DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Twas One Of Those Dreams.[1]
by Thomas Moore

'Twas one of those dreams, that by music are brought,
Like a bright summer haze, o'er the poet's warm thought--
When, lost in the future, his soul wanders on,
And all of this life, but its sweetness, is gone.
The wild notes he heard o'er the water were those
He had taught to sing Erin's dark bondage and woes,
And the breath of the bugle now wafted them o'er
From Dinis' green isle, to Glen''s wooded shore.
He listened--while, high o'er the eagle's rude nest,
The lingering sounds on their way loved to rest;
And the echoes sung back from their full mountain choir,
As if loath to let song so enchanting expire.
It seemed as if every sweet note, that died here,
Was again brought to life in some airier sphere,
Some heaven in those hills, where the soul of the strain
They had ceased upon earth was awaking again!
Oh forgive, if, while listening to music, whose breath
Seemed to circle his name with a charm against death,
He should feel a proud Spirit within him proclaim,
"Even so shalt thou live in the echoes of Fame:
"Even so, tho' thy memory should now die away,
'Twill be caught up again in some happier day,
And the hearts and the voices of Erin prolong,
Through the answering Future, thy name and thy song."
High Explosive
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

'Twas the dingo pup to his dam that said,
"It's time I worked for my daily bread.
Out in the world I intend to go,
And you'd be surprised at the things I know.
"There's a wild duck's nest in a sheltered spot,
And I'll go right down and I'll eat the lot."
But when he got to his destined prey
He found that the ducks had flown away.
But an egg was left that would quench his thirst,
So he bit the egg and it straightway burst.
It burst with a bang, and he turned and fled,
For he thought that the egg had shot him dead.
"Oh, mother," he said, "let us clear right out
Or we'll lose our lives with the bombs about;
And it's lucky I am that I'm not blown up,
It's a very hard life," said the dingo pup.
When Dacey Rode The Mule
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

'Twas to a small, up-country town,
When we were boys at school,
There came a circus with a clown,
Likewise a bucking mule.
The clown announced a scheme they had
Spectators for to bring,
They'd give a crown to any lad
Who's ride him round the ring.
And, Gentle reader, do not scoff
Nor think a man a fool,
To buck a porous-plaster off
Was pastime to that mule.
The boys got on he bucked like sin;
He threw them in the dirt.
What time the clown would raise a grin
By asking, "Are you hurt?"
But Johnny Dacey came one night,
The crack of all the school;
Said he, "I'll win the crown all right;
Bring in your bucking mule."
The elephant went off his trunk,
The monkey played the fool,
And all the band got blazing drunk
When Dacey rode the mule.
But soon there rose a galling shout
Of laughter, for the clown
From somewhere in his pants drew out
A little paper crown.
He placed the crown on Dacey's head
While Dacey looked a fool;
"Now there's your crown, my lad," he said,
"For riding of the mule!"
The band struck up with "Killaloe",
And "Rule, Britannia, Rule",
And "Young Man from the Country", too,
When Dacey rode the mule.
Then Dacey, in a furious rage,
For vengeance on the show
Ascended to the monkeys' cage
And let the monkeys go;
The blue-tailed ape and the chimpanzee
He turned abroad to roam;
Good faith! It was a sight to see
The people step for home.
For big baboons with canine snout
Are spiteful, as a rule,
The people didn't sit it out,
When Dacey rode the mule.
And from the beasts he let escape,
The bushmen all declare,
Were born some creatures partly ape
And partly native-bear.
They're rather few and far between,
The race is nearly spent;
But some of them may still be seen
In Sydney Parliament.
And when those legislators fight,
And drink, and act the fool,
Just blame it on that torrid night
When Dacey rode the mule.
To G. C. And R. L.
by Oliver Goldsmith

'Twas you, or I, or he, or all together,
'Twas one, both, three of them, they know not whether;
This, I believe, between us great or small,
You, I, he, wrote it not 'twas Churchill's all.
Letter XVI. On Hearing The Cuckoo At Midnight, May 1St. 1822. (The Bird And Insects' Post-Office.)
by Robert Bloomfield

(CHARLES BLOOMFIELD.)
'Twas the blush of the spring, vegetation was young,
And the birds with a maddening ecstasy sung
To welcome a season so lovely and gay - 
But a scene the most sweet was the close of May-day.
For the air was serene, and the moon was out bright,
And Philomel boldly exerted her might
In her swellings and trillings, to rival the sound
Of the distant defiance of nightingales round.
While the cuckoo as proudly was heard to prolong,
Though daylight was over, her own mellow song,
And appeared to exult; and at intervals, too,
The owl in the distance joined in with "Too-whoo!"
Unceasing, unwearied, each, proud of his power,
Continued the contest from hour to hour;
The nightingale vaunting - the owl in reply - 
With the cuckoo's response - till the moon from the sky
Was hastening down to the west, and the dawn
Was spreading the east; and the owl in the morn
Sat silently winking his eyes at the sight;
And the nightingale also had bidden "good-night."
The cuckoo, left solus, continued with glee,
His notes of defeat from his favourite tree;
At length he departed; but still as he flew,
Was heard his last notes of defiance, "Cuckoo!"
A Visit From St. Nicholas.
by Clement Clarke Moore

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap--
When out on the lawn there rose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter,
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon, on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave a lustre of mid-day to objects below;
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Dunder and Blitzen--
To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall!
Now, dash away, dash away, dash away all!"
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So, up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With a sleigh full of toys--and St. Nicholas too.
And then in a twinkling I heard on the roof,
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack;
His eyes how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;
His droll little month was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face, and a little round belly
That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump--a right jolly old elf;
And I laughed when I saw him in spite of myself.
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle;
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"
The Legend Of St Cecilia And The Angel.
by William Lisle Bowles

'Twas when, O meekest eve! thy shadows dim
Were slowly stealing round,
With more impassioned sound
Divine Cecilia sang her vesper hymn,
And swelled the solemn chord
In hallelujahs to thy name, O Lord!
And now I see her raise
Rapt adoration's gaze,
With lips just opening, and with humid eyes
Uplifted; whilst the strain
Now sinks, now swells again;
Now rising, seems to blend with heaven's own harmonies.
But who is that, divinely fair,
With more than mortal beauty in his mien;
With eyes of heavenly hue and glistening hair,
His white and ample wings half seen!
O radiant and immortal guest!
Why hast thou left thy seraph throng,
On earth the triumph to attest
Of Beauty, Piety, and Song!
A Vision Of Philosophy.
by Thomas Moore

'Twas on the Red Sea coast, at morn, we met
The venerable man;[1] a healthy bloom
Mingled its softness with the vigorous thought
That towered upon his brow; and when he spoke
'Twas language sweetened into song--such holy sounds
As oft, they say, the wise and virtuous hear,
Prelusive to the harmony of heaven,
When death is nigh; and still, as he unclosed[2]
His sacred lips, an odor, all as bland
As ocean-breezes gather from the flowers
That blossom in Elysium, breathed around,
With silent awe we listened, while he told
Of the dark veil which many an age had hung
O'er Nature's form, till, long explored by man,
The mystic shroud grew thin and luminous,
And glimpses of that heavenly form shone through:--
Of magic wonders, that were known and taught
By him (or Cham or Zoroaster named)
Who mused amid the mighty cataclysm,
O'er his rude tablets of primeval lore;
And gathering round him, in the sacred ark,
The mighty secrets of that former globe,
Let not the living star of science sink
Beneath the waters, which ingulfed a world!--
Of visions, by Calliope revealed
To him,[3]who traced upon his typic lyre
The diapason of man's mingled frame,
And the grand Doric heptachord of heaven.
With all of pure, of wondrous and arcane,
Which the grave sons of Mochus, many a night,
Told to the young and bright-haired visitant
Of Carmel's sacred mount.--Then, in a flow
Of calmer converse, he beguiled us on
Through many a Maze of Garden and of Porch,
Through many a system, where the scattered light
Of heavenly truth lay, like a broken beam
From the pure sun, which, though refracted all
Into a thousand hues, is sunshine still,[4]
And bright through every change!--he spoke of Him,
The lone, eternal One, who dwells above,
And of the soul's untraceable descent
From that high fount of spirit, through the grades
Of intellectual being, till it mix
With atoms vague, corruptible, and dark;
Nor yet even then, though sunk in earthly dross,
Corrupted all, nor its ethereal touch
Quite lost, but tasting of the fountain still.
As some bright river, which has rolled along
Through meads of flowery light and mines of gold,
When poured at length into the dusky deep,
Disdains to take at once its briny taint,
Or balmy freshness, of the scenes it left.
But keeps unchanged awhile the lustrous tinge,
And here the old man ceased--a winged train
Of nymphs and genii bore him from our eyes.
The fair illusion fled! and, as I waked,
'Twas clear that my rapt soul had roamed, the while,
To that bright realm of dreams, that spirit-world,
Which mortals know by its long track of light
O'er midnight's sky, and call the Galaxy.[5]
Then
by Walter De La Mare

Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty
A hundred years ago,
All through the night with lantern bright
The Watch trudged to and fro,
And little boys tucked snug abed
Would wake from dreams to hear -
'Two o' the morning by the clock,
And the stars a-shining clear!'
Or, when across the chimney-tops
Screamed shrill a North-East gale,
A faint and shaken voice would shout,
'Three! And a storm of hail!'
Lines To Selina
by John Carr (Sir)

'Twas when the leaves were yellow turn'd,
Selina, with the gentlest sigh,
Exclaim'd, "For you I long have burn'd,
For you alone, my love! I'll die."
Unthinking youth! I thought her true,
And, when the trees grew white with snow,
The wint'ry wind with music blew,
So did her love upon me grow.
The Spring had scarce unlock'd her store,
When lo! in much ungentle strain,
She bade me think of her no more,
She bade me never love again.
Then did my heart at once reply,
"If you are false, who can be true?
There's nothing here deserves a sigh,
Take this, the last, 'tis heav'd for you."
Ah! fickle fair! amid the scene
That giddy pleasure may prepare,
A pensive thought shall intervene,
And touch your wand'ring heart with care.
And when, alone, at eve you rove,
Where arm in arm we oft have mov'd,
Each Zephyr in the well-known grove
Shall whisper that we once have lov'd.
The River's Tale
by Rudyard Kipling

Twenty bridges from Tower to Kew,
(Twenty bridges or twenty-two),
Wanted to know what the River knew,
For they were young, and the Thames was old
And this is the tale that River told:,
"I walk my beat before London Town,
Five hours up and seven down.
Up I go till I end my run
At Tide-end-town, which is Teddington.
Down I come with the mud in my hands
And plaster it over the Maplin Sands.
But I'd have you know that these waters of mine
Were once a branch of the River Rhine,
When hundreds of miles to the East I went
And England was joined to the Continent.
"I remember the bat-winged lizard-birds,
The Age of Ice and the mammoth herds,
And the giant tigers that stalked them down
Through Regent's Park into Camden Town.
And I remember like yesterday
The earliest Cockney who came my way,
When he pushed through the forest that lined the Strand,
With paint on his face and a club in his hand.
He was death to feather and fin and fur.
He trapped my beavers at Westminster.
He netted my salmon, he hunted my deer,
He killed my heron off Lambeth Pier.
He fought his neighbour with axes and swords,
Flint or bronze, at my upper fords,
While down at Greenwich, for slaves and tin,
The tall Phoenician ships stole in,
And North Sea war-boats, painted and gay,
Flashed like dragon-flies, Erith way;
And Norseman and Negro and Gaul and Greek
Drank with the Britons in Barking Creek,
And life was gay, and the world was new,
And I was a mile across at Kew!
But the Roman came with a heavy hand,
And bridged and roaded and ruled the land,
And the Roman left and the Danes blew in,
And that's where your history-books begin!"
Moon-Drowned.
by James Whitcomb Riley

'Twas the height of the fete when we quitted the riot,
And quietly stole to the terrace alone,
Where, pale as the lovers that ever swear by it,
The moon it 
We stood there enchanted. - And O the delight of
The sight of the stars and the moon and the sea,
And the infinite skies of that opulent night of
Purple and gold and ivory!
The lisp of the lip of the ripple just under -
The half-awake nightingale's dream in the yews -
Came up from the water, and down from the wonder
Of shadowy foliage, drowsed with the dews, -
Unsteady the firefly's taper - unsteady
The poise of the stars, and their light in the tide,
As it struggled and writhed in caress of the eddy,
As love in the billowy breast of a bride.
The far-away lilt of the waltz rippled to us,
And through us the exquisite thrill of the air:
Like the scent of bruised bloom was her breath, and its dew was
Not honier-sweet than her warm kisses were.
We stood there enchanted. - And O the delight of
The sight of the stars and the moon and the sea,
And the infinite skies of that opulent night of
Purple and gold and ivory!
The Stranded Ship (The 'Vincennes')
by Henry Lawson

'Twas the glowing log of a picnic fire where a red light should not be,
Or the curtained glow of a sick room light in a window that faced the sea.
But the Manly lights seemed the Sydney lights, and the bluffs as the 'Heads' were seen;
And the Manly beach was the channel then'and the captain steered between.
The croakers said with a shoulder shrug, and a careless, know-all glance:
'You might pull out her stem, or pull out her stern'but she'll sail no more for France!'
Her stem was dry when the tide was out, and behind her banked the sand,
Where strong gales come from the Hurricane east and the sun sets on the land.
When the tide was high and the rollers struck she shuddered as if in pain,
She had no hope for the open sea and the fair full breeze again.
She turned her side to the pounding seas and the foam glared over the rails,
It seemed her fate to be sold and stripped, and broken by winter gales.
But they sent strong gear, and they sent the gangs, and they sent her a man who knew,
And the tugs came nosing round from the Heads to see what a tug could do;
The four-ton anchors they laid to sea in the waves and the wind and rain,
And the great steel hawser they hove aboard made fast to her cable chain.
And then, while the gaping townsfolk stared from the shining beach in doubt,
The crew and the shore-gangs lowered her yards and they hove the ballast out.
(To lie like a strange sea-grave upheaved on the smooth sand by her side)
And they made all ready and clear for the tugs to come on the rising tide.
And so, in the night when the tide was in and a black sky hid the stars,
The shoremen worked at the jumping winch and the crew at the capstan bars.
To seaward the two tugs rose and fell in their own wild stormy glare
And her head came round for a fathom's length! for a mighty heave was there.
So, tide by tide, and yard by yard, they hove her off the shore
To fit, and load for her ports of call, and to sail for France once more.
Till at last she came with the wild blind rush of a frightened thing set free,
And they towed her round to the Sydney Heads and in from the stormy sea.
And the croakers say, when a man is down, with a shrug and a know-all glance,
Oh, he'll never get out of the gutter again, he has done with every chance;
But we'll 'haul and heave on the block and sheeve', wave-beaten and black-rock hemmed,
And we'll sail with cargoes that they shall buy, when their ships are all condemned.
Sonnet XCII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

In mezzo di duo amanti onesta altera.
LAURA TURNING TO SALUTE HIM, THE SUN, THROUGH JEALOUSY, WITHDREW BEHIND A CLOUD.
'Tween two fond lovers I a lady spied,
Virtuous but haughty, and with her that lord,
By gods above and men below adored--
The sun on this, myself upon that side--
Soon as she found herself the sphere denied
Of her bright friend, on my fond eyes she pour'd
A flood of life and joy, which hope restored
Less cold to me will be her future pride.
Suddenly changed itself to cordial mirth
The jealous fear to which at his first sight
So high a rival in my heart gave birth;
As suddenly his sad and rueful plight
From further scrutiny a small cloud veil'd,
So much it ruffled him that then he fail'd.
MACGREGOR.
The Voice in the Wild Oak
by Henry Kendall

(Written in the shadow of 1872.)
Twelve years ago, when I could face
High heaven's dome with different eyes
In days full-flowered with hours of grace,
And nights not sad with sighs
I wrote a song in which I strove
To shadow forth thy strain of woe,
Dark widowed sister of the grove!
Twelve wasted years ago.
But youth was then too young to find
Those high authentic syllables,
Whose voice is like the wintering wind
By sunless mountain fells;
Nor had I sinned and suffered then
To that superlative degree
That I would rather seek, than men,
Wild fellowship with thee!
But he who hears this autumn day
Thy more than deep autumnal rhyme,
Is one whose hair was shot with grey
By Grief instead of Time.
He has no need, like many a bard,
To sing imaginary pain,
Because he bears, and finds it hard,
The punishment of Cain.
No more he sees the affluence
Which makes the heart of Nature glad;
For he has lost the fine, first sense
Of Beauty that he had.
The old delight God's happy breeze
Was wont to give, to Grief has grown;
And therefore, Niobe of trees,
His song is like thine own!
But I, who am that perished soul,
Have wasted so these powers of mine,
That I can never write that whole,
Pure, perfect speech of thine.
Some lord of words august, supreme,
The grave, grand melody demands;
The dark translation of thy theme
I leave to other hands.
Yet here, where plovers nightly call
Across dim, melancholy leas
Where comes by whistling fen and fall
The moan of far-off seas
A grey, old Fancy often sits
And fills thy strong, strange rhyme by fits
With awful utterings.
Then times there are when all the words
Are like the sentences of one
Shut in by Fate from wind and birds
And light of stars and sun,
No dazzling dryad, but a dark
Dream-haunted spirit doomed to be
Imprisoned, crampt in bands of bark,
For all eternity.
Yea, like the speech of one aghast
At Immortality in chains,
What time the lordly storm rides past
With flames and arrowy rains:
Some wan Tithonus of the wood,
White with immeasurable years
An awful ghost in solitude
With moaning moors and meres.
And when high thunder smites the hill
And hunts the wild dog to his den,
Thy cries, like maledictions, shrill
And shriek from glen to glen,
As if a frightful memory whipped
Thy soul for some infernal crime
That left it blasted, blind, and stript
A dread to Death and Time!
But when the fair-haired August dies,
And flowers wax strong and beautiful,
Thy songs are stately harmonies
By wood-lights green and cool
Most like the voice of one who shows
Through sufferings fierce, in fine relief,
A noble patience and repose
A dignity in grief.
But, ah! conceptions fade away,
And still the life that lives in thee
The soul of thy majestic lay
Remains a mystery!
And he must speak the speech divine
The language of the high-throned lords
Who'd give that grand old theme of thine
Its sense in faultless words.
By hollow lands and sea-tracts harsh,
With ruin of the fourfold gale,
Where sighs the sedge and sobs the marsh,
Still wail thy lonely wail;
And, year by year, one step will break
The sleep of far hill-folded streams,
And seek, if only for thy sake
Thy home of many dreams.
The Last Department
by Rudyard Kipling

Twelve hundred million men are spread
About this Earth, and I and You
Wonder, when You and I are dead,
"What will those luckless millions do?"
None whole or clean, "we cry, "or free from stain
Of favour." Wait awhile, till we attain
The Last Department where nor fraud nor fools,
Nor grade nor greed, shall trouble us again.
Fear, Favour, or Affection, what are these
To the grim Head who claims our services?
I never knew a wife or interest yet
Delay that pukka step, miscalled "decease";
When leave, long overdue, none can deny;
When idleness of all Eternity
Becomes our furlough, and the marigold
Our thriftless, bullion-minting Treasury
Transferred to the Eternal Settlement,
Each in his strait, wood-scantled office pent,
No longer Brown reverses Smith's appeals,
Or Jones records his Minute of Dissent.
And One, long since a pillar of the Court,
As mud between the beams thereof is wrought;
And One who wrote on phosphates for the crops
Is subject-matter of his own Report.
These be the glorious ends whereto we pass,
Let Him who Is, go call on Him who Was;
And He shall see the mallie steals the slab
For currie-grinder, and for goats the grass.
A breath of wind, a Border bullet's flight,
A draught of water, or a horse's firght,
The droning of the fat Sheristadar
Ceases, the punkah stops, and falls the night
For you or Me. Do those who live decline
The step that offers, or their work resign?
Trust me, To-day's Most Indispensables,
Five hundred men can take your place or mine.