DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Family Fool.
by William Schwenck Gilbert

Oh! a private buffoon is a light-hearted loon,
If you listen to popular rumor;
From morning to night he's so joyous and bright,
And he bubbles with wit and good-humor!
He's so quaint and so terse, both in prose and in verse;
Yet though people forgive his transgression,
There are one or two rules that all Family Fools
Must observe, if they love their profession.
There are one or two rules
Half a dozen, maybe,
That all family fools,
Of whatever degree,
Must observe, if they love their profession.
If you wish to succeed as a jester, you'll need
To consider each person auricular:
What is all right for B would quite scandalize C
(For C is so very particular);
And D may be dull, and E's very thick skull
Is as empty of brains as a ladle;
While F is F sharp, and will cry with a carp,
That he's known your best joke from his cradle!
When your humor they flout,
You can't let yourself go;
And it does put you out
When a person says, "Oh!
I have known that old joke from my cradle!"
If your master is surly, from getting up early
(And tempers are short in the morning),
An inopportune joke is enough to provoke
Him to give you, at once, a month's warning
Then if you refrain, he is at you again,
For he likes to get value for money.
He'll ask then and there, with an insolent stare,
If you know that you're paid to be funny?"
It adds to the task
Of a merryman's place,
When your principal asks,
With a scowl on his face,
If you know that you're paid to be funny?"
Comes a Bishop, maybe, or a solemn D.D. 
Oh, beware of his anger provoking!
Better not pull his hair don't stick pins in his chair;
He don't understand practical joking.
If the jests that you crack have an orthodox smack,
You may get a bland smile from these sages;
But should it, by chance, be imported from France,
Half-a-crown is stopped out of your wages!
It's a general rule,
Though your zeal it may quench,
If the Family Fool
Makes a joke that's too French,
Half-a-crown is stopped out of his wages!
Though your head it may rack with a bilious attack,
And your senses with toothache you're losing,
Don't be mopy and flat they don't fine you for that,
If you're properly quaint and amusing!
Though your wife ran away with a soldier that day,
And took with her your trifle of money;
Bless your heart, they don't mind they're exceedingly kind 
They don't blame you as long as you're funny!
It's a comfort to feel
If your partner should flit,
Though you suffer a deal,
They don't mind it a bit 
They don't blame you so long as you're funny!
Song.
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Oh what comes over the sea,
Shoals and quicksands past;
And what comes home to me,
Sailing slow, sailing fast?
A wind comes over the sea
With a moan in its blast;
But nothing comes home to me,
Sailing slow, sailing fast.
Let me be, let me be,
For my lot is cast:
Land or sea all's one to me,
And sail it slow or fast.
To A Golden Heart That He Wore Round His Neck.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Oh thou token loved of joys now perish'd
That I still wear from my neck suspended,
Art thou stronger than our spirit-bond so cherish'd?
Or canst thou prolong love's days untimely ended?
Lily, I fly from thee! I still am doom'd to range
Thro' countries strange,
Thro' distant vales and woods, link'd on to thee!
Ah, Lily's heart could surely never fall
So soon away from me!
As when a bird bath broken from his thrall,
And seeks the forest green,
Proof of imprisonment he bears behind him,
A morsel of the thread once used to bind him;
The free-born bird of old no more is seen,
For he another's prey bath been.
A Night At Dago Tom's
by John Masefield

Oh yesterday, I t'ink it was, while cruisin' down the street,
I met with Bill. "Hullo," he says, "let's give the girls a treat."
We'd red bandanas round our necks 'n' our shrouds new rattled down,
So we filled a couple of Santy Cruz and cleared for Sailor Town.
We scooted south with a press of sail till we fetched to a caboose,
The "Sailor's Rest," by Dago Tom, alongside "Paddy's Goose."
Red curtains to the windies, ay, 'n' white sand to the floor,
And an old blind fiddler liltin' the tune of "Lowlands No More."
He played the "Shaking of the Sheets" 'n' the couples did advance,
Bowing, stamping, curtsying, in the shuffling of the dance;
The old floor rocked and quivered, so it struck beholders dumb,
'N' afterwards there was sweet songs 'n' good Jamaikey rum.
'N' there was many a merry yarn of many a merry spree
Aboard the ships with royals set a-sailing on the sea,
Yarns of the hooker Spindrift, her as had the clipper-bow,
"There ain't no ships," says Bill to me, "like that there hooker now."
When the old blind fiddler played the tune of "Pipe the Watch Below,"
The skew-eyed landlord dowsed the glim and bade us "stamp 'n' go,"
'N' we linked it home, did Bill 'n' I, adown the scattered streets,
Until we fetched to Land o' Nod atween the linen sheets.
Rival Topics.[1] An Extravaganza.
by Thomas Moore

Oh Wellington and Stephenson,
Oh morn and evening papers,
Times, Herald, Courier, Globe, and Sun,
When will ye cease our ears to stun
With these two heroes' capers?
Still "Stephenson" and "Wellington,"
The everlasting two!--
Still doomed, from rise to set of sun,
To hear what mischief one has done,
And t'other means to do:--
What bills the banker past to friends,
But never meant to pay;
What Bills the other wight intends,
As honest, in their way;--
Bills, payable at distant sight,
Beyond the Grecian kalends,
When all good deeds will come to light,
When Wellington will do what's right,
And Rowland pay his balance.
To catch the banker all have sought,
But still the rogue unhurt is;
While t'other juggler--who'd have thought?
Tho' slippery long, has just been caught
By old Archbishop Curtis;--
And, such the power of papal crook,
The crosier scarce had quivered
About his ears, when, lo! the Duke
Was of a Bull delivered!
Sir Richard Birnie doth decide
That Rowland "must be mad,"
In private coach, with crest, to ride,
When chaises could be had.
And t'other hero, all agree,
St. Luke's will soon arrive at,
If thus he shows off publicly,
When he might pass in private.
Oh Wellington, oh Stephenson,
Ye ever-boring pair,
Where'er I sit, or stand, or run,
Ye haunt me everywhere.
Tho' Job had patience tough enough,
Such duplicates would try it;
Till one's turned out and t'other off,
We Shan' have peace or quiet.
But small's the chance that Law affords--
Such folks are daily let off;
And, 'twixt the old Bailey and the Lords,
They both, I fear, will get off.
The Modern Mother
by Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell

Oh what a kiss
With filial passion overcharged is this!
To this misgiving breast
The child runs, as a child ne'er ran to rest
Upon the light heart and the unoppressed.
Unhoped, unsought!
A little tenderness, this mother thought
The utmost of her meed
She looked for gratitude; content indeed
With thus much that her nine years' love had bought.
Nay, even with less.
This mother, giver of life, death, peace, distress,
Desired ah! not so much
Thanks as forgiveness; and the passing touch
Expected, and the slight, the brief caress.
Oh filial light
Strong in these childish eyes, these new, these bright
Intelligible stars! Their rays
Are near the constant earth, guides in the maze,
Natural, true, keen in this dusk of days.
The Larger Hope
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life will be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another gain.
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last, far off, at last to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream; but who am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language, but a cry.
Valentine's Day
by Charles Kingsley

Oh!    I wish I were a tiny browny bird from out the south,
Settled among the alder-holts, and twittering by the stream;
I would put my tiny tail down, and put up my tiny mouth,
And sing my tiny life away in one melodious dream.
I would sing about the blossoms, and the sunshine and the sky,
And the tiny wife I mean to have in such a cosy nest;
And if some one came and shot me dead, why then I could but die,
With my tiny life and tiny song just ended at their best.
Eversley, 1873
Mother Country
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

(Macmillan's Magazine, March 1868.)
Oh what is that country
And where can it be,
Not mine own country,
But dearer far to me?
Yet mine own country,
If I one day may see
Its spices and cedars,
Its gold and ivory.
As I lie dreaming
It rises, that land:
There rises before me
Its green golden strand,
With its bowing cedars
And its shining sand;
It sparkles and flashes
Like a shaken brand.
Do angels lean nearer
While I lie and long?
I see their soft plumage
And catch their windy song,
Like the rise of a high tide
Sweeping full and strong;
I mark the outskirts
Of their reverend throng.
Oh what is a king here,
Or what is a boor?
Here all starve together,
All dwarfed and poor;
Here Death's hand knocketh
At door after door,
He thins the dancers
From the festal floor.
Oh what is a handmaid,
Or what is a queen?
All must lie down together
Where the turf is green,
The foulest face hidden,
The fairest not seen;
Gone as if never,
They had breathed or been.
Gone from sweet sunshine
Underneath the sod,
Turned from warm flesh and blood
To senseless clod,
Gone as if never
They had toiled or trod,
Gone out of sight of all
Except our God.
Shut into silence
From the accustomed song,
Shut into solitude
From all earth's throng,
Run down tho' swift of foot,
Thrust down tho' strong;
Life made an end of
Seemed it short or long.
Life made an end of,
Life but just begun,
Life finished yesterday,
Its last sand run;
Life new-born with the morrow,
Fresh as the sun:
While done is done for ever;
Undone, undone.
And if that life is life,
This is but a breath,
The passage of a dream
And the shadow of death;
But a vain shadow
If one considereth;
Vanity of vanities,
As the Preacher saith.
Odes Of Anacreon - Ode XXXIV.
by Thomas Moore

[1]
Oh thou, of all creation blest,
Sweet insect, that delight'st to rest
Upon the wild wood's leafy tops,
To drink the dew that morning drops,
And chirp thy song with such a glee,
That happiest kings may envy thee.
Whatever decks the velvet field,
Whate'er the circling seasons yield,
Whatever buds, whatever blows,
For thee it buds, for thee it grows.
Nor yet art thou the peasant's fear,
To him thy friendly notes are dear;
For thou art mild as matin dew;
And still, when summer's flowery hue
Begins to paint the bloomy plain,
We hear thy sweet prophetic strain;
Thy sweet prophetic strain we hear,
And bless the notes and thee revere!
The Muses love thy shrilly tone;
Apollo calls thee all his own;
'Twas he who gave that voice to thee,
'Tis he who tunes thy minstrelsy.
Unworn by age's dim decline,
The fadeless blooms of youth are thine.
Melodious insect, child of earth,
In wisdom mirthful, wise in mirth;
Exempt from every weak decay,
That withers vulgar frames away;
With not a drop of blood to stain,
The current of thy purer vein;
So blest an age is past by thee,
Thou seem'st--a little deity!
Sonnet To Charity.
by Thomas Gent

Oh! best belov'd of heaven, on earth bestow'd
To raise the pilgrim, sunk with ghastly fears,
To cool his burning wounds, to wipe his tears,
And strew with amaranths his thorny road.
Alas! how long has superstition hurl'd
Thine altars down, thine attributes revil'd,
The hearts of men with witchcrafts foul beguil'd,
And spread his empire o'er the vassal world?
But truth returns! she spreads resistless day;
And mark, the monster's cloud-wrapt fabric falls--
He shrinks--he trembles 'mid his inmost halls,
And all his damn'd illusions melt away!
The charm dissolv'd--immortal, fair, and free,
Thy holy fanes shall rise, celestial Charity!
Sonnet.
by Frances Anne Kemble (Fanny)

Oh weary, weary world! how full thou art
Of sin, of sorrow, and all evil things!
In thy fierce turmoil, where shall the sad heart,
Released from pain, fold its unrested wings?
Peace hath no dwelling here, but evermore
Loud discord, strife, and envy, fill the earth
With fearful riot, whilst unhallowed mirth
Shrieks frantic laughter forth, leading along,
Whirling in dizzy trance the eager throng,
Who bear aloft the overflowing cup,
With tears, forbidden joys, and blood filled up,
Quaffing long draughts of death; in lawless might,
Drunk with soft harmonies, and dazzling light,
So rush they down to the eternal night.
Requiescat.
by Edwin C. Ranck

(Mrs. Jefferson Davis, widow of the President of the Southern Confederacy died October 16, 1906.)
Oh weep fair South, and bow thy head
For one is gone beyond recall!
Cast flowers on the sainted dead
Who sleeps beneath a funeral pall.
To the sound of muffled drum,
To the sound of muffled drum.
She saw a noble husband's fame
Grow more enduring with the years,
And in the land his honored name
Loom brighter through a mist of tears,
But the sound of muffled drum!
O the sound of muffled drum!
Our fate is but to meet and part
Upon Life's dark and troubled sea,
Yet recollection stirs the heart,
Of men in gray who used to be,
But the sound of muffled drum!
O the sound of muffled drum!
Brave South, 'tis but a moment's pause
E'er on that dim and distant shore,
The heroes of thy Fallen Cause
Will meet again to part no more
To the sound of muffled drum.
To the sound of muffled drum.
Solitude.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Oh ye kindly nymphs, who dwell 'mongst the rocks and the thickets,
Grant unto each whatsoe'er he may in silence desire!
Comfort impart to the mourner, and give to the doubter instruction,
And let the lover rejoice, finding the bliss that he craves.
For from the gods ye received what they ever denied unto mortals,
Power to comfort and aid all who in you may confide.
Tefkir Name. - Firdusi (Speaks).
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Oh world, with what baseness and guilt thou art rife!
Thou nurtures, trainest, and illest the while.
He only whom Allah doth bless with his smile
Is train'd and is nurtured with riches and life.
The Poor Ghost
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

'Oh whence do you come, my dear friend, to me,
With your golden hair all fallen below your knee,
And your face as white as snowdrops on the lea,
And your voice as hollow as the hollow sea?'
'From the other world I come back to you,
My locks are uncurled with dripping drenching dew.
You know the old, whilst I know the new:
But to-morrow you shall know this too.'
'Oh not to-morrow into the dark, I pray;
Oh not to-morrow, too soon to go away:
Here I feel warm and well-content and gay:
Give me another year, another day.'
'Am I so changed in a day and a night
That mine own only love shrinks from me with fright,
Is fain to turn away to left or right
And cover up his eyes from the sight?'
'Indeed I loved you, my chosen friend,
I loved you for life, but life has an end;
Through sickness I was ready to tend:
But death mars all, which we cannot mend.
'Indeed I loved you; I love you yet,
If you will stay where your bed is set,
Where I have planted a violet,
Which the wind waves, which the dew makes wet.'
'Life is gone, then love too is gone,
It was a reed that I leant upon:
Never doubt I will leave you alone
And not wake you rattling bone with bone.
'I go home alone to my bed,
Dug deep at the foot and deep at the head,
Roofed in with a load of lead,
Warm enough for the forgotten dead.
'But why did your tears soak through the clay,
And why did your sobs wake me where I lay?
I was away, far enough away:
Let me sleep now till the Judgment Day.'
Walking With God. - Genesis v.24.
by William Cowper

Oh! for a closer walk with God,
A calm and heavenly frame;
A light to shine upon the road
That leads me to the Lamb!
Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
Of Jesus and his word?
What peaceful hours I once enjoy'd!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void,
The world can never fill.
Return, O holy Dove, return!
Sweet messenger of rest:
I hate the sins that made thee mourn,
And drove thee from my breast.
The dearest idol I have known,
Whate'er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from thy throne,
And worship only thee.
So shall my walk be close with God,
Calm and serene my frame:
So purer light shall mark the road
That leads me to the Lamb.
A Welcome To The Month Of Mary.
by Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

Oh! gladly do we welcome thee,
Fair pleasant month of May;
Month which we've eager longed to see,
Through many a wintry day:
And now with countless budding flowers,
With sunshine bright and clear - 
To gild the quickly fleeting hours - 
At length, sweet month, thou'rt here!
But, yet, we do not welcome thee
Because thy genial breath
Hath power our sleeping land to free
From winter's clasp of death;
Nor yet because fair flowers are springing
Beneath thy genial ray;
And thousand happy birds are singing
All welcome to thee, May!
No, higher, nobler cause have we
These bright days to rejoice - 
'Twas God ordained that thou should'st be
The loved month of our choice:
It is because thou hast been given
To honor her alone,
The ever gentle Queen of Heaven - 
The mother of God's son.
The blossoms that we joyous cull
By bank or silver stream;
The fragrant hawthorn boughs we pull,
Most sacred too, we deem:
For not amid our tresses we
Their op'ning buds will twine,
But garlands fair we'll weave with care
For Mary's lowly shrine.
And when the twilight shades descend
On earth, so hushed and still,
And the lone night bird's soft notes blend
With breeze from glade and hill,
We seek her shrine with loving heart,
And, humbly kneeling there,
We linger long, loth to depart
From that sweet place of prayer!
Oh! who can tell with what gifts rare
Our Mother will repay
Their love who honor thus with care
Her own sweet month of May!
A grace for every flower they've brought
Or 'Ave, they have said;
And ev'ry pious, holy thought
Shall be by her repaid!
A Fisherman's Baby
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Oh! hush little baby, thy Papa's at sea,
The big billows rock him as Mama rocks thee.
He hastes to his dear ones o'er breakers of foam.
Then hush little darling till Papa comes home.
Sleep little baby, hush little baby,
Papa is coming, no longer to roam.
The shells and the pebbles all day tossed about
Are lulled into sleep by the tide ebbing out.
The weary shore slumbers, stretched out in the sand,
While the waves hurry off at mid ocean's command.
Then hush little baby, sleep little darling,
Sleep baby, rocked by thy mother's own hand.
The winds that have rollicked all day in the west
Are soothed into sleep on the calm evening's breast.
The boats that were out with the wild sea at play
Are now rocked to sleep in the arms of the bay.
Then rest little baby, sleep little baby,
Papa will come at the break of the day.
Lines By A Clerk
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Oh! I did love her dearly,
And gave her toys and rings,
And I thought she meant sincerely,
When she took my pretty things.
But her heart has grown as icy
As a fountain in the fall,
And her love, that was so spicy,
It did not last at all.
I gave her once a locket,
It was filled with my own hair,
And she put it in her pocket
With very special care.
But a jeweller has got it, - 
He offered it to me, - 
And another that is not it
Around her neck I see.
For my cooings and my billings
I do not now complain,
But my dollars and my shillings
Will never come again;
They were earned with toil and sorrow,
But I never told her that,
And now I have to borrow,
And want another hat.
Think, think, thou cruel Emma,
When thou shalt hear my woe,
And know my sad dilemma,
That thou hast made it so.
See, see my beaver rusty,
Look, look upon this hole,
This coat is dim and dusty;
Oh let it rend thy soul!
Before the gates of fashion
I daily bent my knee,
But I sought the shrine of passion,
And found my idol, - thee.
Though never love intenser
Had bowed a soul before it,
Thine eye was on the censer,
And not the hand that bore it.
To Julia Weeping.
by Thomas Moore

Oh! if your tears are given to care,
If real woe disturbs your peace,
Come to my bosom, weeping fair!
And I will bid your weeping cease.
But if with Fancy's visioned fears,
With dreams of woe your bosom thrill;
You look so lovely in your tears,
That I must bid you drop them still.
The Voice Of The Dead.
by Mary Gardiner Horsford

Oh! call us not silent,
The throng of the dead!
Though in visible being
No longer we tread
The pathways of earth,
From the grave and the sky,
From the halls of the Past
And the star-host on high,
We speak to the spirit
In language divine;
List, Mortal, our song,
Ere its burden be thine.
Our labor is finished,
Our race it is run;
The guerdon eternal
Is lost or is won;
A beautiful gift
Is the life thou dost share;
Bewail not its sorrow,
Despise not its care;
The rainbow of Hope
Spans the ocean of Time;
High triumph and holy
Makes conflict sublime.
Work ever! Life's moments
Are fleeting and brief;
Behind is the burden,
Before, the relief.
Work nobly! the deed
Liveth bright in the Past,
When the spirit that planned
Is at rest from the blast;
Work nobly! the Infinite
Spreads to thy sight,
The higher thou soarest
The stronger thy flight.
And when from thy vision
Loved faces shall wane,
And thy heart-strings thrill wildly
With anguish and pain;
The voices that now
Are as faint as the tone
Of the Zephyr, that stirs not
The rose on its throne,
Shall burst on thy soul,--
An orchestra divine,
With seraph and cherub
From Deity's shrine.
Sam Holt
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

(Air: 'Ben Bolt.')
Oh! don't you remember Black Alice, Sam Holt'
Black Alice, so dusky and dark,
The Warrego gin, with the straw through her nose,
And teeth like a Moreton Bay shark.
The terrible sheepwash tobacco she smoked
In the gunyah down there by the lake,
And the grubs that she roasted, and the lizards she stewed,
And the damper you taught her to bake.
Oh! don't you remember the moon's silver sheen,
And the Warrego sand-ridges white?
And don't you remember those big bull-dog ants
We caught in our blankets at night?
Oh! don't you remember the creepers, Sam Holt,
That scattered their fragrance around?
And don't you remember that broken-down colt
You sold me, and swore he was sound?
And don't you remember that fiver, Sam Holt,
You borrowed so frank and so free,
When the publican landed your fifty-pound cheque
At Tambo your very last spree?
Luck changes some natures, but yours, Sammy Holt,
Was a grand one as ever I see,
And I fancy I'll whistle a good many tunes
Ere you think of that fiver or me.
Oh! don't you remember the cattle you duffed,
And your luck at the Sandy Creek rush,
And the poker you played, and the bluffs that you bluffed,
And your habits of holding a flush?
And don't you remember the pasting you got
By the boys down in Callaghan's store,
When Tim Hooligan found a fifth ace in his hand,
And you holding his pile upon four?
You were not the cleanest potato, Sam Holt,
You had not the cleanest of fins.
But you made your pile on the Towers, Sam Holt,
And that covers the most of your sins.
They say you've ten thousand per annum, Sam Holt,
In England, a park and a drag;
Perhaps you forget you were six months ago
In Queensland a-humping your swag.
But who'd think to see you now dining in state
With a lord and the devil knows who,
You were flashing your dover, six short months ago,
In a lambing camp on the Barcoo.
When's my time coming?    Perhaps never, I think,
And it's likely enough your old mate
Will be humping his drum on the Hughenden-road
To the end of the chapter of fate.