DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
From Eclogue iv
by Michael Drayton

Melpomine put on thy mourning Gaberdine,
And set thy song vnto the dolefull Base,
And with thy sable vayle shadow thy face,
with weeping verse,
attend his hearse,
Whose blessed soule the heauens doe now enshrine.
Come Nymphs and with your Rebecks ring his knell,
Warble forth your wamenting harmony,
And at his drery fatall obsequie,
with Cypres bowes,
maske your fayre Browes,
And beat your breasts to chyme his burying peale.
Thy birth-day was to all our ioye, the euen,
And on thy death this dolefull song we sing,
Sweet Child of Pan, and the Castalian spring,
vnto our endless mone,
from vs why art thou gone,
To fill vp that sweete Angels quier in heauen.
O whylome thou thy lasses dearest loue,
When with greene Lawrell she hath crowned thee,
Immortal mirror of all Poesie:
the Muses treasure,
the Graces pleasure,
Reigning with Angels now in heauen aboue.
Our mirth is now depriu'd of all her glory,
Our Taburins in dolefull dumps are drownd.
Our viols want their sweet and pleasing sound,
our melodie is mar'd
and we of ioyes debard,
O wicked world so mutable and transitory.
O dismall day, bereauer of delight,
O stormy winter, sourse of all our sorrow,
O most vntimely and eclipsed morrow,
to rob us quite,
of all delight,
Darkening that starre which euer shone so bright.
Oh Elphin, Elphin, Though thou hence be gone,
In spight of death yet shalt thou liue for aye,
Thy Poesie is garlanded with Baye:
and still shalt blaze
thy lasting prayse:
Whose losse poore shepherds euer shall bemone.
Come Girles, and with Carnations decke his graue,
With damaske Roses and the hyacynt:
Come with sweete Williams, Marioram and Mynt,
with precious Balmes,
with hymnes and psalmes,
This funerall deserues no lesse at all to haue.
But see where Elphin sits in fayre Elizia,
Feeding his flocke on yonder heauenly playne,
Come and behold, you louely shepheards swayne,
piping his fill
on yonder hill,
Tasting sweete Nectar, and Ambrosia.
The Master's Song.
by George Pope Morris

Written for the freemasons of St. John's Lodge No. 1, New York.
Members of an order
Ancient as the earth;
All within our border
Realize its worth.
Genial is the greeting
That awaits us there,
On the level meeting,
Parting on the square.
Like the workmen olden,
Who our craft designed,
We the precept golden
Ever bear in mind.
Masons never falter,
We each other know,
As around the altar
Hand in hand we go;
Loud hosannas singing
To our Source above,
And heart-offerings bringing
To the God of Love.
Like the workmen olden,
Who our craft designed,
We the precept golden
Ever bear in mind.
There's a mystic beauty
In our working plan,
Teaching man his duty
To his fellow man:
As a band of brothers,
Ever just and true,
Do we unto others
As we'd have them do.
Like the workmen olden,
Who our craft designed,
We the precept golden
Ever bear in mind.
To Miss Milly Scott.
by Thomas Frederick Young

Memories of happy school-days,
In which we view the years gone by,
Long they last, and long they cheer us - 
Live well the moments as they fly,
Your youth is passing swiftly by.
See, then, Milly, that your school-days
Can no mem'ries sad retain.
Onward! upward! be your motto,
Try and try, and try again,
The future will reward the pain.
Pain
by George William Russell

Men have made them gods of love,
Sun gods, givers of the rain,
Deities of hill and grove,
I have made a god of Pain.
Of my god I know this much,
And in singing I repeat,
Though there's anguish in his touch
Yet his soul within is sweet.
--March 15, 1893
Song - Men Of England
by Thomas Campbell

Men of England! who inherit
Rights that cost your sires their blood!
Men whose undegenerate spirit
Has been proved on field and flood:
By the foes you 've fought uncounted,
By the glorious deeds ye 've done,
Trophies captured, breaches mounted,
Navies conquered, kingdoms won!
Yet, remember, England gathers
Hence but fruitless wreaths of fame,
If the freedom of your fathers
Glow not in your hearts the same.
What are monuments of bravery,
Where no public virtues bloom?
What avail in lands of slavery,
Trophied temples, arch, and tomb?
Pageants! Let the world revere us
For our people's rights and laws,
And the breasts of civic heroes
Bared in Freedom's holy cause.
Yours are Hampden's, Russell's glory,
Sidney's matchless shade is yours,
Martyrs in heroic story,
Worth a hundred Agincourts!
We 're the sons of sires that baffled
Crowned and mitred tyranny;
They defied the field and scaffold
For their birthrights, so will we!
Dreams
by Lola Ridge

Men die...
Dreams only change their houses.
They cannot be lined up against a wall
And quietly buried under ground,
And no more heard of...
However deep the pit and heaped the clay - 
Like seedlings of old time
Hooding a sacred rose under the ice cap of the world - 
Dreams will to light.
Song To The Men Of England.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

1.
Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
2.
Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save,
From the cradle to the grave,
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat - nay, drink your blood?
3.
Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?
4.
Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?
Or what is it ye buy so dear
With your pain and with your fear?
5.
The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge; another bears.
6.
Sow seed, - but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth, - let no impostor heap;
Weave robes, - let not the idle wear;
Forge arms, - in your defence to bear.
7.
Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;
In halls ye deck another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.
8.
With plough and spade, and hoe and loom,
Trace your grave, and build your tomb,
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
England be your sepulchre.
A Summons
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Men of the North-land! where's the manly spirit
Of the true-hearted and the unshackled gone?
Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit
Their names alone?
Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched within us,
Stoops the strong manhood of our souls so low,
That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can win us
To silence now?
Now, when our land to ruin's brink is verging,
In God's name, let us speak while there is time!
Now, when the padlocks for our lips are forging,
Silence is crime!
What! shall we henceforth humbly ask as favors
Rights all our own? In madness shall we barter,
For treacherous peace, the freedom Nature gave us,
God and our charter?
Here shall the statesman forge his human fetters,
Here the false jurist human rights deny,
And in the church, their proud and skilled abettors.
Make truth a lie?
Torture the pages of the hallowed Bible,
To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood?
And, in Oppression's hateful service, libel
Both man and God?
Shall our New England stand erect no longer,
But stoop in chains upon her downward way,
Thicker to gather on her limbs and stronger
Day after day?
Oh no; methinks from all her wild, green mountains;
From valleys where her slumbering fathers lie;
From her blue rivers and her welling fountains,
And clear, cold sky;
From her rough coast, and isles, which hungry Ocean
Gnaws with his surges; from the fisher's skiff,
With white sail swaying to the billows' motion
Round rock and cliff;
From the free fireside of her unbought farmer;
From her free laborer at his loom and wheel;
From the brown smith-shop, where, beneath the hammer,
Rings the red steel;
From each and all, if God hath not forsaken
Our land, and left us to an evil choice,
Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall waken
A People's voice.
Startling and stern! the Northern winds shall bear it
Over Potomac's to St. Mary's wave;
And buried Freedom shall awake to hear it
Within her grave.
Oh, let that voice go forth! The bondman sighing
By Santee's wave, in Mississippi's cane,
Shall feel the hope, within his bosom dying,
Revive again.
Let it go forth! The millions who are gazing
Sadly upon us from afar shall smile,
And unto God devout thanksgiving raising,
Bless us the while.
Oh for your ancient freedom, pure and holy,
For the deliverance of a groaning earth,
For the wronged captive, bleeding, crushed, and lowly,
Let it go forth!
Sons of the best of fathers! will ye falter
With all they left ye perilled and at stake?
Ho! once again on Freedom's holy altar
The fire awake!
Prayer-strengthened for the trial, come together,
Put on the harness for the moral fight,
And, with the blessing of your Heavenly Father,
Maintain the right
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part I. - IV - Druidical Excommunication
by William Wordsworth

Mercy and Love have met thee on thy road,
Thou wretched Outcast, from the gift of fire
And food cut off by sacerdotal ire,
From every sympathy that Man bestowed!
Yet shall it claim our reverence, that to God,
Ancient of days! that to the eternal Sire,
These jealous Ministers of law aspire,
As to the one sole fount whence wisdom flowed,
Justice, and order. Tremblingly escaped,
As if with prescience of the coming storm,
'That' intimation when the stars were shaped;
And still, 'mid yon thick woods, the primal truth
Glimmers through many a superstitious form
That fills the Soul with unavailing ruth.
Song Of The Innocents
by George MacDonald

Merry, merry we well may be,
For Jesus Christ is come down to see:
Long before, at the top of the stair,
He set our angels a waiting there,
Waiting hither and thither to fly,
Tending the children of the sky,
Lest they dash little feet against big stones,
And tumble down and break little bones;
For the path is rough, and we must not roam;
We have learned to walk, and must follow him home!
Portsmouth's Looking Glass
by John Wilmot

Methinks I see you, newly risen
From your embroider'd Bed and pissing,
With studied mien and much grimace,
Present yourself before your glass,
To vanish and smooth o'er those graces,
You rubb'd off in your Night Embraces.
To Laura In Death. Sonnet LXXVIII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

E' mi par d' or in ora udire il messo.
HE FEELS THAT THE DAY OF THEIR REUNION IS AT HAND.
Methinks from hour to hour her voice I hear:
My Lady calls me! I would fain obey;
Within, without, I feel myself decay;
And am so alter'd--not with many a year--
That to myself a stranger I appear;
All my old usual life is put away--
Could I but know how long I have to stay!
Grant, Heaven, the long-wish'd summons may be near!
Oh, blest the day when from this earthly gaol
I shall be freed, when burst and broken lies
This mortal guise, so heavy yet so frail,
When from this black night my saved spirit flies,
Soaring up, up, above the bright serene,
Where with my Lord my Lady shall be seen.
MACGREGOR.
An Acrostic.
by Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow

Merry, merry little child,
Active, playful, sometimes wild;
Rosy cheeks, and ringlets rare,
Glossy black, with eyes compare.
All, all these belong to thee,
Right pleasant little Margerie.
Every good, dear child, be given
Thee on earth, and rest in heaven.
But who thy future lot can see?
All, every page is hid from me;
Xtended through eternity,
Thy life so late begun will be.
Earnest seek to know the truth,
Remember God in early youth;
When in his sacred courts thou art,
Engage in worship thy whole heart;
Listen to what the preacher says,
Listen to prayers, and list to praise,
In nothing see thou dost offend,
Nor fail the Sabbath well to spend.
Give to thy parents honor due,
Thy sisters love, and brothers too;
Oh! good and happy mayst thou be,
Now and ever, Margerie.
To Lady Noel Byron
by George MacDonald

Men sought, ambition's thirst to slake,
The lost elixir old
Whose magic touch should instant make
The meaner metals gold.
A nobler alchymy is thine
Which love from pain doth press:
Gold in thy hand becomes divine,
Grows truth and tenderness.
Merrily Every Bosom Boundeth. (The Tyrolese Song Of Liberty.)
by Thomas Moore

Merrily every bosom boundeth,
Merrily, oh!
Where the song of Freedom soundeth,
Merrily oh!
There the warrior's arms
Shed more splendor;
There the maiden's charm's
Shine more tender;
Every joy the land surroundeth,
Merrily, oh! merrily, oh!
Wearily every bosom pineth,
Wearily, oh!
Where the bond of slavery twineth
Wearily, oh
There the warrior's dart
Hath no fleetness;
There the maiden's heart
Hath no sweetness--
Every flower of life declineth,
Wearily, oh! wearily, oh!
Cheerily then from hill and valley,
Cheerily, oh!
Like your native fountain sally,
Cheerily, oh!
If a glorious death,
Won by bravery,
Sweeter be than breath
Sighed in slavery,
Round the flag of Freedom rally,
Cheerily, oh! cheerily, oh!
The River Duddon - A Series Of Sonnets, 1820. - XXV - Methinks 'twere No Unprecedented Feat
by William Wordsworth

Methinks 'twere no unprecedented feat
Should some benignant Minister of air
Lift, and encircle with a cloudy chair,
The One for whom my heart shall ever beat
With tenderest love; or, if a safer seat
Atween his downy wings be furnished, there
Would lodge her, and the cherished burden bear
O'er hill and valley to this dim retreat!
Rough ways my steps have trod; too rough and long
For her companionship; here dwells soft ease:
With sweets that she partakes not some distaste
Mingles, and lurking consciousness of wrong;
Languish the flowers; the waters seem to waste
Their vocal charm; their sparklings cease to please.
Beauty Making
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Methinks there is no greater work in life
Than making beauty.    Can the mind conceive
One little corner in celestial realms
Unbeautiful, or dull or commonplace?
Or picture ugly angels, illy clad?
Beauty and splendour, opulence and joy,
Are attributes of God and His domain,
And so are worth and virtue.    But why preach
Of virtue only to the sons of men,
Ignoring beauty, till they think it sin?
Why, if each dweller on this little globe
Could know the sacred meaning of that word
And understand its deep significance,
Men's thoughts would form in beauty, till their dreams
Of heaven would find expression in their lives,
However humble; they themselves would grow
Godlike, befitting such a fair estate.
Let us be done with what is only good,
Demanding here and now the beautiful;
Lest, with the mind and eye on earth untrained,
We shall be ill at ease when heaven is gained.
Sonnet: On the Death of Prince Henry
by George Wither

Methought his royal person did foretell
A kingly stateliness, from all pride clear;
His look majestic seem'd to compel
All men to love him, rather than to fear.
And yet though he were every good man's joy,
And the alonely comfort of his own,
His very name with terror did annoy
His foreign foes so far as he was known.
Hell drooped for fear; the Turkey moon looked pale;
Spain trembled; and the most tempestuous sea,
(Where Behemoth, the Babylonish whale,
Keeps all his bloody and imperious plea)
Was swoln with rage, for fear he'd stop the tide
Of her o'er-daring and insulting pride.
Sonnet.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Methinks ofttimes my heart is like some bee
That goes forth through the summer day and sings.
And gathers honey from all growing things
In garden plot or on the clover lea.
When the long afternoon grows late, and she
Would seek her hive, she cannot lift her wings.
So heavily the too sweet bin den clings,
From which she would not, and yet would, fly free.
So with my full, fond heart; for when it tries
To lift itself to peace crowned heights, above
The common way where countless feet have trod,
Lo! then, this burden of dear human ties,
This growing weight of precious earthly love,
Binds down the spirit that would soar to God.
The Sea Of Death. - A Fragment.
by Thomas Hood

-    - Methought I saw
Life swiftly treading over endless space;
And, at her foot-print, but a bygone pace,
The ocean-past, which, with increasing wave,
Swallow'd her steps like a pursuing grave.
Sad were my thoughts that anchor'd silently
On the dead waters of that passionless sea,
Unstirr'd by any touch of living breath:
Silence hung over it, and drowsy Death,
Like a gorged sea-bird, slept with folded wings
On crowded carcases - sad passive things
That wore the thin gray surface, like a veil
Over the calmness of their features pale.
And there were spring-faced cherubs that did sleep
Like water-lilies on that motionless deep,
How beautiful! with bright unruffled hair
On sleek unfretted brows, and eyes that were
Buried in marble tombs, a pale eclipse!
And smile-bedimpled cheeks, and pleasant lips,
Meekly apart, as if the soul intense
Spake out in dreams of its own innocence:
And so they lay in loveliness, and kept
The birth-night of their peace, that Life e'en wept
With very envy of their happy fronts;
For there were neighbor brows scarr'd by the brunts
Of strife and sorrowing - where Care had set
His crooked autograph, and marr'd the jet
Of glassy locks, with hollow eyes forlorn,
And lips that curl'd in bitterness and scorn - 
Wretched, - as they had breathed of this world's pain,
And so bequeathed it to the world again,
Through the beholder's heart in heavy sighs.
So lay they garmented in torpid light,
Under the pall of a transparent night,
Like solemn apparitions lull'd sublime
To everlasting rest, - and with them Time
Slept, as he sleeps upon the silent face
Of a dark dial in a sunless place.
Hope
by Hanford Lennox Gordon

Men talk and dream of better days 
Of a golden time to come;
Toward a happy and shining goal
They run with a ceaseless hum.
The world grows old and grows young again,
Still hope of the better is bright to men.
Hope leads us in at the gate of life;
She crowns the boyish head;
Her bright lamp lures the stalwart youth,
Nor burns out with the gray-haired dead;
For the grave closes over his trouble and care,
But see on the grave Hope is planted there!
'Tis not an empty and flattering deceit,
Begot in a foolish brain;
For the heart speaks loud with its ceaseless throbs,
"We are not born in vain";
And the words that out of the heart-throbs roll,
They cannot deceive the hoping soul.
Merrymind
by James Hebblethwaite

Merrymind, Merrymind, whither art thou roaming?
Merrymind, Merrymind, nay, art thou sleeping yet?
Oh, to us, sweet minstrel dear, wilt thou not be homing?
Or we shall forget.
Vale of toil so waste and drear, hear him now advancing,
Playing on the golden strings, the midnight maiden's boon;
Breaks the sunshine on the hills, the princess falls to dancing
In a bridal noon!
Oh, the joyfulness and kissing of that fiddle's flowings,
Giving rest and happiness, and laughter delicate!
Fling out from this iron world to his merry bowings,
Oh, be not too late!
Lancelot, Lancelot, ride with song and gleaming
Robin, wind in greenwood shaw thy dreaming silvery horn,
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down thy hair a-beaming,
Yellow as the corn!
Pride, begone, thou hateful curse of narrowed blood and breeding,
Cruel growth of heaviness and dull, cold ignorance;
Come, thou golden Charity, lend to us thy leading
In a sunny dance!
Voices Of Women
by Frank James Prewett

Met ye my love?
Ye might in France have met him;
He has a wooing smile,
Who sees cannot forget him!
Met ye my Love?
We shared full many a mile.
Saw ye my Love?
In lands far-off he has been,
With his yellow-tinted hair, 
In Egypt such ye have seen;
Ye knew my love?
I was his brother there.
Heard ye my love?
My love ye must have heard,
For his voice when he will
Tinkles like cry of a bird;
Heard ye my love?
We sang on a Grecian hill.
Behold your love,
And how shall I forget him,
His smile, his hair, his song?
Alas, no maid shall get him
For all her love,
Where he sleeps a million strong.
The Dilettante.
by Friedrich Schiller

Merely because thou hast made a good verse in a language poetic,
One which composes for thee, thou art a poet forsooth!
Can Such Things Be?
by Madison Julius Cawein

Meseemed that while she played, while lightly yet
Her fingers fell, as roses bloom by bloom,
I listened dead within a mighty room
Of some old palace where great casements let
Gaunt moonlight in, that glimpsed a parapet
Of statued marble: in the arrased gloom
Majestic pictures towered, dim as doom,
The dreams of Titian and of Tintoret.
And then, it seemed, along a corridor,
A mile of oak, a stricken footstep came,
Hurrying, yet slow ' I thought long centuries
Passed ere she entered she, I loved of yore,
For whom I died, who wildly wailed my name
And bent and kissed me on the mouth and eyes.
Nursery Rhyme. CLVIII. Songs.
by Unknown

Merry are the bells, and merry would they ring,
Merry was myself, and merry could I sing;
With a merry ding-dong, happy, gay, and free,
And a merry sing-song, happy let us be!
Waddle goes your gait, and hollow are your hose,
Noddle goes your pate, and purple is your nose;
Merry is your sing-song, happy, gay, and free,
With a merry ding-dong, happy let us be!
Merry have we met, and merry have we been,
Merry let us part, and merry meet again;
With our merry sing-song, happy, gay, and free,
And a merry ding-dong, happy let us be!
The Audit
by William Kerr

Mere living wears the most of life away:
Even the lilies take thought for many things,
For frost in April and for drought in May,
And from no careless heart the skylark sings.
Those cheap utilities of rain and sun
Describe the foolish circle of our years,
Until death takes us, doing all undone,
And there's an end at last to hopes and fears.
Though song be hollow and no dreams come true,
Still songs and dreams are better than the truth:
But there's so much to get, so much to do,
Mary must drudge like Martha, dainty Ruth
Forget the morning music in the corn,
And Rachel grudge when Leah's boys are born.
Merchandise
by John Milton Hayes

& Eisie April
Dedicated, by gracious permission, to H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES
Merchandise! Merchandise! Tortoiseshell, spices,
Carpets and Indigo sent o'er the highseas;
Mothero'Pearl from the Solomon Isles
Brought by a brigantine ten thousand miles.
Rubber from Zanzibar, tea from NangPo,
Copra from Haiti, and wine from Bordeaux;
Ships, with topgallants and royals unfurled,
Are bringing in freights from the ends of the world
Crazy old windjammers, manned by Malays,
With ratridden bulkheads and creaking old stays,
Reeking of bilge and of paint and of pitch
That's how these oceangirt islands grew rich:
And tramps, heavy laden, and liners untold
Will lease a new life to a nation grown old.
Merchandise! Merchandise! England was made
By her Men and her Ships and her OVERSEAS TRADE.
Widen your harbours, your docks and your quays,
Hazard your wares on the seven wide seas,
Run out your railways and hew out your coal,
For only by trade can a country keep whole.
Feed up your furnaces, fashion your steel,
Stick to your bargains and pay on the deal;
Rich is your birthright, and well you'll be paid.
If you keep in good faith with your Overseas Trade.
Learn up geography, work out your sums,
Build up your commerce, and pull down your slums;
Sail on a Plimsoll that marks a full hold:
Your Overseas Trade means a harvest of gold.
Bring in the palmoil and pepper you've bought,
But send out ten times the amount you import:
Trade your inventions, your labour and sweat:
Your Overseas Traffic will keep ye from debt.
Hark to the song of the shuttle and loom,
Keep up your commerce or crawl to your tomb
Study new methods and open new lines,
Quicken your factories, foundries and mines,
Think of what Drake did, and Raleigh and Howe
And waste not their labours by slacking it now:
Work is life's currency earn what you're worth,
And send out your ships to the ends of the earth.
Deepbosomed mothers with widefashioned hips
Will bear ye good sons for the building of ships
Good sons for your ships and good ships for your trade
That's how the Peace of the World will be made!
So send out your strong to the forests untrod,
Work for yourselves and your neighbours and
Keep this good England the home of the free,
With Merchandise, Men and good Ships on the
Merchandise! Merchandise! Good honest Merchandise!
Merchandise, Men and Good Ships on the Sea.
The Blossom
by William Blake

Merry, merry sparrow!
Under leaves so green
A happy blossom
Sees you, swift as arrow,
Seek your cradle narrow,
Near my bosom.
Pretty, pretty robin!
Under leaves so green
A happy blossom
Hears you sobbing, sobbing,
Pretty, pretty robin,
Near my bosom.