DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Fit the Eighth - The Vanishing
by Lewis Carroll

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.
They shuddered to think that the chase might fail,
And the Beaver, excited at last,
Went bounding along on the tip of its tail,
For the daylight was nearly past.
"There is Thingumbob shouting!" the Bellman said.
"He is shouting like mad, only hark!
He is waving his hands, he is wagging his head,
He has certainly found a Snark!"
They gazed in delight, while the Butcher exclaimed
"He was always a desperate wag!"
They beheld him, their Baker, their hero unnamed, 
On the top of a neighbouring crag,
Erect and sublime, for one moment of time,
In the next, that wild figure they saw
(As if stung by a spasm) plunge into a chasm,
While they waited and listened in awe.
"It's a Snark!" was the sound that first came to their ears,
And seemed almost too good to be true.
Then followed a torrent of laughter and cheers:
Then the ominous words "It's a Boo, "
Then, silence. Some fancied they heard in the air
A weary and wandering sigh
That sounded like ", jum!" but the others declare
It was only a breeze that went by.
They hunted till darkness came on, but they found
Not a button, or feather, or mark,
By which they could tell that they stood on the ground
Where the Baker had met with the Snark.
In the midst of the word he was trying to say
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away, 
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.
The Irish Emigrant. 1883.
by John Campbell

"They sow in tears who reap in joy,"
Was truly said of old:
We wandered far, but round us still
Stretched God Almighty's fold.
'Twas He who led us forth; our grief
Discerned His chastening hand,
And saw not, though before our eyes
Shone bright His promised land.
O bless Him for the love that made
The parting greeting sore,
But for the bold heart that He gave
We bless our God yet more!
He gave us hope, He gave us strength;
For us His prairies smile,
The new world's untouched soils for us
Spread boundless, mile on mile.
The richest heritage on earth
For us His mercy saved;
For ages Nature's harvests here
Unknown, ungathered, waved.
Ours now the grain which decks the plains,
Ours all their wondrous yield;
Our children, and our kin possess
Their own, in house and field.
What wonder then if many laugh,
And wonder joy was dumb!
To friends in older lands with less
Our happy hearts say "Come."
Mutability
by Rupert Brooke

They say there's a high windless world and strange,
Out of the wash of days and temporal tide,
Where Faith and Good, Wisdom and Truth abide,
'Aeterna corpora', subject to no change.
There the sure suns of these pale shadows move;
There stand the immortal ensigns of our war;
Our melting flesh fixed Beauty there, a star,
And perishing hearts, imperishable Love. . . .
Dear, we know only that we sigh, kiss, smile;
Each kiss lasts but the kissing; and grief goes over;
Love has no habitation but the heart.
Poor straws! on the dark flood we catch awhile,
Cling, and are borne into the night apart.
The laugh dies with the lips, 'Love' with the lover.
In A Breton Cemetery
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

They sleep well here,
These fisher-folk who passed their anxious days
In fierce Atlantic ways;
And found not there,
Beneath the long curled wave,
So quiet a grave.
And they sleep well
These peasant-folk, who told their lives away,
From day to market-day,
As one should tell,
With patient industry,
Some sad old rosary.
And now night falls,
Me, tempest-tost, and driven from pillar to post,
A poor worn ghost,
This quiet pasture calls;
And dear dead people with pale hands
Beckon me to their lands.
Tenebr'
by J. D. C. Fellow

They say that I shall find him if I go
Along the dusty highways, or the green
Tracks of the downland shepherds, or between
The swaying corn, or where cool waters flow;
And others say, that speak as if they know,
That daily in the cities, in the mean
Dark streets, amid the crowd he may be seen,
With thieves and harlots wandering to and fro.
But I am blind. How shall a blind man dare
Venture along the roaring crowded street,
Or branching roads where I may never hit
The way he has gone? But someday if I sit
Quietly at this corner listening, there
May come this way the slow sound of his feet.
The Vanguard
by Henry Lawson

They say, in all kindness, I'm out of the hunt,
Too old and too deaf to be sent to the Front.
A scribbler of stories, a maker of songs,
To the fireside and armchair my valour belongs!
Yet in campaigns all hopeless, in bitterest strife,
I have been at the Front all the days of my life.
Oh, your girl feels a princess, your people are proud,
As you march down the street, 'midst the cheers of the crowd;
And the Nation's behind you and cloudless your sky,
And you come back to Honour, or gloriously die;
While for each thing that brightens, and each thing that cheers,
I have starved in the trenches these forty long years.
The cities were silent, the people were glum,
No sound of a bugle, no tap of a drum;
Our enemies mighty and Parliaments sour,
Our Land's lovers few, and no Man of the Hour.
The Girl turned her nose up (maybe 'twas before),
And they voted us Cracked when we marched to the war.
Our army was small and 'twas scattered afar,
And our headquarters down where the Poor People are.
But I knew the great hearts of the Jims and the Bills,
And we signalled by wireless as old as the hills.
There were songs that could reach to our furthermost wing,
And Sorrow and Poverty taught me to sing.
Our War Hymn the war hymn that ever prevails,
Oh, we sang it of old when we marched from Marseilles!
And our army traditions are cherished with pride
In streets and in woods where we triumphed, or died;
Where, rebel or loyal, by farmhouse and town,
The chorus waxed faint as they volleyed us down.
No V.C. comes to us, no rest nor release,
Though hardest of all is this fighting in peace.
Small honour to wife or to daughter or son,
Though noblest of all are the deeds that are done.
But we never are conquered, we never can die,
For we live through the ages, my army and I!
Erinna
by Sara Teasdale

They sent you in to say farewell to me,
No, do not shake your head; I see your eyes
That shine with tears. Sappho, you saw the sun
Just now when you came hither, and again,
When you have left me, all the shimmering
Great meadows will laugh lightly, and the sun
Put round about you warm invisible arms
As might a lover, decking you with light.
I go toward darkness tho' I lie so still.
If I could see the sun, I should look up
And drink the light until my eyes were blind;
I should kneel down and kiss the blades of grass,
And I should call the birds with such a voice,
With such a longing, tremulous and keen,
That they would fly to me and on the breast
Bear evermore to tree-tops and to fields
The kiss I gave them. Sappho, tell me this,
Was I not sometimes fair? My eyes, my mouth,
My hair that loved the wind, were they not worth
The breath of love upon them? Yet he passed,
And he will pass to-night when all the air
Is blue with twilight; but I shall not see.
I shall have gone forever. Hold my hands,
Hold fast that Death may never come between;
Swear by the gods you will not let me go;
Make songs for Death as you would sing to Love,
But you will not assuage him. He alone
Of all the gods will take no gifts from men.
I am afraid, afraid.
Sappho, lean down.
Last night the fever gave a dream to me,
It takes my life and gives a little dream.
I thought I saw him stand, the man I love,
Here in my quiet chamber, with his eyes
Fixed on me as I entered, while he drew
Silently toward me,he who night by night
Goes by my door without a thought of me,
Neared me and put his hand behind my head,
And leaning toward me, kissed me on the mouth.
That was a little dream for Death to give,
Too short to take the whole of life for, yet
I woke with lips made quiet by a kiss.
The dream is worth the dying. Do not smile
So sadly on me with your shining eyes,
You who can set your sorrow to a song
And ease your hurt by singing. But to me
My songs are less than sea-sand that the wind
Drives stinging over me and bears away.
I have no care what place the grains may fall,
Nor of my songs, if Time shall blow them back,
As land-wind breaks the lines of dying foam
Along the bright wet beaches, scattering
The flakes once more against the laboring sea,
Into oblivion. What care have I
To please Apollo since Love hearkens not?
Your words will live forever, men will say
'She was the perfect lover',I shall die,
I loved too much to live. Go Sappho, go,
I hate your hands that beat so full of life,
Go, lest my hatred hurt you. I shall die,
But you will live to love and love again.
He might have loved some other spring than this;
I should have kept my life,I let it go.
He would not love me now tho' Cypris bound
Her girdle round me. I am Death's, not Love's.
Go from me, Sappho, back to find the sun.
I am alone, alone. O Cyprian ....
The Way Through The Woods
by Rudyard Kipling

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate.
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods....
But there is no road through the woods.
Isabel.
by Nathaniel Parker Willis

They said that I was strange. I could not bear
Confinement, and I lov'd to feel the wind
Blowing upon my forehead, and when morn
Came like an inspiration from the East,
And the cool earth, awaking like a star
In a new element, sent out its voice,
And tempted me with music, and the breath
Of a delicious perfume, and the dye
Of the rich forests and the pastures green,
To come out and be glad - I would not stay
To bind my gushing spirit with a book.
Fourteen bright summers - and my heart had grown
Impatient in its loneliness, and yearn'd
For something that was like itself, to love.
She came - the stately Isabel - as proud
And beautiful, and gentle as my dream;
And with my wealth of feeling, lov'd I her.
Older by years, and wiser of the world,
She was in thought my equal, and we rang'd
The pleasant wood together, and sat down
Impassion'd with the same delicious sweep
Of water, and I pour'd into her ear
My passion and my hoarded thoughts like one,
Till I forgot that there was any world
But Isabel and nature. She was pleas'd
And flatter'd with my wild and earnest love,
And suffer'd my delirious words to burn
Upon my lip unchided. It was new
To be so worshipped like a deity
By a pure heart from nature, and she gave
Her tenderness its way, and when I kiss'd
Her fingers till I thought I was in Heaven,
She gaz'd upon me silently, and wept.
*             *             *             *             *
I have seen eighteen summers - and the child
Of stately Isabel hath learn'd to come
And win me from my sadness. I have school'd
My feelings to affection for that child,
And I can see his father fondle him,
And give him to his mother with a kiss
Upon her holy forehead - and be calm!
Fit the Seventh - The Banker's Fate
by Lewis Carroll

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.
And the Banker, inspired with a courage so new
It was matter for general remark,
Rushed madly ahead and was lost to their view
In his zeal to discover the Snark.
But while he was seeking with thimbles and care,
A Bandersnatch swiftly drew nigh
And grabbed at the Banker, who shrieked in despair,
For he knew it was useless to fly.
He offered large discount, he offered a cheque
(Drawn "to bearer") for seven-pounds-ten:
But the Bandersnatch merely extended its neck
And grabbed at the Banker again.
Without rest or pause, while those frumious jaws
Went savagely snapping around, 
He skipped and he hopped, and he floundered and flopped,
Till fainting he fell to the ground.
The Bandersnatch fled as the others appeared
Led on by that fear-stricken yell:
And the Bellman remarked "It is just as I feared!"
And solemnly tolled on his bell.
He was black in the face, and they scarcely could trace
The least likeness to what he had been:
While so great was the fright that his waistcoat turned white, 
A wonderful thing to be seen!
To the horror of all who were present that day,
He uprose in full evening dress,
And with senseless grimaces endeavoured to say
What his tongue could no longer express.
Down he sank in a chair, ran his hands through his hair, 
And chanted in mimsiest tones
Words whose utter inanity proved his insanity,
While he rattled a couple of bones.
"Leave him here to his fate, it is getting so late!"
The Bellman exclaimed in a fright.
"We have lost half a day. Any further delay,
And we sha'n't catch a Snark before night!"
The Cummerbund. - An Indian Poem.
by Edward Lear

I.
She sate upon her Dobie,
To watch the Evening Star,
And all the Punkahs, as they passed,
Cried, "My! how fair you are!"
Around her bower, with quivering leaves,
The tall Kamsamahs grew,
And Kitmutgars in wild festoons
Hung down from Tchokis blue.
II.
Below her home the river rolled
With soft meloobious sound,
Where golden-finned Chuprassies swam,
In myriads circling round.
Above, on tallest trees remote
Green Ayahs perched alone,
And all night long the Mussak moan'd
Its melancholy tone.
III.
And where the purple Nullahs threw
Their branches far and wide,
And silvery Goreewallahs flew
In silence, side by side,
The little Bheesties' twittering cry
Rose on the flagrant air,
And oft the angry Jampan howled
Deep in his hateful lair.
IV.
She sate upon her Dobie,
She heard the Nimmak hum,
When all at once a cry arose,
"The Cummerbund is come!"
In vain she fled: with open jaws
The angry monster followed,
And so (before assistance came)
That Lady Fair was swollowed.
V.
They sought in vain for even a bone
Respectfully to bury;
They said, "Hers was a dreadful fate!"
(And Echo answered, "Very.")
They nailed her Dobie to the wall,
Where last her form was seen,
And underneath they wrote these words,
In yellow, blue, and green:
"Beware, ye Fair! Ye Fair, beware!
Nor sit out late at night,
Lest horrid Cummerbunds should come,
And swollow you outright."
Who Knows?
by Vachel Lindsay

They say one king is mad.    Perhaps.    Who knows?
They say one king is doddering and grey.
They say one king is slack and sick of mind,
A puppet for hid strings that twitch and play.
Is Europe then to be their sprawling-place?
Their mad-house, till it turns the wide world's bane?
Their place of maudlin, slavering conference
Till every far-off farmstead goes insane?
Dan Wasn't Thrown From His Horse
by Henry Lawson

They say he was thrown and run over,
But that is sheer nonsense, of course:
I taught him to ride when a kiddy,
And Dan wasn't thrown from his horse.
The horse that Dan rode was a devil,
The kind of a brute I despise,
With nasty white eyelashes fringing
A pair of red, sinister eyes.
And a queerly-shaped spot on his forehead,
Where I put a conical ball
The day that he murdered Dan Denver,
The pluckiest rider of all.
'Twas after the races were over
And Duggan (a Talbragar man)
And two of the Denvers, and Barney
Were trying a gallop with Dan.
Dan's horse on a sudden got vicious,
And reared up an' plunged in the race,
Then threw back his head, hitting Dan like
A sledge-hammer, full in the face.
Dan stopped and got down, stood a moment,
Then fell to the ground like a stone,
And died about ten minutes after;
But they're liars who say he was thrown.
The True Beatitude (Bouts-Rimes)
by Rupert Brooke

They say when the Great Prompter's hand shall ring
Down the last curtain upon earth and sea,
All the Good Mimes will have eternity
To praise their Author, worship love and sing;
Or to the walls of Heaven wandering
Look down on those damned for a fretful d----,
Mock them (all theologians agree
On this reward for virtue), laugh, and fling
New sulphur on the sin-incarnadined . . .
Ah, Love! still temporal, and still atmospheric,
Teleologically unperturbed,
We share a peace by no divine divined,
An earthly garden hidden from any cleric,
Untrodden of God, by no Eternal curbed.
Up From The Floor
by Paul Cameron Brown

They sit in silence. In camera, around the table. Terrifyingly stern, stares that grew antlers in my eyes.
It was as if thunder or bolts with electricity were being decreed.
The self-important, the pompous, well-fed and self-assured.
Here to hazard a fling of the dice - to decide whether another should eat.
Employment. The interview. One with yellow tusks protruding to his coffee cup. Eyes, some primordial forest cut for a firebreak back of his soul. And I think of the desperate, those lacking bus-fare to get to such a carnival. Valuable postage money, photocopying, scrimped dollars for a suit to entertain the pumpkins dicing for a worthless garment. A scavenger run, piles of white applications heaped as bones in a graveyard made careless after a violent storm.
Or elephants in tow, trunks wrapped around the other waiting for the ringmaster to signal the question important; whether a neophyte new at sharpening his teeth at a daily wage should be allowed presence onto such a hallowed ground.
And I think such things are the very matter of evil - that these are vile intemperates with their accursed shortlists deigning to be gracious, shaking hands after the fact. Mafioso manners, the sickly grins back of the shovels used to bury another.
To Mr. C.R.
by Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow

FOR MANY YEARS DEPRIVED OF SIGHT.
They say the sun is shining
In all his splendor now,
And clouds in graceful drapery,
Are sailing to an fro.
That birds of brilliant plumage,
Are soaring on the wing;
Exulting in the daylight,
Rejoicing as they sing.
They tell me too that roses,
E'en in my pathway lie;
And decked in rich apparel,
Attract the passers by.
They say the sun when setting,
Is glorious to behold;
And sheds on all at parting,
A radiant crown of gold.
And then the night's pale empress,
With all her glittering train,
The vacant throne ascending,
Resumes her peaceful reign.
That she in queenly beauty,
Subdued yet silvery light,
Makes scarcely less enchanting
Than day, the sober night.
But sights like these so cheering,
Alas, I cannot see!
The daylight and the darkness
Are both alike to me.
Yet there's a world above us,
So beautiful and fair,
That nothing here can equal,
And nought with it compare.
There, in a blaze of glory,
Amidst a countless throng,
The Saviour smiles complacent,
While listening to their song.
Ten thousand times ten thousand,
Their cheerful voices raise,
While golden harps in harmony
Are tuned to sound the praise
Of Him the blest deliverer,
Who conquered when he fell;
The man of many sorrows,
The Great Immanuel.
But stop - I dare not venture
Too far on holy ground;
Its heights are too exalted,
Its depths are too profound.
Yet may I be permitted,
When this brief life is past,
The hope in yon bright heaven,
To find my home at last.
When cleansed from all pollution,
From sin and sorrow free,
I, with unclouded vision,
My Saviour God may see.
Brooklyn, May, 1853.
To The Sun Door.
by Kate Greenaway

They saw it rise in the morning,
They saw it set at night,
And they longed to go and see it,
Ah! if they only might.
The little soft white clouds heard them,
And stepped from out of the blue;
And each laid a little child softly
Upon its bosom of dew.
And they carried them higher and higher,
And they nothing knew any more
Until they were standing waiting
In front of the round gold door.
And they knocked, and called, and entreated,
Whoever should be within;
But all to no purpose, for no one
Would hearken to let them in.
Satires Of Circumstances In Fifteen Glimpses - V At A Watering-Place
by Thomas Hardy

They sit and smoke on the esplanade,
The man and his friend, and regard the bay
Where the far chalk cliffs, to the left displayed,
Smile sallowly in the decline of day.
And saunterers pass with laugh and jest -
A handsome couple among the rest.
"That smart proud pair," says the man to his friend,
"Are to marry next week . . . How little he thinks
That dozens of days and nights on end
I have stroked her neck, unhooked the links
Of her sleeve to get at her upper arm . . .
Well, bliss is in ignorance: what's the harm!"
Do You Think That I Do Not Know?
by Henry Lawson

They say that I never have written of love,
As a writer of songs should do;
They say that I never could touch the strings
With a touch that is firm and true;
They say I know nothing of women and men
In the fields where Love's roses grow,
And they say I must write with a halting pen
Do you think that I do not know?
When the love-burst came, like an English Spring,
In days when our hair was brown,
And the hem of her skirt was a sacred thing
And her hair was an angel's crown.
The shock when another man touched her arm,
Where the dancers sat round in a row;
The hope and despair, and the false alarm
Do you think that I do not know?
By the arbour lights on the western farms,
You remember the question put,
While you held her warm in your quivering arms
And you trembled from head to foot.
The electric shock from her finger tips,
And the murmuring answer low,
The soft, shy yielding of warm red lips
Do you think that I do not know?
She was buried at Brighton, where Gordon sleeps,
When I was a world away;
And the sad old garden its secret keeps,
For nobody knows to-day.
She left a message for me to read,
Where the wild wide oceans flow;
Do you know how the heart of a man can bleed
Do you think that I do not know?
I stood by the grave where the dead girl lies,
When the sunlit scenes were fair,
And the white clouds high in the autumn skies,
And I answered the message there.
But the haunting words of the dead to me
Shall go wherever I go.
She lives in the Marriage that Might Have Been
Do you think that I do not know?
They sneer or scoff, and they pray or groan,
And the false friend plays his part.
Do you think that the blackguard who drinks alone
Knows aught of a pure girl's heart?
Knows aught of the first pure love of a boy
With his warm young blood aglow,
Knows aught of the thrill of the world-old joy
Do you think that I do not know?
They say that I never have written of love,
They say that my heart is such
That finer feelings are far above;
But a writer may know too much.
There are darkest depths in the brightest nights,
When the clustering stars hang low;
There are things it would break his strong heart to write
Do you think that I do not know?
Mediums
by Walt Whitman

They shall arise in the States,
They shall report Nature, laws, physiology, and happiness;
They shall illustrate Democracy and the kosmos;
They shall be alimentive, amative, perceptive;
They shall be complete women and men - their pose brawny and supple, their drink water, their blood clean and clear;
They shall enjoy materialism and the sight of products - they shall enjoy the sight of the beef, lumber, bread-stuffs, of Chicago, the great city;
They shall train themselves to go in public to become orators and oratresses;
Strong and sweet shall their tongues be - poems and materials of poems shall come from their lives - they shall be makers and finders;
Of them, and of their works, shall emerge divine conveyers, to convey gospels;
Characters, events, retrospections, shall be convey'd in gospels - Trees, animals, waters, shall be convey'd,
Death, the future, the invisible faith, shall all be convey'd.