DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Ox Tamer
by Walt Whitman

In a faraway northern county, in the placid, pastoral region,
Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous Tamer of Oxen:
There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds, to break them;
He will take the wildest steer in the world, and break him and tame him;
He will go, fearless, without any whip, where the young bullock chafes up and down the yard;
The bullock's head tosses restless high in the air, with raging eyes;
Yet, see you! how soon his rage subsides how soon this Tamer tames him:
See you! on the farms hereabout, a hundred oxen, young and old and he is the man who has tamed them;
They all know him all are affectionate to him;
See you! some are such beautiful animals so lofty looking!
Some are buff color'd some mottled one has a white line running along his back some are brindled,
Some have wide flaring horns (a good sign) See you! the bright hides;
See, the two with stars on their foreheads See, the round bodies and broad backs;
See, how straight and square they stand on their legs See, what fine, sagacious eyes;
See, how they watch their Tamer they wish him near them how they turn to look after him!
What yearning expression! how uneasy they are when he moves away from them:
Now I marvel what it can be he appears to them, (books, politics, poems depart all else departs;)
I confess I envy only his fascination my silent, illiterate friend,
Whom a hundred oxen love, there in his life on farms,
In the northern county far, in the placid, pastoral region.
Church Extension. To The Editor Of The Morning Chronicle.
by Thomas Moore

Sir--A well-known classical traveller, while employed in exploring, some time since, the supposed site of the Temple of Diana of Ephesus, was so fortunate, in the course of his researches, as to light upon a very ancient bark manuscript, which has turned out, on examination, to be part of an old Ephesian newspaper;--a newspaper published, as you will see, so far back as the time when Demetrius, the great Shrine-Extender,[1] flourished.
I am, Sir, yours, etc.
EPHESIAN GAZETTE.
Second edition.
Important event for the rich and religious!
Great Meeting of Silversmiths held in Queen Square;--
Church Extension, their object,--the excitement prodigious;--
Demetrius, head man of the craft, takes the chair!
Third edition.
The Chairman still up, when our devil came away;
Having prefaced his speech with the usual state prayer,
That the Three-headed Dian would kindly, this day,
Take the Silversmiths' Company under her care.
Being askt by some low, unestablisht divines,
"When your churches are up, where are flocks to be got?"
He manfully answered, "Let us build the shrines,[2]
"And we care not if flocks are found for them or not."
He then added--to show that the Silversmiths' Guild
Were above all confined and intolerant views--
"Only pay thro' the nose to the altars we build,
"You may pray thro' the nose to what altars you choose."
This tolerance, rare from a shrine-dealer's lip
(Tho' a tolerance mixt with due taste for the till)--
So much charmed all the holders of scriptural scrip,
That their shouts of "Hear!" "Hear!" are re-echoing still.
Fourth edition.
Great stir in the Shrine Market! altars to Phoebus
Are going dog-cheap--may be had for a rebus.
Old Dian's, as usual, outsell all the rest;--
But Venus's also are much in request.
The Man And The Flea.
by Jean de La Fontaine

[1]
Impertinent, we tease and weary Heaven
With prayers which would insult mere mortals even.
'Twould seem that not a god in all the skies
From our affairs must ever turn his eyes,
And that the smallest of our race
Could hardly eat, or wash his face,
Without, like Greece and Troy for ten years' space,
Embroiling all Olympus in the case.
A flea some blockhead's shoulder bit,
And then his clothes refused to quit.
'O Hercules,' he cried, 'you ought to purge
This world of this far worse than hydra scourge!
O Jupiter, what are your bolts about,
They do not put these foes of mine to rout?'
To crush a flea, this fellow's fingers under,
The gods must lend the fool their club and thunder!
Parody On The Speech Of Dr. Benjamin Pratt,[1] Provost Of Trinity College To The Prince Of Wales
by Jonathan Swift

Illustrious prince, we're come before ye,
Who, more than in our founders, glory
To be by you protected;
Deign to descend and give us laws,
For we are converts to your cause,
From this day well-affected.[2]
The noble view of your high merits
Has charm'd our thoughts and fix'd our spirits,
With zeal so warm and hearty;
That we resolved to be devoted,
At least until we be promoted,
By your just power and party.
Urged by a passionate desire
Of being raised a little higher,
From lazy cloister'd life;
We cannot flatter you nor fawn,
But fain would honour'd be with lawn,
And settled by a wife.[3]
For this we have before resorted,
Paid levees[4] punctually, and courted,
Our charge at home long quitting,
But now we're come just in the nick,
Upon a vacant[5] bishopric,
This bait can't fail of hitting.
Thus, sir, you see how much affection,
Not interest, sways in this election,
But sense of loyal duty.
For you surpass all princes far,
As glow-worms do exceed a star,
In goodness, wit, and beauty.
To you our Irish Commons owe
That wisdom which their actions show,
Their principles from ours springs,
Taught, ere the deel himself could dream on't,
That of their illustrious house a stem on't,
Should rise the best of kings.
The glad presages with our eyes
Behold a king, chaste, vigilant, and wise,
In foreign fields victorious,
Who in his youth the Turks attacks,
And [made] them still to turn their backs;
Was ever king so glorious?
Since Ormond's like a traitor gone,
We scorn to do what some have done,
For learning much more famous;[6]
Fools may pursue their adverse fate,
And stick to the unfortunate;
We laugh while they condemn us.
For, being of that gen'rous mind,
To success we are still inclined,
And quit the suffering side,
If on our friends cross planets frown,
We join the cry, and hunt them down,
And sail with wind and tide.
Hence 'twas this choice we long delay'd,
Till our rash foes the rebels fled,
Whilst fortune held the scale;
But [since] they're driven like mist before you,
Our rising sun, we now adore you,
Because you now prevail.
Descend then from your lofty seat,
Behold th' attending Muses wait
With us to sing your praises;
Calliope now strings up her lyre,
And Clio[7] Phoebus does inspire,
The theme their fancy raises.
If then our nursery you will nourish,
We and our Muses too will flourish,
Encouraged by your favour;
We'll doctrines teach the times to serve,
And more five thousand pounds deserve,
By future good behaviour.
Now take our harp into your hand,
The joyful strings, at your command,
In doleful sounds no more shall mourn.
We, with sincerity of heart,
To all your tunes shall bear a part,
Unless we see the tables turn.
If so, great sir, you will excuse us,
For we and our attending Muses
May live to change our strain;
And turn, with merry hearts, our tune,
Upon some happy tenth of June,
To "the king enjoys his own again."
The Festival Of The Aisne
by Madison Julius Cawein

Imperial Madness, will of hand,
Builds vast an altar here, and rears
Before the world, on godly land,
A Moloch form of blood and tears.
And far as eye can see, behold,
Priests plunge into its brazen arms
Men, that its iron maw of mold
Mangles, returning horrible forms.
Its Priests are armies, moving slow,
And crowned like kings, in human-guise:
And theirs it is to make it flow
The crimson stream of sacrifice.
Ode On Imagination
by Clark Ashton Smith

Imagination's eyes
Outreach and distance far
The vision of the greatest star
That measures instantaneously -
Enisled therein as in a sea -
Its cincture of the system-laden skies.
Abysses closed about with night
A tribute yield
To her retardless sight;
And Matter's gates disclose the candent ores
Rock-held in furnaces of planet-cores.
She penetrates the sun's transplendent shield,
And through the obstruction of his vestment dire,
Pierces the centermost sublimity
Of his terrific heart, whose gurge of fire
Heaves upward like a monstrous sea,
And inly riven by Titanic throes,
Fills all his frame with outward cataract
Of separate and immingling torrent streams.
Her eyes exact
From the Moon-Sphinx that wanes and grows
In wastes celestial, alien dreams
Brought down on wings of fleetest beams.
Adown the clefts of under-space
She rides, her steed a falling star,
To seek, where void and vagueness are,
Some mark or certainty of place.
Upon their heavenly precipice
The gathered suns shrink back aghast
From that interminate abyss,
And threat of sightless anarchs vast.
She stands endued
With supermundane crown, and vestitures
Of emperies that include
All under-worlds and over-worlds of dream -
Kingdoms o'ercast, and eminent heights extreme
Where moon-transcending light endures.
She wanders in fantastic lands, where grow
In scarce-discern'd fields and closes blind,
Vague blossoms stirred by wings of eidolons;
Or roves in forests where all sound is low:
Each voice that shuns
The noiseful day, and enters there to find
Twilight that naught exalts nor grieves,
Is quickly tuned to the susurrous leaves.
Upon some supersensual eminence
She hears the fragments of a thunder loud,
Where lightnings of ulterior Truth intense
Flame through the walls of hollow cloud.
But these she may not wholly grasp
With incomplete terrestrial clasp.
Her eyes inevitably see,
'Neath rounds and changes of exterior things,
The movements of Essentiality -
Of ageless principles - that alter not
To temporal alterings -
Unswerved by shattered worlds upbuilt once more.
And stars no longer hot;
Or broken constellations strewn
Like coals about the heavenly floor,
And rush of night upon the noon
Of their lost worlds, unsphered restorelessly
In icy deserts of the sky.
From the beginning of the spheres,
When systems nebulous out-thrown
Drove back the brinks
Of nullity with limitary marks,
Till end of suns, and sunless death of years,
To her are known
The unevident inseparable links
That bind all deeps, all suns, all days and darks.
One Among So Many.
by Francis William Lauderdale Adams

. . . In a dark street she met and spoke to me,
Importuning, one wet and mild March night.
We walked and talked together. O her tale
Was very common; thousands know it all!
Seduced; a gentleman; a baby coming;
Parents that railed; London; the child born dead;
A seamstress then, one of some fifty girls
"Taken on" a few months at a dressmaker's
In the crush of the "season;" thirteen shillings a week!
The fashionable people's dresses done,
And they flown off, these fifty extra girls
Sent - to the streets: that is, to work that gives
Scarcely enough to buy the decent clothes
Respectable employers all demand
Or speak dismissal. Well, well, well, we know!
And she - "Why, I have gone on down and down,
And there's the gutter, look, that I shall die in!"
"My dear," I say, "where hope of all but that
Is gone, 'tis time, I think, life were gone too."
She looks at me. "That I should kill myself?" - 
"That you should kill yourself." - "That would be sin,
And God would punish me!" - "And will not God
Punish for this?" She pauses: then whispers:
"No, no, He will forgive me, for He knows!"
I laughed aloud: "And you," she said, "and you,
Who are so good, so noble" . . . "Noble? Good?"
I laughed aloud, the great sob in my throat.
O my poor darling, O my little lost sheep
Of this vast flock that perishes alone
Out in the pitiless desert! - Yet she'd speak:
She'd ask me: she'd entreat: she'd demonstrate.
O I must not say that! I must believe!
Who made the sea, the leaves so green, the sky
So big and blue and pure above it all?
O my poor darling, O my little lost sheep,
Entreat no more and demonstrate no more;
For I believe there is a God, a God
Not in the heaven, the earth, or the waters; no,
But in the heart of man, on the dear lips
Of angel women, of heroic men!
O hopeless wanderer that would not stay,
("It is too late, I cannot rise again!")
O saint of faith in love behind the veils,
("You must believe in God, for you are good!"),
O sister who made holy with your kiss,
Your kiss in that wet dark mild night of March
There in the hideous infamous London streets
My cheek, and made my soul a sacred place,
O my poor darling, O my little lost sheep!
Aesthetic
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In a garb that was guiltless of colours
She stood, with a dull, listless air - 
A creature of dumps and of dolours,
But most undeniably fair.
The folds of her garment fell round her,
Revealing the curve of each limb;
Well proportioned and graceful I found her,
Although quite alarmingly slim.
From the hem of her robe peeped one sandal - 
"High art" was she down to her feet;
And though I could not understand all
She said, I could see she was sweet.
Impressed by her limpness and languor,
I proffered a chair near at hand;
She looked back a mild sort of anger - 
Posed anew, and continued to stand.
Some praises I next tried to mutter
Of the fan that she held to her face;
She said it was "utterly utter,"
And waved it with languishing grace.
I then, in a strain quite poetic,
Begged her gaze on the bow in the sky,
She looked - said its curve was "aesthetic."
But the "tone was too dreadfully high."
Her lovely face, lit by the splendour
That glorified landscape and sea,
Woke thoughts that were daring and tender:
Did HER thoughts, too, rest upon me?
"Oh, tell me," I cried, growing bolder,
"Have I in your musings a place?"
"Well, yes," she said over her shoulder:
"I was thinking of nothing in space."
To Sensibility.
by Helen Maria Williams

In Sensibility's lov'd praise
I tune my trembling reed;
And seek to deck her shrine with bays,
On which my heart must bleed!
No cold exemption from her pain
I ever wish'd to know;
Cheer'd with her transport, I sustain
Without complaint her woe.
Above whate'er content can give,
Above the charm of ease,
The restless hopes, and fears that live
With her, have power to please.
Where but for her, were Friendship's power
To heal the wounded heart,
To shorten sorrow's ling'ring hour,
And bid its gloom depart?
'Tis she that lights the melting eye
With looks to anguish dear;
She knows the price of ev'ry sigh,
The value of a tear.
She prompts the tender marks of love
Which words can scarce express;
The heart alone their force can prove,
And feel how much they bless.
Of every finer bliss the source!
'Tis she on love bestows
The softer grace, the boundless force
Confiding passion knows;
When to another, the fond breast
Each thought for ever gives;
When on another, leans for rest.
And in another lives!
Quick, as the trembling metal flies,
When heat or cold impels,
Her anxious heart to joy can rise,
Or sink where anguish dwells!
Yet tho' her soul must griefs sustain
Which she alone, can know;
And feel that keener sense of pain
Which sharpens every woe;
Tho' she the mourner's grief to calm,
Still shares each pang they feel,
And, like the tree distilling balm,
Bleeds, others wounds to heal;
While she, whose bosom fondly true,
Has never wish'd to range;
One alter'd look will trembling view,
And scarce can bear the change;
Tho' she, if death the bands should tear,
She vainly thought secure;
Thro' life must languish in despair
That never hopes a cure;
Tho' wounded by some vulgar mind,
Unconscious of the deed,
Who never seeks those wounds to bind
But wonders why they bleed; - 
She oft will heave a secret sigh,
Will shed a lonely tear,
O'er feelings nature wrought so high,
And gave on terms so dear;
Yet who would hard INDIFFERENCE choose,
Whose breast no tears can steep?
Who, for her apathy, would lose
The sacred power to weep?
Tho' in a thousand objects, pain,
And pleasure tremble nigh,
Those objects strive to reach, in vain,
The circle of her eye.
Cold, as the fabled god appears
To the poor suppliant's grief,
Who bathes the marble form in tears,
And vainly hopes relief.
Ah Greville! why the gifts refuse
To souls like thine allied?
No more thy nature seem to lose
No more thy softness hide.
No more invoke the playful sprite
To chill, with magic spell,
The tender feelings of delight,
And anguish sung so well;
That envied ease thy heart would prove
Were sure too dearly bought
With friendship, sympathy, and love,
And every finer thought.
Sonnet XXXV. Spring.
by Anna Seward

In April's gilded morn when south winds blow,
And gently shake the hawthorn's silver crown,
Wafting its scent the forest-glade adown,
The dewy shelter of the bounding Doe,
Then, under trees, soft tufts of primrose show
Their palely-yellowing flowers; - to the moist Sun
Blue harebells peep, while cowslips stand unblown,
Plighted to riper May; - and lavish flow
The Lark's loud carols in the wilds of air.
O! not to Nature's glad Enthusiast cling
Avarice, and pride. - Thro' her now blooming sphere
Charm'd as he roves, his thoughts enraptur'd spring
To HIM, who gives frail Man's appointed time
These cheering hours of promise, and of prime.
April 29th, 1782.
Zara, The Bather
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Sara, belle d'indolence.")
[XIX., August, 1828.]
In a swinging hammock lying,
Lightly flying,
Zara, lovely indolent,
O'er a fountain's crystal wave
There to lave
Her young beauty - see her bent.
As she leans, so sweet and soft,
Flitting oft,
O'er the mirror to and fro,
Seems that airy floating bat,
Like a feather
From some sea-gull's wing of snow.
Every time the frail boat laden
With the maiden
Skims the water in its flight,
Starting from its trembling sheen,
Swift are seen
A white foot and neck so white.
As that lithe foot's timid tips
Quick she dips,
Passing, in the rippling pool,
(Blush, oh! snowiest ivory!)
Frolic, she
Laughs to feel the pleasant cool.
Here displayed, but half concealed - 
Half revealed,
Each bright charm shall you behold,
In her innocence emerging,
As a-verging
On the wave her hands grow cold.
For no star howe'er divine
Has the shine
Of a maid's pure loveliness,
Frightened if a leaf but quivers
As she shivers,
Veiled with naught but dripping trees.
By the happy breezes fanned
See her stand, - 
Blushing like a living rose,
On her bosom swelling high
If a fly
Dare to seek a sweet repose.
In those eyes which maiden pride
Fain would hide,
Mark how passion's lightnings sleep!
And their glance is brighter far
Than the star
Brightest in heaven's bluest deep.
O'er her limbs the glittering current
In soft torrent
Rains adown the gentle girl,
As if, drop by drop, should fall,
One and all
From her necklace every pearl.
Lengthening still the reckless pleasure
At her leisure,
Care-free Zara ever slow
As the hammock floats and swings
Smiles and sings,
To herself, so sweet and low.
"Oh, were I a capitana,
Or sultana,
Amber should be always mixt
In my bath of jewelled stone,
Near my throne,
Griffins twain of gold betwixt.
"Then my hammock should be silk,
White as milk;
And, more soft than down of dove,
Velvet cushions where I sit
Should emit
Perfumes that inspire love.
"Then should I, no danger near,
Free from fear,
Revel in my garden's stream;
Nor amid the shadows deep
Dread the peep,
Of two dark eyes' kindling gleam.
"He who thus would play the spy,
On the die
For such sight his head must throw;
In his blood the sabre naked
Would be slak'd,
Of my slaves of ebon brow.
"Then my rich robes trailing show
As I go,
None to chide should be so bold;
And upon my sandals fine
How should shine
Rubies worked in cloth-of-gold!"
Fancying herself a queen,
All unseen,
Thus vibrating in delight;
In her indolent coquetting
Quite forgetting
How the hours wing their flight.
As she lists the showery tinkling
Of the sprinkling
By her wanton curvets made;
Never pauses she to think
Of the brink
Where her wrapper white is laid.
To the harvest-fields the while,
In long file,
Speed her sisters' lively band,
Like a flock of birds in flight
Streaming light,
Dancing onward hand in hand.
And they're singing, every one,
As they run
This the burden of their lay:
"Fie upon such idleness!
Not to dress
Earlier on harvest-day!"
JOHN L. O'SULLIVAN.
The Happy Corpse
by Charles Baudelaire

In a rich land, fertile, replete with snails
I'd like to dig myself a spacious pit
Where I might spread at leisure myoid bones
And sleep unnoticed, like a shark at sea.
I hate both testaments and epitaphs;
Sooner than beg remembrance from the world
I would, alive, invite the hungry crows
To bleed my tainted carcass inch by inch.
O worms! dark playmates minus ear or eye,
Prepare to meet a free and happy corpse;
Droll philosophies, children of rottenness,
Go then along my ruin guiltlessly,
And say if any torture still exists
For this old soulless corpse, dead with the dead!
Guadalquivir
by Paul Cameron Brown

In a pleasureless world, pure pleasure exists.
Particles of sunlight, exquisite with nightdrops &
leaves stringent with dew,
persuade tributaries with inset eyes
to depart down foible breast, sticky fingers
up delightful steps.
And taking pleasure with an earthen spoon    - 
sipped long and hard down tubes and winding
entrails;
soft relief canyons swollen blood vessels.
For your brow shines like olive branches,
Guadalquivir's river or nectar drawn from golden
wells
and, as such, unfolds loveliest eyes
out from fond embrace not hedging lies.
My darling, amongst flowering cherub trees
a moment shared with you is pretty mirth
accounts all Arcadia's treasures, the
angelic breath off passing wings.
Vanitas Vanitatis, Etc.
by Anne Bronte

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

In a heavy time I dogged myself
Along a louring way,
Till my leading self to my following self
Said: "Why do you hang on me
So harassingly?"
"I have watched you, Heart of mine," I cried,
"So often going astray
And leaving me, that I have pursued,
Feeling such truancy
Ought not to be."
He said no more, and I dogged him on
From noon to the dun of day
By prowling paths, until anew
He begged: "Please turn and flee! -
What do you see?"
"Methinks I see a man," said I,
"Dimming his hours to gray.
I will not leave him while I know
Part of myself is he
Who dreams such dree!"
"I go to my old friend's house," he urged,
"So do not watch me, pray!"
"Well, I will leave you in peace," said I,
"Though of this poignancy
You should fight free:
"Your friend, O other me, is dead;
You know not what you say."
- "That do I! And at his green-grassed door
By night's bright galaxy
I bend a knee."
- The yew-plumes moved like mockers' beards,
Though only boughs were they,
And I seemed to go; yet still was there,
And am, and there haunt we
Thus bootlessly.