DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Live Life With Love.
by Freeman Edwin Miller

There is no soul of anguish or repining,
That doubts and trembles in the shades of gloom,
But love can lead where softest suns are shining
And fill his days with beauty and its bloom.
Live life with love!
There is no bosom dark with lonely caring,
That sadly sorrows in the nights of woe,
But love can soothe his torture and despairing,
And scatter gladness where his feet may go.
Live life with love!
There is no scene of misery or sorrow
That droops and withers in the dark of night,
But love can bring fond yearnings for the morrow
And heap the heart with hope's unfading light.
Live life with love!
There is in all the world no sinful creature
That gropes and falters on his troubled way,
But love can overcome his erring nature,
And change his darkness to eternal day.
Live life with love!
Sweet love, with bounties that her hands are giving,
Can blossom roses on the desert heath,
Can brighten all the longings of the living
And with found kisses warm the lips of death.
Live life with love!
As love is thine, so shall thy days be sweeter
With all the deeds that shall thy fellows bless;
Thy small achievements nobler and completer
With truth and hope and highest happiness!
Live life with love!
Length Of Days To The Early Dead In Battle
by Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell

There is no length of days
But yours, boys who were children once.    Of old
The past beset you in your childish ways,
With sense of Time untold!
What have you then forgone?
A history?    This you had.    Or memories?
These, too, you had of your far-distant dawn.
No further dawn seems his,
The old man who shares with you,
But has no more, no more.    Time's mystery
Did once for him the most that it can do:
He has had infancy.
And all his dreams, and all
His loves for mighty Nature, sweet and few,
Are but the dwindling past he can recall
Of what his childhood knew.
He counts not any more
His brief, his present years.    But O he knows
How far apart the summers were of yore,
How far apart the snows.
Therefore be satisfied;
Long life is in your treasury ere you fall;
Yes, and first love, like Dante's.    O a bride
For ever mystical!
Irrevocable good,-
You dead, and now about, so young, to die,-
Your childhood was; there Space, there Multitude,
There dwelt Antiquity.
The Power Of Hell
by John Le Gay Brereton

'There is no place,' he said,
'For love or pity here;
We dread and only dread
The moods that once were dear.
'We break the ancient spell,
And arm to take our part
Against the power of Hell.'
And Hell was in his heart.
Life In A Dream
by Edward Smyth Jones

There is nothing so sweet as our life in our dreams,
When we soar far on fancy's swift wing;
For a thing in our dreams is all that it seems,
And the songs are so sweet that we sing.
Ah! the sun shines the brightest, and stars twinkle lightest
At the moon in her silvery beams!
There is nothing so gay as the life in our dreams,
With its joy and its laughter and mirth;
For the pleasure that teems is far greater, one deems,
Than any he finds in the earth.
There are homes are our natal, and nothing is fatal
In the beautiful land of our dreams!
There is nothing so bright as the life in our dreams,
Far away from earth's trickery chance;
There the music's wild screams and the wine in its streams
Are both lost in the song and the dance.
Oh! our joy is the sweetest and life is completest,
Ah! the life in our beautiful dreams!
There is nothing serene as the life in our dreams,
When the dove to his mate softly cooes
In the groves by the streams and the moon's silver beams,
Where the swain oft his maid gently wooes.
There the swains are the rarest and maids are the fairest,
And their love is as true as it seems!
Ecclesiastes
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

There is one sin: to call a green leaf grey,
Whereat the sun in heaven shuddereth.
There is one blasphemy: for death to pray,
For God alone knoweth the praise of death.
There is one creed: 'neath no world-terror's wing
Apples forget to grow on apple-trees.
There is one thing is needful--everything--
The rest is vanity of vanities.
The Meeting Of The Waters.[1]
by Thomas Moore

There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet;[2]
Oh! the last rays of feeling and life must depart,
Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart.
Yet it was not that nature had shed o'er the scene
Her purest of crystal and brightest of green;
'Twas not her soft magic of streamlet or hill,
Oh! no,--it was something more exquisite still.
'Twas that friends, the beloved of my bosom, were near,
Who made every dear scene of enchantment more dear,
And who felt how the best charms of nature improve,
When we see them reflected from looks that we love.
Sweet vale of Avoca! how calm could I rest
In thy bosom of shade, with the friends I love best.
Where the storms that we feel in this cold world should cease,
And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace.
Sonnet: - XIV.
by Charles Sangster

There is no sadness here. Oh, that my heart
Were calm and peaceful as these dreamy groves!
That all my hopes and passions, and deep loves,
Could sit in such an atmosphere of peace,
Where no unholy impulses would start
Responsive to the throes that never cease
To keep my spirit in such wild unrest.
'Tis only in the struggling human breast
That the true sorrow lives. Our fruitful joys
Have stony kernels hidden in their core.
Life in a myriad phases passeth here,
And death as various - an equal poise;
Yet all is but a solemn change - no more;
And not a sound save joy pervades the atmosphere.
Preludes
by Madison Julius Cawein

I
There is no rhyme that is half so sweet
As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat;
There is no metre that's half so fine
As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine;
And the loveliest lyric I ever heard
Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird. - 
If the wind and the brook and the bird would teach
My heart their beautiful parts of speech,
And the natural art that they say these with,
My soul would sing of beauty and myth
In a rhyme and metre that none before
Have sung in their love, or dreamed in their lore,
And the world would be richer one poet the more.
II
A thought to lift me up to those
Sweet wildflowers of the pensive woods;
The lofty, lowly attitudes
Of bluet and of bramble-rose:
To lift me where my mind may reach
The lessons which their beauties teach.
A dream, to lead my spirit on
With sounds of faery shawms and flutes,
And all mysterious attributes
Of skies of dusk and skies of dawn:
To lead me, like the wandering brooks,
Past all the knowledge of the books.
A song, to make my heart a guest
Of happiness whose soul is love;
One with the life that knoweth of
But song that turneth toil to rest:
To make me cousin to the birds,
Whose music needs not wisdom's words.
The Art Of Alma-Tadema
by Emily Pauline Johnson

There is no song his colours cannot sing,
For all his art breathes melody, and tunes
The fine, keen beauty that his brushes bring
To murmuring marbles and to golden Junes.
The music of those marbles you can hear
In every crevice, where the deep green stains
Have sunken when the grey days of the year
Spilled leisurely their warm, incessant rains
That, lingering, forget to leave the ledge,
But drenched into the seams, amid the hush
Of ages, leaving but the silent pledge
To waken to the wonder of his brush.
And at the Master's touch the marbles leap
To life, the creamy onyx and the skins
Of copper-coloured leopards, and the deep,
Cool basins where the whispering water wins
Reflections from the gold and glowing sun,
And tints from warm, sweet human flesh, for fair
And subtly lithe and beautiful, leans one - 
A goddess with a wealth of tawny hair.
Old Man Winter
by Madison Julius Cawein

There is nothing at all to do to-day.
I can't go out and run and play;
For it's raining and snowing and sleeting, too;
And Old Man Winter he is to blame.
And I just sit here and think it a shame.
There is nothing at all to do.
I stand or sit at the windowpane,
And look at the snow and look at the rain,
And the old dead leaves go flying by;
For Wild Man Wind is making a din;
And mother says that it is a sin:
And I'm almost ready to cry.
I can't go out in the wind and wet,
And it's a long time yet till the table's set,
And we are ready for toast and tea:
It's a long time too till the lamp is lit,
And my father's home and I can sit,
And he can read to me.
And I can not play or do a thing;
And there's no one coming visiting,
For it's storming more and more:
But now and then there's a rat-tat-tat,
And I ask my mother what is that,
And she says, "The wind at the door."
And she says, "Now what can the Old Wind want
A-knocking there with his knuckles gaunt?
You can hear his old hat dripping rain,
And his ragged cloak that flaps and slaps.
Why, I guess he's looking for little chaps,
To give them a cold again.
"You can see him there by the water-spout
With Old Man Rain just flapping about,
His long sharp nose an icicle,
And his fingers too; and his old, wild eyes
Small and gray as the winter skies,
Or ice in a winter well."
And then she comes to my side and sits
And says, "Just listen how he hits!
But he can't get in and you can't get out:
And by and by he'll be out of breath,
And grumble and growl himself to death,
Or leave with a mighty shout."
Right then there comes a step on the stair,
And I run to see; and my father's there;
With snow and rain on his coat and hat.
Now Old Man Winter can break his cane,
Can crack his cane on the windowpane
I don't care a rap for that.
For my father's home! "It's a wild old night.
The Wind and the Snow are having a fight,"
He says, "and are mauling each other around:
First Old Man Snow rips out a curse;
Then Wild Man Wind says something worse;
Then both are on the ground.
"And Old Man Snow is underneath,
And he snarls like a wolf and shows his teeth,
While Wild Man Wind just hits and hits:
Then round they wrestle; and Old Snow reels,
His long wild whiskers around his heels,
And his gray cloak torn in bits.
"And before you know it he's up with a bound,
And it's Wild Man Wind that hits the ground,
And Old Man Snow holds down his arm:
You can see them there by the window-light,
Wrangling, wrestling out in the night,
Out in the night and storm."
Then I look and see how the wind and snow
Just fight it out and thrash and blow;
Their windy rags through the ghostly black
Go whistling past the windowpane:
Then I run to the fire and lamp again,
And reach a book from the rack.
The lamp is lit, and my father's knee
And the fairy tales are ready for me:
And I sit, and he holds me by the hand:
Now Wild Man Wind and Old Man Snow
Can do their worst and bluster and blow,
I am far in Fairyland.
On The Hilltop
by Madison Julius Cawein

There is no inspiration in the view.
From where this acorn drops its thimbles brown
The landscape stretches like a shaggy frown;
The wrinkled hills hang haggard and harsh of hue:
Above them hollows the heaven's stony blue,
Like a dull thought that haunts some sleepdazed clown
Plodding his homeward way; and, whispering down,
The dead leaves dance, a sere and shelterless crew.
Let the sick day stagger unto its close,
Morose and mumbling, like a hoary crone
Beneath her fagots huddled fogs that soon
Shall flare the windy west with ashen glows,
Like some deep, dying hearth; and let the lone
Night come at last night, and its withered moon.
Epiphany
by Madison Julius Cawein

There is nothing that eases my heart so much
As the wind that blows from the purple hills;
'Tis a hand of balsam whose healing touch
Unburdens my bosom of ills.
There is nothing that causes my soul to rejoice
Like the sunset flaming without a flaw:
'Tis a burning bush whence God's own voice
Addresses my spirit with awe.
There is nothing that hallows my mind, meseems,
Like the night with its moon and its stars above;
'Tis a mystical lily whose golden gleams
Fulfill my being with love.
There is nothing, no, nothing, we see and feel,
That speaks to our souls some beautiful thought,
That was not created to help us, and heal
Our lives that are overwrought.
The Fair Little Maiden
by Dora Sigerson Shorter

'There is one at the door, Wolfe O'Driscoll,
At the door, who is bidding you come!'
'Who is he that wakes me in the darkness,
Calling when all the world's dumb?'
'Six horses has he to his carriage,
Six horses blacker than the night,
And their twelve red eyes in the shadows
Twelve lamps he carries for his light;
'And his coach is a coffin black and mouldy,
A huge black coffin open wide:
He asks for your soul, Wolfe O'Driscoll,
Who is calling at the door outside.'
'Who let him thro' the gates of my gardens,
Where stronger bolts have never been?'
''Twas the father of the fair little maiden
You drove to her grave so green.'
'And who let him pass through the courtyard,
By loosening the bar and the chain?'
'Oh, who but the brother of the maiden,
Who lies in the cold and the rain!'
'Then who drew the bolts at the portal,
And into my house bade him go?'
'She, the mother of the poor young maiden,
Who lies in her youth so low.'
'Who stands, that he dare not enter,
The door of my chamber, between?'
'O, the ghost of the fair little maiden,
Who lies in the churchyard green.'
War Mothers
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There is something in the sound of drum and fife
That stirs all the savage instincts into life.
In the old times of peace we went our ways,
Through proper days
Of little joys and tasks.    Lonely at times,
When from the steeple sounded wedding chimes,
Telling to all the world some maid was wife - 
But taking patiently our part in life
As it was portioned us by Church and State,
Believing it our fate.
Our thoughts all chaste
Held yet a secret wish to love and mate
Ere youth and virtue should go quite to waste.
But men we criticised for lack of strength,
And kept them at arm's length.
Then the war came - 
The world was all aflame!
The men we had thought dull and void of power
Were heroes in an hour.
He who had seemed a slave to petty greed
Showed masterful in that great time of need.
He who had plotted for his neighbour's pelf,
Now for his fellows offers up himself.
And we were only women, forced by war
To sacrifice the things worth living for.
Something within us broke,
Something within us woke,
The wild cave-woman spoke.
When we heard the sound of drumming,
As our soldiers went to camp,
Heard them tramp, tramp, tramp;
As we watched to see them coming,
And they looked at us and smiled
(Yes, looked back at us and smiled),
As they filed along by hillock and by hollow,
Then our hearts were so beguiled
That, for many and many a day,
We dreamed we heard them say,
'Oh, follow, follow, follow!'
And the distant, rolling drum
Called us 'Come, come, come!'
Till our virtue seemed a thing to give away.
War had swept ten thousand years away from earth.
We were primal once again.
There were males, not modern men;
We were females meant to bring their sons to birth.
And we could not wait for any formal rite,
We could hear them calling to us, 'Come to-night;
For to-morrow, at the dawn,
We move on!'
And the drum
Bellowed, 'Come, come, come!'
And the fife
Whistled, 'Life, life, life!'
So they moved on and fought and bled and died;
Honoured and mourned, they are the nation's pride.
We fought our battles, too, but with the tide
Of our red blood, we gave the world new lives.
Because we were not wives
We are dishonoured.    Is it noble, then,
To break God's laws only by killing men
To save one's country from destruction?
We took no man's life but gave our chastity,
And sinned the ancient sin
To plant young trees and fill felled forests in.
Oh, clergy of the land,
Bible in hand,
All reverently you stand,
On holy thoughts intent
While barren wives receive the sacrament!
Had you the open visions you could see
Phantoms of infants murdered in the womb,
Who never knew a cradle or a tomb,
Hovering about these wives accusingly.
Bestow the sacrament!    Their sins are not well known - 
Ours to the four winds of the earth are blown.
Happy Is England Now
by John Frederick Freeman

There is not anything more wonderful
Than a great people moving towards the deep
Of an unguessed and unfeared future; nor
Is aught so dear of all held dear before
As the new passion stirring in their veins
When the destroying Dragon wakes from sleep.
Happy is England now, as never yet!
And though the sorrows of the slow days fret
Her faithfullest children, grief itself is proud.
Ev'n the warm beauty of this spring and summer
That turns to bitterness turns then to gladness
Since for this England the beloved ones died.
Happy is England in the brave that die
For wrongs not hers and wrongs so sternly hers;
Happy in those that give, give, and endure
The pain that never the new years may cure;
Happy in all her dark woods, green fields, towns,
Her hills and rivers and her chafing sea.
Whate'er was dear before is dearer now.
There's not a bird singing upon his bough
But sings the sweeter in our English ears:
There's not a nobleness of heart, hand, brain
But shines the purer; happiest is England now
In those that fight, and watch with pride and tears.
Proem. To Myth And Romance
by Madison Julius Cawein

There is no rhyme that is half so sweet
As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat;
There is no metre that's half so fine
As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine;
And the loveliest lyric I ever heard
Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird.--
If the wind and the brook and the bird would teach
My heart their beautiful parts of speech.
And the natural art that they say these with,
My soul would sing of beauty and myth
In a rhyme and a metre that none before
Have sung in their love, or dreamed in their lore,
And the world would be richer one poet the more.
Absence
by William Lisle Bowles

There is strange music in the stirring wind,
When lowers the autumnal eve, and all alone
To the dark wood's cold covert thou art gone,
Whose ancient trees on the rough slope reclined
Rock, and at times scatter their tresses sere.
If in such shades, beneath their murmuring,
Thou late hast passed the happier hours of spring,
With sadness thou wilt mark the fading year;
Chiefly if one, with whom such sweets at morn
Or evening thou hast shared, afar shall stray.
O Spring, return! return, auspicious May!
But sad will be thy coming, and forlorn,
If she return not with thy cheering ray,
Who from these shades is gone, far, far away.
The Copperhead
by Bret Harte (Francis)

There is peace in the swamp where the Copperhead sleeps,
Where the waters are stagnant, the white vapor creeps,
Where the musk of Magnolia hangs thick in the air,
And the lilies' phylacteries broaden in prayer.
There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is death,
Though the mist is miasma, the upas-tree's breath,
Though no echo awakes to the cooing of doves,
There is peace: yes, the peace that the Copperhead loves.
Go seek him: he coils in the ooze and the drip,
Like a thong idly flung from the slave-driver's whip;
But beware the false footstep, the stumble that brings
A deadlier lash than the overseer swings.
Never arrow so true, never bullet so dread,
As the straight steady stroke of that hammer-shaped head;
Whether slave or proud planter, who braves that dull crest,
Woe to him who shall trouble the Copperhead's rest!
Then why waste your labors, brave hearts and strong men,
In tracking a trail to the Copperhead's den?
Lay your axe to the cypress, hew open the shade
To the free sky and sunshine Jehovah has made;
Let the breeze of the North sweep the vapors away,
Till the stagnant lake ripples, the freed waters play;
And then to your heel can you righteously doom
The Copperhead born of its shadow and gloom!
The Hills
by Madison Julius Cawein

There is no joy of earth that thrills
My bosom like the far-off hills!
Th' unchanging hills, that, shadowy,
Beckon our mutability
To follow and to gaze upon
Foundations of the dusk and dawn.
Meseems the very heavens are massed
Upon their shoulders, vague and vast
With all the skyey burden of
The winds and clouds and stars above.
Lo, how they sit before us, seeing
The laws that give all Beauty being!
Behold! to them, when dawn is near,
The nomads of the air appear,
Unfolding crimson camps of day
In brilliant bands; then march away;
And under burning battlements
Of twilight plant their tinted tents.
The truth of olden myths, that brood
By haunted stream and haunted wood,
They see; and feel the happiness
Of old at which we only guess:
The dreams, the ancients loved and knew,
Still as their rocks and trees are true:
Not otherwise than presences
The tempest and the calm to these:
One, shouting on them all the night;
Black-limbed and veined with lambent light;
The other with the ministry
Of all soft things that company
With music an embodied form,
Giving to solitude the charm
Of leaves and waters and the peace
Of bird-begotten melodies
And who at night cloth still confer
With the mild moon, that telleth her
Pale tale of lonely love, until
Wan images of passion fill
The heights with shapes that glimmer by
Clad on with sleep and memory.
Song of the Devoted Slave
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

There is one God: Mahomed his Prophet.    Had I his power
I would take the topmost peaks of the snow-clad Himalayas,
And would range them around your dwelling, during the heats of summer,
To cool the airs that fan your serene and delicate presence,
Had I the power.
Your courtyard should ever be filled with the fleetest of camels
Laden with inlaid armour, jewels and trappings for horses,
Ripe dates from Egypt, and spices and musk from Arabia.
And the sacred waters of Zem-Zem well, transported thither,
Should bubble and flow in your chamber, to bathe the delicate
Slender and wayworn feet of my Lord, returning from travel,
Had I the power.
Fine woven silk, from the further East, should conceal your beauty,
Clinging around you in amorous folds; caressive, silken,
Beautiful long-lashed, sweet-voiced Persian boys should, kneeling, serve you,
And the floor beneath your sandalled feet should be smooth and golden,
Had I the power.
And if ever your clear and stately thoughts should turn to women,
Kings' daughters, maidens, should be appointed to your caresses,
That the youth and the strength of my Lord might never be wasted
In light or sterile love; but enrich the world with his children.
Had I the power.
Whilst I should sit in the outer court of the Water Palace
To await the time when you went forth, for Pleasure or Warfare,
Descending the stairs rose crowned, or armed and arrayed in purple, - 
To mark the place where your steps have fallen, and kiss the footprints,
Had I the power.