DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Penitent
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I had a little Sorrow,
Born of a little Sin,
I found a room all damp with gloom
And shut us all within;
And, "Little Sorrow, weep," said I,
"And, Little Sin, pray God to die,
And I upon the floor will lie
And think how bad I've been!"
Alas for pious planning--
It mattered not a whit!
As far as gloom went in that room,
The lamp might have been lit!
My little Sorrow would not weep,
My little Sin would go to sleep--
To save my soul I could not keep
My graceless mind on it!
So up I got in anger,
And took a book I had,
And put a ribbon on my hair
To please a passing lad,
And, "One thing there's no getting by--
I've been a wicked girl," said I;
"But if I can't be sorry, why,
I might as well be glad!"
Nursery Rhyme. V. Historical
by Unknown

[The following perhaps refers to Joanna of Castile, who visited the court of Henry the Seventh, in the year 1506.]
I had a little nut tree, nothing would it bear
But a silver nutmeg and a golden pear;
The king of Spain's daughter came to visit me,
And all was because of my little nut tree.
I skipp'd over water, I danced over sea,
And all the birds in the air couldn't catch me.
Ad Rosam.
by Henry Austin Dobson

"Mitte sectari ROSA quo locorum
Sera moretur."
--Hor. i. 38.
I had a vacant dwelling--
Where situated, I,
As naught can serve the telling,
Decline to specify;--
Enough 'twas neither haunted,
Entailed, nor out of date;
I put up "Tenant Wanted,"
And left the rest to Fate.
Then, Rose, you passed the window,--
I see you passing yet,--
Ah, what could I within do,
When, Rose, our glances met!
You snared me, Rose, with ribbons,
Your rose-mouth made me thrall,
Brief--briefer far than Gibbon's,
Was my "Decline and Fall."
I heard the summons spoken
That all hear--king and clown:
You smiled--the ice was broken;
You stopped--the bill was down.
How blind we are! It never
Occurred to me to seek
If you had come for ever,
Or only for a week.
The words your voice neglected,
Seemed written in your eyes;
The thought your heart protected,
Your cheek told, missal-wise;--
I read the rubric plainly
As any Expert could;
In short, we dreamed,--insanely,
As only lovers should.
I broke the tall Oenone,
That then my chambers graced,
Because she seemed "too bony,"
To suit your purist taste;
And you, without vexation,
May certainly confess
Some graceful approbation,
Designed ' mon adresse.
You liked me then, carina,--
You liked me then, I think;
For your sake gall had been a
Mere tonic-cup to drink;
For your sake, bonds were trivial,
The rack, a tour-de-force;
And banishment, convivial,--
You coming too, of course.
Then, Rose, a word in jest meant
Would throw you in a state
That no well-timed investment
Could quite alleviate;
Beyond a Paris trousseau
You prized my smile, I know,
I, yours--ah, more than Rousseau
The lip of d'Houdetot.
Then, Rose,--But why pursue it?
When Fate begins to frown
Best write the final "fuit,"
And gulp the physic down.
And yet,--and yet, that only,
The song should end with this:--
You left me,--left me lonely,
Rosa mutabilis!
Left me, with Time for Mentor,
(A dreary t'te-'-t'te!)
To pen my "Last Lament," or
Extemporize to Fate,
In blankest verse disclosing
My bitterness of mind,--
Which is, I learn, composing
In cases of the kind.
No, Rose. Though you refuse me,
Culture the pang prevents;
"I am not made"--excuse me--
"Of so slight elements;"
I leave to common lovers
The hemlock or the hood;
My rarer soul recovers
In dreams of public good.
The Roses of this nation--
Or so I understand
From careful computation--
Exceed the gross demand;
And, therefore, in civility
To maids that can't be matched,
No man of sensibility
Should linger unattached.
So, without further fashion--
A modern Curtius,
Plunging, from pure compassion,
To aid the overplus,--
I sit down, sad--not daunted,
And, in my weeds, begin
A new card--"Tenant Wanted;
Particulars within."
Forever
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

I had not known before
Forever was so long a word.
The slow stroke of the clock of time
I had not heard.
'Tis hard to learn so late;
It seems no sad heart really learns,
But hopes and trusts and doubts and fears,
And bleeds and burns.
The night is not all dark,
Nor is the day all it seems,
But each may bring me this relief--
My dreams and dreams.
I had not known before
That Never was so sad a word,
So wrap me in forgetfulness--
I have not heard.
Rose And Redbird - A Faerytale.
by Madison Julius Cawein

I had the strangest dream last night:
I dreamed the poppies, red and white,
That over-run the flower-bed,
Changed to wee women, white and red,
Who, jeweled with the twinkling wet,
Joined hands and danced a minuet.
And there, beside the garden walk,
I thought a red-rose stood at talk
With a black cricket; and I heard
The cricket say, "You are the bird,
Red-crested, who comes every day
To sing his lyric roundelay."
The rose replied, "Nay! you must know
That bird and I loved long-ago:
I am a princess, he a prince:
And we were parted ever since
The world of science made us don
The new disguises we have on."
And then the rose put off disguise
And stood revealed before my eyes,
A faery princess; and, in black,
His tiny fiddle on his back,
An elfin fiddler, long of nose,
The cricket bowed before the rose.
A house of moss and firefly-light
Now seemed to rise within the night
Beside the tree where, bending low,
The flowers stood, a silken row,
Around the rose, a faery band
Before the Queen of Faeryland.
And suddenly I saw the side
Of a great beech-tree open wide,
And there, behold! were wondrous things,
Slim flower-like people bright with wings,
Who bowed before a throne of state,
Whereon the rose and redbird sate.
And then I woke; and there, behold,
Was naught except the moonlight's gold
On tree and garden; and the flowers
Safe snuggled in their beds and bowers:
The rose was gone, but where she'd stood
Lay scattered crimson of her hood.
The cricket still was at his tune
Somewhere between the dawn and moon:
And I'd have sworn it was a dream
Had I not glimpsed a glowworm gleam
And heard a chuckling in the tree,
And seen the dewdrop wink at me.
My Friend
by Arthur Sherburne Hardy

I have a friend who came, I know not how,
Nor he. Among the crowd, apart,
I feel the pressure of his hand, and hear
In very truth the beating of his heart.
My soul had shut the door of abode,
So poor it seemed for any guest
To tarry there a night, until he came,
Asking, not entertainment, only rest.
Our hands were empty,-his and mine alike,
He says until they joined. I see
The gifts he brought; but where were mine
That he should say "I too have need of thee?"
Without the threshold of his heart I wait
Abashed, afraid to enter where
So radiant a company do meet,
Yet enter boldly, knowing I am there.
Whether his hand shall press my latch to-night,
To-morrow, matters not. He came
Unsummoned, he will come again; and I,
Though dead, shall answer to my name.
And yet, dear friend, in whom I rest content,
Speak to me now lest when we meet
Where tears and hunger have no grace,
A little word of friendship be less sweet.
My Typewriter
by Edward Dyson

I have a trim typewriter now,
They tell me none is better;
It makes a pleasing, rhythmic row,
And neat is every letter.
I tick out stories by machine,
Dig pars, and gags, and verses keen,
And lathe them off in manner slick.
It is so easy, and it's quick.
And yet it falls short, I'm afraid,
Of giving satisfaction,
This making literature by aid
Of scientific traction;
For often, I can't fail to see,
The dashed thing runs away with me.
It bolts, and do whate'er I may
I cannot hold the runaway.
It is not fitted with a brake,
And endless are my verses,
Nor any yarn I start to make
Appropriately terse is.
'Tis plain that this machine-made screed
Is fit but for machines to read;
So 'Wanted' (as an iron censor)
'A good, sound, secondhand condenser!'
The Woman Drowned.
by Jean de La Fontaine

[1]
I hate that saying, old and savage,
"'Tis nothing but a woman drowning."
That's much, I say. What grief more keen should have edge
Than loss of her, of all our joys the crowning?
Thus much suggests the fable I am borrowing.
A woman perish'd in the water,
Where, anxiously, and sorrowing,
Her husband sought her,
To ease the grief he could not cure,
By honour'd rites of sepulture.
It chanced that near the fatal spot,
Along the stream which had
Produced a death so sad,
There walk'd some men that knew it not.
The husband ask'd if they had seen
His wife, or aught that hers had been.
One promptly answer'd, 'No!
But search the stream below:
It must nave borne her in its flow.'
'No,' said another; 'search above.
In that direction
She would have floated, by the love
Of contradiction.'
This joke was truly out of season; - 
I don't propose to weigh its reason.
But whether such propensity
The sex's fault may be,
Or not, one thing is very sure,
Its own propensities endure.
Up to the end they'll have their will,
And, if it could be, further still.
The Challenge
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I have a vague remembrance
Of a story, that is told
In some ancient Spanish legend
Or chronicle of old.
It was when brave King Sanchez
Was before Zamora slain,
And his great besieging army
Lay encamped upon the plain.
Don Diego de Ordonez
Sallied forth in front of all,
And shouted loud his challenge
To the warders on the wall.
All the people of Zamora,
Both the born and the unborn,
As traitors did he challenge
With taunting words of scorn.
The living, in their houses,
And in their graves, the dead!
And the waters of their rivers,
And their wine, and oil, and bread!
There is a greater army,
That besets us round with strife,
A starving, numberless army,
At all the gates of life.
The poverty-stricken millions
Who challenge our wine and bread,
And impeach us all as traitors,
Both the living and the dead.
And whenever I sit at the banquet,
Where the feast and song are high,
Amid the mirth and the music
I can hear that fearful cry.
And hollow and haggard faces
Look into the lighted hall,
And wasted hands are extended
To catch the crumbs that fall.
For within there is light and plenty,
And odors fill the air;
But without there is cold and darkness,
And hunger and despair.
And there in the camp of famine,
In wind and cold and rain,
Christ, the great Lord of the army,
Lies dead upon the plain!
Feelings Of A Republican On The Fall Of Bonaparte.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan
To think that a most unambitious slave,
Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave
Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne
Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer
A frail and bloody pomp which Time has swept
In fragments towards Oblivion. Massacre,
For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept,
Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust,
And stifled thee, their minister. I know
Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,
That Virtue owns a more eternal foe
Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime,
And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.
One With Nature
by George MacDonald

I have a fellowship with every shade
Of changing nature: with the tempest hour
My soul goes forth to claim her early dower
Of living princedom; and her wings have staid
Amidst the wildest uproar undismayed!
Yet she hath often owned a better power,
And blessed the gentle coming of the shower,
The speechless majesty of love arrayed
In lowly virtue, under which disguise
Full many a princely thing hath passed her by;
And she from homely intercourse of eyes
Hath gathered visions wider than the sky,
And seen the withered heart of man arise
Peaceful as God, and full of majesty.
Child's Song. From A Masque.
by Thomas Moore

I have a garden of my own,
Shining with flowers of every hue;
I loved it dearly while alone,
But I shall love it more with you:
And there the golden bees shall come,
In summer-time at break of morn,
And wake us with their busy hum
Around the Siha's fragrant thorn.
I have a fawn from Aden's land,
On leafy buds and berries nurst;
And you shall feed him from your hand,
Though he may start with fear at first.
And I will lead you where he lies
For shelter in the noontide heat;
And you may touch his sleeping eyes,
And feel his little silvery feet.
Little Elfie
by George MacDonald

I have a puppet-jointed child,
She's but three half-years old;
Through lawless hair her eyes gleam wild
With looks both shy and bold.
Like little imps, her tiny hands
Dart out and push and take;
Chide her--a trembling thing she stands,
And like two leaves they shake.
But to her mind a minute gone
Is like a year ago;
And when you lift your eyes anon,
Anon you must say No!
Sometimes, though not oppressed with care,
She has her sleepless fits;
Then, blanket-swathed, in that round chair
The elfish mortal sits;--
Where, if by chance in mood more grave,
A hermit she appears
Propped in the opening of his cave,
Mummied almost with years;
Or like an idol set upright
With folded legs for stem,
Ready to hear prayers all the night
And never answer them.
But where's the idol-hermit thrust?
Her knees like flail-joints go!
Alternate kiss, her mother must,
Now that, now this big toe!
I turn away from her, and write
For minutes three or four:
A tiny spectre, tall and white,
She's standing by the door!
Then something comes into my head
That makes me stop and think:
She's on the table, the quadruped,
And dabbling in my ink!
O Elfie, make no haste to lose
Thy ignorance of offence!
Thou hast the best gift I could choose,
A heavenly confidence.
'Tis time, long-white-gowned Mrs. Ham,
To put you in the ark!
Sleep, Elfie, God-infolded lamb,
Sleep shining through the dark.
Nessmuk.
by James Whitcomb Riley

I hail thee, Nessmuk, for the lofty tone
Yet simple grace that marks thy poetry!
True forester thou art, and still to be,
Even in happier fields than thou hast known.
Thus, in glad visions, glimpses am I shown
Of groves delectable - "preserves" for thee - 
Ranged but by friends of thine - I name thee three: - 
First, Chaucer, with his bald old pate new-grown
With changeless laurel; next, in Lincoln-green,
Gold-belted, bowed and bugled, Robin Hood;
And next, Ike Walton, patient and serene:
These three, O Nessmuk, gathered hunter-wise,
Are camped on hither slopes of Paradise
To hail thee first and greet thee, as they should.
Written Upon Receiving A New Year's Gift.
by Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow

I have a little Grandchild dear,
Who sends to me on each new year
A valuable present:
Not costly gift from store-house bought,
But one that her own hands have wrought,
Therefore to me more pleasant.
Accept, dear child, the wish sincere,
For you much happiness this year,
And length of days be given;
Here may you act well your part,
Serving the Lord with all your heart,
And find your rest in heaven.
Jan. 1852.
To Cupid.
by Robert Herrick

I have a leaden, thou a shaft of gold;
Thou kill'st with heat, and I strike dead with cold.
Let's try of us who shall the first expire;
Or thou by frost, or I by quenchless fire:
Extremes are fatal where they once do strike,
And bring to th' heart destruction both alike.
The Perfect Marriage
by Vachel Lindsay

I
I hate this yoke; for the world's sake here put it on:
Knowing 'twill weigh as much on you till life is gone.
Knowing you love your freedom dear, as I love mine - 
Knowing that love unchained has been our life's great wine:
Our one great wine (yet spent too soon, and serving none;
Of the two cups free love at last the deadly one).
II
We grant our meetings will be tame, not honey-sweet
No longer turning to the tryst with flying feet.
We know the toil that now must come will spoil the bloom
And tenderness of passion's touch, and in its room
Will come tame habit, deadly calm, sorrow and gloom.
Oh, how the battle scars the best who enter life!
Each soldier comes out blind or lame from the black strife.
Mad or diseased or damned of soul the best may come - 
It matters not how merrily now rolls the drum,
The fife shrills high, the horn sings loud, till no steps lag - 
And all adore that silken flame, Desire's great flag.
III
We will build strong our tiny fort, strong as we can - 
Holding one inner room beyond the sword of man.
Love is too wide, it seems to-day, to hide it there.
It seems to flood the fields of corn, and gild the air - 
It seems to breathe from every brook, from flowers to sigh - 
It seems a cataract poured down from the great sky;
It seems a tenderness so vast no bush but shows
Its haunting and transfiguring light where wonder glows.
It wraps us in a silken snare by shadowy streams,
And wildering sweet and stung with joy your white soul seems
A flame, a flame, conquering day, conquering night,
Brought from our God, a holy thing, a mad delight.
But love, when all things beat it down, leaves the wide air,
The heavens are gray, and men turn wolves, lean with despair.
Ah, when we need love most, and weep, when all is dark,
Love is a pinch of ashes gray, with one live spark - 
Yet on the hope to keep alive that treasure strange
Hangs all earth's struggle, strife and scorn, and desperate change.
IV
Love?... we will scarcely love our babes full many a time - 
Knowing their souls and ours too well, and all our grime - 
And there beside our holy hearth we'll hide our eyes - 
Lest we should flash what seems disdain without disguise.
Yet there shall be no wavering there in that deep trial - 
And no false fire or stranger hand or traitor vile - 
We'll fight the gloom and fight the world with strong sword-play,
Entrenched within our block-house small, ever at bay - 
As fellow-warriors, underpaid, wounded and wild,
True to their battered flag, their faith still undefiled!
The Queen Of Fairy Land
by Rudyard Kipling

"I have a thousand men," said he,
"To wait upon my will;
And towers nine upon the Tyne,
And three upon the Till."
"And what care I for your men? " said she,
"Or towers from Tyne to Till?
Sith you must go with me," said she,
"To wait upon my will.
And you may lead a thousand men
Nor ever draw the rein,
But before you lead the Fairy Queen
'Twill burst your heart in twain."
He has slipped his foot from the stirrup-bar,
The bridle from his hand,
And he is bound by hand and foot
To the Queen of Fairy Land.
Andrew Jones
by William Wordsworth

I hate that Andrew Jones; he'll breed 
His children up to waste and pillage. 
I wish the press-gang or the drum 
With its tantara sound would come, 
And sweep him from the village! 
I said not this, because he loves 
Through the long day to swear and tipple; 
But for the poor dear sake of one 
To whom a foul deed he had done, 
A friendless man, a travelling cripple! 
For this poor crawling helpless wretch, 
Some horseman who was passing by, 
A penny on the ground had thrown; 
But the poor cripple was alone 
And could not stoop, no help was nigh. 
Inch-thick the dust lay on the ground 
For it had long been droughty weather; 
So with his staff the cripple wrought 
Among the dust till he had brought 
The half-pennies together. 
It chanced that Andrew passed that way 
Just at the time; and there he found 
The cripple in the mid-day heat 
Standing alone, and at his feet 
He saw the penny on the ground. 
He stopped and took the penny up: 
And when the cripple nearer drew, 
Quoth Andrew, "Under half-a-crown, 
What a man finds is all his own, 
And so, my Friend, good-day to you." 
And 'hence' I said, that Andrew's boys 
Will all be trained to waste and pillage; 
And wished the press-gang, or the drum 
With its tantara sound, would come 
And sweep him from the village.
Love and Solitude
by John Clare

I hate the very noise of troublous man
Who did and does me all the harm he can.
Free from the world I would a prisoner be
And my own shadow all my company;
And lonely see the shooting stars appear,
Worlds rushing into judgment all the year.
O lead me onward to the loneliest shade,
The darkest place that quiet ever made,
Where kingcups grow most beauteous to behold
And shut up green and open into gold.
Farewell to poesy--and leave the will;
Take all the world away--and leave me still
The mirth and music of a woman's voice,
That bids the heart be happy and rejoice.
Clancy Of The Overflow
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just on spec, addressed as follows, "Clancy, of The Overflow"
And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
"Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are."
* * * * * * * * *
In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.
And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.
* * * * * * * * *
I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all
And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.
And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.
And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal,
But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of The Overflow.
The Bulletin, 21 December 1889.
Horace, Ode I. Lib. III. A Fragment.
by Thomas Moore

odi profanum, valgus et arceo;
favete linguis: carmina non prius
audila Musarum sacerdos
virginibus puerisque canto.
regum timendorum in proprios greges,
reges in ipsos imperium est Jovis.
1813.
I hate thee, oh, Mob, as my Lady hates delf;
To Sir Francis I'll give up thy claps and thy hisses,
Leave old Magna Charta to shift for itself,
And, like Godwin, write books for young masters and misses.
Oh! it is not high rank that can make the heart merry,
Even monarchs themselves are not free from mishap:
Tho' the Lords of Westphalia must quake before Jerry,
Poor Jerry himself has to quake before Nap.
I Have A King Who Does Not Speak;
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

I have a king who does not speak;
So, wondering, thro' the hours meek
I trudge the day away,--
Half glad when it is night and sleep,
If, haply, thro' a dream to peep
In parlors shut by day.
And if I do, when morning comes,
It is as if a hundred drums
Did round my pillow roll,
And shouts fill all my childish sky,
And bells keep saying 'victory'
From steeples in my soul!
And if I don't, the little Bird
Within the Orchard is not heard,
And I omit to pray,
'Father, thy will be done' to-day,
For my will goes the other way,
And it were perjury!