DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Boy On The Farm
by Madison Julius Cawein

Out in Oldham County once
Met a boy who showed me how
He could milk an old red cow.
Yes; he was n't any dunce.
Put me on an old-gray mare;
Rode me to an old mill, where
They were grinding corn. He filled
A big sack and then we sat
By the dam and there he killed
A black snake, as long as that.
Then he showed me how to row
In an old flat boat that leaked,
Where the dam was stained and streaked
With big lilies, white as snow.
Then he showed me how to swim
Jumping from a sycamore limb:
While he splashed around, why, I
Waded up and down the shore;
Then, when he was dressed and dry,
Mounted that old mare once more.
And he took the bag of meal
"That's for corn-cakes, " so he said:
"And it makes the grandest bread!
Cornbread. Ain't it heavy? Feel."
And he slung it on across
That old mare, who, with a toss
Of her tail, turned right for home.
On the way he showed me where
Hornets had their nest, like some
Foot-ball made of paper there.
And he showed me how to catch
Bumblebees and how to keep
Them from stinging; made a leap,
Caught one in a clover-patch;
And he showed me then where they
Stow their honey-bags away:
Caught two bees and was n't stung:
Took one's bag and gave it me,
And I put it on my tongue:
Sweet! yes sir, and smelt of bee.
Then he caught a locust; took
Its two wings, like some queer toy's;
Showed me how it made its noise;
Held it up and shook and shook
Till it rattled. And that night
Showed me, with a lantern light,
How the pond-toads puffed their throats,
Each one like a toy-balloon,
Swelling, piping reedy notes,
Making music for the moon.
No; he was n't any dunce;
No, sir. Why, he'd tell the time
By the sun, he could. And climb!
Climbed a great tall poplar once
Hundred feet or more, and straight
As the flag-pole at our gate.
When he's up there, took his hat,
Tossed it up and cried, "Hurrah!"
Bet you no man could do that;
No! not even my own Pa.
Lose him? Why, he'd tell his way
In the darkest night, he could;
In the deepest, darkest wood,
By the stars, he said: by day
Knew it by these lichens on
Trunks of trees. When I am grown
He's a-going to teach me all
Everything he knows; and I'm
Going there again this Fall
Live there, may be, all the time.
Electricity
by Lola Ridge

Out of fiery contacts...
Rushing auras of steel
Touching and whirled apart...
Out of the charged phallases
Of iron leaping
Female and male,
Complete, indivisible, one,
Fused into light.
Dead Cities
by Madison Julius Cawein

Out of it all but this remains:
I was with one who crossed wide chains
Of the Cordilleras, whose peaks
Lock in the wilds of Yucatan,
Chiapas and Honduras. Weeks
And then a city that no man
Had ever seen; so dim and old,
No chronicle has ever told
The history of men who piled
Its temples and huge teocallis
Among mimosa-blooming valleys;
Or how its altars were defiled
With human blood; whose idols there
With eyes of stone still stand and stare.
So old the moon can only know
How old, since ancient forests grow
On mighty wall and pyramid.
Huge ce'bas, whose trunks were scarred
With ages, and dense yuccas, hid
Fanes 'mid the cacti, scarlet-starred.
I looked upon its paven ways,
And saw it in its kingliest days;
When from the lordly palace one,
A victim, walked with prince and priest,
Who turned brown faces toward the east
In worship of the rising sun:
At night ten hundred temples' spires
On gold burnt everlasting fires.
Uxmal? Palenque? or Copan?
I know not. Only how no man
Had ever seen; and still my soul
Believes it vaster than the three.
Volcanic rock walled in the whole,
Lost in the woods as in some sea.
I only read its hieroglyphs,
Perused its monster monoliths
Of death, gigantic heads; and read
The pictured codex of its fate,
The perished Toltec; while in hate
Mad monkeys cursed me, as if dead
Priests of its past had taken form
To guard its ruined shrines from harm.
What Miss Edith Saw from Her Window
by Bret Harte (Francis)

Our window's not much, though it fronts on the street;
There's a fly in the pane that gets nothin' to eat;
But it's curious how people think it's a treat
For me to look out of the window!
Why, when company comes, and they're all speaking low,
With their chairs drawn together, then some one says, 'Oh!
Edith dear! that's a good child now run, love, and go
And amuse yourself there at the window!'
Or Bob that's my brother comes in with his chum,
And they whisper and chuckle, the same words will come.
And it's 'Edith, look here! Oh, I say! what a rum
Lot of things you can see from that window!'
And yet, as I told you, there's only that fly
Buzzing round in the pane, and a bit of blue sky,
And the girl in the opposite window, that I
Look at when she looks from her window.
And yet, I've been thinking I'd so like to see
If what goes on behind her, goes on behind me!
And then, goodness gracious! what fun it would be
For us both as we sit by our window!
How we'd know when the parcels were hid in a drawer,
Or things taken out that one never sees more;
What people come in and go out of the door,
That we never see from the window!
And that night when the stranger came home with our Jane
I might see what I heard then, that sounded so plain
Like when my wet fingers I rub on the pane
(Which they won't let me do on my window).
And I'd know why papa shut the door with a slam,
And said something funny that sounded like 'jam,'
And then 'Edith where are you?' I said, 'Here I am.'
'Ah, that's right, dear, look out of the window!'
They say when I'm grown up these things will appear
More plain than they do when I look at them here,
But I think I see some things uncommonly clear,
As I sit and look down from the window.
What things? Oh, the things that I make up, you know,
Out of stories I've read and they all pass below.
Ali Baba, the Forty Thieves, all in a row,
Go by, as I look from my window.
That's only at church time; other days there's no crowd.
Don't laugh! See that big man who looked up and bowed?
That's our butcher I call him the Sultan Mahoud
When he nods to me here at the window!
And that man he's our neighbor just gone for a ride
Has three wives in the churchyard that lie side by side.
So I call him 'Bluebeard' in search of his bride,
While I'm Sister Anne at the window.
And what do I call you? Well, here's what I do:
When my sister expects you, she puts me here, too;
But I wait till you enter, to see if it's you,
And then I just open the window!
'Dear child!' Yes, that's me! Oh, you ask what that's for?
Well, Papa says you're 'Poverty's self,' and what's more,
I open the window, when you're at the door,
To see Love fly out of the window!'
The Red River Voyageur
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Out and in the river is winding
The links of its long, red chain,
Through belts of dusky pine-land
And gusty leagues of plain.
Only, at times, a smoke-wreath
With the drifting cloud-rack joins,
The smoke of the hunting-lodges
Of the wild Assiniboins.
Drearily blows the north-wind
From the land of ice and snow;
The eyes that look are weary,
And heavy the hands that row.
And with one foot on the water,
And one upon the shore,
The Angel of Shadow gives warning
That day shall be no more.
Is it the clang of wild-geese?
Is it the Indian's yell,
That lends to the voice of the north-wind
The tones of a far-off bell?
The voyageur smiles as he listens
To the sound that grows apace;
Well he knows the vesper ringing
Of the bells of St. Boniface.
The bells of the Roman Mission,
That call from their turrets twain,
To the boatman on the river,
To the hunter on the plain!
Even so in our mortal journey
The bitter north-winds blow,
And thus upon life's Red River
Our hearts, as oarsmen, row.
And when the Angel of Shadow
Rests his feet on wave and shore,
And our eyes grow dim with watching
And our hearts faint at the oar,
Happy is he who heareth
The signal of his release
In the bells of the Holy City,
The chimes of eternal peace
King Solomon And The Ants
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Out from Jerusalem
The king rode with his great
War chiefs and lords of state,
And Sheba's queen with them;
Comely, but black withal,
To whom, perchance, belongs
That wondrous Song of songs,
Sensuous and mystical,
Whereto devout souls turn
In fond, ecstatic dream,
And through its earth-born theme
The Love of loves discern.
Proud in the Syrian sun,
In gold and purple sheen,
The dusky Ethiop queen
Smiled on King Solomon.
Wisest of men, he knew
The languages of all
The creatures great or small
That trod the earth or flew.
Across an ant-hill led
The king's path, and he heard
Its small folk, and their word
He thus interpreted:
"Here comes the king men greet
As wise and good and just,
To crush us in the dust
Under his heedless feet."
The great king bowed his head,
And saw the wide surprise
Of the Queen of Sheba's eyes
As he told her what they said.
"O king!" she whispered sweet,
"Too happy fate have they
Who perish in thy way
Beneath thy gracious feet!
"Thou of the God-lent crown,
Shall these vile creatures dare
Murmur against thee where
The knees of kings kneel down?"
"Nay," Solomon replied,
"The wise and strong should seek
The welfare of the weak,"
And turned his horse aside.
His train, with quick alarm,
Curved with their leader round
The ant-hill's peopled mound,
And left it free from harm.
The jewelled head bent low;
"O king!" she said, "henceforth
The secret of thy worth
And wisdom well I know.
"Happy must be the State
Whose ruler heedeth more
The murmurs of the poor
Than flatteries of the great.
Scirocco
by Francis Brett Young

Out of that high pavilion
Where the sick, wind-harassed sun
In the whiteness of the day
Ghostly shone and stole away - 
Parch'd with the utter thirst
Of unnumbered Libyan sands,
Thou, cloud-gathering spirit, burst
Out of arid Africa
To the tideless sea, and smote
On our pale, moon-cool'd lands
The hot breath of a lion's throat.
And that furnace-heated breath
Blew into my placid dreams
The heart of fire from whence it came:
Haunt of beauty and of death
Where the forest breaks in flame
Of flaunting blossom, where the flood
Of life pulses hot and stark,
Where a wing'd death breeds in mud
And tumult of tree-shadowed streams - 
Black waters, desolately hurled
Through the uttermost, lost, dark,
Secret places of the world.
There, O swift and terrible
Being, wast thou born; and thence,
Like a demon loosed from hell,
Stripped with rending wings the dense
Echoing forests, till their bowed
Plumes of trees like tattered cloud
Were toss'd and torn, and cried aloud
As the wood were rack'd with pain:
Thence thou freed'st thy wings, and soon
From the moaning, stricken plain
In whorled eagle-soarings rose
To melt the sun-defeating snows
Of the Mountains of the Moon,
To dull their glaciers with fierce breath,
To slip the avalanches' rein,
To set the laughing torrents free
On the tented desert beneath,
Where men of thirst must wither and die
While the vultures stare in the sun's eye;
Where slowly sifting sands are strown
On broken cities, whose bleaching bones
Whiten in moonlight stone on stone.
Over their pitiful dust thy blast
Passed in columns of whirling sand,
Leapt the desert and swept the strand
Of the cool and quiet sea,
Gathering mighty shapes, and proud
Phantoms of monstrous, wave-born cloud,
And northward drove this panoply
Till the sky seemed charging on the land....
Yet, in that plum'd helm, the most
Of thy hot power was cooled or lost,
So that it came to me at length,
Faint and tepid and shorn of strength,
To shiver an olive-grove that heaves
A myriad moonlight-coloured leaves,
And in the stone-pine's dome set free
A murmur of the middle sea:
A puff of warm air in the night
So spent by its impetuous flight
It scarce invades my pillar'd closes, - 
To waft their fragrance from the sweet
Buds of my lemon-coloured roses
Or strew blown petals at my feet:
To kiss my cheek with a warm sigh
And in the tired darkness die.
Snow-Flakes
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.
Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.
This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.
The Golden City Of St. Mary
by John Masefield

Out beyond the sunset could I but find the way,
Is a sleepy blue laguna which widens to a bay,
And there's the Blessed City, so the sailors say,
The Golden City of St. Mary.
It's built of fair marble, white, without a stain,
And in the cool twilight when the sea-winds wane
The bells chime faintly, like a soft warm rain,
In the Golden City of St. Mary.
Among the green palm-trees where the fire-flies shine,
Are the white tavern tables where the gallants dine,
Singing slow Spanish songs like old mulled wine,
In the Golden City of St. Mary.
Oh I'll be shipping sunset-wards and westward-ho
Through the green topping combers a-shattering into snow,
Till I come to quiet moorings and a watch below,
In the Golden City of St. Mary.
Ships That Pass In The Night
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing;
I look far out into the pregnant night,
Where I can hear a solemn booming gun
And catch the gleaming of a random light,
That tells me that the ship I seek is passing, passing.
My tearful eyes my soul's deep hurt are glassing;
For I would hail and check that ship of ships.
I stretch my hands imploring, cry aloud,
My voice falls dead a foot from mine own lips,
And but its ghost doth reach that vessel, passing, passing.
O Earth, O Sky, O Ocean, both surpassing,
O heart of mine, O soul that dreads the dark!
Is there no hope for me? Is there no way
That I may sight and check that speeding bark
Which out of sight and sound is passing, passing?
The Good Conceit
by Thomas William Hodgson Crosland

Out of the cloud that covers me
And blots the stars and seldom lifts,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my indubitable gifts.
Under the whip, upon the setts,
Men drive me many a galling mile;
My stock of editors' regrets
Would fill a barrow, but -- I smile.
Fast by this trade of wind and wit
I mean to hold till life be done,
And every year I stay in it
Finds, and shall find me, tugging on.
It matters not how stiff and sheer
The climb -- how difficult the sum,
I am the man they've got to hear!
I am the man that's bound to come!
Through Me Only
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

Out of all the reek and turmoil
Of the dreadful battle-plain,
Came a voice insistent, calling,
Calling, calling, but in vain;--
"Through Me only
Shall the world have peace again."
But our hearts were too sore-burdened,
Fighting foes and fighting pain,
And we heeded not the clear voice,
Calling, calling all in vain;--
"Through Me only
Shall the world have peace again."
Now, at last, the warfare ended,
Dead the passion, loosed the strain,
Louder still that voice is calling;
Shall it call and call in vain?
"Through Me only
Shall the world have peace again."
Now we hear it; now we hearken,
In the silence of our slain,
Broken hearts new homes would build them
Of the fragments that remain.
"Through Me only
Shall the world have peace again."
Lord, we know it by our sorrows,
Might of man can ne'er attain
That Thou givest.    Now we offer
Thee the Kingship.    Come and reign!
Through Thee only
Shall our loss be turned to gain.
Show us, Lord, all Thou would'st have us
Do to garner all Thy grain.
Thy deep ploughing, Thy sure sowing
Richest harvest shall obtain.
Only come Thou,
Come and dwell with us again!
TUNE--Abbeycombe.
The Creed To Be
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Our thoughts are molding unmade spheres,
And, like a blessing or a curse,
They thunder down the formless years,
And ring throughout the universe.
We build our futures, by the shape
Of our desires, and not by acts.
There is no pathway of escape;
No priest-made creeds can alter facts.
Salvation is not begged or bought;
Too long this selfish hope sufficed;
Too long man reeked with lawless thought,
And leaned upon a tortured Christ.
Like shriveled leaves, these worn out creeds
Are dropping from Religion's tree;
The world begins to know its needs,
And souls are crying to be free.
Free from the load of fear and grief,
Man fashioned in an ignorant age;
Free from the ache of unbelief
He fled to in rebellious rage.
No church can bind him to the things
That fed the first crude souls, evolved;
For, mounting up on daring wings,
He questions mysteries all unsolved.
Above the chant of priests, above
The blatant voice of braying doubt,
He hears the still, small voice of Love,
Which sends its simple message out.
And clearer, sweeter, day by day,
Its mandate echoes from the skies,
"Go roll the stone of self away,
And let the Christ within thee rise."
Manhattan
by Lola Ridge

Out of the night you burn, Manhattan,
In a vesture of gold - 
Span of innumerable arcs,
Flaring and multiplying - 
Gold at the uttermost circles fading
Into the tenderest hint of jade,
Or fusing in tremulous twilight blues,
Robing the far-flung offices,
Scintillant-storied, forking flame,
Or soaring to luminous amethyst
Over the steeples aureoled - 
Diaphanous gold,
Veiling the Woolworth, argently
Rising slender and stark
Mellifluous-shrill as a vender's cry,
And towers squatting graven and cold
On the velvet bales of the dark,
And the Singer's appraising
Indolent idol's eye,
And night like a purple cloth unrolled - 
Nebulous gold
Throwing an ephemeral glory about life's vanishing points,
Wherein you burn...
You of unknown voltage
Whirling on your axis...
Scrawling vermillion signatures
Over the night's velvet hoarding...
Insolent, towering spherical
To apices ever shifting.
Poem: In The Forest
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Out of the mid-wood's twilight
Into the meadow's dawn,
Ivory limbed and brown-eyed,
Flashes my Faun!
He skips through the copses singing,
And his shadow dances along,
And I know not which I should follow,
Shadow or song!
O Hunter, snare me his shadow!
O Nightingale, catch me his strain!
Else moonstruck with music and madness
I track him in vain!
Wake Me a Song
by Abram Joseph Ryan

Out of the silences wake me a song,
Beautiful, sad, and soft, and low;
Let the loveliest music sound along,
And wing each note with a wail of woe:
Dim and drear
As hope's last tear;
Out of the silences wake me a hymn,
Whose sounds are like shadows soft and dim.
Out of the stillness in your heart --
A thousand songs are sleeping there --
Wake me a song, thou child of art!
The song of a hope in a last despair:
Dark and low,
A chant of woe;
Out of the stillness, tone by tone,
Cold as a snowflake, low as a moan.
Out of the darkness flash me a song,
Brightly dark and darkly bright;
Let it sweep as a lone star sweeps along
The mystical shadows of the night:
Sing it sweet;
Where nothing is drear, or dark, or dim,
And earth-song soars into heavenly hymn.
The Song of the Chattahoochee.
by Sidney Lanier

Out of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover's pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall.
All down the hills of Habersham,
All through the valleys of Hall,
The rushes cried `Abide, abide,'
The willful waterweeds held me thrall,
The laving laurel turned my tide,
The ferns and the fondling grass said `Stay,'
The dewberry dipped for to work delay,
And the little reeds sighed `Abide, abide,
Here in the hills of Habersham,
Here in the valleys of Hall.'
High o'er the hills of Habersham,
Veiling the valleys of Hall,
The hickory told me manifold
Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold,
The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine,
Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign,
Said, `Pass not, so cold, these manifold
Deep shades of the hills of Habersham,
These glades in the valleys of Hall.'
And oft in the hills of Habersham,
And oft in the valleys of Hall,
The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone
Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl,
And many a luminous jewel lone
- Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist,
Ruby, garnet and amethyst -
Made lures with the lights of streaming stone
In the clefts of the hills of Habersham,
In the beds of the valleys of Hall.
But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of Hall
Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward the voices of Duty call -
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main,
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,
And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o'er the hills of Habersham,
Calls through the valleys of Hall.
1877.
Spain 1873-'74
by Walt Whitman

Out of the murk of heaviest clouds,
Out of the feudal wrecks, and heap'd-up skeletons of kings,
Out of that old entire European debris the shatter'd mummeries,
Ruin'd cathedrals, crumble of palaces, tombs of priests,
Lo! Freedom's features, fresh, undimm'd, look forth the same immortal face looks forth;
(A glimpse as of thy mother's face, Columbia,
A flash significant as of a sword,
Beaming towards thee.)
Nor think we forget thee, Maternal;
Lag'd'st thou so long? Shall the clouds close again upon thee?
Ah, but thou hast Thyself now appear'd to us we know thee;
Thou hast given us a sure proof, the glimpse of Thyself;
Thou waitest there, as everywhere, thy time.
November Meteors.
by Kate Seymour Maclean

Out of the dread eternities,
The vast abyss of night,
A glorious pageant rose and shone,
And passed from human sight.
We saw the glittering cavalcade,
And heard inwove through all,
Faint and afar from star to star,
The sliding music fall.
With banners and with torches,
And hoofs of glancing flame,
With helm and sword and pennon bright
The long procession came.
And all the starry spaces,
Height above height outshone,
And the bickering clang of their armour rang
Down to the farthest zone.
As if some grand cathedral,
With towers of malachite,
And walls of more than crystal clear,
Rose out of the solid light,
And under its frowning gateway,
Each morioned warrior stept,
And in radiant files down the ringing aisles,
The martial pageant swept.
From out the oriel windows,
From vault, and spire, and dome,
And sparkling up from base to cope,
The light and glory clomb.
They knelt before the altar,
Each mailed and visored knight,
And the censers swung as a voice outrung,--
'Now God defend the right'!
On casque, and brand, and corselet
Fell the red light of Mars,
As forth from the minster gates they passed
To the battle of the stars.
Across moon-lighted depths of space,
And breadths of purple seas,
Their flying squadrons sailed in fleets,
Of fiery argosies:
Down lengths of shining rivers,
Past golded-sanded bars,
And nebulous isles of amethyst,
They dropt like falling stars:
Till on a scarped and wrinkled coast,
Washed by dark waves below,
They came upon the glittering tents--
The city of the foe.
Then rushed they to the battle;
Their bright hair blazed behind,
As deadlier than the bolt they fell,
And swifter than the wind.
And all the stellar continents,
With that fierce hail thick sown,
Recoiled with fear, from sphere to sphere
To Saturn's ancient throne.
The blind old king, in ermine wrapt.
And immemorial cold,
Awoke, and raised his aged hands,
And shook his rings of gold.
Down toppled plume and pennon bright,
In endless ruin hurled,
Their blades of light struck fire from night--
Their splendours lit the world!
And rolling down the hollow spheres,
The mighty chords, the seven,
Clanged on from orb to orb, and smote
Orion in mid-heaven.
Along the ground the white tents lay;
And faint along the fields.
The foe's swart hosts, like glimmering ghosts,
Followed his chariot wheels.
With banners and with torches,
And armour all aflame,
The victors and the vanquished went,
Departing as they came;
With here and there a rocket sent
Up from some lonely barque:
Into the vast abysm they passed,--
Into the final dark.