DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Death-Bed
by Siegfried Loraine Sassoon

He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped
Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;
Aqueous like floating rays of amber light,
Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep, - 
Silence and safety; and his mortal shore
Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.
Some one was holding water to his mouth.
He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped
Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot
The opiate throb and ache that was his wound.
Water - calm, sliding green above the weir;
Water - a sky-lit alley for his boat,
Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers
And shaken hues of summer: drifting down,
He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.
Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,
Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve.
Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars
Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;
Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,
Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.
Rain; he could hear it rustling through the dark;
Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;
Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers
That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps
Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace
Gently and slowly washing life away.
*        *        *        *        *
He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain
Leaped like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore
His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.
But some one was beside him; soon he lay
Shuddering because that evil thing had passed.
And Death, who'd stepped toward him, paused and stared.
Light many lamps and gather round his bed.
Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.
Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.
He's young; he hated war; how should he die
When cruel old campaigners win safe through?
But Death replied: "I choose him." So he went,
And there was silence in the summer night;
Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.
Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.
The Doctor.
by W. M. MacKeracher

He bent above our darling's bed
When her life was ebbing low,
And in his serious look we read
The truth we feared to know.
We knew a slender thread was all
That held her now; we saw
The dark, portentous shadow fall,
And near and nearer draw.
Our hopes were centred all in him;
We stood with bated breath
As, pitiful and calm and grim,
He fought and fought with Death.
We hung upon the desperate fight,
And saw in him combined
The tiger's stealth, the lion's might,
The man's superior mind.
We saw the fearful hate he bore
His old, relentless foe,
His beautiful compassion for
The one we cherished so.
No mortal ever waged alone
A conflict so severe;
The high-souled, stainless champion
Finds heavenly succor near.
Legions of angels to his aid
His pure devotion brought;
Celestial strength his spirit swayed;
'Twas Life that in him fought.
The awful stillness of the night!
The long and bitter hours! - 
It seemed that Time had stayed his flight
To watch the battling pow'rs.
And ere the ghastly night had fled
He conquered in the strife,
And gently took the slender thread,
And drew her back to life.
Discipline
by Ringgold Wilmer Lardner

He couldn't have a doughnut, and it made him very mad;
He undertook to get revenge by screaming at his dad.
"Cut out that noise!" I ordered, and he gave another roar,
And so I put him in "the room" and shut and locked the door.
I left him in his prison cell two minutes, just about,
And, penitent, he smiled at me when I did let him out.
But when he got another look at the forbidden fruit
He gave a yell that they could hear in Jacksonville or Butte.
"Cut out that noise!" I barked again. "Cut out that foghorn stuff!
Perhaps I didn't leave you in your prison long enough.
"You want your dad to keep you jailed all afternoon, I guess."
He smiled at me and answered his equivalent for "yes."
The All Right Un
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

He came from "further out",
That land of fear and drought
And dust and gravel.
He got a touch of sun,
And rested at the run
Until his cure was done,
And he could travel.
When spring had decked the plain,
He flitted off again
As flit the swallows.
And from that western land,
When many months were spanned,
A letter came to hand,
Which read as follows:
"Dear Sir, I take my pen
In hopes that all their men
And you are hearty.
You think that I've forgot
Your kindness, Mr Scott;
Oh, no, dear sir, I'm not
That sort of party.
"You sometimes bet, I know.
Well, now you'll have a show
The 'books' to frighten.
Up here at Wingadee
Young Billy Fife and me
We're training Strife, and he
Is a all right un.
"Just now we're running byes,
But, sir, first time he tries
I'll send you word of.
And running 'on the crook'
Their measures we have took;
It is the deadest hook
You ever heard of.
"So when we lets him go,
Why then I'll let you know,
And you can have a show
To put a mite on.
Now, sir, my leave I'll take,
Yours truly, William Blake,
P.S., Make no mistake,
He's a all right un.
*             *             *             *
By next week's Riverine
I saw my friend had been
A bit too cunning.
I read: "The racehorse Strife
And jockey William Fife
Disqualified for life,
Suspicious running."
But though they spoilt his game
I reckon all the same
I fairly ought to claim
My friend a white un.
For though he wasn't straight,
His deeds would indicate
His heart at any rate
Was "a all right un".
Endurance
by George William Russell

He bent above: so still her breath
What air she breathed he could not say,
Whether in worlds of life or death:
So softly ebbed away, away
The life that had been light to him,
So fled her beauty leaving dim
The emptying chambers of his heart
Thrilled only by the pang and smart,
The dull and throbbing agony
That suffers still, yet knows not why.
Love's immortality so blind
Dreams that all things with it conjoined
Must share with it immortal day:
But not of this--but not of this--
The touch, the eyes, the laugh, the kiss,
Fall from it and it goes its way.
So blind he wept above her clay,
'I did not think that you could die.
Only some veil would cover you
Our loving eyes could still pierce through;
And see through dusky shadows still
Move as of old your wild sweet will,
Impatient every heart to win
And flash its heavenly radiance in.'
Though all the worlds were sunk in rest
The ruddy star within his breast
Would croon its tale of ancient pain,
Its sorrow that would never wane,
Its memory of the days of yore
Moulded in beauty evermore.
Ah, immortality so blind,
To dream all things with it conjoined
Must follow it from star to star
And share with it immortal years.
The memory, yearning, grief, and tears,
Fall from it and it goes afar.
He walked at night along the sands,
And saw the stars dance overhead,
He had no memory of the dead,
But lifted up exultant hands
To hail the future like a boy,
The myriad paths his feet might press.
Unhaunted by old tenderness
He felt an inner secret joy!
A spirit of unfettered will
Through light and darkness moving still
Within the All to find its own,
To be immortal and alone.
In Memory of Charles H. Sandford.
by George Pope Morris

He died, as he had lived, beloved,
Without an enemy on earth;
In word and deed he breathed and moved
The soul of honor and of worth:
His hand was open as the day,
His bearing high, his nature brave;
And, when from life he passed away,
Our hearts went with him to the grave.
What desolation filled our home
When death from us our treasure bore!--
Oh! for the better world to come
Where we shall meet to part no more!
The hope of THAT sustains us now,
In THAT we trust on bended knee,
While thus around his faded brow
We twine the wreath of memory.
Extempore In The Court Of Session.
by Robert Burns

Lord Advocate.
He clench'd his pamphlets in his fist,
He quoted and he hinted,
'Till in a declamation-mist
His argument he tint it:
He gaped for't, he grap'd for't,
He fand it was awa, man;
But what his common sense came short
He eked out wi' law, man.
Mr. Erskine.
Collected Harry stood awee,
Then open'd out his arm, man:
His lordship sat wi' rueful e'e,
And ey'd the gathering storm, man;
Like wind-driv'n hail it did assail,
Or torrents owre a linn, man;
The Bench sae wise lift up their eyes,
Half-wauken'd wi' the din, man.
Sonnet.
by Thomas Runciman

He comes to me like air on parching grass;
His eyes are wells where truth lives, found at last;
Summer is fragrant should he this way pass;
His calm love is a chain that binds me fast....
Yet often melancholy will forecast
That time when I shall have grown old - when he - 
Still rapturous in his struggle with life's blast - 
Shall give a pitying side glance to me,
Who skirt the fog-fringe of eternity,
Straining mine eyes to catch what shadowy sign
Of good or evil omen there may be,
Yet no sure good nor evil can divine:
Only some hints of doubtful sound and light,
That lonelier leave the uncompanioned night.
The Dungeoned Anarchist.
by Charles Hamilton Musgrove

He crouches, voiceless, in his tomb-like cell,
Forgot of all things save his jailer's hate
That turns the daylight from his iron grate
To make his prison more and more a hell;
For him no coming day or hour shall spell
Deliverance, or bid his soul await
The hand of Mercy at his dungeon gate:
He would not know even though a kingdom fell!
The black night hides his hand before his eyes,--
That grim, clenched hand still burning with the sting
Of royal blood; he holds it like a prize,
Waiting the hour when he at last shall fling
The stain in God's face, shrieking as he dies:
"Behold the unconquered arm that slew a king!"
Susan, A Kind Providence
by Frederick Locker-Lampson

He dropt a tear on Susan's bier,
He seem'd a most despairing swain;
But bluer sky brought newer tie,
And, would he wish her back again?
The moments fly, and when we die,
Will Philly Thistletop complain?
She'll cry and sigh, and, dry her eye,
And let herself be woo'd again.
The Tramp
by John Clare

He eats (a moment's stoppage to his song)
The stolen turnip as he goes along;
And hops along and heeds with careless eye
The passing crowded stage coach reeling bye.
He talks to none but wends his silent way,
And finds a hovel at the close of day,
Or under any hedge his house is made.
He has no calling and he owns no trade.
An old smoaked blanket arches oer his head,
A whisp of straw or stubble makes his bed.
He knows a lawless law that claims no kin
But meet and plunder on and feel no sin--
No matter where they go or where they dwell
They dally with the winds and laugh at hell.
The Miser & His Gold
by Walter Crane

He buried his Gold in a hole.
One saw, and the treasure he stole.
Said another, "What matter?
Don't raise such a clatter,
You can still go & sit by the hole."
Use Alone Gives Value
The Eagle (A fragment )
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
Forlorn
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

I.
'He is fled'I wish him dead'
He that wrought my ruin'
O the flattery and the craft
Which were my undoing . . . 
In the night, in the night,
When the storms are blowing.
II.
Who was witness of the crime?
Who shall now reveal it?
He is fled, or he is dead,
Marriage will conceal it . . . 
In the night, in the night,
While the gloom is growing.'
III.
Catherine, Catherine, in the night,
What is this you're dreaming?
There is laughter down in Hell
At your simple scheming . . . 
In the night, in the night,
When the ghosts are fleeting.
IV.
You to place a hand in his
Like an honest woman's,
You that lie with wasted lungs
Waiting for your summons . . . 
In the night, O the night!
O the deathwatch beating!
V.
There will come a witness soon
Hard to be confuted,
All the world will hear a voice
Scream you are polluted . . . 
In the night! O the night,
When the owls are wailing!
VI.
Shame and marriage, Shame and marriage,
Fright and foul dissembling,
Bantering bridesman, reddening priest,
Tower and altar trembling . . . 
In the night, O the night,
When the mind is failing!
VII.
Mother, dare you kill your child?
How your hand is shaking!
Daughter of the seed of Cain,
What is this you're taking? . . . 
In the night, O the night,
While the house is sleeping.
VIII.
Dreadful! has it come to this,
O unhappy creature?
You that would not tread on a worm
For your gentle nature . . . 
In the night, O the night,
O the night of weeping!
IX.
Murder would not veil your sin,
Marriage will not hide it,
Earth and Hell will brand your name,
Wretch you must abide it . . . 
In the night, O the night,
Long before the dawning.
X.
Up, get up, and tell him all,
Tell him you were lying!
Do not die with a lie in your mouth,
You that know you're dying . . . 
In the night, O the night,
While the grave is yawning.
XI.
No'you will not die before,
Tho' you'll ne'er be stronger;
You will live till that is born,
Then a little longer . . . 
In the night, O the night,
While the Fiend is prowling.
XII.
Death and marriage, Death and marriage!
Funeral hearses rolling!
Black with bridal favours mixt!
Bridal bells with tolling! . . . 
In the night, O the night,
When the wolves are howling.
XIII.
Up, get up, the time is short,
Tell him now or never!
Tell him all before you die,
Lest you die for ever . . . 
In the night, O the night,
Where there's no forgetting.
XIV.
Up she got, and wrote him all,
All her tale of sadness,
Blister'd every word with tears,
And eased her heart of madness . . . 
In the night, and nigh the dawn,
And while the moon was setting.
Adversaries
by Paul Cameron Brown

He held his hands like plastic    - 
his vestments the finer
calling of his trade,
vocation as modern strummer
of Nature's laws
Engineer in brief    - 
wine glass in hand
bestowing the more salient points
of mawkish disbelief with
cigarette to numb the spine.
The Reverend
looked down on fire,
caught papryus smoke in the bellows
of his chest,
made laundry of
the Plumber's intellect    - 
tore savage parchment
from the soft cheesecutter's
contemporary breath.
Son
by Robert William Service

He hurried away, young heart of joy, under our Devon sky!
And I watched him go, my beautiful boy, and a weary woman was I.
For my hair is grey, and his was gold; he'd the best of his life to live;
And I'd loved him so, and I'm old, I'm old; and he's all I had to give.
Ah yes, he was proud and swift and gay, but oh how my eyes were dim!
With the sun in his heart he went away, but he took the sun with him.
For look! How the leaves are falling now, and the winter won't be long. . . .
Oh boy, my boy with the sunny brow, and the lips of love and of song!
How we used to sit at the day's sweet end, we two by the firelight's gleam,
And we'd drift to the Valley of Let's Pretend, on the beautiful river of Dream.
Oh dear little heart! All wealth untold would I gladly, gladly pay
Could I just for a moment closely hold that golden head to my grey.
For I gaze in the fire, and I'm seeing there a child, and he waves to me;
And I run and I hold him up in the air, and he laughs and shouts with glee;
A little bundle of love and mirth, crying: "Come, Mumsie dear!"
Ah me! If he called from the ends of the earth I know that my heart would hear.
. . . . .
Yet the thought comes thrilling through all my pain: how worthier could he die?
Yea, a loss like that is a glorious gain, and pitiful proud am I.
For Peace must be bought with blood and tears, and the boys of our hearts must pay;
And so in our joy of the after-years, let us bless them every day.
And though I know there's a hasty grave with a poor little cross at its head,
And the gold of his youth he so gladly gave, yet to me he'll never be dead.
And the sun in my Devon lane will be gay, and my boy will be with me still,
So I'm finding the heart to smile and say: "Oh God, if it be Thy Will!"
Secret Love
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

He gloomily sat by the wall,
As gaily she danced with them all.
Her laughter's light spell
On every one fell;
His heartstrings were near unto rending,
But this there was none comprehending.
She fled from the house, when at eve
He came there to take his last leave.
To hide her she crept,
She wept and she wept;
Her life-hope was shattered past mending,
But this there was none comprehending.
Long years dragged but heavily o'er,
And then he came back there once more.
- Her lot was the best,
In peace and at rest;
Her thought was of him at life's ending,
But this there was none comprehending.
Epithalamium
by Alfred Edward Housman

He is here, Urania's son,
Hymen come from Helicon;
God that glads the lover's heart,
He is here to join and part.
So the groomsman quits your side
And the bridegroom seeks the bride:
Friend and comrade yield you o'er
To her that hardly loves you more.
Now the sun his skyward beam
Has tilted from the Ocean stream.
Light the Indies, laggard sun:
Happy bridegroom, day is done,
And the star from 'ta's steep
Calls to bed but not to sleep.
Happy bridegroom, Hesper brings
All desired and timely things.
All whom morning sends to roam,
Hesper loves to lead them home.
Home return who him behold,
Child to mother, sheep to fold,
Bird to nest from wandering wide:
Happy bridegroom, seek your bride.
Pour it out, the golden cup
Given and guarded, brimming up,
Safe through jostling markets borne
And the thicket of the thorn;
Folly spurned and danger past,
Pour it to the god at last.
Now, to smother noise and light,
Is stolen abroad the wildering night,
And the blotting shades confuse
Path and meadow full of dews;
And the high heavens, that all control,
Turn in silence round the pole.
Catch the starry beams they shed
Prospering the marriage bed,
And breed the land that reared your prime
Sons to stay the rot of time.
All is quiet, no alarms;
Nothing fear of nightly harms.
Safe you sleep on guarded ground,
And in silent circle round
The thoughts of friends keep watch and ward,
Harnessed angels, hand on sword.
In Memoriam G. A. P.
by Edward Woodley Bowling

He has gone to his grave in the strength of youth,
While life shone bright before him;
And we, who remember his worth and truth,
Stand vainly grieving o'er him.
He has gone to his grave; that manly heart
No more with life is glowing;
And the tears to our eyes unbidden start,
Our sad hearts' overflowing.
I gaze on his rooms as beneath I pace,
And the past again comes o'er me,
For I feel his grasp, and I see his face,
And his voice has a welcome for me.
I gaze on the river, and see once more
His form in the race competing;
And I hear the time of his well-known oar,
And the shouts his triumph greeting.
Flow on, cold river!    Our bitter grief
No tears from thy waves can waken:
Thy whisp'ring reed, and thy willow leaf
By no sad sighs are shaken.
Thy banks are thronged by the young and gay,
Who dream not of the morrow;
No ear hast thou for a mournful lay,
No sympathy with sorrow.
Flow on, dull river!    Thy heedless wave,
As it echoes shouts of gladness,
Bears forms as stalwart, and hearts as brave,
As his whom we mourn in sadness.
But an arm more strong, and a heart more bold,
And with purer feelings glowing,
Thy flowing waters shall ne'er behold,
Till time has ceased from flowing.
(1866).
The King Of Our Republic
by Henry Lawson

He is coming! He is coming! without heralds, without cheers.
He is coming! He is coming! and he's been with us for years:
And, if you should pause to wonder who's the man of whom I sing,
'Tis the King of our Republic, and the man we shall call King.
No, he comes not to amuse us, and he comes not to explain,
With the bathos of the old things over all the land again.
The debatable and tangled, and the vain imagining
Shall be swept out of our pathway by the man that we'll call King.
He is coming! He is coming! He has heard our spirit call;
He'll be greatest man since Cromwell in the English nations all,
And he'll take his place amongst us while the rest are wondering,
Shall the King of our Republic, and the man we will call King.
If you find him stern, unyielding, where his living task is set,
I have told you that a tyrant shall uplift the nation yet;
He will place his country's welfare over all and everything,
Shall the King of our Republic, and the man that we'll call King.
Yet his heart shall still be gentle with his brothers gone astray,
For the Great Man of Australia shall be simple in his day,
Modest, kindly, but unyielding, while the watching world shall ring
With the name of our Republic and the man that we call King.
The Coward
by Madison Julius Cawein

He found the road so long and lone
That he was fain to turn again.
The bird's faint note, the bee's low drone
Seemed to his heart to monotone
The unavailing and the vain,
And dirge the dreams that life had slain.
And for a while he sat him there
Beside the way, and bared his head:
He felt the hot sun on his hair;
And weed-warm odors everywhere
Waked memories, forgot or dead,
Of days when love this way had led
To that old house beside the road
With white board-fence and picket gate,
And garden plot that gleamed and glowed
With color, and that overflowed
With fragrance; where, both soon and late,
She 'mid the flowers used to wait.
Was it the same? or had it changed,
As he and she, with months and years?
How long now had they been estranged?
How far away their lives had ranged,
Since that last meeting, filled with tears,
And boyish hopes and maiden fears!
He closed his eyes, and seemed to see
That parting now: The moon above
The old house and its locust tree;
The moths that glimmered drowsily
From flower to flower, the scent whereof
Seemed portion of that oldtime love.
Her face was lifted, pale and wet;
Her body tense as if with pain:
He stooped, yes, he could see it yet
A moment and their young lips met,
And then. . . There in the lonely lane
He seemed to live it o'er again.
Why had.he gone? 'Twas for her sake.
But what had come of all his toil?
The City, like some monster snake,
Had dragged him down down, half awake,
Crushing him in its grimy coil,
Whence none escapes without a soil.
He was not clean yet. She would read
Failure, vice-written, in his face.
But, haply, now she had no need
Of him, whose life, like some wild weed
Full grown, with evil would replace
The love in her heart's garden-space.
He could not bear to look and see
The question in those virgin eyes.
What answer for that look had he?
He thought it out. It could not be.
He could not live a life of lies.
Better to break all oldtime ties.
And then he rose. The house was near
There where the road turned from the wood.
Whose voice was that he seemed to hear?
Then heart and soul were seized with fear,
And, turning, as if death-pursued,
He fled into the solitude.
Signs For The Serious
by Helen Leah Reed

He has a taste that's superfine who flouts at every subway sign,
He reckons not that some there be, who cannot tell, unless they see
Spelled plain before them on the wall, what things their own they ought to call
For instance, when I come to town, whom you may dub a country clown - 
How should I know what things to buy, if not a subway sign were nigh
To show - the pills I ought to take my all-consuming thirst to slake; - 
The hair restorer that will soothe my infant son with his first tooth; - 
The ruddy catsup that is sure all family jars and ills to cure; - 
The dollar watch that daintily we'll serve, wound-up, for early tea; - 
The window-screens that will not hide our failings from the country-side; - 
What breakfast-food is our true friend, the dime cigars that I should send
My wife to cure her racking cough. The hooks and eyes that won't come off
Ah! hats, and soaps, and castor-oil, and cocoa that we need not boil; - 
And well-made suits and patent soup, and phonographs. - But what a dupe
Of every city tradesman I, if all these vendibles I'd try
To purchase by my native wit! Yet what the subway "best" has writ
In flaming words, with weird device - that make I mine, - and pay the price.