DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
To My Father (Upon His Retirement)
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

(See Note 42)
In all the land our race was once excelling.
In richer regions it e'en now possesses
Broad seats and fruitful; but by fate's hard stresses
Our branch was bent and bowed to blows compelling.
Now toward the light again it lifts aloft
Its top, and fresh buds crown it, fair and soft.
The flowing fountain of your faith has laved it,
To life's late evening thus your strength has saved it.
As rests the race in time of chill and rigor,
And from the deeps that lie within its being
Draws to it what alone can nourish, freeing
Its powers to full prophecy of vigor, - 
So I divined the unseen stir in you
Of nature's might that you could not subdue;
It was so strong, from sire to son surviving,
In mystery mute descends this power's striving.
Upon this poured its radiant warmth pervading
My mother's soul; of wedded joy the glory
Crowns not alone your aged heads and hoary;
But it shall death outlive in light unfading.
And if my people ever truly prize
The pictured home that in my writings lies,
Honor of love and faith serene, unbroken, - 
Of father, mother, both, shall praise be spoken.
If men remember the Norwegian peasant,
As from the field of toil or saga fateful
I conjured him; to you they shall be grateful,
Father, in whom love let me find him present.
And if the woman whom I made them view
In sun-like splendid faith and spirit true,
By women is approved, it is the other
Who has their homage, my sweet-natured mother.
And now you'll rest the evening long and cheery
From the day's work in fair or troubled weather,
And of the by-gone time you'll talk together,
Of many a mile you trod with footsteps weary, - 
Now will as sunlight on the winter's snow,
A warmth of thanks in through the window glow,
Harsh memories mellow with its golden shining,
Your life in faith complete find its refining.
But none gives thanks as now that son in gladness,
For whom you lived in anxious fear unceasing,
Since forth he flew with strength of wing increasing,
For whom to God you prayed in joy and sadness.
Oh, know, when hot my blood burned over-much,
I felt your soothing hands my forehead touch,
And oft, my heart in mute repentance bleeding,
In thoughts of you I heard God's gentle pleading.
And so I pray that I may have the power
(Since we again for life shall be united,
And hope 'mid mirthful mem'ries be relighted),
To brighten now their every evening-hour!
When children's children in their arms shall be,
Oh, let them morning in their evening see!
So shall they gladly lay, when death gives warning,
Their gray heads down to greet the dawning morning.
In Memory of Rupert Brooke
by Alfred Joyce Kilmer (Joyce)

In alien earth, across a troubled sea,
His body lies that was so fair and young.
His mouth is stopped, with half his songs unsung;
His arm is still, that struck to make men free.
But let no cloud of lamentation be
Where, on a warrior's grave, a lyre is hung.
We keep the echoes of his golden tongue,
We keep the vision of his chivalry.
So Israel's joy, the loveliest of kings,
Smote now his harp, and now the hostile horde.
To-day the starry roof of Heaven rings
With psalms a soldier made to praise his Lord;
And David rests beneath Eternal wings,
Song on his lips, and in his hand a sword.
The Troglodyte
by Madison Julius Cawein

In ages dead, a troglodyte,
At the hollow roots of a monster height, - 
That grew from the heart of the world to light, - 
I dwelt in caverns: over me
Were mountains older than the moon;
And forests vaster than the sea,
And gulfs, that the earthquake's hand had hewn,
Hung under me. And late and soon
I heard the d'mon of change that sighed
A cosmic language of mystery;
While life sat silent, primeval-eyed,
With the infant spirit of prophecy.
Gaunt stars glared down on the Titan peaks;
And the gaunter glare of the cratered streaks
Of the sunset's ruin heard condor shrieks.
The roar of cataracts hurled in air,
And the hurricane laying his thunders bare,
And rush of battling beasts, - whose lair
Was the antechamber of nadir-gloom, - 
Were my outworld joys. But who shall tell
The awe of the depths that heard the boom
Of the iron rivers that fashioned Hell!
The Dinkey Bird
by Eugene Field

In an ocean, 'way out yonder
(As all sapient people know),
Is the land of Wonder-Wander,
Whither children love to go;
It's their playing, romping, swinging,
That give great joy to me
While the Dinkey-Bird goes singing
In the amfalula tree!
There the gum-drops grow like cherries,
And taffy's thick as peas -
Caramels you pick like berries
When, and where, and how you please;
Big red sugar-plums are clinging
To the cliffs beside that sea
Where the Dinkey-Bird is singing
In the amfalula tree.
So when children shout and scamper
And make merry all the day,
When there's naught to put a damper
To the ardor of their play;
When I hear their laughter ringing,
Then I'm sure as sure can be
That the Dinkey-Bird is singing
In the amfalula tree.
For the Dinkey-Bird's bravuras
And staccatos are so sweet -
His roulades, appoggiaturas,
And robustos so complete,
That the youth of every nation -
Be they near or far away -
Have especial delectation
In that gladsome roundelay.
Their eyes grow bright and brighter,
Their lungs begin to crow,
Their hearts get light and lighter,
And their cheeks are all aglow;
For an echo cometh bringing
The news to all and me,
That the Dinkey-Bird is singing
In the amfalula tree.
I'm sure you like to go there
To see your feathered friend -
And so many goodies grow there
You would like to comprehend!
Speed, little dreams, your winging
To that land across the sea
Where the Dinkey-Bird is singing
In the amfalula tree!
The Principal's Ash-Barrel.
by W. M. MacKeracher

In a notable college the story is told
'Twill bear repetition, although somewhat old
That, at some unauthenticate date in the past
(I think 'twas the month or the year before last),
The Principal brought a complaint 'gainst the Steward
Concerning a matter he long had endured:
He deposed that the former - the cause of the quarrel
Had neglected to see to his scavenger-barrel,
And requested the Faculty grave and sedate
To sit and consider the point in debate,
Which this reverend body would straightway have done
Had not a professor objection begun
By insisting that such an undignified act
To the Faculty was not becoming, in fact,
That he, for his part, refused to comply
With the purpose the Principal wished to apply,
Considering it 'neath both his place and apparel
To sit upon anyone's scavenger-barrel.
Natural Progress
by Ben Jonson

In all faith, we did our part:
generated punctually, prepared adequately,
ejected promptly,
and swam in the approved manner
in the appropriate direction;
did all instinctive things well,
even eagerly
an exemplary start.
But then the barrier: unexpectedness
unexpectedly.
(They did not tell us this).
To go back impossible, unnatural:
so round; many times;
we tired ourselves.
Where were the promised homes,
embedded in the soft wall?
Or the anticipated achievement
so momentous, fulfilling?
So we died:
what else was there to do?
But in all faith, we did our part!
The Romanza.
by Madison Julius Cawein

In a kingdom of mist and moonlight,
Or ever the world was known,
Past leagues of unsailed water,
There reigned a king with a daughter
That shone like a starry stone.
The day grew out o' the moonlight;
But never a day was there.
The king was wise as hoary,
And his daughter, like the glory
Of seven kingdoms, fair.
And the night dimmed over the moonlight, - 
And ever the mist was gray, - 
With slips of dull stars, bluer
Where the princess met her wooer,
A page like the month o' May.
In her eyes the mist, and the moonlight
In hair of a crumpled gold;
By day they wooed a-hawking,
A-hawking laughed, a-mocking
The good, white king and old.
On the sea the mist, and the moonlight
Poured pale to the lilies' tips; - 
At eve, when the hawks were feeding,
In courts to the kennels leading,
He kissed her mouth and lips.
On towers the mist, and the moonlight
On a dead face staring up; - 
His kingly couch was ready,
But and her hand was steady
Giving the poisoned cup.
The Ocean Of Song
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In a land beyond sight or conceiving,
In a land where no blight is, no wrong,
No darkness, no graves, and no grieving,
There lies the great ocean of song.
And its waves, oh, its waves unbeholden
By any save gods, and their kind,
Are not blue, are not green, but are golden,
Like moonlight and sunlight combined.
It was whispered to me that their waters
Were made from the gathered-up tears
That were wept by the sons and the daughters
Of long-vanished eras and spheres.
Like white sands of heaven the spray is
That falls all the happy day long,
And whoever it touches straightway is
Made glad with the spirit of song.
Up, up to the clouds where their hoary
Crowned heads melt away in the skies,
The beautiful mountains of glory
Each side of the song-ocean rise.
Here day is one splendour of sky-light - 
Of God's light with beauty replete.
Here night is not night, but is twilight,
Pervading, enfolding, and sweet.
Bright birds from all climes and all regions,
That sing the whole glad summer long,
Are dumb, till they flock here in legions
And lave in the ocean of song.
It is here that the four winds of heaven,
The winds that do sing and rejoice,
It is here they first came and were given
The secret of sound and a voice.
Far down along beautiful beeches,
By night and by glorious day,
The throng of the gifted ones reaches,
Their foreheads made white with the spray,
And a few of the sons and the daughters
Of this kingdom, cloud-hidden from sight,
Go down in the wonderful waters,
And bathe in those billows of light.
And their souls evermore are like fountains,
And liquid and lucent and strong,
High over the tops of the mountains
Gush up the sweet billows of song.
No drouth-time of waters can dry them.
Whoever has bathed in that sea,
All dangers, all deaths, they defy them,
And are gladder than gods are, with glee.
Spenserian Stanza: Written At The Close Of Canto II, Book V, Of "The Faerie Queene"
by John Keats

In after-time, a sage of mickle lore
Yclep'd Typographus, the Giant took,
And did refit his limbs as heretofore,
And made him read in many a learned book,
And into many a lively legend look;
Thereby in goodly themes so training him,
That all his brutishness he quite forsook,
When, meeting Artegall and Talus grim,
The one he struck stone-blind, the other's eyes wox dim.
The Voice Of The Banjo
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

In a small and lonely cabin out of noisy traffic's way,
Sat an old man, bent and feeble, dusk of face, and hair of gray,
And beside him on the table, battered, old, and worn as he,
Lay a banjo, droning forth this reminiscent melody:
"Night is closing in upon us, friend of mine, but don't be sad;
Let us think of all the pleasures and the joys that we have had.
Let us keep a merry visage, and be happy till the last,
Let the future still be sweetened with the honey of the past.
"For I speak to you of summer nights upon the yellow sand,
When the Southern moon was sailing high and silvering all the land;
And if love tales were not sacred, there's a tale that I could tell
Of your many nightly wanderings with a dusk and lovely belle.
"And I speak to you of care-free songs when labour's hour was o'er,
And a woman waiting for your step outside the cabin door,
And of something roly-poly that you took upon your lap,
While you listened for the stumbling, hesitating words, 'Pap, pap.'
"I could tell you of a 'possum hunt across the wooded grounds,
I could call to mind the sweetness of the baying of the hounds,
You could lift me up and smelling of the timber that 's in me,
Build again a whole green forest with the mem'ry of a tree.
"So the future cannot hurt us while we keep the past in mind,
What care I for trembling fingers,--what care you that you are blind?
Time may leave us poor and stranded, circumstance may make us bend;
But they 'll only find us mellower, won't they, comrade?--in the end."
Ode To Quinbus Flestrin, The Man Mountain,[87] By Titty Tit, Poet-Laureate To His Majesty Of Lilliput. Translated Into English.
by Alexander Pope

In amaze
Lost I gaze!
Can our eyes
Reach thy size!
May my lays
Swell with praise,
Worthy thee!
Worthy me!
Muse, inspire
All thy fire!
Bards of old
Of him told.
When they said
Atlas' head
Propp'd the skies:
See! and believe your eyes!
See him stride
Valleys wide,
Over woods,
Over floods!
When he treads,
Mountains' heads
Groan and shake:
Armies quake:
Lest his spurn
Overturn
Man and steed,
Troops, take heed!
Left and right,
Speed your flight!
Lest an host
Beneath his foot be lost!
Turn'd aside
From his hide
Safe from wound,
Darts rebound.
From his nose
Clouds he blows:
When he speaks,
Thunder breaks!
When he eats,
Famine threats!
When he drinks,
Neptune shrinks!
Nigh thy ear
In mid air,
On thy hand
Let me stand;
So shall I,
Lofty poet! touch the sky.
An Exception
by Ellis Parker Butler

In all romances, old and new,
And in all lover's rhymes
I find one rule that has held true
Since prehistoric times.
The lover must, if he indeed
Be hit by Cupid's dart,
Grow pale, sigh much, neglect his food,
And wholly lose his heart.
Now fain would I abide this rule
But I, forsooth, grow red
And hot, and stammer like a fool,
And only lose my head.
Skeletons Digging
by Charles Baudelaire

I.
In anatomical designs
That hang about these dusty quays
Where books' cadavers lie and sleep
Like mummies of the ancient times,
Drawings of which the gravity
And the engraver's knowing hand,
Although the theme be less than grand,
Communicate an artistry,
One sees, which renders more intense
The horror and the mystery,
Like field-hands working wearily
Some skeletons and skinless men.
II.
Out of the land you're digging there,
Obedient and woeful drones,
With all the effort of your bones,
Of all your muscles, stripped and bare,
Say, what strange harvest do you farm,
Convicts from the charnel house,
And what contractor hired you out
To fill what farmer's empty barn?
Do you (our dreadful fate seems clear
In your design) intend to show
That in the pit we may not know
The sleep we have been promised there;
Non-being will not keep its faith;
That even Death can tell a lie,
And that, Alas! eternally
It falls to us, perhaps, at death
In some anonymous retreat
To see the stubborn land is flayed
By pushing the reluctant spade
Under our bare and bleeding feet?
A Face In A Book
by Richard Le Gallienne

In an old book I found her face
Writ by a dead man long ago - 
I found, and then I lost the place;
So nothing but her face I know,
And her soft name writ fair below.
Even if she lived I cannot learn,
Or but a dead man's dream she were;
Page after yellow page I turn,
But cannot come again to her,
Although I know she must be there.
On other books of other men,
Far in the night, year-long, I pore,
Hoping to find her face again,
Too fair a face to see no more - 
And 'twas so soft a name she bore.
Sometimes I think the book was Youth,
And the dead man that wrote it I,
The face was Beauty, the name Truth - 
And thus, with an unseeing eye,
I pass the long-sought image by.
The Kestrel
by John Frederick Freeman

In a great western wind we climbed the hill
And saw the clouds run up, ride high and sink;
And there were shadows running at our feet
Till it seemed the very earth could not be still,
Nor could our hearts be still, nor could we think
Our hearts could ever be still, our thought less fleet
Than the dizzy clouds, less than the flying wind.
Eastward the valley and the dark steep hill
And other hills and valleys lost behind
In mist and light. The hedges were not yet bare
Though the wind picked at them as he went by.
The woods were fire, a fire that dense or clear
Burned steady, but could not burn up the shadows
Rooted where the trees' roots entangled lie,
In darkness; or a flame burned solitary
In the middle of the highest of brown meadows,
Burned solitary and unconsuming where
A red tree stooped to its black shadow and
The kestrel's shadow hunted the kestrel up the hill.
We climbed, and as we stood (where yet we stand
And of the visioned sun and shadow still drink)
Happiness like a shadow chased our thought
That tossed on free wings up and down the world;
Till by that wild swift-darting shadow caught
Our free spirits their free pinions furled.
Then as the kestrel began once more the heavens to climb
A new-winged spirit rose clear above the hills of time.
Dell And I
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In a mansion grand, just over the way
Lives bonny, beautiful Dell;
You may have heard of this lady gay,
For she is a famous belle.
I live in a low cot opposite - 
You never have heard of me;
For when the lady moon shines bright,
Who would a pale star see?
But ah, well! ah, well!    I am happier far than Dell,
As strange as that may be.
Dell has robes of the richest kind - 
Pinks and purples and blues;
And she worries her maid and frets her mind
To know which one to choose.
Which shall it be now, silk or lace?
In which will I be most fair?
She stands by the mirror with anxious face,
And her maid looks on in despair.
Ah, well! ah, well!    I am not worried, you see, like Dell,
For I have but one to wear.
Dell has lovers of every grade,
Of every age and style;
Suitors flutter about the maid,
And bask in her word and smile.
She keeps them all, with a coquette's art,
As suits her mood or mirth,
And vainly wonders if in one heart
Of all true love has birth.
Ah, well! ah, well!    I never question myself like Dell,
For I know a true heart's worth.
Pleasure to Dell seems stale and old,
Often she sits and sighs;
Life to me is a tale untold,
Each day is a glad surprise.
Dell will marry, of course, some day,
After her belleship is run;
She will cavil the matter in worldly way
And wed Dame Fortune's son
But, ah, well! sweet to tell, I shall not dally and choose like Dell,
For I love and am loved by - one.
Vanitas Vanitatum, Omnia Vanitas
by Anne Bronte

In all we do, and hear, and see,
Is restless Toil and Vanity.
While yet the rolling earth abides,
Men come and go like Ocean tides;
And ere one generation dies,
Another in its place shall rise;
That, sinking soon into the grave,
Others succeed, like wave on wave;
And as they rise, they pass away.
The sun arises every day,
And, hastening onward to the West,
He nightly sinks, but not to rest:
Returning to the eastern skies,
Again to light us, he must rise.
And still the restless wind comes forth,
Now blowing keenly from the North;
Now from the South, the East, the West,
For ever changing, ne'er at rest.
The fountains, gushing from the hills,
Supply the ever-running rills;
The thirsty rivers drink their store,
And bear it rolling to the shore,
But still the ocean craves for more.
'Tis endless labour everywhere!
Sound cannot satisfy the ear,
Light cannot fill the craving eye,
Nor riches half our wants supply;
Pleasure but doubles future pain,
And joy brings sorrow in her train;
Laughter is mad, and reckless mirth,
What does she in this weary earth?
Should Wealth, or Fame, our Life employ,
Death comes, our labour to destroy;
To snatch the untasted cup away,
For which we toiled so many a day.
What, then, remains for wretched man?
To use life's comforts while he can,
Enjoy the blessings Heaven bestows,
Assist his friends, forgive his foes;
Trust God, and keep his statutes still,
Upright and firm, through good and ill;
Thankful for all that God has given,
Fixing his firmest hopes on heaven;
Knowing that earthly joys decay,
But hoping through the darkest day.
The Old English Garden - A Floral Phantasy
by Walter Crane

In an old world garden dreaming,
Where the flowers had human names,
Methought, in fantastic seeming,
They disported as squires and dames.
Of old in Rosamond's Bower,
With it's peacock hedges of yew,
One could never find the flower
Unless one was given the clue;
So take the key of the wicket,
Who would follow my fancy free,
By formal knot and clipt thicket,
And smooth greensward so fair to see
And while Time his scythe is whetting,
Ere the dew from the grass has gone,
The Four Seasons' flight forgetting,
As they dance round the dial stone;
With a leaf from an old English book,
A Jonquil will serve for a pen.
Let us note from the green arbour's nook,
Flowers masking like women and men.
FIRST in VENUS'S LOOKING GLASS,
You may see where LOVE LIES BLEEDING,
While PRETTY MAIDS all of them pass
With careless hearts quite unheeding.
Next, a knight with his flaming targe
See the DENT-DE-LION so bold
With his feathery crest at large,
On a field of the cloth of gold.
Simple honesty shows in vain
A fashion few seek to robe in,
While the poor SHEPHERD'S-PURSE is ta'en
By rascally RAGGED-ROBIN.
Hamlet Micure
by Edgar Lee Masters

In a lingering fever many visions come to you:
I was in the little house again
With its great yard of clover
Running down to the board-fence,
Shadowed by the oak tree,
Where we children had our swing.
Yet the little house was a manor hall
Set in a lawn, and by the lawn was the sea.
I was in the room where little Paul
Strangled from diphtheria,
But yet it was not this room - 
It was a sunny verandah enclosed
With mullioned windows
And in a chair sat a man in a dark cloak
With a face like Euripides.
He had come to visit me, or I had gone to visit him - I could not tell.
We could hear the beat of the sea, the clover nodded
Under a summer wind, and little Paul came
With clover blossoms to the window and smiled.
Then I said: "What is "divine despair" Alfred?"
"Have you read 'Tears, Idle Tears'?" he asked.
"Yes, but you do not there express divine despair."
"My poor friend," he answered, "that was why the despair
Was divine."
The Convergence Of The Twain
by Thomas Hardy

(Lines on the loss of the "Titanic")
I
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
II
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
III
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
IV
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.
V
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?" . . .
VI
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
VII
Prepared a sinister mate
For her so gaily great -
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
VIII
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
IX
Alien they seemed to be:
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,
X
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,
XI
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said "Now!" And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
Off To The War
by Michael Earls

(For Jack)
In a little ship and down the bay,
Out to the calling sea,
A young brave lad sailed off today,
To the one great war went he:
The one long war all men must know
Greater than land or gold,
Soul is the prince and flesh the foe
Of a kingdom Christ will hold.
With arms of faith and hope well-wrought
The brave lad went away,
And the voice of Christ fills all his thought,
Under two hands that pray:
The tender love of a mother's hands
That guarded all his years,
Fitted the armor, plate and bands,
And blessed them with her tears.
Older than Rhodes and Ascalon
And the farthest forts of sea,
Is the Master voice that calls him on
From the hills in Galilee:
From hills where Christ in gentle guise
Called, as He calls again,
With His heart of love and His love-lit eyes
Unto His warrior men.
Christ with the brave young lad to-day
Who goes to the sweet command,
Strengthen his heart wherever the way,
Whether he march or stand:
And whether he die in a peaceful cell,
Or alone in the lonely night,
The Cross of Christ shall keep him well,
And be his death's delight.