DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Rhymes And Rhythms - XXII
by William Ernest Henley

Trees and the menace of night;
Then a long, lonely, leaden mere
Backed by a desolate fell
As by a spectral battlement; and then,
Low-brooding, interpenetrating all,
A vast, grey, listless, inexpressive sky,
So beggared, so incredibly bereft
Of starlight and the song of racing worlds
It might have bellied down upon the Void
Where as in terror Light was beginning to be.
Hist!    In the trees fulfilled of night
(Night and the wretchedness of the sky)
Is it the hurry of the rain?
Or the noise of a drive of the Dead
Streaming before the irresistible Will
Through the strange dusk of this, the Debateable Land
Between their place and ours?
Like the forgetfulness
Of the work-a-day world made visible,
A mist falls from the melancholy sky:
A messenger from some lost and loving soul,
Hopeless, far wandered, dazed
Here in the provinces of life,
A great white moth fades miserably past.
Thro' the trees in the strange dead night,
Under the vast dead sky,
Forgetting and forgot, a drift of Dead
Sets to the mystic mere, the phantom fell,
And the unimagined vastitudes beyond.
The Appointment (The Adventures Of Seumas Beg)
by James Stephens

Tree! you are years standing there,
Gripping tight to the side of the hill,
And your branches are spread on the air,
While you stand so sad and so still,
And you do not complain
When you're wet with the rain,
Though I think you have often been ill.
I would like (but it could not be done,
So you must not keep me to my word)
To take you away when the sun
Goes down, and the breezes are stirred,
And hug you in bed
With myself, till you said
That to sleep on a hill was absurd.
O beautiful tree! when the night
Is dark, and the winds come and scold,
I would love then to cuddle you tight,
For I fear you will die of the cold;
But you are so tall,
And my bed is so small,
That it could not be done, I am told.
My mother is calling for me,
And the baby is wanting to play,
I shall have to go home now, you see,
But I'll give you a kiss if I may:
I would stay if I could,
But a child must be good,
So I must, darling tree, go away.
I will leave you my pencil and slate,
And this little pin from my frock;
But now I must go, for it's late,
And my mother is rattling the lock:
So good-bye, darling dear,
I'll come back, never fear,
In the morning at seven o'clock.
Poem: Requiescat
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.
Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.
AVIGNON
Stanza From A Translation Of The Marseillaise Hymn.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Tremble, Kings despised of man!
Ye traitors to your Country,
Tremble! Your parricidal plan
At length shall meet its destiny...
We all are soldiers fit to fight,
But if we sink in glory's night
Our mother Earth will give ye new
The brilliant pathway to pursue
Which leads to Death or Victory...
Leudemann's-On-The-River.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Toward even when the day leans down
To kiss the upturned face of night,
Out just beyond the loud-voiced town
I know a spot of calm delight.
Like crimson arrows from a quiver
The red rays pierce the waters flowing
While we go dreaming, singing, rowing
To Leudemann's-on-the-River.
The hills, like some glad mocking-bird,
Send back our laughter and our singing,
While faint - and yet more faint is heard
The steeple bells all sweetly ringing.
Some message did the winds deliver
To each glad heart that August night,
All heard, but all heard not aright;
By Leudemann's-on-the-River.
Night falls as in some foreign clime,
Between the hills that slope and rise.
So dusk the shades at landing time,
We could not see each other's eyes.
We only saw the moonbeams quiver
Far down upon the stream! that night
The new moon gave but little light
By Leudemann's-on-the-River.
How dusky were those paths that led
Up from the river to the hall.
The tall trees branching overhead
Invite the early shades that fall.
In all the glad blithe world, oh, never
Were hearts more free from care than when
We wandered through those walks, we ten,
By Leudemann's-on-the-River.
So soon, so soon, the changes came.
This August day we two alone,
On that same river, not the same,
Dream of a night forever flown.
Strange distances have come to sever
The hearts that gayly beat in pleasure,
Long miles we cannot cross or measure - 
From Leudemann's-on-the-River.
We'll pluck two leaves, dear friend, to-day.
The green, the russet! seems it strange
So soon, so soon, the leaves can change!
Ah, me! so runs all life away.
This night wind chills me, and I shiver;
The Summer time is almost past.
One more good-bye - perhaps the last
To Leudemann's-on-the-River.
The Galaxy
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Torrent of light and river of the air,
Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seen
Like gold and silver sands in some ravine
Where mountain streams have left their channels bare!
The Spaniard sees in thee the pathway, where
His patron saint descended in the sheen
Of his celestial armor, on serene
And quiet nights, when all the heavens were fair.
Not this I see, nor yet the ancient fable
Of Phaeton's wild course, that scorched the skies
Where'er the hoofs of his hot coursers trod;
But the white drift of worlds o'er chasms of sable,
The star-dust that is whirled aloft and flies
From the invisible chariot-wheels of God.
Julian Scott
by Edgar Lee Masters

Toward the last
The truth of others was untruth to me;
The justice of others injustice to me;
Their reasons for death, reasons with me for life;
Their reasons for life, reasons with me for death;
I would have killed those they saved,
And save those they killed.
And I saw how a god, if brought to earth,
Must act out what he saw and thought,
And could not live in this world of men
And act among them side by side
Without continual clashes.
The dust's for crawling, heaven's for flying - 
Wherefore, O soul, whose wings are grown,
Soar upward to the sun!
Kiama
by Henry Kendall

Towards the hills of Jamberoo
Some few fantastic shadows haste,
Uplit with fires
Like castle spires
Outshining through a mirage waste.
Behold, a mournful glory sits
On feathered ferns and woven brakes,
Where sobbing wild like restless child
The gusty breeze of evening wakes!
Methinks I hear on every breath
A lofty tone go passing by,
That whispers 'Weave,
Though wood winds grieve,
The fadeless blooms of Poesy!'
A spirit hand has been abroad
An evil hand to pluck the flowers
A world of wealth,
And blooming health
Has gone from fragrant seaside bowers.
The twilight waxeth dim and dark,
The sad waves mutter sounds of woe,
But the evergreen retains its sheen,
And happy hearts exist below;
But pleasure sparkles on the sward,
And voices utter words of bliss,
And while my bride
Sits by my side,
Oh, where's the scene surpassing this?
Kiama slumbers, robed with mist,
All glittering in the dewy light
That, brooding o'er
The shingly shore,
Lies resting in the arms of Night;
And foam-flecked crags with surges chill,
And rocks embraced of cold-lipped spray,
Are moaning loud where billows crowd
In angry numbers up the bay.
The holy stars come looking down
On windy heights and swarthy strand,
And Life and Love
The cliffs above
Are sitting fondly hand in hand.
I hear a music inwardly,
That floods my soul with thoughts of joy;
Within my heart
Emotions start
That Time may still but ne'er destroy.
An ancient Spring revives itself,
And days which made the past divine;
And rich warm gleams from golden dreams,
All glorious in their summer shine;
And songs of half forgotten hours,
And many a sweet melodious strain,
Which still shall rise
Beneath the skies
When all things else have died again.
A white sail glimmers out at sea
A vessel walking in her sleep;
Some Power goes past
That bends the mast,
While frighted waves to leeward leap.
The moonshine veils the naked sand
And ripples upward with the tide,
As underground there rolls a sound
From where the caverned waters glide.
A face that bears affection's glow,
The soul that speaks from gentle eyes,
And joy which slips
From loving lips
Have made this spot my Paradise!
Sonnet VII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

La gola e 'l sonno e l' oziose piume.
TO A FRIEND, ENCOURAGING HIM TO PURSUE POETRY.
Torn is each virtue from its earthly throne
By sloth, intemperance, and voluptuous ease;
E'en nature deviates from her wonted ways,
Too much the slave of vicious custom grown.
Far hence is every light celestial gone,
That guides mankind through life's perplexing maze;
And those, whom Helicon's sweet waters please,
From mocking crowds receive contempt alone.
Who now would laurel, myrtle-wreaths obtain?
Let want, let shame, Philosophy attend!
Cries the base world, intent on sordid gain.
What though thy favourite path be trod by few;
Let it but urge thee more, dear gentle friend!
Thy great design of glory to pursue.
ANON.
Intemperance, slumber, and the slothful down
Have chased each virtue from this world away;
Hence is our nature nearly led astray
From its due course, by habitude o'erthrown;
Those kindly lights of heaven so dim are grown,
Which shed o'er human life instruction's ray;
That him with scornful wonder they survey,
Who would draw forth the stream of Helicon.
"Whom doth the laurel please, or myrtle now?
Naked and poor, Philosophy, art thou!"
The worthless crowd, intent on lucre, cries.
Few on thy chosen road will thee attend;
Yet let it more incite thee, gentle friend,
To prosecute thy high-conceived emprize.
NOTT.
Tell Me.
by George MacDonald

"Traveller, what lies over the hill?
Traveller, tell to me:
Tip-toe-high on the window-sill
Over I cannot see."
"My child, a valley green lies there,
Lovely with trees, and shy;
And a tiny brook that says, 'Take care,
Or I'll drown you by and by!'"
"And what comes next?"--"A little town,
And a towering hill again;
More hills and valleys up and down,
And a river now and then."
"And what comes next?"--"A lonely moor
Without one beaten way,
And slow clouds drifting dull before
A wind that will not stay."
"And then?"--"Dark rocks and yellow sand,
Blue sea and a moaning tide."
"And then?"--"More sea, and then more land,
With rivers deep and wide."
"And then?"--"Oh, rock and mountain and vale,
Ocean and shores and men,
Over and over, a weary tale,
And round to your home again!"
"And is that all? From day to day,
Like one with a long chain bound,
Should I walk and walk and not get away,
But go always round and round?"
"No, no; I have not told you the best,
I have not told you the end:
If you want to escape, away in the west
You will see a stair ascend,
"Built of all colours of lovely stones,
A stair up into the sky
Where no one is weary, and no one moans,
Or wishes to be laid by."
"Is it far away?"--"I do not know:
You must fix your eyes thereon,
And travel, travel through thunder and snow,
Till the weary way is gone.
"All day, though you never see it shine,
You must travel nor turn aside,
All night you must keep as straight a line
Through moonbeams or darkness wide."
"When I am older!"--"Nay, not so!"
"I have hardly opened my eyes!"
"He who to the old sunset would go,
Starts best with the young sunrise."
"Is the stair right up? is it very steep?"
"Too steep for you to climb;
You must lie at the foot of the glorious heap
And patient wait your time."
"How long?"--"Nay, that I cannot tell."
"In wind, and rain, and frost?"
"It may be so; and it is well
That you should count the cost.
"Pilgrims from near and from distant lands
Will step on you lying there;
But a wayfaring man with wounded hands
Will carry you up the stair."
Trees And The Menace Of Night
by William Ernest Henley

Trees and the menace of night;
Then a long, lonely, leaden mere
Backed by a desolate fell,
As by a spectral battlement; and then,
Low-brooding, interpenetrating all,
A vast, gray, listless, inexpressive sky,
So beggared, so incredibly bereft
Of starlight and the song of racing worlds,
It might have bellied down upon the Void
Where as in terror Light was beginning to be.
Hist!    In the trees fulfilled of night
(Night and the wretchedness of the sky)
Is it the hurry of the rain?
Or the noise of a drive of the Dead,
Streaming before the irresistible Will
Through the strange dusk of this, the Debateable Land
Between their place and ours?
Like the forgetfulness
Of the work-a-day world made visible,
A mist falls from the melancholy sky.
A messenger from some lost and loving soul,
Hopeless, far wandered, dazed
Here in the provinces of life,
A great white moth fades miserably past.
Thro' the trees in the strange dead night,
Under the vast dead sky,
Forgetting and forgot, a drift of Dead
Sets to the mystic mere, the phantom fell,
And the unimagined vastitudes beyond.
To Captain Fryatt
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Trampled yet red is the last of the embers,
Red the last cloud of a sun that has set;
What of your sleeping though Flanders remembers,
What of your waking, if England forget?
Why should you share in the hearts that we harden,
In the shame of our nature, who see it and live?
How more than the godly the greedy can pardon,
How well and how quickly the hungry forgive.
Ah, well if the soil of the stranger had wrapped you,
While the lords that you served and the friends that you knew
Hawk in the marts of the tyrants that trapped you,
Tout in the shops of the butchers that slew.
Why should you wake for a realm that is rotten,
Stuffed with their bribes and as dead to their debts?
Sleep and forget us, as we have forgotten;
For Flanders remembers and England forgets.
Draft Epilogue for the Second Edition of Les Fleurs du mal
by Charles Baudelaire

Tranquil as a sage and gentle as one who's cursed. I said:
I love you, oh my beauty, my charmer
many a time
your debauches without thirst, your soul-less loves,
your longing for the infinite
which proclaims itself everywhere, even in evil,
your bombs, knives, victory marches, public feasts,
your melancholy suburbs,
your furnished rooms,
your gardens full of sighs and intrigue,
your churches vomiting prayer as music,
your childish despairs, mad hags' games,
your discouragements:
and your fireworks, eruptions of joy,
that make the dumb and gloomy sky smile.
Your venerable vice dressed in silk,
and laughable virtue, with sad gaze,
gentle, delighting in the luxury it shows.
Your saved principles and flouted laws,
your proud monuments on which mists catch,
your metal domes the sun inflames,
your theatrical queens with seductive voices,
your tocsins, cannon, deafening orchestra,
your magic cobbles heaped as barricades,
your petty orators' swollen rhetoric,
preaching love, while your sewers run with blood,
rushing towards Hell like the Orinoco's flood,
your angels, your fresh clowns in ancient rags.
Angels dressed in gold, purple and hyacinth,
O you, bear witness that I've discharged my task,
like a perfect alchemist like a sainted soul.
From every thing I've extracted the quintessence,
you gave me your mud and I've turned it into gold.
Requiescat
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.
Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.
Upon An Old Man: A Residentiary.
by Robert Herrick

Tread, sirs, as lightly as ye can
Upon the grave of this old man.
Twice forty, bating but one year
And thrice three weeks, he lived here.
Whom gentle fate translated hence
To a more happy residence.
Yet, reader, let me tell thee this,
Which from his ghost a promise is,
If here ye will some few tears shed,
He'll never haunt ye now he's dead.
Rhymes And Rhythms - XVII
by William Ernest Henley

CARMEN PATIBULARE
(To H. S.)
Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook
And the rope of the Black Election,
'Tis the faith of the Fool that a race you rule
Can never achieve perfection:
And 'It's O for the time of the New Sublime
And the better than human way
When the Wolf (poor beast) shall come to his own
And the Rat shall have his day!'
For Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Beam
And the power of provocation,
You have cockered the Brute with your dreadful fruit
Till your thought is mere stupration:
And 'It's how should we rise to be pure and wise,
And how can we choose but fall,
So long as the Hangman makes us dread
And the Noose floats free for all?'
So Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Coign
And the trick there's no recalling,
They will haggle and hew till they hack you through
And at last they lay you sprawling:
When 'Hey! for the hour of the race in flower
And the long good-bye to sin!'
And 'Ho! for the fires of Hell gone out
For the want of keeping in!'
But Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Bough
And the ghastly Dreams that tend you,
Your growth began with the life of Man
And only his death can end you:
They may tug in line at your hempen twine,
They may flourish with axe and saw,
But your taproot drinks of the Sacred Springs
In the living rock of Law.
And Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Fork,
When the spent sun reels and blunders
Down a welkin lit with the flare of the Pit
As it seethes in spate and thunders,
Stern on the glare of the tortured air
Your lines august shall gloom,
And your master-beam be the last thing whelmed
In the ruining roar of Doom.
Leudemanns-On-The-River.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Toward even, when the day leans down
To kiss the upturned face of night,
Out just beyond the loud-voiced town
I know a spot of calm delight.
Like crimson arrows from a quiver
The red rays pierce the waters flowing,
While we go dreaming, singing, rowing
To Leudemanns-on-the-River.
The hills, like some glad mocking-bird,
Send back our laughter and our singing,
While faint - and yet more faint is heard
The steeple bells all sweetly ringing.
Some message did the winds deliver
To each glad heart that August night,
All heard, but all heard not aright,
By Leudemanns-on-the-River.
Night falls as in some foreign clime,
Between the hills that slope and rise.
So dusk the shades at landing-time,
We could not see each other's eyes.
We only saw the moonbeams quiver
Far down upon the stream! that night
The new moon gave but little light
By Leudemanns-on-the-River.
How dusky were those paths that led
Up from the river to the hall.
The tall trees branching overhead
Invite the early shades that fall.
In all the glad blithe world, oh, never
Were hearts more free from care than when
We wandered through those walks, we ten,
By Leudemanns-on-the-River.
So soon, so soon, the changes came.
This August day we two alone,
On that same river, not the same,
Dream of a night for ever flown.
Strange distances have come to sever
The hearts that gaily beat in pleasure,
Long miles we cannot cross or measure - 
From Leudemanns-on-the-River.
We'll pluck two leaves, dear friend, to-day.
The green, the russet! seems it strange
So soon, so soon, the leaves can change!
Ah me! so runs all life away.
This night-wind chills me, and I shiver;
The Summer-time is almost past.
One more good-bye - perhaps the last
To Leudemanns-on-the-River.
Topsy Turvy
by Madison Julius Cawein

Topsy Turvy is her name;
She's a curiosity:
Never sees the world the same
As it seems to you and me.
"All the world is upside down,"
So she says; then, with a frown,
"If it's not it ought to be."
Topsy Turvy! Topsy Turvy!
Takes you to some old wood pool,
Or some well to prove she's right:
"There's the real world, you fool!
Something's wrong with people's sight.
There's the sky, the clouds, the wood.
There you see them as you should.
If you don't it's out of spite."
Topsy Turvy! Topsy Turvy!
"You are walking on your heads,
And don't know it; but it's true.
You don't lie down in your beds,
But your beds lie down on you;
You are under them. The sun,
Moon, and stars are, every one,
Shining underneath you too."
Topsy Turvy! Topsy Turvy!
"Seems that no one else can see
As I see it. It's a shame,
Or your own perversity.
But, good Lord! I'm not to blame.
Don't know what you miss, you don't,
By not seeing things you won't.
My! how fine they look to me!"
Topsy Turvy! Topsy Turvy!
Then she runs away and hides
By a creek and looks for hours,
In the water where it slides,
At herself, the trees and flowers,
Sun and skies and clouds, and if
You just laugh, she gives a sniff,
Shakes her head and glares and glowers.
Topsy Turvy! Topsy Turvy!
To M. Henry Lawes, The Excellent Composer Of His Lyrics.
by Robert Herrick

Touch but thy lyre, my Harry, and I hear
From thee some raptures of the rare Gotiere;
Then if thy voice commingle with the string,
I hear in thee rare Laniere to sing;
Or curious Wilson: tell me, canst thou be
Less than Apollo, that usurp'st such three?
Three, unto whom the whole world give applause;
Yet their three praises praise but one; that's Lawes.
Trickle, Drops
by Walt Whitman

Trickle, drops! my blue veins
O drops of me! trickle, slow drops,
Candid, from me falling, drip, bleeding drops,
From wounds made to free you whence you were prison'd,
From my face, from my forehead and lips,
From my breast, from within where I was conceal'd, press forth, red drops, confession drops;
Stain every page, stain every song I sing, every word I say, bloody drops;
Let them know your scarlet heat, let them glisten;
Saturate them with yourself, all ashamed and wet;
Glow upon all I have written, or shall write, bleeding drops;
Let it all be seen in your light, blushing drops.
Duns Scotus's Oxford
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Towery city and branchy between towers;
Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarm'd, lark-charm'd, rook- racked, river-rounded;
The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and town did
Once encounter in, here coped and pois'd powers;
Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours
That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded
Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded
Rural rural keeping - folk, flocks, and flowers.
Yet ah! this air I gather and I release
He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what
He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;
Of realty the rarest-vein'd unraveller; a not
Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece;
Who fired France for Mary without spot.
Epitaph [1] On A Robin Redbreast.
by Samuel Rogers

Tread lightly here, for here, 'tis said,
When piping winds are hush'd around,
A small note wakes from underground,
Where now his tiny bones are laid.
No more in lone and leafless groves,
With ruffled wing and faded breast,
His friendless, homeless spirit roves;
--Gone to the world where birds are blest!
Where never cat glides o'er the green,
Or school-boy's giant form is seen;
But Love, and Joy, and smiling Spring
Inspire their little souls to sing!
In Westminster Abbey
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

"The Southern Transept, hardly known by any other name but Poet's Corner."
DEAN STANLEY.
Tread softly here; the sacredest of tombs
Are those that hold your Poets.    Kings and queens
Are facile accidents of Time and Chance.
Chance sets them on the heights, they climb not there!
But he who from the darkling mass of men
Is on the wing of heavenly thought upborne
To finer ether, and becomes a voice
For all the voiceless, God anointed him:
His name shall be a star, his grave a shrine.
Tread softly here, in silent reverence tread.
Beneath those marble cenotaphs and urns
Lies richer dust than ever nature hid
Packed in the mountain's adamantine heart,
Or slyly wrapt in unsuspected sand--
The dross men toil for, and oft stain the soul.
How vain and all ignoble seems that greed
To him who stands in this dim claustral air
With these most sacred ashes at his feet!
This dust was Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden this--
The spark that once illumed it lingers still.
O ever-hallowed spot of English earth!
If the unleashed and happy spirit of man
Have option to revisit our dull globe,
What august Shades at midnight here convene
In the miraculous sessions of the moon,
When the great pulse of London faintly throbs,
And one by one the stars in heaven pale!