DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Monseigneur Plays
by Theodosia Garrison

Monseigneur plays his new gavotte--
Within her gilded chair the Queen
Listens, her rustling maids between;
A very tulip-garden stirred
To hear the fluting of a bird;
Faint sunlight through the casement falls
On cupids painted on the walls
At play with doves. Precisely set
Awaits the slender legged spinet
Expectant of its happy lot,
The while the player stays to twist
The cobweb ruffle from his wrist.
A pause, and then--(Ah, whisper not)
Monseigneur plays his new gavotte.
Monseigneur plays his new gavotte--
Hark, 'tis the faintest dawn of Spring,
So still the dew drops whispering
Is loud upon the violets;
Here in this garden of Pierrettes'
Where Pierrot waits, ah, hasten Sweet,
And hear; on dainty, tripping feet
She comes--the little, glad coquette.
"Ah thou, Pierrot?" "Ah thou, Pierrette?"
A kiss, nay, hear--a bird wakes, then
A silence--and they kiss again,
"Ah, Mesdames, have you quite forgot--"
(So laughs his music.) "Love's first kiss?
Let this note lead you then, and this
Back to that fragrant garden-spot."
Monseigneur plays his new gavotte.
Monseigneur plays his new gavotte--
Ah, hear--in that last note they go
The little lovers laughing so;
Kissing their finger-tips, they dance
From out this gilded room of France.
Adieu! Monseigneur rises now
Ready for compliment and bow,
Playing about his mouth the while
Its cynical, accustomed smile,
Protests and, hand on heart, avers
The patience of his listeners.
"A masterpiece? Ah, surely not."
A grey-eyed maid of honour slips
A long stemmed rose across her lips
And drops it; does he guess her thought?
Monseigneur plays his new gavotte.
Pastoral Sung To The King
by Robert Herrick

Pastoral Sung To The King
MON.    Bad are the times.    SIL.    And worse than they are we.
MON.    Troth, bad are both; worse fruit, and ill the tree:
The feast of shepherds fail.    SIL.    None crowns the cup
Of wassail now, or sets the quintel up:
And he, who used to lead the country-round,
Youthful Mirtillo, here he comes, grief-drown'd.
AMBO.    Let's cheer him up.    SIL. Behold him weeping-ripe.
MIRT. Ah, Amarillis!    farewell mirth and pipe;
Since thou art gone, no more I mean to play
To these smooth lawns, my mirthful roundelay.
Dear Amarillis!    MON.    Hark!    SIL.    Mark!    MIRT.    This
earth grew sweet
Where, Amarillis, thou didst set thy feet.
AMBO    Poor pitied youth!    MIRT.    And here the breath
of kine
And sheep grew more sweet by that breath of thine.
This dock of wool, and this rich lock of hair,
This ball of cowslips, these she gave me here.
SIL.    Words sweet as love itself.    MON.    Hark!
MIRT.    This way she came, and this way too she went;
How each thing smells divinely redolent!
Like to a field of beans, when newly blown,
Or like a meadow being lately mown.
MON.    A sweet sad passion
MIRT.    In dewy mornings, when she came this way,
Sweet bents would bow, to give my Love the day;
And when at night she folded had her sheep,
Daisies would shut, and closing, sigh and weep.
Besides (Ai me!) since she went hence to dwell,
The Voice's Daughter ne'er spake syllable.
But she is gone.    SIL.    Mirtillo, tell us whither?
MIRT.    Where she and I shall never meet together.
MON.    Fore-fend it, Pan!    and Pales, do thou please
To give an end'    MIRT.    To what?    SIL.    Such griefs
as these.
MIRT.    Never, O never!    Still I may endure
The wound I suffer, never find a cure.
MON.    Love, for thy sake, will bring her to these hills
And dales again.    MIRT.    No, I will languish still;
And all the while my part shall be to weep;
And with my sighs call home my bleating sheep;
And in the rind of every comely tree
I'll carve thy name, and in that name kiss thee.
MON.    Set with the sun, thy woes!    SIL.    The day
grows old;
And time it is our full-fed flocks to fold.
CHOR.    The shades grow great; but greater grows
our sorrow:
But let's go steep
Our eyes in sleep;
And meet to weep
To-morrow.
The Second Best
by Matthew Arnold

Moderate tasks and moderate leisure,
Quiet living, strict-kept measure
Both in suffering and in pleasure
'Tis for this thy nature yearns.
But so many books thou readest,
But so many schemes thou breedest,
But so many wishes feedest,
That thy poor head almost turns.
And (the world's so madly jangled,
Human things so fast entangled)
Nature's wish must now be strangled
For that best which she discerns.
So it must be! yet, while leading
A strain'd life, while overfeeding,
Like the rest, his wit with reading,
No small profit that man earns,
Who through all he meets can steer him,
Can reject what cannot clear him,
Cling to what can truly cheer him!
Who each day more surely learns
That an impulse, from the distance
Of his deepest, best existence,
To the words 'Hope, Light, Persistence,'
Strongly stirs and truly burns!
Sonnets - VI. - To......
by William Wordsworth

"Miss not the occasion: by the forelock take
That subtile Power, the never-halting Time,
Lest a mere moment's putting-off should make
Mischance almost as heavy as a crime."
"Wait, prithee, wait!" this answer Lesbia threw
Forth to her Dove, and took no further heed;
Her eye was busy, while her fingers flew
Across the harp, with soul-engrossing speed;
But from that bondage when her thoughts were freed
She rose, and toward the close-shut casement drew,
Whence the poor unregarded Favourite, true
To old affections, had been heard to plead
With flapping wing for entrance. What a shriek!
Forced from that voice so lately tuned to a strain
Of harmony! a shriek of terror, pain,
And self-reproach! for, from aloft, a Kite
Pounced, and the Dove, which from its ruthless beak
She could not rescue, perished in her sight!
How To Write By Proxy.
by Thomas Moore

qui facit per alium facit per se.
'Mong our neighbors, the French, in the good olden time
When Nobility flourisht, great Barons and Dukes
Often set up for authors in prose and in rhyme,
But ne'er took the trouble to write their own books.
Poor devils were found to do this for their betters;--
And one day a Bishop, addressing a Blue,
Said, "Ma'am, have you read my new Pastoral Letters?"
To which the Blue answered--"No, Bishop, have you?"
The same is now done by our privileged class;
And to show you how simple the process it needs,
If a great Major-General[1] wishes to pass
For an author of History, thus he proceeds:--
First, scribbling his own stock of notions as well
As he can, with a goose-quill that claims him as kin,
He settles his neckcloth--takes snuff--rings the bell,
And yawningly orders a Subaltern in.
The Subaltern comes--sees his General seated,
In all the self-glory of authorship swelling;--
"There look," saith his Lordship, "my work is completed,--
"It wants nothing now but the grammar and spelling."
Well used to a breach, the brave Subaltern dreads
Awkward breaches of syntax a hundred times more;
And tho' often condemned to see breaking of heads,
He had ne'er seen such breaking of Priscian's before.
However, the job's sure to pay--that's enough--
So, to it he sets with his tinkering hammer,
Convinced that there never was job half so tough
As the mending a great Major-General's grammar.
But lo! a fresh puzzlement starts up to view--
New toil for the Sub.--for the Lord new expense:
'Tis discovered that mending his grammar won't do,
As the Subaltern also must find him in sense!
At last--even this is achieved by his aid;
Friend Subaltern pockets the cash and--the story;
Drums beat--the new Grand March of Intellect's played--
And off struts my Lord, the Historian, in glory!
Answer To A Beautiful Poem, Written By Montgomery, Author Of "The Wanderer Of Switzerland," Etc., Entitled "The Common Lot." [1]
by George Gordon Byron

1.
Montgomery! true, the common lot
Of mortals lies in Lethe's wave;
Yet some shall never be forgot,
Some shall exist beyond the grave.
2.
"Unknown the region of his birth,"
The hero [2] rolls the tide of war;
Yet not unknown his martial worth,
Which glares a meteor from afar.
3.
His joy or grief, his weal or woe,
Perchance may 'scape the page of fame;
Yet nations, now unborn, will know
The record of his deathless name.
4.
The Patriot's and the Poet's frame
Must share the common tomb of all:
Their glory will not sleep the same;
'That' will arise, though Empires fall.
5.
The lustre of a Beauty's eye
Assumes the ghastly stare of death;
The fair, the brave, the good must die,
And sink the yawning grave beneath.
6.
Once more, the speaking eye revives,
Still beaming through the lover's strain;
For Petrarch's Laura still survives:
She died, but ne'er will die again.
7.
The rolling seasons pass away,
And Time, untiring, waves his wing;
Whilst honour's laurels ne'er decay,
But bloom in fresh, unfading spring.
8.
All, all must sleep in grim repose,
Collected in the silent tomb;
The old, the young, with friends and foes,
Fest'ring alike in shrouds, consume.
9.
The mouldering marble lasts its day,
Yet falls at length an useless fane;
To Ruin's ruthless fangs a prey,
The wrecks of pillar'd Pride remain.
10.
What, though the sculpture be destroy'd,
From dark Oblivion meant to guard;
A bright renown shall be enjoy'd,
By those, whose virtues claim reward.
11.
Then do not say the common lot
Of all lies deep in Lethe's wave;
Some few who ne'er will be forgot
Shall burst the bondage of the grave.
A Blue Valentine
by Alfred Joyce Kilmer (Joyce)

Monsignore,
Right Reverend Bishop Valentinus,
Sometime of Interamna, which is called Ferni,
Now of the delightful Court of Heaven,
I respectfully salute you,
I genuflect
And I kiss your episcopal ring.
It is not, Monsignore,
The fragrant memory of your holy life,
Nor that of your shining and joyous martyrdom,
Which causes me now to address you.
But since this is your august festival, Monsignore,
It seems appropriate to me to state
According to a venerable and agreeable custom,
That I love a beautiful lady.
Her eyes, Monsignore,
Are so blue that they put lovely little blue reflections
On everything that she looks at,
Such as a wall
Or the moon
Or my heart.
It is like the light coming through blue stained glass,
Yet not quite like it,
For the blueness is not transparent,
Only translucent.
Her soul's light shines through,
But her soul cannot be seen.
It is something elusive, whimsical, tender, wanton, infantile, wise
And noble.
She wears, Monsignore, a blue garment,
Made in the manner of the Japanese.
It is very blue --
I think that her eyes have made it more blue,
Sweetly staining it
As the pressure of her body has graciously given it form.
Loving her, Monsignore,
I love all her attributes;
But I believe
That even if I did not love her
I would love the blueness of her eyes,
And her blue garment, made in the manner of the Japanese.
Monsignore,
I have never before troubled you with a request.
The saints whose ears I chiefly worry with my pleas are the most exquisite and maternal Brigid,
Gallant Saint Stephen, who puts fire in my blood,
And your brother bishop, my patron,
The generous and jovial Saint Nicholas of Bari.
But, of your courtesy, Monsignore,
Do me this favour:
When you this morning make your way
To the Ivory Throne that bursts into bloom with roses because of her who sits upon it,
When you come to pay your devoir to Our Lady,
I beg you, say to her:
"Madame, a poor poet, one of your singing servants yet on earth,
Has asked me to say that at this moment he is especially grateful to you
For wearing a blue gown."
Consolation
by Matthew Arnold

Mist clogs the sunshine.
Smoky dwarf houses
Hem me round everywhere;
A vague dejection
Weighs down my soul.
Yet, while I languish,
Everywhere countless
Prospects unroll themselves,
And countless beings
Pass countless moods.
Far hence, in Asia,
On the smooth convent-roofs,
On the gilt terraces,
Of holy Lassa,
Bright shines the sun.
Grey time-worn marbles
Hold the pure Muses;
In their cool gallery,
By yellow Tiber,
They still look fair.
Strange unloved uproar
Shrills round their portal;
Yet not on Helicon
Kept they more cloudless
Their noble calm.
Through sun-proof alleys
In a lone, sand-hemm'd
City of Africa,
A blind, led beggar,
Age-bow'd, asks alms.
No bolder robber
Erst abode ambush'd
Deep in the sandy waste;
No clearer eyesight
Spied prey afar.
Saharan sand-winds
Sear'd his keen eyeballs;
Spent is the spoil he won.
For him the present
Holds only pain.
Two young, fair lovers,
Where the warm June-wind,
Fresh from the summer fields
Plays fondly round them,
Stand, tranced in joy.
With sweet, join'd voices,
And with eyes brimming:
"Ah," they cry, "Destiny,
Prolong the present!
Time, stand still here!"
The prompt stern Goddess
Shakes her head, frowning;
Time gives his hour-glass
Its due reversal;
Their hour is gone.
With weak indulgence
Did the just Goddess
Lengthen their happiness,
She lengthen'd also
Distress elsewhere.
The hour, whose happy
Unalloy'd moments
I would eternalise,
Ten thousand mourners
Well pleased see end.
The bleak, stern hour,
Whose severe moments
I would annihilate,
Is pass'd by others
In warmth, light, joy.
Time, so complain'd of,
Who to no one man
Shows partiality,
Brings round to all men
Some undimm'd hours.
The Cur''s Progress.
by Henry Austin Dobson

Monsieur the Cur' down the street
Comes with his kind old face,--
With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair,
And his green umbrella-case.
You may see him pass by the little "Grande Place,"
And the tiny "H'tel-de-Ville";
He smiles, as he goes, to the fleuriste Rose,
And the pompier Th'ophile.
He turns, as a rule, through the "March'" cool,
Where the noisy fish-wives call;
And his compliment pays to the "Belle Th'r'se,"
As she knits in her dusky stall.
There's a letter to drop at the locksmith's shop,
And Toto, the locksmith's niece,
Has jubilant hopes, for the Cur' gropes
In his tails for a pain d''pice.
There's a little dispute with a merchant of fruit,
Who is said to be heterodox,
That will ended be with a "Ma foi, oui!"
And a pinch from the Cur''s box.
There is also a word that no one heard
To the furrier's daughter Lou;
And a pale cheek fed with a flickering red,
And a "Bon Dieu garde M'sieu!"
But a grander way for the Sous-Pr'fet,
And a bow for Ma'am'selle Anne;
And a mock "off-hat" to the Notary's cat,
And a nod to the Sacristan:--
For ever through life the Cur' goes
With a smile on his kind old face--
With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair,
And his green umbrella-case.
Mock On, Mock On, Voltaire, Rousseau
by William Blake

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;
Mock on, mock on; 'tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.
And every sand becomes a gem
Reflected in the beams divine;
Blown back they blind the mocking eye,
But still in Israel's paths they shine.
The Atoms of Democritus
And Newton's Particles of Light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.
Made In Space
by Paul Cameron Brown

Mood food. In deep, deep water
without the thought of water bottom,
I thought of you.
Sous la peau rouge,
Chartreuse, I thought
of you.
Dans le cafe du paradis,
ile au emeraude.
Cascades aux ecrivisses
la belle aux Bois dormant.
Tir a l'arc, volcon.
Precious little majesty to Words
nor necromancy of place names,
ma douce.
Partout, je te vous.
The Dream
by Siegfried Loraine Sassoon

I
Moonlight and dew-drenched blossom, and the scent
Of summer gardens; these can bring you all
Those dreams that in the starlit silence fall:
Sweet songs are full of odours.
While I went
Last night in drizzling dusk along a lane,
I passed a squalid farm; from byre and midden
Came the rank smell that brought me once again
A dream of war that in the past was hidden.
II
Up a disconsolate straggling village street
I saw the tired troops trudge: I heard their feet.
The cheery Q.M.S. was there to meet
And guide our Company in ...
I watched them stumble
Into some crazy hovel, too beat to grumble;
Saw them file inward, slipping from their backs
Rifles, equipment, packs.
On filthy straw they sit in the gloom, each face
Bowed to patched, sodden boots they must unlace,
While the wind chills their sweat through chinks and cracks.
III
I'm looking at their blistered feet; young Jones
Stares up at me, mud-splashed and white and jaded;
Out of his eyes the morning light has faded.
Old soldiers with three winters in their bones
Puff their damp Woodbines, whistle, stretch their toes:
They can still grin at me, for each of 'em knows
That I'm as tired as they are ...
Can they guess
The secret burden that is always mine? - 
Pride in their courage; pity for their distress;
And burning bitterness
That I must take them to the accurs'd Line.
IV
I cannot hear their voices, but I see
Dim candles in the barn: they gulp their tea,
And soon they'll sleep like logs. Ten miles away
The battle winks and thuds in blundering strife.
And I must lead them nearer, day by day,
To the foul beast of war that bludgeons life.
Sonnets: Idea XVI An Allusion To The Phoenix
by Michael Drayton

'Mongst all the creatures in this spacious round
Of the birds' kind, the phoenix is alone,
Which best by you of living things is known;
None like to that, none like to you is found!
Your beauty is the hot and splend'rous sun;
The precious spices be your chaste desire,
Which being kindled by that heavenly fire,
Your life, so like the phoenix's begun.
Yourself thus burn'd in that sacred flame,
With so rare sweetness all the heavens perfuming;
Again increasing as you are consuming,
Only by dying born the very same.
And winged by fame you to the stars ascend;
So you of time shall live beyond the end.
Missis Moriarty's Boy
by Robert William Service

Missis Moriarty called last week, and says she to me, says she:
"Sure the heart of me's broken entirely now -    it's the fortunate woman you are;
You've still got your Dinnis to cheer up your home, but me Patsy boy where is he?
Lyin' alone, cold as a stone, kilt in the weariful wahr.
Oh, I'm seein' him now as I looked on him last, wid his hair all curly and bright,
And the wonderful, tenderful heart he had, and his eyes as he wint away,
Shinin' and lookin' down on me from the pride of his proper height:
Sure I'll remember me boy like that if I live to me dyin' day."
And just as she spoke them very same words me Dinnis came in at the door,
Came in from McGonigle's ould shebeen, came in from drinkin' his pay;
And Missis Moriarty looked at him, and she didn't say anny more,
But she wrapped her head in her ould black shawl, and she quietly wint away.
And what was I thinkin', I ask ye now, as I put me Dinnis to bed,
Wid him ravin' and cursin' one half of the night, as cold by his side I sat;
Was I thinkin' the poor ould woman she was wid her Patsy slaughtered and dead?
Was I weepin' for Missis Moriarty? I'm not so sure about that.
Missis Moriarty goes about wid a shinin' look on her face;
Wid her grey hair under her ould black shawl, and the eyes of her mother-mild;
Some say she's a little bit off her head; but annyway it's the case,
Her timper's so swate that you nivver would tell she'd be losin' her only child.
And I think, as I wait up ivery night for me Dinnis to come home blind,
And I'm hearin' his stumblin' foot on the stair along about half-past three:
Sure there's many a way of breakin' a heart, and I haven't made up me mind - 
Would I be Missis Moriarty, or Missis Moriarty me?
Catkins
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
Misty are the far-off hills
And misty are the near;
Purple hazes dimly lie
Veiling hill and field and sky,
Marshes where the hylas cry,
Like a myriad bills
Piping, "Spring is here!"
II.
A redbird flits,
Then sings and sits
And calls to his mate,
"She is late! she is late!
How long, how long must the woodland wait
For its emerald plumes
And its jewelled blooms?
She is late! she is late!"
III.
Along the stream,
A cloudy gleam,
The pussy-willows, tufted white,
Make of each tree a mighty light;
Pearl and silver and glimmering gray
They tassel the boughs of the willow way;
And as they swing they seem to say,
With mouths of bloom
And warm perfume:
IV.
"Awake! awake!
For young Spring's sake,
O little brown bees in hive and brake!
Awake! awake!
For sweet Spring's sake,
O butterflies whose wild wings ache
With colors rare
As flowers wear!
And hither, hither,
Before we wither!
Oh, come to us,
All amorous
With honey for your mouths to buss.
V.
"Hearken! hearken!
Last night we heard
A wondrous word:
When dusk did darken
The rain and the wind sat in these boughs,
As in a great and shadowy house.
At first we deemed
We only dreamed,
And then it seemed
We heard them whisper of things to be,
The wind and the rain in the willow tree,
A sweet, delicious conspiracy,
To take the world with witchery:
They talked of the fairy brotherhoods
Of blooms and blossoms and leaves and buds,
That ambushed under the winter mold
And under the bark of the forest old:
And they took our breath
With the shibboleth,
The secret word that casts off death,
That word of life no man may guess;
That wondrous word
Which we then heard,
That bids life rise
Beneath the skies;
Rise up and fill
Far wood and hill
With myriad hosts of loveliness,
Invading beauty that love shall bless.
VI.
"Then in our ears,
Our woolly ears,
Our little ears of willow bloom,
Like wild perfume
We seemed to hear dim woodland cheers
Of hosts of flowers
That soon would run
Through fields and bowers,
And to the sun
Lift high their banners of blue and gold,
And storm the ways of the woodland old.
VII.
"Awake! awake!
For young Spring's sake,
O hylas sleeping in marsh and lake!
Tune up your pipes and play, play, play!
Tune, tune your reeds in ooze and clay,
And pipe and sing
Till everything
Knows, gladly knows,
Sowing the rose,
The lily and rose,
With her breast blown bare
And the wind in her hair,
And the birds around her everywhere,
The Spring, the Spring.
The young witch Spring,
With lilt and laughter, and rain and ray,
Comes swiftly, wildly up this way."
Montcalm.
by W. M. MacKeracher

"Ce n'est rien, ce n'est rien; ne vous affligez pas pour moi, mes bonnes amies."
Montcalm, calm mount, thou didst not faint nor fail
At that fierce volley from thy foemen near,
Nor at the charge's deafening prelude quail, -
The Highland slogan and the Saxon cheer.
But thou, even thou, couldst not withstand the shock
That broke and bore precipitately on
Tried regiments, La Sarre and Languedoc,
B'arn, Guienne and Royal Roussillon.
Thou couldst but fight as heroes e'er have fought,
With that high self-devotion which transcends
Vain-glorious victory: "'Tis naught, 'tis naught;
Fret not yourselves on my account, good friends,"
Yet 'twas thy mortal wound. Such words express
True chivalry and Christlike nobleness.
Dawn.
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
Mist on the mountain height
Silvery creeping;
Incarnate beads of light
Bloom-cradled sleeping,
Dripped from the brow of Night.
II.
Shadows, and winds that rise
Over the mountain;
Stars in the spar that lies
Cold in the fountain,
Pale as the quickened skies.
III.
Sheep in the wattled folds
Dreamily bleating,
Dim on the thistled wolds,
Where, glad with meeting,
Morn the thin Night enfolds.
IV.
Sleep on the moaning sea
Hushing his trouble;
Rest on the cares that be
Hued in Life's bubble,
Calm on the woes of me....
V.
Mist from the mountain height
Hurriedly fleeting;
Star in the locks of Night
Throbbing and beating,
Thrilled with the coming light.
VI.
Flocks on the musky strips;
Pearl in the fountain;
Winds from the forest's lips;
Red on the mountain;
Dawn from the Orient trips.