DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Two Pictures.
by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick

A beautiful form and a beautiful face,
A winsome bride and a woman's grace,
So fair and sweet it were heaven indeed
For man to follow where she would lead.
A web of lace and a jeweled hand,
And life is changed by a golden band;
A dream of love and a wealth of gold--
The old new story once more is told.
A wealth of flowers and a robe of snow,
A beauteous woman with cheeks aglow;
A train of satin that sweeps the floor--
And life is altered forevermore.
A beautiful scene on this Christmas eve,
Where all could linger and none could grieve,
A dazzling vision of wealth and pride,
A royal feast and a happy bride.
But turn your steps to the lonely street,
Where fierce winds mutter and wild storms beat;
And come with me to the haunts of woe
Where life is a burden and hopes are low.
Look on this woman, so thin and white;
You close your eyes--'tis a dreadful sight;
But shudder not--she is cold and dead--
And died, oh men! for a CRUST OF BREAD.
So young and hopeless, oh! God above,
With none to comfort and none to love;
A tortured soul and a hungry cry
That rang unheard through the stormy sky.
While, oh! so near in the gloomy night
Lay rescue and love and warmth and light;
And oh! so near to the longing eyes,
There gleamed the bright depths of a paradise.
Oh! look on this picture, thou fair young bride,
For one poor morsel of bread she died;
One glittering gem from your breast or hair,
Could have saved this woman who lieth there.
One costly spray of your flowers bright
Could have bought the food that she craved this night;
One drop of love from your boundless store
Her soul could have saved forevermore.
Oh, sadd'ning picture, this Christmas eve,--
For thy sad story the angels grieve;
To think in this city of wealth and might
A woman perished for BREAD, this night.
On One Of The Windows At Delville
by Jonathan Swift

A bard, grown desirous of saving his pelf,
Built a house he was sure would hold none but himself.
This enraged god Apollo, who Mercury sent,
And bid him go ask what his votary meant?
"Some foe to my empire has been his adviser:
'Tis of dreadful portent when a poet turns miser!
Tell him, Hermes, from me, tell that subject of mine,
I have sworn by the Styx, to defeat his design;
For wherever he lives, the Muses shall reign;
And the Muses, he knows, have a numerous train."
Song
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

A bee that was searching for sweets one day
Through the gate of a rose garden happened to stray.
In the heart of a rose he hid away,
And forgot in his bliss the light of day,
As sipping his honey he buzzed in song;
Though day was waning, he lingered long,
For the rose was sweet, so sweet.
A robin sits pluming his ruddy breast,
And a madrigal sings to his love in her nest:
"Oh, the skies they are blue, the fields are green,
And the birds in your nest will soon be seen!"
She hangs on his words with a thrill of love,
And chirps to him as he sits above
For the song is sweet, so sweet.
A maiden was out on a summer's day
With the winds and the waves and the flowers at play;
And she met with a youth of gentle air,
With the light of the sunshine on his hair.
Together they wandered the flowers among;
They loved, and loving they lingered long,
For to love is sweet, so sweet.
A Mood
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

A blight, a gloom, I know not what, has crept upon my gladness--
Some vague, remote ancestral touch of sorrow, or of madness;
A fear that is not fear, a pain that has not pain's insistence;
A sense of longing, or of loss, in some foregone existence;
A subtle hurt that never pen has writ nor tongue has spoken--
Such hurt perchance as Nature feels when a blossomed bough is broken.
Song. "A Beautiful Flower, That Bedeck'd A Mean Pasture"
by John Clare

A beautiful flower, that bedeck'd a mean pasture,
In virgin perfection I found;
Its fair bloom stood naked to every disaster,
And deep the storm gather'd around:
The rose in the midst of its brambles is blooming,
Whose weapons intruders alarm,
But sweetest of blossoms, fond, fair, and weak woman
Has nothing to guard her from harm.
Each stranger seem'd struck with a blossom so lovely,
In such a lone valley that grew;
The clown's admiration was cast on it roughly
While blushing it shrank from his view:
O sweet was the eve when I found the fair blossom,
Sure never seem'd blossom so fair,
I instant transplanted its charms to my bosom,
And deep has the root gather'd there.
The Selfsame Song
by Thomas Hardy

A bird bills the selfsame song,
With never a fault in its flow,
That we listened to here those long
Long years ago.
A pleasing marvel is how
A strain of such rapturous rote
Should have gone on thus till now
Unchanged in a note!
- But it's not the selfsame bird. -
No: perished to dust is he . . .
As also are those who heard
That song with me.
No Spouse But A Sister.
by Robert Herrick

A bachelor I will
Live as I have liv'd still,
And never take a wife
To crucify my life;
But this I'll tell ye too,
What now I mean to do:
A sister (in the stead
Of wife) about I'll lead;
Which I will keep embrac'd,
And kiss, but yet be chaste.
Fidelity
by William Wordsworth

A barking sound the Shepherd hears,
A cry as of a dog or fox;
He halts and searches with his eyes
Among the scattered rocks:
And now at distance can discern
A stirring in a brake of fern;
And instantly a dog is seen,
Glancing through that covert green.
The Dog is not of mountain breed;
Its motions, too, are wild and shy;
With something, as the Shepherd thinks,
Unusual in its cry:
Nor is there any one in sight
All round, in hollow or on height;
Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear;
What is the creature doing here?
It was a cove, a huge recess,
That keeps, till June, December's snow;
A lofty precipice in front,
A silent tarn below!
Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,
Remote from public road or dwelling,
Pathway, or cultivated land;
From trace of human foot or hand.
There sometimes doth a leaping fish
Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
The crags repeat the raven's croak,
In symphony austere;
Thither the rainbow comes the cloud 
And mists that spread the flying shroud;
And sunbeams; and the sounding blast,
That, if it could, would hurry past;
But that enormous barrier holds it fast.
Not free from boding thoughts, a while
The Shepherd stood; then makes his way
O'er rocks and stones, following the Dog
As quickly as he may;
Nor far had gone before he found
A human skeleton on the ground;
The appalled Discoverer with a sigh
Looks round, to learn the history.
From those abrupt and perilous rocks
The Man had fallen, that place of fear!
At length upon the Shepherd's mind
It breaks, and all is clear:
He instantly recalled the name,
And who he was, and whence he came;
Remembered, too, the very day
On which the Traveller passed this way.
But hear a wonder, for whose sake
This lamentable tale I tell!
A lasting monument of words
This wonder merits well.
The Dog, which still was hovering nigh,
Repeating the same timid cry,
This Dog, had been through three months' space
A dweller in that savage place.
Yes, proof was plain that, since the day
When this ill-fated Traveller died,
The Dog had watched about the spot,
Or by his master's side:
How nourished here through such long time
He knows, who gave that love sublime;
And gave that strength of feeling, great
Above all human estimate!
Above Crow's Nest - Sydney
by Henry Lawson

A blanket low and leaden,
Though rent across the west,
Whose darkness seems to deaden
The brightest and the best;
A sunset white and staring
On cloud-wrecks far away,
And haggard house-walls glaring
A farewell to the day.
A light on tower and steeple,
Where sun no longer shines,
My people, Oh my people!
Rise up and read the signs!
Low looms the nearer high-line
(No sign of star or moon),
The horseman on the skyline
Rode hard this afternoon!
(Is he, and who shall know it?,
The spectre of a scout?
The spirit of a poet,
Whose truths were met with doubt?
Who sought and who succeeded
In marking danger's track,
Whose warnings were unheeded
Till all the sky was black?)
It is a shameful story
For our young, generous home,
Without the rise and glory
We'd go as Greece and Rome.
Without the sacrifices
That make a nation's name,
The elder nation's vices
And luxuries we claim.
Grown vain without a conquest,
And sure without a fort,
And maddened in the one quest
For pleasure or for sport.
Self-blinded to our starkness
We'd fling the time away
To fight, half-armed, in darkness
Who should be armed to-day.
This song is for the city,
The city in its pride,
The coming time shall pity
And shield the countryside.
Shall we live in the present
Till fearful war-clouds loom,
And till the sullen peasant
Shall leave us to our doom?
Cloud-fortresses titanic
Along the western sky,
The tired, bowed mechanic
And pallid clerk flit by.
Lit by a light unhealthy,
The ghastly after-glare,
The veiled and goggled wealthy
Drive fast, they know not where.
Night's sullen spirit rouses,
The darkening gables lour
From ugly four-roomed houses
Verandah'd windows glower;
The last long day-stare dies on
The scrub-ridged western side,
And round the near horizon
The spectral horsemen ride.
The Bitch And Her Friend.
by Jean de La Fontaine

[1]
A bitch, that felt her time approaching,
And had no place for parturition,
Went to a female friend, and, broaching
Her delicate condition,
Got leave herself to shut
Within the other's hut.
At proper time the lender came
Her little premises to claim.
The bitch crawl'd meekly to the door,
And humbly begg'd a fortnight more.
Her little pups, she said, could hardly walk.
In short, the lender yielded to her talk.
The second term expired; the friend had come
To take possession of her house and home.
The bitch, this time, as if she would have bit her,
Replied, 'I'm ready, madam, with my litter,
To go when you can turn me out.'
Her pups, you see, were fierce and stout.
The creditor, from whom a villain borrows,
Will fewer shillings get again than sorrows.
If you have trusted people of this sort,
You'll have to plead, and dun, and fight; in short,
If in your house you let one step a foot,
He'll surely step the other in to boot.
The Phantom Curate. A Fable
by William Schwenck Gilbert

A BISHOP once I will not name his see
Annoyed his clergy in the mode conventional;
From pulpit shackles never set them free,
And found a sin where sin was unintentional.
All pleasures ended in abuse auricular
The Bishop was so terribly particular.
Though, on the whole, a wise and upright man,
He sought to make of human pleasures clearances;
And form his priests on that much-lauded plan
Which pays undue attention to appearances.
He couldn't do good deeds without a psalm in 'em,
Although, in truth, he bore away the palm in 'em.
Enraged to find a deacon at a dance,
Or catch a curate at some mild frivolity,
He sought by open censure to enhance
Their dread of joining harmless social jollity.
Yet he enjoyed (a fact of notoriety)
The ordinary pleasures of society.
One evening, sitting at a pantomime
(Forbidden treat to those who stood in fear of him),
Roaring at jokes, sans metre, sense, or rhyme,
He turned, and saw immediately in rear of him,
His peace of mind upsetting, and annoying it,
A curate, also heartily enjoying it.
Again, 't was Christmas Eve, and to enhance
His children's pleasure in their harmless rollicking,
He, like a good old fellow, stood to dance;
When something checked the current of his frolicking:
That curate, with a maid he treated lover-ly,
Stood up and figured with him in the "Coverley!"
Once, yielding to an universal choice
(The company's demand was an emphatic one,
For the old Bishop had a glorious voice),
In a quartet he joined an operatic one.
Harmless enough, though ne'er a word of grace in it,
When, lo! that curate came and took the bass in it!
One day, when passing through a quiet street,
He stopped awhile and joined a Punch's gathering;
And chuckled more than solemn folk think meet,
To see that gentleman his Judy lathering;
And heard, as Punch was being treated penalty,
That phantom curate laughing all hyaenally.
Now at a picnic, 'mid fair golden curls,
Bright eyes, straw hats, bottines that fit amazingly,
A croquet-bout is planned by all the girls;
And he, consenting, speaks of croquet praisingly;
But suddenly declines to play at all in it
The curate fiend has come to take a ball in it!
Next, when at quiet sea-side village, freed
From cares episcopal and ties monarchical,
He grows his beard, and smokes his fragrant weed,
In manner anything but hierarchical
He sees and fixes an unearthly stare on it
That curate's face, with half a yard of hair on it!
At length he gave a charge, and spake this word:
"Vicars, your curates to enjoyment urge ye may;
To check their harmless pleasuring's absurd;
What laymen do without reproach, my clergy may."
He spake, and lo! at this concluding word of him,
The curate vanished no one since has heard of him.
A Dirge
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

A bell tolls on in my heart
As though in my ears a knell
Had ceased for awhile to swell,
But the sense of it would not part
From the spirit that bears its part
In the chime of the soundless bell.
Ah dear dead singer of sorrow,
The burden is now not thine
That grief bade sound for a sign
Through the songs of the night whose morrow
Has risen, and I may not borrow
A beam from its radiant shrine.
The burden has dropped from thee
That grief on thy life bound fast;
The winter is over and past
Whose end thou wast fain to see.
Shall sorrow not comfort me
That is thine no longer, at last?
Good day, good night, and good morrow,
Men living and mourning say.
For thee we could only pray
That night of the day might borrow
Such comfort as dreams lend sorrow:
Death gives thee at last good day.
Tutto ' Sciolto
by James Joyce

A birdless heaven, seadusk, one lone star
Piercing the west,
As thou, fond heart, love's time, so faint, so far,
Rememberest.
The clear young eyes' soft look, the candid brow,
The fragrant hair,
Falling as through the silence falleth now
Dusk of the air.
Why then, remembering those shy
Sweet lures, repine
When the dear love she yielded with a sigh
Was all but thine?
England, Awake!
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A beautiful great lady, past her prime,
Behold her dreaming in her easy chair;
Gray robed, and veiled; in laces old and rare,
Her smiling eyes see but the vanished time,
Of splendid prowess, and of deeds sublime.
Self satisfied she sits, all unaware
That peace has flown before encroaching care,
And through her halls stalks hunger, linked with crime.
England, awake! from dreams of what has been,
Look on what IS, and put the past away.
Speak to your sons, until they understand.
England, awake! for dreaming now is sin;
In all your ancient wisdom, rise to-day,
And save the glory of your menaced land.
Night Fishing At Antibes
by Paul Cameron Brown

A beach back of bric ' brac,
wine goblet of sky ... .
the horizon beginning
somewhere between Nod &
nigh unto forever with
only the sigh of a Casuarina pine
or sea-grape to force a smile.
It was entering into twilight
- our minds were sailing ships,
mere vagaries upon the waves,
mine more a clippership
on the Frisco to China run.
Soir'e intim'e,
ap'rtif, digestif?
A bottle of rum
with Eleuthera for a name
- the prettiest coves
have steadfast winds
dark about portside.
Silvery light of stars,
the stars like black hansom cabs
with livried footmen before
shark-toothed clouds,
a shark-faced moon,
the sight of a shark breaking water,
lemon-white its gullet with the
Big Dipper stuck in a shark tooth.
Diamondhead or Copperback?
Carpetbaggers ... the moon's silver tea-set
giving birth to wonderment
flooding in affection
a Raouel Dufy lithograph,
some decrepit Neapolitan fisherman
zoning his epic life
to human proportions.
Stanzas.
by Thomas Moore

A beam of tranquillity smiled in the west,
The storms of the morning pursued us no more;
And the wave, while it welcomed the moment of rest.
Still heaved, as remembering ills that were o'er.
Serenely my heart took the hue of the hour,
Its passions were sleeping, were mute as the dead;
And the spirit becalmed but remembered their power,
As the billow the force of the gale that was fled.
I thought of those days, when to pleasure alone
My heart ever granted a wish or a sigh;
When the saddest emotion my bosom had known,
Was pity for those who were wiser than I.
I reflected, how soon in the cup of Desire
The pearl of the soul may be melted away;
How quickly, alas, the pure sparkle of fire
We inherit from heaven, may be quenched in the clay;
And I prayed of that Spirit who lighted the flame,
That Pleasure no more might its purity dim;
So that, sullied but little, or brightly the same,
I might give back the boon I had borrowed from Him.
How blest was the thought! it appeared as if Heaven
Had already an opening to Paradise shown;
As if, passion all chastened and error forgiven,
My heart then began to be purely its own.
I looked to the west, and the beautiful sky
Which morning had clouded, was clouded no more:
"Oh! thus," I exclaimed, "may a heavenly eye
"Shed light on the soul that was darkened before."
John Kinsella's Lament For Mr. Mary Moore
by William Butler Yeats

A Bloody and a sudden end,
Gunshot or a noose,
For Death who takes what man would keep,
Leaves what man would lose.
He might have had my sister,
My cousins by the score,
But nothing satisfied the fool
But my dear Mary Moore,
None other knows what pleasures man
At table or in bed.
i(What shall I do for pretty girls)
i(Now my old bawd is dead?)
Though stiff to strike a bargain,
Like an old Jew man,
Her bargain struck we laughed and talked
And emptied many a can;
And O! but she had stories,
Though not for the priest's ear,
To keep the soul of man alive,
Banish age and care,
And being old she put a skin
On everything she said.
i(What shall I do for pretty girls)
i(Now my old bawd is dead?)
The priests have got a book that says
But for Adam's sin
Eden's Garden would be there
And I there within.
No expectation fails there,
No pleasing habit ends,
No man grows old, no girl grows cold
But friends walk by friends.
Who quarrels over halfpennies
That plucks the trees for bread?
i(What shall I do for pretty girls)
i(Now my old bawd is dead?)
A Bouquet
by Edward Smyth Jones

A blossom pink, a blossom blue,
Make all there is in love so true.
'Tis fit, methinks, my heart to move,
To give it thee, sweet girl, I love!
Now, take it, dear, this morn and wear
A wreath of beauty in thy hair;
Think on it, when from bliss we part - 
The emblem of my wooing heart!
Nearing Port
by Mary Hannay Foott

A blue line to the westward that surely is not cloud;
A green tinge in the waters; a clamorous bird-crowd;
Then far-off foamy edges, and hill-tops timber fringed;
And, perched aloft, a light-house, o'er grey cliffs golden-tinged.
O watchers leaning landward, know ye of nothing more?
And hear ye but the sea-birds? and see ye but the shore?
Nay, look awhile, and listen who bids you welcome there;
The great seas kiss her sandals, the high stars gem her hair!
Behold her in the gateway! high-held in either hand
A blazing beacon, lighted to lead you to the land.
'Now welcome, kindly welcome, who come to me for cheer!
My forts may frown on others, but ye have nought to fear.
The cannon's flash and thunder are all for joy to-day,
No murmurs meet your coming, none wish to bar your way.'
O, later called to labour, shall we who toiled at morn
Remember, as against you, the heat and burthen borne?
No, verily, we shall not! We pray the labourer's Lord
May give you after-comers a full day's full reward.
Now fear not, fair-haired maiden, for gladness waits thee here,
As by thy father's fireside in bygone days and dear.
Thy troubled brow, O matron, beneath its silvering hair,
Shall gain no fresher furrows, shall lose its look of care;
No longer for thy household the winter need'st thou dread,
Nor, fearing for to-morrow, shalt stint the children's bread.
And thou, a 'mother's darling,' on those young locks of thine
What midnight rains shall batter, what tropic suns shall shine!
Thy tender hands, toil-hardened, unwonted tools shall wield,
Shall fell the columned forest, shall till the furrowed field.
Yet, when at England's fireside her olden tales are told,
Perchance, 'mid tearful silence, one from the land of gold.
Shall tell a brave new story, of want, and work, and care,
Of trial and of triumph, to touch the coldest there!
Now enter ye a haven your fathers have not known;
Now dwell ye in a country that once was not your own.
Part of the New World's army, the pioneers, are ye;
For whom there waits, ungathered, the wealth of earth and sea!
No need of 'fiery baptism,' no blood, no tears to flow,
Ah, legions of the Caesars, had you but conquered so!
Ah, Vikings in Valhalla our fathers dead and gone
Could you have made such landing such golden shores upon!
A Birthday Walk.
by Jean Ingelow

(WRITTEN FOR A FRIEND'S BIRTHDAY.)
"The days of our life are threescore years and ten."
A birthday: - and a day that rose
With much of hope, with meaning rife - 
A thoughtful day from dawn to close:
The middle day of human life.
In sloping fields on narrow plains,
The sheep were feeding on their knees
As we went through the winding lanes,
Strewed with red buds of alder-trees.
So warm the day - its influence lent
To flagging thought a stronger wing;
So utterly was winter spent,
So sudden was the birth of spring.
Wild crocus flowers in copse and hedge - 
In sunlight, clustering thick below,
Sighed for the firwood's shaded ledge,
Where sparkled yet a line of snow.
And crowded snowdrops faintly hung
Their fair heads lower for the heat,
While in still air all branches flung
Their shadowy doubles at our feet.
And through the hedge the sunbeams crept,
Dropped through the maple and the birch;
And lost in airy distance slept
On the broad tower of Tamworth Church.
Then, lingering on the downward way,
A little space we resting stood,
To watch the golden haze that lay
Adown that river by the wood.
A distance vague, the bloom of sleep
The constant sun had lent the scene,
A veiling charm on dingles deep
Lay soft those pastoral hills between.
There are some days that die not out,
Nor alter by reflection's power,
Whose converse calm, whose words devout,
For ever rest, the spirit's dower.
And they are days when drops a veil - 
A mist upon the distance past;
And while we say to peace - "All hail!"
We hope that always it shall last.
Times when the troubles of the heart
Are hushed - as winds were hushed that day - 
And budding hopes begin to start,
Like those green hedgerows on our way:
When all within and all around
Like hues on that sweet landscape blend,
And Nature's hand has made to sound
The heartstrings that her touch attend:
When there are rays within, like those
That streamed through maple and through birch,
And rested in such calm repose
On the broad tower of Tamworth Church.
Neither Beast Nor Bird
by Walter Crane

A Beast he would be, or a bird,
As might suit, thought the Bat: but he erred.
When the battle was done,
He found that no one
Would take him for friend at his word.
Between Two Stools You May Come To The Ground