DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Stable-Boy's Guest.
by Jean Blewett

The Wise Men came to the inn that night,
"Now open to us," they cried,
"We have journeyed far that we might kneel
To One who doth here abide."
The door was opened with eager haste.
"Of whom do ye come in quest?
Can it be that a lord of high degree
Is with us this night as guest?"
The Wise Men answered: "The eastern sky
Is luminous still, and clear,
With the radiance of a golden star
That hath led our footsteps here.
"Blessed, O keeper, this inn of thine,
Both thatch and foundation stone,
For the open door and hearth-fire warm
When the King came to His own!"
"The King! the King!" loud the keeper's cry,
"The King in this house of mine!
Lights ho! lights ho! set the place aglow,
Bring forth the meat and the wine!
"The King! let the guest-room be prepared - 
Honor and homage we pay
To royal son of a royal line
Who tarries with us to-day!"
From room to room of the inn they went,
The Wise Men and keeper proud,
But not a trace of the One they sought
Found they in that motley crowd.
"You have other guests?" the Wise Men asked,
And the keeper's face flamed red;
"But a straggling pair who came so late
They found neither room nor bed."
"My masters," a lad said timidly,
"As I gave the cattle feed,
Came creeping down to the stable door
A woman in sorest need.
"I made her a bed in the manger low,
At head of the oxen mild,
And, masters, I heard a moan of pain,
Then the cry of a new-born child."
"A prince shalt thou be!" the Wise Men cried,
"For hearkening to that moan,
A prince shalt thou be for succor given
When the King came to His own!"
"Nay, I'm but a stable-boy," he smiled,
With his eager eyes aglow;
"No King, but a little naked child,
Sleeps out in my manger low."
*        *        *        *        *
Hast come to these homes of ours, O Christ,
In quest of a meal or bed,
And found no welcoming cheer set forth,
Nor place to pillow thine head?
Give us a heart aflame with love,
Filled with a pity divine,
Then come Thou as beggar, or babe, or king,
The best that we have is Thine.
The Farmer, The Dog, And The Fox.
by Jean de La Fontaine

[1]
The wolf and fox are neighbours strange:
I would not build within their range.
The fox once eyed with strict regard
From day to day, a poultry-yard;
But though a most accomplish'd cheat,
He could not get a fowl to eat.
Between the risk and appetite,
His rogueship's trouble was not slight.
'Alas!' quoth he, 'this stupid rabble
But mock me with their constant gabble;
I go and come, and rack my brains,
And get my labour for my pains.
Your rustic owner, safe at home,
Takes all the profits as they come:
He sells his capons and his chicks,
Or keeps them hanging on his hook,
All dress'd and ready for his cook;
But I, adept in art and tricks,
Should I but catch the toughest crower,
Should be brimful of joy, and more.
O Jove supreme! why was I made
A master of the fox's trade?
By all the higher powers, and lower,
I swear to rob this chicken-grower!'
Revolving such revenge within,
When night had still'd the various din,
And poppies seem'd to bear full sway
O'er man and dog, as lock'd they lay
Alike secure in slumber deep,
And cocks and hens were fast asleep,
Upon the populous roost he stole.
By negligence, - a common sin, - 
The farmer left unclosed the hole,
And, stooping down, the fox went in.
The blood of every fowl was spill'd,
The citadel with murder fill'd.
The dawn disclosed sad sights, I ween,
When heaps on slaughter'd heaps were seen,
All weltering in their mingled gore.
With horror stricken, as of yore,
The sun well nigh shrunk back again,
To hide beneath the liquid main.
Such sight once saw the Trojan plain,
When on the fierce Atrides'[2] head
Apollo's awful anger fell,
And strew'd the crimson field with dead:
Of Greeks, scarce one was left to tell
The carnage of that night so dread.
Such slaughter, too, around his tent,
The furious Ajax made, one night,
Of sheep and goats, in easy fight;
In anger blindly confident
That by his well-directed blows
Ulysses fell, or some of those
By whose iniquity and lies
That wily rival took the prize.
The fox, thus having Ajax play'd,
Bore off the nicest of the brood, - 
As many pullets as he could, - 
And left the rest, all prostrate laid.
The owner found his sole resource
His servants and his dog to curse.
'You useless puppy, better drown'd!
Why did you not your 'larum sound?'
'Why did you not the evil shun,'
Quoth Towser, 'as you might have done?
If you, whose interest was more,
Could sleep and leave an open door,
Think you that I, a dog at best,
Would watch, and lose my precious rest?'
This pithy speech had been, in truth,
Good logic in a master's mouth;
But, coming from a menial's lip,
It even lack'd the lawyership
To save poor Towser from the whip.
O thou who head'st a family,
(An honour never grudged by me,)
Thou art a patriarch unwise,
To sleep, and trust another's eyes.
Thyself shouldst go to bed the last,
Thy doors all seen to, shut and fast.
I charge you never let a fox see
Your special business done by proxy.
The Twilight Of Earth
by George William Russell

The wonder of the world is o'er:
The magic from the sea is gone:
There is no unimagined shore,
No islet yet to venture on.
The Sacred Hazels' blooms are shed,
The Nuts of Knowledge harvested.
Oh, what is worth this lore of age
If time shall never bring us back
Our battle with the gods to wage
Reeling along the starry track.
The battle rapture here goes by
In warring upon things that die.
Let be the tale of him whose love
Was sighed between white Deirdre's breasts,
It will not lift the heart above
The sodden clay on which it rests.
Love once had power the gods to bring
All rapt on its wild wandering.
We shiver in the falling dew,
And seek a shelter from the storm:
When man these elder brothers knew
He found the mother nature warm,
A hearth fire blazing through it all,
A home without a circling wall.
We dwindle down beneath the skies,
And from ourselves we pass away:
The paradise of memories
Grows ever fainter day by day.
The shepherd stars have shrunk within,
The world's great night will soon begin.
Will no one, ere it is too late,
Ere fades the last memorial gleam,
Recall for us our earlier state?
For nothing but so vast a dream
That it would scale the steeps of air
Could rouse us from so vast despair.
The power is ours to make or mar
Our fate as on the earliest morn,
The Darkness and the Radiance are
Creatures within the spirit born.
Yet, bathed in gloom too long, we might
Forget how we imagined light.
Not yet are fixed the prison bars:
The hidden light the spirit owns
If blown to flame would dim the stars
And they who rule them from their thrones:
And the proud sceptred spirits thence
Would bow to pay us reverence.
Oh, while the glory sinks within
Let us not wait on earth behind,
But follow where it flies, and win
The glow again, and we may find
Beyond the Gateways of the Day
Dominion and ancestral sway.
Cut The Grass
by A. R. Ammons

The wonderful workings of the world: wonderful,
wonderful: I'm surprised half the time:
ground up fine, I puff if a pebble stirs:
I'm nervous: my moarality's intricate: if
a squash blossom dies, I feel withered as a stained
zucchini and blame my nature: and
when grassblades flop to the little red-ant
queens burring around trying to get aloft, I blame
my not keeping the grass short, stubble
firm: well, I learn a lot of useless stuff, meant
to be ignored: like when the sun sinking in the
west glares a plane invisible, I think how much
revelation concealment necessitates: and then I
think of the oecean, multiple to a blinding
oneness and realize that only total expression
expressed hiding: I'll have to say everything
to take on the roundness and withdrawal of the deep dark:
less than total is a bucketful of radiant toys.
To Rosa. Written During Illness.
by Thomas Moore

The wisest soul, by anguish torn,
Will soon unlearn the lore it knew;
And when the shrining casket's worn,
The gem within will tarnish too.
But love's an essence of the soul,
Which sinks hot with this chain of clay;
Which throbs beyond the chill control
Of withering pain or pale decay.
And surely, when the touch of Death
Dissolves the spirit's earthly ties,
Love still attends the immortal breath,
And makes it purer for the skies!
Oh Rosa, when, to seek its sphere,
My soul shall leave this orb of men,
That love which formed its treasure here,
Shall be its best of treasures then!
And as, in fabled dreams of old,
Some air-born genius, child of time,
Presided o'er each star that rolled,
And tracked it through its path sublime;
So thou, fair planet, not unled,
Shalt through thy mortal orbit stray;
Thy lover's shade, to thee still wed,
Shall linger round thy earthly way.
Let other spirits range the sky,
And play around each starry gem;
I'll bask beneath that lucid eye,
Nor envy worlds of suns to them.
And when that heart shall cease to beat,
And when that breath at length is free,
Then, Rosa, soul to soul we'll meet,
And mingle to eternity!
On Mr. Gladstone's Retirement
by Richard Le Gallienne

The world grows Lilliput, the great men go;
If greatness be, it wears no outer sign;
No more the signet of the mighty line
Stamps the great brow for all the world to know.
Shrunken the mould of manhood is, and lo!
Fragments and fractions of the old divine,
Men pert of brain, planned on a mean design,
Dapper and undistinguished - such we grow.
No more the leonine heroic head,
The ruling arm, great heart, and kingly eye;
No more th' alchemic tongue that turned poor themes
Of statecraft into golden-glowing dreams;
No more a man for man to deify:
Laurel no more - the heroic age is dead.
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet XXV
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

The wisest scholler of the wight most wise
By Phoebus doom, with sugred sentence sayes,
That vertue, if it once met with our eyes,
Strange flames of loue it in our souls would raise;
But for that man with paine this truth descries,
Whiles he each thing in Senses balance wayes,
And so nor will nor can behold those skies
Which inward sunne to heroick mind displaies
Vertue of late, with vertuous care to ster
Loue of herself, tooke Stellas shape, that she
To mortall eyes might sweetly shine in her.
It is most true; for since I her did see,
Vertues great beauty in that face I proue,
And find th' effect, for I do burn in loue.
In Lukewarm Weather
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

The women who were girls a long time ago
Are sitting between the flower bushes
And speaking softly together:
"They pretend that we are old and have white hair;
They say also that our faces
Are not like the spring moons.
"Perhaps it is a lie;
We cannot see ourselves.
"Who will tell us for certain
That winter is not at the other side of the mirror,
Obscuring our delights
And covering our hair with frost?"
From the Chinese of Wang Ch'ang Ling (eighth century).
Boston Hymn
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

READ IN MUSIC HALL, JANUARY 1, 1863
The word of the Lord by night
To the watching Pilgrims came,
As they sat by the seaside,
And filled their hearts with flame.
God said, I am tired of kings,
I suffer them no more;
Up to my ear the morning brings
The outrage of the poor.
Think ye I made this ball
A field of havoc and war,
Where tyrants great and tyrants small
Might harry the weak and poor?
My angel,--his name is Freedom,--
Choose him to be your king;
He shall cut pathways east and west
And fend you with his wing.
Lo! I uncover the land
Which I hid of old time in the West,
As the sculptor uncovers the statue
When he has wrought his best;
I show Columbia, of the rocks
Which dip their foot in the seas
And soar to the air-borne flocks
Of clouds and the boreal fleece.
I will divide my goods;
Call in the wretch and slave:
None shall rule but the humble.
And none but Toil shall have.
I will have never a noble,
No lineage counted great;
Fishers and choppers and ploughmen
Shall constitute a state.
Go, cut down trees in the forest
And trim the straightest boughs;
Cut down trees in the forest
And build me a wooden house.
Call the people together,
The young men and the sires,
The digger in the harvest-field,
Hireling and him that hires;
And here in a pine state-house
They shall choose men to rule
In every needful faculty,
In church and state and school.
Lo, now! if these poor men
Can govern the land and sea
And make just laws below the sun,
As planets faithful be.
And ye shall succor men;
'Tis nobleness to serve;
Help them who cannot help again:
Beware from right to swerve.
I break your bonds and masterships,
And I unchain the slave:
Free be his heart and hand henceforth
As wind and wandering wave.
I cause from every creature
His proper good to flow:
As much as he is and doeth,
So much he shall bestow.
But, laying hands on another
To coin his labor and sweat,
He goes in pawn to his victim
For eternal years in debt.
To-day unbind the captive,
So only are ye unbound;
Lift up a people from the dust,
Trump of their rescue, sound!
Pay ransom to the owner
And fill the bag to the brim.
Who is the owner? The slave is owner,
And ever was. Pay him.
O North! give him beauty for rags,
And honor, O South! for his shame;
Nevada! coin thy golden crags
With Freedom's image and name.
Up! and the dusky race
That sat in darkness long,--
Be swift their feet as antelopes.
And as behemoth strong.
Come, East and West and North,
By races, as snow-flakes,
And carry my purpose forth,
Which neither halts nor shakes.
My will fulfilled shall be,
For, in daylight or in dark,
My thunderbolt has eyes to see
His way home to the mark.
Memorials Of A Tour In Italy, 1837 - XVI. - Continued
by William Wordsworth

The world forsaken, all its busy cares
And stirring interests shunned with desperate flight,
All trust abandoned in the healing might
Of virtuous action; all that courage dares,
Labour accomplishes, or patience bears
Those helps rejected, they, whose minds perceive
How subtly works man's weakness, sighs may heave
For such a One beset with cloistral snares.
Father of Mercy! rectify his view,
If with his vows this object ill agree;
Shed over it thy grace, and thus subdue
Imperious passion in a heart set free:
That earthly love may to herself be true,
Give him a soul that cleaveth unto thee.
Helen Of Troy On The Isle Of Cranae
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The world an abject vassal to her charms,
And kings competing for a single smile,
Yet love she knew not, till upon this isle
She gave surrender to abducting arms.
Not Theseus, who plucked her lips' first kiss,
Not Menelaus, lawful mate and spouse,
Such answering passion in her heart could rouse,
Or wake such tumult in her soul as this.
Let come what will, let Greece and Asia meet,
Let heroes die and kingdoms run with gore;
Let devastation spread from shore to shore - 
Resplendent Helen finds her bondage sweet.
The whole world fights her battles, while she lies
Sunned in the fervour of young Paris' eyes.
My Wife's Second Husband
by Henry Lawson

The world goes round, old fellow,
And still I'm in the swim,
While my wife's second husband
Is growing old and grim.
I meet him in the city,
It all seems very tame,
He glances at me sometimes
As if I were to blame.
Oh, my wife's second husband
Was handsome, young and true;
He had his boyish visions
(I had my visions too).
He made a model lover,
The greenest in the game,
They say, when I was married
That I was just the same.
Though I am ten years older
My hair is dark to-day,
While my wife's second husband
Is quickly growing grey.
I drank when first he knew me,
And he drank not at all;
I see that he, through drinking,
Is going to the wall.
A sweet ill-treated woman,
A drunken brute (Good Lord!),
Ah, well, she got her freedom,
And he got his reward.
He'll fight it out a season,
For Fate will not be forced,
But my wife's second husband
Shall surely be divorced.
I sympathize, and wonder
What mutual friends would think
If my wife's second husband
And I should have a drink.
And I a mere bystander,
It almost seems absurd,
Might lay prophetically
My hand on my wife's third.
But my wife's second husband
His sorrows shall forget,
We'll clasp warm hands in friendship
And clink our glasses yet.
We'll smoke cigars together,
In pure philosophy,
While calmly contemplating
The fate of number three.
The Man Hunt
by Madison Julius Cawein

The woods stretch deep to the mountain side,
And the brush is wild where a man may hide.
They have brought the bloodhounds up again
To the roadside rock where they found the slain.
They have brought the bloodhounds up, and they
Have taken the trail to the mountain way.
Three times they circled the trail and crossed;
And thrice they found it and thrice they lost.
Now straight through the trees and the underbrush
They follow the scent through the forest's hush.
And their deep-mouthed bay is a pulse of fear
In the heart of the wood that the man must hear.
The man who crouches among the trees
From the stern-faced men who follow these.
A huddle of rocks that the ooze has mossed,
And the trail of the hunted again is lost.
An upturned pebble; a bit of ground
A heel has trampled - the trail is found.
And the woods re-echo the bloodhounds' bay
As again they take to the mountain way.
A rock; a ribbon of road; a ledge,
With a pine tree clutching its crumbling edge.
A pine, that the lightning long since clave,
Whose huge roots hollow a ragged cave.
A shout; a curse; and a face aghast;
The human quarry is laired at last.
The human quarry with clay-clogged hair
And eyes of terror who waits them there.
That glares and crouches and rising then
Hurls clods and curses at dogs and men.
Until the blow of a gun-butt lays
Him stunned and bleeding upon his face.
A rope; a prayer; and an oak-tree near,
And a score of hands to swing him clear.
A grim, black thing for the setting sun
And the moon and the stars to gaze upon.
To The Evening Star.
by George Pope Morris

The woods waved welcome in the breeze,
When, many years ago,
Lured by the songs of birds and bees,
I sought the dell below;
And there, in that secluded spot,
Where silver streamlets roved,
Twined the green ivy round the cot
Of her I fondly loved.
In dreams still near that porch I stand
To listen to her vow!
Still feel the pressure of her hand
Upon my burning brow!
And here, as in the days gone by,
With joy I meet her yet,
And mark the love-light of her eyes,
Fringed with its lash of jet.
O fleeting vision of the past!
From memory glide away!
Ye were too beautiful to last,
Too good to longer stay!
But why, attesting evening star,
This sermon sad recall:
"THAN LOVE AND LOSE 'TIS BETTER FAR
TO NEVER LOVE AT ALL!"
The Cusine
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The woman who looks upon man as a sinner
Unsaved as to soul, and uncertain in heart,
Should learn how to cook, and prepare him a dinner,
And serve it with talent, refinement, and art.
Full many a question is solved by digestion.
Bad morals are caused, oftentimes by bad cooks,
And many a riot results from poor diet -
Conversion may lie in the leaves of cook books.
About the dull stalk of the thorntree of duty
Plant flowers of fragrance and vines of good taste.
Surround the coarse needs of the body with beauty,
Make common things noble, make vulgar things chaste.
Put art in housekeeping, nor think culture sleeping
Because the base animal, man, must be fed.
Delsarte should be able to speak in the table -
'Expression' may lie in a light loaf of bread.
Though hard be the labour, the end recompenses -
Though weary the journey, reward is the goal.
For the soul of a man must be reached through his senses,
As the senses of woman are reached through her soul.
Speak first to his spirit, he never will hear it;
Speak first to his body, his soul will reply;
The mortal man fare for, his appetites care for,
And lo! he will follow your footsteps on high.
Love born in the boudoir oft dies in the kitchen,
The failure of marriage oft starts in the soup.
The stomach appeal to, and men's heart you steal to -
Would you reach to the last?    To the first you must stoop.
Speech And Silence.
by Bliss Carman (William)

The words that pass from lip to lip
For souls still out of reach!
A friend for that companionship
That's deeper than all speech!
On Himself.
by Robert Herrick

The work is done: young men and maidens, set
Upon my curls the myrtle coronet
Washed with sweet ointments: thus at last I come
To suffer in the Muses' martyrdom;
But with this comfort, if my blood be shed,
The Muses will wear blacks when I am dead.
The Man Hunt
by Madison Julius Cawein

The woods stretch wild to the mountain-side,
And the brush is deep where a man may hide.
They have brought the bloodhounds up again
To the roadside rock where they found the slain.
They have brought the bloodhounds up, and they
Have taken the trail to the mountain way.
Three times they circled the trail and crossed,
And thrice they found it and thrice they lost.
Now straight through the trees and the underbrush
They follow the scent through the forest's hush.
And their deep-mouthed bay is a pulse of fear
In the heart of the wood that the man must hear.
The man who crouches among the trees
From the stern-faced men who follow these.
A huddle of rocks that the ooze has mossed
And the trail of the hunted again is lost.
An upturned pebble; a bit of ground
A heel has trampled the trail is found.
And the woods re-echo the bloodhounds' bay
As again they take to the mountain way.
A rock; a ribbon of road; a ledge,
With a pine-tree clutching its crumbling edge.
A pine, that the lightning long since clave,
Whose huge roots hollow a ragged cave.
A shout; a curse; and a face aghast,
And the human quarry is laired at last.
The human quarry with clay-clogged hair
And eyes of terror who waits them there.
That glares and crouches and rising then
Hurls clods and curses at dogs and men.
Until the blow of a gun-butt lays
Him stunned and bleeding upon his face.
A rope, a prayer, and an oak-tree near,
And a score of hands to swing him clear.
A grim, black thing for the setting sun
And the moon and the stars to look upon.
Faithless
by Walter De La Mare

The words you said grow faint;
The lamp you lit burns dim;
Yet, still be near your faithless friend
To urge and counsel him.
Still with returning feet
To where life's shadows brood,
With steadfast eyes made clear in death
Haunt his vague solitude.
So he, beguiled with earth,
Yet with its vain things vexed,
Keep even to his own heart unknown
Your memory unperplexed.
The World Below The Brine
by Walt Whitman

The world below the brine;
Forests at the bottom of the sea the branches and leaves,
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds the thick tangle, the openings, and the pink turf,
Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold the play of light through the water,
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks coral, gluten, grass, rushes and the aliment of the swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there, suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom,
The sperm-whale at the surface, blowing air and spray, or disporting with his flukes,
The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the sting-ray;
Passions there wars, pursuits, tribes sight in those ocean-depths breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do;
The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by beings like us, who walk this sphere;
The change onward from ours, to that of beings who walk other spheres.
James Hogg.
by James McIntyre

The wondrous shepherd James Hogg
Was happy with his good sheep dog,
Meditating o'er his sweet lays
While his fleecy flocks did graze.
His education it came late
After he reached to man's estate,
While his flocks were busy feeding
His favourite authors he was reading.
Wondrous tales he did rehearse
Of witches both in prose and verse,
And he in fairy tales did glory
Traditions of each shepherd's story.
The shepherd he sang late and early
Of the deeds of bold Prince Charley,
And how the charming bonnie Flora
Soothed the Prince when in his sorrow.
Few songs possess so much vigor
As his gathering of McGregor,
The lover's heart is all aflame
To meet lassie when the kye comes hame.
But one who loved the shepherd's songs
And sang them unto countless throngs,
Great Kennedy has passed away
Now mournful is our Scottish lay.