DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Storm-bound.
by Hattie Howard

My careful plans all storm-subdued,
In disappointing solitude
The weary hours began;
And scarce I deemed when time had sped,
Marked only by the passing tread
Of some pedestrian.
But with the morrow's tranquil dawn,
A fairy scene I looked upon
That filled me with delight;
Far-reaching from my own abode,
The world in matchless splendor glowed,
Arrayed in spotless white.
The surface of the hillside slope
Gleamed in my farthest vision's scope
Like opalescent stone;
Rich jewels hung on every tree,
Whose crystalline transparency
Golconda's gems outshone.
Beyond the line where wayside posts
Stood up, like fear-inspiring ghosts
Of awful form and mien,
A mansion tall, my neighbor's pride,
A seeming castle fortified,
Uprose in wondrous sheen.
The evergreens loomed up before
My staunch and storm-defying door,
Like snowy palaces
That one dare only penetrate
With reverence - as at Heaven's gate,
Awed by its mysteries.
The apple trees' extended arms
Upheld a thousand varied charms;
The curious tracery
Of trellised grapevine seemed to me
A rare network of filigree
In silver drapery.
And I no longer thought it hard
From favorite pursuits debarred,
Nor gazed with rueful face;
For every object seemed to be
Invested with the witchery
Of magic art and grace.
And, though a multitude of cares,
Perplexing, profitless affairs,
Absorbed the hours, it seems
That on the golden steps of thought
I mounted heavenward, and wrought
Out many hopeful schemes.
Thus every day, though it may span
The gulf wherein some cherished plan
Lies disarranged and crossed,
If, ere its close, we shall have trod
The path that leads us nearer God,
Cannot be counted lost.
To The Cambridge Crew
by Thomas William Hodgson Crosland

My dear Cambridge,
You have pulled it off,
As all men know.
This ode
Will make Oxford pretty sick;
But the spoils are to the victor.
If Oxford had rowed better
And won,
They should have had a nice new ode,
Like good boys;
But they have been and gone and lost,
And are, therefore,
Not fit subjects
For immortal verse.
Pah!
I pass by Oxford!
As for you, dear Cambridge,
Here's to you:
In spite of your long and honourable connection
With the manufacture
Of sossiges,
There appears to be something in you,
Which is more than can be said
For some of the sossiges.
Cambridge, my own,
You have won the bowt rice!
'Ave a drink!
What is the good of winning the bowt rice,
If you don't 'ave a drink?
I don't know,
And I'm sure you don't.
Also, what is the good
Of winning the bowt rice
At all?
I give it up.
Yes, I do really;
Please do let me give it up.
You have won;
You can afford to be generous;
Suffer me to indulge my little whim:
There is no good
In winning the bowt rice, Cambridge
No good at all.
On the other hand,
When I come to think of it
I am not quite sure
That to have rowed
In the Cambridge boat
Which won the bowt rice,
Is materially to have damaged
One's prospects or career:
At the very least, it makes one safe
For a tutor's job
At '80 per annum;
And what self-respecting person from Cambridge
Could wish for more?
I have heard of a man
Who rowed
In a winning Cambridge boat
And is now driving
A hansom cab.
And I have heard of another man
Who omitted to row
In a winning Cambridge boat
And is now driving a four-wheeler.
You see the difference, of course!
After all,
To row
In a winning Cambridge boat
Does give one
A sort of start in life,
And don't you forget it.
Always remember, my dear Cambridge, who you are.
You licked Oxford by five lengths
In 1902.
This is probably
All you will get
For your father's money.
Be thankful.
A Dream
by Stephen Phillips

My dead love came to me, and said,
'God gives me one hour's rest,
To spend with thee on earth again:
How shall we spend it best?'
'Why, as of old,' I said; and so
We quarrell'd, as of old:
But, when I turn'd to make my peace,
That one short hour was told.
To The Daily Mail
by Thomas William Hodgson Crosland

(Aug. 3, 1901)
My dear "Daily Mail," -
To-day you attain
Your 1,650th number,
Which, for the sake of talking,
We will call your Jubilee.
Congratulations,
My dear Daily Mail,
Congratulations!
There are people in the world
Who,
In the time of your infancy,
Gave you the usual three months.
Most new papers
Get three months on the day of their birth.
For at the sight of a new sheet,
Your wise man invariably taps his nose,
Looks even wiser than is his wont,
And says,
"My dear Sir,
I give it
Three months."
Well,
My dear Daily Mail,
You have survived the sentence of the wise,
And I am given to understand
That you have long been a tremendous property.
Once again
Congratulations!
BUT
(These buts are fearful things,
Are they not?) -
But
(Pray excuse me if I appear to say "but" again) -
But -
Well, you know what I mean, don't you?
Let me put it this way.
When I come to town of a morning,
Per 'bus or Potromelitan Railway,
As the case may be,
What do I see?
Not to put too fine a point upon it,
I see a row of silk or straw hats
(According to the state of the weather),
And I see a row
Of choice trouserings,
And between the hats and the trouserings
There is spread
A row of rustling morning papers.
I can tell you the names of those papers
With my eyes shut:
Five out of six of them is called
The Daily Mail.
This upsets me.
It is all right for you, of course,
But it distresses me,
And I do not like being distressed.
Now, why does it distress me?
Shall I tell you?
Are you sure that you could bear the blow?
Can you pull yourself together for a moment?
Very well, then,
You distress me
Because
The price of you is one halfpenny.
I am of opinion
That in the present condition of the general purse,
Things which are sold for a halfpenny
Are really too cheap.
I will give you my reasons some other day.
Meanwhile
(To take your own case)
When I look into your pages,
Which is seldom,
What do I find?
I will be frank for the second time,
And tell you:
I find,
My dear Daily Mail,
Ha'pennyness
Writ in every line of you,
From the front page, "Personal Column,"
With its "Massa, me nebber leab you
While you keep So-and-So's toffee about,"
To the last line
Of your astonishing Magazine page,
You are
Ha'pennyness,
Ha'pennyness,
Ha'pennyness,
Ha'pennyness,
Ha'pennyness,
Ha'pennyness
All the time.
Of course there is no harm in that,
Especially
As you get the ha'pennies,
And far be it from me
To contemn you for it.
On the other hand,
As I have remarked previously,
I do not like it.
I have no advice to offer you,
Inasmuch
As I do not see how you can help yourself.
But I shall ask you kindly to note
That the congratulations
Expressed at the beginning of this poem
Bear reference to your attainment of your 1,650th number
And not
To another matter,
Which,
While you certainly have the right upon your side,
You appear to me to be conducting
IN
AN
UNMITIGATED
HA'PENNY
WAY.
Chloris.
by Robert Burns

Air - "My lodging is on the cold ground."
I.
My Chloris, mark how green the groves,
The primrose banks how fair:
The balmy gales awake the flowers,
And wave thy flaxen hair.
II.
The lav'rock shuns the palace gay,
And o'er the cottage sings;
For nature smiles as sweet, I ween,
To shepherds as to kings
III.
Let minstrels sweep the skilfu' string
In lordly lighted ha':
The shepherd stops his simple reed,
Blythe, in the birken shaw.
IV.
The princely revel may survey
Our rustic dance wi' scorn;
But are their hearts as light as ours,
Beneath the milk-white thorn?
V.
The shepherd, in the flow'ry glen,
In shepherd's phrase will woo:
The courtier tells a finer tale - 
But is his heart as true?
VI.
These wild-wood flowers I've pu'd, to deck
That spotless breast o' thine:
The courtier's gems may witness love - 
But 'tis na love like mine.
To Clare
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

(WITH A VOLUME OF STORIES FROM FROISSART)
My Clare,--
These tales were told, you know,
In French, five hundred years ago,
By old Sir John, whose heart's delight
Was lady sweet and valiant knight.
A hundred years went by, and then
A great lord told the tales again,
When bluff King Hal desired his folk
To read them in the tongue they spoke.
Last, I myself among them took
What I loved best and made this book.
Great, lesser, less--these writers three
Worked for the days they could not see,
And certes, in their work they knew
Nothing at all, dear child, of you.
Yet is this book your own in truth,
Because 'tis made for noble youth,
And every word that's living there
Must die when Clares are no more Clare.
Goin' Home To-Day.
by William McKendree Carleton

My business on the jury's done - the quibblin' all is through - 
I've watched the lawyers right and left, and give my verdict true;
I stuck so long unto my chair, I thought I would grow in;
And if I do not know myself, they'll get me there ag'in;
But now the court's adjourned for good, and I have got my pay;
I'm loose at last, and thank the Lord, I'm going home to-day.
I've somehow felt uneasy like, since first day I come down;
It is an awkward game to play the gentleman in town;
And this 'ere Sunday suit of mine on Sunday rightly sets;
But when I wear the stuff a week, it somehow galls and frets.
I'd rather wear my homespun rig of pepper-salt and gray - 
I'll have it on in half a jiff, when I get home to-day.
I have no doubt my wife looked out, as well as any one - 
As well as any woman could - to see that things was done:
For though Melinda, when I'm there, won't set her foot outdoors,
She's very careful, when I'm gone, to tend to all the chores.
But nothing prospers half so well when I go off to stay,
And I will put things into shape, when I get home to-day.
The mornin' that I come away, we had a little bout;
I coolly took my hat and left, before the show was out.
For what I said was naught whereat she ought to take offense;
And she was always quick at words and ready to commence.
But then she's first one to give up when she has had her say;
And she will meet me with a kiss, when I go home to-day.
My little boy - I'll give 'em leave to match him, if they can;
It's fun to see him strut about, and try to be a man!
The gamest, cheeriest little chap, you'd ever want to see!
And then they laugh, because I think the child resembles me.
The little rogue! he goes for me, like robbers for their prey;
He'll turn my pockets inside out, when I get home to-day.
My little girl - I can't contrive how it should happen thus - 
That God could pick that sweet bouquet, and fling it down to us!
My wife, she says that han'some face will some day make a stir;
And then I laugh, because she thinks the child resembles her.
She'll meet me half-way down the hill, and kiss me, any way;
And light my heart up with her smiles, when I go home to-day!
If there's a heaven upon the earth, a fellow knows it when
He's been away from home a week, and then gets back again.
If there's a heaven above the earth, there often, I'll be bound,
Some homesick fellow meets his folks, and hugs 'em all around.
But let my creed be right or wrong, or be it as it may,
My heaven is just ahead of me - I'm going home to-day.
The Lesson
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

My cot was down by a cypress grove,
And I sat by my window the whole night long,
And heard well up from the deep dark wood
A mocking-bird's passionate song.
And I thought of myself so sad and lone,
And my life's cold winter that knew no spring;
Of my mind so weary and sick and wild,
Of my heart too sad to sing.
But e'en as I listened the mock-bird's song,
A thought stole into my saddened heart,
And I said, "I can cheer some other soul
By a carol's simple art."
For oft from the darkness of hearts and lives
Come songs that brim with joy and light,
As out of the gloom of the cypress grove
The mocking-bird sings at night.
So I sang a lay for a brother's ear
In a strain to soothe his bleeding heart,
And he smiled at the sound of my voice and lyre,
Though mine was a feeble art.
But at his smile I smiled in turn,
And into my soul there came a ray:
In trying to soothe another's woes
Mine own had passed away.
My Country's Wardrobe.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

My country need not change her gown,
Her triple suit as sweet
As when't was cut at Lexington,
And first pronounced "a fit."
Great Britain disapproves "the stars;"
Disparagement discreet, --
There's something in their attitude
That taunts her bayonet.
A Letter From A Stupid Woman
by Nizar Qabbani

(A Letter to a Man)
(1)
My dear Master,
This is a letter from a stupid woman
Has a stupid woman before me, written to you?
My name? Lets put names aside
Rania, or Zaynab
or Hind or Hayfa
The silliest thing we carry, my Master, are names
(2)
My Master:
I am frightened to tell you my thoughts
I am frightened, if I did,
that the heavens would burn
For your East, my dear Master,
confiscate blue letters
confiscate dreams from the treasure chests of women
Practices suppression, upon the emotions of women
It uses knives...
and cleavers...
to speak to women
and butchers spring and passions
and black plaits
And your East, dear Master,
Manufactures the delicate crown of the East
from the skulls of women
(3)
Don't criticize me, Master
If my writing is poor
For I write and the sword is behind my door
And beyond the room is the sound of wind and howling dogs
My master!
'Antar al Abys is behind my door!
He will butcher me
If he saw my letter
He will cut my head off
If I spoke of my torture
He will cut my head off
If he saw the sheerness of my clothes
For your East, my dear Master,
Surrounds women with spears
And your East, my dear Master
elects the men to become Prophets,
and buries the women in the dust.
(4)
Don't become annoyed!
My dear Master, from these lines
Don't become annoyed!
If I smash the complaints blocked for centuries
If I unsealed my consciousness
If I ran away...
From the domes of the Harem in the castles
If I rebelled, against my death...
against my grave, against my roots...
and the giant slaughter house....
Don't become annoyed, my dear Master,
If I revealed to you my feelings
For the Eastern man
Is not concerned with poetry or feelings
The Eastern man, and forgive my insolence, does not understand women
but over the sheets.
(5)
I am sorry my master -If I have insolently attacked the kingdom of Men
for the great literature of course
is the literature of men
And love has always been
the allotment of men...
And sex has always been
a drug sold to men
A senile fairytale, the freedom of women in our countries
For there is no freedom
Other than, the freedom of men...
My Master
Say all you wish of me. It does not matter to me:
Shallow... Stupid... Crazy... Simple minded.
It does not concern me anymore..
For whoever writes about her concerns...
in the logic of Men is called
a stupid woman
and didn't I tell you in the beginning
that I am a stupid woman?
To Laura In Death. Sonnet LI.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

I d' miei pi' leggier che nessun cervo.
HIS PASSION FINDS ITS ONLY CONSOLATION IN CONTEMPLATING HER IN HEAVEN.
My days more swiftly than the forest hind
Have fled like shadows, and no pleasure seen
Save for a moment, and few hours serene,
Whose bitter-sweet I treasure in true mind.
O wretched world, unstable, wayward! Blind
Whose hopes in thee alone have centred been;
In thee my heart was captived by her mien
Who bore it with her when she earth rejoin'd:
Her better spirit, now a deathless flower,
And in the highest heaven that still shall be,
Each day inflames me with its beauties more.
Alone, though frailer, fonder every hour,
I muse on her--Now what, and where is she,
And what the lovely veil which here she wore?
MACGREGOR.
Oh! swifter than the hart my life hath fled,
A shadow'd dream; one winged glance hath seen
Its only good; its hours (how few serene!)
The sweet and bitter tide of thought have fed:
Ephemeral world! in pride and sorrow bred,
Who hope in thee, are blind as I have been;
I hoped in thee, and thus my heart's loved queen
Hath borne it mid her nerveless, kindred dead.
Her form decay'd--its beauty still survives,
For in high heaven that soul will ever bloom,
With which each day I more enamour'd grow:
Thus though my locks are blanch'd, my hope revives
In thinking on her home--her soul's high doom:
Alas! how changed the shrine she left below!
WOLLASTON.
To The Lord Mayor
by Thomas William Hodgson Crosland

(November 9th)
My dear Lord Mayor, -
In Fleet Street all is gay
From min' office window I catch glimpses
Of fluttering bunting and swinging festoons.
I don't know who pays for them
(The bunting and the festoons, that is to say),
But I am informed by the police that they
(The bunting and the festoons, that is to say)
Have been hung up in honour of YOU.
I am also given to understand that there has been a big rush
For free windows to view your procession,
Which, all being well (the Procession, that is to say)
Will take place this day, Saturday;
For my own part I am going into the country,
And I dare say that on the whole
You wish you were going with me;
But ambition has its penalties,
And if you will become Lord Mayor of London
(A dizzy pinnacle to which none but the biggest-souled of us
May aspire)
I suppose you must put up with the attendant inconveniences
And publicity.
So far as I have been able to judge
(And I arrive at this conclusion by dint of steadfast abstinence
From witnessing Lord Mayors' Shows)
A Lord Mayor's Show is a distinctly inspiriting spectacle.
It may be set down
As the Londoner's one annual opportunity
Of seeing a circus for nothing;
Hence no doubt its popularity.
Think not, however, my dear Lord Mayor,
That I deprecate your little pageant, gratis though it be.
This country, as everybody knows,
Has for centuries past been on the high road to ruin,
And, in my humble opinion, its decadence has been largely due
To a deep-rooted tendency on the part of the powerful
To curtail and do away with mayoral and other shows.
Feasts and fairs have been kicked out of England
By the aforesaid powerful:
If you would be a respectable community
You must have neither feast nor fair,
And, if you would be a respectable citizen of any given city,
You must not array yourself in motley.
A man who walked into his bank
In yellow trousers and a blue silk hat
Would never be allowed an overdraft,
Black and subdued greens and browns being the only wear
For persons who would get on in life.
All this is wrong, my dear Lord Mayor.
I am of opinion that millionaires
Ought to wear purple breeches;
I see no reason why I myself
Should not have a morning coat of red, white, and blue,
Or a waistcoat emblazoned with the arms
Of the Worshipful Company of Spectaclemakers.
In fact, my dear Lord Mayor,
To perpetrate a Mrs. Meynellism,
The colour of life is the salt of it,
Just as the Lord Mayor's Show is the salt of the Lord Mayoralty
And the one beautiful thing
About life as people expect you to live it
In the Metropolis.
Come hither, come hither, my dear Lord Mayor,
And do not tremble so!
We are all glad to see you going up Fleet Street,
We are all glad to see you going home the other way;
And we shall be equally glad to see your successor
Getting through the same flowerful day's work
Next year.
Goodbye, my dear Lord Mayor!
And
Hooray?
From The Chrysalis.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

My cocoon tightens, colors tease,
I'm feeling for the air;
A dim capacity for wings
Degrades the dress I wear.
A power of butterfly must be
The aptitude to fly,
Meadows of majesty concedes
And easy sweeps of sky.
So I must baffle at the hint
And cipher at the sign,
And make much blunder, if at last
I take the clew divine.
The Ant.
by Oliver Herford

MY child, ob-serve the use-ful Ant,
How hard she works each day.
She works as hard as ad-a-mant
(That's very hard, they say).
She has no time to gal-li-vant;
She has no time to play.
Let Fido chase his tail all day;
Let Kitty play at tag:
She has no time to throw a-way,
She has no tail to wag.
She scurries round from morn till night;
She ne-ver, ne-ver sleeps;
She seiz-es ev-ery-thing in sight,
And drags it home with all her might,
And all she takes she keeps.
To The Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain
by Thomas William Hodgson Crosland

(Touching his Audience of the King)
My dear Mr. Chamberlain,
Since you last heard from me,
Many curious things have happened,
Both in Birmingham and abroad.
As to the happenings in Birmingham,
Nobody cares tuppence for them.
The happenings abroad, however, are a different matter,
Inasmuch as they have brought you great fame,
And cost us a lot of money.
Your influence in the governance of this great country, my dear Mr. Chamberlain,
Is undoubted.
When you say things,
It is understood that all your fellow-ministers
Sit up and look good.
"We don't like it," they say in their decent hearts;
"But Joseph says it must be so, and be so it must."
To the delicate souls of Arthur James,
And George, and Broddy, and the rest of 'em,
You must, my dear Mr. Chamberlain, be a good deal of a trial,
But, somehow, they have to put up with you,
Even as the honest martyr has to put up with his shirt;
And, for my own part, I rather like to see it:
At any rate, in a sort of way, don't you know.
But, my dear Mr. Chamberlain,
In the daily papers of Monday morning,
What did I read?    Why, I read:
"Mr. Chamberlain had an audience of the King
Yesterday afternoon."
And yesterday afternoon was Sunday afternoon.
Now, my dear Joseph, I do not mind in the least
What you do to Arthur James,
Or what you do to George,
Or what you do to Broddy,
Or whether you do it on Sunday afternoons,
Or on any other afternoon.
But I really must draw the line somewhere,
And I wish you to understand
That if you go to see His Majesty the King
On Sunday afternoons
(On the afternoon of the Sabbath, as they would say in Birmingham),
You do so entirely without my approval.
I think it is scandalous, and, not being a politician,
I have no hesitation in saying what I think.
Somehow, while I know you to be a competent man of business,
You never figure in my mind's eye, Joseph,
As the sort of man who ought to have
Personal communication with his Sovereign,
Particularly on Sunday afternoons.
Birmingham men were not born to grace the Court;
And, when it comes to the furnishing of Pleasant Sunday Afternoons for Monarchs,
In my opinion, they are quite out of it.
When business presses,
As it no doubt did press on Sunday, Joseph,
It is your business, as a Birmingham man,
To remember your origin,
And, if you have anything on your mind
Which really must be communicated
To His Gracious Majesty King Edward the Seventh,
To look up the peerage and send round somebody
Who is, as one might say, fit for the job.
There is always Salisbury,
There is always Arthur James,
There is always George,
And there is always Broddy:
These men, my dear Joseph, are gentlemen,
And have known the Court all their lives.
What they do on Sundays I neither know nor care
But I have no doubt that, if you told them to go round and see the King,
They would go hotfoot and see him.
So that you have no excuse, Joseph.
Birmingham will, no doubt, forgive you this once:
As for me, I solemnly swear that I never will.
The Platypus.
by Oliver Herford

MY child, the Duck-billed Plat-y-pus
A sad ex-am-ple sets for us:
From him we learn how In-de-ci-sion
Of char-ac-ter pro-vokes De-ri-sion.
This vac-il-lat-ing Thing, you see,
Could not de-cide which he would be,
Fish, Flesh, or Fowl, and chose all three.
The sci-en-tists were sore-ly vexed
To clas-si-fy him; so per-plexed
Their brains that they, with Rage at bay,
Called him a hor-rid name one day, - 
A name that baf-fles, frights, and shocks us, - 
Or-ni-tho-rhyn-chus Par-a-dox-us.