dit tout bel jeun etre a toute belle.
Importun!    Attende quelques lustres:
Quand les souvenirs 1'emmeneront ici - 
Mere, grand'mere, pale, lasse, et fidele,
Demande mais doucement - 'Et le vieillard,
Qu'est qu'il dit?'
Trinidad, January 10, 1870
Song
by Thomas Oldham

Ere Reason rose within my breast,
To enforce her sacred law,
Still would some charm, in every maid,
My veering passions draw.
But now, to calm those gales of night,
The morn her light displays;
The twinkling stars no more I view,
For only Venus sways:
The spotless heaven of genuine love
Unveil'd I wondering see,
And all that heaven, transported, claim
For Julia and for me.
Difference Of Station.
by Friedrich Schiller

Even the moral world its nobility boasts vulgar natures
Reckon by that which they do; noble, by that which they are.
Vain Finding
by Walter De La Mare

Ever before my face there went
Betwixt earth's buds and me
A beauty beyond earth's content,
A hope - half memory:
Till in the woods one evening - 
Ah! eyes as dark as they,
Fastened on mine unwontedly,
Grey, and dear heart, how grey!
Eve's Flowers
by Nancy Rebecca Campbell Glass

Eve must have wept to leave her flowers,
And plucked some roots to tell
Of Eden's happy, sinless bowers,
Where she in bliss did dwell.
Roses and lilies, pansies gay,
Violets with azure eyes,
Her favorites must have been, for they
Seem born in paradise.
And when they drooped, did she not sigh
And kiss their petals fair,
Thinking, "Alas, ye too must die
And in our sorrow share"?
And then perhaps unto her soul
This answer sweet was given,
"Like you we fade and perish here;
For you we'll bloom in heaven."
Roses and lilies are the type
Of him who from above,
The lamb of God, gave up his life,
A sacrifice of love.
He was her hope in those sad hours
Of blight and sure decay;
The sin that drove her from her flowers
His blood could wash away.
On Time
by Jonathan Swift

Ever eating, never cloying,
All-devouring, all-destroying,
Never finding full repast,
Till I eat the world at last.
Haunted
by Siegfried Loraine Sassoon

Evening was in the wood, louring with storm.
A time of drought had sucked the weedy pool
And baked the channels; birds had done with song.
Thirst was a dream of fountains in the moon,
Or willow-music blown across the water
Leisurely sliding on by weir and mill.
Uneasy was the man who wandered, brooding,
His face a little whiter than the dusk.
A drone of sultry wings flicker'd in his head.
The end of sunset burning thro' the boughs
Died in a smear of red; exhausted hours
Cumber'd, and ugly sorrows hemmed him in.
He thought: 'Somewhere there's thunder,' as he strove
To shake off dread; he dared not look behind him,
But stood, the sweat of horror on his face.
He blundered down a path, trampling on thistles,
In sudden race to leave the ghostly trees.
And: 'Soon I'll be in open fields,' he thought,
And half remembered starlight on the meadows,
Scent of mown grass and voices of tired men,
Fading along the field-paths; home and sleep
And cool-swept upland spaces, whispering leaves,
And far off the long churring night-jar's note.
But something in the wood, trying to daunt him,
Led him confused in circles through the brake.
He was forgetting his old wretched folly,
And freedom was his need; his throat was choking;
Barbed brambles gripped and clawed him round his legs,
And he floundered over snags and hidden stumps.
Mumbling: 'I will get out! I must get out!'
Butting and thrusting up the baffling gloom,
Pausing to listen in a space 'twixt thorns,
He peers around with boding, frantic eyes.
An evil creature in the twilight looping
Flapped blindly in his face. Beating it off,
He screeched in terror, and straightway something clambered
Heavily from an oak, and dropped, bent double,
To shamble at him zigzag, squat and bestial.
Headlong he charges down the wood, and falls
With roaring brain - agony - the snapt spark -
And blots of green and purple in his eyes.
Then the slow fingers groping on his neck,
And at his heart the strangling clasp of death.
Rhymes On The Road. Extract III. Geneva.
by Thomas Moore

Fancy and Truth--Hippomenes and Atalanta. Mont Blanc.--Clouds.
Even here in this region of wonders I find
That light-footed Fancy leaves Truth far behind;
Or at least like Hippomenes turns her astray
By the golden illusions he flings in her way.
What a glory it seemed the first evening I gazed!
MONT BLANC like a vision then suddenly raised
On the wreck of the sunset--and all his array
Of high-towering Alps, touched still with a light
Far holier, purer than that of the Day,
As if nearness to Heaven had made them so bright!
Then the dying at last of these splendors away
From peak after peak, till they left but a ray,
One roseate ray, that, too precious to fly,
O'er the Mighty of Mountains still glowingly hung,
Like the last sunny step of ASTRAEA, when high,
From the summit of earth to Elysium she sprung!
And those infinite Alps stretching out from the sight
Till they mingled with Heaven, now shorn of their light,
Stood lofty and lifeless and pale in the sky,
Like the ghosts of a Giant Creation gone by!
That scene--I have viewed it this evening again,
By the same brilliant light that hung over it then--
The valley, the lake in their tenderest charms--
MONT BLANC in his awfullest pomp--and the whole
A bright picture of Beauty, reclined in the arms
Of Sublimity, bridegroom elect of her soul!
But where are the mountains that round me at first
One dazzling horizon of miracles burst?
Those Alps beyond Alps, without end swelling on
Like the waves of eternity--where are they gone?
Clouds--clouds--they were nothing but clouds, after all![1]
That chain of MONT BLANC'S, which my fancy flew o'er,
With a wonder that naught on this earth can recall,
Were but clouds of the evening and now are no more.
What a picture of Life's young illusions! Oh, Night,
Drop thy curtain at once and hide all from my sight.
Urara
by Henry Kendall

Euroka, go over the tops of the hill,
For the Death-clouds have passed us to-day,
And we'll cry in the dark for the foot-falls still,
And the tracks which are fading away!
Let them yell to their lubras, the Bulginbah dogs,
And say how our brothers were slain,
We shall wipe out our grief in the blood of their chief,
And twenty more dead on the plain
On the blood-spattered spurs of the plain!
But the low winds sigh,
And the dead leaves fly,
Where our warriors lie,
In the dingoes' den in the white-cedar glen
On the banks of the gloomy Urara!
Urara! Urara!
On the banks of the gloomy Urara!
The Wallaroos grope through the tufts of the grass,
And crawl to their coverts for fear;
But we'll sit in the ashes and let them pass
Where the boomerangs sleep with the spear!
Oh! our hearts will be lonely and low to-night
When we think of the hunts of yore;
And the foes that we sought, and the fights which we fought,
With those who will battle no more
Who will go to the battle no more!
For the dull winds sigh,
And the dead leaves fly,
Where our warriors lie,
In the dingoes' den in the white-cedar glen
On the banks of the gloomy Urara!
Urara! Urara!
On the banks of the gloomy Urara!
Oh! the gorges and gullies are black with crows,
And they feast on the flesh of the brave;
But the forest is loud with the howls of our foes
For those whom they never can save!
Let us crouch with our faces down to our knees,
And hide in the dark of our hair;
For we will not return where the camp-fires burn,
And see what is smouldering there
What is smouldering, mouldering there!
Where the sad winds sigh
The dead leaves fly,
And our warriors lie;
In the dingoes' den in the white-cedar glen
On the banks of the gloomy Urara!
Urara! Urara!
On the banks of the gloomy Urara!
Some Geese.
by Oliver Herford

EV-ER-Y child who has the use
Of his sen-ses knows a goose.
See them un-der-neath the tree
Gath-er round the goose-girl's knee,
While she reads them by the hour
From the works of Scho-pen-hau-er.
How pa-tient-ly the geese at-tend!
But do they re-al-ly com-pre-hend
What Scho-pen-hau-er's driv-ing at?
Oh, not at all; but what of that?
Nei-ther do I; nei-ther does she;
And, for that mat-ter, nor does he.
Imogen
by Walter De La Mare

Even she too dead! all languor on her brow,
All mute humanity's last simpleness, - 
And yet the roses in her cheeks unfallen!
Can death haunt silence with a silver sound?
Can death, that hushes all music to a close,
Pluck one sweet wire scarce-audible that trembles,
As if a little child, called Purity,
Sang heedlessly on of his dear Imogen?
Surely if some young flowers of Spring were put
Into the tender hollow of her heart,
'Twould faintly answer, trembling in their petals.
Poise but a wild bird's feather, it will stir
On lips that even in silence wear the badge
Only of truth. Let but a cricket wake,
And sing of home, and bid her lids unseal
The unspeakable hospitality of her eyes.
O childless soul - call once her husband's name!
And even if indeed from these green hills
Of England, far, her spirit flits forlorn,
Back to its youthful mansion it will turn,
Back to the floods of sorrow these sweet locks
Yet heavy bear in drops; and Night shall see
Unwearying as her stars still Imogen,
Pausing 'twixt death and life on one hushed word.
The Dreamer
by Madison Julius Cawein

Even as a child he loved to thrid the bowers,
And mark the loafing sunlight's lazy laugh;
Or, on each season, spell the epitaph
Of its dead months repeated in their flowers;
Or list the music of the strolling showers,
Whose vagabond notes strummed through a twinkling staff,
Or read the day's delivered monograph
Through all the chapters of its d'dal hours.
Still with the same child-faith and child regard
He looks on Nature, hearing at her heart,
The Beautiful beat out the time and place,
Through which no lesson of this life is hard,
No struggle vain of science or of art,
That dies with failure written on its face.
A Sigh
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

Evening sunshine never
Solace to my window bears,
Morning sunshine elsewhere fares; - 
Here are shadows ever.
Sunshine freely falling,
Wilt thou not my chamber find?
Here some rays would reach a mind,
'Mid the dark appalling.
Morning sunshine's gladness,
Oh, thou art my childhood bright;
While thou playest pure and white,
I would weep in sadness.
Evening sunshine's whiling,
Oh, thou art the wise man's rest; - 
Farther on! Then from the west
Greet my window smiling!
Morning sunshine's singing,
Oh, thou art the fantasy
That the sun-glad world lifts free,
Past my powers' winging.
Evening sunshine's quiet,
Thou art more than wisdom's rest,
Christian faith glows in thee blest:
Calm my soul's wild riot!
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - XXXVI - Emigrant French Clergy
by William Wordsworth

Even while I speak, the sacred roofs of France
Are shattered into dust; and self-exiled
From altars threatened, leveled, or defiled,
Wander the Ministers of God, as chance
Opens a way for life, or consonance
Of faith invites. More welcome to no land
The fugitives than to the British strand,
Where priest and layman with the vigilance
Of true compassion greet them. Creed and test
Vanish before the unreserved embrace
Of catholic humanity: distrest
They came, and, while the moral tempest roars
Throughout the Country they have left, our shores
Give to their Faith a fearless resting-place.
The Sick
by Alfred Lichtenstein

Evening and grief and lamp light
Bury our death-face.
We sit at the window and drop out of it,
Far off day still squints at a gray house.
We scarcely touch our life...
And the world is a morphine dream...
Blinded by clouds the sky sinks.
The garden expires in dark wind - 
The watchmen enter,
Lift us up into bed,
Inject us with poison,
Kill the lamp.
Curtains hang in front of the night...
They disappear gently and slowly - 
Some groan, but no one speaks,
Our buried face sleeps.
Evening (From A Happy Boy)
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

Evening sun in beauty is shining,
Lazy puss on the step's reclining.
"Two small mice,
Cream that was so nice,
Four fine bits of fish,
Stolen from a dish,
And I'm so good and full,
And I'm so lazy and dull!"
Says the pussy.
Mother-hen her wings now is sinking,
Rooster stands on one leg a-thinking:
"That gray goose,
High he flies and loose;
But just watch, you must admit,
Naught he has of rooster-wit.
Chickens in! To the coop away!
Gladly dismiss we the sun for today!"
Says the rooster.
"Dear me, it is good to be living,
When life no labor is giving!"
Says the song-bird.
My Old Classical Master.
by W. M. MacKeracher

Ever hail'd with delight when my memory strays
O'er the various scenes of my juvenile days,
Do you mind if I sing a poor song in your praise,
My jolly old classical master?
You were kind - over-lenient, 'twas rumor'd, to rule -
And so learn'd, though the blithest of all in the school,
'Twas your pupil's own fault if he left you a fool,
My jolly old classical master.
"Polumetis Odusseus" you brought back to life,
"Xanthos Menelaos" recalled to the strife:
You knew more about Homer than Homer's own wife,
My jolly old classical master.
You could sever each classical Gordian knot,
Each "crux criticorum" explain on the spot;
We preferr'd your opinion to Liddell and Scott,
My jolly old classical master.
To you "Arma virumque," "All Gaul" and the rest
Were a snap of the fingers, a plaything, a jest,
Even Horace mere English - you lik'd Horace best,
My jolly old classical master.
We esteemed you a marvel in Latin and Greek,
An Erasmus, a Bentley, a Person, a freak;
And for all sorts of knowledge we held you unique,
My jolly old classical master.
You brought forth from your treasury things new and old,
Philosophical gems, oratorical gold;
And how many a capital story you told,
My jolly old classical master!
Your devotion to learning, whole-hearted and pure,
Your fine critical relish of literature,
And your gay disposition, had charms to allure,
My jolly old classical master.
Here's a health to you, sir, from a thousand old boys,
Who once plagu'd you with nonsense and tried you with noise,
But who learn'd from you, lov'd you, and wish you all joys,
My jolly old classical master.
May your mien be still jovial, your mind be still bright,
May your wit be still sprightly, your heart be still light,
And long, long may it be ere your spirit takes flight,
My jolly old classical master.
Sonnet XXIII.
by Fernando Ant'nio Nogueira Pessoa

Even as upon a low and cloud-domed day,
When clouds are one cloud till the horizon,
Our thinking senses deem the sun away
And say ''tis sunless' and 'there is no sun';
And yet the very day they wrong truth by
Is of the unseen sun's effluent essence,
The very words do give themselves the lie,
The very thought of absence comes from presence:
Even so deem we through Good of what is evil.
He speaks of light that speaks of absent light,
And absent god, becoming present devil,
Is still the absent god by essence' right.
The withdrawn cause by being withdrawn doth get
(Being thereby cause still) the denied effect.
Dusk In June
by Sara Teasdale

Evening, and all the birds
In a chorus of shimmering sound
Are easing their hearts of joy
For miles around.
The air is blue and sweet,
The few first stars are white,
Oh let me like the birds
Sing before night.
Nightfall
by John Frederick Freeman

I
Eve goes slowly
Dancing lightly
Clad with shadow up the hills;
Birds their singing
Cease at last, and silence
Falling like fine rain the valley fills.
Not a bat's cry
Stirs the stillness
Perfect as broad water sleeping,
Not a moth's wings
Flit in the gathering darkness,
Not a mouselike moonray ev'n comes creeping.
Then a light shines
From the casement,
Wreathed with jasmine boughs and stars,
Palely golden
As the late eve's primrose,
Glimmers through green leafy prison bars.
II
Only joy now
Come in silence,
Come before your look's forgot;
Come and hearken
While the lonely shadow
Broadens on the hill and then is not.
Now the hour is,
Here the place is,
Here am I who saw thee here.
Evening darkens
All is still and marvellous,
Now the sharp stars in the deep sky peer.
Come and fill me
As the wind fills
Leafy wide boughs of a tree;
Come and windlike
Cleanse my slumbrous branches,
Come and moonlike bathe the leaves of me.
III
Eve has gone and
Night follows,
Every bush is now a ghost;
Every tree looms
Lofty large and sombre;
All day's simple friendliness is lost.
See the poplars
Black in blackness,
In all their leaves there is no sigh.
'Neath that darkling
Cedar who dare wander
Now, or under the vast oak would lie!...
Till that tingling
Silence broken
Every clod renews its breath;
Birds, leaves, grasses
Heave as one, then sleep on
Full of sweeter sleep and unlike death.
IV
Only joy now
Come like music
Falling clear from strings of light;
Come like shadow
Drinking up late sunrays,
Come like moonrays sweeping the round night.
See how night is
Opening flowerlike:
Open so thy bosom to me.
See how earth falls
Easeful into silence:
Let my moth-wing'd thought so fall on thee.
While the lamp's beam
Primrose golden
Now is like a shifting spear
Borne in battle,
Seen awhile then hidden,
Bold then beaten--now long lost, and here!
The Unequal Marriage,
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Even this heavenly pair were unequally match'd when united:
Psyche grew older and wise, Amor remain'd still a child,
The Trial By Bxistence
by Robert Lee Frost

Even the bravest that are slain
Shall not dissemble their surprise
On waking to find valor reign,
Even as on earth, in paradise;
And where they sought without the sword
Wide fields of asphodel fore'er,
To find that the utmost reward
Of daring should be still to dare.
The light of heaven falls whole and white
And is not shattered into dyes,
The light forever is morning light;
The hills are verdured pasture-wise;
The angle hosts with freshness go,
And seek with laughter what to brave; 
And binding all is the hushed snow
Of the far-distant breaking wave.
And from a cliff-top is proclaimed
The gathering of the souls for birth,
The trial by existence named,
The obscuration upon earth.
And the slant spirits trooping by
In streams and cross- and counter-streams
Can but give ear to that sweet cry
For its suggestion of what dreams!
And the more loitering are turned
To view once more the sacrifice
Of those who for some good discerned
Will gladly give up paradise.
And a white shimmering concourse rolls
Toward the throne to witness there
The speeding of devoted souls
Which God makes his especial care.
And none are taken but who will,
Having first heard the life read out
That opens earthward, good and ill,
Beyond the shadow of a doubt;
And very beautifully God limns,
And tenderly, life's little dream,
But naught extenuates or dims,
Setting the thing that is supreme.
Nor is there wanting in the press
Some spirit to stand simply forth,
Heroic in it nakedness,
Against the uttermost of earth.
The tale of earth's unhonored things
Sounds nobler there than 'neath the sun;
And the mind whirls and the heart sings,
And a shout greets the daring one.
But always God speaks at the end:
'One thought in agony of strife
The bravest would have by for friend,
The memory that he chose the life;
But the pure fate to which you go
Admits no memory of choice,
Or the woe were not earthly woe
To which you give the assenting voice.'
And so the choice must be again,
But the last choice is still the same;
And the awe passes wonder then,
And a hush falls for all acclaim.
And God has taken a flower of gold
And broken it, and used therefrom
The mystic link to bind and hold
Spirit to matter till death come.
'Tis of the essence of life here,
Though we choose greatly, still to lack
The lasting memory at all clear,
That life has for us on the wrack
Nothing but what we somehow chose;
Thus are we wholly stripped of pride
In the pain that has but one close,
Bearing it crushed and mystified.
November 1836
by William Wordsworth

Even so for me a Vision sanctified
The sway of Death; long ere mine eyes had seen
Thy countenance, the still rapture of thy mien
When thou, dear Sister! wert become Death's Bride:
No trace of pain or languor could abide
That change: age on thy brow was smoothed thy cold
Wan cheek at once was privileged to unfold
A loveliness to living youth denied.
Oh! if within me hope should e'er decline,
The lamp of faith, lost Friend! too faintly burn;
Then may that heaven-revealing smile of thine,
The bright assurance, visibly return:
And let my spirit in that power divine
Rejoice, as, through that power, it ceased to mourn.
Terre Promise
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

Even now the fragrant darkness of her hair
Had brushed my cheek; and once, in passing by,
Her hand upon my hand lay tranquilly:
What things unspoken trembled in the air!
Always I know, how little severs me
From mine heart's country, that is yet so far;
And must I lean and long across a bar,
That half a word would shatter utterly?
Ah might it be, that just by touch of hand,
Or speaking silence, shall the barrier fall;
And she shall pass, with no vain words at all,
But droop into mine arms, and understand!