DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Disguise
by Walter De La Mare

Why in my heart, O Grief,
Dost thou in beauty hide?
Dead is my well-content,
And buried deep my pride.
Cold are their stones, beloved,
To hand and side.
The shadows of even are gone,
Shut are the day's clear flowers,
Now have her birds left mute
Their singing bowers,
Lone shall we be, we twain,
In the night hours.
Thou with thy cheek on mine,
And dark hair loosed, shall see
Take the far stars for fruit
The cypress tree,
And in the yew's black
Shall the moon be.
We will tell no old tales,
Nor heed if in wandering air
Die a lost song of love
Or the once fair;
Still as well-water be
The thoughts we share!
And, while the ghosts keep
Tryst from chill sepulchres,
Dreamless our gaze shall sleep,
And sealed our ears;
Heart unto heart will speak,
Without tears.
O, thy veiled, lovely face - 
Joy's strange disguise - 
Shall be the last to fade
From these rapt eyes,
Ere the first dart of daybreak
Pierce the skies.
The Music of the World and of the Soul
by Arthur Hugh Clough

I
Why should I say I see the things I see not?
Why be and be not?
Show love for that I love not, and fear for what I fear not?
And dance about to music that I hear not?
Who standeth still i' the street
Shall be hustled and justled about;
And he that stops i' the dance shall be spurned by the dancers' feet,
Shall be shoved and be twisted by all he shall meet,
And shall raise up an outcry and rout;
And the partner, too,
What 's the partner to do?
While all the while 'tis but, perchance, an humming in mine ear,
That yet anon shall hear,
And I anon, the music in my soul,
In a moment read the whole;
The music in my heart,
Joyously take my part,
And hand in hand, and heart with heart, with these retreat, advance;
And borne on wings of wavy sound,
Whirl with these around, around,
Who here are living in the living dance
Why forfeit that fair chance?
Till that arrive, till thou awake,
Of these, my soul, thy music make,
And keep amid the throng,
And turn as they shall turn, and bound as they are bounding,
Alas! alas! alas! and what if all along
The music is not sounding?
II
Are there not, then, two musics unto men?
One loud and bold and coarse,
And overpowering still perforce
All tone and tune beside;
Yet in despite its pride
Only of fumes of foolish fancy bred,
And sounding solely in the sounding head
The other, soft and low,
Stealing whence we not know,
Painfully heard, and easily forgot,
With pauses oft and many a silence strange
(And silent oft it seems, when silent it is not),
Revivals too of unexpected change
Haply thou think'st 'twill never be begun,
Or that 't has come, and been, and passed away
Yet turn to other none,
Turn not, oh, turn not thou!
But listen, listen, listen, if haply be heard it may;
Listen, listen, listen, is it not sounding now?
III
Yea, and as thought of some departed friend
By death or distance parted will descend,
Severing, in crowded rooms ablaze with light,
As by a magic screen, the seer from the sight
(Palsying the nerves that intervene
The eye and central sense between);
So may the ear,
Hearing not hear,
Though drums do roll, and pipes and cymbals ring;
So the bare conscience of the better thing
Unfelt, unseen, unimaged, all unknown,
May fix the entranc'd soul 'mid multitudes alone.
Compensation
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why should I keep holiday
When other men have none?
Why but because, when these are gay,
I sit and mourn alone?
And why, when mirth unseals all tongues,
Should mine alone be dumb?
Ah! late I spoke to silent throngs,
And now their hour is come.
My Neighbour's Garden
by Dora Sigerson Shorter

Why in my neighbour's garden
Are the flowers more sweet than mine?
I had never such bloom of roses,
Such yellow and pink woodbine.
Why in my neighbour's garden
Are the fruits all red and gold,
While here the grapes are bitter
That hang for my fingers' hold?
Why in my neighbour's garden
Do the birds all fly to sing?
Over the fence between us
One would think 'twas always spring.
I thought my own wide garden
Once more sweet and fair than all,
Till I saw the gold and crimson
Just over my neighbour's wall.
But now I want his thrushes,
And now I want his vine,
If I cannot have his cherries
That grow more red than mine.
The serpent 'neath his apples
Will tempt me to my fall,
And then-I'll steal my neighbour's fruit
Across the garden wall.
Municipal
by Rudyard Kipling

"Why is my District death-rate low?"
Said Binks of Hezabad.
"Well, drains, and sewage-outfalls are
"My own peculiar fad.
"I learnt a lesson once, It ran
"Thus," quoth that most veracious man:
It was an August evening and, in snowy garments clad,
I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezabad;
When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all,
A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall.
I couldn't see he driver, and across my mind it rushed
That that Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone musth.
I didn't care to meet him, and I couldn't well get down,
So I let the Waler have it, and we headed for the town.
The buggy was a new one and, praise Dykes, it stood the strain,
Till he Waler jumped a bullock just above the City Drain;
And the next that I remember was a hurricane of squeals,
And the creature making toothpicks of my five-foot patent wheels.
He seemed to want the owner, so I fled, distraught with fear,
To the Main Drain sewage-outfall while he snorted in my ear
Reached the four-foot drain-head safely and, in darkness and despair,
Felt the brute's proboscis fingering my terror-stiffened hair.
Heard it trumpet on my shoulder tried to crawl a little higher
Found the Main Drain sewage outfall blocked, some eight feet up, with mire;
And, for twenty reeking minutes, Sir, my very marrow froze,
While the trunk was feeling blindly for a purchase on my toes!
It missed me by a fraction, but my hair was turning grey
Before they called the drivers up and dragged the brute away.
Then I sought the City Elders, and my words were very plain.
They flushed that four-foot drain-head and it never choked again!
You may hold with surface-drainage, and the sun-for-garbage cure,
Till you've been a periwinkle shrinking coyly up a sewer.
I believe in well-flushed culverts. . . .
This is why the death-rate's small;
And, if you don't believe me, get shikarred yourself. That's all.
A Weeping Cupid
by Dora Sigerson Shorter

Why love!    I thought you were gay and fair,
Merry of mien and debonair.
What then means this brow so black,
Whose sullen gloom twin eyes give back,
Poor little god in tears, alack!
Why love!    I thought in your smiling cheek
Dainty dimples played hide and seek;
Passing by like a winter's night,
With stormy sighs from lips all white.
Poor little god, how comes your plight?
A maiden said you were tall and bold,
With an arm of steel and a heart of gold;
Whose changing face would make her day;
When came a frown, the sunshine play
Of smiles would chase the clouds away.
A youth once said you were like a maid
With sunny hair in a golden braid;
Whose cheeks were each a rose uncurled;
And brow a lilybell unfurled;
The fairest maid in all the world.
Why love!    I find you so weak and small,
A human child, not a god at all;
Two angry, sleepy eyes that cry,
Two little hands so soft and shy,
I'll hush you with a lullaby.
Come, love!
Song.
by Francis Brett Young

Why have you stolen my delight
In all the golden shows of Spring
When every cherry-tree is white
And in the limes the thrushes sing,
O fickler than the April day,
O brighter than the golden broom,
O blither than the thrushes' lay,
O whiter than the cherry-bloom,
O sweeter than all things that blow ...
Why have you only left for me
The broom, the cherry's crown of snow,
And thrushes in the linden-tree?
Why Sad To-Day?
by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

Why is the nameless sorrowing look
So often thought a whim?
God-willed, the willow shades the brook,
The gray owl sings a hymn;
Sadly the winds change, and the rain
Comes where the sunlight fell:
Sad is our story, told again,
Which past years told so well!
Why not love sorrow and the glance
That ends in silent tears?
If we count up the world's mischance,
Grieving is in arrears.
Why should I know why I could weep?
The old urns cannot read
The names they wear of kings they keep
In ashes; both are dead.
And like an urn the heart must hold
Aims of an age gone by:
What the aims were we are not told;
We hold them, who knows why?
Caelia - Sonnet - 2
by William Browne

Why might I not for once be of that sect,
Which hold that souls, when Nature hath her right,
Some other bodies to themselves elect;
And sunlike make the day, and license night?
That soul, whose setting in one hemisphere
Was to enlighten straight another part;
In that horizon, if I see it there,
Calls for my first respect and its desert;
Her virtue is the same and may be more;
For as the sun is distant, so his power
In operation differs, and the store
Of thick clouds interpos'd make him less our.
And verily I think her climate such,
Since to my former flame it adds so much.
Lovers
by Richard Le Gallienne

Why should I ask perfection of thee, sweet,
That have so little of mine own to bring?
That thou art beautiful from head to feet - 
Is that, beloved, such a little thing,
That I should ask more of thee, and should fling
Thy largesse from me, in a world like this,
O generous giver of thy perfect kiss?
Thou gavest me thy lips, thine eyes, thine hair;
I brought thee worship - was it not thy due?
If thou art cruel - still art thou not fair?
Roses thou gavest - shalt thou not bring rue?
Alas! have I not brought thee sorrow too?
How dare I face the future and its drouth,
Missing that golden honeycomb thy mouth?
Kiss and make up - 'tis the wise ancient way;
Back to my arms, O bountiful deep breast!
No more of words that know not what they say;
To kiss is wisdom - folly all the rest.
Dear loveliness so mercifully pressed
Against my heart - I shake with sudden fear
To think - to losing thee I came so near.
Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad?
by William Butler Yeats

Why should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly-fisher's wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live to bear children to a dunce;
A Helen of social welfare dream,
Climb on a wagonette to scream.
Some think it a matter of course that chance
Should starve good men and bad advance,
That if their neighbours figured plain,
As though upon a lighted screen,
No single story would they find
Of an unbroken happy mind,
A finish worthy of the start.
Young men know nothing of this sort,
Observant old men know it well;
And when they know what old books tell
And that no better can be had,
Know why an old man should be mad.
The Gathering Round The Oak Tree.
by Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney

Why should "the little remnant mourn?"
Though closed the house of prayer,
An aged oak its shelter gave;
And surely He was there,
Who dwells in house not built with hands,
Eternal in the skies;
Incense nor costly altar craves,
Nor lamb for sacrifice;
But who the purest offering still
Finds in a willing mind,
And oft "through paths they know not of,"
In safety leads the blind.
Yes, He was there! The faithful band,
"O'ershadowed by His love,"
Saw in each bough that gently waved
A peace-branch from above.
Jesus was in the awful pause;
The prayer He prompted too;
And softly sighed, "Father, forgive,
They know not what they do."
While thus they crucify afresh
The Lamb of Calvary,
O Lord! be merciful to them,
Though they are false to Thee.
And many a voiceless prayer was borne
Up to the throne of God,
That none might question Heaven's decree,
But bless the chastening rod;
That though our pathway thorny be,
We fearless might pursue
The track our fathers marked with blood,
Unmurmuring marked it too.
How freely may the little band
Accept the chalice given,
Till by the Saviour called to swell
The symphonies of Heaven;
And when their weary pilgrimage,
Their day on earth is done,
God hath a coronal for those
Who trusted in the Son.
Anacreontic
by Thomas Oldham

Why must Poets, when they sing,
Drink of the Castalian spring?
Sure 'tis chilling to the brain;
Witness many a modern strain:
Poets! would ye sing with fire,
Wine, not water, must inspire.
Come, then, pour thy purple stream,
Lovely Bottle! thou'rt my theme.
How within thy crystal frame
Does the rosy nectar flame!
Not so beauteous on the vine
Did the clustering rubies shine,
When the potent God of day
Fill'd them with his ripening ray;
When with proudness and delight
Bacchus view'd the charming sight.
Still it keeps Apollo's fires;
Still the vintage-God admires.
Hail sweet antidote of wo!
Chiefest blessing mortals know!
Nay, the mighty powers divine
Own the magic force of wine.
Wearied with the world's affairs,
Jove himself, to drown his cares,
Bids the nectar'd goblet bear:
Lo! the youthful Hebe fair
Pours the living draught around;
Hark! with mirth the skies resound.
'Tis to wine, for aught I know,
Deities their godship owe;
Don't we mortals owe to wine
Manhood, and each spark divine?
Say, thou life-inspiring Bowl,
Who thy heavenly treasure stole?
Not the hand that stole Jove's fire
Did so happily aspire;
Tell the lucky spoiler's name,
Worthy never-dying fame.
Since it must a secret be,
Him I'll praise, in praising thee.
Glory of the social treat!
Source of friendly converse sweet!
Source of cheerfulness and sense,
Humour, wit, and eloquence,
Courage and sincerity,
Candour and philanthropy!
Source of O thou bounteous wine!
What the good that is not thine?
Were my nerves relax'd and low?
Did my chill blood toil on slow?
When thy spirit through me flows,
How each vital function glows!
Tuned, my nerves, no longer coy,
Answer to the touch of joy:
On the steams, that from thee rise,
Time on swifter pinions flies;
Fancy gilds them with her rays;
Hope amid the rainbow plays.
But behold! what Image bright
Rises heavenly to my sight!
Could such wondrous charms adorn
Venus, when from ocean born?
Say, my Julia, is it thou,
Ever lovely, loveliest now?
Yet, methinks, the Cyprian Queen
Comes herself, but takes thy mien.
Goddess! I confess thy power,
And to love devote the hour,
Let me but, with grateful soul,
Greet once more the bounteous Bowl.
Ribb Considers Christian Love Insufficient
by William Butler Yeats

Why should I seek for love or study it?
It is of God and passes human wit.
I study hatred with great diligence,
For that's a passion in my own control,
A sort of besom that can clear the soul
Of everything that is not mind or sense.
Why do I hate man, woman Or event?
That is a light my jealous soul has sent.
From terror and deception freed it can
Discover impurities, can show at last
How soul may walk when all such things are past,
How soul could walk before such things began.
Then my delivered soul herself shall learn
A darker knowledge and in hatred turn
From every thought of God mankind has had.
Thought is a garment and the soul's a bride
That cannot in that trash and tinsel hide:
Hatred of God may bring the soul to God.
At stroke of midnight soul cannot endure
A bodily or mental furniture.
What can she take until her Master give!
Where can she look until He make the show!
What can she know until He bid her know!
How can she live till in her blood He live!
Destiny
by Matthew Arnold

Why each is striving, from of old,
To love more deeply than he can?
Still would be true, yet still grows cold?
Ask of the Powers that sport with man!
They yok'd in him, for endless strife,
A heart of ice, a soul of fire;
And hurl'd him on the Field of Life,
An aimless unallay'd Desire.
A Mountain Grave
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why fear to die
And let thy body lie
Under the flowers of June,
Thy body food
For the ground-worms' brood
And thy grave smiled on by the visiting moon.
Amid great Nature's halls
Girt in by mountain walls
And washed with waterfalls
It would please me to die,
Where every wind that swept my tomb
Goes loaded with a free perfume
Dealt out with a God's charity.
I should like to die in sweets,
A hill's leaves for winding-sheets,
And the searching sun to see
That I am laid with decency.
And the commissioned wind to sing
His mighty psalm from fall to spring
And annual tunes commemorate
Of Nature's child the common fate.
WILLIAMSTOWN, VERMONT, 1 June, 1831.
The Sonnets LXXVI - Why is my verse so barren of new pride
by William Shakespeare

Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
O! know sweet love I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.
What's In A Name?
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Why has Spring one syllable less
Than any its fellow season?
There may be some other reason,
And I'm merely making a guess;
But surely it hoards such wealth
Of happiness, hope and health,
Sunshine and musical sound,
It may spare a foot from its name
Yet all the same
Superabound.
Soft-named Summer,
Most welcome comer,
Brings almost everything
Over which we dream or sing
Or sigh;
But then Summer wends its way,
To-morrow, - to-day, -
Good-bye!
Autumn, - the slow name lingers,
While we likewise flag;
It silences many singers;
Its slow days drag,
Yet hasten at speed
To leave us in chilly need
For Winter to strip indeed.
In all-lack Winter,
Dull of sense and of sound,
We huddle and shiver
Beside our splinter
Of crackling pine,
Snow in sky and snow on ground.
Winter and cold
Can't last for ever!
To-day, to-morrow, the sun will shine;
When we are old,
But some still are young,
Singing the song
Which others have sung,
Ringing the bells
Which others have rung, -
Even so!
We ourselves, who else?
We ourselves long
Long ago.
Poem On Death
by John Clare

Why should man's high aspiring mind
Burn in him with so proud a breath,
When all his haughty views can find
In this world yields to Death?
The fair, the brave, the vain, the wise,
The rich, the poor, and great, and small,
Are each but worm's anatomies
To strew his quiet hall.
Power may make many earthly gods,
Where gold and bribery's guilt prevails,
But Death's unwelcome, honest odds
Kick o'er the unequal scales.
The flatter'd great may clamours raise
Of power, and their own weakness hide,
But Death shall find unlooked-for ways
To end the farce of pride.
An arrow hurtel'd e'er so high,
With e'en a giant's sinewy strength,
In Time's untraced eternity
Goes but a pigmy length;
Nay, whirring from the tortured string,
With all its pomp of hurried flight,
'T is by the skylark's little wing
Outmeasured in its height.
Just so man's boasted strength and power
Shall fade before Death's lightest stroke,
Laid lower than the meanest flower,
Whose pride o'er-top't the oak;
And he who, like a blighting blast,
Dispeopled worlds with war's alarms
Shall be himself destroyed at last
By poor despised worms.
Tyrants in vain their powers secure,
And awe slaves' murmurs with a frown,
For unawed Death at last is sure
To sap the Babels down.
A stone thrown upward to the skye
Will quickly meet the ground agen;
So men-gods of earth's vanity
Shall drop at last to men;
And Power and Pomp their all resign,
Blood-purchased thrones and banquet halls.
Fate waits to sack Ambition's shrine
As bare as prison walls,
Where the poor suffering wretch bows down
To laws a lawless power hath passed;
And pride, and power, and king, and clown
Shall be Death's slaves at last.
Time, the prime minister of Death!
There's nought can bribe his honest will.
He stops the richest tyrant's breath
And lays his mischief still.
Each wicked scheme for power all stops,
With grandeurs false and mock display,
As eve's shades from high mountain tops
Fade with the rest away.
Death levels all things in his march;
Nought can resist his mighty strength;
The palace proud, triumphal arch,
Shall mete its shadow's length.
The rich, the poor, one common bed
Shall find in the unhonoured grave,
Where weeds shall grow alike o'er head
Of tyrant and of slave.
Love.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Why is it said thou canst not live
In a youthful breast and fair,
Since thou eternal life canst give,
Canst bloom for ever there?
Since withering pain no power possessed,
Nor age, to blanch thy vermeil hue,
Nor time's dread victor, death, confessed,
Though bathed with his poison dew,
Still thou retain'st unchanging bloom,
Fixed tranquil, even in the tomb.
And oh! when on the blest, reviving,
The day-star dawns of love,
Each energy of soul surviving
More vivid, soars above,
Hast thou ne'er felt a rapturous thrill,
Like June's warm breath, athwart thee fly,
O'er each idea then to steal,
When other passions die?
Felt it in some wild noonday dream,
When sitting by the lonely stream,
Where Silence says, 'Mine is the dell';
And not a murmur from the plain,
And not an echo from the fell,
Disputes her silent reign.
No Second Troy
by William Butler Yeats

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
The Violet
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

BY ELLEN LOUISA TUCKER
Why lingerest thou, pale violet, to see the dying year;
Are Autumn's blasts fit music for thee, fragile one, to hear;
Will thy clear blue eye, upward bent, still keep its chastened glow,
Still tearless lift its slender form above the wintry snow?
Why wilt thou live when none around reflects thy pensive ray?
Thou bloomest here a lonely thing in the clear autumn day.
The tall green trees, that shelter thee, their last gay dress put on;
There will be nought to shelter thee when their sweet leaves are gone.
O Violet, like thee, how blest could I lie down and die,
When summer light is fading, and autumn breezes sigh;
When Winter reigned I'd close my eye, but wake with bursting Spring,
And live with living nature, a pure rejoicing thing.
I had a sister once who seemed just like a violet;
Her morning sun shone bright and calmly purely set;
When the violets were in their shrouds, and Summer in its pride,
She laid her hopes at rest, and in the year's rich beauty died.
After Communion.
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Why should I call Thee Lord, Who art my God?
Why should I call Thee Friend, Who art my Love?
Or King, Who art my very Spouse above?
Or call Thy Sceptre on my heart Thy rod?
Lo, now Thy banner over me is love,
All heaven flies open to me at Thy nod:
For Thou hast lit Thy flame in me a clod,
Made me a nest for dwelling of Thy Dove.
What wilt Thou call me in our home above,
Who now hast called me friend? how will it be
When Thou for good wine settest forth the best?
Now Thou dost bid me come and sup with Thee,
Now Thou dost make me lean upon Thy breast:
How will it be with me in time of love?
A Dream Or No
by Thomas Hardy

Why go to Saint-Juliot? What's Juliot to me?
I was but made fancy
By some necromancy
That much of my life claims the spot as its key.
Yes. I have had dreams of that place in the West,
And a maiden abiding
Thereat as in hiding;
Fair-eyed and white-shouldered, broad-browed and brown-tressed.
And of how, coastward bound on a night long ago,
There lonely I found her,
The sea-birds around her,
And other than nigh things uncaring to know.
So sweet her life there (in my thought has it seemed)
That quickly she drew me
To take her unto me,
And lodge her long years with me. Such have I dreamed.
But nought of that maid from Saint-Juliot I see;
Can she ever have been here,
And shed her life's sheen here,
The woman I thought a long housemate with me?
Does there even a place like Saint-Juliot exist?
Or a Vallency Valley
With stream and leafed alley,
Or Beeny, or Bos with its flounce flinging mist?
February 1913.