DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Watchman
by Charles Kingsley

'Watchman, what of the night?'
'The stars are out in the sky;
And the merry round moon will be rising soon,
For us to go sailing by.'
'Watchman, what of the night?'
'The tide flows in from the sea;
There's water to float a little cockboat
Will carry such fishers as we.'
'Watchman, what of the night?'
'The night is a fruitful time;
When to many a pair are born children fair,
To be christened at morning chime.'
1849.
The Fountain Of Youth
by Michael Earls

(For Osceola and Pocahontas)
Was it a hundred years ago,
Or was it but yesterday,
When we found the roads that grow
Blossom and song of May?
Maybe it was but yesterday,
Or a hundred years ago.
The roads from Bersabee to Dan
Are old and quickly tire,
But to the heart of child or man
Youth is a fairy fire:
Our youthful roads, they never tire
From Bersabee to Dan.
Ponce de Leon found no spring,
But legend's long, long ruth;
But the grace of God is a magic thing
Abides with chivalrous youth:
The grace of God that brings no ruth
For them who find the spring.
There is a land, there is a May
Beyond the graveyard tree;
Ten thousand years are like a day
Of a youth that we shall see:
Our young hearts pass the graveyard tree
To a land forever in May.
Another To The Maids
by Robert Herrick

Wash your hands, or else the fire
Will not tend to your desire;
Unwashed hands, ye maidens, know,
Dead the fire, though ye blow.
The Sonnets LXXXVI - Was it the proud full sail of his great verse
by William Shakespeare

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
Bound for the prize of all too precious you,
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
He, nor that affable familiar ghost
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
As victors of my silence cannot boast;
I was not sick of any fear from thence:
But when your countenance fill'd up his line,
Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine.
Old Aunt Mary's (AKA "Out To Old Aunt Mary's")
by James Whitcomb Riley

Wasn't it pleasant, O brother mine,
In those old days of the lost sunshine
Of youth - when the Saturday's chores were through,
And the "Sunday's wood" in the kitchen too,
And we went visiting, "me and you,"
Out to Old Aunt Mary's?
It all comes back so clear to-day!
Though I am as bald as you are gray -
Out by the barn-lot, and down the lane,
We patter along in the dust again,
As light as the tips of the drops of the rain,
Out to Old Aunt Mary's!
We cross the pasture, and through the wood
Where the old gray snag of the poplar stood,
Where the hammering "red-heads" hopped awry,
And the buzzard "raised" in the "clearing" sky
And lolled and circled, as we went by
Out to Old Aunt Mary's.
And then in the dust of the road again;
And the teams we met, and the countrymen;
And the long highway, with sunshine spread
As thick as butter on country bread,
Our cares behind, and our hearts ahead
Out to Old Aunt Mary's.
Why, I see her now in the open door,
Where the little gourds grew up the sides and o'er
The clapboard roof! And her face - ah, me!
Wasn't it good for a boy to see -
And wasn't it good for a boy to be
Out to Old Aunt Mary's?
The jelly - the Jam and the marmalade,
And the cherry and quince "preserves'' she made!
And the sweet-sour pickles of peach and pear,
With cinnamon in 'em, and all things rare!
And the more we ate was the more to spare,
Out to Old Aunt Mary's!
And the old spring-house in the cool green gloom
Of the willow-trees, and the cooler room
Where the swinging-shelves and the crocks were kept -
Where the cream in a golden languor slept
While the waters gurgled and laughed and wept -
Out to Old Aunt Mary's.
And O my brother, so far away,
This is to tell you she waits to-day
To welcome us: Aunt Mary fell
Asleep this morning, whispering"Tell
The boys to come!" And all is well
Out to Old Aunt Mary's.
Northwoods Poem
by Paul Cameron Brown

I
Watermelon,
ears of skeleton
wet nose with marshmallow
I saw the Bear leaning on
Santa for a favor.
II
Here's Bear, week's growth of beard,
long bushy eyebrows
still reeking of gin
apparently wanted the penny-strapped Claus'
to dump Rudolph,
spray-paint his coat white
use Bear's fleshy drinker's nose
to lead the sleigh
that crazy night.
III
A tiff erupted
Rudolph almost lost it
santa ended paying Hibernation fees
though Bear grumbled he wasn't
bedding Next to no knot of worms garter snakes.
Sonnet XXV.
by Fernando Ant'nio Nogueira Pessoa

We are in Fate and Fate's and do but lack
Outness from soul to know ourselves its dwelling,
And do but compel Fate aside or back
By Fate's own immanence in the compelling.
We are too far in us from outward truth
To know how much we are not what we are,
And live but in the heat of error's youth,
Yet young enough its acting youth to ignore.
The doubleness of mind fails us, to glance
At our exterior presence amid things,
Sizing from otherness our countenance
And seeing our puppet will's act-acting strings.
An unknown language speaks in us, which we
Are at the words of, fronted from reality.
The Song Of The Allies
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

We are the Allies of God to-day,
And the width of the earth is our right of way.
Let no man question or ask us why,
As we speed to answer a wild world cry;
Let no man hinder or ask us where,
As out over water and land we fare;
For whether we hurry, or whether we wait,
We follow the finger of guiding fate.
We are the Allies.    We differ in faith,
But are one in our courage at thought of death.
Many and varied the tongues we speak,
But one and the same is the goal we seek.
And the goal we seek is not power or place,
But the peace of the world, and the good of the race.
And little matters the colour of skin,
When each heart under it beats to win.
We are the Allies; we fight or fly,
We wallow in trenches like pigs in a sty,
We dive under water to foil a foe,
We wait in quarters, or rise and go.
And staying or going, or near or far,
One thought is ever our guiding star:
We are the Allies of God to-day,
We are the Allies - make way! make way!
The Flood
by John Clare

Waves trough, rebound, and furious boil again,
Like plunging monsters rising underneath,
Who at the top curl up a shaggy mane,
A moment catching at a surer breath,
Then plunging headlong down and down, and on
Each following whirls the shadow of the last;
And other monsters rise when those are gone,
Crest their fringed waves, plunge onward and are past.
The chill air comes around me oceanly,
From bank to bank the waterstrife is spread;
Strange birds like snowspots oer the whizzing sea
Hang where the wild duck hurried past and fled.
On roars the flood, all restless to be free,
Like Trouble wandering to Eternity.
Love at Sea
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Imitated from Th'ophile Gautier
We are in love's land to-day;
Where shall we go?
Love, shall we start or stay,
Or sail or row?
There's many a wind and way,
And never a May but May;
We are in love's hand to-day;
Where shall we go?
Our landwind is the breath
Of sorrows kissed to death
And joys that were;
Our ballast is a rose;
Our way lies where God knows
And love knows where.
We are in love's hand to-day
Our seamen are fledged Loves,
Our masts are bills of doves,
Our decks fine gold;
Our ropes are dead maids' hair,
Our stores are love-shafts fair
And manifold.
We are in love's land to-day
Where shall we land you, sweet?
On fields of strange men's feet,
Or fields near home?
Or where the fire-flowers blow,
Or where the flowers of snow
Or flowers of foam?
We are in love's hand to-day
Land me, she says, where love
Shows but one shaft, one dove,
One heart, one hand.
A shore like that, my dear,
Lies where no man will steer,
No maiden land.
The Master And The Leaves
by Thomas Hardy

I
We are budding, Master, budding,
We of your favourite tree;
March drought and April flooding
Arouse us merrily,
Our stemlets newly studding;
And yet you do not see!
II
We are fully woven for summer
In stuff of limpest green,
The twitterer and the hummer
Here rest of nights, unseen,
While like a long-roll drummer
The nightjar thrills the treen.
III
We are turning yellow, Master,
And next we are turning red,
And faster then and faster
Shall seek our rooty bed,
All wasted in disaster!
But you lift not your head.
IV
- "I mark your early going,
And that you'll soon be clay,
I have seen your summer showing
As in my youthful day;
But why I seem unknowing
Is too sunk in to say!"
Pain
by Sara Teasdale

Waves are the sea's white daughters,
And raindrops the children of rain,
But why for my shimmering body
Have I a mother like Pain?
Night is the mother of stars,
And wind the mother of foam,
The world is brimming with beauty,
But I must stay at home.
Saying Good-Bye (Song)
by Thomas Hardy

We are always saying
"Good-bye, good-bye!"
In work, in playing,
In gloom, in gaying:
At many a stage
Of pilgrimage
From youth to age
We say, "Good-bye,
Good-bye!"
We are undiscerning
Which go to sigh,
Which will be yearning
For soon returning;
And which no more
Will dark our door,
Or tread our shore,
But go to die,
To die.
Some come from roaming
With joy again;
Some, who come homing
By stealth at gloaming,
Had better have stopped
Till death, and dropped
By strange hands propped,
Than come so fain,
So fain.
So, with this saying,
"Good-bye, good-bye,"
We speed their waying
Without betraying
Our grief, our fear
No more to hear
From them, close, clear,
Again: "Good-bye,
Good-bye!"
Failure.
by Jean Ingelow

We are much bound to them that do succeed;
But, in a more pathetic sense, are bound
To such as fail. They all our loss expound;
They comfort us for work that will not speed,
And life - itself a failure.
Ay, his deed,
Sweetest in story, who the dusk profound
Of Hades flooded with entrancing sound,
Music's own tears, was failure. Doth it read
Therefore the worse? Ah, no! so much, to dare,
He fronts the regnant Darkness on its throne. - 
So much to do; impetuous even there,
He pours out love's disconsolate sweet moan - 
He wins; but few for that his deed recall:
Its power is in the look which costs him all.
Honor Among Scamps
by Vachel Lindsay

We are the smirched.    Queen Honor is the spotless.
We slept thro' wars where Honor could not sleep.
We were faint-hearted.    Honor was full-valiant.
We kept a silence Honor could not keep.
Yet this late day we make a song to praise her.
We, codeless, will yet vindicate her code.
She who was mighty, walks with us, the beggars.
The merchants drive her out upon the road.
She makes a throne of sod beside our campfire.
We give the maiden-queen our rags and tears.
A battered, rascal guard have rallied round her,
To keep her safe until the better years.
Sonnet XIV.
by Fernando Ant'nio Nogueira Pessoa

We are born at sunset and we die ere morn,
And the whole darkness of the world we know,
How can we guess its truth, to darkness born,
The obscure consequence of absent glow?
Only the stars do teach us light. We grasp
Their scattered smallnesses with thoughts that stray,
And, though their eyes look through night's complete mask,
Yet they speak not the features of the day.
Why should these small denials of the whole
More than the black whole the pleased eyes attract?
Why what it calls 'worth' does the captive soul
Add to the small and from the large detract?
So, put of light's love wishing it night's stretch,
A nightly thought of day we darkly reach.
Which
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

We are both of us sad at heart,
But I wonder who can say
Which has the harder part,
Or the bitterer grief to-day.
You grieve for a love that was lost
Before it had reached its prime;
I sit here and count the cost
Of a love that has lived its time.
Your blossom was plucked in its May,
In its dawning beauty and pride;
Mine lived till the August day,
And reached fruition and died.
You pressed its leaves in a book,
And you weep sweet tears o'er them.
Dry eyed I sit and look
On a withered and broken stem.
And now that all is told,
Which is the sadder, pray,
To give up your dream with its gold,
Or to see it fade into grey?
In The Artillery.
by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

We are moving on in silence,
Save for rattling iron and steel,
And a skirmish echoing round us,
Showering faintly, peal on peal.
Like a lion roars the North wind
As a-horse we sternly clank,
While beside the guns our men drop,
Slyly shot from either flank.
You are musing, love, and smiling
By the hearth-fire of the Mill,
While the tangled oaks are cracking
Boughs upon the windy hill.
I can see the moonlight shining
Over fields of frozen calm;
I can hear the chapel organ,
And the singing of the psalm.
Fare you well, then, English village,
Which of all I loved the most,
Where my ghost alone can wander
Once again, when life is lost.
Fare you well, then, Sally Dorset;
You will never utter wail
For the soldier dead who loved you
With these tears of no avail!
I can see your drowsy lashes
Lifting as you hear them read
Prayers in mercy for our souls' shrift
When we come to our last need.
I forgive you, matchless beauty,
Proudly conscious of your fame,
Loved by many a luckless youngster
Who will ne'er forget your name!
Merry, though so cold of answer,
With a laughing glance of steel,
How your face swept like a banner,
Blushing down the village reel!
As you dance before my vision
On this deadly foreign morn,
Death is charmed into the soothing
Of the love you chose to scorn.
We shall die - our hours are numbered - 
As the sunlight dawns serene
Over yonder mountain ridges,
Rimming round this battle scene.
I shall die - few will return, dear;
I shall be of those who stay:
England sent us, but a handful,
Among hordes of heathen clay.
We will show the world how England
Has no dross to spend in war;
When she throws away her soldiers,
They are soldiers to the core.
You will wake to hear the twitter
Of the early sparrow's note:
I shall lie beneath the heavens,
With the death-grip at my throat!
We Are The Choice Of The Will
by William Ernest Henley

To R. F. B.
We are the Choice of the Will:    God, when He gave the word
That called us into line, set in our hand a sword;
Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw,
And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law.
East and west and north, wherever the battle grew,
As men to a feast we fared, the work of the Will to do.
Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy cease -
(Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a place of peace!) -
Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire,
Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, our sire.
Road was never so rough that we left its purpose dark;
Stark was ever the sea, but our ships were yet more stark;
We tracked the winds of the world to the steps of their very thrones;
The secret parts of the world were salted with our bones;
Till now the name of names, England, the name of might,
Flames from the austral fires to the bounds of the boreal night;
And the call of her morning drum goes in a girdle of sound,
Like the voice of the sun in song, the great globe round and round;
And the shadow of her flag, when it shouts to the mother-breeze,
Floats from shore to shore of the universal seas;
And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of her flowers,
And the end of the road to Hell with the sense of her dews and showers!
Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us fade and die,
While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky?
For the sire lives in his sons, and they pay their father's debt,
And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw was set;
And the Lion in his whelps, his whelps that none shall brave,
Is but less strong than Time and the great, all-whelming Grave.
Lament XVIII
by Jan Kochanowski

We are thy thankless children, gracious Lord.
The good thou dost afford
Lightly do we employ,
All careless of the one who giveth joy.
We heed not him from whom delights do flow.
Until they fade and go
We take no thought to render
That gratitude we owe the bounteous sender.
Yet keep us in thy care. Let not our pride
Cause thee, dear God, to hide
The glory of thy beauty:
Chasten us till we shall recall our duty.
Yet punish us as with a father's hand.
We mites, cannot withstand
Thine anger; we are snow,
Thy wrath, the sun that melts us in its glow.
Make us not perish thus, eternal God,
From thy too heavy rod.
Recall that thy disdain
Alone doth give thy children bitter pain.
Yet I do know thy mercy doth abound
While yet the spheres turn round,
And thou wilt never cast
Without the man who humbles him at last.
Though great and many my transgressions are,
Thy goodness greater far
Than mine iniquity:
Lord, manifest thy mercy unto me!
The Cynic's Fealty.
by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

We all have hearts that shake alike
Beneath the arias of Fate's hand;
Although the cynics sneering stand,
These too the deathless powers strike.
A trembling lover's infinite trust,
To the last drop of doating blood,
Feels not alone the ocean flood
Of desperate grief, when dreams are dust.
The scornfullest souls, with mourning eyes,
Pant o'er again their ghostly ways; - 
Dread night-paths, where were gleaming days
When life was lovelier than the skies!
Hymn To Love
by Lascelles Abercrombie

We are thine, O Love, being in thee and made of thee,
As th'u, L've, were the d'ep th'ught
And we the speech of the thought; yea, spoken are we,
Thy fires of thought out-spoken:
But burn'd not through us thy imagining
Like fi'rce m'od in a s'ng c'ught,
We were as clamour'd words a fool may fling,
Loose words, of meaning broken.
For what more like the brainless speech of a fool,
The lives travelling dark fears,
And as a boy throws pebbles in a pool
Thrown down abysmal places?
Hazardous are the stars, yet is our birth
And our journeying time theirs;
As words of air, life makes of starry earth
Sweet soul-delighted faces;
As voices are we in the worldly wind;
The great wind of the world's fate
Is turned, as air to a shapen sound, to mind
And marvellous desires.
But not in the world as voices storm-shatter'd,
Not borne down by the wind's weight;
The rushing time rings with our splendid word
Like darkness filled with fires.
For Love doth use us for a sound of song,
And Love's meaning our life wields,
Making our souls like syllables to throng
His tunes of exultation.
Down the blind speed of a fatal world we fly,
As rain blown along earth's fields;
Yet are we god-desiring liturgy,
Sung joys of adoration;
Yea, made of chance and all a labouring strife,
We go charged with a strong flame;
For as a language Love hath seized on life
His burning heart to story.
Yea, Love, we are thine, the liturgy of thee.
Thy thought's golden and glad name,
The mortal conscience of immortal glee,
Love's zeal in Love's own glory.
On The Fly-Leaf Of Erckmann-Chatrian's Novel Entitled "Madame Therese."
by Toru Dutt

Wavered the foremost soldiers,--then fell back.
Fallen was their leader, and loomed right before
The sullen Prussian cannon, grim and black,
With lighted matches waving. Now, once more,
Patriots and veterans!--Ah! 'Tis in vain!
Back they recoil, though bravest of the brave;
No human troops may stand that murderous rain;
But who is this--that rushes to a grave?
It is a woman,--slender, tall, and brown!
She snatches up the standard as it falls,--
In her hot haste tumbles her dark hair down,
And to the drummer-boy aloud she calls
To beat the charge; then forwards on the pont
They dash together;--who could bear to see
A woman and a child, thus Death confront,
Nor burn to follow them to victory?
I read the story and my heart beats fast!
Well might all Europe quail before thee, France,
Battling against oppression! Years have past,
Yet of that time men speak with moistened glance.
Va-nu-pieds! When rose high your Marseillaise
Man knew his rights to earth's remotest bound,
And tyrants trembled. Yours alone the praise!
Ah, had a Washington but then been found!
The Mendicants.
by Bliss Carman (William)

We are as mendicants who wait
Along the roadside in the sun.
Tatters of yesterday and shreds
Of morrow clothe us every one.
And some are dotards, who believe
And glory in the days of old;
While some are dreamers, harping still
Upon an unknown age of gold.
Hopeless or witless! Not one heeds,
As lavish Time comes down the way
And tosses in the suppliant hat
One great new-minted gold To-day.
Ungrateful heart and grudging thanks,
His beggar's wisdom only sees
Housing and bread and beer enough;
He knows no other things than these.
O foolish ones, put by your care!
Where wants are many, joys are few;
And at the wilding springs of peace,
God keeps an open house for you.
But that some Fortunatus' gift
Is lying there within his hand,
More costly than a pot of pearls,
His dulness does not understand.
And so his creature heart is filled;
His shrunken self goes starved away.
Let him wear brand-new garments still,
Who has a threadbare soul, I say.
But there be others, happier few,
The vagabondish sons of God,
Who know the by-ways and the flowers,
And care not how the world may plod.
They idle down the traffic lands,
And loiter through the woods with spring;
To them the glory of the earth
Is but to hear a bluebird sing.
They too receive each one his Day;
But their wise heart knows many things
Beyond the sating of desire,
Above the dignity of kings.
One I remember kept his coin,
And laughing flipped it in the air;
But when two strolling pipe-players
Came by, he tossed it to the pair.
Spendthrift of joy, his childish heart
Danced to their wild outlandish bars;
Then supperless he laid him down
That night, and slept beneath the stars.
We Are Not Always Glad When We Smile
by James Whitcomb Riley

We are not always glad when we smile:
Though we wear a fair face and are gay,
And the world we deceive
May not ever believe
We could laugh in a happier way. -
Yet, down in the deeps of the soul,
Ofttimes, with our faces aglow,
There's an ache and a moan
That we know of alone,
And as only the hopeless may know.
We are not always glad when we smile, -
For the heart, in a tempest of pain,
May live in the guise
Of a smile in the eyes
As a rainbow may live in the rain;
And the stormiest night of our woe
May hang out a radiant star
Whose light in the sky
Of despair is a lie
As black as the thunder-clouds are.
We are not always glad when we smile! -
But the conscience is quick to record,
All the sorrow and sin
We are hiding within
Is plain in the sight of the Lord:
And ever, O ever, till pride
And evasion shall cease to defile
The sacred recess
Of the soul, we confess
We are not always glad when we smile.