DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Younger Born
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The modern English-speaking young girl is the astonishment of the world and the despair of the older generation.    Nothing like her has ever been seen or heard before.    Alike in drawing-rooms and the amusement places of the people, she defies conventions in dress, speech, and conduct.    She is bold, yet not immoral.    She is immodest, yet she is chaste.    She has no ideals, yet she is kind and generous.    She is an anomaly and a paradox.
We are the little daughters of Time and the World his wife,
We are not like the children, born in their younger life,
We are marred with our mother's follies and torn with our father's strife.
We are the little daughters of the modern world,
And Time, her spouse.
She has brought many children to our father's house
Before we came, when both our parents were content
With simple pleasures and with quiet homely ways.
Modest and mild
Were the fair daughters born to them in those fair days,
Modest and mild.
But Father Time grew restless and longed for a swifter pace,
And our mother pushed out beside him at the cost of her tender grace,
And life was no more living but just a headlong race.
And we are wild -
Yea, wild are we, the younger born of the World
Into life's vortex hurled.
With the milk of our mother's breast
We drank her own unrest,
And we learned our speech from Time
Who scoffs at the things sublime.
Time and the World have hurried so
They could not help their younger born to grow;
We only follow, follow where they go.
They left their high ideals behind them as they ran;
There was but one goal, pleasure, for Woman or for Man,
And they robbed the nights of slumber to lengthen the days' brief span.
We are the demi-virgins of the modern day;
All evil on the earth is known to us in thought,
But yet we do it not.
We bare our beauteous bodies to the gaze of men,
We lure them, tempt them, lead them on, and then
Lightly we turn away.
By strong compelling passion we are never stirred;
To us it is a word -
A word much used when tragic tales are told;
We are the younger born, yet we are very old
In understanding, and our knowledge makes us bold.
Boldly we look at life,
Loving its stress and strife,
And hating all conventions that may mean restraint,
Yet shunning sin's black taint.
We know wine's taste;
And the young-maiden bloom and sweetness of our lips
Is often in eclipse
Under the brown weed's stain.
Yet we are chaste;
We have no large capacity for joy or pain,
But an insatiable appetite for pleasure.
We have no use for leisure
And never learned the meaning of that word 'repose.'
Life as it goes
Must spell excitement for us, be the cost what may.
Speeding along the way,
We ofttimes pause to do some generous little deed,
And fill the cup of need;
For we are kind at heart,
Though with less heart than head,
Unmoral, not immoral, when the worst is said;
We are the product of the modern day.
We are the little daughters of Time and the World his wife,
We are not like the children, born in their younger life,
We are marred with our mother's follies and torn with our father's strife.
Silence
by Sara Teasdale

(To Eleonora Duse)
We are anhungered after solitude,
Deep stillness pure of any speech or sound,
Soft quiet hovering over pools profound,
The silences that on the desert brood,
Above a windless hush of empty seas,
The broad unfurling banners of the dawn,
A faery forest where there sleeps a Faun;
Our souls are fain of solitudes like these.
O woman who divined our weariness,
And set the crown of silence on your art,
From what undreamed-of depth within your heart
Have you sent forth the hush that makes us free
To hear an instant, high above earth's stress,
The silent music of infinity?
On The March
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

WE are out on the open road.
Through the low west window a cold light flows
On the floor where never my numb feet trode
Before; onward the strange road goes.
Soon the spaces of the western sky
With shutters of sombre cloud will close.
But we'll still be together, this road and I,
Together, wherever the long road goes.
The wind chases by us, and over the corn
Pale shadows flee from us as if from their foes.
Like a snake we thresh on the long, forlorn
Land, as onward the long road goes.
From the sky, the low, tired moon fades out;
Through the poplars the night-wind blows;
Pale, sleepy phantoms are tossed about
As the wind asks whither the wan road goes.
Away in the distance wakes a lamp.
Inscrutable small lights glitter in rows.
But they come no nearer, and still we tramp
Onward, wherever the strange road goes.
Beat after beat falls sombre and dull.
The wind is unchanging, not one of us knows
What will be in the final lull
When we find the place where this dead road goes.
For something must come, since we pass and pass
Along in the coiled, convulsive throes
Of this marching, along with the invisible grass
That goes wherever this old road goes.
Perhaps we shall come to oblivion.
Perhaps we shall march till our tired toes
Tread over the edge of the pit, and we're gone
Down the endless slope where the last road goes.
If so, let us forge ahead, straight on
If we're going to sleep the sleep with those
That fall forever, knowing none
Of this land whereon the wrong road goes.
Nearing Home.
by John Hartley

We are near the last bend of the river,
Soon will the prospect be bright;
Already the waves seem to quiver,
As touched with celestial light.
Since first we were launched on its bosom,
Strange hap'nings and perils we've passed,
But we've braved and endured them together
And we're nearing the haven at last.
We are near the last bend of lifes river,
Around, all is tranquil and calm;
The tempests that passed us can never,
Again strike our souls with alarm.
We are drifting, - unconsciously gliding,
Down Time's river - my darling and me.
And soon in love's sweet trust abiding,
We shall sail on Eternities sea.
Oh, how the soul strains with its yearning
To see what is hid beyond this,
This life, with its pain and heartburning - 
The beyond, where is nothing but bliss.
Our life's Sun has touched the horizon,
It will speedily dip out of sight,
And then what? Will a new morn be rising?
Or will it for ever be night?
War Song Of The Saracens
by James Elroy Flecker

We are they who come faster than fate: we are they who ride early or late:
We storm at your ivory gate: Pale Kings of the Sunset, beware!
Not on silk nor in samet we lie, not in curtained solemnity die
Among women who chatter and cry, and children who mumble a prayer.
But we sleep by the ropes of the camp, and we rise with a shout, and we tramp
With the sun or the moon for a lamp, and the spray of the wind in our hair.
From the lands, where the elephants are, to the forts of Merou and Balghar,
Our steel we have brought and our star to shine on the ruins of Rum.
We have marched from the Indus to Spain, and by God we will go there again;
We have stood on the shore of the plain where the Waters of Destiny boom.
A mart of destruction we made at Jalula where men were afraid,
For death was a difficult trade, and the sword was a broker of doom;
And the Spear was a Desert Physician who cured not a few of ambition,
And drave not a few to perdition with medicine bitter and strong:
And the shield was a grief to the fool and as bright as a desolate pool,
And as straight as the rock of Stamboul when their cavalry thundered along:
For the coward was drowned with the brave when our battle sheered up like a wave,
And the dead to the desert we gave, and the glory to God in our song.
Twillingate
by Paul Cameron Brown

We all end up badly and
it's not the season nor the salt
rather, I suspect but type of gherkin used.
We all end, badly, at least
the more modest of us do.
the old salts they dine on
limericks anyways.
We all end up, sadly, the distances
and the wiles only last up,
sideways, and barely with
the edge-ways of a smile.
Some of us, sadly,
limit our losses
call off the posse
quit deals, the
quicksilver steals.
Some of us, gladly,
surrender or catch
a slow boat to Twillingate,
if not willingly,
at least painstakingly.
All Men Are Brothers.
by James McIntyre

We are in ancient stories told,
All were brothers in days of old,
But these with facts they do not chime
For all mankind do love the dime,
And worship the mighty dollar,
And admire the golden collar,
The rich man's washed with whitest lime,
The poor man's cover'd o'er with slime,
But we should try to love each other
And treat each man as our brother.
Rhymes And Rhythms - III
by William Ernest Henley

(To R. F. B.)
We are the Choice of the Will: God, when He gave the word
That called us into line, set in our hand a sword;
Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw,
And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law.
East and west and north, wherever the battle grew,
As men to a feast we fared, the work of the Will to do.
Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy cease,
(Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a place of peace!)
Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire,
Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, our sire.
Road was never so rough that we left its purpose dark;
Stark was ever the sea, but our ships were yet more stark;
We tracked the winds of the world to the steps of their very thrones;
The secret parts of the world were salted with our bones;
Till now the name of names, England, the name of might,
Flames from the austral bounds to the ends of the northern night;
And the call of her morning drum goes in a girdle of sound,
Like the voice of the sun in song, the great globe round and round;
And the shadow of her flag, when it shouts to the mother-breeze,
Floats from shore to shore of the universal seas;
And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of her flowers,
And the end of the road to Hell with the sense of her dews and showers!
Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us fade and die,
While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky?
For the sire lives in his sons, and they pay their father's debt,
And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw was set:
And the Lion in his whelps, his whelps that none shall brave,
Is but less strong than Time and the all-devouring Grave.
Mutability.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! - yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:
Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.
We rest. - A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise. - One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:
It is the same! - For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.
NOTES:
_15 may 1816; can Lodore, chapter 49, 1835 (Mrs. Shelley).
_16 Nought may endure but 1816;
Nor aught endure save Lodore, chapter 49, 1835 (Mrs. Shelley).
Valgovind's Boat Song
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

Waters glisten and sunbeams quiver,
The wind blows fresh and free.
Take my boat to your breast, O River!
Carry me out to Sea!
This land is laden with fruit and grain,
With never a place left free for flowers,
A fruitful mother; but I am fain
For brides in their early bridal hours.
Take my boat to your breast, O River!
Carry me out to Sea!
The Sea, beloved by a thousand ships,
Is maiden ever, and fresh and free.
Ah, for the touch of her cool green lips,
Carry me out to Sea!
Take my boat to your breast, dear River,
And carry it out to Sea!
We Are Accused Of Terrorism
by Nizar Qabbani

We are accused of terrorism
If we dare to write about the remains of a homeland
That is scattered in pieces and in decay
In decadence and disarray
About a homeland that is searching for a place
And about a nation that no longer has a face
About a homeland that has nothing left of its great ancient verse
But that of wailing and eulogy
About a homeland that has nothing in its horizons
Of freedoms of different types and ideology
About a homeland that forbids us from buying a newspaper
Or listen to anything
About a homeland where all birds are always not allowed to sing
About a homeland that out of horror, its writers are using invisible ink
About a homeland that resembles poetry in our country
Improvised, imported, loose and of no boundaries
Of foreign tongue and soul
Detached from Man and Land, ignoring their plight as a whole
About a homeland to the negotiating table moves
Without a dignity or shoes
About a homeland
That no more has steadfast men
With only women therein
Bitterness is in our mouthsin our talkin our eyes
Will draught also plague our souls as a legacy passed to us
from ancient times?
Our nation has nobody left, even the less glorified
No one to say "NO" in the face of those who gave up our
homebread and butter
Turning our colorful history into a circus
We have not a single honest poem
That has not lost its virginity in a ruler's Harem
We grew accustomed to humiliation
Then what is left of Man
If he is comfortable with that?
I search the books of history
For men of greatness to deliver us from darkness
To save our women from fires' brutality
I search for men of yesterday
But all I find is frightened cats
Fearing for their souls
From the authority of rats
Are we hit by national blindness
Or are we suffering from color blindness
We are accused of terrorism
If we refuse to perish
Under Israeli tyranny
That is hampering our unity
Our history
Our Bible and our Quran
Our prophets' land
If that is our sin and crime
Then terrorism is fine
We are accused of terrorism
If we refuse to be wiped out
By barbarians, the Mongols or the Jews
If we choose to stone the fragile security council
Which was sacked by the king of caesuras
We are accused of terrorism
If we refuse to negotiate the wolf
And reach out for a whore
America is fighting the cultures of Man
Because it lacks one
And against the civilizations because it needs one
It is a gigantic structure but without a wall
We are accused of terrorism
If we refuse current times
Where America     the arrogant the mighty the rich
Became a sworn interpreter of Hebrew.
The Grey Eros
by George William Russell

We are desert leagues apart;
Time is misty ages now
Since the warmth of heart to heart
Chased the shadows from my brow.
Oh, I am so old, meseems
I am next of kin to Time,
The historian of her dreams
From the long forgotten prime.
You have come a path of flowers.
What a way was mine to roam!
Many a fallen empire's towers,
Many a ruined heart my home.
No, there is no comfort, none;
All the dewy tender breath
Idly falls when life is done
On the starless brow of death.
Though the dream of love may tire,
In the ages long agone
There were ruby hearts of fire--
Ah, the daughters of the dawn!
Though I am so feeble now,
I remember when our pride
Could not to the Mighty bow;
We would sweep His stars aside.
Mix thy youth with thoughts like those--
It were but to wither thee,
But to graft the youthful rose
On the old and flowerless tree.
Age is no more near than youth
To the sceptre and the crown.
Vain the wisdom, vain the truth;
Do not lay thy rapture down.
The Stevedores
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

We are the army stevedores, lusty and virile and strong,
We are given the hardest work of the war, and the hours are long.
We handle the heavy boxes, and shovel the dirty coal;
While soldiers and sailors work in the light, we burrow below like a mole.
But somebody has to do this work, or the soldiers could not fight!
And whatever work is given a man, is good if he does it right.
We are the army stevedores, and we are volunteers.
We did not wait for the draft to come, to put aside our fears;
We flung them away on the winds of fate, at the very first call of our land,
And each of us offered a willing heart and the strength of a brawny hand.
We are the army stevedores, and work as we must and may,
The cross of honour will never be ours to proudly wear away.
But the men at the Front could never be there,
And the battles could not be won,
If the stevedores stopped in their dull routine
And left their work undone.
Somebody has to do this work; be glad that it isn't you!
We are the army stevedores - give us our due!
Dawnwards?
by Sydney Jephcott

To the Author of the "Songs of the Army of the Night."
We - who, encircled in sleepless sadness
With ears laid close to the Austral earth,
Have heard far cries of wrong-wrought madness,
Of hopeless anguish and murd'rous mirth
Beneath all noise of maudlin gladness
Awail, environ the world's wide girth - 
Almost arise with Hope's keen urging
When out the vasty and night-bound North
Red rays ascend, and Songs resurging
Through all the darkness and chill, come forth!
The comet climbs until it scorches
The sacred dais that skies the great,
Until it gleams on palace porches,
Where blissful aeons-to-be hold state - 
Fades, and we know it one of the torches
Madmen a moment elevate!
And, closer clutching the earth, our sorrow
Doth then with desperate murmur cry,
"We ne'er shall see or morn or morrow!
For never star doth scale the sky,
"All men made wise through midnight sable
To lead where, safe after all annoy,
Sleep soft in earth's Augean stable
The virgin "Justice," the infant "Joy!" - 
Grant this, O Father, being able,
Or else in merciful might destroy
"This orb whose past and present, awful
Alike, attest it a torture wheel,
Where, bound by holy men and lawful,
Man's body's broken with bars of steel!"
But when we pause, despairing wholly,
As a storm that strengthens out on the sea,
The far-flown SONGS come sounding slowly!
As sea-birds kindle that sweep alee
New hopes, old yearnings winging slowly
From breast to bosom for shelter flee!
And scarce we know, as there they hover
And our blood beats 'neath their beating wings,
If 'tis an old dream earthed over
Or new bird-ballad that stirs and sings!
But truth's Tyrtaeus is now our neighbour,
And strives to waken the slumbering South
With peal and throb of trump and tabour
And sobbing songs of his mournful mouth
To see where Life's all-giver, Labour,
Lies fettered, famished and dumb with drouth.
Sydney Jephcott,
Brisbane Boomerang, 25th January 1888.
Sweet Briars of the Stairways
by Vachel Lindsay

We are happy all the time
Even when we fight:
Sweet briars of the stairways,
Gay fairies of the grime;
WE, WHO ARE PLAYING TO-NIGHT.
"Our feet are in the gutters,
Our eyes are sore with dust,
But still our eyes are bright.
The wide street roars and mutters - 
We know it works because it must - 
WE, WHO ARE PLAYING TO-NIGHT!
"Dirt is everlasting. -    We never, never fear it.
Toil is never ceasing. -    We will play until we near it.
Tears are never ending. -    When once real tears have come;
"When we see our people as they are - 
Our fathers - broken, dumb - 
Our mothers - broken, dumb - 
The weariest of women and of men;
Ah - then our eyes will lose their light - 
Then we will never play again - 
WE, WHO ARE PLAYING TO-NIGHT."
Co-Heirs.
by Robert Herrick

We are co-heirs with Christ; nor shall His own
Heirship be less by our adoption.
The number here of heirs shall from the state
Of His great birthright nothing derogate.
On A Pair Of Dice
by Jonathan Swift

We are little brethren twain,
Arbiters of loss and gain,
Many to our counters run,
Some are made, and some undone:
But men find it to their cost,
Few are made, but numbers lost.
Though we play them tricks for ever,
Yet they always hope our favour.
Nursery Rhyme. CCCXXXIII. Games.
by Unknown

[The "Three Knights of Spain" is a game played in nearly the same manner as the preceding. The dramatis person' form themselves in two parties, one representing a courtly dame and her daughters, the other the suitors of the daughters. The last party, moving backwards and forwards, with their arms entwined, approach and recede from the mother party, which is stationary, singing to a very sweet air. See Chambers' 'Popular Rhymes,' p. 66.]
Suitors.
We are three brethren out of Spain,
Come to court your daughter Jane.
Mother.
My daughter Jane she is too young,
And has not learned her mother tongue.
Suitors.
Be she young, or be she old,
For her beauty she must be sold.
So fare you well, my lady gay,
We'll call again another day.
Mother.
Turn back, turn back, thou scornful knight,
And rub thy spurs till they be bright.
Suitors.
Of my spurs take you no thought,
For in this town they were not bought,
So fare you well, my lady gay,
We'll call again another day.
Mother.
Turn back, turn back, thou scornful knight,
And take the fairest in your sight.
Suitor.
The fairest maid that I can see,
Is pretty Nancy, - come to me.
Here comes your daughter safe and sound,
Every pocket with a thousand pound;
Every finger with a gay gold ring;
Please to take your daughter in.
On The Vowels
by Jonathan Swift

We are little airy creatures,
All of different voice and features;
One of us in glass is set,
One of us you'll find in jet.
T'other you may see in tin,
And the fourth a box within.
If the fifth you should pursue,
It can never fly from you.
Sickness
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

Waving slowly before me, pushed into the dark,
Unseen my hands explore the silence, drawing the bark
Of my body slowly behind.
Nothing to meet my fingers but the fleece of night
Invisible blinding my face and my eyes! What if in their flight
My hands should touch the door!
What if I suddenly stumble, and push the door
Open, and a great grey dawn swirls over my feet, before
I can draw back!
What if unwitting I set the door of eternity wide
And am swept away in the horrible dawn, am gone down the tide
Of eternal hereafter!
Catch my hands, my darling, between your breasts.
Take them away from their venture, before fate wrests
The meaning out of them.
Sonnet CI.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Io canterei d' Amor s' novamente.
REPLY TO A Sonnet OF JACOPO DA LENTINO.
Ways apt and new to sing of love I'd find,
Forcing from her hard heart full many a sigh,
And re-enkindle in her frozen mind
Desires a thousand, passionate and high;
O'er her fair face would see each swift change pass,
See her fond eyes at length where pity reigns,
As one who sorrows when too late, alas!
For his own error and another's pains;
See the fresh roses edging that fair snow
Move with her breath, that ivory descried,
Which turns to marble him who sees it near;
See all, for which in this brief life below
Myself I weary not but rather pride
That Heaven for later times has kept me here.
MACGREGOR.
Epilogue For "The King's House."[1]
by John Dryden

We act by fits and starts, like drowning men,
But just peep up, and then pop down again.
Let those who call us wicked change their sense;
For never men lived more on Providence.
Not lottery cavaliers are half so poor,
Nor broken cits, nor a vacation whore;
Not courts, nor courtiers living on the rents
Of the three last ungiving parliaments:
So wretched, that, if Pharaoh could divine,
He might have spared his dream of seven lean kine,
And changed his vision for the Muses Nine.
The comet that, they say, portends a dearth,
Was but a vapour drawn from play-house earth:
Pent there since our last fire, and, Lilly says,
Foreshows our change of state, and thin third-days.
'Tis not our want of wit that keeps us poor;
For then the printer's press would suffer more.
Their pamphleteers each day their venom spit;
They thrive by treason, and we starve by wit.
Confess the truth, which of you has not laid
Four farthings out to buy the Hatfield maid?
Or, which is duller yet, and more would spite us,
Democritus his wars with Heraclitus?
Such are the authors who have run us down,
And exercised you critics of the town.
Yet these are pearls to your lampooning rhymes,
Ye abuse yourselves more dully than the times.
Scandal, the glory of the English nation,
Is worn to rags, and scribbled out of fashion.
Such harmless thrusts, as if, like fencers wise,
They had agreed their play before their prize.
Faith! they may hang their harps upon the willows;
'Tis just like children when they box with pillows.
Then put an end to civil wars for shame;
Let each knight-errant, who has wrong'd a dame,
Throw down his pen, and give her, as he can,
The satisfaction of a gentleman.