DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
It Was An English Ladye Bright
by Walter Scott (Sir)

It was an English ladye bright,
(The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall,)
And she would marry a Scottish knight,
For Love will still be lord of all.
Blithely they saw the rising sun
When he shone fair on Carlisle wall;
But they were sad ere day was done,
Though Love was still the lord of all.
Her sire gave brooch and jewel fine,
Where the sun shines fair on Carlisle wall;
Her brother gave but a flask of wine,
For ire that Love was lord of all.
For she had lands both meadow and lea,
Where the sun shines fair on Carlisle wall,
And he swore her death, ere he would see
A Scottish knight the lord of all.
That wine she had not tasted well
(The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall,)
When dead, in her true love's arms, she fell,
For Love was still the lord of all!
He pierced her brother to the heart,
Where the sun shines fair on Carlisle wall:
So perish all would true love part
That Love may still be lord of all!
And then he took the cross divine,
Where the sun shines fair on Carlisle wall,
And died for her sake in Palestine;
So Love was still the lord of all.
Now all ye lovers, that faithful prove,
(The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall,)
Pray for their souls who died for love,
For Love shall still be lord of all!
The Ballad Of The Oysterman
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

It was a tall young oysterman lived by the river-side,
His shop was just upon the bank, his boat was on the tide;
The daughter of a fisherman, that was so straight and slim,
Lived over on the other bank, right opposite to him.
It was the pensive oysterman that saw a lovely maid,
Upon a moonlight evening, a sitting in the shade;
He saw her wave her handkerchief, as much as if to say,
"I 'm wide awake, young oysterman, and all the folks away."
Then up arose the oysterman, and to himself said he,
"I guess I 'll leave the skiff at home, for fear that folks should see
I read it in the story-book, that, for to kiss his dear,
Leander swam the Hellespont, - and I will swim this here."
And he has leaped into the waves, and crossed the shining stream,
And he has clambered up the bank, all in the moonlight gleam;
Oh there were kisses sweet as dew, and words as soft as rain, - 
But they have heard her father's step, and in he leaps again!
Out spoke the ancient fisherman, - "Oh, what was that, my daughter?"
"'T was nothing but a pebble, sir, I threw into the water."
"And what is that, pray tell me, love, that paddles off so fast?"
"It's nothing but a porpoise, sir, that 's been a swimming past."
Out spoke the ancient fisherman, - "Now bring me my harpoon!
I'll get into my fishing-boat, and fix the fellow soon."
Down fell that pretty innocent, as falls a snow-white lamb,
Her hair drooped round her pallid cheeks, like sea-weed on a clam.
Alas for those two loving ones! she waked not from her swound,
And he was taken with the cramp, and in the waves was drowned;
But Fate has metamorphosed them, in pity of their woe,
And now they keep an oyster-shop for mermaids down below.
An Anniversary
by Thomas Hardy

It was at the very date to which we have come,
In the month of the matching name,
When, at a like minute, the sun had upswum,
Its couch-time at night being the same.
And the same path stretched here that people now follow,
And the same stile crossed their way,
And beyond the same green hillock and hollow
The same horizon lay;
And the same man pilgrims now hereby who pilgrimed here that day.
Let so much be said of the date-day's sameness;
But the tree that neighbours the track,
And stoops like a pedlar afflicted with lameness,
Knew of no sogged wound or windcrack.
And the joints of that wall were not enshrouded
With mosses of many tones,
And the garth up afar was not overcrowded
With a multitude of white stones,
And the man's eyes then were not so sunk that you saw the socket- bones.
KINGSTON-MAURWARD EWELEASE.
Silence
by W.J. Turner

It was bright day and all the trees were still
In the deep valley, and the dim Sun glowed;
The clay in hard-baked fire along the hill
Leapt through dark trunks to apples green and gold,
Smooth, hard and cold, they shone like lamps of stone:
They were bright bubbles bursting from the trees,
Swollen and still among the dark green boughs;
On their bright skins the shadows of the leaves
Seemed the faint ghosts of summers long since gone,
Faint ghosts of ghosts, the dreams of ghostly eyes.
There was no sound between those breathless hills.
Only the dim Sun hung there, nothing moved;
The thronged, massed, crowded multitude of leaves
Hung like dumb tongues that loll and gasp for air:
The grass was thick and still, between the trees.
There were big apples lying on the ground,
Shining, quite still, as though they had been stunned
By some great violent spirit stalking through,
Leaving a deep and supernatural calm
Round a dead beetle upturned in a furrow.
A valley filled with dark, quiet, leaf-thick trees,
Loaded with green, cold, faintly shining suns;
And in the sky a great dim burning disc! -
Madness it is to watch these twisted trunks
And to see nothing move and hear no sound!
Let's make a noise, Hey!... Hey!... Hullo! Hullo!
The Fiftieth Birthday Of Agassiz
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

MAY 28, 1857
It was fifty years ago
In the pleasant month of May,
In the beautiful Pays de Vaud,
A child in its cradle lay.
And Nature, the old nurse, took
The child upon her knee,
Saying: "Here is a story-book
Thy Father has written for thee."
"Come, wander with me," she said,
"Into regions yet untrod;
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God."
And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him night and day
The rhymes of the universe.
And whenever the way seemed long,
Or his heart began to fail,
She would sing a more wonderful song,
Or tell a more marvellous tale.
So she keeps him still a child,
And will not let him go,
Though at times his heart beats wild
For the beautiful Pays de Vaud;
Though at times he hears in his dreams
The Ranz des Vaches of old,
And the rush of mountain streams
From glaciers clear and cold;
And the mother at home says, "Hark!
For his voice I listen and yearn;
It is growing late and dark,
And my boy does not return!"
Battle Of Blenheim, The
by Robert Southey

It was a summer's evening;
Old Casper's work was done,
And he before his cottage-door
Was sitting in the sun;
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.
She saw her brother Peterkin
Roll something large and round,
That he beside the rivulet
In playing there had found.
He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large, and smooth, and round.
Old Casper took it from the boy,
Who stood expectant by;
And then the old man shook his head,
And with a natural sigh,
"'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he,
"Who fell in the great victory.
"I find them in the garden, for
There's many here about;
And often, when I go to plough,
The ploughshare turns them out;
For many thousand men," said he,
"Were slain in the great victory."
"Now tell us what 'twas all about,"
Young Peterkin he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up,
With wonder-waiting eyes:
"Now tell us all about the war,
And what they kill'd each other for."
"It was the English," Casper cried,
"That put the French to rout;
But what they kill'd each other for,
I could not well make out;
But everybody said," quoth he,
"That 'twas a famous victory.
"My father lived at Blenheim then,
Yon little stream hard by;
They burnt his dwelling to the ground,
And he was forced to fly;
So with his wife and child he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.
"With fire and sword the country round,
Was wasted far and wide,
And many a childing mother then
And new-born infant died.
But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.
"They say it was a shocking sight,
After the field was won,
For many a thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun.
But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.
"Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won,
And our good Prince Eugene."
"Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!"
Said little Wilhelmine.
"Nay, nay, my little girl," quoth he,
"It was a famous victory;
"And everybody praised the duke,
Who such a fight did win."
"But what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.
"Why, that I cannot tell," said he;
"But 'twas a famous victory."
It Was An April Morning: Fresh And Clear
by William Wordsworth

It was an April morning: fresh and clear
The Rivulet, delighting in its strength,
Ran with a young man's speed; and yet the voice
Of waters which the winter had supplied
Was softened down into a vernal tone.
The spirit of enjoyment and desire,
And hopes and wishes, from all living things
Went circling, like a multitude of sounds.
The budding groves seemed eager to urge on
The steps of June; as if their various hues
Were only hindrances that stood between
Them and their object: but, meanwhile, prevailed
Such an entire contentment in the air
That every naked ash, and tardy tree
Yet leafless, showed as if the countenance
With which it looked on this delightful day
Were native to the summer.'Up the brook
I roamed in the confusion of my heart,
Alive to all things and forgetting all.
At length I to a sudden turning came
In this continuous glen, where down a rock
The Stream, so ardent in its course before,
Sent forth such sallies of glad sound, that all
Which I till then had heard, appeared the voice
Of common pleasure: beast and bird, the lamb,
The shepherd's dog, the linnet and the thrush
Vied with this waterfall, and made a song,
Which, while I listened, seemed like the wild growth
Or like some natural produce of the air,
That could not cease to be. Green leaves were here;
But 'twas the foliage of the rocks'the birch,
The yew, the holly, and the bright green thorn,
With hanging islands of resplendent furze:
And, on a summit, distant a short space,
By any who should look beyond the dell,
A single mountain-cottage might be seen.
I gazed and gazed, and to myself I said,
"Our thoughts at least are ours; and this wild nook,
My EMMA, I will dedicate to thee."
Soon did the spot become my other home,
My dwelling, and my out-of-doors abode.
And, of the Shepherds who have seen me there,
To whom I sometimes in our idle talk
Have told this fancy, two or three, perhaps,
Years after we are gone and in our graves,
When they have cause to speak of this wild place,
May call it by the name of EMMA'S DELL.
The King's Experiment
by Thomas Hardy

It was a wet wan hour in spring,
And Nature met King Doom beside a lane,
Wherein Hodge trudged, all blithely ballading
The Mother's smiling reign.
"Why warbles he that skies are fair
And coombs alight," she cried, "and fallows gay,
When I have placed no sunshine in the air
Or glow on earth to-day?"
"'Tis in the comedy of things
That such should be," returned the one of Doom;
"Charge now the scene with brightest blazonings,
And he shall call them gloom."
She gave the word: the sun outbroke,
All Froomside shone, the hedgebirds raised a song;
And later Hodge, upon the midday stroke,
Returned the lane along,
Low murmuring: "O this bitter scene,
And thrice accurst horizon hung with gloom!
How deadly like this sky, these fields, these treen,
To trappings of the tomb!"
The Beldame then: "The fool and blind!
Such mad perverseness who may apprehend?" -
"Nay; there's no madness in it; thou shalt find
Thy law there," said her friend.
"When Hodge went forth 'twas to his Love,
To make her, ere this eve, his wedded prize,
And Earth, despite the heaviness above,
Was bright as Paradise.
"But I sent on my messenger,
With cunning arrows poisonous and keen,
To take forthwith her laughing life from her,
And dull her little een,
"And white her cheek, and still her breath,
Ere her too buoyant Hodge had reached her side;
So, when he came, he clasped her but in death,
And never as his bride.
"And there's the humour, as I said;
Thy dreary dawn he saw as gleaming gold,
And in thy glistening green and radiant red
Funereal gloom and cold."
The Poet's Seat. An Idyll Of The Suburbs.
by Henry Austin Dobson

"Ille terrarum mihi pr'ter omnes
Angulus Ridet."
--Hor. ii. 6.
It was an elm-tree root of yore,
With lordly trunk, before they lopped it,
And weighty, said those five who bore
Its bulk across the lawn, and dropped it
Not once or twice, before it lay.
With two young pear-trees to protect it,
Safe where the Poet hoped some day
The curious pilgrim would inspect it.
He saw him with his Poet's eye,
The stately Maori, turned from etching
The ruin of St. Paul's, to try
Some object better worth the sketching:--
He saw him, and it nerved his strength
What time he hacked and hewed and scraped it,
Until the monster grew at length
The Master-piece to which he shaped it.
To wit--a goodly garden seat,
And fit alike for Shah or Sophy,
With shelf for cigarettes complete,
And one, but lower down, for coffee;
He planted pansies 'round its foot,--
"Pansies for thoughts!" and rose and arum;
The Motto (that he meant to put)
Was "Ille angulus terrarum."
But "Oh! the change" (as Milton sings)--
"The heavy change!" When May departed,
When June with its "delightful things"
Had come and gone, the rough bark started,--
Began to lose its sylvan brown,
Grew parched, and powdery, and spotted;
And, though the Poet nailed it down,
It still flapped up, and dropped, and rotted.
Nor was this all. 'Twas next the scene
Of vague (and viscous) vegetations;
Queer fissures gaped, with oozings green,
And moist, unsavoury exhalations,--
Faint wafts of wood decayed and sick,
Till, where he meant to carve his Motto,
Strange leathery fungi sprouted thick,
And made it like an oyster grotto.
Briefly, it grew a seat of scorn,
Bare,--shameless,--till, for fresh disaster,
From end to end, one April morn,
'Twas riddled like a pepper caster,--
Drilled like a vellum of old time;
And musing on this final mystery,
The Poet left off scribbling rhyme,
And took to studying Natural History.
This was the turning of the tide;
His five-act play is still unwritten;
The dreams that now his soul divide
Are more of Lubbock than of Lytton;
"Ballades" are "verses vain" to him
Whose first ambition is to lecture
(So much is man the sport of whim!)
On "Insects and their Architecture."
A Lament For Fair-Haired Donough That Was Hanged In Galway
by Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory

It was bound fast here you saw him, and wondered to see him,
Our fair-haired Donough, and he after being condemned;
There was a little white cap on him in place of a hat,
And a hempen rope in the place of a neck-cloth.
I am after walking here all through the night,
Like a young lamb in a great flock of sheep;
My breast open, my hair loosened out,
And how did I find my brother but stretched before me!
The first place I cried my fill was at the top of the lake;
The second place was at the foot of the gallows;
The third place was at the head of your dead body
Among the Gall, and my own head as if cut in two.
If you were with me in the place you had a right to be,
Down in Sligo or down in Ballinrobe,
It is the gallows would be broken, it is the rope would be cut
And fair-haired Donough going home by the path.
O fair-haired Donough, it is not the gallows was fit for you;
But to be going to the barn, to be threshing out the straw;
To be turning the plough to the right hand and to the left,
To be putting the red side of the soil uppermost.
O fair-haired Donough, O dear brother,
It is well I know who it was took you away from me;
Drinking from the cup, putting a light to the pipe,
And walking in the dew in the cover of the night.
O Michael Malley, O scourge of misfortune!
My brother was no calf of a vagabond cow;
But a well-shaped boy on a height or a hillside,
To knock a low pleasant sound out of a hurling-stick.
And fair-haired Donough, is not that the pity,
You that would carry well a spur or a boot;
I would put clothes in the fashion on you from cloth that would be lasting;
I would send you out like a gentleman's son.
O Michael Malley, may your sons never be in one another's company;
May your daughters never ask a marriage portion of you;
The two ends of the table are empty, the house is filled,
And fair-haired Donough, my brother, is stretched out.
There is a marriage portion coming home for Donough,
But it is not cattle or sheep or horses;
But tobacco and pipes and white candles,
And it will not be begrudged to them that will use it.
Barbara Allan
by Frank Sidgwick

The Text is from Allan Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany (1763). It was not included in the first edition (1724-1727), nor until the ninth edition in 1740, when to the original three volumes there was added a fourth, in which this ballad appeared. There is also a Scotch version, Sir John Grehme and Barbara Allan. Percy printed both in the Reliques, vol. iii.
The Story of Barbara Allan's scorn of her lover and subsequent regret has always been popular. Pepys records of Mrs. Knipp, 'In perfect pleasure I was to hear her sing, and especially her little Scotch song of Barbary Allen' (January 2, 1665-6). Goldsmith's words are equally well known: 'The music of the finest singer is dissonance to what I felt when an old dairymaid sung me into tears with Johnny Armstrong's Last Goodnight, or The Cruelty of Barbara Allen.' The tune is excessively popular: it is given in Chappell's English Song and Ballad Music.
BARBARA ALLAN
1.
It was in and about the Martinmas time,
When the green leaves were afalling,
That Sir John Gr'me, in the West Country,
Fell in love with Barbara Allan.
2.
He sent his men down through the town,
To the place where she was dwelling;
'O haste and come to my master dear,
Gin ye be Barbara Allan.'
3.
O hooly, hooly rose she up,
To the place where he was lying,
And when she drew the curtain by,
'Young man, I think you're dying.'
4.
'O it's I am sick, and very, very sick,
And 't is a' for Barbara Allan.'
'O the better for me ye 's never be,
Tho' your heart's blood were aspilling.'
5.
'O dinna ye mind, young man,' said she,
'When ye was in the tavern a drinking,
That ye made the healths gae round and round,
And slighted Barbara Allan?'
6.
He turn'd his face unto the wall,
And death was with him dealing;
'Adieu, adieu, my dear friends all,
And be kind to Barbara Allan.'
7.
And slowly, slowly raise she up,
And slowly, slowly left him,
And sighing, said, she coud not stay,
Since death of life had reft him.
8.
She had not gane a mile but twa,
When she heard the dead-bell ringing,
And every jow that the dead-bell geid,
It cry'd, 'Woe to Barbara Allan!'
9.
'O mother, mother, make my bed,
O make it saft and narrow!
Since my love died for me to-day,
I'll die for him to-morrow.'
Chrismus On The Plantation
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

It was Chrismus Eve, I mind hit fu' a mighty gloomy day--
Bofe de weathah an' de people--not a one of us was gay;
Cose you 'll t'ink dat 's mighty funny 'twell I try to mek hit cleah,
Fu' a da'ky 's allus happy when de holidays is neah.
But we wasn't, fu' dat mo'nin' Mastah 'd tol' us we mus' go,
He 'd been payin' us sence freedom, but he couldn't pay no mo';'
He wa'n't nevah used to plannin' 'fo' he got so po' an' ol',
So he gwine to give up tryin', an' de homestead mus' be sol'.
I kin see him stan'in' now erpon de step ez cleah ez day,
Wid de win' a-kind o' fondlin' thoo his haih all thin an' gray;
An' I 'membah how he trimbled when he said, "It's ha 'd fu' me,
Not to mek yo' Chrismus brightah, but I 'low it wa'n't to be."
All de women was a-cryin', an' de men, too, on de sly,
An' I noticed somep'n shinin' even in ol' Mastah's eye.
But we all stood still to listen ez ol' Ben come f'om de crowd
An' spoke up, a-try'n' to steady down his voice and mek it loud:--
"Look hyeah, Mastah, I 's been servin' you' fu' lo! dese many yeahs,
An' now, sence we 's got freedom an' you 's kind o' po', hit 'pears
Dat you want us all to leave you 'cause you don't t'ink you can pay.
Ef my membry has n't fooled me, seem dat whut I hyead you say.
"Er in othah wo'ds, you wants us to fu'git dat you 's been kin',
An' ez soon ez you is he'pless, we 's to leave you hyeah behin'.
Well, ef dat 's de way dis freedom ac's on people, white er black,
You kin jes' tell Mistah Lincum fu' to tek his freedom back.
"We gwine wo'k dis ol' plantation fu' whatevah we kin git,
Fu' I know hit did suppo't us, an' de place kin do it yit.
Now de land is yo's, de hands is ouahs, an' I reckon we 'll be brave,
An' we 'll bah ez much ez you do w'en we has to scrape an' save."
Ol' Mastah stood dah trimblin', but a-smilin' thoo his teahs,
An' den hit seemed jes' nachul-like, de place fah rung wid cheahs,
An' soon ez dey was quiet, some one sta'ted sof an' low:
"Praise God," an' den we all jined in, "from whom all blessin's flow!"
Well, dey was n't no use tryin', ouah min's was sot to stay,
An' po' ol' Mastah could n't plead ner baig, ner drive us 'way,
An' all at once, hit seemed to us, de day was bright agin,
So evahone was gay dat night, an' watched de Chrismus in.
Revisited.
by Madison Julius Cawein

It was beneath a waning moon when all the woods were sear,
And winds made eddies of the leaves that whispered far and near,
I met her on the old mill-bridge we parted at last year.
At first I deemed it but a mist that faltered in that place,
An autumn mist beneath the trees that sentineled the race;
Until I neared and in the moon beheld her face to face.
The waver of the summer-heat upon the drouth-dry leas;
The shimmer of the thistle-drift a down the silences;
The gliding of the fairy-fire between the swamp and trees;
They qualified her presence as a sorrow may a dream
The vague suggestion of a self; the glimmer of a gleam;
The actual unreal of the things that only seem.
Where once she came with welcome and glad eyes all loving-wise,
She passed and gave no greeting that my heart might recognize,
With far-set face unseeing and sad unremembering eyes.
It was beneath a waning moon when woods were bleak and sear,
And winds made whispers of the leaves that eddied far and near,
I met her ghost upon the bridge we parted at last year.
The Oubit[1]
by Charles Kingsley

It was an hairy oubit, sae proud he crept alang,
A feckless hairy oubit, and merrily he sang - 
'My Minnie bad me bide at hame until I won my wings;
I show her soon my soul's aboon the warks o' creeping things.'
This feckless hairy oubit cam' hirpling by the linn,
A swirl o' wind cam' doun the glen, and blew that oubit in:
Oh when he took the water, the saumon fry they rose,
And tigg'd him a' to pieces sma', by head and tail and toes.
Tak' warning then, young poets a', by this poor oubit's shame;
Though Pegasus may nicher loud, keep Pegasus at hame.
Oh haud your hands frae inkhorns, though a' the Muses woo;
For critics lie, like saumon fry, to mak' their meals o' you.
Eversley, 1851.
The Demiurge's Laugh
by Robert Lee Frost

It was far in the sameness of the wood;
I was running with joy on the Demon's trail,
Though I knew what I hunted was no true god.
i was just as the light was beginning to fail
That I suddenly head, all I needed to hear:
It has lasted me many and many a year.
The sound was behind me instead of before,
A sleepy sound, but mocking half,
As one who utterly couldn't care.
The Demon arose from his wallow to laugh,
Brushing the dirt from his eye as he went;
And well I knew what the Demon meant.
I shall not forget how his laugh rang out.
I felt as a fool to have been so caught,
And checked my steps to make pretense
I was something among the leaves I sought
(Though doubtful whether he stayed to see).
Thereafter I sat me against a tree.