DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Fragment - Moonrise At Sea.
by Madison Julius Cawein

With lips that were hoarse with a fury
Of foam and of winds that are strewn,
Of storm and of turbulent hurry,
The ocean roared, heralding soon
A birth of miraculous glory,
Of madness, affection - the moon.
And soon from her waist with a slipping
And shudder and clinging of light,
With a loos'ning and pushing and ripping
Of the raven-laced bodice of Night,
With a silence of feet and a dripping
The goddess came, virginal white.
And the air was alive with the twinkle
And tumult of silver-shod feet,
The hurling of stars, and the sprinkle
Of loose, lawny limbs and a sweet
Murmur and whisper and tinkle
Of beam-weaponed moon spirits fleet.
New Worlds. (Moods Of Love.)
by George Parsons Lathrop

With my beloved I lingered late one night.
At last the hour when I must leave her came:
But, as I turned, a fear I could not name
Possessed me that the long sweet evening might
Prelude some sudden storm, whereby delight
Should perish. What if Death, ere dawn, should claim
One of us? What, though living, not the same
Each should appear to each in morning-light?
Changed did I find her, truly, the next day:
Ne'er could I see her as of old again.
That strange mood seemed to draw a cloud away,
And let her beauty pour through every vein
Sunlight and life, part of me. Thus the lover
With each new morn a new world may discover.
To John Taylor.
by Robert Burns

With Pegasus upon a day,
Apollo weary flying,
Through frosty hills the journey lay,
On foot the way was plying,
Poor slip-shod giddy Pegasus
Was but a sorry walker;
To Vulcan then Apollo goes,
To get a frosty calker.
Obliging Vulcan fell to work,
Threw by his coat and bonnet,
And did Sol's business in a crack;
Sol paid him with a sonnet.
Ye Vulcan's sons of Wanlockhead,
Pity my sad disaster;
My Pegasus is poorly shod,
I'll pay you like my master.
ROBERT BURNS.
Ramages, 3 o'clock, (no date.)
A Vindication Of The Libel; Or, A New Ballad, Written By A Shoe-Boy, On An Attorney Who Was Formerly A Shoe-Boy
by Jonathan Swift

"Qui color ater erat, nunc est contrarius atro."[1]
With singing of ballads, and crying of news,
With whitening of buckles, and blacking of shoes,
Did Hartley set out, both shoeless and shirtless,
And moneyless too, but not very dirtless;
Two pence he had gotten by begging, that's all;
One bought him a brush, and one a black ball;
For clouts at a loss he could not be much,
The clothes on his back as being but such;
Thus vamp'd and accoutred, with clouts, ball, and brush,
He gallantly ventured his fortune to push:
Vespasian[2] thus, being bespatter'd with dirt,
Was omen'd to be Rome's emperor for't.
But as a wise fiddler is noted, you know,
To have a good couple of strings to one bow;
So Hartley[3] judiciously thought it too little,
To live by the sweat of his hands and his spittle:
He finds out another profession as fit,
And straight he becomes a retailer of wit.
One day he cried - "Murders, and songs, and great news!"
Another as loudly - "Here blacken your shoes!"
At Domvile's[4] full often he fed upon bits,
For winding of jacks up, and turning of spits;
Lick'd all the plates round, had many a grubbing,
And now and then got from the cook-maid a drubbing;
Such bastings effect upon him could have none:
The dog will be patient that's struck with a bone.
Sir Thomas, observing this Hartley withal
So expert and so active at brushes and ball,
Was moved with compassion, and thought it a pity
A youth should be lost, that had been so witty:
Without more ado, he vamps up my spark,
And now we'll suppose him an eminent clerk!
Suppose him an adept in all the degrees
Of scribbling cum dasho, and hooking of fees;
Suppose him a miser, attorney, per bill,
Suppose him a courtier - suppose what you will - 
Yet, would you believe, though I swore by the Bible,
That he took up two news-boys for crying the libel?
The Looking-Glass.
by Alexander Pope

ON MRS PULTENEY.[81]
With scornful mien, and various toss of air,
Fantastic, vain, and insolently fair,
Grandeur intoxicates her giddy brain,
She looks ambition, and she moves disdain.
Far other carriage graced her virgin life,
But charming Gumley's lost in Pulteney's wife.
Not greater arrogance in him we find,
And this conjunction swells at least her mind:
Oh could the sire, renown'd in glass, produce
One faithful mirror for his daughter's use!
Wherein she might her haughty errors trace,
And by reflection learn to mend her face:
The wonted sweetness to her form restore,
Be what she was, and charm mankind once more!
The Bier Of Precentor A. Reitan (1872)
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

(See Note 56)
With smiles his soft eyes ever gleamed,
When God and country thinking;
With endless joy, his soul, it seemed,
Faith, fatherland, was linking.
His word, his song,
Like springs flowed strong;
They fruitful made the valley long,
And quickened all there drinking.
Poor people and poor homes among
In wintry region saddest,
In Sunday's choir he always sung,
Of all the world the gladdest:
"The axis stout
It turns about,
Falls not the poorest home without,
For thus, O God, Thou badest."
With sickness came a heavy year
And put to proof his singing,
While helpless children standing near
His trust to test were bringing.
But glad the more,
As soft notes soar
When winds o'er hidden harp-strings pour,
His song his soul was winging.
His life foretold us that erelong
With faith in God unshaken
Shall all our nation stand in song,
And church, home, school, awaken,
In Norway's song,
In gladness' song,
In glory of the Lord's own song,
From life's low squalor taken.
Fair fatherland, do not forget,
The children of his bower!
He, poor as is the rosebush, yet
Gave gladness till death's hour - 
With failure's smart
Let not depart
From this thy soil so glad a heart, - 
His garden, let it flower!
Lines For A Sun-Dial
by Alfred Noyes

With shadowy pen I write,
Till time be done,
Good news of some strange light,
Some far off sun.
With Ships The Sea Was Sprinkled Far And Nigh
by William Wordsworth

With ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh,
Like stars in heaven, and joyously it showed;
Some lying fast at anchor in the road,
Some veering up and down, one knew not why.
A goodly vessel did I then espy
Come like a giant from a haven broad;
And lustily along the bay she strode,
Her tackling rich, and of apparel high.
The ship was nought to me, nor I to her,
Yet I pursued her with a lover's look;
This ship to all the rest did I prefer:
When will she turn, and whither? She will brook
No tarrying; where she comes the winds must stir:
On went she, and due north her journey took.
To Caleb Hardinge, M.D.
by Mark Akenside

With sordid floods the wintry Urn
Hath stain'd fair Richmond's level green:
Her naked hill the Dryads mourn,
No longer a poetic scene.
No longer there thy raptur'd eye
The beauteous forms of earth or sky
Surveys as in their Author's mind:
And London shelters from the year
Those whom thy social hours to share
The Attic Muse design'd.
From Hampstead's airy summit me
Her guest the city shall behold,
What day the people's stern decree
To unbelieving kings is told,
When common men (the dread of fame)
Adjudg'd as one of evil name,
Before the sun, the anointed head.
Then seek thou too the pious town,
With no unworthy cares to crown
That evening's awful shade.
Deem not I call thee to deplore
The sacred martyr of the day,
By fast and penitential lore
To purge our ancient guilt away.
For this, on humble faith I rest
That still our advocate, the priest,
From heavenly wrath will save the land;
Nor ask what rites our pardon gain,
Nor how his potent sounds restrain
The thunderer's lifted hand.
No, Hardinge: peace to church and state!
That evening, let the Muse give law:
While I anew the theme relate
Which my first youth inamor'd saw.
Then will I oft explore thy thought,
What to reject which Locke hath taught,
What to pursue in Virgil's lay:
Till hope ascends to loftiest things,
Nor envies demagogues or kings
Their frail and vulgar sway.
O vers'd in all the human frame,
Lead thou where'er my labor lies,
And English fancy's eager flame
To Grecian purity chastize:
While hand in hand, at wisdom's shrine,
Beauty with truth I strive to join,
And grave assent with glad applause;
To paint the story of the soul,
And Plato's visions to control
By Verulamian laws.
To Giorgio Vasari. On The Lives Of The Painters.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Se con lo stile.
With pencil and with palette hitherto
You made your art high Nature's paragon;
Nay more, from Nature her own prize you won,
Making what she made fair more fair to view.
Now that your learn'd hand with labour new
Of pen and ink a worthier work hath done,
What erst you lacked, what still remained her own,
The power of giving life, is gained for you.
If men in any age with Nature vied
In beauteous workmanship, they had to yield
When to the fated end years brought their name.
You, reilluming memories that died,
In spite of Time and Nature have revealed
For them and for yourself eternal fame.
The Lily Land Of France.
by A. H. Laidlaw

With pensive memories
We part the Ocean foam,
To find 'neath summer skies
A country and a home.
O lily land of France,
Farewell! Farewell, Paris! (Pa-ree)
Farewell to Life's romance!
Welcome the sounding sea!
Soon, soon, our fading forms
Recede into the sea,
Which, dark with all its storms,
Will veil our hearts from thee.
O lily land of France,
Farewell! Farewell, Paris!
Farewell to Life's romance!
Welcome the sounding sea!
In vain, in farther climes,
Athwart the sweeping sea,
We seek, in other times,
The heaven we've lost in thee.
O lily land of France,
Farewell! Farewell, Paris!
Farewell to Life's romance!
Welcome the sounding sea!
The Soul's Expression
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

With stammering lips and insufficient sound
I strive and struggle to deliver right
That music of my nature, day and night
With dream and thought and feeling interwound
And inly answering all the senses round
With octaves of a mystic depth and height
Which step out grandly to the infinite
From the dark edges of the sensual ground.
This song of soul I struggle to outbear
Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole,
And utter all myself into the air:
But if I did it, as the thunder-roll
Breaks its own cloud, my flesh would perish there,
Before that dread apocalypse of soul.
The Best Of Life
by Madison Julius Cawein

With soul self-blind
Do n't struggle on merely at last to find
The best of life, the dream, is left behind.
Why desperately!
Struggle and strive? after long years to see
Substance alone has no reality.
To find, alas!
The starry glitter in the mountain pass,
The light you climbed for is no star, but glass.
Help, one and all!
Dreamers we need, not workmen, for the wall
The Tower of Beauty that shall never fall.
Lowell.
by James McIntyre

With pleasure we would love to dwell
On the charming themes of Lowell.
Omarism
by Victor James Daley

With pen in hand and pipe in mouth,
And claret iced to quench my drouth,
I sit upon my balcony
That overlooks the sparkling sea,
Serenly gay, and cool, and bland
With pipe in mouth and pen in hand.
This life I think is beautiful,
When at the jug I take a pull.
The harbor shines like azure silk;
The claret tastes like mother's milk;
Then to the pipe I turn again
And then I trifle with the pen.
The red-faced neighbors townward go;
The air is in a furnace glow.
I watch them scorching as they pass,
Like flies beneath a burning glass
Each clutching at the red-hot hour
For coin; their folly turns me sour.
The Business Man may fret and sweat
In his black coat, for etiquette,
And grow in shop and office old,
And gather wrinkles with his gold
I sit in shirt-sleeves cool and bland,
With pipe in mouth and pen in hand.
The white clouds - idle they as I
Like dreaming gods, at leisure lie
Upon the hill-crests. Smoke upcurls
From chimneys lazily, and girls
Below me, with bare, brown arms fine,
Are pegging linen on a line.
The great ships, from the world outside,
Steam slowly in with stately pride,
Their giant screws now gently spin;
'Tis good to watch them gliding in
From East, and West, and North, and South,
With jug in hand and pipe in mouth.
These visions fill me with content,
And I remember not the rent.
When with cool breezes comes the night
It will be time enough to write.
Then you shall see me start the band
With pipe in mouth and pen in hand.
Pel'e: May 8, 1902
by Paul Cameron Brown

With the smile of morning
in her purse,
the dark laughter of her
cat napping
in the crevice, half-alert,
Martinique (angelique)
on padded paws
climbs from night.
I saw her hair-brush
the lava to warm the bay,
crinkle little St. Pierre
jammed into one
parking lot, volcanic embrace.
In the little museum
- the holocaust cenotaph - 
Nature pared essentials to the bone,
a cauldron of smoke
peers from old photographs
to cement (danse macabre)
bric ' brac ivy/stone and
coffee beans wedded
in grandeur
fission-fusion-froideur
resembling masses of bees,
grotesqueries & beards
upstaging even Miro & the distant surrealists;
where reality masked vampire fiction to
roll sulphuric heat toward belches of
St. Pierre's prison.
And Cygnet
(his name close in French to "Swan"
leg-irons)
(subterranean chamberling peeking out),
undaunted solitary survivor - 
the bars on his charnel house
were the fingers of God
pointing the way free.
Sonnets - II - The New Year
by Mary Hannay Foott

With supple boughs and new-born leaflets crowned,
Rejoicing in fresh verdure stands the tree,
Though weather-scarred and scooped by fire may be
Its ancient trunk. So may our lives be found
(God leaving still our roots within His ground.)
Where gaps of loss and waste show brokenly
May each new year that comes to greet us see
Branches, and foliage, and flowers abound.
Where Fortune, spoiling wayfarer, hath left
Unsightly rents, may garlands spring apace.
And if, perchance, some pitiless wind hath reft
Away what newer green shall ne'er replace,
May heaven-light come the closer for the cleft
O'er which no tender fronds shall interlace.
Cowslips
by Walter Savage Landor

With rosy hand a little girl press'd down
A boss of fresh-cull'd cowslips in a rill:
Often as they sprang up again, a frown
Show'd she dislik'd resistance to her will:
But when they droop'd their heads and shone much less,
She shook them to and fro, and threw them by,
And tripp'd away. 'Ye loathe the heaviness
Ye love to cause, my little girls!' thought I,
'And what has shone for you, by you must die!'
Union Square
by Sara Teasdale

With the man I love who loves me not,
I walked in the street-lamps' flare;
We watched the world go home that night
In a flood through Union Square.
I leaned to catch the words he said
That were light as a snowflake falling;
Ah well that he never leaned to hear
The words my heart was calling.
And on we walked and on we walked
Past the fiery lights of the picture shows
Where the girls with thirsty eyes go by
On the errand each man knows.
And on we walked and on we walked,
At the door at last we said good-bye;
I knew by his smile he had not heard
My heart's unuttered cry.
With the man I love who loves me not
I walked in the street-lamps' flare
But oh, the girls who can ask for love
In the lights of Union Square.
Desire
by George William Russell

With thee a moment! Then what dreams have play!
Traditions of eternal toil arise,
Search for the high austere and lonely way
The Spirit moves in through eternities.
Ah, in the soul what memories arise!
And with what yearning inexpressible,
Rising from long forgetfulness I turn
To Thee, invisible, unrumoured, still:
White for Thy whiteness all desires burn.
Ah, with what longing once again I turn!
A Sower
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

With sanguine looks
And rolling walk
Among the rooks
He loved to stalk,
While on the land
With gusty laugh
From a full hand
He scattered chaff.
Now that within
His spirit sleeps
A harvest thin
The sickle reaps;
But the dumb fields
Desire his tread,
And no earth yields
A wheat more red.
The Looking-Glass. : On Mrs. Pulteney
by Alexander Pope

With scornful mien, and various toss of air,
Fantastic vain, and insolently fair,
Grandeur intoxicates her giddy brain,
She looks ambition, and she moves disdain.
Far other carriage grac'd her virgin life,
But charming G'-y's lost in P''y's wife.
Not greater arrogance in him we find,
And this conjunction swells at least her mind:
O could the sire renown'd in glass, produce
One faithful mirror for his daughter's use!
Wherein she might her haughty errors trace,
And by reflection learn to mend her face:
The wonted sweetness to her form restore,
Be what she was, and charm mankind once more!
Mrs. Merdle Goes To Market.
by Horatio Alger, Jr.

With prices outrageous they charge now for meat,
And servants so worthless are every day growing,
I wonder we get half enough now to eat,
And shouldn't if 't want for the fact of my going
To market to cheapen potatoes and beef,
And talk to the butchers about their abuses,
And listen to stories beyond our belief,
They tell while they cheat us, by way of excuses.
And grocers--do tell us--is 't legal to charge
Such prices for sugar, and butter, and flour?
Oh, why don't the Mayor in his wisdom enlarge
Both weight and measure as he does 'doubtful power?'
Imagination.
by Margaret Steele Anderson

With the old gods thou walkest, 'mid the leaf
And bloom of ancient morning and of light;
Thou die'st with Christ, and with the nailed thief
That dies upon his left hand and his right.
Yea, thou descendest into hell, and then
To the last heaven dost take thy road sublime;
Thine hostelries the secret souls of men,
Thy servants all the fleeting things of time!
The Newly Dead.
by Charles Hamilton Musgrove

I.
With the light just quenched in their eyes
They lie in their graves 'neath the skies,
And the fresh clod rests
Heavy upon their breasts.
The white rose dies
Upon the new-made mound, and underneath
The lily shrivels in the shriveling hand.
Pale guests of sovereign Death,
They sought their silent beds at his command,
And it seems
Strange that their life-long dreams
Shall find them no more,--never bid them arise
And go forth with a glory in their eyes.
II.
Still, voiceless, cold,
They lie in their shrouds and hold
The crumbling links that make
A chain for Memory's sake,
Broken, alas! too soon.
Blithe morn and brazen noon
And eve with garb of gray and gold,
Know them no more in the dark ways they take.
They have forgot the sun,
And the fiery worlds that run
About it. Something--(what, let no man say,)--
Begot of mystery is in mystery done:
The rest shall be with them and God alway.
Upon A Dying Lady
by William Butler Yeats

I
Her Courtesy
With the old kindness, the old distinguished grace
She lies, her lovely piteous head amid dull red hair
Propped upon pillows, rouge on the pallor of her face.
She would not have us sad because she is lying there,
And when she meets our gaze her eyes are laughter-lit,
Her speech a wicked tale that we may vie with her
Matching our broken-hearted wit against her wit,
Thinking of saints and of Petronius Arbiter.
II
Certain Artists bring her Dolls and Drawings
Bring where our Beauty lies
A new modelled doll, or drawing,
With a friend's or an enemy's
Features, or maybe showing
Her features when a tress
Of dull red hair was flowing
Over some silken dress
Cut in the Turkish fashion,
Or it may be like a boy's.
We have given the world our passion
We have naught for death but toys.
III
She turns the Dolls' Faces to the Wall
Because to-day is some religious festival
They had a priest say Mass, and even the Japanese,
Heel up and weight on toe, must face the wall
'Pedant in passion, learned in old courtesies,
Vehement and witty she had seemed'; the Venetian lady
Who had seemed to glide to some intrigue in her red shoes,
Her domino, her panniered skirt copied from Longhi;
The meditative critic; all are on their toes,
Even our Beauty with her Turkish trousers on.
Because the priest must have like every dog his day
Or keep us all awake with baying at the moon,
We and our dolls being but the world were best away.
IV
The End of Day
She is playing like a child
And penance is the play,
Fantastical and wild
Because the end of day
Shows her that some one soon
Will come from the house, and say'
Though play is but half-done'
'Come in and leave the play.''
V
Her Race
She has not grown uncivil
As narrow natures would
And called the pleasures evil
Happier days thought good;
She knows herself a woman
No red and white of a face,
Or rank, raised from a common
Unreckonable race;
And how should her heart fail her
Or sickness break her will
With her dead brother's valour
For an example still.
VI
Her Courage
When her soul flies to the predestined dancing-place
(I have no speech but symbol, the pagan speech I made
Amid the dreams of youth) let her come face to face,
While wondering still to be a shade, with Grania's shade
All but the perils of the woodland flight forgot
That made her Dermuid dear, and some old cardinal
Pacing with half-closed eyelids in a sunny spot
Who had murmured of Giorgione at his latest breath'
Aye and Achilles, Timor, Babar, Barhaim, all
Who have lived in joy and laughed into the face of Death.
VII
Her Friends bring her a Christmas Tree
Pardon, great enemy,
Without an angry thought
We've carried in our tree,
And here and there have bought
Till all the boughs are gay,
And she may look from the bed
On pretty things that may
Please a fantastic head.
Give her a little grace,
What if a laughing eye
Have looked into your face'
It is about to die.
Yellow Hair
by Paul Cameron Brown

With that lime green hairnet
commonly used by butterfly dispatchers - 
something your aunt might have commandeered
to put her hair up donkey's years ago,
I unjarred the bottle of air &
with a pair of forceps
tried to wrangle the life juices
from a Polyphemeus[1] in a manner akin to Ulysses
in that cave three millenia ago;
his gentle bleating like the whine
of the net across the gelatin fabric
of air or the flash of a tomahawk gliding
across Custer's golden hair.
Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - LIV
by Alfred Edward Housman

With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.
By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.
Prologue To "Arvirgus And Philicia Revived."
by John Dryden

BY LODOWICK CARLELL, ESQ., 1690.
SPOKEN BY MR HART.
With sickly actors and an old house too,
We're match'd with glorious theatres and new;
And with our alehouse scenes, and clothes bare worn,
Can neither raise old plays, nor new adorn.
If all these ills could not undo us quite,
A brisk French troop is grown your dear delight;
Who with broad bloody bills call you each day
To laugh and break your buttons at their play;
Or see some serious piece, which we presume
Is fallen from some incomparable plume;
And therefore, Messieurs, if you'll do us grace,
Send lackeys early to preserve your place.
We dare not on your privilege intrench,
Or ask you why you like them? they are French.
Therefore some go, with courtesy exceeding,
Neither to hear nor see, but show their breeding:
Each lady striving to out-laugh the rest;
To make it seem they understood the jest.
Their countrymen come in, and nothing pay,
To teach us English where to clap the play:
Civil, egad! our hospitable land
Bears all the charge, for them to understand:
Mean time we languish and neglected lie,
Like wives, while you keep better company;
And wish for your own sakes, without a satire,
You'd less good breeding, or had more good nature.