DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Elegiac Stanzas In Memory Of My Brother, John Commander Of The E. I. Company's Ship The Earl Of Abergavenny In Which He Perished By Calamitous Shipwreck, Feb.6, 1805
by William Wordsworth

I
The Sheep-boy whistled loud, and lo!
That instant, startled by the shock,
The Buzzard mounted from the rock
Deliberate and slow:
Lord of the air, he took his flight;
Oh! could he on that woeful night
Have lent his wing, my Brother dear,
For one poor moment's space to Thee,
And all who struggled with the Sea,
When safety was so near.
II
Thus in the weakness of my heart
I spoke (but let that pang be still)
When rising from the rock at will,
I saw the Bird depart.
And let me calmly bless the Power
That meets me in this unknown Flower.
Affecting type of him I mourn!
With calmness suffer and believe,
And grieve, and know that I must grieve,
Not cheerless, though forlorn.
III
Here did we stop; and here looked round
While each into himself descends,
For that last thought of parting Friends
That is not to be found.
Hidden was Grasmere Vale from sight,
Our home and his, his heart's delight,
His quiet heart's selected home.
But time before him melts away,
And he hath feeling of a day
Of blessedness to come.
IV
Full soon in sorrow did I weep,
Taught that the mutual hope was dust,
In sorrow, but for higher trust,
How miserably deep!
All vanished in a single word,
A breath, a sound, and scarcely heard:
Sea, Ship, drowned, Shipwreck, so it came,
The meek, the brave, the good, was gone;
He who had been our living John
Was nothing but a name.
V
That was indeed a parting! oh,
Glad am I, glad that it is past;
For there were some on whom it cast
Unutterable woe.
But they as well as I have gains;
From many a humble source, to pains
Like these, there comes a mild release;
Even here I feel it, even this Plant
Is in its beauty ministrant
To comfort and to peace.
VI
He would have loved thy modest grace,
Meek Flower! To Him I would have said,
"It grows upon its native bed
Beside our Parting-place;
There, cleaving to the ground, it lies
With multitude of purple eyes,
Spangling a cushion green like moss;
But we will see it, joyful tide!
Some day, to see it in its pride,
The mountain will we cross."
VII
Brother and Friend, if verse of mine
Have power to make thy virtues known,
Here let a monumental Stone
Stand, sacred as a Shrine;
And to the few who pass this way,
Traveller or Shepherd, let it say,
Long as these mighty rocks endure,
Oh do not Thou too fondly brood,
Although deserving of all good,
On any earthly hope, however pure!
Once By The Pacific
by Robert Lee Frost

The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last *Put out the Light* was spoken.
A Burial At Sea.
by Samuel Griswold Goodrich

The shore hath blent with the distant skies,
O'er the bend of the crested seas,
And the leaning ship in her pathway flies,
On the sweep of the freshened breeze.
Swift be its flight! for a dying guest
It bears across the billow,
And she fondly sighs in her native West
To find a peaceful pillow.
There, o'er the tide, her kindred sleep,
And she would sleep beside them 
It may not be! for the sea is deep,
And the waves the waves divide them!
It may not be! for the flush is flown,
That lighted her lily cheek 
'Twas the passing beam, ere the sun goes down. 
Life's last and loveliest streak.
'Tis gone, and a dew is o'er her now 
The dew of the mornless eve 
No morrow will shine on that pallid brow,
For the spirit hath ta'en its leave.
* * * * *
The ship heaves to, and the funeral rite,
O'er the lovely form is said,
And the rough man's cheek with tears is bright,
As he lowers the gentle dead.
The corse sinks down, alone alone,
To its dark and dreary grave,
And the soul on a lightened wing hath flown,
To the world beyond the wave.
* * * * *
'Tis a fearful thing in the sea to sleep
Alone in a silent bed 
'Tis a fearful thing on the shoreless deep
Of the spirit-world to tread!
November
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
The shivering wind sits in the oaks, whose limbs,
Twisted and tortured, nevermore are still;
Grief and decay sit with it; they, whose chill
Autumnal touch makes hectic-red the rims
Of all the oak leaves; desolating, dims
The ageratum's blue that banks the rill;
And splits the milkweed's pod upon the hill,
And shakes it free of the last seed that swims.
Down goes the day despondent to its close:
And now the sunset's hands of copper build
A tower of brass, behind whose burning bars
The day, in fierce, barbarian repose,
Like some imprisoned Inca sits, hate-filled,
Crowned with the gold corymbus of the stars.
II.
There is a booming in the forest boughs;
Tremendous feet seem trampling through the trees:
The storm is at his wildman revelries,
And earth and heaven echo his carouse.
Night reels with tumult; and, from out her house
Of cloud, the moon looks, like a face one sees
In nightmare, hurrying, with pale eyes that freeze
Stooping above with white, malignant brows.
The isolated oak upon the hill,
That seemed, at sunset, in terrific lands
A Titan head black in a sea of blood,
Now seems a monster harp, whose wild strings thrill
To the vast fingering of innumerable hands
Spirits of tempest and of solitude.
The sigh that heaves the grasses
by Alfred Edward Housman

The sigh that heaves the grasses
Whence thou wilt never rise
Is of the air that passes
And knows not if it sighs.
The diamond tears adorning
Thy low mound on the lea,
Those are the tears of morning,
That weeps, but not for thee.
The Street Player
by Fay Inchfawn

The shopping had been tedious, and the rain
Came pelting down as she turned home again.
The motor-bus swirled past with rush and whirr,
Nought but its fumes of petrol left for her.
The bloaters in her basket, and the cheese
Malodorously mixed themselves with these.
And all seemed wrong. The world was drab and grey
As the slow minutes wept themselves away.
And then, athwart the noises of the street,
A violin flung out an Irish air.
"I'll take you home again, Kathleen." Ah, sweet,
How tender-sweet those lilting phrases were!
They soothed away the weariness, and brought
Such peace to one worn woman, over- wrought,
That she forgot the things which vexed her so:
The too outrageous price of calico,
The shop-girl's look of pitying insolence
Because she paused to count the dwindling pence.
The player stopped. But the rapt vision stayed.
That woman faced life's worries unafraid.
The sugar shortage now had ceased to be
An insurmountable calamity.
Her kingdom was not bacon, no, nor butter,
But things more costly still, too rare to utter.
And, over chimney-pots, so bare and tall,
The sun set gloriously, after all.
Another. (Confusion Of Face.)
by Robert Herrick

The shame of man's face is no more
Than prayers repell'd, says Cassiodore.
The Show.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

The show is not the show,
But they that go.
Menagerie to me
My neighbor be.
Fair play --
Both went to see.
The Alchemist
by Ben Jonson

The sickness hot, a master quit, for fear,
His house in town, and left one servant there;
Ease him corrupted, and gave means to know
A Cheater, and his punk; who now brought low,
Leaving their narrow practice, were become
Cozeners at large; and only wanting some
House to set up, with him they here contract,
Each for a share, and all begin to act.
Much company they draw, and much abuse,
In casting figures, telling fortunes, news,
Selling of flies, flat bawdry with the stone,
Till it, and they, and all in fume are gone.
Fabien Dei Franchi
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

(To my Friend Henry Irving)
The silent room, the heavy creeping shade,
The dead that travel fast, the opening door,
The murdered brother rising through the floor,
The ghost's white fingers on thy shoulders laid,
And then the lonely duel in the glade,
The broken swords, the stifled scream, the gore,
Thy grand revengeful eyes when all is o'er,
These things are well enough, but thou wert made
For more august creation! frenzied Lear
Should at thy bidding wander on the heath
With the shrill fool to mock him, Romeo
For thee should lure his love, and desperate fear
Pluck Richard's recreant dagger from its sheath
Thou trumpet set for Shakespeare's lips to blow!
What The Traveller Said At Sunset
by John Greenleaf Whittier

The shadows grow and deepen round me,
I feel the deffall in the air;
The muezzin of the darkening thicket,
I hear the night-thrush call to prayer.
The evening wind is sad with farewells,
And loving hands unclasp from mine;
Alone I go to meet the darkness
Across an awful boundary-line.
As from the lighted hearths behind me
I pass with slow, reluctant feet,
What waits me in the land of strangeness?
What face shall smile, what voice shall greet?
What space shall awe, what brightness blind me?
What thunder-roll of music stun?
What vast processions sweep before me
Of shapes unknown beneath the sun?
I shrink from unaccustomed glory,
I dread the myriad-voiced strain;
Give me the unforgotten faces,
And let my lost ones speak again.
He will not chide my mortal yearning
Who is our Brother and our Friend;
In whose full life, divine and human,
The heavenly and the earthly blend.
Mine be the joy of soul-communion,
The sense of spiritual strength renewed,
The reverence for the pure and holy,
The dear delight of doing good.
No fitting ear is mine to listen
An endless anthem's rise and fall;
No curious eye is mine to measure
The pearl gate and the jasper wall.
For love must needs be more than knowledge:
What matter if I never know
Why Aldebaran's star is ruddy,
Or warmer Sirius white as snow!
Forgive my human words, O Father!
I go Thy larger truth to prove;
Thy mercy shall transcend my longing
I seek but love, and Thou art Love!
I go to find my lost and mourned for
Safe in Thy sheltering goodness still,
And all that hope and faith foreshadow
Made perfect in Thy holy will!
Those Names
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

The shearers sat in the firelight, hearty and hale and strong,
After the hard day's shearing, passing the joke along:
The "ringer" that shore a hundred, as they never were shorn before,
And the novice who, toiling bravely, had tommy-hawked half a score,
The tarboy, the cook and the skushy, the sweeper that swept the board,
The picker-up, and the penner, with the rest of the shearing horde.
There were men from the inland stations where the skies like a furnace glow,
And men from Snowy River, the land of frozen snow;
There were swarthy Queensland drovers who reckoned all land by miles,
And farmers' sons from the Murray, where many a vineyard smiles.
They started at telling stories when they wearied of cards and games,
And to give these stories flavour they threw in some local names,
Then a man from the bleak Monaro, away on the tableland,
He fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and he started to play his hand.
He told them of Adjintoothbong, where the pine-clad mountains freeze,
And the weight of the snow in summer breaks branches off the trees,
And, as he warmed to the business, he let them have it strong,
Nimitybelle, Conargo, Wheeo, Bongongolong;
He lingered over them fondly, because they recalled to mind
A thought of the bush homestead, and the girl that he left behind.
Then the shearers all sat silent till a man in the corner rose;
Said he, "I've traveled a-plenty but never heard names like those.
Out in the western districts, out in the Castlereigh
Most of the names are easy, short for a man to say.
You've heard of Mungrybambone and the Gundabluey Pine,
Quobbotha, Girilambone, and Terramungamine,
Quambone, Eunonyhareenyha, Wee Waa, and Buntijo,"
But the rest of the shearers stopped him: "For the sake of your jaw, go slow,
If you reckon those names are short ones out where such names prevail,
Just try and remember some long ones before you begin the tale."
And the man from the western district, though never a word he said,
Just winked with his dexter eyelid, and then he retired to bed.
The Shepherd, Looking Eastward, Softly Said
by William Wordsworth

The Shepherd, looking eastward, softly said
"Bright is thy veil, O Moon, as thou art bright!"
Forthwith, that little cloud, in ether spread
And penetrated all with tender light,
She cast away, and showed her fulgent head
Uncovered; dazzling the Beholder's sight
As if to vindicate her beauty's right
Her beauty thoughtlessly disparaged.
Meanwhile that veil, removed or thrown aside,
Went floating from her, darkening as it went;
And a huge mass, to bury or to hide,
Approached this glory of the firmament;
Who meekly yields, and is obscured content
With one calm triumph of a modest pride.
Spring.
by Marietta Holley

The sides of the hill were brown, but violet buds had started
In gray and hidden nooks o'erhung by feathery ferns and heather,
And a bird in an April morn was never lighter-hearted
Than the pilot swallow we saw convoying sunny weather,
And sunshine golden, and gay-voiced singing-birds into the land;
And this was the song - the clear, shrill song of the swallow,
That it carolled back to the southern sun, and his brown winged band,
Clear it arose, "Oh, follow me - come and follow - and follow."
A tender story was in his eyes, he wished to tell me I knew,
As he stood in the happy morn by my side at the garden-gate;
But I fancy the tall rose branches that bent and touched his brow,
Were whispering to him, "Wait, impatient heart, oh, wait,
Before the bloom of the rose is the tender green of the leaf;
Not rash is he who wisely followeth patient Nature's ways,
The lily-bud of love should be swathed in a silken sheaf,
Unfolding at will to summer bloom in the warm and perfect days."
So silently sailed the early sun, through clouds of fleecy white;
So stood we in dreamy silence, enwrapped in a tender spell;
But the pulses of soft Spring air were quickened to fresh delight,
For I read in his eye the story sweet, he longed, yet feared to tell;
It spoke from his heart to mine, and needed no word from his mouth,
And high o'er our heads rang out the happy song of the swallow;
It cried to the sunshine and beauty and bloom of the South,
Exultingly carolling clear, "Oh, follow me - oh, follow."
Not Dead, but Sleeping.
by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick

[To the memory of Edwin B. Foster, a member of the Howards, who nobly sacrificed his own life for others, and in remembrance of those unknown to fame or friends who have silently followed in the steps of our Saviour.]
The shadow of death is around us all,
And life is a sorrowful thing;
For the winds sweep by with a mournful sigh,
And sad are the tidings they bring.
He is dead--and the strong, brave life that he gave
Seemed offered to God in vain;
Yet he died, Christ-like, in a labor of love,
'Mid sorrow and death and pain.
And why should we sorrow--the crown is his
And the glory of life is won;
Though he died when his labor was just begun,
Yet the work of his life is done.
The beautiful South is a land of death,
Where the shadows darken the sun;
And the moans of the dying are heard in the night
When the deeds of the day are done.
The sunlight falls with a dreary gleam
On the cities where ruin is spread,
And the rain beats down with a mournful sound
On the graves of the silent dead.
Yet high in the heavens a Hand is stretched,
That treasures the deeds of love;
And the lives gone out in the darkness below
Are wrapped in the glory above.
The North bends down in her icy pride
And kisses the land of the sun;
Love joins them both in a flood of tears,
And the glory of peace is won.
The hand that was dyed in a brother's blood
Now eases that brother's pain;
And the hearts that in life were driven apart,
In death are united again.
Then why should we sorrow--our God is love,
And lives are not lived in vain;
Bright hope still shines like a star of night
In the shadow of death and pain.
The Haunted House
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
The shadows sit and stand about its door
Like uninvited guests and poor;
And all the long, hot summer day
The grating locust dins its roundelay
In one old sycamore.
The squirrel leaves upon its rotting roof,
In empty hulls, its tracks;
And in its clapboard cracks
The spider weaves a windy woof;
Its cells the mud-wasp packs.
The she-fox whelps upon its floor;
The owlet roosts above its door;
And where the musty mosses run,
The freckled snake basks in the sun.
II.
The children of what fathers sleep
Beneath these melancholy pines?
The slow slugs crawl among their graves where creep
The doddered poison-vines.
The orchard, near the meadow deep,
Lifts up decrepit arms,
Gray-lichened in a withering heap.
No sap swells up to make it leap
As once in calms and storms;
No blossom lulls its age asleep;
Each breeze brings sad alarms.
Big, bell-round pears and apples, russet-red,
No maiden gathers now;
The worm-bored trunks weep gum, like tears, instead,
From each decaying bough.
III.
The woodlands around it are solitary
And fold it like gaunt hands;
The sunlight is sad and the moonlight is dreary,
And the hum of the country is weary, so weary!
And the bees go by in bands
To other lovelier lands.
The grasses are rotting in walk and in bower;
The lonesomeness, dank and rank
As a chamber where lies for a lonely hour
An old-man's corpse with many a flower,
Is hushed and blank.
And even the birds have passed it by,
To sing their songs to a happier sky,
A happier sky and bank.
IV.
In its desolate halls are lying,
Gold, blood-red and browned,
Drifted leaves of summer dying;
And the winds, above them sighing,
Turn them round and round,
Make a ghostly sound
As of footsteps failing, flying,
Voices through the chambers crying,
Of the haunted house.
V.
Gazing down in her white shroud,
Shroud of windy cloud,
Comes at night the phantom moon;
Comes and all the shadows soon,
Crowding in the rooms, arouse;
Shadows, ghosts, her rays lead on,
Till beneath the cloud
Like a ghost she's gone,
In her gusty shroud,
O'er the haunted house.
A Song
by Mark Akenside

The Shape alone let others prize,
The Features of the Fair;
I look for Spirit in her Eyes,
And Meaning in her Air.
A Damask Cheek, an Iv'ry Arm,
Shall ne'er my Wishes win,
Give me an animated Form,
That speaks a Mind within.
A Face where awful Honour shines,
Where Sense and Sweetness move,
And Angel Innocence refines,
The Tenderness of Love.
These are the Soul of Beauty's frame,
Without whose vital Aid,
Unfinish'd all her Features seem,
And all her Roses dead.
But ah! where both their Charms unite,
How perfect is the View,
With ev'ry Image of Delight,
With Graces ever new.
Of Pow'r to charm the greatest Woe,
The wildest Rage control,
Diffusing Mildness o'er the Brow,
And Rapture thro' the Soul.
Their Pow'r but faintly to express,
All Language must despair,
But go behold Arpasia's Face,
And read it perfect there.
Ecstasy
by Duncan Campbell Scott

The shore-lark soars to his topmost flight,
Sings at the height where morning springs,
What though his voice be lost in the light,
The light comes dropping from his wings.
Mount, my soul, and sing at the height
Of thy clear flight in the light and the air,
Heard or unheard in the night in the light
Sing there! Sing there!
The shepherd's brow
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The shepherd's brow fronting forked lightning, owns
The horror and the havoc and the glory
Of it. Angels fall, they are towers, from heaven - a story
Of just, majestical, and giant groans.
But man - we, scaffold of score brittle bones;
Who breathe, from groundlong babyhood to hoary
Age gasp; whose breath is our memento mori - 
What bass is our viol for tragic tones?
He! Hand to mouth he lives, and voids with shame;
And, blazoned in however bold the name,
Man Jack the man is, just; his mate a hussy.
And I that die these deaths, that feed this flame,
That ... in smooth spoons spy life's masque mirrored: tame
My tempests there, my fire and fever fussy.
After Nine Years
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

To Joseph Mazzini.
Prim' dicte mihi, summ' dicende Camen'.
1.
The shadows fallen of years are nine
Since heaven grew seven times more divine
With thy soul entering, and the dearth
Of souls on earth
Grew sevenfold sadder, wanting One
Whose light of life, quenched here and done,
Burns there eternal as the sun.
2.
Beyond all word, beyond all deed,
Beyond all thought beloved, what need
Has death or love that speech should be,
Hast thou of me?
I had no word, no prayer, no cry,
To praise or hail or mourn thee by,
As when thou too wast man as I.
3.
Nay, never, nor as any born
Save one whose name priests turn to scorn,
Who haply, though we know not now,
Was man as thou,
A wanderer branded with men's blame,
Loved past man's utterance: yea, the same,
Perchance, and as his name thy name.
4.
Thou wast as very Christ'not he
Degraded into Deity,
And priest-polluted by such prayer
As poisons air,
Tongue-worship of the tongue that slays,
False faith and parricidal praise:
But the man crowned with suffering days.
5.
God only, being of all mankind
Most manlike, of most equal mind
And heart most perfect, more than can
Be heart of man
Once in ten ages, born to be
As haply Christ was, and as we
Knew surely, seeing, and worshipped thee.
6.
To know thee'this at least was ours,
God, clothed upon with human hours,
O face beloved, O spirit adored,
Saviour and lord!
That wast not only for thine own
Redeemer'not of these alone
But all to whom thy word was known.
7.
Ten years have wrought their will with me
Since last my words took wing for thee
Who then wast even as now above
Me, and my love.
As then thou knewest not scorn, so now
With that beloved benignant brow
Take these of him whose light wast thou.
The Sheep
by Ellis Parker Butler

The Sheep adorns the landscape rural
And is both singular and plural,
It gives grammarians the creeps
To hear one say, 'A flock of sheeps.'
The Sheep is gentle, meek and mild,
And led in herds by man or child,
Being less savage than the rabbit,
Sheep are gregarious by habit.
The Sheep grows wool and thus promotes
The making of vests, pants and coats,
Vests, pants and coats and woolen cloths
Provide good food for hungry moths.
With vegetables added to
The Sheep, we get our mutton stew,
Experiments long since revealed
The Sheep should first be killed and peeled.
Thus, with our debt to them so deep,
All men should cry 'Praise be for Sheep!'
And, if we happen to be shepherds,
'Praise be they're not as fierce as leopards!'
Summer Freshness
by Alfred Lichtenstein

The sky is like a blue jellyfish.
And all around are fields, rolling meadows - 
Peaceful world, you great mousetrap,
Would that I might finally escape from you..    O if I had wings - 
One plays dice.    Guzzles.    Chatters about future countries.
Each person puts in his own two cents.
The earth is a succulent Sunday roast,
Nicely dunked into a sweet sun-sauce.
If only there were a wind... that ripped
The gentle world with iron claws.    That would amuse me.
But if a storm comes...    It would shred
The lovely blue eternal sky into a thousand pieces.
Cloudy Evening
by Alfred Lichtenstein

The sky is swollen with tears and melancholy.
Only far off, where its foul vapors burst,
Green glow pours down.    The houses,
Gray grimaces, are fiendishly bloated with mist.
Yellowish lights are beginning to gleam.
A stout father with wife and children dozes.
Painted women are practicing their dances.
Grotesque mimes strut towards the theater.
Jokers shriek, foul connoisseurs of men:
The day is dead... and a name remains!
Powerful men gleam in girls' eyes.
A woman yearns for her beloved woman.