DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Arms And The Man. - The Southern Colonies.
by James Barron Hope

Then sweeping down below Virginia's Capes,
From Chesapeake to where Savannah flows,
We find the settlers laughing 'mid their grapes
And ignorant of snows.
The fragrant uppowock, and golden corn
Spread far a-field by river and lagoon,
And all the months poured out from Plenty's Horn
Were opulent as June.
Yet, they had tragedies all dark and fell!
Lone Roanoke Island rises on the view,
And this Peninsula its tale could tell
Of Opecancanough!
But, when the Ocean thunders on the shore
Its waves, though broken, overflow the beach;
So here our Fathers on and onward bore
With English laws and speech.
Kind skies above them, underfoot rich soils;
Silence and Savage at their presence fled;
This Giant's Causeway, sacred through their toils,
Resounded at their tread.
With ardent hearts, and ever-open hands,
Candid and honest, brave and proud they grew,
Their lives and habits colored by fair lands
As skies give waters hue.
The race in semi-Feudal State appears - 
Their Knightly figures glow in tender mist,
With ghostly pennons flung from ghostly spears
And ghostly hawks on wrist.
By enterprise and high adventure stirred,
From rude lunette and sentry-guarded croft
They hawked at Empire, and, as on they spurred,
Fate's falcon soared aloft!
Fate's falcon soared aloft full strong and free,
With blood on talons, plumage, beak, and breast!
Her shadow like a storm-shade on the sea
Far-sailing down the West!
Swift hoofs clang out behind that Falcon's flights - 
Hoofs shod with Golden Horse Shoes catch the eye!
And as they ring, we see the Forest-Knights - 
The Cavaliers ride by!
Their Height In Heaven Comforts Not,
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Their height in heaven comforts not,
Their glory nought to me;
'T was best imperfect, as it was;
I 'm finite, I can't see.
The house of supposition,
The glimmering frontier
That skirts the acres of perhaps,
To me shows insecure.
The wealth I had contented me;
If 't was a meaner size,
Then I had counted it until
It pleased my narrow eyes
Better than larger values,
However true their show;
This timid life of evidence
Keeps pleading, "I don't know."
Benjamin Fraser
by Edgar Lee Masters

Their spirits beat upon mine
Like the wings of a thousand butterflies.
I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating.
I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes
Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes,
And when they turned their heads;
And when their garments clung to them,
Or fell from them, in exquisite draperies.
Their spirits watched my ecstasy
With wide looks of starry unconcern.
Their spirits looked upon my torture;
They drank it as it were the water of life;
With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes,
The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt,
Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight.
And they cried to me for life, life, life.
But in taking life for myself,
In seizing and crushing their souls,
As a child crushes grapes and drinks
From its palms the purple juice,
I came to this wingless void,
Where neither red, nor gold, nor wine,
Nor the rhythm of life are known.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - XXIII - Confirmation
by William Wordsworth

The Young-ones gathered in from hill and dale,
With holiday delight on every brow:
'Tis passed away; far other thoughts prevail;
For they are taking the baptismal Vow
Upon their conscious selves; their own lips speak
The solemn promise. Strongest sinews fail,
And many a blooming, many a lovely, cheek
Under the holy fear of God turns pale;
While on each head his lawn-robed Servant lays
An apostolic hand, and with prayer seals
The Covenant. The Omnipotent will raise
Their feeble Souls; and bear with 'his' regrets,
Who, looking round the fair assemblage, feels
That ere the Sun goes down their childhood sets.
The Puritans' Christmas
by Madison Julius Cawein

Their only thought religion,
What Christmas joys had they,
The stern, staunch Pilgrim Fathers who
Knew naught of holiday?--
A log-church in the clearing
'Mid solitudes of snow,
The wild-beast and the wilderness,
And lurking Indian foe.
No time had they for pleasure,
Whom God had put to school;
A sermon was their Christmas cheer,
A psalm their only Yule.
They deemed it joy sufficient,--
Nor would Christ take it ill,--
That service to Himself and God
Employed their spirits still.
And so through faith and prayer
Their powers were renewed,
And souls made strong to shape a World,
And tame a solitude.
A type of revolution,
Wrought from an iron plan,
In the largest mold of liberty
God cast the Puritan.
A better land they founded,
That Freedom had for bride,
The shackles of old despotism
Struck from her limbs and side.
With faith within to guide them,
And courage to perform,
A nation, from a wilderness,
They hewed with their strong arm.
For liberty to worship,
And right to do and dare,
They faced the savage and the storm
With voices raised in prayer.
For God it was who summoned,
And God it was who led,
And God would not forsake the love
That must be clothed and fed.
Great need had they of courage!
Great need of faith had they!
And lacking these--how otherwise
For us had been this day!
The Ideal.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Thee have I seen in some waste Arden old,
A white-browed maiden by a foaming stream,
With eyes profound and looks like threaded gold,
And features like a dream.
Upon thy wrist the jessied falcon fleet,
A silver poniard chased with imageries
Hung at a buckled belt, while at thy feet
The gasping heron dies.
Have fancied thee in some quaint ruined keep
A maiden in chaste samite, and her mien
Like that of loved ones visiting our sleep,
Or of a fairy queen.
She, where the cushioned ivy dangling hoar
Disturbs the quiet of her sable hair,
Pores o'er a volume of romantic lore,
Or hums an olden air.
Or a fair Bradamant both brave and just,
Intense with steel, her proud face lit with scorn,
At heathen castles, demons' dens of lust,
Winding her bugle horn.
Just as stern Artegal; in chastity
A second Britomart; in hardihood
Like him who 'mid King Charles' chivalry
A pillared sunbeam stood.
Or one in Avalon's deep-dingled bowers,
On which old yellow stars and waneless moons
Look softly, while white downy-lipp'd flowers
Lisp faint and fragrant tunes.
Where haze-like creatures with smooth houri forms
Stoop thro' the curling clouds and float and smile,
While calm as hope in all her dreamy charms
Sleeps the enchanted isle.
And where cool, heavy bow'rs unstirred entwine,
Upon a headland breasting purple seas,
A crystal castle like a thought divine
Rises in mysteries.
And there a sorceress full beautiful
Looks down the surgeless reaches of the deep,
And, bubbling from her lily throat, songs lull
The languid air to sleep.
About her brow a diadem of spars,
At her fair casement seated fleecy white
Heark'ning wild sirens choiring to the stars
Thro' all the raven night.
And when she bends above the glow-lit waves
She sees the sea-king's templed city old
Wrought from huge shells and labyrinthine caves
Ribbed red with rusty gold.
But nor the sirens' nor the ocean king's
Love will she heed, but still sits yearning there
To have the secret bird that vaguely sings
Her aching heart to share.
The Night Of The Lion
by Alfred Noyes

"And that a reply be received before midnight."
British Ultimatum.
Their Day was at twelve of the night,
When the graves give up their dead.
And still, from the City, no light
Yellows the clouds overhead.
Where the Admiral stands there's a star,
But his column is lost in the gloom;
For the brazen doors are ajar,
And the Lion awakes, and the doom.
He is not of a chosen race.
His strength is the strength of the skies,
In whose glory all nations have place,
In whose downfall Liberty dies.
He is mighty, but he is just.
He shall live to the end of years.
He shall bring the proud to the dust.
He shall raise the weak to the spheres.
It is night on the world's great mart,
But the brooding hush is awake
With the march of a steady heart
That calls like the drum of Drake,
Come! And a muttering deep
As the pulse of the distant guns,
Or the thunder before the leap
Thro' the rolling thoroughfare runs.
And the wounded men go by
Like thoughts in the Lion's brain.
And the clouds lift on high
Like the slow waves of his mane
And the narrowing lids conceal
The furnaces of his eyes.
Their gold is gone out. They reveal
Only two search-lights of steel
Steadily sweeping the skies.
And we hoped he had peace in his lair
Where the bones of old tyrannies lay,
And the skulls that his cubs have stripped bare,
The old skulls they still toss in their play.
But the tyrants are risen again,
And the last light dies from their path;
For the midnight of his mane
Lifts to the stars with his wrath.
From the East to the West he is crouching.
He snuffs at the North-East wind.
His breast upon Britain is couching.
His haunches quiver on Ind.
It is night, black night, where he lies;
But a kingdom and a fleet
Shall burn in his terrible eyes
When he leaps, and the darkness dies
With the War-gods under his feet.
Till the day when a little child,
Shall lay but a hand on his mane,
And his eyes grow golden and mild
And he stands in the heavens again;
Till the day of the seventh seal,
Which the Lion alone shall rend,
When the stars from their courses reel,
His Freedom shall not end.
The Melody (From Arne)
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

The youth in the woods spent the whole day long,
The whole day long;
For there he had heard such a wonderful song,
Wonderful song.
Willow-wood gave him a flute so fair,
A flute so fair, - 
To try, if within were the melody rare,
Melody rare.
Melody whispered and said: "I am here!"
Said: "I am here!"
But while he was listening, it fled from his ear,
Fled from his ear.
Oft when he slept, it to him crept,
It to him crept;
And over his forehead in love it swept,
In love it swept.
When he would seize it, his sleep took flight,
His sleep took flight;
The melody hung in the pallid night,
In the pallid night.
"Lord, O my God, take me therein,
Take me therein!
The melody rare all my soul doth win,
My soul doth win."
Answered the Lord: "'T is your friend alone,
Your friend alone;
Though never an hour you it shall own,
You it shall own."
The Poet In The Nursery
by Robert von Ranke Graves

The youngest poet down the shelves was fumbling
In a dim library, just behind the chair
From which the ancient poet was mum-mumbling
A song about some Lovers at a Fair,
Pulling his long white beard and gently grumbling
That rhymes were beastly things and never there.
And as I groped, the whole time I was thinking
About the tragic poem I'd been writing,...
An old man's life of beer and whisky drinking,
His years of kidnapping and wicked fighting;
And how at last, into a fever sinking,
Remorsefully he died, his bedclothes biting.
But suddenly I saw the bright green cover
Of a thin pretty book right down below;
I snatched it up and turned the pages over,
To find it full of poetry, and so
Put it down my neck with quick hands like a lover,
And turned to watch if the old man saw it go.
The book was full of funny muddling mazes,
Each rounded off into a lovely song,
And most extraordinary and monstrous phrases
Knotted with rhymes like a slave-driver's thong.
And metre twisting like a chain of daisies
With great big splendid words a sentence long.
I took the book to bed with me and gloated,
Learning the lines that seemed to sound most grand;
So soon the pretty emerald green was coated
With jam and greasy marks from my hot hand,
While round the nursery for long months there floated
Wonderful words no one could understand.
Translations. - The Song Of Praise "Te Teum Laudamus," Turned Into German By Dr. Mart. Luther. (Luther's Song-Book.)
by George MacDonald

The first Choir.--Lord God, thee praise do we.
The second Choir.--Lord, we give thanks to thee.
1. Thee, Father, eternal God,
2. Earth praises, far and broad.
1. All angels and heaven's host,
2. All that in thy service boast,
1. The cherubim and seraphim
2. Sing thee ever with lofty hymn:
1. Holy is our Lord God!
2. Holy is our Lord God!
Both Choirs.--Holy is our God, the Lord of Sabaoth.
1. Thy godlike might and lordship go
2. Wide over heaven and earth below.
1. To thee the holy twelve do call,
2. And thy beloved prophets all:
1. The precious martyrs, with one voice,
2. Praise thee, O Lord, with mighty noise.
1. From all thy worthy Christendom
2. To thee each day thy praises come;
1. To Thee, the Father, on highest throne,
2. Thy true and only-begotten Son;
1. The holy Comforter always,
2. With service true they thank and praise.
1. Thou, king of glory, Christ, alone
2. Art the Father's eternal Son;
1. Didst not the virgin's womb despise,
2. That so the human race might rise;
1. Thou on the might of Death didst tread,
2. And Christians all to heaven dost lead.
1. Thou sittest now at God's right hand,
2. With glory of all i' th' heavenly land;
1. The hour shall come when thou shalt yet
2. To judge the dead and living sit;
1. Now to thy servants help afford,
2. Ransomed with thy dear blood, O Lord;
1. Let us in heaven have our dole,
2. And with the holy be always whole.
1. Thy folk, Lord Christ, help and advance,
2. And bless thine own inheritance;
1. Them watch and ward, Lord, every day,
2. And lift them always up, we pray.
1. Daily, Lord God, we honour thee,
2. And praise thy name continually.
1. O God of truth, keep us this day
2. From every sin and evil way.
1. Be gracious to us, Lord, we plead--
2. Be gracious to us in every need.
1. Show unto us thy pitying grace,
2. For all our hope in thee we place.
1. Dear Lord, our hope is in thy name;
2. Let us be never put to shame. Amen.
Prudence
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Theme no poet gladly sung,
Fair to old and foul to young;
Scorn not thou the love of parts,
And the articles of arts.
Grandeur of the perfect sphere
Thanks the atoms that cohere.
To A Locomotive In Winter
by Walt Whitman

Thee for my recitative!
Thee in the driving storm, even as now the snow the winter-day declining;
Thee in thy panoply, thy measured dual throbbing, and thy beat convulsive;
Thy black cylindric body, golden brass, and silvery steel;
Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides;
Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar now tapering in the distance;
Thy great protruding head-light, fix'd in front;
Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple;
The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack;
Thy knitted frame thy springs and valves the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels;
Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily-following,
Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering:
Type of the modern! emblem of motion and power! pulse of the continent!
For once, come serve the Muse, and merge in verse, even as here I see thee,
With storm, and buffeting gusts of wind, and falling snow;
By day, thy warning, ringing bell to sound its notes,
By night, thy silent signal lamps to swing.
Fierce-throated beauty!
Roll through my chant, with all thy lawless music! thy swinging lamps at night;
Thy piercing, madly-whistled laughter! thy echoes, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all!
Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding;
(No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)
Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return'd,
Launch'd o'er the prairies wide across the lakes,
To the free skies, unpent, and glad, and strong.
The Red Man's Wife
by James Stephens

Then she arose
And walked in the valley
In her fine clothes.
After great fire
Great frost
Comes following.
Turgesius was lost
By the daughter of Maelsheachlin
The King.
By Grainne,
Of high Ben Gulbain in the north,
Was Diarmuid lost.
The strong sons of Ushna,
Who never submitted,
They fell by Deirdre.
O Maple Leaf!
by W. M. MacKeracher

Thee best of leaves I love,
In forest or in grove,
O Maple Leaf;
O thou which art the sign
Of this dear land of mine,
What loveliness is thine,
O Maple Leaf!
Naught can with thee compare,
On earth or in the air,
O Maple Leaf;
Wondrous thy beauties are;
Thy form is like a star,
But thou art not afar,
O Maple Leaf.
When drops of dew adorn
Thy surface in the morn,
O Maple Leaf,
No hue so fair is seen,
In silk or satin's sheen,
As thy rich shade of green,
O Maple Leaf.
No music in my ear
Is half so sweet to hear,
O Maple Leaf,
As that which thou dost make
When winds of summer shake
The branches of the brake,
O Maple Leaf.
Most beautiful in pain,
When suns begin to wane,
O Maple Leaf,
Thou never growest old,
But in the time of cold
Thou turnest but to gold,
O Maple Leaf.
And when the earth expires,
And mute are all her choirs,
O Maple Leaf,
Thy dower thou dost shed
Of tribute, richest red,
Upon her sombre bed,
O Maple Leaf.
May heaven bless thy land,
And make it strong to stand,
O Maple Leaf;
For it we humbly pray
That God will be its stay,
Now, henceforth, and for aye,
O Maple Leaf.
The Cadets At New Market.[1]
by James Barron Hope

Their sleep is made glorious,
And dead they're victorious
Over defeat!
Never Lethean billows
Shall roll o'er their pillows,
Red with the feet
Of Mars from the wine press
So bitterly sweet!
Sleeping, but glorious,
Dead in Fame's portal,
Dead, but victorious,
Dead, but immortal!
They gave us great glory,
What more could they give?
They have left us a story,
A story to live - 
And blaze on the brows of the State like a crown,
While from these grand mountains the rivers run down,
While grass grows in graveyards, or the Ocean's deep calls,
Their deeds and their glory shall fresco these walls.
The Sonnets XC - Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now
by William Shakespeare

Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;
Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
And do not drop in for an after-loss:
Ah! do not, when my heart hath 'scap'd this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purpos'd overthrow.
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
When other petty griefs have done their spite,
But in the onset come: so shall I taste
At first the very worst of fortune's might;
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
Compar'd with loss of thee, will not seem so.
Then First From Love.
by Thomas Moore

Then first from Love, in Nature's bowers,
Did Painting learn her fairy skill,
And cull the hues of loveliest flowers,
To picture woman lovelier still.
For vain was every radiant hue,
Till Passion lent a soul to art,
And taught the painter, ere he drew,
To fix the model in his heart.
Thus smooth his toil awhile went on,
Till, lo, one touch his art defies;
The brow, the lip, the blushes shone,
But who could dare to paint those eyes?
'Twas all in vain the painter strove;
So turning to that boy divine,
"Here take," he said, "the pencil, Love,
"No hand should paint such eyes but thine."
To Rhea
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thee, dear friend, a brother soothes,
Not with flatteries, but truths,
Which tarnish not, but purify
To light which dims the morning's eye.
I have come from the spring-woods,
From the fragrant solitudes;--
Listen what the poplar-tree
And murmuring waters counselled me.
If with love thy heart has burned;
If thy love is unreturned;
Hide thy grief within thy breast,
Though it tear thee unexpressed;
For when love has once departed
From the eyes of the false-hearted,
And one by one has torn off quite
The bandages of purple light;
Though thou wert the loveliest
Form the soul had ever dressed,
Thou shalt seem, in each reply,
A vixen to his altered eye;
Thy softest pleadings seem too bold,
Thy praying lute will seem to scold;
Though thou kept the straightest road,
Yet thou errest far and broad.
But thou shalt do as do the gods
In their cloudless periods;
For of this lore be thou sure,--
Though thou forget, the gods, secure,
Forget never their command,
But make the statute of this land.
As they lead, so follow all,
Ever have done, ever shall.
Warning to the blind and deaf,
'T is written on the iron leaf,
Who drinks of Cupid's nectar cup
Loveth downward, and not up;
He who loves, of gods or men,
Shall not by the same be loved again;
His sweetheart's idolatry
Falls, in turn, a new degree.
When a god is once beguiled
By beauty of a mortal child
And by her radiant youth delighted,
He is not fooled, but warily knoweth
His love shall never be requited.
And thus the wise Immortal doeth,--
'T is his study and delight
To bless that creature day and night;
From all evils to defend her;
In her lap to pour all splendor;
To ransack earth for riches rare,
And fetch her stars to deck her hair:
He mixes music with her thoughts,
And saddens her with heavenly doubts:
All grace, all good his great heart knows,
Profuse in love, the king bestows,
Saying, 'Hearken! Earth, Sea, Air!
This monument of my despair
Build I to the All-Good, All-Fair.
Not for a private good,
But I, from my beatitude,
Albeit scorned as none was scorned,
Adorn her as was none adorned.
I make this maiden an ensample
To Nature, through her kingdoms ample,
Whereby to model newer races,
Statelier forms and fairer faces;
To carry man to new degrees
Of power and of comeliness.
These presents be the hostages
Which I pawn for my release.
See to thyself, O Universe!
Thou art better, and not worse.'--
And the god, having given all,
Is freed forever from his thrall.
Epitaphs for Two Players
by Vachel Lindsay

I. Edwin Booth
An old actor at the Player's Club told me that Edwin Booth first impersonated Hamlet when a barnstormer in California. There were few theatres, but the hotels were provided with crude assembly rooms for strolling players.
The youth played in the blear hotel.
The rafters gleamed with glories strange.
And winds of mourning Elsinore
Howling at chance and fate and change;
Voices of old Europe's dead
Disturbed the new-built cattle-shed,
The street, the high and solemn range.
The while the coyote barked afar
All shadowy was the battlement.
The ranch-boys huddled and grew pale,
Youths who had come on riot bent.
Forgot were pranks well-planned to sting.
Behold there rose a ghostly king,
And veils of smoking Hell were rent.
When Edwin Booth played Hamlet, then
The camp-drab's tears could not but flow.
Then Romance lived and breathed and burned.
She felt the frail queen-mother's woe,
Thrilled for Ophelia, fond and blind,
And Hamlet, cruel, yet so kind,
And moaned, his proud words hurt her so.
A haunted place, though new and harsh!
The Indian and the Chinaman
And Mexican were fain to learn
What had subdued the Saxon clan.
Why did they mumble, brood, and stare
When the court-players curtsied fair
And the Gonzago scene began?
And ah, the duel scene at last!
They cheered their prince with stamping feet.
A death-fight in a palace! Yea,
With velvet hangings incomplete,
A pasteboard throne, a pasteboard crown,
And yet a monarch tumbled down,
A brave lad fought in splendor meet.
Was it a palace or a barn?
Immortal as the gods he flamed.
There in his last great hour of rage
His foil avenged a mother shamed.
In duty stern, in purpose deep
He drove that king to his black sleep
And died, all godlike and untamed.
.    .    .    .    .
I was not born in that far day.
I hear the tale from heads grown white.
And then I walk that earlier street,
The mining camp at candle-light.
I meet him wrapped in musings fine
Upon some whispering silvery line
He yet resolves to speak aright.
II. John Bunny, Motion Picture Comedian
In which he is remembered in similitude, by reference to Yorick, the king's jester, who died when Hamlet and Ophelia were children.
Yorick is dead. Boy Hamlet walks forlorn
Beneath the battlements of Elsinore.
Where are those oddities and capers now
That used to "set the table on a roar"?
And do his bauble-bells beyond the clouds
Ring out, and shake with mirth the planets bright?
No doubt he brings the blessed dead good cheer,
But silence broods on Elsinore tonight.
That little elf, Ophelia, eight years old,
Upon her battered doll's staunch bosom weeps.
("O best of men, that wove glad fairy-tales.")
With tear-burned face, at last the darling sleeps.
Hamlet himself could not give cheer or help,
Though firm and brave, with his boy-face controlled.
For every game they started out to play
Yorick invented, in the days of old.
The times are out of joint! O cursed spite!
The noble jester Yorick comes no more.
And Hamlet hides his tears in boyish pride
By some lone turret-stair of Elsinore.