DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Separation.
by Nora Pembroke (Margaret Moran Dixon McDougall)

ELIZABETH TO WALTER
He has come and he has gone,
Meeting, parting, both are o'er;
And I feel the same dull pain,
Aching heart and throbbing brain
Coming o'er me once again
That I often felt before.
For he is my father's son,
And, in childhood's loving time
He and I so lone, so young,
No twin blossoms ever sprung,
No twin cherries ever clung,
Closer than his heart and mine.
He is changed, ah me! ah me!
Have we then a different aim?
Shall earth's glory or its gold
Make his heart to mine grow cold?
Or can new love kill the old?
Leaving me for love and fame
Oh, my brother fair to see!
Idol of my lonely heart,
Parting is a time of test,
Father, give him what is best,
Father keep him from the rest,
Bless him though we fall apart.
Well I know love will not die,
It will cause us bliss or pain;
We may part for many years,
But my loving prayers and tears,
Rising up to Him who hears,
Will yet draw him back again.
From the fount of tenderness,
All the past comes brimming up;
When his brow is touched with care,
When no grief of his I share,
When we're separated far,
It will be a bitter cup;
Bless him from before Thy throne,
Thus my heart to Thee makes moan,
Keep him Lord where he is gone
George L. Stearns
by John Greenleaf Whittier

He has done the work of a true man,
Crown him, honor him, love him.
Weep, over him, tears of woman,
Stoop manliest brows above him!
O dusky mothers and daughters,
Vigils of mourning keep for him!
Up in the mountains, and down by the waters,
Lift up your voices and weep for him,
For the warmest of hearts is frozen,
The freest of hands is still;
And the gap in our picked and chosen
The long years may not fill.
No duty could overtask him,
No need his will outrun;
Or ever our lips could ask him,
His hands the work had done.
He forgot his own soul for others,
Himself to his neighbor lending;
He found the Lord in his suffering brothers,
And not in the clouds descending.
So the bed was sweet to die on,
Whence he saw the doors wide swung
Against whose bolted iron
The strength of his life was flung.
And he saw ere his eye was darkened
The sheaves of the harvest-bringing,
And knew while his ear yet hearkened
The voice of the reapers singing.
Ah, well! The world is discreet;
There are plenty to pause and wait;
But here was a man who set his feet
Sometimes in advance of fate;
Plucked off the old bark when the inner
Was slow to renew it,
And put to the Lord's work the sinner
When saints failed to do it.
Never rode to the wrong's redressing
A worthier paladin.
Shall he not hear the blessing,
"Good and faithful, enter in!
All Mad.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"He is mad as a hare, poor fellow,
And should be in chains," you say.
I haven't a doubt of your statement,
But who isn't mad, I pray?
Why, the world is a great asylum,
And people are all insane,
Gone daft with pleasure or folly,
Or crazed with passion and pain.
The infant who shrieks at a shadow,
The child with his Santa Claus faith,
The woman who worships Dame Fashion,
Each man with his notions of death,
The miser who hoards up his earnings,
The spendthrift who wastes them too soon,
The scholar grown blind in his delving,
The lover who stares at the moon.
The poet who thinks life a p'an,
The cynic who thinks it a fraud,
The youth who goes seeking for pleasure,
The preacher who dares talk of God,
All priests with their creeds and their croaking,
All doubters who dare to deny,
The gay who find aught to wake laughter,
The sad who find aught worth a sigh,
Whoever is downcast or solemn,
Whoever is gleeful and glad,
Are only the dupes of delusions - 
We are all of us - all of us mad.
The Hymn Of Molling's Guest, The Man Full Of Trouble
by Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory

He is clean gold, he is Heaven about the sun, he is a silver vessel having wine in it; he is an angel, he is the wisdom of saints; everyone that is doing the will of the King.
He is a bird with a trap closing about him; he is a broken ship in great danger; he is an empty vessel, he is a withered tree; he that is not doing the will of the King.
He is a sweet-smelling branch with its blossoms; he is a vessel that is full of honey; he is a shining stone of good luck; he who does the will of the Son of God of Heaven.
He is a blind nut without profit; he is ill-smelling rottenness, he is a withered tree; he is a wild apple branch without blossom; he that is not doing the will of the King.
If he does the will of the Son of God of Heaven, he is a bright sun with summer about it; he is the image of the God of Heaven; he is a vessel of clear glass.
He is a racehorse over a smooth plain, the man that is striving for the kingdom of the great God; he is a chariot that is seen under a king, that wins the victory with golden bridles.
He is a sun that warms high heaven; the king to whom the great King is thankful; he is a church, joyful, noble; he is a shrine having gold about it.
He is an altar having wine poured upon it; having many quires singing around; he is a clean chalice with ale in it; he is bronze, white, shining, he is gold.
For To Admire
by Rudyard Kipling

he Injian Ocean sets an' smiles
So sof', so bright, so bloomin' blue;
There aren't a wave for miles an' miles
Excep' the jiggle from the screw.
The ship is swep', the day is done,
The bugle's gone for smoke and play;
An' black ag'in the settin' sun
The Lascar sings, "Hum deckty hai!" ["I'm looking out."]
For to admire an' for to see,
For to be'old this world so wide,
It never done no good to me,
But I can't drop it if I tried!
I see the sergeants pitchin' quoits,
I 'ear the women laugh an' talk,
I spy upon the quarter-deck
The orficers an' lydies walk.
I thinks about the things that was,
An' leans an' looks acrost the sea,
Till, spite of all the crowded ship
There's no one lef' alive but me.
The things that was which I 'ave seen,
In barrick, camp, an' action too,
I tells them over by myself,
An' sometimes wonders if they're true;
For they was odd, most awful odd,
But all the same, now they are o'er,
There must be 'eaps o' plenty such,
An' if I wait I'll see some more.
Oh, I 'ave come upon the books,
An' frequent broke a barrick-rule,
An' stood beside an' watched myself
Be'avin' like a bloomin' fool.
I paid my price for findin' out,
Nor never grutched the price I paid,
But sat in Clink without my boots,
Admirin' 'ow the world was made.
Be'old a crowd upon the beam,
An' 'umped above the sea appears
Old Aden, like a barrick-stove
That no one's lit for years an' years!
I passed by that when I began,
An' I go 'ome the road I came,
A time-expired soldier-man
With six years' service to 'is name.
My girl she said, "Oh, stay with me!"
My mother 'eld me to 'er breast.
They've never written none, an' so
They must 'ave gone with all the rest,
With all the rest which I 'ave seen
An' found an' known an' met along.
I cannot say the things I feel,
And so I sing my evenin' song:
For to admire an' for to see,
For to be'old this world so wide,
It never done no good to me,
But I can't drop it if I tried!
A Boundless Moment
by Robert Lee Frost

He halted in the wind, and, what was that
Far in the maples, pale, but not a ghost?
He stood there bringing March against his thought,
And yet too ready to believe the most.
'Oh, that's the Paradise-in-bloom,' I said;
And truly it was fair enough for flowers
had we but in us to assume in march
Such white luxuriance of May for ours.
We stood a moment so in a strange world,
Myself as one his own pretense deceives;
And then I said the truth (and we moved on).
A young beech clinging to its last year's leaves.
The Mission Of The Bard.
by Eric Mackay

He is a seer. He wears the wedding-ring
Of Art and Nature; and his voice is bold.
He should be quicker than the birds to sing,
And fill'd with frenzy like the men of old
Who sang their songs for country and for king.
Nothing should daunt him, though the news were told
By fiends from Hell! He should be swift to hold
And swift to part with truth, as from a spring.
He should discourse of war and war's alarm,
And deeds of peace, and garlands to be sought,
And love, and lore, and death, and beauty's charm,
And warlike men subdued by tender thought,
And grief dismiss'd, and hatred set at nought,
And Freedom shielded by his strong right arm!
A Friend In The Garden.
by Juliana Horatia Ewing

He is not John the gardener,
And yet the whole day long
Employs himself most usefully,
The flower-beds among.
He is not Tom the pussy-cat,
And yet the other day,
With stealthy stride and glistening eye,
He crept upon his prey.
He is not Dash the dear old dog,
And yet, perhaps, if you
Took pains with him and petted him,
You'd come to love him too.
He's not a Blackbird, though he chirps,
And though he once was black;
And now he wears a loose grey coat,
All wrinkled on the back.
He's got a very dirty face,
And very shining eyes!
He sometimes comes and sits indoors;
He looks--and p'r'aps is--wise.
But in a sunny flower-bed
He has his fixed abode;
He eats the things that eat my plants--
He is a friendly TOAD.
'GS' or the Fourth Cook
by Henry Lawson

He has notions of Australia from the tales that he's been told, 
Land of leggings and revolvers, land of savages and gold;
So he begs old shirts, and someone patches up his worn-out duds.
He is shipped as 'general servant,' scrubbing pots and peeling spuds
(In the steamer's grimy alley, hating man and peeling spuds).
There is little time to comfort, there is little time to cry, 
He will come back with a fortune, 'We'll be happy by-and-by!'
Scarcely time to kiss his sweetheart, barely time to change his duds,
Ere they want him at the galley, and they set him peeling spuds
(With a butcher's knife, a bucket, and, say, half a ton of spuds).
And he peels 'em hard to Plymouth, peels 'em fast to drown his grief,
Peels 'em while his stomach sickens on the road to Teneriffe;
Peels 'em while the donkey rattles, peels 'em while the engine thuds,
By the time they touch at Cape Town he's a don at peeling spuds
(And he finds some time for dreaming as he gets on with the spuds).
In the steamer's slushy alley, where the souls of men are dead,
And the adjectives are crimson if the substances are red,
He's perhaps a college black-sheep, and, maybe, of ancient blood, 
Ah! his devil grips him sometimes as he reaches for a spud
(And he jerks his head and sadly gouges dry-rot from a spud).
And his brave heart hopes and sickens as the weary days go round;
There is lots o' time for blue-lights ere they reach King George's Sound.
But he gets his best suit ready, two white shirts and three bone studs!
He will face the new world bravely when he's finished with the spuds
(And next week, perhaps, he'll gladly take a job at peeling spuds).
There were heroes in Australia went exploring long ago;
There are heroes in Australia that the world shall never know;
And the men we use for heroes in the land of droughts and floods
Often win their way to Sydney scrubbing pots and peeling spuds
(Plucky beggars! brave, poor devils! gouging dry-rot from their spuds).
A Dog's Mistake
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

In Doggerel Verse
He had drifted in among us as a straw drifts with the tide,
He was just a wand'ring mongrel from the weary world outside;
He was not aristocratic, being mostly ribs and hair,
With a hint of spaniel parents and a touch of native bear.
He was very poor and humble and content with what he got,
So we fed him bones and biscuits, till he heartened up a lot;
Then he growled and grew aggressive, treating orders with disdain,
Till at last he bit the butcher, which would argue want of brain.
Now the butcher, noble fellow, was a sport beyond belief,
And instead of bringing actions he brought half a shin of beef,
Which he handed on to Fido, who received it as a right
And removed it to the garden, where he buried it at night.
'Twas the means of his undoing, for my wife, who'd stood his friend,
To adopt a slang expression, "went in off the deepest end",
For among the pinks and pansies, the gloxinias and the gorse
He had made an excavation like a graveyard for a horse.
Then we held a consultation which decided on his fate:
'Twas in anger more than sorrow that we led him to the gate,
And we handed him the beef-bone as provision for the day,
Then we opened wide the portal and we told him, "On your way."
A Hero's Decision.
by Thomas Frederick Young

He just had reached the time of life,
When cares are felt by men,
But when they're strong to bear them well, - 
A score of years and ten.
"Heigh ho!" says he, "and this is life,
The dream of earlier years,
In which we see so much of joy,
And naught of bitter tears.
"I've lived a half a score of years,
In search of fame and glory,
For all earth's boasted joys I've sought,
But ah! what is the story?"
The story! 'tis the same old tale,
Told long, long years ago,
But strange, each for himself must learn
This earth's a 'fleeting show.'
"The dreams of sanguine, hopeful youth,
Are chiefly dreams alone,
Whose falseness often breaks the heart,
Or turns it into stone.
Fame's or ambition's giddy height
Is only seldom gain'd,
And often half the pleasure leaves,
Just when the height's attain'd."
But still I strive, and still I hope,
And still I fight the battle,
Besieg'd by earth's artillery,
With all its horrid rattle.
Then come, ye mocking earthly foes,
E'en come like fiends of hell,
I'll fight the battle till I die,
And I will fight it well.
"I'll change my tactics quickly, tho',
Fight on a diff'rent line,
And on my waving battle flag,
I'll mark a diff'rent sign.
Until this present moment, I
Have fought in single strife,
But I will fight no more alone,
I'll get myself a wife.
We'll then fight all who dare oppose,
E'en should it be her brother,
And when we've vanquish'd all our foes,
We'll turn and fight each other."
The Soldier
by Robert Lee Frost

He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,
But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust.
If we who sight along it round the world,
See nothing worthy to have been its mark,
It is because like men we look too near,
Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere,
Our missiles always make too short an arc.
They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect
The curve of earth, and striking, break their own;
They make us cringe for metal-point on stone.
But this we know, the obstacle that checked
And tripped the body, shot the spirit on
Further than target ever showed or shone.
Malaria
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

He lurks among the reeds, beside the marsh,
Red oleanders twisted in His hair,
His eyes are haggard and His lips are harsh,
Upon His breast the bones show gaunt and bare.
The green and stagnant waters lick His feet,
And from their filmy, iridescent scum
Clouds of mosquitoes, gauzy in the heat,
Rise with His gifts: Death and Delirium.
His messengers: They bear the deadly taint
On spangled wings aloft and far away,
Making thin music, strident and yet faint,
From golden eve to silver break of day.
The baffled sleeper hears th' incessant whine
Through his tormented dreams, and finds no rest
The thirsty insects use his blood for wine,
Probe his blue veins and pasture on his breast.
While far away He in the marshes lies,
Staining the stagnant water with His breath,
An endless hunger burning in His eyes,
A famine unassuaged, whose food is Death.
He hides among the ghostly mists that float
Over the water, weird and white and chill,
And peasants, passing in their laden boat,
Shiver and feel a sense of coming ill.
A thousand burn and die; He takes no heed,
Their bones, unburied, strewn upon the plain,
Only increase the frenzy of His greed
To add more victims to th' already slain.
He loves the haggard frame, the shattered mind,
Gloats with delight upon the glazing eye,
Yet, in one thing, His cruelty is kind,
He sends them lovely dreams before they die;
Dreams that bestow on them their heart's desire,
Visions that find them mad, and leave them blest,
To sink, forgetful of the fever's fire,
Softly, as in a lover's arms, to rest.
The Chipmunk
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
He makes a roadway of the crumbling fence,
Or on the fallen tree, brown as a leaf
Fall stripes with russet, gambols down the dense
Green twilight of the woods. We see not whence
He comes, nor whither (in a time so brief)
He vanishes swift carrier of some Fay,
Some pixy steed that haunts our child-belief
A goblin glimpse upon some wildwood way.
II.
What harlequin mood of nature qualified
Him so with happiness? and limbed him with
Such young activity as winds, that ride
The ripples, have, dancing on every side?
As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith
Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight,
Gnome-like, in darkness, like a moonlight myth,
Lairing in labyrinths of the under night.
III.
Here, by a rock, beneath the moss, a hole
Leads to his is home, the den wherein he sleeps;
Lulled by near noises of the laboring mole
Tunneling its mine like some ungainly Troll
Or by the tireless cricket there that keeps
Picking its rusty and monotonous lute;
Or slower sounds of grass that creeps and creeps,
And trees unrolling mighty root on root.
IV.
Such is the music of his sleeping hours.
Day hath another 'tis a melody
He trips to, made by the assembled flowers,
And light and fragrance laughing 'mid the bowers,
And ripeness busy with the acorn-tree.
Such strains, perhaps, as filled with mute amaze
(The silent music of Earth's ecstasy)
The Satyr's soul, the Faun of classic days.
A Dreamer Of Dreams
by Madison Julius Cawein

He lived beyond men, and so stood
Admitted to the brotherhood
Of beauty: dreams, with which he trod
Companioned like some sylvan god.
And oft men wondered, when his thought
Made all their knowledge seem as naught,
If he, like Uther's mystic son,
Had not been born for Avalon.
When wandering mid the whispering trees,
His soul communed with every breeze;
Heard voices calling from the glades,
Bloom-words of the Leimoni'ds;
Or Dryads of the ash and oak,
Who syllabled his name and spoke
With him of presences and powers
That glimpsed in sunbeams, gloomed in showers.
By every violet-hallowed brook,
Where every bramble-matted nook
Rippled and laughed with water sounds,
He walked like one on sainted grounds,
Fearing intrusion on the spell
That kept some fountain-spirit's well,
Or woodland genius, sitting where
Red, racy berries kissed his hair.
Once when the wind, far o'er the hill,
Had fall'n and left the wildwood still
For Dawn's dim feet to trail across,
Beneath the gnarled boughs, on the moss,
The air around him golden-ripe
With daybreak, there, with oaten pipe,
His eyes beheld the wood-god, Pan,
Goat-bearded, horned; half brute, half man;
Who, shaggy-haunched, a savage rhyme
Blew in his reed to rudest time;
And swollen-jowled, with rolling eye
Beneath the slowly silvering sky,
Whose rose streaked through the forest's roof
Danced, while beneath his boisterous hoof
The branch was snapped, and, interfused
Between gnarled roots, the moss was bruised.
And often when he wandered through
Old forests at the fall of dew
A new Endymion, who sought
A beauty higher than all thought
Some night, men said, most surely he
Would favored be of deity:
That in the holy solitude
Her sudden presence, long-pursued,
Unto his gaze would stand confessed:
The awful moonlight of her breast
Come, high with majesty, and hold
His heart's blood till his heart grew cold,
Unpulsed, unsinewed, all undone,
And snatch his soul to Avalon.
A Year's Spinning
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

He listened at the porch that day,
To hear the wheel go on, and on;
And then it stopped, ran back away,
While through the door he brought the sun:
But now my spinning is all done.
He sat beside me, with an oath
That love ne'er ended, once begun;
I smiled, believing for us both,
What was the truth for only one:
And now my spinning is all done.
My mother cursed me that I heard
A young man's wooing as I spun:
Thanks, cruel mother, for that word,
For I have, since, a harder known!
And now my spinning is all done.
I thought, O God! my first-born's cry
Both voices to mine ear would drown:
I listened in mine agony,
It was the silence made me groan!
And now my spinning is all done.
Bury me 'twixt my mother's grave,
(Who cursed me on her death-bed lone)
And my dead baby's (God it save!)
Who, not to bless me, would not moan.
And now my spinning is all done.
A stone upon my heart and head,
But no name written on the stone!
Sweet neighbours, whisper low instead,
"This sinner was a loving one,
And now her spinning is all done."
And let the door ajar remain,
In case he should pass by anon;
And leave the wheel out very plain,
That HE, when passing in the sun,
May see the spinning is all done.
From Idyl VII (Pictures From Theocritus - From Idyl I.)
by William Lisle Bowles

He left us; we, the hour of parting come,
To Prasidamus' hospitable home,
Myself and Eucritus, together wend,
With young Amynticus, our blooming friend:
There, all delighted, through the summer day,
On beds of rushes, pillowed deep, we lay;
Around, the lentils, newly cut, were spread;
Dark elms and poplars whispered o'er our head;
A hallowed stream, to all the wood-nymphs dear,
Fresh from the rocky cavern murmured near;
Beneath the fruit-leaves' many-mantling shade,
The grasshoppers a coil incessant made;
From the wild thorny thickets, heard remote,
The wood-lark trilled his far-resounding note;
Loud sung the thrush, musician of the scene,
And soft and sweet was heard the dove's sad note between;
Then yellow bees, whose murmur soothed the ear,
Went idly flitting round the fountain clear.
Summer and Autumn seemed at once to meet,
Filling with redolence the blest retreat,
While the ripe pear came rolling to our feet.
The Choirmaster's Burial
by Thomas Hardy

He often would ask us
That, when he died,
After playing so many
To their last rest,
If out of us any
Should here abide,
And it would not task us,
We would with our lutes
Play over him
By his grave-brim
The psalm he liked best -
The one whose sense suits
"Mount Ephraim" -
And perhaps we should seem
To him, in Death's dream,
Like the seraphim.
As soon as I knew
That his spirit was gone
I thought this his due,
And spoke thereupon.
"I think," said the vicar,
"A read service quicker
Than viols out-of-doors
In these frosts and hoars.
That old-fashioned way
Requires a fine day,
And it seems to me
It had better not be."
Hence, that afternoon,
Though never knew he
That his wish could not be,
To get through it faster
They buried the master
Without any tune.
But 'twas said that, when
At the dead of next night
The vicar looked out,
There struck on his ken
Thronged roundabout,
Where the frost was graying
The headstoned grass,
A band all in white
Like the saints in church-glass,
Singing and playing
The ancient stave
By the choirmaster's grave.
Such the tenor man told
When he had grown old.
Father
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

He never made a fortune, or a noise
In the world where men are seeking after fame;
But he had a healthy brood of girls and boys
Who loved the very ground on which he trod.
They thought him just a little short of God;
Oh you should have heard the way they said his name - 
'Father.'
There seemed to be a loving little prayer
In their voices, even when they called him 'Dad.'
Though the man was never heard of anywhere,
As a hero, yet you somehow understood
He was doing well his part and making good;
And you knew it, by the way his children had
Of saying 'Father.'
He gave them neither eminence nor wealth,
But he gave them blood untainted with a vice,
And the opulence of undiluted health.
He was honest, and unpurchable and kind;
He was clean in heart, and body, and in mind.
So he made them heirs to riches without price - 
This father.
He never preached or scolded; and the rod - 
Well, he used it as a turning pole in play.
But he showed the tender sympathy of God
To his children in their troubles, and their joys.
He was always chum and comrade with his boys,
And his daughters - oh, you ought to hear them say
'Father.'
Now I think of all achievements 'tis the least
To perpetuate the species; it is done
By the insect and the serpent, and the beast.
But the man who keeps his body, and his thought,
WORTH bestowing on an offspring love-begot,
Then the highest earthly glory he has won,
When in pride a grown-up daughter or a son
Says 'That's Father.'