DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Belgium
by John Le Gay Brereton

The Blatant Beast saw meadows, made for peace,
Sunlit and gently asway, and held them light,
Till each green blade grew rigid in the night
And ruddied with a glorious morn's increase.
Thou hast suffered; nor till Freedom find release
And set for ever on the shining height
The eternal rolling banner of her might
Shall thy great gift of strife and suffering cease.
We, bred of one small island in the west,
A little shrine of Freedom, far away
We, who can bow at no strong tyrant's hest,
Bend low our heads in pride to thee to-day,
For all unknown, a smiling babe at rest,
Within thy lowly manger Freedom lay.
Christmas
by Kate Seymour Maclean

The birth day of the Christ child dawneth slow
Out of the opal east in rosy flame,
As if a luminous picture in its frame--
A great cathedral window, toward the sun
Lifted a form divine, which still below
Stretched hands of benediction;--while the air
Swayed the bright aureole of the flowing hair
Which lit our upturned faces;--even so
Look on us from the heavens, divinest One
And let us hear through the slow moving years.
Long centuries of wrongs, and crimes, and tears,--
The echo of the angel's song again,
Peace and good will, good will and peace to men,
A little space make silence,--that our ears,
Filled with the din of toil and moil and pain
May catch the jubilant rapture of the skies,--
The glories of the choirs of paradise.
The hills still tremble when the thunders cease
Of the loud diapason,--and again
Through the rapt stillness steals the hymn of peace;
Melodious and sweet its far refrain
Dying in distance, as the shadows die
Of white wings vanished up the morning sky,
As farther still--and thinner--more remote--
A film of sound, the aerial voices float--
Peace and good will, good will and peace to men!
December's Snow
by Arthur Conan Doyle

The bloom is on the May once more,
The chestnut buds have burst anew;
But, darling, all our springs are o'er,
'Tis winter still for me and you.
We plucked Life's blossoms long ago
What's left is but December's snow.
But winter has its joys as fair,
The gentler joys, aloof, apart;
The snow may lie upon our hair
But never, darling, in our heart.
Sweet were the springs of long ago
But sweeter still December's snow.
Yes, long ago, and yet to me
It seems a thing of yesterday;
The shade beneath the willow tree,
The word you looked but feared to say.
Ah! when I learned to love you so
What recked we of December's snow?
But swift the ruthless seasons sped
And swifter still they speed away.
What though they bow the dainty head
And fleck the raven hair with gray?
The boy and girl of long ago
Are laughing through the veil of snow.
The Lover And The Sculptor.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Non ha l' ottimo artista.
The best of artists hath no thought to show
Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell
Doth not include: to break the marble spell
Is all the hand that serves the brain can do.
The ill I shun, the good I seek, even so
In thee, fair lady, proud, ineffable,
Lies hidden: but the art I wield so well
Works adverse to my wish, and lays me low.
Therefore not love, nor thy transcendent face,
Nor cruelty, nor fortune, nor disdain,
Cause my mischance, nor fate, nor destiny;
Since in thy heart thou carriest death and grace
Enclosed together, and my worthless brain
Can draw forth only death to feed on me.
Summa
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The best ideal is the true
And other truth is none.
All glory be ascrib'd to
The holy Three in One.
The Blude Red Rose At Yule May Blaw.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "To daunton me."
I.
The blude red rose at Yule may blaw,
The simmer lilies bloom in snaw,
The frost may freeze the deepest sea;
But an auld man shall never daunton me.
To daunton me, and me so young,
Wi' his fause heart and flatt'ring tongue.
That is the thing you ne'er shall see;
For an auld man shall never daunton me.
II.
For a' his meal and a' his maut,
For a' his fresh beef and his saut,
For a' his gold and white monie,
An auld man shall never daunton me.
III.
His gear may buy him kye and yowes,
His gear may buy him glens and knowes;
But me he shall not buy nor fee,
For an auld man shall never daunton me.
IV.
He hirples twa fauld as he dow,
Wi' his teethless gab and Ma auld beld pow,
And the rain rains down frae his red bleer'd ee,
That auld man shall never daunton me.
To daunton me, and me sae young,
Wi' his fause heart and flatt'ring tongue,
That is the thing you ne'er shall see;
For an auld man shall never daunton me.
Unsatisfied
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The bird flies home to its young;
The flower folds its leaves about an opening bud;
And in my neighbour's house there is the cry of a child.
I close my window that I need not hear.
She is mine, and she is very beautiful:
And in her heart there is no evil thought.
There is even love in her heart - 
Love of life, love of joy, love of this fair world,
And love of me (or love of my love for her);
Yet she will never consent to bear me a child.
And when I speak of it she weeps,
Always she weeps, saying:
'Do I not bring joy enough into your life?
Are you not satisfied with me and my love,
As I am satisfied with you?
Never would I urge you to some great peril
To please my whim; yet ever so you urge me,
Urge me to risk my happiness - yea, life itself - 
So lightly do you hold me.'    And then she weeps,
Always she weeps, until I kiss away her tears
And soothe her with sweet lies, saying I am content.
Then she goes singing through the house like some bright bird
Preening her wings, making herself all beautiful,
Perching upon my knee, and pecking at my lips
With little kisses.    So again love's ship
Goes sailing forth upon a portless sea,
From nowhere unto nowhere; and it takes
Or brings no cargoes to enrich the world.
The years
Are passing by us.    We will yet be old
Who now are young.    And all the man in me
Cries for the reproduction of myself
Through her I love.    Why, love and youth like ours
Could populate with gods and goddesses
This great, green earth, and give the race new types
Were it made fruitful!    Often I can see,
As in a vision, desolate old age
And loneliness descending on us two,
And nowhere in the world, nowhere beyond the earth,
Fruit of my loins and of her womb to feed
Our hungry hearts.    To me it seems
More sorrowful than sitting by small graves
And wetting sad-eyed pansies with our tears.
The bird flies home to its young;
The flower folds its leaves about an opening bud;
And in my neighbour's house there is the cry of a child.
I close my window that I need not hear.
Sonnet CLXXXIII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Il cantar novo e 'l pianger degli augelli.
MORNING.
The birds' sweet wail, their renovated song,
At break of morn, make all the vales resound;
With lapse of crystal waters pouring round,
In clear, swift runnels, the fresh shores among.
She, whose pure passion knows nor guile nor wrong,
With front of snow, with golden tresses crown'd,
Combing her aged husband's hoar locks found,
Wakes me when sportful wakes the warbling throng.
Thus, roused from sleep, I greet the dawning day,
And its succeeding sun, with one more bright,
Still dazzling, as in early youth, my sight:
Both suns I've seen at once uplift their ray;
This drives the radiance of the stars away,
But that which gilds my life eclipses e'en his light.
NOTT.
Soon as gay morn ascends her purple car,
The plaintive warblings of the new-waked grove,
The murmuring streams, through flowery meads that rove,
Fill with sweet melody the valleys fair.
Aurora, famed for constancy in love,
Whose face with snow, whose locks with gold compare.
Smoothing her aged husband's silvery hair,
Bids me the joys of rural music prove.
Then, waking, I salute the sun of day;
But chief that beauteous sun, whose cheering ray
Once gilt, nay gilds e'en now, life's scene so bright.
Dear suns! which oft I've seen together rise;
This dims each meaner lustre of the skies,
And that sweet sun I love dims every light.
ANON. 1777.
Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650): John Marston
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

The bitterness of death and bitterer scorn
Breathes from the broad-leafed aloe-plant whence thou
Wast fain to gather for thy bended brow
A chaplet by no gentler forehead worn.
Grief deep as hell, wrath hardly to be borne,
Ploughed up thy soul till round the furrowing plough
The strange black soil foamed, as a black beaked prow
Bids night-black waves foam where its track has torn.
Too faint the phrase for thee that only saith
Scorn bitterer than the bitterness of death
Pervades the sullen splendour of thy soul,
Where hate and pain make war on force and fraud
And all the strengths of tyrants; whence unflawed
It keeps this noble heart of hatred whole.
Autumn At Annisquam
by Madison Julius Cawein

The bitter-sweet and red-haw in her hands,
And in her hair pale berries of the bay,
She haunts the coves and every Cape Ann way,
The Indian, Autumn, wandered from her bands.
Beside the sea, upon a rock, she stands,
And looks across the foam, and straight the grey
Takes on a sunset tone, and all the day
Murmurs with music of forgotten lands.
Now in the woods, knee-deep among the ferns,
She walks and smiles and listens to the pines,
The sweetheart pines, that kiss and kiss again,
Whispering their love: and now she frowns and turns
And in the west the fog in ragged lines
Rears the wild wigwams of the tribes of rain.
The Bloom Upon The Grape
by Richard Le Gallienne

The bloom upon the grape I ask no more,
Nor pampered fragrance of the soft-lipped rose,
I only ask of Him who keeps the Door - 
To open it for one who fearless goes
Into the dark, from which, reluctant, came
His innocent heart, a little laughing flame;
I only ask that he who gave me sight,
Who gave me hearing and who gave me breath,
Give me the last gift in His flaming hand - 
The holy gift of Death.
Joy Supreme
by William Henry Davies

The birds are pirates of her notes,
The blossoms steal her face's light;
The stars in ambush lie all day,
To take her glances for the night.
Her voice can shame rain-pelted leaves;
Young robin has no notes as sweet
In autumn, when the air is still,
And all the other birds are mute.
When I set eyes on ripe, red plums
That seem a sin and shame to bite,
Such are her lips, which I would kiss,
And still would keep before my sight.
When I behold proud gossamer
Make silent billows in the air,
Then think I of her head's fine stuff,
Finer than gossamer's, I swear.
The miser has his joy, with gold
Beneath his pillow in the night;
My head shall lie on soft warm hair,
And miser's know not that delight.
Captains that own their ships can boast
Their joy to feel the rolling brine, 
But I shall lie near her, and feel
Her soft warm bosom swell on mine.
What The Birds Said
by John Greenleaf Whittier

The birds against the April wind
Flew northward, singing as they flew;
They sang, "The land we leave behind
Has swords for corn-blades, blood for dew."
"O wild-birds, flying from the South,
What saw and heard ye, gazing down?"
"We saw the mortar's upturned mouth,
The sickened camp, the blazing town!
"Beneath the bivouac's starry lamps,
We saw your march-worn children die;
In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps,
We saw your dead uncoffined lie.
"We heard the starving prisoner's sighs
And saw, from line and trench, your sons
Follow our flight with home-sick eyes
Beyond the battery's smoking guns."
"And heard and saw ye only wrong
And pain," I cried, "O wing-worn flocks?"
"We heard," they sang, "the freedman's song,
The crash of Slavery's broken locks!
"We saw from new, uprising States
The treason-nursing mischief spurned,
As, crowding Freedom's ample gates,
The long-estranged and lost returned.
"O'er dusky faces, seamed and old,
And hands horn-hard with unpaid toil,
With hope in every rustling fold,
We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil.
"And struggling up through sounds accursed,
A grateful murmur clomb the air;
A whisper scarcely heard at first,
It filled the listening heavens with prayer.
"And sweet and far, as from a star,
Replied a voice which shall not cease,
Till, drowning all the noise of war,
It sings the blessed song of peace!"
So to me, in a doubtful day
Of chill and slowly greening spring,
Low stooping from the cloudy gray,
The wild-birds sang or seemed to sing.
They vanished in the misty air,
The song went with them in their flight;
But lo! they left the sunset fair,
And in the evening there was light.
The Blue And The Gray.
by Eugene Field

The Blue and the Gray collided one day
In the future great town of Missouri,
And if all that we hear is the truth, 'twould appear
That they tackled each other with fury.
While the weather waxed hot they hove and they sot,
Like the scow in the famous old story,
And what made the fight an enjoyable sight
Was the fact that they fought con amore.
They as participants fought in such wise as was taught,
As beseemed the old days of the dragons,
When you led to the dance and defended with lance
The damsel you pledged in your flagons.
In their dialect way the knights of the Gray
Gave a flout at the buckeye bandana,
And the buckeye came back with a gosh-awful whack,
And that's what's the matter with Hannah.
This resisted attack took the Grays all a-back,
And feeling less coltish and frisky,
They resolved to elate the cause of their state,
And also their persons, with whisky.
Having made ample use of the treacherous juice,
Which some folks say stings like an adder,
They went back again at the handkerchief men,
Who slowly got madder and madder.
You can bet it was h--l in the Southern Hotel
And elsewhere, too many to mention,
But the worst of it all was achieved in the hall
Where the President held his convention.
They ripped and they hewed and they, sweating imbrued,
Volleyed and bellowed and thundered;
There was nothing to do until these yawpers got through,
So the rest of us waited and wondered.
As the result of these frays it appears that the Grays,
Who once were as chipper as daisies,
Have changed their complexion to one of dejection,
And at present are bluer than blazes.
The Blind
by Sara Teasdale

The birds are all a-building,
They say the world's a-flower,
And still I linger lonely
Within a barren bower.
I weave a web of fancies
Of tears and darkness spun.
How shall I sing of sunlight
Who never saw the sun?
I hear the pipes a-blowing,
But yet I may not dance,
I know that Love is passing,
I cannot catch his glance.
And if his voice should call me
And I with groping dim
Should reach his place of calling
And stretch my arms to him,
The wind would blow between my hands
For Joy that I shall miss,
The rain would fall upon my mouth
That his will never kiss.
Babylon
by George William Russell

The blue dusk ran between the streets; my love was winged within my mind;
It left to-day and yesterday and thrice a thousand years behind.
To-day was past and dead for me for from to-day my feet had run
Through thrice a thousand years to walk the ways of ancient Babylon.
On temple top and palace roof the burnished gold flung back the rays
Of a red sunset that was dead and lost beyond a million days.
The tower of heaven turns darker blue; a starry sparkle now begins;
The mystery and magnificence, the myriad beauty and the sins
Come back to me. I walk beneath the shadowy multitude of towers;
Within the gloom the fountain jets its pallid mist in lily flowers.
The waters lull me, and the scent of many gardens, and I hear
Familiar voices, and the voice I love is whispering in my ear.
Oh real as in dream all this; and then a hand on mine is laid:
The wave of phantom time withdraws; and that young Babylonian maid,
One drop of beauty left behind from all the flowing of that tide,
Is looking with the self-same eyes, and here in Ireland by my side.
Oh, light our life in Babylon, but Babylon has taken wings,
While we are in the calm and proud procession of eternal things.
Hidden Love
by William Henry Davies

The bird of Fortune sings when free,
But captured, soon grows dumb; and we,
To hear his fast declining powers,
Must soon forget that he is ours.
So, when I win that maid, no doubt
Love soon will seem to be half out;
Like blighted leaves drooped to the ground,
Whose roots are still untouched and sound,
So will our love's root still be strong
When others think the leaves go wrong.
Though we may quarrel, 'twill not prove
That she and I are less in love;
The parrot, though he mocked the dove,
Died when she died, and proved his love.
When merry springtime comes, we hear
How all things into love must stir;
How birds would rather sing than eat,
How joyful sheep would rather bleat:
And daffodils nod heads of gold,
And dance in April's sparkling cold.
So in our early love did we
Dance much and skip, and laugh with glee:
But let none think our love is flown
If, when we're married, little's shown:
E'en though our lips be dumb of song,
Our hearts can still be singing strong.
To Mr Lee, On His "Alexander."
by John Dryden

The blast of common censure could I fear,
Before your play my name should not appear;
For 'twill be thought, and with some colour too,
I pay the bribe I first received from you;
That mutual vouchers for our fame we stand,
And play the game into each other's hand;
And as cheap pen'orths to ourselves afford,
As Bessus[1] and the brothers of the sword.
Such libels private men may well endure,
When states and kings themselves are not secure:
For ill men, conscious of their inward guilt,
Think the best actions on by-ends are built.
And yet my silence had not 'scaped their spite;
Then, envy had not suffer'd me to write;
For, since I could not ignorance pretend,
Such merit I must envy or commend.
So many candidates there stand for wit,
A place at court is scarce so hard to get:
In vain they crowd each other at the door;
For even reversions are all begg'd before:
Desert, how known soe'er, is long delay'd;
And then, too, fools and knaves are better paid.
Yet, as some actions bear so great a name,
That courts themselves are just, for fear of shame;
So has the mighty merit of your play
Extorted praise, and forced itself away.
'Tis here as 'tis at sea; who farthest goes,
Or dares the most, makes all the rest his foes.
Yet when some virtue much outgrows the rest,
It shoots too fast and high to be express'd;
As his heroic worth struck envy dumb,
Who took the Dutchman, and who cut the boom.
Such praise is yours, while you the passions move,
That 'tis no longer feign'd, 'tis real love,
Where nature triumphs over wretched art;
We only warm the head, but you the heart.
Always you warm; and if the rising year,
As in hot regions, brings the sun too near,
'Tis but to make your fragrant spices blow,
Which in our cooler climates will not grow.
They only think you animate your theme
With too much fire, who are themselves all phlegm.
Prizes would be for lags of slowest pace,
Were cripples made the judges of the race.
Despise those drones, who praise, while they accuse
The too much vigour of your youthful Muse.
That humble style which they your virtue make,
Is in your power; you need but stoop and take.
Your beauteous images must be allow'd
By all, but some vile poets of the crowd.
But how should any sign-post dauber know
The worth of Titian or of Angelo?
Hard features every bungler can command;
To draw true beauty shows a master's hand.
Elegy For A Jet Pilot
by A. R. Ammons

The blast skims
over the string
of takeoff lights
and
relinquishing
place and time
lofts to
separation:
the plume, rose
sliver, grows
across the
high-lit evening
sky: by this
Mays Landing creek
shot pinecones,
skinned huckleberry
bush, laurel
swaths define
an unbelievably
particular stop.
The Lost Dream
by Madison Julius Cawein

The black night showed its hungry teeth,
And gnawed with sleet at roof and pane;
Beneath the door I heard it breathe
A beast that growled in vain.
The hunter wind stalked up and down,
And crashed his ice-spears through each tree;
Before his rage, in tattered gown,
I saw the maid moon flee.
There stole a footstep to my door;
A voice cried in my room and there!
A shadow cowled and gaunt and hoar,
Death, leaned above my chair.
He beckoned me; he bade me rise,
And follow through the madman night;
Into my heart's core pierced his eyes,
And lifted me with might.
I rose; I made no more delay;
And followed where his eyes compelled;
And through the darkness, far away,
They lit me and enspelled.
Until we reached an ancient wood,
That flung its twisted arms around,
As if in anguish that it stood
On dark, unhallowed ground.
And then I saw it cold and blind
The dream, that had my heart to share,
That fell, before its feet could find
Its home, and perished there.
Celaeno
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

The blind king hides his weeping eyeless head,
Sick with the helpless hate and shame and awe,
Till food have choked the glutted hell-bird's craw
And the foul cropful creature lie as dead
And soil itself with sleep and too much bread:
So the man's life serves under the beast's law,
And things whose spirit lives in mouth and maw
Share shrieking the soul's board and soil her bed,
Till man's blind spirit, their sick slave, resign
Its kingdom to the priests whose souls are swine,
And the scourged serf lie reddening from their rod,
Discrowned, disrobed, dismantled, with lost eyes
Seeking where lurks in what conjectural skies
That triple-headed hound of hell their God.
To William Shelley.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

1.
The billows on the beach are leaping around it,
The bark is weak and frail,
The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound it
Darkly strew the gale.
Come with me, thou delightful child,
Come with me, though the wave is wild,
And the winds are loose, we must not stay,
Or the slaves of the law may rend thee away.
2.
They have taken thy brother and sister dear,
They have made them unfit for thee;
They have withered the smile and dried the tear
Which should have been sacred to me.
To a blighting faith and a cause of crime
They have bound them slaves in youthly prime,
And they will curse my name and thee
Because we fearless are and free.
3.
Come thou, beloved as thou art;
Another sleepeth still
Near thy sweet mother's anxious heart,
Which thou with joy shalt fill,
With fairest smiles of wonder thrown
On that which is indeed our own,
And which in distant lands will be
The dearest playmate unto thee.
4.
Fear not the tyrants will rule for ever,
Or the priests of the evil faith;
They stand on the brink of that raging river,
Whose waves they have tainted with death.
It is fed from the depth of a thousand dells,
Around them it foams and rages and swells;
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,
Like wrecks on the surge of eternity.
5.
Rest, rest, and shriek not, thou gentle child!
The rocking of the boat thou fearest,
And the cold spray and the clamour wild? -
There, sit between us two, thou dearest -
Me and thy mother - well we know
The storm at which thou tremblest so,
With all its dark and hungry graves,
Less cruel than the savage slaves
Who hunt us o'er these sheltering waves.
6.
This hour will in thy memory
Be a dream of days forgotten long.
We soon shall dwell by the azure sea
Of serene and golden Italy,
Or Greece, the Mother of the free;
And I will teach thine infant tongue
To call upon those heroes old
In their own language, and will mould
Thy growing spirit in the flame
Of Grecian lore, that by such name
A patriot's birthright thou mayst claim!
NOTES:
_1 on the beach omitted 1839, 1st edition.
_8 of the law 1839, 1st edition; of law 1839, 2nd edition.
_14 prime transcript; time editions 1839.
_16 fearless are editions 1839; are fearless transcript.
_20 shalt transcript; wilt editions 1839.
_25-_32 Fear...eternity omitted, transcript.
See "Rosalind and Helen", lines 894-901.
_33 and transcript; omitted editions 1839.
_41 us transcript, 1839, 1st edition; thee 1839, 2nd edition.
_42 will in transcript, 1839, 2nd edition;
will sometime in 1839, 1st edition.
_43 long transcript; omitted editions 1839.
_48 those transcript, 1839, 1st edition; their 1839, 2nd edition.
Another. (Abel's Blood)
by Robert Herrick

The blood of Abel was a thing
Of such a rev'rend reckoning,
As that the old world thought it fit
Especially to swear by it.