DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Wood-Path.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Here doth white Spring white violets show,
Broadcast doth white, frail wind-flowers sow
Through starry mosses amber-fair,
As delicate as ferns that grow,
Hart's-tongue and maiden-hair.
Here fungus life is beautiful,
White mushroom and the thick toad-stool
As various colored as wild blooms;
Existences that love the cool,
Distinct in rank perfumes.
Here stray the wandering cows to rest,
The calling cat-bird builds her nest
In spice-wood bushes dark and deep;
Here raps the woodpecker his best,
And here young rabbits leap.
Tall butternuts and hickories,
The pawpaw and persimmon trees,
The beech, the chestnut, and the oak,
Wall shadows huge, like ghosts of bees
Through which gold sun-bits soak.
Here to pale melancholy moons.
In haunted nights of dreamy Junes,
Wails wildly the weird whippoorwill,
Whose mournful and demonic tunes
Wild woods with phantoms fill.
Princeton
by Alfred Noyes

(1917)
The first four lines of this poem were written for inscription on the first joint memorial to the American and British soldiers who fell in the Revolutionary War. This memorial was recently dedicated at Princeton.
I.
Here Freedom stood, by slaughtered friend and foe,
And ere the wrath paled or that sunset died,
Looked through the ages: then, with eyes aglow,
Laid them, to wait that future, side by side.
II.
Now lamp-lit gardens in the blue dusk shine
Through dog-wood red and white,
And round the gray quadrangles, line by line,
The windows fill with light,
Where Princeton calls to Magdalen, tower to tower,
Twin lanthorns of the law,
And those cream-white magnolia boughs embower
The halls of old Nassau.
III.
The dark bronze tigers crouch on either side
Where red-coats used to pass,
And round the bird-loved house where Mercer died
And violets dusk the grass,
By Stony Brook that ran so red of old,
But sings of friendship now,
To feed the old enemy's harvest fifty-fold
The green earth takes the plough.
IV.
Through this May night if one great ghost should stray
With deep remembering eyes,
Where that old meadow of battle smiles away
Its blood-stained memories,
If Washington should walk, where friend and foe
Sleep and forget the past,
Be sure his unquenched heart would leap to know
Their hosts are joined at last.
V.
Be sure he walks, in shadowy buff and blue,
Where those dim lilacs wave,
He bends his head to bless, as dreams come true,
The promise of that grave,
Then with a vaster hope than thought can scan,
Touching his ancient sword,
Prays for that mightier realm of God in man,
"Hasten Thy Kingdom, Lord."
VI.
"Land of new hope, land of the singing stars,
Type of the world to be,
The vision of a world set free from wars
Takes life, takes form, from thee,
Where all the jarring nations of this earth,
Beneath the all-blessing sun,
Bring the new music of mankind to birth,
And make the whole world one."
VII.
And those old comrades rise around him there,
Old foemen, side by side,
With eyes like stars upon the brave night-air,
And young as when they died,
To hear your bells, O beautiful Princeton towers,
Ring for the world's release.
They see you, piercing like gray swords through flowers,
And smile from hearts at peace.
The Prodigal Son
by Rudyard Kipling

Here come I to my own again,
Fed, forgiven and known again,
Claimed by bone of my bone again
And cheered by flesh of my flesh.
The fatted calf is dressed for me,
But the husks have greater rest for me,
I think my pigs will be best for me,
So I'm off to the Yards afresh.
I never was very refined, you see,
(And it weighs on my brother's mind, you see)
But there's no reproach among swine, d'you see,
For being a bit of a swine.
So I'm off with wallet and staff to eat
The bread that is three parts chaff to wheat,
But glory be!, there's a laugh to it,
Which isn't the case when we dine.
My father glooms and advises me,
My brother sulks and despises me,
And Mother catechises me
Till I want to go out and swear.
And, in spite of the butler's gravity,
I know that the servants have it I
Am a monster of moral depravity,
And I'm damned if I think it's fair!
I wasted my substance, I know I did,
On riotous living, so I did,
But there's nothing on record to show I did
Worse than my betters have done.
They talk of the money I spent out there,
They hint at the pace that I went out there,
But they all forget I was sent out there
Alone as a rich man's son.
So I was a mark for plunder at once,
And lost my cash (can you wonder?) at once,
But I didn't give up and knock under at once,
I worked in the Yards, for a spell,
Where I spent my nights and my days with hogs.
And shared their milk and maize with hogs,
Till, I guess, I have learned what pays with hogs
And, I have that knowledge to sell!
So back I go to my job again,
Not so easy to rob again,
Or quite so ready to sob again
On any neck that's around.
I'm leaving, Pater.    Good-bye to you!
God bless you, Mater! I'll write to you!
I wouldn't be impolite to you,
But, Brother, you are a hound!
Epitaph On Holy Willie.
by Robert Burns

Here Holy Willie's sair worn clay
Takes up its last abode;
His saul has ta'en some other way,
I fear the left-hand road.
Stop! there he is, as sure's a gun,
Poor, silly body, see him;
Nae wonder he's as black's the grun,
Observe wha's standing wi' him.
Your brunstane devilship I see,
Has got him there before ye;
But hand your nine-tail cat a wee,
Till ance you've heard my story.
Your pity I will not implore,
For pity ye hae nane;
Justice, alas! has gi'en him o'er,
And mercy's day is gaen.
But hear me, sir, deil as ye are,
Look something to your credit;
A coof like him wad stain your name,
If it were kent ye did it.
Peace, Blessed Peace
by Edward Dyson

Here in the flamin' thick of thick of things,
With Death across the way, 'n' traps
What little Fritz the German flings
Explodin' in yer lunch pe'aps,
It ain't all glory for a bloke',
It ain't all corfee 'ot and stoo,
Nor wavin' banners in the smoke,
Or practisin' the bay'net stroke,
We has our little troubles, too!
Here's Trigger Ribb bin seein' red
'N' raisin' Cain because he had,
Back in the caverns iv his 'ead,
A 'oller tooth run ravin' mad.
Pore Trigger up 'n' down the trench
Was jiggin' like a blithered loan,
'N' every time she give a wrench
You orter seen the beggar blench,
You orter 'eard him play a toon.
The sullen shells was pawin' blind,
A-feelin' for us grim as sin,
While now 'n' then we'd likely find
A dizzy bomb come limpin' in.
But Trigger simply let 'er sizz.
He 'ardly begged to be excused.
This was no damn concern of his.
He twined a muffler round his phiz,
'N' fearful was the words he used.
Lest we be getting' cock-a-whoop
Ole 'Ans tries out his box of tricks.
His bullets all around the coop
Is peckin' like a million chicks.
But Trigger when they barks his snout
Don't sniff at it. He won't confess
They're on the earth'ignores the clout,
'N' makes the same old sung about
His brimmin' mug of bitterness.
They raided us there in the mud
One day afore the dead sun rose.
Me oath, the mess of stuff and blood
Would give a slaughterman the joes!
And when the scrap is past and done,
Where's Trigger Ribb? The noble youth
Has got his bay'net in a Hun,
While down his cheeks the salt tears run.
Sez he to me 'Gorbli''this tooth!'
A shell hoist Trigger in a tree.
We found him motherin' his jor.
'If this ache's goin' on,' sez he,
'So 'elp me, it'll spoil the war!'
Five collared Trigger on his perch,
They wired his molar to a bough,
Then give the anguished one a lurch,
'N' down he pitches. From that birch
His riddled tooth is hangin' now.
This afternoon it's merry 'ell;
Grenades is comin' by the peck;
A big gun times us true 'n well,
And, oh! we gets it in the neck.
They lick out flames hat reach a mile,
The drip of lead will never cease.
But Trigger's pottin' all the while;
He sports a fond 'n' foolish smile,
'Thank Gord,' he sez, 'a bit of peace!'
Faun
by Robert von Ranke Graves

Here down this very way,
Here only yesterday
King Faun went leaping.
He sang, with careless shout
Hurling his name about;
He sang, with oaken stock
His steps from rock to rock
In safety keeping,
"Here Faun is free,
Here Faun is free!"
Today against yon pine,
Forlorn yet still divine,
King Faun leant weeping.
"They drank my holy brook,
My strawberries they took,
My private path they trod."
Loud wept the desolate God,
Scorn on scorn heaping,
"Faun, what is he,
Faun, what is he?"
Seventy-Four And Twenty
by Thomas Hardy

Here goes a man of seventy-four,
Who sees not what life means for him,
And here another in years a score
Who reads its very figure and trim.
The one who shall walk to-day with me
Is not the youth who gazes far,
But the breezy wight who cannot see
What Earth's ingrained conditions are.
Poor Pierrot
by Edgar Lee Masters

Here far away from the city, here by the yellow dunes
I will lie and soothe my heart where the sea croons.
For what can I do with strife, or what can I do with hate?
Or the city, or life, or fame, or love or fate?
Or the struggle since time began of the rich and poor?
Or the law that drives the weak from the temple's door?
Bury me under the sand so that my sorrow shall lie
Hidden under the dunes from the world's eye.
I have learned the secret of silence, silence long and deep:
The dead knew all that I know, that is why they sleep.
They could do nothing with fate, or love, or fame, or strife - 
When life fills full the soul then life kills life.
I would glide under the earth as a shadow over a dune,
Into the soul of silence, under the sun and moon.
And forever as long as the world stands or the stars flee
Be one with the sands of the shore and one with the sea.
An Impromptu
by Duncan Campbell Scott

Here in the pungent gloom
Where the tamarac roses glow
And the balsam burns its perfume,
A vireo turns his slow
Cadence, as if he gloated
Over the last phrase he floated;
Each one he moulds and mellows
Matching it with its fellows:
So have you noted
How the oboe croons,
The canary-throated,
In the gloom of the violoncellos
And bassoons.
But afar in the thickset forest
I hear a sound go free,
Crashing the stately neighbours
The pine and the cedar tree,
Horns and harps and tabors,
Drumming and harping and horning
In savage minstrelsy - 
It wakes in my soul a warning
Of the wind of destiny.
My life is soaring and swinging
In triple walls of quiet,
In my heart there is rippling and ringing
A song with melodious riot,
When a fateful thing comes nigh it
A hush falls, and then
I hear in the thickset world
The wind of destiny hurled
On the lives of men.
Remembered
by Madison Julius Cawein

Here in the dusk I see her face again
As then I knew it, ere she fell asleep;
Renunciation glorifying pain
Of her soul's inmost deep.
I shall not see its like again! the brow
Of passive marble, purely aureoled, - 
As some pale lily in the afterglow, - 
With supernatural gold.
As if a rose should speak and, somehow heard
By some strange sense, the unembodied sound
Grow visible, her mouth was as a word
A sweet thought falters 'round.
So do I still remember eyes imbued
With far reflections - as the stars suggest
The silence, purity and solitude
Of infinite peace and rest.
She was my all. I loved her as men love
A high desire, religion, an ideal - 
The meaning purpose in the loss whereof
God shall alone reveal.
Hod Putt
by Edgar Lee Masters

Here I lie close to the grave
Of Old Bill Piersol,
Who grew rich trading with the Indians, and who
Afterwards took the Bankrupt Law
And emerged from it richer than ever
Myself grown tired of toil and poverty
And beholding how Old Bill and other grew in wealth
Robbed a traveler one Night near Proctor's Grove,
Killing him unwittingly while doing so,
For which I was tried and hanged.
That was my way of going into bankruptcy.
Now we who took the bankrupt law in our respective ways
Sleep peacefully side by side.
A Letter Home. (To Robert Graves)
by Siegfried Loraine Sassoon

I
Here I'm sitting in the gloom
Of my quiet attic room.
France goes rolling all around,
Fledged with forest May has crowned.
And I puff my pipe, calm-hearted,
Thinking how the fighting started,
Wondering when we'll ever end it,
Back to Hell with Kaiser send it,
Gag the noise, pack up and go,
Clockwork soldiers in a row.
I've got better things to do
Than to waste my time on you.
II
Robert, when I drowse to-night,
Skirting lawns of sleep to chase
Shifting dreams in mazy light,
Somewhere then I'll see your face
Turning back to bid me follow
Where I wag my arms and hollo,
Over hedges hasting after
Crooked smile and baffling laughter,
Running tireless, floating, leaping,
Down your web-hung woods and valleys,
Garden glooms and hornbeam alleys,
Where the glowworm stars are peeping,
Till I find you, quiet as stone
On a hill-top all alone,
Staring outward, gravely pondering
Jumbled leagues of hillock-wandering.
III
You and I have walked together
In the starving winter weather.
We've been glad because we knew
Time's too short and friends are few.
We've been sad because we missed
One whose yellow head was kissed
By the gods, who thought about him
Till they couldn't do without him.
Now he's here again; I've seen
Soldier David dressed in green,
Standing in a wood that swings
To the madrigal he sings.
He's come back, all mirth and glory,
Like the prince in a fairy story.
Winter called him far away;
Blossoms bring him home with May.
IV
Well, I know you'll swear it's true
That you found him decked in blue
Striding up through morning-land
With a cloud on either hand.
Out in Wales, you'll say, he marches
Arm-in-arm with oaks and larches;
Hides all night in hilly nooks,
Laughs at dawn in tumbling brooks.
Yet, it's certain, here he teaches
Outpost-schemes to groups of beeches.
And I'm sure, as here I stand,
That he shines through every land,
That he sings in every place
Where we're thinking of his face.
V
Robert, there's a war in France;
Everywhere men bang and blunder,
Sweat and swear and worship Chance,
Creep and blink through cannon thunder.
Rifles crack and bullets flick,
Sing and hum like hornet-swarms.
Bones are smashed and buried quick.
Yet, through stunning battle storms.
All the while I watch the spark
Lit to guide me; for I know
Dreams will triumph, though the dark
Scowls above me where I go.
You can hear me; you can mingle
Radiant folly with my jingle,
War's a joke for me and you
While we know such dreams are true!
On Rome In The Pontificate Of Julius II.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Qua si fa elmi.
Here helms and swords are made of chalices:
The blood of Christ is sold so much the quart:
His cross and thorns are spears and shields; and short
Must be the time ere even his patience cease.
Nay let him come no more to raise the fees
Of this foul sacrilege beyond report!
For Rome still flays and sells him at the court,
Where paths are closed to virtue's fair increase.
Now were fit time for me to scrape a treasure!
Seeing that work and gain are gone; while he
Who wears the robe, is my Medusa still.
God welcomes poverty perchance with pleasure:
But of that better life what hope have we,
When the blessed banner leads to nought but ill?
The Mountain Squatter
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

Here in my mountain home,
On rugged hills and steep,
I sit and watch you come,
O Riverinia Sheep!
You come from the fertile plains
Where saltbush (sometimes) grows,
And flats that (when it rains)
Will blossom like the rose.
But when the summer sun
Gleams down like burnished brass,
You have to leave your run
And hustle off for grass.
'Tis then that, forced to roam,
You come to where I keep,
Here in my mountain home,
A boarding-house for sheep.
Around me where I sit
The wary wombat goes,
A beast of little wit,
But what he knows, he knows.
The very same remark
Applies to me also;
I don't give out a spark,
But what I know, I know.
My brain perhaps would show
No convolutions deep,
But anyhow I know
The way to handle sheep.
These Riverina cracks,
They do not care to ride
The half-inch hanging tracks
Along the mountain side.
Their horses shake with fear
When loosened boulders go
With leaps, like startled deer,
Down to the gulfs below.
Their very dogs will shirk,
And drop their tails in fright
When asked to go and work
A mob that's out of sight.
My little collie pup
Works silently and wide;
You'll see her climbing up
Along the mountain side.
As silent as a fox
You'll see her come and go,
A shadow through the rocks
Where ash and messmate grow.
Then, lost to sight and sound
Behind some rugged steep,
She works her way around
And gathers up the sheep;
And, working wide and shy,
She holds them rounded up.
The cash ain't coined to buy
That little collie pup.
And so I draw a screw
For self and dog and keep
To boundary-ride for you,
O Riverina Sheep!
And, when the autumn rain
Has made the herbage grow,
You travel off again,
And glad, no doubt, to go.
But some are left behind
Around the mountain's spread,
For those we cannot find
We put them down as dead.
So, when we say adieu
And close the boarding job,
I always find a few
Fresh ear-marks in my mob.
And, what with those I sell,
And what with those I keep,
You pay me pretty well,
O Riverina Sheep!
It's up to me to shout
Before we say good-bye,
"Here's to a howlin' drought
All west of Gundagai!"
In Hospital - XVIII - Children: Private Ward
by William Ernest Henley

Here in this dim, dull, double-bedded room,
I play the father to a brace of boys,
Ailing but apt for every sort of noise,
Bedfast but brilliant yet with health and bloom.
Roden, the Irishman, is 'sieven past,'
Blue-eyed, snub-nosed, chubby, and fair of face.
Willie's but six, and seems to like the place,
A cheerful little collier to the last.
They eat, and laugh, and sing, and fight, all day;
All night they sleep like dormice.    See them play
At Operations:- Roden, the Professor,
Saws, lectures, takes the artery up, and ties;
Willie, self-chloroformed, with half-shut eyes,
Holding the limb and moaning - Case and Dresser.
Ossian's Poems.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Here I have heard on hills the battle clash
Roar to the windy sea that roared again:
When, drunk with wrath, upon the clanking plain
Barbaric kings did meet in war and dash
Their mail'd thousands down, heard onset crash
Like crags contending 'gainst the battering main.
Torrents of helms, beaming like streams of rain,
Blue-billowing 'neath the pale moon's fitful flash;
Saw the scared moon hang over the black wood
Like a pale wreath of foam; shields, spears, and swords
Shoot green as meteors thro' the steely flood,
Or shine like ripples 'round their heathen lords
Standing like stubborn rocks, whence the wild wave
Of war circled in steel and foamed out brave on brave.
Captain Rock In London. Letter From The Captain To Terry Alt, Esq.[1]
by Thomas Moore

Here I am, at headquarters, dear Terry, once more,
Deep in Tory designs, as I've oft been before:
For, bless them! if 'twasn't for this wrong-headed crew,
You and I, Terry Alt, would scarce know what to do;
So ready they're always, when dull we are growing,
To set our old concert of discord a-going,
While Lyndhurst's the lad, with his Tory-Whig face,
To play in such concert the true double-base.
I had feared this old prop of my realm was beginning
To tire of his course of political sinning,
And, like Mother Cole, when her heyday was past,
Meant by way of a change to try virtue at last.
But I wronged the old boy, who as staunchly derides
All reform in himself as in most things besides;
And, by using two faces thro' life, all allow,
Has acquired face sufficient for any-thing now.
In short, he's all right; and, if mankind's old foe,
My "Lord Harry" himself--who's the leader, we know,
Of another red-hot Opposition below--
If that "Lord," in his well-known discernment, but spares
Me and Lyndhurst, to look after Ireland's affairs,
We shall soon such a region of devilment make it,
That Old Nick himself for his own may mistake it.
Even already--long life to such Bigwigs, say I,
For, as long as they flourish, we Rocks cannot die--
He has served our right riotous cause by a speech
Whose perfection of mischief he only could reach;
As it shows off both his and my merits alike,
Both the swell of the wig and the point of the pike;
Mixes up, with a skill which one can't but admire,
The lawyer's cool craft with the incendiary's fire,
And enlists, in the gravest, most plausible manner,
Seven millions of souls under Rockery's banner!
Oh Terry, my man, let this speech never die;
Thro' the regions of Rockland, like flame, let it fly;
Let each syllable dark the Law-Oracle uttered
By all Tipperary's wild echoes be muttered.
Till naught shall be heard, over hill, dale or flood,
But "You're aliens in language, in creed and in blood;"
While voices, from sweet Connemara afar,
Shall answer, like true Irish echoes, "We are!"
And, tho' false be the cry, and the sense must abhor it,
Still the echoes may quote Law authority for it,
And naught Lyndhurst cares for my spread of dominion
So he, in the end, touches cash "for the opinion."
But I've no time for more, my dear Terry, just now,
Being busy in helping these Lords thro' their row.
They're bad hands at mob-work, but once they begin,
They'll have plenty of practice to break them well in.
The Unthrift
by John Frederick Freeman

Here in the shade of the tree
The hours go by
Silent and swift,
Lightly as birds fly.
Then the deep clouds broaden and drift,
Or the cloudless darkness and the worn moon.
Waking, the dreamer knows he is old,
And the day that he dreamed was gone
Is gone.
The Cottage
by Robert von Ranke Graves

Here in turn succeed and rule
Carter, smith, and village fool,
Then again the place is known
As tavern, shop, and Sunday-school;
Now somehow it's come to me
To light the fire and hold the key,
Here in Heaven to reign alone.
All the walls are white with lime,
Big blue periwinkles climb
And kiss the crumbling window-sill;
Snug inside I sit and rhyme,
Planning, poem, book, or fable,
At my darling beech-wood table
Fresh with bluebells from the hill.
Through the window I can see
Rooks above the cherry-tree,
Sparrows in the violet bed,
Bramble-bush and bumble-bee,
And old red bracken smoulders still
Among boulders on the hill,
Far too bright to seem quite dead.
But old Death, who can't forget,
Waits his time and watches yet,
Waits and watches by the door.
Look, he's got a great new net,
And when my fighting starts afresh
Stouter cord and smaller mesh
Won't be cheated as before.
Nor can kindliness of Spring,
Flowers that smile nor birds that sing.
Bumble-bee nor butterfly,
Nor grassy hill nor anything
Of magic keep me safe to rhyme
In this Heaven beyond my time.
No! for Death is waiting by.
Fireflies In The Garden
by Robert Lee Frost

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.
The Flag
by Arthur Macy

Here comes The Flag!
Hail it!
Who dares to drag
Or trail it?
Give it hurrahs, - 
Three for the stars,
Three for the bars.
Uncover your head to it!
The soldiers who tread to it
Shout at the sight of it,
The justice and right of it,
The unsullied white of it,
The blue and red of it,
And tyranny's dread of it!
Here comes The Flag!
Cheer it!
Valley and crag
Shall hear it.
Fathers shall bless it,
Children caress it.
All shall maintain it.
No one shall stain it,
Cheers for the sailors that fought on the wave for it,
Cheers for the soldiers that always were brave for it,
Tears for the men that went down to the grave for it!
Here comes The Flag!
On A March Day
by Sara Teasdale

Here in the teeth of this triumphant wind
That shakes the naked shadows on the ground,
Making a key-board of the earth to strike
From clattering tree and hedge a separate sound,
Bear witness for me that I loved my life,
All things that hurt me and all things that healed,
And that I swore it this day in March,
Here at the edge of this new-broken field.
You only knew me, tell them I was glad
For every hour since my hour of birth,
And that I ceased to fear, as once I feared,
The last complete reunion with the earth.