DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Nutting
by William Wordsworth

It seems a day
(I speak of one from many singled out)
One of those heavenly days that cannot die;
When, in the eagerness of boyish hope,
I left our cottage-threshold, sallying forth
With a huge wallet o'er my shoulders slung,
A nutting-crook in hand; and turned my steps
Tow'rd some far-distant wood, a Figure quaint,
Tricked out in proud disguise of cast-off weeds
Which for that service had been husbanded,
By exhortation of my frugal Dame, 
Motley accoutrement, of power to smile
At thorns, and brakes, and brambles,, and, in truth,
More ragged than need was! O'er pathless rocks,
Through beds of matted fern, and tangled thickets,
Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook
Unvisited, where not a broken bough
Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign
Of devastation; but the hazels rose
Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung,
A virgin scene!, A little while I stood,
Breathing with such suppression of the heart
As joy delights in; and, with wise restraint
Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed
The banquet;, or beneath the trees I sate
Among the flowers, and with the flowers I played;
A temper known to those, who, after long
And weary expectation, have been blest
With sudden happiness beyond all hope.
Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves
The violets of five seasons re-appear
And fade, unseen by any human eye;
Where fairy water-breaks do murmur on
For ever; and I saw the sparkling foam,
And, with my cheek on one of those green stones
That, fleeced with moss, under the shady trees,
Lay round me, scattered like a flock of sheep, 
I heard the murmur, and the murmuring sound,
In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay
Tribute to ease; and, of its joy secure,
The heart luxuriates with indifferent things,
Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones,
And on the vacant air. Then up I rose,
And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash
And merciless ravage: and the shady nook
Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower,
Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up
Their quiet being: and, unless I now
Confound my present feelings with the past;
Ere from the mutilated bower I turned
Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings,
I felt a sense of pain when I beheld
The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky., 
Then, dearest Maiden, move along these shades
In gentleness of heart; with gentle hand
Touch, for there is a spirit in the woods.
Strange Meeting
by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;
With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
The hopelessness.    Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something has been left,
Which must die now.    I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now . . ."
To Nature
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It may indeed be fantasy when I
Essay to draw from all created things
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings;
And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie
Lessons of love and earnest piety.
So let it be; and if the wide world rings
In mock of this belief, it brings
Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity.
So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only God! and thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice.
The Meadow Path.
by George W. Doneghy

I.
It led adown the sloping hill, and through the valley wound,
And where the blooming clover shed its fragrance all around,
And then between the maple trees, across the little brook,
To where the old fence bars let down, a tortuous course it took;
And often are the times I've heard the merry, ringing laugh,
From rosy-ankled children there, along the meadow path.
II.
Three boys--and a little girl whose hair was chestnut gold--
(She's resting now in dreamless sleep beneath the crumbling mold;)--
But I remember her as when, with innocence and glee,
Her laughing eyes looked into mine--for she was dear to me;
And thus it is I love to let the fancy photograph
The merry group that idled there, along the meadow path.
III.
Adown it oft we used to go at twilight for the cows,
Or wander from the beaten track a rabbit to arouse,
And watch him as he scampered off, with frightened leap and bound,
The while we made the welkin ring and with our shouts resound.
The sweetest flowers that bloom for me--a fragrant aftermath--
Are those that in the memory blow, along the meadow path!
The Truth About Horace
by Eugene Field

It is very aggravating
To hear the solemn prating
Of the fossils who are stating
That old Horace was a prude;
When we know that with the ladies
He was always raising Hades,
And with many an escapade his
Best productions are imbued.
There's really not much harm in a
Large number of his carmina,
But these people find alarm in a
Few records of his acts;
So they'd squelch the muse caloric,
And to students sophomoric
They d present as metaphoric
What old Horace meant for facts.
We have always thought 'em lazy;
Now we adjudge 'em crazy!
Why, Horace was a daisy
That was very much alive!
And the wisest of us know him
As his Lydia verses show him,--
Go, read that virile poem,--
It is No. 25.
He was a very owl, sir,
And starting out to prowl, sir,
You bet he made Rome howl, sir,
Until he filled his date;
With a massic-laden ditty
And a classic maiden pretty
He painted up the city,
And Maecenas paid the freight!
Visionary On The Advantages Of An 'Astral Body'
by John Kendall (Dum-Dum)

It is told, in Buddhi-theosophic Schools
There are rules
By observing which when mundane matter irks,
Or the world has gone amiss, you
Can incontinently issue
From the circumscribing tissue
Of your Works.
That the body and the gentleman inside
Can divide,
And the latter, if acquainted with the plan,
Can alleviate the tension
By remaining 'in suspension'
As a kind of fourth dimension
Bogie man.
And to such as mourn an Indian Solar Crime
At its prime,
'Twere a stratagem so luminously fit,
That tho' doctrinaires deny it,
And Academicians guy it,
I, for one, would like to try it
For a bit.
Just to leave one's earthly tenement asleep
In a heap,
And detachedly to watch it as it lies,
With an epidermis pickled
Where the prickly heat has prickled,
And a sense of being tickled
By the flies.
And to sit and loaf and idle till the day
Dies away,
In a duplicate ethereally cool,
Or around the place to potter,
(Tho' the flesh could hardly totter,)
As contented as an otter
In a pool!
'Let the pestilent mosquito do his worst
Till he burst,
Let him bore and burrow, morning, noon, and night,
If he finds the diet sweet, oh,
Who am I to place a veto
On the pestilent mosquito? - 
Let him bite!'
O my cumbersome misfit of bone and skin,
Could I win
To the wisdom that would render me exempt
From the grosser bonds that tether
You and Astral Me together,
I should simply treat the weather
With contempt;
I should contemplate its horrors with entire
Lack of ire,
And pursuant to my comfortable aim,
With a snap at every shackle
I should quit my tabernacle,
And serenely sit and cackle
At the game!
But, alas! the 'mystic glory swims away,'
And the clay
Is as vulgarly persistent as of yore,
And the cuticle is pickled
Where the prickly heat has prickled,
And the nose and ears are tickled
As before;
And until the Buddhi-theosophic Schools
Print the rules
That will bring our tale of sorrows to a close,
Body mine, though others chide thee,
And consistently deride thee,
I shall have to stay inside thee,
I suppose!
Love's Justification. Second Reading.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Ben pu' talor col casto.
It must be right sometimes to entertain
Chaste love with hope not over-credulous;
Since if all human loves were impious,
Unto what end did God the world ordain?
If I love thee and bend beneath thy reign,
'Tis for the sake of beauty glorious
Which in thine eyes divine is stored for us,
And drives all evil thought from its domain.
That is not love whose tyranny we own
In loveliness that every moment dies;
Which, like the face it worships, fades away:
True love is that which the pure heart hath known,
Which alters not with time or death's decay,
Yielding on earth earnest of Paradise.
It Never Looks Like Summer
by Thomas Hardy

"It never looks like summer here
On Beeny by the sea."
But though she saw its look as drear,
Summer it seemed to me.
It never looks like summer now
Whatever weather's there;
But ah, it cannot anyhow,
On Beeny or elsewhere!
BOSCASTLE,
March 8, 1913.
Ulysses
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known,-- cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,--
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
Settin Off.
by John Hartley

It isn't 'at aw want to rooam
An leeav thi bi thisen:
For aw'm content enuff at hooam,
Aw'm net like other men.
But then ther's thee an childer three,
To care for an protect,
It's reight 'at yo should luk to me,
An wrang should aw neglect.
Aw'm growin older ivvery day,
My race is ommost run,
Time's growin varry precious, lass,
An lots remains undone.
If aw wor called away, maybe,
Tha'd find some other man,
But tha cannot find a father,
For them lads, - do th' best tha can.
Another husband might'nt prove
As kind as aw have been;
An wedded life's a weary thing,
When love's shut aght o'th' scene.
Aw know aw've faults, aw'll own a lot, - 
But then, tha must agree,
Aw've allus kept a tender spot
Within mi heart for thee.
An if aw've spokken nowty words
At's made thee cry an freeat;
Aw've allus suffered twice as mich,
An beg'd thi to forget.
Tha'rt th' only woman maks me mad,
Then soothes me wi' a smile,
Then maks mi fancy aw'm a king,
An snubs me all the while,
Nay, - nay, - old lass! it isn't fun
Nor frolics that allure, - 
Aw'm strivin for thisen an bairns,
To mak yor futur sure.
It's duty at aw think aw owe
To them young things an thee,
The thowts o' which may cheer mi heart,
When aw lay daan to dee.
Two Worlds.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

It makes no difference abroad,
The seasons fit the same,
The mornings blossom into noons,
And split their pods of flame.
Wild-flowers kindle in the woods,
The brooks brag all the day;
No blackbird bates his jargoning
For passing Calvary.
Auto-da-fe and judgment
Are nothing to the bee;
His separation from his rose
To him seems misery.
A Backward Glance
by Henry Lawson

It is well when you've lived in clover,
To mourn for the days gone by,
Would I live the same life over
Could I live again? Not I!
But, knowing the false from the real,
I would strive to ascend:
I would seek out my boyhood's ideal,
And follow it to the end.
The Old Year
by Henry Kendall

It passed like the breath of the night-wind away,
It fled like a mist at the dawn of the day;
It lasted its moment, then backward was hurled,
Another increase to the age of the world.
It passed with its shadows, its smiles and its tears,
It passed as a stream to the ocean of years;
Years that were coming were here and are o'er,
The ages departed to visit no more.
It passed, but the bark on its billowy track
Leaves an impression on waters aback:
The glow of the gloaming remains on the sky,
Unwilling to leave us unwilling to die.
It fled; but away and away in its wake
There lingers a something that time cannot break.
The past and the future are joined by a chain,
And memories live that must ever remain.
The Broken Drouth.
by Madison Julius Cawein

It seemed the listening forest held its breath
Before some vague and unapparent form
Of fear, approaching with the wings of death,
On the impending storm.
Above the hills, big, bellying clouds loomed, black
And ominous, yet silent as the blue
That pools calm heights of heaven, deepening back
'Twixt clouds of snowdrift hue.
Then instantly, as when a multitude
Shout riot and war through some tumultuous town,
Innumerable voices swept the wood
As wild the wind rushed down.
And fierce and few, as when a strong man weeps,
Great rain-drops dashed the dust; and, overhead,
Ponderous and vast down the prodigious deeps,
Went slow the thunder's tread.
And swift and furious, as when giants fence,
The lightning foils of tempest went insane;
Then far and near sonorous Earth grew dense
With long sweet sweep of rain.
Finis
by Clark Ashton Smith

It seemed that from the west
The live red flame of sunset,
Eating the dead blue sky
And cold insensate peaks,
Was loosened slowly, and fell.
Above it, a few red stars
Burned down like low candle-flames
Into the gaunt black sockets
Of the chill insensible mountains.
But in the ascendant skies
(Cloudless, like some vast corpse
Unfeatured, cerementless)
Succeeded nor star nor planet.
It may have been that black,
Pulseless, dead stars arose
And crossed as of old the heavens.
But came no living orb,
Nor comet seeming the ghost,
Homeless, of an outcast world,
Seeking its former place
That is no more nor shall be
In all the Cosmos again.
Null, blank, and meaningless
As a burnt scroll that blackens
With the passing of the fire,
Lay the dead infinite sky.
Lo! in the halls of Time,
I thought, the torches are out -
The revelry of the gods,
Or lamentation of demons
For which their flames were lit,
Over and quiet at last
With the closing peace of night,
Whose dumb, dead, passionless skies
Enfold the living world
As the sea a sinking pebble.
The Delights Of Mathematics
by Robert Fuller Murray

It seems a hundred years or more
Since I, with note-book, ink and pen,
In cap and gown, first trod the floor
Which I have often trod since then;
Yet well do I remember when,
With fifty other fond fanatics,
I sought delights beyond my ken,
The deep delights of Mathematics.
I knew that two and two made four,
I felt that five times two were ten,
But, as for all profounder lore,
The robin redbreast or the wren,
The sparrow, whether cock or hen,
Knew quite as much about Quadratics,
Was less confused by x and n,
The deep delights of Mathematics.
The Asses' Bridge I passed not o'er,
I floundered in the noisome fen
Which lies behind it and before;
I wandered in the gloomy glen
Where Surds and Factors have their den.
But when I saw the pit of Statics,
I said Good-bye, Farewell, Amen!
The deep delights of Mathematics.
O Bejants! blessed, beardless men,
Who strive with Euclid in your attics,
For worlds I would not taste again
The deep delights of Mathematics.
Sonnet: On The Sea
by John Keats

It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often 'tis in such gentle temper found
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be mov'd for days from whence it sometime fell,
When last the winds of heaven were unbound.
Oh ye! who have your eye-balls vex'd and tir'd,
Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;
Oh ye! whose ears are dinn'd with uproar rude,
Or fed too much with cloying melody,
Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood
Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quir'd!
Philosophy.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

It might be easier
To fail with land in sight,
Than gain my blue peninsula
To perish of delight.
Hon. Henry Bennett
by Edgar Lee Masters

It never came into my mind
Until I was ready to die
That Jenny had loved me to death, with malice of heart.
For I was seventy, she was thirty - five,
And I wore myself to a shadow trying to husband
Jenny, rosy Jenny full of the ardor of life.
For all my wisdom and grace of mind
Gave her no delight at all, in very truth,
But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength
Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat
Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch
One time at Georgie Kirby's.
So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard - 
That mount of brawn! That clownish soul!
Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - XVI
by Alfred Edward Housman

It nods and curtseys and recovers
When the wind blows above,
The nettle on the graves of lovers
That hanged themselves for love.
The nettle nods, the wind blows over,
The man, he does not move,
The lover of the grave, the lover
That hanged himself for love.
A Song of Winter Weather
by Robert William Service

It isn't the foe that we fear;
It isn't the bullets that whine;
It isn't the business career
Of a shell, or the bust of a mine;
It isn't the snipers who seek
To nip our young hopes in the bud:
No, it isn't the guns,
And it isn't the Huns - 
It's the MUD,
MUD,
MUD.
It isn't the melee we mind.
That often is rather good fun.
It isn't the shrapnel we find
Obtrusive when rained by the ton;
It isn't the bounce of the bombs
That gives us a positive pain:
It's the strafing we get
When the weather is wet - 
It's the RAIN,
RAIN,
RAIN.
It isn't because we lack grit
We shrink from the horrors of war.
We don't mind the battle a bit;
In fact that is what we are for;
It isn't the rum-jars and things
Make us wish we were back in the fold:
It's the fingers that freeze
In the boreal breeze - 
It's the COLD,
COLD,
COLD.
Oh, the rain, the mud, and the cold,
The cold, the mud, and the rain;
With weather at zero it's hard for a hero
From language that's rude to refrain.
With porridgy muck to the knees,
With sky that's a-pouring a flood,
Sure the worst of our foes
Are the pains and the woes
Of the RAIN,
the COLD,
and the MUD.
Transcendentalism
by Unknown

It is told, in Buddhi-theosophic schools,
There are rules.
By observing which, when mundane labor irks
One can simulate quiescence
By a timely evanescence
From his Active Mortal Essence,
(Or his Works.)
The particular procedure leaves research
In the lurch,
But, apparently, this matter-moulded form
Is a kind of outer plaster,
Which a well-instructed Master
Can remove without disaster
When he's warm.
And to such as mourn an Indian Solar Clime
At its prime
'Twere a thesis most immeasurably fit,
So expansively elastic,
And so plausibly fantastic,
That one gets enthusiastic
For a bit.
Life's Tragedy
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

It may be misery not to sing at all
And to go silent through the brimming day.
It may be sorrow never to be loved,
But deeper griefs than these beset the way.
To have come near to sing the perfect song
And only by a half-tone lost the key,
There is the potent sorrow, there the grief,
The pale, sad staring of life's tragedy.
To have just missed the perfect love,
Not the hot passion of untempered youth,
But that which lays aside its vanity
And gives thee, for thy trusting worship, truth--
This, this it is to be accursed indeed;
For if we mortals love, or if we sing,
We count our joys not by the things we have,
But by what kept us from the perfect thing.
To The Portrait Of "A Gentleman" In The Athenieum Gallery
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

It may be so, - perhaps thou hast
A warm and loving heart;
I will not blame thee for thy face,
Poor devil as thou art.
That thing thou fondly deem'st a nose,
Unsightly though it be, - 
In spite of all the cold world's scorn,
It may be much to thee.
Those eyes, - among thine elder friends
Perhaps they pass for blue, - 
No matter, - if a man can see,
What more have eyes to do?
Thy mouth, - that fissure in thy face,
By something like a chin, - 
May be a very useful place
To put thy victual in.
I know thou hast a wife at home,
I know thou hast a child,
By that subdued, domestic smile
Upon thy features mild.
That wife sits fearless by thy side,
That cherub on thy knee;
They do not shudder at thy looks,
They do not shrink from thee.
Above thy mantel is a hook, - 
A portrait once was there;
It was thine only ornament, - 
Alas! that hook is bare.
She begged thee not to let it go,
She begged thee all in vain;
She wept, - and breathed a trembling prayer
To meet it safe again.
It was a bitter sight to see
That picture torn away;
It was a solemn thought to think
What all her friends would say!
And often in her calmer hours,
And in her happy dreams,
Upon its long-deserted hook
The absent portrait seems.
Thy wretched infant turns his head
In melancholy wise,
And looks to meet the placid stare
Of those unbending eyes.
I never saw thee, lovely one, - 
Perchance I never may;
It is not often that we cross
Such people in our way;
But if we meet in distant years,
Or on some foreign shore,
Sure I can take my Bible oath,
I've seen that face before.
Cupid In Ambush
by Matthew Prior

It oft to many has successful been
Upon his arm to let his mistress lean,
Or with her airy fan to cool her heat,
Or gently squeeze her knees, or press her feet.
All public sports to favour young desire,
With opportunities like this conspire.
E'en where his skill the gladiator shows,
With human blood where the Arena flows,
There oftentimes Love's quiver-bearing boy
Prepares his bow and arrows to destroy;
While the spectator gazes on the sight,
And sees them wound each other with delight;
While he his pretty mistress entertains,
And wagers with her who the conquest gains,
Slily the god takes aim, and hits his heart,
And in the wounds he sees he bears his part.