DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Nursery Rhyme. DCIV. Local.
by Unknown

A man went a hunting at Reigate,
And wished to leap over a high gate;
Says the owner, "Go round,
With your gun and your hound,
For you never shall leap over my gate."
Nursery Rhyme. XC. Proverbs.
by Unknown

A man of words and not of deeds,
Is like a garden full of weeds;
For when the weeds begin to grow,
Then doth the garden overflow.
The Magnet And The Churn.
by William Schwenck Gilbert

A magnet hung in a hardware shop,
And all around was a loving crop
Of scissors and needles, nails and knives,
Offering love for all their lives;
But for iron the magnet felt no whim,
Though he charmed iron, it charmed not him,
From needles and nails and knives he'd turn,
For he'd set his love on a Silver Churn!
His most 'sthetic,
Very magnetic
Fancy took this turn 
"If I can wheedle
A knife or needle,
Why not a Silver Churn?"
And Iron and Steel expressed surprise,
The needles opened their well drilled eyes,
The pen-knives felt "shut up," no doubt,
The scissors declared themselves "cut out."
The kettles they boiled with rage, 'tis said,
While every nail went off its head,
And hither and thither began to roam,
Till a hammer came up and drove it home,
While this magnetic
Peripatetic
Lover he lived to learn,
By no endeavor,
Can Magnet ever
Attract a Silver Churn!
A Man In His Life
by Yehuda Amichai

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest what history
takes years and years to do.
A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves he begins to forget.
Birchington Churchyard.
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

A lowly hill which overlooks a flat,
Half sea, half country side;
A flat-shored sea of low-voiced creeping tide
Over a chalky, weedy mat.
A hill of hillocks, flowery and kept green
Round Crosses raised for hope,
With many-tinted sunsets where the slope
Faces the lingering western sheen.
A lowly hope, a height that is but low,
While Time sets solemnly,
While the tide rises of Eternity,
Silent and neither swift nor slow.
The Old Scottish Minister.
by W. M. MacKeracher

A man he was of Scottish race,
And ancient Scottish name;
Of common mould, but lofty mien,
That dignified his frame.
And he lived a humble, quiet life,
Obscure, unknown to fame;
God's glory and the good of man
His constant, only aim:
Like a fine old Scottish minister,
All of the olden time.
He dearly loved his gentle wife,
As everyone could tell;
And watched his children as they grew,
Lest any ill befell;
And as he looked upon his boys
His bosom oft would swell;
For he reared them in the fear of God,
And ruled his household well:
Like a true old Scottish minister,
All of the olden time.
A father, too, he was to all
His congregation there:
To all he felt a father's love,
And showed a father's care:
He wisely counselled them with speech,
And pled for them in prayer;
And ever for the needy ones
He something had to spare:
Like a kind old Scottish minister,
All of the olden time.
The servant of the Lord he was,
In hovel and in hall, - 
The high ambassador of heaven
Whom earth could not enthrall;
Like Christ among the wedding guests,
Or by the funeral pall;
And he made his daily life sublime,
A pattern unto all:
Like a grand old Scottish minister,
All of the olden time.
For truth and righteousness and love
His voice was ever heard;
And minds were kindled into thought,
And consciences were stirred,
And weary, heavy-laden hearts
To faith and hope were spurred,
As from the pulpit he proclaimed
The everlasting Word:
Like a faithful Scottish minister,
All of the olden time.
And when, amid his elders grave,
Extended in a line
Beside the table of the Lord,
He kept the rite divine,
His face with a rapt, unearthly look
Was seen to strangely shine,
As he broke the white, symbolic bread,
And passed the sacred wine:
Like a saintly Scottish minister,
All of the olden time.
His lot was hard, his task severe;
He found the burden light:
When darkly o'er his pathway hung
The shadows of the night,
His heart was steadfast, for he walked
By faith, and not by sight;
And ran triumphantly his course,
And fought a goodly fight:
Like a brave old Scottish minister,
All of the olden time.
And when upon a summer's day
He laid him down to die,
He called his household to his side
Without a moan or sigh,
And blessed his children each in turn,
And said a fond good-bye,
And then consigned his soul to God,
And went to live on high:
Like a good old Scottish minister,
All of the olden time.
Feud.
by Madison Julius Cawein

A Mile of lane, hedged high with iron-weeds
And dying daisies, white with sun, that leads
Downward into a wood; through which a stream
Steals like a shadow; over which is laid
A bridge of logs, worn deep by many a team,
Sunk in the tangled shade.
Far off a wood-dove lifts its lonely cry;
And in the sleepy silver of the sky
A gray hawk wheels scarce larger than a hand.
From point to point the road grows worse and worse,
Until that place is reached where all the land
Seems burdened with some curse.
A ragged fence of pickets, warped and sprung,
On which the fragments of a gate are hung,
Divides a hill, the fox and ground-hog haunt,
A wilderness of briers; o'er whose tops
A battered barn is seen, low-roofed and gaunt,
'Mid fields that know no crops.
Fields over which a path, o'erwhelmed with burs
And ragweeds, noisy with the grasshoppers,
Leads, lost, irresolute as paths the cows
Wear through the woods, unto a woodshed; then,
With wrecks of windows, to a huddled house,
Where men have murdered men.
A house, whose tottering chimney, clay and rock,
Is seamed and crannied; whose lame door and lock
Are bullet-bored; around which, there and here,
Are sinister stains. One dreads to look around.
The place seems thinking of that time of fear
And dares not breathe a sound.
Within is emptiness: the sunlight falls
On faded journals papering its walls;
On advertisement chromos, torn with time,
Around a hearth where wasps and spiders build.
The house is dead; meseems that night of crime
It, too, was shot and killed.
The Mother's Return
by William Wordsworth

A month, sweet Little-ones, is past
Since your dear Mother went away,, 
And she tomorrow will return;
Tomorrow is the happy day.
O blessed tidings! thought of joy!
The eldest heard with steady glee;
Silent he stood; then laughed amain,, 
And shouted, " Mother, come to me!"
Louder and louder did he shout,
With witless hope to bring her near;
"Nay, patience! patience, little boy!
Your tender mother cannot hear."
I told of hills, and far-off town,
And long, long vale to travel through;, 
He listens, puzzled, sore perplexed,
But he submits; what can he do ?
No strife disturbs his sister's breast;
She wars not with the mystery
Of time and distance, night and day;
The bonds of our humanity.
Her joy is like an instinct, joy
Of kitten, bird, or summer fly;
She dances, runs without an aim,
She chatters in her ecstasy.
Her brother now takes up the note,
And echoes back his sister's glee;
They hug the infant in my arms,
As if to force his sympathy.
Then, settling into fond discourse,
We rested in the garden bower;
While sweetly shone the evening sun
In his departing hour.
We told o'er all that we had done,, 
Our rambles by the swift brook's side
Far as the willow-skirted pool,
Where two fair swans together glide.
We talked of change, of winter gone,
Of green leaves on the hawthorn spray,
Of birds that build their nests and sing
And all "since Mother went away!"
To her these tales they will repeat,
To her our new-born tribes will show,
The goslings green, the ass's colt,
The lambs that in the meadow go.
But, see, the evening star comes forth!
To bed the children must depart;
A moment's heaviness they feel,
A sadness at the heart;
'Tis gone, and in a merry fit
They run up stairs in gamesome race;
I, too, infected by their mood,
I could have joined the wanton chase.
Five minutes past, and, O the change!
Asleep upon their beds they lie;
Their buy limbs in perfect rest,
And closed the sparkling eye.
A Good Husband.
by Robert Herrick

A Master of a house, as I have read,
Must be the first man up, and last in bed.
With the sun rising he must walk his grounds;
See this, view that, and all the other bounds:
Shut every gate; mend every hedge that's torn,
Either with old, or plant therein new thorn;
Tread o'er his glebe, but with such care, that where
He sets his foot, he leaves rich compost there.
Lavender
by Paul Cameron Brown

A mind is a ray of light running to the sea;
an arch of wood upon which birds rest.
Minds roam the ocean's crest, sit as antlers upon a beach,
watch eddies of water trap themselves in the sand.
And minds are in anything but a state of rest - they violate
physics, make mockery of other bodies not in ready motion.
I have seen a mind enclosed above fresh air and sunshine,
frolicking on its own strength, the elasticity of its thought lassoing
all the stars assembled.
Golden points of light caught in this sand with an oval sun
marching blue legions across the sky bring more harmony than
all the stars assembled.
Admiral. Fakir. Harem. They are all here as is batik, geisha,
sarong, teak and gingham. I have seen them in quiet pools near
the atolls.
Rapture is a word to be eaten with persimmon and pears.
The closed wood. Copse and fragrant bush. White mare alone in
a green-studded pasture aback groves and groves of pleasant
trees. Bright insects making a curry of the forest floor with leaves
as trinkets bartered to the wind.
And the endless sky overturned like a bowl across the horizon.
Water and air, the two chief elements in a brisk compound with
earth and fire.
The land itself nursing a presence by the sea as a lizard might
devour a fly on a bough above a tree.
Then there are the granaries of this empire, the washed up logs
darting into footprints from the inlets. A white sand making its
presence felt like a tireless magician. Green strands of the
cucumber bush big with melon, a mother with expectant child
hushed and sitting by a clearing.
"The waters of the stream please me more than the sea,"
coconut groves with hand-me-down messages for the ages.
Strands among weeds, wine bottles as ferrymen ready for
circumnavigation around islands crisscrossing bucolic charts.
And everywhere reefs and coral and sugarbush fish darting
between the sieve of land breaking bread with sea; exchanging
colours from many coloured coats.
Kangaroo, koala, tepee, bayou hula, lei.
Sights which gallop against the senses, act as brigands to mature
reason. Faraway in the mountain fastness of the mind, alpine
meadows look out upon further marvels, exchange cocoa for
quinine, adjust the mind as a stirrup before a long, night ride.
The shaman with a hammock in his catamaran dolefully accepts
the waves as the skin must a tatoo.
The lovely collision of sound with twilight on fragrant sea-grape,
the hush of storm clouds preparing to administer their own
bromide of fire before the appearance of a band-aid patch of
lightning streaks against the divide.
Perhaps lavender is a language here, the juxtaposition of mind
with energy coming to a halt from a brisk canter, then proceeding
to nibble a currant from my hand.
Before Parting
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

A month or twain to live on honeycomb
Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time,
Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,
And that strong purple under juice and foam
Where the wine's heart has burst;
Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.
Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray
Even to change the bitterness of it,
The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet,
To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay
All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise
Over my face and eyes.
And yet who knows what end the scyth'd wheat
Makes of its foolish poppies' mouths of red?
These were not sown, these are not harvested,
They grow a month and are cast under feet
And none has care thereof,
As none has care of a divided love.
I know each shadow of your lips by rote,
Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows;
The fashion of fair temples tremulous
With tender blood, and colour of your throat;
I know not how love is gone out of this,
Seeing that all was his.
Love's likeness there endures upon all these:
But out of these one shall not gather love.
Day hath not strength nor the night shade enough
To make love whole and fill his lips with ease,
As some bee-builded cell
Feels at filled lips the heavy honey swell.
I know not how this last month leaves your hair
Less full of purple colour and hid spice,
And that luxurious trouble of closed eyes
Is mixed with meaner shadow and waste care;
And love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yet
Worth patience to regret.
The Bell(e) of Baltimore.
by Hattie Howard

[One of the notable features of Baltimore is the big bell that hangs in the city hall tower, to strike the hour and sound the fire alarm. It is called "Big Sam," and weighs 5,000 pounds]
A million feet above the ground
(For so it seemed in winding round),
A million, and two more,
The latter stiff and sore,
While perspiration formed a part
Of every reeking pore,
I viewed the city like a chart
Spread out upon the floor.
And said: "Great guide Jehoiakin,
To me is meagre pleasure in
The height of spires and domes,
Of walls like ancient Rome's;
Nor care I for the marts of trade,
Or shelves of musty tomes,
Nor yet for yonder colonnade
Before your palace homes;
"But curiosity is keen
To know the city's reigning queen,
Who suiteth well the score
Of suitors at her door;
Oh, which of your divinities
Is she whom all adore?
Embodiment of truth, who is
The belle of Baltimore?"
Veracity's revolving eyes
Looked up as if to read the skies:
"Why, Lor'-a-miss, see dar - 
De bell is in de air!
Lan' sakes! of all de missteries
Yo' nebber learn before!
Why, don' yo' know 'Big Sam'? He is
De bell of Baltimore!"
Visor'd
by Walt Whitman

A mask, a perpetual natural disguiser of herself,
Concealing her face, concealing her form,
Changes and transformations every hour, every moment,
Falling upon her even when she sleeps.
Okhouan
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

A mole shows black
Between her mouth and cheek.
As if a negro,
Coming into a garden,
Wavered between a purple rose
And a scarlet camomile.
From the Arabic.
The Millennium.
by Thomas Moore

SUGGESTED BY THE LATE WORK OF THE REVEREND MR. IRVING "ON PROPHECY."
1826
A millennium at hand!--I'm delighted to hear it--
As matters both public and private now go,
With multitudes round us all starving or near it.
A good, rich Millennium will come '-propos.
Only think, Master Fred, what delight to behold,
Instead of thy bankrupt old City of Rags,
A bran-new Jerusalem built all of gold,
Sound bullion throughout from the roof to the flags--
A City where wine and cheap corn[1] shall abound--
A celestial Cocaigne on whose buttery shelves
We may swear the best things of this world will be found,
As your Saints seldom fail to take care of themselves!
Thanks, reverend expounder of raptures Elysian,
Divine Squintifobus who, placed within reach
Of two opposite worlds, by a twist of your vision
Can cast at the same time a sly look at each;--
Thanks, thanks for the hope thou affordest, that we
May even in our own times a Jubilee share.
Which so long has been promist by prophets like thee,
And so often postponed, we began to despair.
There was Whiston[2] who learnedly took Prince Eugene
For the man who must bring the Millennium about;
There's Faber whose pious productions have been
All belied ere his book's first edition was out;--
There was Counsellor Dobbs, too, an Irish M. P.,
Who discoursed on the subject with signal eclat,
And, each day of his life sat expecting to see
A Millennium break out in the town of Armagh![3]
There was also--but why should I burden my lay
With your Brotherses, Southcotes, and names less deserving,
When all past Millenniums henceforth must give way
To the last new Millennium of Orator Irving.
Go on, mighty man,--doom them all to the shelf,--
And when next thou with Prophecy troublest thy sconce,
Oh forget not, I pray thee, to prove that thyself
Art the Beast (Chapter iv.) that sees nine ways at once.
Joe - An Etching
by Emily Pauline Johnson

A meadow brown; across the yonder edge
A zigzag fence is ambling; here a wedge
Of underbush has cleft its course in twain,
Till where beyond it staggers up again;
The long, grey rails stretch in a broken line
Their ragged length of rough, split forest pine,
And in their zigzag tottering have reeled
In drunken efforts to enclose the field,
Which carries on its breast, September born,
A patch of rustling, yellow, Indian corn.
Beyond its shrivelled tassels, perched upon
The topmost rail, sits Joe, the settler's son,
A little semi-savage boy of nine.
Now dozing in the warmth of Nature's wine,
His face the sun has tampered with, and wrought,
By heated kisses, mischief, and has brought
Some vagrant freckles, while from here and there
A few wild locks of vagabond brown hair
Escape the old straw hat the sun looks through,
And blinks to meet his Irish eyes of blue.
Barefooted, innocent of coat or vest,
His grey checked shirt unbuttoned at his chest,
Both hardy hands within their usual nest - 
His breeches pockets - so, he waits to rest
His little fingers, somewhat tired and worn,
That all day long were husking Indian corn.
His drowsy lids snap at some trivial sound,
With lazy yawns he slips towards the ground,
Then with an idle whistle lifts his load
And shambles home along the country road
That stretches on, fringed out with stumps and weeds,
And finally unto the backwoods leads,
Where forests wait with giant trunk and bough
The axe of pioneer, the settler's plough.
The Student
by Thomas William Hodgson Crosland

A minx of seventeen, with rather fine
Brown eyes and freckles and a cheerful grin,
She saunters up the ward, and stricken sin
Nods and looks pleasant (why should one repine?).
She takes "her cases," looks for every "sign,"
Hammers and sounds the portly and the thin,
Plies them with questions till their cheap heads spin
And keeps them busy saying "ninety-nine."
It's my turn now! Oh, let me bare my chest
And spread a level sheet across my crib,
And be as wax for our meticulous Miss;
While she, poor dear, doing her anxious best,
Feels for the apex under the wrong rib
And wonders fiercely where my liver is.
Translations. - Milton's Italian Poems. VI.
by George MacDonald

A modest youth, in love a simpleton,
When to escape myself I seek and shift,
Lady, I of my heart the humble gift
Vow unto thee. In trials many a one,
True, brave, I've found it, firm to things begun;
By gracious, prudent, worthy thoughts uplift.
When roars the great world, in the thunder-rift,
Its own self, armour adamant, it will don,
From chance and envy as securely barred,
From fears and hopes that still the crowd abuse,
As inward gifts and high worth coveting,
And the resounding lyre, and every Muse:
There only wilt thou find it not so hard
Where Love hath fixed his ever cureless sting.
The National Anthem
by William Schwenck Gilbert

A monarch is pestered with cares,
Though, no doubt, he can often trepan them;
But one comes in a shape he can never escape -
The implacable National Anthem!
Though for quiet and rest he may yearn,
It pursues him at every turn -
No chance of forsaking
Its ROCOCO numbers;
They haunt him when waking -
They poison his slumbers -
Like the Banbury Lady, whom every one knows,
He's cursed with its music wherever he goes!
Though its words but imperfectly rhyme,
And the devil himself couldn't scan them;
With composure polite he endures day and night
That illiterate National Anthem!
It serves a good purpose, I own:
Its strains are devout and impressive -
Its heart-stirring notes raise a lump in our throats
As we burn with devotion excessive:
But the King, who's been bored by that song
From his cradle - each day - all day long -
Who's heard it loud-shouted
By throats operatic,
And loyally spouted
By courtiers emphatic -
By soldier - by sailor - by drum and by fife -
Small blame if he thinks it the plague of his life!
While his subjects sing loudly and long,
Their King - who would willingly ban them -
Sits, worry disguising, anathematising
That Bogie, the National Anthem!
The Country Schoolmaster.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I.
A Master of a country school
Jump'd up one day from off his stool,
Inspired with firm resolve to try
To gain the best society;
So to the nearest baths he walk'd,
And into the saloon he stalk'd.
He felt quite. startled at the door,
Ne'er having seen the like before.
To the first stranger made he now
A very low and graceful bow,
But quite forgot to bear in mind
That people also stood behind;
His left-hand neighbor's paunch he struck
A grievous blow, by great ill luck;
Pardon for this he first entreated,
And then in haste his bow repeated.
His right hand neighbor next he hit,
And begg'd him, too, to pardon it;
But on his granting his petition,
Another was in like condition;
These compliments he paid to all,
Behind, before, across the hall;
At length one who could stand no more,
Show'd him impatiently the door.
*     *     *     *
May many, pond'ring on their crimes,
A moral draw from this betimes!
II.
As he proceeded on his way
He thought, "I was too weak to-day;
To bow I'll ne'er again be seen;
For goats will swallow what is green."
Across the fields he now must speed,
Not over stumps and stones, indeed,
But over meads and cornfields sweet,
Trampling down all with clumsy feet.
A farmer met him by-and-by,
And didn't ask him: how? or why?
But with his fist saluted him.
"I feel new life in every limb!"
Our traveller cried in ecstasy.
"Who art thou who thus gladden'st me?
May Heaven such blessings ever send!
Ne'er may I want a jovial friend!"