DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Nature Has A Thousand Choirs.
by Freeman Edwin Miller

Nature has a thousand choirs
Singing in the sylvan shadows,
And the music of her lyres
Echoes in the merry meadows;
Always glad with golden glee
Sounds her happy melody,
Swelling wild in fairy measure
With the songs of purest pleasure.
Where the dancing fountains play
Winding warbles shake and shiver,
And soft carols rise alway
From the ripples of the river;
Sweetest voices fondly call
From the fleecy waterfall,
And the joyful chimes are creeping
Where the lovely lake is sleeping.
Raptures echo in the wood,
Where the pimpernel reposes;
Gladness fills the solitude
Where the blushes kiss the roses;
Sunny beam and somber gloom
Utter hymns from bowers of bloom,
Where the vernal winds are crying
And the vocal birds are flying.
O'er the smiling scenes of earth
Nature throws no sullen weather;
All her soul is full of mirth,
Song and springtime walk together;
For the harps of happy days
Wake the woodlands with their lays,
And where lilies white are springing
Gentle melodies are ringing.
O, wild Nature, from thy soul
Fill the human hearts with gladness,
Till their lives shall gladly troll
Songs that banish all their sadness!
Bathe their breasts with songs of love
From the Edens found above,
Till their lips shall sing the story
Of their happiness and glory!
The Poet's Metamorphosis
by Eugene Field

M'cenas, I propose to fly
To realms beyond these human portals;
No common things shall be my wings,
But such as sprout upon immortals.
Of lowly birth, once shed of earth,
Your Horace, precious (so you've told him),
Shall soar away; no tomb of clay
Nor Stygian prison-house shall hold him.
Upon my skin feathers begin
To warn the songster of his fleeting;
But never mind, I leave behind
Songs all the world shall keep repeating.
Lo! Boston girls, with corkscrew curls,
And husky westerns, wild and woolly,
And southern climes shall vaunt my rhymes,
And all profess to know me fully.
Methinks the West shall know me best,
And therefore hold my memory dearer;
For by that lake a bard shall make
My subtle, hidden meanings clearer.
So cherished, I shall never die;
Pray, therefore, spare your dolesome praises,
Your elegies, and plaintive cries,
For I shall fertilize no daisies!
Declaration Of Independence
by Ringgold Wilmer Lardner

"MYSELF!" It means that you don't care
To have me lift you in your chair;
That if I do, you'll rage and tear.
"MYSELF!" It means you don't require
Assistance from your willing sire
In eating; 'twill but rouse your ire.
"MYSELF!" It means when you are through
That you don't want your daddy to
Unseat you, as he used to do.
Time was, and not so long ago,
When you were carried to and fro
And waited on, but now? No! No!
You'd rather fall and break your head,
Or fill your lap with cream and bread
Than be helped up or down, or fed.
Well, kid, I hope you'll stay that way
And that there'll never come a day
When you're without the strength to say,
"MYSELF!"
Edgehill Fight
by Rudyard Kipling

Naked and grey the Cotswolds stand
Beneath the autumn sun,
And the stubble-fields on either hand
Where Stour and Avon run.
There is no change in the patient land
That has bred us every one.
She should have passed in cloud and fire
And saved us from this sin
Of war, red war,' twixt child and sire,
Household and kith and kin,
In the heart of a sleepy Midland shire.
With the harvest scarcely in.
But there is no change as we meet at last
On the brow-head or the plain,
And the raw astonished ranks stand fast
To slay or to be slain
By the men they knew in the kindly past
That shall never come again,
By the men they met at dance or chase,
In the tavern or the hall,
At the j ustice-bench and the market-place,
At the cudgel-play or brawl,
Of their own blood and speech and race,
Comrades or neighbours all!
More bitter than death this day must prove
Whichever way it go,
For the brothers of the maids we love
Make ready to lay low
Their sisters sweethearts, as we move
Against our dearest foe.
Thank Heaven! At last the trumpets peal
Before our strength gives way.
For King or for the Commonweal,
No matter which they say,
The first dry rattle of new-drawn steel
Changes the world to-day!
Nature Rarer Uses Yellow
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Nature rarer uses yellow
Than another hue;
Saves she all of that for sunsets, --
Prodigal of blue,
Spending scarlet like a woman,
Yellow she affords
Only scantly and selectly,
Like a lover's words.
Unnamed Lands
by Walt Whitman

Nations ten thousand years before These States, and many times ten thousand years before These States;
Garner'd clusters of ages, that men and women like us grew up and travel'd their course, and pass'd on;
What vast-built cities, what orderly republics, what pastoral tribes and nomads;
What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others;
What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions;
What sort of marriage, what costumes, what physiology and phrenology;
What of liberty and slavery among them, what they thought of death and the soul;
Who were witty and wise, who beautiful and poetic, who brutish and undevelop'd;
Not a mark, not a record remains, And yet all remains.
O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any more than we are for nothing;
I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as much as we now belong to it, and as all will henceforth belong to it.
Afar they stand, yet near to me they stand,
Some with oval countenances, learn'd and calm,
Some naked and savage, Some like huge collections of insects,
Some in tents, herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen,
Some prowling through woods, Some living peaceably on farms, laboring, reaping, filling barns,
Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories, libraries, shows, courts, theatres, wonderful monuments.
Are those billions of men really gone?
Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone?
Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us?
Did they achieve nothing for good, for themselves?
I believe of all those billions of men and women that fill'd the unnamed lands, every one exists this hour, here or elsewhere, invisible to us, in exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out of what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinn'd, in life.
I believe that was not the end of those nations, or any person of them, any more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of me;
Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products, games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets,
I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen world, counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world.
I suspect I shall meet them there,
I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those unnamed lands.
Song.
by John Carr (Sir)

Nature's imperfect child, to whom
The world is wrapt in viewless gloom,
Can unresisted still impart
The fondest wishes of his heart.
And he, to whose impervious ear
The sweetest sounds no charms dispense,
Can bid his inmost soul appear
In clear, tho' silent, eloquence.
But we, my Julia, not so blest,
Are doom'd a diff'rent fate to prove, - 
To feel each joy and hope supprest
That flow from pure, but hidden, love.
To Henry the Fifth
by Mary Hannay Foott

My youth was passing, Sire, whilst you among
The cradle-wrappings slept; my morning-song
Sung o'er your pillow. Winds of heaven have thrown
Us both, since then, on heights apart and lone.
Heights! For misfortune drear, our destined land,
So thunder-scarred, a-nigh to heaven must stand!
The north and south are nearer than our ways
Are near to one another; and Fate lays
The purple round you, and has not withheld
Our France's sceptre-dazzlements of eld.
I, crowned with silver hairs, say, praising you,
'Well done!' That man is to his manhood true
Who bravely, at his own behest, will do
High deeds of self -undoing; will forego
All, all, save immemorial Honour; though
She seem to earthlier eyes a phantom, more
Will follow her (as erst in Elsinore
One faithful heart obeyed the beckoning ghost),
Nor stoop to buy a kingdom at her cost.
That you are aught save honest, none may say;
The Lily must be white, all white, for aye.
A Bourbon can but reign as Capet's heir,
Or waive his kingship. History is aware
Of wrecks enough, of changing battles' din,
Of those who grandly lose, or basely win!
Better with honour, Prince, the throne to quit.
Than, where St. Louis sat, dishonoured sit!
Melbourne Argus, 1873.
Another to the Same. (To Leonora)
by William Cowper

Naples, too credulous, ah! boast no more
The sweet-voiced Siren buried on thy shore,
That, when Parthenope[1] deceas'd, she gave
Her sacred dust to a Chalcidic[2] grave,
For still she lives, but has exchanged the hoarse
Pausilipo for Tiber's placid course,
Where, idol of all Rome, she now in chains,
Of magic song both Gods and Men detains.
The Earth's Shame
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Name not his deed: in shuddering and in haste
We dragged him darkly o'er the windy fell:
That night there was a gibbet in the waste,
And a new sin in hell.
Be his deed hid from commonwealths and kings,
By all men born be one true tale forgot;
But three things, braver than all earthly things,
Faced him and feared him not.
Above his head and sunken secret face
Nested the sparrow's young and dropped not dead.
From the red blood and slime of that lost place
Grew daisies white, not red.
And from high heaven looking upon him,
Slowly upon the face of God did come
A smile the cherubim and seraphim
Hid all their faces from.
Epistle To A Young Clergyman.
by Patrick Bronte

"Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." 2 TIMOTHY ii. 15.
My youthful brother, oft I long
To write to you in prose or song;
With no pretence to judgment strong,
But warm affection,
May truest friendship rivet long
Our close connection!
With deference, what I impart
Receive with humble grateful heart,
Nor proudly from my counsel start,
I only lend it,
A friend ne'er aims a poisoned dart,
He wounds, to mend it.
A graduate you've just been made,
And lately passed the Mitred Head;
I trust, by the Blest Spirit, led,
And Shepherd's care:
And not a wolf, in sheepskin clad,
As numbers are.
The greatest office you sustain
For love of souls, and not of gain:
Through your neglect should one be slain,
The Scriptures say,
Your careless hands his blood will stain,
On the Last Day.
But if pure truths, like virgin snows,
You loud proclaim, to friends and foes,
Consoling these, deterring those,
To heaven you'll fly;
Though stubborn sinners still oppose,
And graceless die.
Divide the word of truth aright,
Show Jesus in a saving light,
Proclaim to all they're dead outright
Till Grace restore them:
The great Redeemer, full in sight,
Keep still before them.
Dare not, like some, to mince the matter,
Nor dazzling tropes and figures scatter,
Nor coarsely speak nor basely flatter,
Nor grovelling go:
But let plain truths, as Life's pure water,
Pellucid flow.
The sinner level with the dead,
The Lamb exalt, the Church's Head,
His holiness, adoring spread,
With godly zeal:
Enforce, though sinless, how He bled
For sinners' weal.
Pourtray how God in thunder spoke
His fiery Law, whilst curling smoke,
In terror fierce, from Sinai broke,
Midst raging flame!
Then Jesu's milder blood invoke,
And preach His name.
Remember still to fear the Lord,
To live, as well as preach, His word,
And wield the Gospel's two-edged sword,
Though dangers lower,
Example only can afford
To precept power.
And dress nor slovenly nor gay,
Nor sternly act; nor trifling play;
Still keep the golden middle way
Whate'er betide you;
And ne'er through giddy pleasures stray,
Though fools deride you.
As wily serpent ever prove,
Yet harmless as the turtle-dove,
Still winning souls by guileful love
And deep invention,
So once the great Apostle strove
With good intention.
And inly to thyself take heed,
Oft prove your heart, its pages read, 
Self-knowledge will, in time of need,
Your wants supply;
Who knows himself, from dangers freed,
Where'er he lie.
So God will own the labours done,
Approving see His honoured Son,
And honoured Law; and numbers won
Of souls immortal,
Through grace, will onward conquering run
To heaven's bright portal.
And on that last and greatest day,
When heaven and earth shall pass away,
A perfect band, in bright array,
Will form your crown,
Your joys triumphant wide display,
And sorrows drown.
And now farewell, my youthful friend,
Excuse these lines, in candour penned;
To me as freely counsel lend,
With zeal as fervent,
For you will pray, till life does end,
Your humble servant.
Professor Minto
by Richard Le Gallienne

Nature, that makes Professors all day long,
And, filling idle souls with idle song,
Turns out small Poets every other minute,
Made earth for men - but seldom puts men in it.
Ah, Minto, thou of that minority
Wert man of men - we had deep need of thee!
Had Heaven a deeper? Did the heavenly Chair
Of Earthly Love wait empty for thee there?
March 1, 1893.
To Maecenas. III-29 (From The Odes Of Horace)
by Helen Leah Reed

M'cenas, scion of Tyrrhenian rulers,
A jar, as yet unpierced, of mellow wine
Long waits thee here, with balm for thee made ready
And blooming roses in thy locks to twine.
No more delay, nor always look with favor
The sloping fields of 'sula upon;
Why gaze so long on ever marshy Tibur
Near by the mount of murderer Telegon?
Give up thy luxury - it palls upon thee - 
Thy tower that reaches yonder lofty cloud;
Cease to admire the smoke, the wealth, the uproar,
And all that well hath made our Rome so proud.
Sometimes a change is grateful to the rich man,
A simple meal beneath a humble roof
Has often smoothed from care the furrowed forehead,
Though unadorned that home with purple woof.
Bright Cepheus now his long-hid fire is showing,
Now flames on high the angry lion-star,
Now Procyon rages, and the sun revolving
Brings back the thirsty season from afar.
Seeking a cooling stream, the weary shepherd
His languid flock leads to the shady wood
Where rough Sylvanus reigns, yet by the brookside.
No truant breeze disturbs the solitude.
Ah, who but thee is busy now with statecraft?
Thou plannest for Rome's weal, disquieted,
Lest warring Scythian, Bactrian, or Persian
Should'st plunge the city into awful dread.
A prudent deity in pitchy darkness
The issue of futurity conceals,
And smiles when man beyond the right of mortals,
His fear about the time to come reveals.
Thou should'st concern thee only with the present,
All else progresses as the river flows,
Which gliding at one time in middle channel
Toward the Tuscan Sea unruffled goes;
Or at another time, herds, trees, and houses,
And broken rocks to one destruction drags,
When wild the flood provokes the quiet current
With noise from neighboring woods and distant crags.
Happy he lives, and of himself is master,
That man who can at night with truth declare,
"I have lived to-day, to-morrow let the Father
Make as he will my sky or dark or fair,
"It is not his to render vain and worthless
My happy past - the bliss has dearer grown
That the fleet-footed hour carried with it;
The joys that once have been are still my own.
"Now upon me, again on others smiling,
Fortune rejoices in her savage trade
Of shifting thus at will uncertain honors,
As stubbornly her mocking game is played.
"I praise her when she stays, but if she leave me,
Fluttering her airy wings in hasty flight,
I yield her what she gave, and wrapped in virtue,
In dowerless Poverty find my delight.
"Although the mast may crack beneath the South wind,
I will not rush with many a doleful prayer
To barter thus my vows, lest all my treasure
From Tyre and Cyprus should become a share
"Of what the greedy sea has in possession;
Nay! then, protected in my two-oared boat,
With favoring winds, and with twin Pollux guiding
Safe through the 'gean tempests I will float."
(This version won, in 1890, the Sargent Prize, offered annually to students of Harvard University and Radcliffe College.)
Jaguar
by Lola Ridge

Nasal intonations of light
and clicking tongues...
publicity of windows
stoning me with pent-up cries...
smells of abattoirs...
smells of long-dead meat.
Some day-end - 
while the sand is yet cozy as a blanket
off the warm body of a squaw,
and the jaguars are out to kill...
with a blue-black night coming on
and a painted cloud
stalking the first star - 
I shall go alone into the Silence...
the coiled Silence...
where a cry can run only a little way
and waver and dwindle
and be lost.
And there...
where tiny antlers clinch and strain
as life grapples in a million avid points,
and threshing things
strike and die,
letting their hate live on
in the spreading purple of a wound...
I too
will make covert of a crevice in the night,
and turn and watch...
nose at the cleft's edge.
Fantasie To Laura.
by Friedrich Schiller

Name, my Laura, name the whirl-compelling
Bodies to unite in one blest whole
Name, my Laura, name the wondrous magic
By which soul rejoins its kindred soul!
See! it teaches yonder roving planets
Round the sun to fly in endless race;
And as children play around their mother,
Checkered circles round the orb to trace.
Every rolling star, by thirst tormented,
Drinks with joy its bright and golden rain
Drinks refreshment from its fiery chalice,
As the limbs are nourished by the brain.
'Tis through Love that atom pairs with atom,
In a harmony eternal, sure;
And 'tis Love that links the spheres together
Through her only, systems can endure.
Were she but effaced from Nature's clockwork,
Into dust would fly the mighty world;
O'er thy systems thou wouldst weep, great Newton,
When with giant force to chaos hurled!
Blot the goddess from the spirit order,
It would sink in death, and ne'er arise.
Were love absent, spring would glad us never;
Were love absent, none their God would prize!
What is that, which, when my Laura kisses,
Dyes my cheek with flames of purple hue,
Bids my bosom bound with swifter motion,
Like a fever wild my veins runs through?
Every nerve from out its barriers rises,
O'er its banks, the blood begins to flow;
Body seeks to join itself to body,
Spirits kindle in one blissful glow.
Powerful as in the dead creations
That eternal impulses obey,
O'er the web Arachne-like of Nature,
Living Nature, Love exerts her sway.
Laura, see how joyousness embraces
E'en the overflow of sorrows wild!
How e'en rigid desperation kindles
On the loving breast of Hope so mild.
Sisterly and blissful rapture softens
Gloomy Melancholy's fearful night,
And, deliver'd of its golden children,
Lo, the eye pours forth its radiance bright!
Does not awful Sympathy rule over
E'en the realms that Evil calls its own?
For 'tis Hell our crimes are ever wooing,
While they bear a grudge 'gainst Heaven alone!
Shame, Repentance, pair Eumenides-like,
Weave round sin their fearful serpent-coils:
While around the eagle-wings of Greatness
Treach'rous danger winds its dreaded toils.
Ruin oft with Pride is wont to trifle,
Envy upon Fortune loves to cling;
On her brother, Death, with arms extended,
Lust, his sister, oft is wont to spring.
On the wings of Love the future hastens
In the arms of ages past to lie;
And Saturnus, as he onward speeds him,
Long hath sought his bride Eternity!
Soon Saturnus will his bride discover,
So the mighty oracle hath said;
Blazing worlds will turn to marriage torches
When Eternity with Time shall wed!
Then a fairer, far more beauteous morning,
Laura, on our love shall also shine,
Long as their blest bridal-night enduring:
So rejoice thee, Laura Laura mine!
Odes From Horace. - [1]To M'cenas. Book The Second, Ode The Twelfth.
by Anna Seward

M'cenas, I conjure thee cease
To wake my harp's enamour'd strings
To tones, that fright recumbent Peace,
That Pleasure flies on rapid wings!
Slow conquest on Numantia's plain,
Or Hannibal, that dauntless stood,
Tho' thrice he saw Ausonia's main
Redden with Carthaginian blood;
The Lapith''s remorseless pride,
Hyl'us' wild inebriate hours;
The Giants, who the Gods defied,
And shook old Saturn's splendid towers;
These, dear M'cenas, thou should'st paint,
Each glory of thy C'sar's reign,
In eloquence, that scorns restraint,
And sweeter than the Poet's strain;
Show captive Kings, who from the fight
Drag at his wheels their galling chain,
And the pale lip indignant bite
With mutter'd vengeance, wild and vain.
Enraptur'd by Licinia's grace,
My Muse would these high themes decline,
Charm'd that the heart, the form, the face
Of matchless Excellence is thine.
Ah, happy Friend! for whom an eye,
Of splendid, and resistless fire,
Lays all its pointed arrows by,
For the mild gleams of soft desire!
With what gay spirit does she foil
The Pedant's meditated hit!
What happy archness in her smile!
What pointed meaning in her wit!
Her cheek how pure a crimson warms,
When with the Nymphs, in circling line,
Bending she twines her snowy arms,
And dances round Diana's shrine[2]!
M'cenas, would'st not thou exchange
The treasures gorgeous Persia pours,
The wealth of Phrygia's fertile range,
Or warm Arabia's spicy shores,
For one light ringlet of the hair,
Which shades thy sweet Licinia's face,
In that dear moment when the Fair,
In flying from thy fond embrace,
Relenting turns her snowy neck,
To meet thy kisses half their way,
Or when her feign'd resentments check
The ardors thy warm lips convey?
While in her eyes the languid light
Betrays a yielding wish to prove,
Amid her coy, yet playful flight,
The pleasing force of fervent Love;
Or when, in gaily-frolic guise,
She snatches her fair self the kiss,
E'en at the instant she denies
Her Lover the requested bliss.
Songs Set To Music: 17. Set By Mr. De Fesch
by Matthew Prior

Nanny blushes when I woo her,
And with kindly chiding eyes
Faintly says I shall undo her;
Faintly, O, forbear! she cries.
But her breasts while I am pressing,
While to hers my lips I join,
Warm'd, she seems to taste the blessing,
And her kisses answer mine.
Undebauch'd by rules of honour,
Innocence with Nature charms;
One bids gently push me from her,
The other take me in her arms.
The Reason
by Fay Inchfawn

"Why shouldest Thou be as a wayfaring man, that turneth aside to tarry for a night?" -- Jer. xiv. 8.
Nay, do not get the venison pasty out;
I shall not greatly put myself about
Hungry, he may be; yes, and we shall spare
Some bread and cheese, 'tis truly whole- some fare.
We have to-morrow's dinner still to find;
It's well for you I have a frugal mind.
Not the best bed! No, no. Whatever next?
Why with such questionings should I be vext?
The man is naught to us; why should we care?
The little attic room will do; 'tis bare,
But he'll be gone before to-morrow's light;
He has but come to tarry for a night.
I shall not speak with him. Oh, no, not I,
Lest I should pity overmuch, or buy
Some paltry ware of his. Nay, I'll to bed,
And he can sup alone, well warmed and fed;
'Tis much to take him in a night like this.
Why should I fret me with concerns of his?
Grey morning came, and at the break of day
The Man rose up and went upon his way
The Leveller.
by Robert von Ranke Graves

Near Martinpuisch that night of hell
Two men were struck by the same shell,
Together tumbling in one heap
Senseless and limp like slaughtered sheep.
One was a pale eighteen-year-old,
Girlish and thin and not too bold,
Pressed for the war ten years too soon,
The shame and pity of his platoon.
The other came from far-off lands
With bristling chin and whiskered hands,
He had known death and hell before
In Mexico and Ecuador.
Yet in his death this cut-throat wild
Groaned "Mother!    Mother!" like a child,
While that poor innocent in man's clothes
Died cursing God with brutal oaths.
Old Sergeant Smith, kindest of men,
Wrote out two copies there and then
Of his accustomed funeral speech
To cheer the womenfolk of each.