DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Arbiter, The Almoner, And The Hermit.
by Jean de La Fontaine

Three saints, for their salvation jealous,
Pursued, with hearts alike most zealous,
By routes diverse, their common aim.
All highways lead to Rome: the same
Of heaven our rivals deeming true,
Each chose alone his pathway to pursue.
Moved by the cares, delays, and crosses
Attach'd to suits by legal process,
One gave himself as judge, without reward,
For earthly fortune having small regard.
Since there are laws, to legal strife
Man damns himself for half his life.
For half? - Three-fourths! - perhaps the whole!
The hope possess'd our umpire's soul,
That on his plan he should be able
To cure this vice detestable. - 
The second chose the hospitals.
I give him praise: to solace pain
Is charity not spent in vain,
While men in part are animals.
The sick - for things went then as now they go - 
Gave trouble to the almoner, I trow.
Impatient, sour, complaining ever,
As rack'd by rheum, or parch'd with fever, - 
'His favourites are such and such;
With them he watches over-much,
And lets us die,' they say, - 
Such sore complaints from day to day
Were nought to those that did await
The reconciler of debate.
His judgments suited neither side;
Forsooth, in either party's view,
He never held the balance true,
But swerved in every cause he tried.
Discouraged by such speech, the arbiter
Betook himself to see the almoner.
As both received but murmurs for their fees,
They both retired, in not the best of moods,
To break their troubles to the silent woods,
And hold communion with the ancient trees.
There, underneath a rugged mountain,
Beside a clear and silent fountain,
A place revered by winds, to sun unknown,
They found the other saint, who lived alone.
Forthwith they ask'd his sage advice.
'Your own,' he answer'd, 'must suffice;
Who but yourselves your wants should know?
To know one's self, is, here below,
The first command of the Supreme.
Have you obey'd among the bustling throngs?
Such knowledge to tranquillity belongs;
Elsewhere to seek were fallacy extreme.
Disturb the water - do you see your face?
See we ourselves within a troubled breast?
A murky cloud in such a case,
Though once it were a crystal vase!
But, brothers, let it simply rest,
And each shall see his features there impress'd.
For inward thought a desert home is best.'
Such was the hermit's answer brief;
And, happily, it gain'd belief.
But business, still, from life must not be stricken
Since men will doubtless sue at law, and sicken,
Physicians there must be, and advocates, - 
Whereof, thank God, no lack the world awaits,
While wealth and honours are the well-known baits.
Yet, in the stream of common wants when thrown,
What busy mortal but forgets his own?
O, you who give the public all your care,
Be it as judge, or prince, or minister,
Disturb'd by countless accidents most sinister,
By adverse gales abased, debased by fair, - 
Yourself you never see, nor see you aught.
Comes there a moment's rest for serious thought,
There comes a flatterer too, and brings it all to nought.
This lesson seals our varied page:
O, may it teach from age to age!
To kings I give it, to the wise propose;
Where could my labours better close?[1]
Secrets.
by Bliss Carman (William)

Three secrets that never were said:
The stir of the sap in the spring,
The desire of a man to a maid,
The urge of a poet to sing.
Three Weeks Passed Since I Had Seen Her,
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Three weeks passed since I had seen her, --
Some disease had vexed;
'T was with text and village singing
I beheld her next,
And a company -- our pleasure
To discourse alone;
Gracious now to me as any,
Gracious unto none.
Borne, without dissent of either,
To the parish night;
Of the separated people
Which are out of sight?
The Three Wise Men Of Gotham
by Leonard Leslie Brooke

The Three Wise Men Of Gotham.
Three wise men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl:
If the bowl had been stronger,
My song would have been longer.
The Huntsmen
by Walter De La Mare

Three jolly gentlemen,
In coats of red,
Rode their horses
Up to bed.
Three jolly gentlemen
Snored till morn,
Their horses champing
The golden corn.
Three jolly gentlemen,
At break of day,
Came clitter-clatter down the stairs
And galloped away.
Translations. - The Words Of Faith. (From Schiller.)
by George MacDonald

Three words I will tell you, of meaning full:
The lips of the many shout them;
Yet were they born of no sect or school,
The heart only knows about them:
That man is of everything worth bereft
Who in those three words has no faith left:
Man is born free--and is free alway
Even were he born in fetters!
Let not the mob's cry lead you astray,
Or the misdeeds of frantic upsetters:
Fear not the slave when he breaks his bands;
Fear nothing from any free man's hands.
And Virtue--it is no empty sound;
That a man can obey her, no folly;
Even if he stumble all over the ground
He yet can follow the Holy;
And what never wisdom of wise man knew
A child-like spirit can simply do.
And a God there is--a steadfast Will,
However the human shrinketh!
High over space and time He still,
The live Thought, doth what He thinketh;
And though all things keep circling, to change confined,
He keeps, in all changes, a changeless mind.
These three words cherish--of meaning full:
From mouth to mouth send them faring;
For, although they spring from no sect or school,
Your hearts them witness are bearing;
And man is never of worth bereft
While yet he has faith in those three words left.
Three words there are of weighty sound,
And from good men's lips they hail us;
But a tinkling cymbal, a drum's rebound,
For help or for comfort they fail us!
His Life's fruit away he forfeit flings
Who catches after those shadows of things;
Who still believes in a Golden Age,
Where the Right and the Good reign in splendour:
The Right and the Good war ever must wage--
Their foe will never surrender;
And chok'st thou him not in the upper air,
His strength he will still on the earth repair.
Who yet believes that Fortune, the jilt,
To the noble will bind herself ever:
Her love-looks follow the man of guilt;
The world to the good belongs never;
He is in it a stranger; he wanders away
Seeking a house that will not decay.
Who still believes that no human gaze
Truth ever her visage discloses:
Her veil no mortal hand shall raise;
Man only thinks and supposes:
Thou mayst prison the spirit in sounding form,
But the Fetterless walks away on the storm.
Then, noble spirit, from folly break free,
This heav'nly faith holding and handing:
What the ear never heard, what no eye can see,
Is the lovely, the true, notwithstanding;
Outside, the fool seeks for it evermore;
The wise man finds it with closed door!
Autumn and Winter
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

I.
Three months bade wane and wax the wintering moon
Between two dates of death, while men were fain
Yet of the living light that all too soon
Three months bade wane.
Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain,
Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune
That death smote silent when he smote again.
First went my friend, in life's mid light of noon,
Who loved the lord of music:    then the strain
Whence earth was kindled like as heaven in June
Three months bade wane.
II.
A herald soul before its master's flying
Touched by some few moons first the darkling goal
Where shades rose up to greet the shade, espying
A herald soul;
Shades of dead lords of music, who control
Men living by the might of men undying,
With strength of strains that make delight of dole.
The deep dense dust on death's dim threshold lying
Trembled with sense of kindling sound that stole
Through darkness, and the night gave ear, descrying
A herald soul.
III.
One went before, one after, but so fast
They seem gone hence together, from the shore
Whence we now gaze:    yet ere the mightier passed
One went before;
One whose whole heart of love, being set of yore
On that high joy which music lends us, cast
Light round him forth of music's radiant store.
Then went, while earth on winter glared aghast,
The mortal god he worshipped, through the door
Wherethrough so late, his lover to the last,
One went before.
IV.
A star had set an hour before the sun
Sank from the skies wherethrough his heart's pulse yet
Thrills audibly:    but few took heed, or none,
A star had set.
All heaven rings back, sonorous with regret,
The deep dirge of the sunset:    how should one
Soft star be missed in all the concourse met?
But, O sweet single heart whose work is done,
Whose songs are silent, how should I forget
That ere the sunset's fiery goal was won
A star had set?
Dusk In The Woods
by Madison Julius Cawein

Three miles of trees it is: and I
Came through the woods that waited, dumb,
For the cool summer dusk to come;
And lingered there to watch the sky
Up which the gradual splendor clomb.
A tree-toad quavered in a tree;
And then a sudden whippoorwill
Called overhead, so wildly shrill
The sleeping wood, it seemed to me,
Cried out and then again was still.
Then through dark boughs its stealthy flight
An owl took; and, at drowsy strife,
The cricket tuned its faery fife;
And like a ghost-flower, silent white,
The wood-moth glimmered into life.
And in the dead wood everywhere
The insects ticked, or bored below
The rotted bark; and, glow on glow,
The lambent fireflies here and there
Lit up their jack-o'-lantern show.
I heard a vesper-sparrow sing,
Withdrawn, it seemed, into the far
Slow sunset's tranquil cinnabar;
The crimson, softly smoldering
Behind the trees, with its one star.
A dog barked: and down ways that gleamed,
Through dew and clover, faint the noise
Of cowbells moved. And then a voice,
That sang a-milking, so it seemed,
Made glad my heart as some glad boy's.
And then the lane: and, full in view,
A farmhouse with its rose-grown gate,
And honeysuckle paths, await
For night, the moon, and love and you
These are the things that made me late.
Three Years She Grew
by William Wordsworth

Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, 'A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown;
This Child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A Lady of my own.
'Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse: and with me
The Girl, in rock and plain,
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain.
'She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things.
'The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend;
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the Storm
Grace that shall mould the Maiden's form
By silent sympathy.
'The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.
'And vital feelings of delight
Shall rear her form to stately height,
Her virgin bosom swell;
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give
While she and I together live
Here in this happy dell.'
Thus Nature spake, The work was done,
How soon my Lucy's race was run!
She died, and left to me
This heath, this calm and quiet scene;
The memory of what has been,
And never more will be.
Nursery Rhyme. LXV. Tales.
by Unknown

[The "foles of Gotham" are mentioned as early as the fifteenth century in the 'Townley Mysteries;' and, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, Dr. Andrew Borde made a collection of stories about them, not however, including the following, which rests on the authority of nursery tradition.]
Three wise men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl:
And if the bowl had been stronger,
My song would have been longer.
Three Queens
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

Three sweet drivers hold the reins,
And hold the places of my heart.
A great people obeys me,
But these three obey me not.
Am I then a lesser king than love?
From the Arabic of Haroun El Raschid (eighth century).
Experience
by Madison Julius Cawein

Three memories hold us ever
With longing and with pain;
Three memories Time has never
Been able to restrain;
That in each life remain
A part of heart and brain.
The first 's of that which taught us
To follow, Beauty still;
Who to the Fountain brought us
Of ancient good and ill,
And bade us drink our fill
At Life's wild-running rill.
The second one, that 's driven
Of anguish and delight,
Holds that which showed us Heaven,
Through Love's triumphant might;
And, deep beneath its height,
Hell, sighing in the night.
The third none follows after:
Its form is veiled and dim;
Its eyes are tears and laughter,
That look beyond the rim
Of earth and point to Him,
Who rules the Seraphim.
The Moralist
by Edward Dyson

Three other soldier blokes 'n' me packed 'ome from foreign lands;
Bit into each the God of Battles' everlastin' brands.
They limped in time, 'n' coughed in tune, 'n' one was short an ear,
'N' one was short a tier of ribs 'n' all was short of beer.
I speaks up like a temp'rance gent,
But ever since the sky was bent
The thirst of man 'as never yet bin squenched with argument.
Bill's skull was welded all across, Jim 'ad an eye in soak,
Sam 'obbled on a patent leg, 'n' every man was broke;
They sang a song of 'Mother' with their faces titled up.
Says Bill-o: ''Ere's yer 'eroes, sling the bloomin' votive cup!
We got no beer, the soup was bad-
Now oo will stand the soldier lad
The swag of honest liquor that for years he hasn't 'ad?'
Sez I: 'Respeck yer uniform! Remember oo you are!'
They'd pinched a wicker barrer, 'arf a pram 'n' 'arf a car.
In this ole Bill-o nestled 'neath a blanket, on his face
A someone's darlin' sorter look, a touch iv boy'ood's grace.
The gentle ladies stopped to 'ear,
'N' dropped a symperthetic tear,
A dollar or a deener for the pore haff1ict dear.
The others trucked the wounded to a hentrance up a lane.
I sez: 'Sich conduck's shameful!' Bill-o took to ease his pain
One long 'un and another. The conductor picked his brand;
The gripman lent his countenance to wot he 'ad in 'and.
And when they moved their stand 'twas Sam
Lay pale 'n' peaceful in the pram,
'N' twenty flappers stroked his paw, 'n' said he was a lamb.
The gathered in the tokens and they blooed 'em as above,
While Jim-o done the hinvalid 'oom Sammy had to shove.
Sez I: 'No noble 'eroes what's bin fightin' for their king
Should smirch theirselves by doin' this dis'onerable thing.'
But fine old gents 'n' donahs prim
They stopped 'n' slid the beans to Jim.
You betcher life I let 'im hear just what I though of 'im.
Nine, g.m. at St. Kilder, saw the finish of the prowl.
Each 'ad his full-'n'-plentv, and was blowin' in the tow'l.
As neither bloke cud stand alone, they leaned 'n' argufied
Which was the patient sufferer oo's turn it was to ride.
Each 'eld a san'wich and a can.
Sez I: 'This shouldn't 'ave began-
'Tain't conduck wot it worthy of a soldier and a man.'
I cud 'a' cried with injured pride. Afore a push the three
Got scrappin', vague 'n' foolish, which the cripple boy should be.
Sam slips his scientific leg, 'n' flings it in the drain
'I'll auto 'ome,' he sez, 'or never see me 'ome again.'
But I am thinkin' 'ard oo he
Tucked 'elpiess in the pram might be.
Comes sudden reckerlection. Great Gohanners, it is me!
Stream And Sun At Glendalough
by William Butler Yeats

Through intricate motions ran
Stream and gliding sun
And all my heart seemed gay:
Some stupid thing that I had done
Made my attention stray.
Repentance keeps my heart impure;
But what am I that dare
Fancy that I can
Better conduct myself or have more
Sense than a common man?
What motion of the sun or stream
Or eyelid shot the gleam
That pierced my body through?
What made me live like these that seem
Self-born, born anew?
Translations. - Sayings Of Confucius. (From Schiller.)
by George MacDonald

I.
Threefold is of Time the tread:
Lingering comes the Future pacing hither;
Dartlike is the Now gone thither;
Stands the Past aye moveless, foot and head.
No impatience wings its idle
Tread of leisurely delay;
Fear or doubt it cannot bridle
Should it headlong run away;
No remorse, no incantation
Moves the standing from its station.
Wouldst thou end thy earthly journey
Wise and of good fortune full,
Make the Lingering thine attorney
Thee to counsel--not thy tool;
Not for friend the Flying take,
Nor thy foe the Standing make.
II.
Threefold is of Space the way:
On unresting, without stay,
Strives the Length into the distance;
Ceaseless pours the Breadth's insistence
Bottomless the Depth goes down.
For a sign the three are sent thee:
Onward must alone content thee--
Weary, thou must not stand still
Wouldst thou thy perfection fill!
Thou must spread thee wider, bigger,
Wouldst thou have the world take figure!
To the deep the man descendeth
Who existence comprehendeth.
Leads persistence to the goal;
Leads abundance to precision;
Dwells in the abyss the Vision.
The Proverbs Of Confucius.
by Friedrich Schiller

I.
Threefold is the march of time
While the future slow advances,
Like a dart the present glances,
Silent stands the past sublime.
No impatience e'er can speed him
On his course if he delay;
No alarm, no doubts impede him
If he keep his onward way;
No regrets, no magic numbers
Wake the tranced one from his slumbers.
Wouldst thou wisely and with pleasure,
Pass the days of life's short measure,
From the slow one counsel take,
But a tool of him ne'er make;
Ne'er as friend the swift one know,
Nor the constant one as foe!
II.
Threefold is the form of space:
Length, with ever restless motion,
Seeks eternity's wide ocean;
Breadth with boundless sway extends;
Depth to unknown realms descends.
All as types to thee are given;
Thou must onward strive for heaven,
Never still or weary be
Would'st thou perfect glory see;
Far must thy researches go.
Wouldst thou learn the world to know;
Thou must tempt the dark abyss
Wouldst thou prove what Being is.
Naught but firmness gains the prize, 
Naught but fulness makes us wise, 
Buried deep, truth ever lies!
Through Foulest Fogs
by James Thomson -  (Bysshe Vanolis)

Through foulest fogs of my own sluggish soul,
Through midnight glooms of all the wide world's guilt,
Through sulphurous cannon-clouds that surge and roll
Above the steam of blood in anger spilt;
Through all the sombre earth-oppressing piles
Of old cathedral temples which expand
Sepulchral vaults and monumental aisles,
Hopeless and freezing in the lifeful land;
I gaze and seek with ever-longing eyes
For God, the Love-Supreme, all-wise, all-good:
Alas! in vain; for over all the skies
A dark and awful shadow seems to brood,
A numbing, infinite, eternal gloom:
I tremble in the consciousness of Doom.
To Delaware
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Thrice welcome to thy sisters of the East,
To the strong tillers of a rugged home,
With spray-wet locks to Northern winds released,
And hardy feet o'erswept by ocean's foam;
And to the young nymphs of the golden West,
Whose harvest mantles, fringed with prairie bloom,
Trail in the sunset, O redeemed and blest,
To the warm welcome of thy sisters come!
Broad Pennsylvania, down her sail-white bay
Shall give thee joy, and Jersey from her plains,
And the great lakes, where echo, free alway,
Moaned never shoreward with the clank of chains,
Shall weave new sun-bows in their tossing spray,
And all their waves keep grateful holiday.
And, smiling on thee through her mountain rains,
Vermont shall bless thee; and the granite peaks,
And vast Katahdin o'er his woods, shall wear
Their snow-crowns brighter in the cold, keen air;
And Massachusetts, with her rugged cheeks
O'errun with grateful tears, shall turn to thee,
When, at thy bidding, the electric wire
Shall tremble northward with its words of fire;
Glory and praise to God! another State is free
A Song Of Comfort
by John McCrae

"Sleep, weary ones, while ye may,
Sleep, oh, sleep!"
Eugene Field.
Thro' May time blossoms, with whisper low,
The soft wind sang to the dead below:
"Think not with regret on the Springtime's song
And the task ye left while your hands were strong.
The song would have ceased when the Spring was past,
And the task that was joyous be weary at last."
To the winter sky when the nights were long
The tree-tops tossed with a ceaseless song:
"Do ye think with regret on the sunny days
And the path ye left, with its untrod ways?
The sun might sink in a storm cloud's frown
And the path grow rough when the night came down."
In the grey twilight of the autumn eves,
It sighed as it sang through the dying leaves:
"Ye think with regret that the world was bright,
That your path was short and your task was light;
The path, though short, was perhaps the best
And the toil was sweet, that it led to rest."
The Muses' Son.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

THROUGH field and wood to stray,
And pipe my tuneful lay, 
'Tis thus my days are pass'd;
And all keep tune with me,
And move in harmony,
And so on, to the last.
To wait I scarce have power
The garden's earliest flower,
The tree's first bloom in Spring;
They hail my joyous strain, 
When Winter comes again,
Of that sweet dream I sing.
My song sounds far and near,
O'er ice it echoes clear,
Then Winter blossoms bright;
And when his blossoms fly,
Fresh raptures meet mine eye,
Upon the well-till'd height.
When 'neath the linden tree,
Young folks I chance to see,
I set them moving soon;
His nose the dull lad curls,
The formal maiden whirls,
Obedient to my tune.
Wings to the feet ye lend,
O'er hill and vale ye send
The lover far from home;
When shall I, on your breast,.
Ye kindly muses, rest,
And cease at length to roam?
[Goethe quotes the beginning of this song in his Autobiography, as expressing the manner in which his poetical effusions used to pour out from him.]
Upon The Roses In Julia's Bosom.
by Robert Herrick

Thrice happy roses, so much grac'd to have
Within the bosom of my love your grave.
Die when ye will, your sepulchre is known,
Your grave her bosom is, the lawn the stone.
Up The Line.
by Will Carleton

Through blinding storm and clouds of night,
We swiftly pushed our restless flight;
With thundering hoof and warning neigh,
We urged our steed upon his way
Up the line.
Afar the lofty head-light gleamed;
Afar the whistle shrieked and screamed;
And glistening bright, and rising high,
Our flakes of fire bestrewed the sky,
Up the line.
Adown the long, complaining track,
Our wheels a message hurried back;
And quivering through the rails ahead,
Went news of our resistless tread,
Up the line.
The trees gave back our din and shout,
And flung their shadow arms about;
And shivering in their coats of gray,
They heard us roaring far away,
Up the line.
The wailing storm came on apace,
And dashed its tears into our fade;
But steadily still we pierced it through,
And cut the sweeping wind in two,
Up the line.
A rattling rush across the ridge,
A thunder-peal beneath the bridge;
And valley and hill and sober plain
Re-echoed our triumphant strain,
Up the line.
And when the Eastern streaks of gray
Bespoke the dawn of coming day,
We halted our steed, his journey o'er,
And urged his giant form no more,
Up the line.
The Golden Cord
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

Through every minute of this day,
Be with me, Lord!
Through every day of all this week,
Be with me, Lord!
Through every week of all this year,
Be with me, Lord!
Through all the years of all this life,
Be with me, Lord!
So shall the days and weeks and years
Be threaded on a golden cord,
And all draw on with sweet accord
Unto Thy fulness, Lord,
That so, when time is past,
By Grace, I may at last,
Be with Thee, Lord.
On a Palmetto.
by Sidney Lanier

Through all that year-scarred agony of height,
Unblest of bough or bloom, to where expands
His wandy circlet with his bladed bands
Dividing every wind, or loud or light,
To termless hymns of love and old despite,
Yon tall palmetto in the twilight stands,
Bare Dante of these purgatorial sands
That glimmer marginal to the monstrous night.
Comes him a Southwind from the scented vine,
It breathes of Beatrice through all his blades,
North, East or West, Guelph-wind or Ghibelline,
'Tis shredded into music down the shades;
All sea-breaths, land-breaths, systol, diastol,
Sway, minstrels of that grief-melodious Soul.
1880.