DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
A Helpmeet For Him.
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Woman was made for man's delight, -
Charm, O woman! Be not afraid!
His shadow by day, his moon by night,
Woman was made.
Her strength with weakness is overlaid;
Meek compliances veil her might;
Him she stays, by whom she is stayed.
World-wide champion of truth and right,
Hope in gloom, and in danger aid,
Tender and faithful, ruddy and white,
Woman was made.
The Symphony
by Alfred Noyes

Wonder in happy eyes
Fades, fades away:
And the angel-coloured skies
Whisper farewell.
Loveliness over the strings of the heart may stray
In fugitive melodies;
But Oh, the hand of the Master must not stay,
Even for a breath;
For to prolong one joy, or even to dwell
On one rich chord of pain,
Beyond the pulse of the song, would untune heaven
And drown the stars in death.
So youth with its love-note dies;
And beauty fades in the air,
To make the master-symphony immortal,
And find new life and deeper wonder there.
The Father.
by Friedrich Schiller

Work as much as thou wilt, alone thou'lt be standing forever,
Till by nature thou'rt joined forcibly on to the whole.
With A Book
by Ambrose Bierce

Words shouting, singing, smiling, frowning
Sense lacking.
Ah, nothing, more obscure than Browning,
Save blacking.
Restlessness.*
by Emma Lazarus

Would I had waked this morn where Florence smiles,
A-bloom with beauty, a white rose full-blown,
Yet rich in sacred dust, in storied stone,
Precious past all the wealth of Indian isles - 
From olive-hoary Fiesole to feed
On Brunelleschi's dome my hungry eye,
And see against the lotus-colored sky,
Spring the slim belfry graceful as a reed.
To kneel upon the ground where Dante trod,
To breathe the air of immortality
From Angelo and Raphael - TO BE - 
Each sense new-quickened by a demi-god.
To hear the liquid Tuscan speech at whiles,
From citizen and peasant, to behold
The heaven of Leonardo washed with gold - 
Would I had waked this morn where Florence smile!
The Turning Of The Babies In The Bed
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Woman's sho' a cur'ous critter, an' dey ain't no doubtin' dat.
She's a mess o' funny capahs f'om huh slippahs to huh hat.
Ef you tries to un'erstan' huh, an' you fails, des' up an' say:
"D' ain't a bit o' use to try to un'erstan' a woman's way."
I don' mean to be complainin', but I 's jes' a-settin' down
Some o' my own obserwations, w'en I cas' my eye eroun'.
Ef you ax me fu' to prove it, I ken do it mighty fine,
Fu' dey ain't no bettah 'zample den dis ve'y wife o' mine.
In de ve'y hea't o' midnight, w'en I 's sleepin' good an' soun',
I kin hyeah a so't o' rustlin' an' somebody movin' 'roun'.
An' I say, "Lize, whut you doin'?" But she frown an' shek huh haid,
"Heish yo' mouf, I's only tu'nin' of de chillun in de bed.
"Don' you know a chile gits restless, layin' all de night one way?
An' you' got to kind o' 'range him sev'al times befo' de day?
So de little necks won't worry, an' de little backs won't break;
Don' you t'ink case chillun 's chillun dey hain't got no pain an' ache."
So she shakes 'em, an' she twists 'em, an' she tu'ns 'em 'roun' erbout,
'Twell I don' see how de chillun evah keeps f'om hollahin' out.
Den she lif's 'em up head down'ards, so's dey won't git livahgrown,
But dey snoozes des' ez peaceful ez a liza'd on a stone.
W'en hit's mos' nigh time fu' wakin' on de dawn o' jedgment day,
Seems lak I kin hyeah ol' Gab'iel lay his trumpet down an' say,
"Who dat walkin' 'roun' so easy, down on earf ermong de dead?"--
'T will be Lizy up a-tu'nin' of de chillun in de bed.
Sestet - Sent To A Friend With A Volume Of Tennyson
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Wouldst know the clash of knightly steel on steel?
Or list the throstle singing loud and clear?
Or walk at twilight by some haunted mere
In Surrey; or in throbbing London feel
Life's pulse at highest--hark, the minster's peal! . . .
Turn but the page, that various world is here!
The Key.
by Friedrich Schiller

Wouldst thou know thyself, observe the actions of others.
Wouldst thou other men know, look thou within thine own heart.
Satires Of Circumstances In Fifteen Glimpses - IV In The Room Of The Bride-Elect
by Thomas Hardy

"Would it had been the man of our wish!"
Sighs her mother. To whom with vehemence she
In the wedding-dress the wife to be -
"Then why were you so mollyish
As not to insist on him for me!"
The mother, amazed: "Why, dearest one,
Because you pleaded for this or none!"
"But Father and you should have stood out strong!
Since then, to my cost, I have lived to find
That you were right and that I was wrong;
This man is a dolt to the one declined . . .
Ah! here he comes with his button-hole rose.
Good God I must marry him I suppose!"
In Time Of Wars And Tumults
by Thomas Hardy

"Would that I'd not drawn breath here!" some one said,
"To stalk upon this stage of evil deeds,
Where purposelessly month by month proceeds
A play so sorely shaped and blood-bespread."
Yet had his spark not quickened, but lain dead
To the gross spectacles of this our day,
And never put on the proffered cloak of clay,
He had but known not things now manifested;
Life would have swirled the same. Morns would have dawned
On the uprooting by the night-gun's stroke
Of what the yester noonshine brought to flower;
Brown martial brows in dying throes have wanned
Despite his absence; hearts no fewer been broke
By Empery's insatiate lust of power.
1915.
Titian
by Vachel Lindsay

Would that such hills and cities round us sang,
Such vistas of the actual earth and man
As kindled Titian when his life began;
Would that this latter Greek could put his gold,
Wisdom and splendor in our brushes bold
Till Greece and Venice, children of the sun,
Become our every-day, and we aspire
To colors fairer far, and glories higher.
The Artifice.
by Friedrich Schiller

Wouldst thou give pleasure at once to the children of earth and the righteous?
Draw the image of lust adding the devil as well!
St. Francis of Assisi
by Vachel Lindsay

Would I might wake St. Francis in you all,
Brother of birds and trees, God's Troubadour,
Blinded with weeping for the sad and poor;
Our wealth undone, all strict Franciscan men,
Come, let us chant the canticle again
Of mother earth and the enduring sun.
God make each soul the lonely leper's slave;
God make us saints, and brave.
Sunrise
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Would you know what joy is hid
In our green Musketaquid,
And for travelled eyes what charms
Draw us to these meadow farms,
Come and I will show you all
Makes each day a festival.
Stand upon this pasture hill,
Face the eastern star until
The slow eye of heaven shall show
The world above, the world below.
Behold the miracle!
Thou saw'st but now the twilight sad
And stood beneath the firmament,
A watchman in a dark gray tent,
Waiting till God create the earth,--
Behold the new majestic birth!
The mottled clouds, like scraps of wool,
Steeped in the light are beautiful.
What majestic stillness broods
Over these colored solitudes.
Sleeps the vast East in pleas'd peace,
Up the far mountain walls the streams increase
Inundating the heaven
With spouting streams and waves of light
Which round the floating isles unite:--
See the world below
Baptized with the pure element,
A clear and glorious firmament
Touched with life by every beam.
I share the good with every flower,
I drink the nectar of the hour:--
This is not the ancient earth
Whereof old chronicles relate
The tragic tales of crime and fate;
But rather, like its beads of dew
And dew-bent violets, fresh and new,
An exhalation of the time.
The Channel Swimmer
by Marriott Edgar

Would you hear a wild tale of adventure
Of a hero who tackled the sea,
A super-man swimming the ocean,
Then hark to the tale of Joe Lee.
Our Channel, our own Straits of Dover
Had heen swum by an alien lot:
Our British-born swimmers had tried it,
But that was as far as they'd got.
So great was the outcry in England,
Darts Players neglected their beer,
And the Chanc'Ior proclaimed from the Woolsack
As Joe Lee were the chap for this 'ere.
For in swimming baths all round the country
Joe were noted for daring and strength;
Quite often he'd dived in the deep end,
And thought nothing of swimming a length.
So they wrote him, care of Workhouse Master,
Joe were spending the summer with him,
And promised him two Christmas puddings
If over the Channel he'd swim.
Joe jumped into t' breach like an 'ero,
He said, "All their fears I'll relieve,
And it isn't their puddings I'm after,
As I told them last Christmas Eve.
"Though many have tackled the Channel
From Grisnez to Dover that is,
For the honour and glory of England
I'll swim from Dover to Gris-niz."
As soon as his words were made public
The newspapers gathered around
And offered to give him a pension
If he lost both his legs and got drowned.
He borrowed a tug from the Navy
To swim in the shelter alee,
The Wireless folk lent him a wavelength,
And the Water Board lent him the sea.
His wife strapped a mascot around him,
The tears to his eyes gently stole;
'Twere some guiness corks she had collected
And stitched to an old camisole.
He entered the water at daybreak,
A man with a camera stood near,
He said "Hurry up and get in, lad,
You're spoiling my view of the pier."
At last he were in, he were swimming
With a beautiful overarm stroke,
When the men on the tug saw with horror
That the rope he were tied to had broke.
Then down came a fog, thick as treacle,
The tug looked so distant and dim
A voice shouted "Help, I am drowning,"
Joe listened and found it were him.
The tug circled round till they found him,
They hauled him aboard like a sack,
Tied a new tow-rope around him,
Smacked him and then threw him back.
'Twere at sunset, or just a bit later,
That he realized all wasn't right,
For the tow-rope were trailing behind him
And the noose round his waist getting tight.
One hasty glance over his shoulder,
He saw in a flash what were wrong.
The Captain had shut off his engine,
Joe were towing the Tugboat along.
On and on through the darkness he paddled
Till he knew he were very near in
By the way he kept bumping the bottom
And hitting the stones with his chin.
Was it Grisniz he'd reached?... No, it wasn't,
The treacherous tide in its track
Had carried him half-way to Blackpool
And he had to walk all the way back.
Epitaph On Elizabeth
by Ben Jonson

Wouldst thou hear what man can say
In a little? Reader, stay.
Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die;
Which in life did harbor give
To more virture than doth live.
If at all she had a fault,
Leave it buried in this vault.
One name was Elizabeth,
Th' other let it sleep with death;
Fitter, where it died to tell,
Than that it lived at all. Farewell.
Knowledge
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Would you believe in Presences Unseen - 
In life beyond this earthly life?
BE STILL:    Be stiller yet; and listen.    Set the screen
Of silence at the portal of your will.
Relax, and let the world go by unheard.
And seal your lips with some all-sacred word.
Breathe 'God,' in any tongue - it means the same;
LOVE ABSOLUTE:    Think, feel, absorb the thought;
Shut out all else; until a subtle flame
(A spark from God's creative centre caught)
Shall permeate your being, and shall glow,
Increasing in its splendour, till, YOU KNOW.
Not in a moment, or an hour, or day
The knowledge comes; the power is far too great,
To win in any desultory way.
No soul is worthy till it learns to wait.
Day after day be patient, then, oh, soul;
Month after month - till, lo! the goal! the goal!
Hymn To Aristogeiton And Harmodius
by Edgar Allan Poe

I
Wreathed in myrtle, my sword I'll conceal,
Like those champions devoted and brave,
When they plunged in the tyrant their steel,
And to Athens deliverance gave.
II
Beloved heroes! your deathless souls roam
In the joy breathing isles of the blest;
Where the mighty of old have their home,
Where Achilles and Diomed rest.
III
In fresh myrtle my blade I'll entwine,
Like Harmodius, the gallant and good,
When he made at the tutelar shrine
A libation of Tyranny's blood.
IV
Ye deliverers of Athens from shame!
Ye avengers of Liberty's wrongs!
Endless ages shall cherish your fame,
Embalmed in their echoing songs!
Concerning Emperors
by Vachel Lindsay

I. God Send the Regicide
Would that the lying rulers of the world
Were brought to block for tyrannies abhorred.
Would that the sword of Cromwell and the Lord,
The sword of Joshua and Gideon,
Hewed hip and thigh the hosts of Midian.
God send that ironside ere tomorrow's sun;
Let Gabriel and Michael with him ride.
God send the Regicide.
II. A Colloquial Reply: To Any Newsboy
If you lay for Iago at the stage door with a brick
You have missed the moral of the play.
He will have a midnight supper with Othello and his wife.
They will chirp together and be gay.
But the things Iago stands for must go down into the dust:
Lying and suspicion and conspiracy and lust.
And I cannot hate the Kaiser (I hope you understand.)
Yet I chase the thing he stands for with a brickbat in my hand.
Buddha
by Vachel Lindsay

Would that by Hindu magic we became
Dark monks of jeweled India long ago,
Sitting at Prince Siddartha's feet to know
The foolishness of gold and love and station,
The gospel of the Great Renunciation,
The ragged cloak, the staff, the rain and sun,
The beggar's life, with far Nirvana gleaming:
Lord, make us Buddhas, dreaming.
A Ditty Of No Tone.
by James Whitcomb Riley

Piped to the Spirit of John Keats.
I.
Would that my lips might pour out in thy praise
A fitting melody - an air sublime, - 
A song sun-washed and draped in dreamy haze - 
The floss and velvet of luxurious rhyme:
A lay wrought of warm languors, and o'er-brimmed
With balminess, and fragrance of wild flowers
Such as the droning bee ne'er wearies of - 
Such thoughts as might be hymned
To thee from this midsummer land of ours
Through shower and sunshine blent for very love.
II.
Deep silences in woody aisles wherethrough
Cool paths go loitering, and where the trill
Of best-remembered birds hath something new
In cadence for the hearing - lingering still
Through all the open day that lies beyond;
Reaches of pasture-lands, vine-wreathen oaks,
Majestic still in pathos of decay, - 
The road - the wayside pond
Wherein the dragonfly an instant soaks
His filmy wing-tips ere he flits away.
III.
And I would pluck from out the dank, rich mould,
Thick-shaded from the sun of noon, the long
Lithe stalks of barley, topped with ruddy gold,
And braid them in the meshes of my song;
And with them I would tangle wheat and rye,
And wisps of greenest grass the katydid
Ere crept beneath the blades of, sulkily,
As harvest-hands went by;
And weave of all, as wildest fancy bid,
A crown of mingled song and bloom for thee.
Wreath The Bowl.
by Thomas Moore

Wreath the bowl
With flowers of soul,
The brightest wit can find us;
We'll take a flight
Towards heaven to-night,
And leave dull earth behind us.
Should Love amid
The wreaths be hid,
That joy, the enchanter, brings us,
No danger fear,
While wine is near,
We'll drown him if he stings us,
Then, wreath the bowl
With flowers of soul,
The brightest wit can find us;
We'll take a flight
Towards heaven to-night,
And leave dull earth behind us.
'Twas nectar fed
Of old, 'tis said,
Their Junos, Joves, Apollos;
And man may brew
His nectar too,
The rich receipt's as follows:
Take wine like this,
Let looks of bliss
Around it well be blended,
Then bring wit's beam
To warm the stream,
And there's your nectar, splendid!
So wreath the bowl
With flowers of soul,
The brightest wit can find us;
We'll take a flight
Towards heaven to-night,
And leave dull earth behind us.
Say, why did Time
His glass sublime
Fill up with sands unsightly,
When wine, he knew,
Runs brisker through,
And sparkles far more brightly?
Oh, lend it us,
And, smiling thus,
The glass in two we'll sever,
Make pleasure glide
In double tide,
And fill both ends for ever!
Then wreath the bowl
With flowers of soul
The brightest wit can find us;
We'll take a flight
Towards heaven to-night,
And leave dull earth behind us.
Would You Know?
by William Schwenck Gilbert

Would you know the kind of maid
Sets my heart a flame-a?
Eyes must be downcast and staid,
Cheeks must flush for shame-a!
She may neither dance nor sing,
But, demure in everything,
Hang her head in modest way,
With pouting lips that seem to say
"Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me,
Though I die of shame-a."
Please you, that's the kind of maid
Sets my heart a flame-a!
When a maid is bold and gay,
With a tongue goes clang-a,
Flaunting it in brave array,
Maiden may go hang-a!
Sunflower gay and hollyhock
Never shall my garden stock;
Mine the blushing rose of May,
With pouting lips that seem to say,
"Oh, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me,
Though I die for shame-a!"
Please you, that's the kind of maid
Sets my heart a flame-a!
To The Theoretical Selector
by Edward Dyson

Would you be the King, the strong man, first in council and in toil,
To the men who war with nature for possession of the soil?
Take an axe upon your shoulder, take a billy and a rug,
And go forward in the forest where no man has cut and dug,
Where the scrub-ferns grow like magic, and the gum-trees you must fell
Have their topmost boughs in heaven, and their tap-roots deep as hell.
Take the land the Powers would cheerfully devote to Smith or Brown,
Two miles or more from water and a hundred miles from town;
Fell, and scrub, and hew, and hunger, and when seven weeks are gone
You may have a clearing large enough to build a hut upon.
Then you furnish it with saplings and you carpet it with loam,
And you bring the kids and missus to their charming country home!
Rising early with the jackass, like a man of pith and push,
With axe in hand you sally forth to face the stubborn bush.
'Tis a mighty undertaking, and the odds are hard enough,
But the settler must be stubborn, and the settler must be tough,
And he strikes from morn till even with his strong arm bare and brown,
And he counts his gain by inches when the big gum rattles down.
So you slave and strive and suffer, for it's fearful work and slow
Ere the cabbages are solid and the spuds have room to grow.
By and bye to fruit and fowls and swine, as city swells advise,
You resort to make a fortune; but the venture proves unwise,
For the fruit-trees blight and wither, and the pigs die in their pens,
And the drought destroys the ducklings, and the dingoes eat the hens.
Years go on, and still the bush-wall rings your narrow clearing round,
But you've won a few good acres and a crop is on the ground,
And you harvest single-handed, and you rake the stubble clean,
For you lack the cash for wages and the marvellous machine;
Still you're thankful for small mercies though you're often sorely pushed
When the missus hasn't sunstroke and the baby isn't bushed.
Then, at last, when worn with work, and warped with years, and very grey,
When your mastering the mortgage and the railroad runs your way,
When your farm is looking home-like, and your sons are grown-up men,
You may talk to brown-faced farmers you may try to teach them then.
And if any kid-gloved critic starts to give you points on grain,
And a little hot-house farming does to make your errors plain,
You will rise up with a waddy, and you'll sympathise with Cain.
Rose-Morals.
by Sidney Lanier

I. - Red.
Would that my songs might be
What roses make by day and night -
Distillments of my clod of misery
Into delight.
Soul, could'st thou bare thy breast
As yon red rose, and dare the day,
All clean, and large, and calm with velvet rest?
Say yea - say yea!
Ah, dear my Rose, good-bye;
The wind is up; so; drift away.
That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly,
I strive, I pray.
II. - White.
Soul, get thee to the heart
Of yonder tuberose: hide thee there -
There breathe the meditations of thine art
Suffused with prayer.
Of spirit grave yet light,
How fervent fragrances uprise
Pure-born from these most rich and yet most white
Virginities!
Mulched with unsavory death,
Grow, Soul! unto such white estate,
That virginal-prayerful art shall be thy breath,
Thy work, thy fate.
Baltimore, 1875.
Upon Julia's Sweat.
by Robert Herrick

Would ye oil of blossoms get?
Take it from my Julia's sweat:
Oil of lilies and of spike?
From her moisture take the like.
Let her breathe, or let her blow,
All rich spices thence will flow.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - XXXIII - Regrets
by William Wordsworth

Would that our scrupulous Sires had dared to leave
Less scanty measure of those graceful rites
And usages, whose due return invites
A stir of mind too natural to deceive;
Giving to Memory help when she would weave
A crown for Hope! I dread the boasted lights
That all too often are but fiery blights,
Killing the bud o'er which in vain we grieve.
Go, seek, when Christmas snows discomfort bring,
The counter Spirit found in some gay church
Green with fresh holly, every pew a perch
In which the linnet or the thrush might sing,
Merry and loud and safe from prying search,
Strains offered only to the genial Spring.
The Legend Of Puck The Fairy.
by Thomas Moore

Wouldst know what tricks, by the pale moonlight,
Are played by me, the merry little Sprite,
Who wing thro' air from the camp to the court,
From king to clown, and of all make sport;
Singing, I am the Sprite
Of the merry midnight,
Who laugh at weak mortals and love the moonlight.
To a miser's bed, where he snoring slept
And dreamt of his cash, I slyly crept;
Chink, chink o'er his pillow like money I rang,
And he waked to catch--but away I sprang,
Singing, I am the Sprite, etc.
I saw thro' the leaves, in a damsel's bower,
She was waiting her love at that starlight hour:
"Hist--hist!" quoth I, with an amorous sigh,
And she flew to the door, but away flew I,
Singing, I am the Sprite, etc.
While a bard sat inditing an ode to his love,
Like a pair of blue meteors I stared from above,
And he swooned--for he thought 'twas the ghost, poor man!
Of his lady's eyes, while away I ran,
Singing, I am the Sprite, etc.
To -----
by Friedrich Schiller

Wouldst thou teach me the truth? Don't take the trouble! I wish not,
Through thee, the thing to observe, but to see thee through the thing.
Shakespeare
by Vachel Lindsay

Would that in body and spirit Shakespeare came
Visible emperor of the deeds of Time,
With Justice still the genius of his rhyme,
Giving each man his due, each passion grace,
Impartial as the rain from Heaven's face
Or sunshine from the heaven-enthroned sun.
Sweet Swan of Avon, come to us again.
Teach us to write, and writing, to be men.