DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Frog
by James Whitcomb Riley

Who am I but the Frog - the Frog!
My realm is the dark bayou,
And my throne is the muddy and moss-grown log
That the poison-vine clings to -
And the blacksnakes slide in the slimy tide
Where the ghost of the moon looks blue.
What am I but a King - a King! -
For the royal robes I wear -
A scepter, too, and a signet-ring,
As vassals and serfs declare:
And a voice, god wot, that is equaled not
In the wide world anywhere!
I can talk to the Night - the Night! -
Under her big black wing
She tells me the tale of the world outright,
And the secret of everything;
For she knows you all, from the time you crawl,
To the doom that death will bring.
The Storm swoops down, and he blows - and blows, -
While I drum on his swollen cheek,
And croak in his angered eye that glows
With the lurid lightning's streak;
While the rushes drown in the watery frown
That his bursting passions leak.
And I can see through the sky - the sky -
As clear as a piece of glass;
And I can tell you the how and why
Of the things that come to pass -
And whether the dead are there instead,
Or under the graveyard grass.
To your Sovereign lord all hail - all hail! -
To your Prince on his throne so grim!
Let the moon swing low, and the high stars trail
Their heads in the dust to him;
And the wide world sing:    Long live the King,
And grace to his royal whim!
Three Songs In A Garden I
by Theodosia Garrison

White rose-leaves in my hands,
I toss you all away;
The winds shall blow you through the world
To seek my wedding day.
Or East you go, or West you go
And fall on land or sea,
Find the one that I love best
And bring him here to me.
And if he finds me spinning
'Tis short I'll break my thread;
And if he finds me dancing
I'll dance with him instead;
If he finds me at the Mass--
(Ah, let this not be,
Lest I forget my sweetest saint
The while he kneels by me!)
Santorin
by James Elroy Flecker

(A Legend of the 'gean)
'Who are you, Sea Lady,
And where in the seas are we?
I have too long been steering
By the flashes in your eyes.
Why drops the moonlight through my heart,
And why so quietly
Go the great engines of my boat
As if their souls were free?'
'Oh ask me not, bold sailor;
Is not your ship a magic ship
That sails without a sail:
Are not these isles the Isles of Greece
And dust upon the sea?
But answer me three questions
And give me answers three.
What is your ship?" 'A British.'
'And where may Britain be?'
'Oh it lies north, dear lady;
It is a small country.'
'Yet you will know my lover,
Though you live far away:
And you will whisper where he has gone,
That lily boy to look upon
And whiter than the spray.'
'How should I know your lover,
Lady of the sea?'
'Alexander, Alexander,
The King of the World was he.'
'Weep not for him, dear lady,
But come aboard my ship.
So many years ago he died,
He's dead as dead can be.'
'O base and brutal sailor
To lie this lie to me.
His mother was the foam-foot
Star-sparkling Aphrodite;
His father was Adonis
Who lives away in Lebanon,
In stony Lebanon, where blooms
His red anemone.
But where is Alexander,
The soldier Alexander,
My golden love of olden days
The King of the world and me?'
She sank into the moonlight
And the sea was only sea.
Invocation
by Francis Brett Young

Whither, O, my sweet mistress, must I follow thee?
For when I hear thy distant footfall nearing,
And wait on thy appearing,
Lo! my lips are silent: no words come to me.
Once I waylaid thee in green forest covers,
Hoping that spring might free my lips with gentle fingers;
Alas! her presence lingers
No longer than on the plain the shadow of brown kestrel hovers.
Through windless ways of the night my spirit followed after;
Cold and remote were they, and there, possessed
By a strange unworldly rest,
Awaiting thy still voice heard only starry laughter.
The pillared halls of sleep echoed my ghostly tread.
Yet when their secret chambers I essayed
My spirit sank, dismayed,
Waking in fear to find the new-born vision fled.
Once indeed - but then my spirit bloomed in leafy rapture -
I loved; and once I looked death in the eyes:
So, suddenly made wise,
Spoke of such beauty as I may never recapture....
Whither, O, divine mistress, must I then follow thee?
Is it only in love ... say, is it only in death
That the spirit blossometh,
And words that may match my vision shall come to me?
The Blinded Bourbons.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Qui leur e't dit l'aust're destine'?")
[II. v., November, 1836.]
Who then, to them[1] had told the Future's story?
Or said that France, low bowed before their glory,
One day would mindful be
Of them and of their mournful fate no more,
Than of the wrecks its waters have swept o'er
The unremembering sea?
That their old Tuileries should see the fall
Of blazons from its high heraldic hall,
Dismantled, crumbling, prone;[2]
Or that, o'er yon dark Louvre's architrave[3]
A Corsican, as yet unborn, should grave
An eagle, then unknown?
That gay St. Cloud another lord awaited,
Or that in scenes Le N'tre's art created
For princely sport and ease,
Crimean steeds, trampling the velvet glade,
Should browse the bark beneath the stately shade
Of the great Louis' trees?
Fraser's Magazine.
To A Brown Beggar-Maid
by Charles Baudelaire

White maiden with the russet hair,
Whose garments, through their holes, declare
That poverty is part of you,
And beauty too.
To me, a sorry bard and mean,
Your youthful beauty, frail and lean,
With summer freckles here and there,
Is sweet and fair.
Your sabots tread the roads of chance,
And not one queen of old romance
Carried her velvet shoes and lace
With half your grace.
In place of tatters far too short
Let the proud garments worn at Court
Fall down with rustling fold and pleat
About your feet;
In place of stockings, worn and old,
Let a keen dagger all of gold
Gleam in your garter for the eyes
Of rou's wise;
Let ribbons carelessly untied
Reveal to us the radiant pride
Of your white bosom purer far
Than any star;
Let your white arms uncovered shine,
Polished and smooth and half divine;
And let your elfish fingers chase
With riotous grace
The purest pearls that softly glow,
The sweetest sonnets of Belleau,
Offered by gallants ere they fight
For your delight;
And many fawning rhymers who
Inscribe their first thin book to you
Will contemplate upon the stair
Your slipper fair;
And many a page who plays at cards,
And many lords and many bards,
Will watch your going forth, and burn
For your return;
And you will count before your glass
More kisses than the lily has;
And more than one Valois will sigh
When you pass by.
But meanwhile you are on the tramp,
Begging your living in the damp,
Wandering mean streets and alley's o'er,
From door to door;
And shilling bangles in a shop
Cause you with eager eyes to stop,
And I, alas, have not a sou
To give to you.
Then go, with no more ornament,
Pearl, diamond, or subtle scent,
Than your own fragile naked grace
And lovely face.
Whither?
by Walter R. Cassels

Whither away, youth, whither away,
With lightsome step, and with joyous heart,
And eyes that Hope's gay glances dart?
Whither away--whither away?
Into the world, the glorious world,
To gain the prize, of the brave and bold,
To snatch the crown from the age of gold--
Into the world--into the world!
Whither away, girl, whither away?
Thy soft blue eyes are suffused with love,
And thy smile is as bright as the sunshine above,--
Whither away, whither away?
Into the world, the beautiful world,
To meet the heart that must mate with mine,
And make the measure of life divine,--
Into the world, into the world.
Whither away, old man, whither away,
With locks of white, and form bent low,
And trembling hands, and steps so slow?
Whither away,--whither away?
Out of the world, Oh! the weary world,
With its empty pleasures, and poison'd joys,
Whose draught first gladdens, and then destroys--
Out of the world, out of the world,
With shatter'd hopes, and with feeble frame,
From Life's sharp struggle, and unsped aim,--
Out of the world, Oh! the weary world.
Whither away, poor one, whither away?
Hurrying swiftly, with weeping eyes,
And hectic cheeks, and smother'd sighs,
Whither away--whither away?
Out of the world, oh! the cold, cold world!
Oh! Father, my heart ... but there is rest
For the sinking soul, and the bruis'd breast,
Out of the world--out of the world!
To Bacchus, A Canticle.
by Robert Herrick

Whither dost thou whorry me,
Bacchus, being full of thee?
This way, that way, that way, this,
Here and there a fresh love is.
That doth like me, this doth please,
Thus a thousand mistresses
I have now; yet I alone,
Having all, enjoy not one.
Everlasting Flowers
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

Who do you think stands watching
The snow-tops shining rosy
In heaven, now that the darkness
Takes all but the tallest posy?
Who then sees the two-winged
Boat down there, all alone
And asleep on the snow's last shadow,
Like a moth on a stone?
The olive-leaves, light as gad-flies,
Have all gone dark, gone black.
And now in the dark my soul to you
Turns back.
To you, my little darling,
To you, out of Italy.
For what is loveliness, my love,
Save you have it with me!
So, there's an oxen wagon
Comes darkly into sight:
A man with a lantern, swinging
A little light.
What does he see, my darling
Here by the darkened lake?
Here, in the sloping shadow
The mountains make?
He says not a word, but passes,
Staring at what he sees.
What ghost of us both do you think he saw
Under the olive trees?
All the things that are lovely -
The things you never knew -
I wanted to gather them one by one
And bring them to you.
But never now, my darling
Can I gather the mountain-tips
From the twilight like half-shut lilies
To hold to your lips.
And never the two-winged vessel
That sleeps below on the lake
Can I catch like a moth between my hands
For you to take.
But hush, I am not regretting:
It is far more perfect now.
I'll whisper the ghostly truth to the world
And tell them how
I know you here in the darkness,
How you sit in the throne of my eyes
At peace, and look out of the windows
In glad surprise.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - III - Charles The Second
by William Wordsworth

Who comes with rapture greeted, and caressed
With frantic love, his kingdom to regain?
Him Virtue's Nurse, Adversity, in vain
Received, and fostered in her iron breast:
For all she taught of hardiest and of best,
Or would have taught, by discipline of pain
And long privation, now dissolves amain,
Or is remembered only to give zest
To wantonness. Away, Circean revels!
But for what gain? if England soon must sink
Into a gulf which all distinction levels
That bigotry may swallow the good name,
And, with that draught, the life-blood: misery, shame,
By Poets loathed; from which Historians shrink!
The Rose Of The World
by William Butler Yeats

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna's children died.
We and the labouring world are passing by:
Amid men's souls, that waver and give place
Like the pale waters in their wintry race,
Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,
Lives on this lonely face.
Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
Before you were, or any hearts to beat,
Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;
He made the world to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.
To A Simple Housewife
by Richard Le Gallienne

Who dough shall knead as for God's sake
Shall fill it with celestial leaven,
And every loaf that she shall bake
Be eaten of the Blest in heaven.
Nursery Rhyme. DCXLVII. Relics.
by Unknown

Who comes here?
A grenadier.
What do you want?
A pot of beer.
Where is your money?
I've forgot.
Get you gone,
You drunken sot!
The Stanza of Childe Harold
by Henry Kendall

Who framed the stanza of Childe Harold? He
It was who, halting on a stormy shore,
Knew well the lofty voice which evermore,
In grand distress, doth haunt the sleepless sea
With solemn sounds. And as each wave did roll
Till one came up, the mightiest of the whole,
To sweep and surge across the vacant lea,
Wild words were wedded to wild melody.
This poet must have had a speechless sense
Of some dead summer's boundless affluence;
Else, whither can we trace the passioned lore
Of Beauty, steeping to the very core
His royal verse, and that rare light which lies
About it, like a sunset in the skies?
The Miracle
by Walter De La Mare

Who beckons the green ivy up
Its solitary tower of stone?
What spirit lures the bindweed's cup
Unfaltering on?
Calls even the starry lichen to climb
By agelong inches endless Time?
Who bids the hollyhock uplift
Her rod of fast-sealed buds on high;
Fling wide her petals - silent, swift,
Lovely to the sky?
Since as she kindled, so she will fade,
Flower above flower in squalor laid.
Ever the heavy billow rears
All its sea-length in green, hushed wall;
But totters as the shore it nears,
Foams to its fall;
Where was its mark? on what vain quest
Rose that great water from its rest?
So creeps ambition on; so climb
Man's vaunting thoughts. He, set on high,
Forgets his birth, small space, brief time,
That he shall die;
Dreams blindly in his dark, still air;
Consumes his strength; strips himself bare;
Rejects delight, ease, pleasure, hope,
Seeking in vain, but seeking yet,
Past earthly promise, earthly scope,
On one aim set:
As if, like Chaucer's child, he thought
All but "O Alma!" nought.
Need.
by Robert Herrick

Who begs to die for fear of human need,
Wisheth his body, not his soul, good speed.
Epilogue To A Benefit Play, Given In Behalf Of The Distressed Weavers.
by Jonathan Swift

BY THE DEAN. SPOKEN BY MR. GRIFFITH
Who dares affirm this is no pious age,
When charity begins to tread the stage?
When actors, who at best are hardly savers,
Will give a night of benefit to weavers?
Stay - let me see, how finely will it sound!
Imprimis, From his grace[1] a hundred pound.
Peers, clergy, gentry, all are benefactors;
And then comes in the item of the actors.
Item, The actors freely give a day - 
The poet had no more who made the play.
But whence this wondrous charity in players?
They learn it not at sermons, or at prayers:
Under the rose, since here are none but friends,
(To own the truth) we have some private ends.
Since waiting-women, like exacting jades,
Hold up the prices of their old brocades;
We'll dress in manufactures made at home;
Equip our kings and generals at the Comb.[2]
We'll rig from Meath Street Egypt's haughty queen
And Antony shall court her in ratteen.
In blue shalloon shall Hannibal be clad,
And Scipio trail an Irish purple plaid,
In drugget drest, of thirteen pence a-yard,
See Philip's son amidst his Persian guard;
And proud Roxana, fired with jealous rage,
With fifty yards of crape shall sweep the stage.
In short, our kings and princesses within
Are all resolved this project to begin;
And you, our subjects, when you here resort,
Must imitate the fashion of the court.
O! could I see this audience clad in stuff,
Though money's scarce, we should have trade enough:
But chintz, brocades, and lace, take all away,
And scarce a crown is left to see the play.
Perhaps you wonder whence this friendship springs
Between the weavers and us playhouse kings;
But wit and weaving had the same beginning;
Pallas[3] first taught us poetry and spinning:
And, next, observe how this alliance fits,
For weavers now are just as poor as wits:
Their brother quillmen, workers for the stage,
For sorry stuff can get a crown a page;
But weavers will be kinder to the players,
And sell for twenty pence a yard of theirs.
And to your knowledge, there is often less in
The poet's wit, than in the player's dressing.
Devotion Makes The Deity.
by Robert Herrick

Who forms a godhead out of gold or stone
Makes not a god, but he that prays to one.
Giving And Taking
by John Greenleaf Whittier

"Who gives and hides the giving hand,
Nor counts on favor, fame, or praise,
Shall find his smallest gift outweighs
The burden of the sea and land.
Who gives to whom hath naught been given,
His gift in need, though small indeed
As is the grass-blade's wind-blown seed,
Is large as earth and rich as heaven.
Forget it not, O man, to whom
A gift shall fall, while yet on earth;
Yea, even to thy seven-fold birth
Recall it in the lives to come.
Who broods above a wrong in thought
Sins much; but greater sin is his
Who, fed and clothed with kindnesses,
Shall count the holy alms as nought.
Who dares to curse the hands that bless
Shall know of sin the deadliest cost;
The patience of the heavens is lost
Beholding man's unthankfulness.
For he who breaks all laws may still
In Sivam's mercy be forgiven;
But none can save, in earth or heaven,
The wretch who answers good with ill
The Yellow Puccoon
by Madison Julius Cawein

Who could describe you, child of mystery
And silence, born among these solitudes?
Within whose look there is a secrecy,
Old as these wanderingwoods,
And knowledge, cousin to the morning-star,
Beyond the things that mar,
And earth itself that on the soul intrudes.
How many eons what antiquity
Went to your making? When the world was young
You yet were old. What mighty company
Of cosmic forces swung
About you! On what wonders have you gazed
Since first your head was raised
To greet the Power that here your seed-spore flung!
The butterfly that woos you, and the bee
That quits the mandrakes' cups to whisper you,
Are in your confidence and sympathy,
As sunlight is and dew,
And the soft music of this woodland stream,
Telling the trees its dream,
That lean attentive its dim face unto.
With bluet, larkspur, and anemone
Your gold conspires to arrest the eye,
Making it prisoner unto Fantasy
And Vision, none'll deny!
That lead the mind (as children lead the blind
Homeward by ways that wind)
To certainties of love that round it lie.
The tanager, in scarlet livery,
Out-flaunts you not in bravery, amber-bright
As is the little moon of Fa'rie,
That glows with golden light
From out a firmament of green, as you
From out the moss and dew
Glimmer your starry disc upon my sight.
If I might know you, have you, as the bee
And butterfly, in some more intimate sense
Or, like the brook there talking to the tree,
Win to your confidence
Then might I grasp it, solve it, in some wise,
This riddle in disguise
Named Life, through you and your experience.
Easter Day. (From The Villager's Verse-Book.)
by William Lisle Bowles

Who comes (my soul no longer doubt),
Rising from earth's wormy sod,
And whilst ten thousand angels sing,
Ascends - ascends to heaven, a God?
Saviour, Lord, I know thee now!
Mighty to redeem and save,
Such glory blazes on thy brow,
Which lights the darkness of the grave.
Saviour, Lord, the human soul,
Forgotten every sorrow here,
Shall thus, aspiring to its goal,
Triumph in its native sphere.
Shakespeare - Tercentennial Celebration
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Who claims our Shakespeare from that realm unknown,
Beyond the storm-vexed islands of the deep,
Where Genoa's roving mariner was blown?
Her twofold Saint's-day let our England keep;
Shall warring aliens share her holy task?"
The Old World echoes ask.
O land of Shakespeare! ours with all thy past,
Till these last years that make the sea so wide;
Think not the jar of battle's trumpet-blast
Has dulled our aching sense to joyous pride
In every noble word thy sons bequeathed
The air our fathers breathed!
War-wasted, haggard, panting from the strife,
We turn to other days and far-off lands,
Live o'er in dreams the Poet's faded life,
Come with fresh lilies in our fevered hands
To wreathe his bust, and scatter purple flowers, - 
Not his the need, but ours!
We call those poets who are first to mark
Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn, - 
Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark,
While others only note that day is gone;
For him the Lord of light the curtain rent
That veils the firmament.
The greatest for its greatness is half known,
Stretching beyond our narrow quadrant-lines, - 
As in that world of Nature all outgrown
Where Calaveras lifts his awful pines,
And cast from Mariposa's mountain-wall
Nevada's cataracts fall.
Yet heaven's remotest orb is partly ours,
Throbbing its radiance like a beating heart;
In the wide compass of angelic powers
The instinct of the blindworm has its part;
So in God's kingliest creature we behold
The flower our buds infold.
With no vain praise we mock the stone-carved name
Stamped once on dust that moved with pulse and breath,
As thinking to enlarge that amplest fame
Whose undimmed glories gild the night of death:
We praise not star or sun; in these we see
Thee, Father, only thee!
Thy gifts are beauty, wisdom, power, and love:
We read, we reverence on this human soul, - 
Earth's clearest mirror of the light above, - 
Plain as the record on thy prophet's scroll,
When o'er his page the effluent splendors poured,
Thine own "Thus saith the Lord!"
This player was a prophet from on high,
Thine own elected. Statesman, poet, sage,
For him thy sovereign pleasure passed them by;
Sidney's fair youth, and Raleigh's ripened age,
Spenser's chaste soul, and his imperial mind
Who taught and shamed mankind.
Therefore we bid our hearts' Te Deum rise,
Nor fear to make thy worship less divine,
And hear the shouted choral shake the skies,
Counting all glory, power, and wisdom thine;
For thy great gift thy greater name adore,
And praise thee evermore!
In this dread hour of Nature's utmost need,
Thanks for these unstained drops of freshening dew!
Oh, while our martyrs fall, our heroes bleed,
Keep us to every sweet remembrance true,
Till from this blood-red sunset springs new-born
Our Nation's second morn!
Hint From The Mountains For Certain Political Pretenders
by William Wordsworth

"Who but hails the sight with pleasure
When the wings of genius rise,
Their ability to measure
With great enterprise;
But in man was ne'er such daring
As yon Hawk exhibits, pairing
His brave spirit with the war in
The stormy skies!
"Mark him, how his power he uses,
Lays it by, at will resumes!
Mark, ere for his haunt he chooses
Clouds and utter glooms!
There, he wheels in downward mazes;
Sunward now his flight he raises,
Catches fire, as seems, and blazes
With uninjured plumes!"
ANSWER
"Stranger, 'tis no act of courage
Which aloft thou dost discern;
No bold 'bird' gone forth to forage
'Mid the tempest stern;
But such mockery as the nations
See, when public perturbations
Lift men from their native stations
Like yon TUFT OF FERN;
"Such it is; the aspiring creature
Soaring on undaunted wing,
(So you fancied) is by nature
A dull helpless thing,
Dry and withered, light and yellow;
'That' to be the tempest's fellow!
Wait, and you shall see how hollow
Its endeavouring!"
Epigram From The French[1]
by Jonathan Swift

Who can believe with common sense,
A bacon slice gives God offence;
Or, how a herring has a charm
Almighty vengeance to disarm?
Wrapp'd up in majesty divine,
Does he regard on what we dine?
Who Fancied What A Pretty Sight
by William Wordsworth

Who fancied what a pretty sight
This Rock would be if edged around
With living snow-drops? circlet bright!
How glorious to this orchard-ground!
Who loved the little Rock, and set
Upon its head this coronet?
Was it the humour of a child?
Or rather of some gentle maid,
Whose brows, the day that she was styled
The shepherd-queen, were thus arrayed?
Of man mature, or matron sage?
Or old man toying with his age!
I asked 'twas whispered; The device
To each and all might well belong:
It is the Spirit of Paradise
That prompts such work, a Spirit strong,
That gives to all the self-same bent
Where life is wise and innocent.
Echo
by Walter De La Mare

"Who called?" I said, and the words
Through the whispering glades,
Hither, thither, baffled the birds - 
"Who called? Who called?"
The leafy boughs on high
Hissed in the sun;
The dark air carried my cry
Faintingly on:
Eyes in the green, in the shade,
In the motionless brake,
Voices that said what I said,
For mockery's sake:
"Who cares?" I bawled through my tears;
The wind fell low:
In the silence, "Who cares? who cares?"
Wailed to and fro.
Miles Redux.
by Jacob Bigelow

Who comes here?
A Grenadier.
What do you want?
A pot of beer.
Where's your money?
I've forgot.
Get you gone,
You drunken sot.
Heus! Quis illic?
Ductor militi'.
Quid petis hic?
Cantharum cervisi'.
Ubi moneta?
Loqueris oblito.
O, ebriose,
In malum abito.