DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Singer
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

The singer only sang the Joy of Life,
For all too well, alas! the singer knew
How hard the daily toil, how keen the strife,
How salt the falling tear; the joys how few.
He who thinks hard soon finds it hard to live,
Learning the Secret Bitterness of Things:
So, leaving thought, the singer strove to give
A level lightness to his lyric strings.
He only sang of Love; its joy and pain,
But each man in his early season loves;
Each finds the old, lost Paradise again,
Unfolding leaves, and roses, nesting doves.
And though that sunlit time flies all too fleetly,
Delightful Days that dance away too soon!
Its early morning freshness lingers sweetly
Throughout life's grey and tedious afternoon.
And he, whose dreams enshrine her tender eyes,
And she, whose senses wait his waking hand,
Impatient youth, that tired but sleepless lies,
Will read perhaps, and reading, understand.
Oh, roseate lips he would have loved to kiss,
Oh, eager lovers that he never knew!
What should you know of him, or words of his? - 
But all the songs he sang were sung for you!
The Pitcher
by Jean de La Fontaine

THE simple Jane was sent to bring
Fresh water from the neighb'ring spring;
The matter pressed, no time to waste,
Jane took her jug, and ran in haste
The well to reach, but in her flurry
(The more the speed the worse the hurry),
Tripped on a rolling stone, and broke
Her precious pitcher, - ah! no joke!
Nay, grave mishap! 'twere better far
To break her neck than such a jar!
Her dame would beat and soundly rate her,
No way could Jane propitiate her.
Without a sou new jug to buy!
'Twere better far for her to die!
O'erwhelmed by grief and cruel fears
Unhappy Jane burst into tears
"I can't go home without the delf,"
Sobbed Jane, "I'd rather kill myself;
"So here am I resolved to die."
A friendly neighbour passing by
O'erheard our damsel's lamentation;
And kindly offered consolation:
"If death, sweet maiden, be thy bent,
"I'll aid thee in thy sad intent."
Throwing her down, he drew his dirk,
And plunged it in the maid, - a work
You'll say was cruel, - not so Jane,
Who even seemed to like the pain,
And hoped to be thus stabbed again.
Amid the weary world's alarms,
For some e'en death will have its charms;
"If this, my friend, is how you kill,
"Of breaking jugs I'll have my fill!"
The Parting Of Ways
by George William Russell

The skies from black to pearly grey
Had veered without a star or sun;
Only a burning opal ray
Fell on your brow when all was done.
Aye, after victory, the crown;
Yet through the fight no word of cheer;
And what would win and what go down
No word could help, no light make clear.
A thousand ages onward led
Their joys and sorrows to that hour;
No wisdom weighed, no word was said,
For only what we were had power.
There was no tender leaning there
Of brow to brow in loving mood;
For we were rapt apart, and were
In elemental solitude.
We knew not in redeeming day
Whether our spirits would be found
Floating along the starry way,
Or in the earthly vapours drowned.
Brought by the sunrise-coloured flame
To earth, uncertain yet, the while
I looked at you, there slowly came,
Noble and sisterly, your smile.
We bade adieu to love the old;
We heard another lover then,
Whose forms are myriad and untold,
Sigh to us from the hearts of men.
Preening
by Paul Cameron Brown

The sky is red and comes
from Montreal - 
you lied to me
the hemlock of the wind
is not this January's
but is ringed with
steel laughter of
another winter.
I saw you wringing sweat
from the eyes of the road,
lie down take the season's
wetness in your mouth,
push apart moist dampness
'til one cavity was
felled and another opened.
The Beacon.
by Robert von Ranke Graves

The silent shepherdess,
She of my vows,
Here with me exchanging love
Under dim boughs.
Shines on our mysteries
A sudden spark, 
"Dout the candle, glow-worm,
Let all be dark.
"The birds have sung their last notes,
The Sun's to bed,
Glow-worm, dout your candle."
The glow-worm said:
"I also am a lover;
The lamp I display
Is beacon for my true love
Wandering astray.
"Through the thick bushes
And the grass comes she
With a heartload of longing
And love for me.
"Sir, enjoy your fancy,
But spare me harm,
A lover is a lover,
Though but a worm."
Secrets.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

The skies can't keep their secret!
They tell it to the hills --
The hills just tell the orchards --
And they the daffodils!
A bird, by chance, that goes that way
Soft overheard the whole.
If I should bribe the little bird,
Who knows but she would tell?
I think I won't, however,
It's finer not to know;
If summer were an axiom,
What sorcery had snow?
So keep your secret, Father!
I would not, if I could,
Know what the sapphire fellows do,
In your new-fashioned world!
Mary Ruane
by James Stephens

The sky-like girl whom we knew!
She dressed herself to go to the fair
In a dress of white and blue;
A white lace cap, and ribbons white
She wore in her hair;
She does not hear in the night
Her mother crying for her,
Where,
Deep down in the sea,
She rolls and lingers to and fro
Unweariedly.
The Prairie.
by John Milton Hay

The skies are blue above my head,
The prairie green below,
And flickering o'er the tufted grass
The shifting shadows go,
Vague-sailing, where the feathery clouds
Fleck white the tranquil skies,
Black javelins darting where aloft
The whirring pheasant flies.
A glimmering plain in drowsy trance
The dim horizon bounds,
Where all the air is resonant
With sleepy summer sounds, -
The life that sings among the flowers,
The lisping of the breeze,
The hot cicala's sultry cry,
The murmurous dream of bees.
The butterfly - a flying flower -
Wheels swift in flashing rings,
And flutters round his quiet kin,
With brave flame-mottled wings.
The wild Pinks burst in crimson fire
The Phlox' bright clusters shine,
And Prairie-Cups are swinging free
To spill their airy wine.
And lavishly beneath the sun,
In liberal splendour rolled,
The Fennel fills the dipping plain
With floods of flowery gold;
And widely weaves the Iron-Weed
A woof of purple dyes
Where Autumn's royal feet may tread
When bankrupt Summer flies.
In verdurous tumult far away
The prairie-billows gleam,
Upon their crests in blessing rests
The noontide's gracious beam.
Low quivering vapours steaming dim
The level splendours break
Where languid Lilies deck the rim
Of some land-circled lake.
Far in the east like low-hung clouds
The waving woodlands lie;
Far in the west the glowing plain
Melts warmly in the sky.
No accent wounds the reverent air,
No footprint dints the sod,
Lone in the light the prairie lies
Rapt in a dream of God.
ILLINOIS, 1858.
Alfred Tennyson
by Henry Kendall

The silvery dimness of a happy dream
I've known of late. Methought where Byron moans,
Like some wild gulf in melancholy zones,
I passed tear-blinded. Once a lurid gleam
Of stormy sunset loitered on the sea,
While, travelling troubled like a straitened stream,
The voice of Shelley died away from me.
Still sore at heart, I reached a lake-lit lea.
And then the green-mossed glades with many a grove,
Where lies the calm which Wordsworth used to love,
And, lastly, Locksley Hall, from whence did rise
A haunting song that blew and breathed and blew
With rare delights. 'Twas there I woke and knew
The sumptuous comfort left in drowsy eyes.
A May Morning
by William Henry Davies

The sky is clear,
The sun is bright;
The cows are red,
The sheep are white;
Trees in the meadows
Make happy shadows.
Birds in the hedge
Are perched and sing;
Swallows and larks
Are on the wing:
Two merry cuckoos
Are making echoes.
Bird and the beast
Have the dew yet;
My road shines dry,
Theirs bright and wet:
Death gives no warning,
On this May morning.
I see no Christ
Nailed on a tree,
Dying for sin;
No sin I see:
No thoughts for sadness,
All thoughts for gladness.
Comparison
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The sky of brightest gray seems dark
To one whose sky was ever white.
To one who never knew a spark,
Thro' all his life, of love or light,
The grayest cloud seems over-bright.
The robin sounds a beggar's note
Where one the nightingale has heard,
But he for whom no silver throat
Its liquid music ever stirred,
Deems robin still the sweetest bird.
The Skies Are Strown With Stars
by William Ernest Henley

The skies are strown with stars,
The streets are fresh with dew
A thin moon drifts to westward,
The night is hushed and cheerful.
My thought is quick with you.
Near windows gleam and laugh,
And far away a train
Clanks glowing through the stillness:
A great content's in all things,
And life is not in vain.
1877
Middle-age
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

The sins of Youth are hardly sins,
So frank they are and free.
'T is but when Middle-age begins
We need morality.
Ah, pause and weigh this bitter truth:
That Middle-age, grown cold,
No comprehension has of Youth,
No pity for the Old.
Youth, with his half-divine mistakes,
She never can forgive,
So much she hates his charm which makes
Worth while the life we live.
She scorns Old Age, whose tolerance
And calm, well-balanced mind
(Knowing how crime is born of chance)
Can pardon all mankind.
Yet she, alas! has all the power
Of strength and place and gold,
Man's every act, through every hour,
Is by her laws controlled.
All things she grasps with sordid hands
And weighs in tarnished scales.
She neither feels, nor understands,
And yet her will prevails!
Cold-blooded vice and careful sin,
Gold-lust, blind selfishness, - 
The shortest, cheapest way to win
Some, worse than cheap, success.
Such are her attributes and aims,
Yet meekly we obey,
While she to guide and order claims
All issues of the day.
You seek for honour, friendship, truth?
Let Middle-age be banned!
Go, for warm-hearted acts, to Youth;
To Age, - to understand!
Fate
by Bret Harte (Francis)

'The sky is clouded, the rocks are bare,
The spray of the tempest is white in air;
The winds are out with the waves at play,
And I shall not tempt the sea to-day.
'The trail is narrow, the wood is dim,
The panther clings to the arching limb;
And the lion's whelps are abroad at play,
And I shall not join in the chase to-day.'
But the ship sailed safely over the sea,
And the hunters came from the chase in glee;
And the town that was builded upon a rock
Was swallowed up in the earthquake shock.
The Wood-Cutter
by Robert William Service

The sky is like an envelope,
One of those blue official things;
And, sealing it, to mock our hope,
The moon, a silver wafer, clings.
What shall we find when death gives leave
To read - our sentence or reprieve?
I'm holding it down on God's scrap-pile, up on the fag-end of earth;
O'er me a menace of mountains, a river that grits at my feet;
Face to face with my soul-self, weighing my life at its worth;
Wondering what I was made for, here in my last retreat.
Last! Ah, yes, it's the finish. Have ever you heard a man cry?
(Sobs that rake him and rend him, right from the base of the chest.)
That's how I've cried, oh, so often; and now that my tears are dry,
I sit in the desolate quiet and wait for the infinite Rest.
Rest! Well, it's restful around me; it's quiet clean to the core.
The mountains pose in their ermine, in golden the hills are clad;
The big, blue, silt-freighted Yukon seethes by my cabin door,
And I think it's only the river that keeps me from going mad.
By day it's a ruthless monster, a callous, insatiate thing,
With oily bubble and eddy, with sudden swirling of breast;
By night it's a writhing Titan, sullenly murmuring,
Ever and ever goaded, and ever crying for rest.
It cries for its human tribute, but me it will never drown.
I've learned the lore of my river; my river obeys me well.
I hew and I launch my cordwood, and raft it to Dawson town,
Where wood means wine and women, and, incidentally, hell.
Hell and the anguish thereafter. Here as I sit alone
I'd give the life I have left me to lighten some load of care:
(The bitterest part of the bitter is being denied to atone;
Lips that have mocked at Heaven lend themselves ill to prayer.)
Impotent as a beetle pierced on the needle of Fate;
A wretch in a cosmic death-cell, peaks for my prison bars;
'Whelmed by a world stupendous, lonely and listless I wait,
Drowned in a sea of silence, strewn with confetti of stars.
See! from far up the valley a rapier pierces the night,
The white search-ray of a steamer. Swiftly, serenely it nears;
A proud, white, alien presence, a glittering galley of light,
Confident-poised, triumphant, freighted with hopes and fears.
I look as one looks on a vision; I see it pulsating by;
I glimpse joy-radiant faces; I hear the thresh of the wheel.
Hoof-like my heart beats a moment; then silence swoops from the sky.
Darkness is piled upon darkness. God only knows how I feel.
Maybe you've seen me sometimes; maybe you've pitied me then - 
The lonely waif of the wood-camp, here by my cabin door.
Some day you'll look and see not; futile and outcast of men,
I shall be far from your pity, resting forevermore.
My life was a problem in ciphers, a weary and profitless sum.
Slipshod and stupid I worked it, dazed by negation and doubt.
Ciphers the total confronts me. Oh, Death, with thy moistened thumb,
Stoop like a petulant schoolboy, wipe me forever out!
Ite Domum Satur', venit Hesperus
by Arthur Hugh Clough

The skies have sunk, and hid the upper snow
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie),
The rainy clouds are filing fast below,
And wet will be the path, and wet shall we.
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.
Ah dear, and where is he, a year agone,
Who stepped beside and cheered us on and on?
My sweetheart wanders far away from me,
In foreign land or on a foreign sea.
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.
The lightning zigzags shoot across the sky
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie),
And through the vale the rains go sweeping by;
Ah me, and when in shelter shall we be?
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.
Cold, dreary cold, the stormy winds feel they
O'er foreign lands and foreign seas that stray
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie).
And doth he e'er, I wonder, bring to mind
The pleasant huts and herds he left behind?
And doth he sometimes in his slumbering see
The feeding kine, and doth he think of me,
My sweetheart wandering wheresoe'er it be?
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.
The thunder bellows far from snow to snow
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie),
And loud and louder roars the flood below.
Heigho! but soon in shelter shall we be:
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.
Or shall he find before his term be sped,
Some comelier maid that he shall wish to wed?
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.)
For weary is work, and weary day by day
To have your comfort miles on miles away.
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.
Or may it be that I shall find my mate,
And he returning see himself too late?
For work we must, and what we see, we see,
And God he knows, and what must be, must be,
When sweethearts wander far away from me.
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.
The sky behind is brightening up anew
(Home; Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie),
The rain is ending, and our journey too;
Heigho! aha! for here at home are we:'
In, Rose, and in, Provence and La Palie.
A Night-Piece
by William Wordsworth

The sky is overcast
With a continuous cloud of texture close,
Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon,
Which through that veil is indistinctly seen,
A dull, contracted circle, yielding light
So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls,
Chequering the ground from rock, plant, tree, or tower.
At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye
Bent earthwards; he looks up the clouds are split
Asunder, and above his head he sees
The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black-blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives: how fast they wheel away,
Yet vanish not! the wind is in the tree,
But they are silent; still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; and the vault,
Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds,
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.
At length the Vision closes; and the mind,
Not undisturbed by the delight it feels,
Which slowly settles into peaceful calm,
Is left to muse upon the solemn scene.
Mary
by John Clare

The skylark mounts up with the morn,
The valleys are green with the Spring,
The linnets sit in the whitethorn,
To build mossy dwellings and sing;
I see the thornbush getting green,
I see the woods dance in the Spring,
But Mary can never be seen,
Though the all-cheering Spring doth begin.
I see the grey bark of the oak
Look bright through the underwood now;
To the plough plodding horses they yoke,
But Mary is not with her cow.
The birds almost whistle her name:
Say, where can my Mary be gone?
The Spring brightly shines, and 'tis shame
That she should be absent alone.
The cowslips are out on the grass,
Increasing like crowds at a fair;
The river runs smoothly as glass,
And the barges float heavily there;
The milkmaid she sings to her cow,
But Mary is not to be seen;
Can Nature such absence allow
At milking on pasture and green?
When Sabbath-day comes to the green,
The maidens are there in their best,
But Mary is not to be seen,
Though I walk till the sun's in the west.
I fancy still each wood and plain,
Where I and my Mary have strayed,
When I was a young country swain,
And she was the happiest maid.
But woods they are all lonely now,
And the wild flowers blow all unseen;
The birds sing alone on the bough,
Where Mary and I once have been.
But for months she now keeps away.
And I am a sad lonely hind;
Trees tell me so day after day,
As slowly they wave in the wind.
Birds tell me, while swaying the bough,
That I am all threadbare and old;
The very sun looks on me now
As one dead, forgotten, and cold.
Once I'd a place where I could rest.
And love, for then I was free;
That place was my Mary's dear breast
And hope was still left unto me.
The Spring comes brighter day by day,
And brighter flowers appear,
And though she long has kept away
Her name is ever dear.
Then leave me still the meadow flowers,
Where daffies blaze and shine;
Give but the Spring's young hawthorn bower,
For then sweet Mary's mine.
Poem: The New Remorse
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

The sin was mine; I did not understand.
So now is music prisoned in her cave,
Save where some ebbing desultory wave
Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand.
And in the withered hollow of this land
Hath Summer dug herself so deep a grave,
That hardly can the leaden willow crave
One silver blossom from keen Winter's hand.
But who is this who cometh by the shore?
(Nay, love, look up and wonder!) Who is this
Who cometh in dyed garments from the South?
It is thy new-found Lord, and he shall kiss
The yet unravished roses of thy mouth,
And I shall weep and worship, as before.
The Siren
by Oliver Herford

The Siren may be said to be
The Chorus-Lady of the Sea;
Tho' Mermaids claim her as their kin,
Instead of fishy tail and fin
Two shapely feet rejoice the view
(With all that appertains thereto).
When to these other charms we add
A voice that drives the hearer mad,
Who will dispute her claim to be
The Chorus-Lady of the Sea?
To Miss Mitford: Authoress Of 'Our Village'
by Charles Kingsley

The single eye, the daughter of the light;
Well pleased to recognise in lowliest shade
Some glimmer of its parent beam, and made
By daily draughts of brightness, inly bright.
The taste severe, yet graceful, trained aright
In classic depth and clearness, and repaid
By thanks and honour from the wise and staid - 
By pleasant skill to blame, and yet delight,
And high communion with the eloquent throng
Of those who purified our speech and song - 
All these are yours.    The same examples lure,
You in each woodland, me on breezy moor - 
With kindred aim the same sweet path along,
To knit in loving knowledge rich and poor.
Eversley, 1853.
The Tempest Stilled.
by Thomas Frederick Young

The sky was dark with threat'ning clouds,
And fiercely on the raging sea,
The roaring tempest wilder swept,
And fiercer rag'd old Galilee.
Deep, dark and wild the waters roll'd,
And fast across the lurid sky
The black clouds pass'd, as if to hide
The lights of heav'n from human eye.
A little boat, from crest to crest
Was lash'd about, and wildly thrown,
While down below lay timid souls,
Too faint to shriek, too weak to groan.
While thunders roll'd, and lightning flash'd,
And fiercer onward rush'd the waves,
Deep down below these mortals look'd
With freighted mind, to wat'ry graves.
The helmsman held the rudder still,
But unavailing his control;
The blasts grew wild, and wilder yet,
And louder grew the thunder's roll.
His hand grew faint, his heart grew sick,
As still he saw the lightning's glare,
And heard the thunders toll his doom,
And voices shriek it in the air.
Air, water, heavens, all combin'd,
Seem'd on the ship their wrath to pour,
Combin'd to sink it in the tide,
And keep it ever from the shore.
One hope was left, and only one;
The Master on a pillow slept,
And to him these affrighted ones,
So weak of faith, in silence crept.
With gentle touch they wake the Lord,
And half in hope, and half in fear,
They cry, "save us, or we're lost.
O Master, Lord, wilt thou not hear?"
With gentle mien the Master rose,
And to his mild, but mighty will,
The thunders, winds and billows bow'd,
And answer'd yes, his "peace be still."
"O, fearful ones, why do you fear?"
Then said the mighty Lord of all;
"Why trust ye not, ye faithless ones,
And call in faith, whene'er ye call?"
Thus, on the raging sea of life,
While billows wild around us swell,
Let faith in Christ our fears disperse,
Let trust in Him our sorrows quell.
When bitter anguish fills our breast,
And weak and trembling grows our hand,
Give Christ the rudder of our ship,
And he will bring us safe to land.
For wind, and sea, and thunder's roll,
His great command at once obey,
And those who trust Him, He will lead
Through storm and gloom, to perfect day.
Remembrance
by Walter De La Mare

The sky was like a waterdrop
In shadow of a thorn,
Clear, tranquil, beautiful,
Dark, forlorn.
Lightning along its margin ran;
A rumour of the sea
Rose in profundity and sank
Into infinity.
Lofty and few the elms, the stars
In the vast boughs most bright;
I stood a dreamer in a dream
In the unstirring night.
Not wonder, worship, not even peace
Seemed in my heart to be:
Only the memory of one,
Of all most dead to me.
Beclouded.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
A travelling flake of snow
Across a barn or through a rut
Debates if it will go.
A narrow wind complains all day
How some one treated him;
Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
Without her diadem.