DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
High and Low
by Arthur Hugh Clough

The grasses green of sweet content
That spring, no matter high or low,
Where'er a living thing can grow,
On chilly hills and rocky rent,
And by the lowly streamlet's side
Oh! why did e'er I turn from these?
The lordly, tall, umbrageous trees,
That stand in high aspiring pride,
With massive bulk on high sustain
A world of boughs with leaf and fruits,
And drive their wide-extending roots
Deep down into the subject plain.
Oh, what with these had I to do?
That germs of things above their kind
May live, pent up and close confined
In humbler forms, it may be true;
Yet great is that which gives our lot;
High laws and powers our will transcend,
And not for this, till time do end,
Shall any be what he is not.
Each in its place, as each was sent,
Just nature ranges side by side;
Alike the oak tree's lofty pride
And grasses green of sweet content.
The Little Roads
by Alfred Noyes

The great roads are all grown over
That seemed so firm and white.
The deep black forests have covered them.
How should I walk aright?
How should I thread these tangled mazes,
Or grope to that far off light?
I stumble round the thickets, and they turn me
Back to the thickets and the night.
Yet, sometimes, at a word, an elfin pass-word,
(O, thin, deep, sweet with beaded rain!)
There shines, through a mist of ragged-robins,
The old lost April-coloured lane,
That leads me from myself; for, at a whisper,
Where the strong limbs thrust in vain,
At a breath, if my heart help another heart,
The path shines out for me again.
A thin thread, a rambling lane for lovers
To the light of the world's one May,
Where the white dropping flakes may wet our faces
As we lift them to the bloom-bowed spray:
O Master, shall we ask Thee, then, for high-roads,
Or down upon our knees and pray
That Thou wilt ever lose us in Thy little lanes,
And lead us by a wandering way.
Roses And Butterflies.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Roses et Papillons.")
[XXVII., Dec. 7, 1834.]
The grave receives us all:
Ye butterflies and roses gay and sweet
Why do ye linger, say?
Will ye not dwell together as is meet?
Somewhere high in the air
Would thy wing seek a home 'mid sunny skies,
In mead or mossy dell - 
If there thy odors longest, sweetest rise.
Have where ye will your dwelling,
Or breath or tint whose praise we sing;
Butterfly shining bright,
Full-blown or bursting rosebud, flow'r or wing.
Dwell together ye fair,
'Tis a boon to the loveliest given;
Perchance ye then may choose your home
On the earth or in heaven.
W.C. WESTBROOK
In Memoriam. - Rev. Dr. James W. Alexander,
by Lydia Howard Sigourney

Pastor of the Fifth Avenue Church, New York, died at the Virginia Springs, July, 1859.
The great and good. How startling is the knell
That tells he is but dust.
The echo comes
From where Virginia's health-reviving springs
Make many whole. But waiting there for him
The dark-winged angel who doth come but once,
Troubled the waters, and his latest breath
Fled, where his first was drawn.
That noble brow
So mark'd with intellect, so clear with truth,
Grave in its goodness, in its love serene,
Will it be seen no more?
That earnest voice
Filling the Temple-arch so gloriously,
With themes of import to the undying soul
Enforced by power of fervid eloquence
Is it forever mute?
That mind so rich
With varied learning and with classic lore,
Studious, progressive, affluent, profound,
That feeling heart, instinct with sympathy
For the world's family of grief and pain,
The dark in feature, or the lost in sin,
Say, are their treasures lost?
No, on the page
Of many a tome, traced by his tireless pen
They live and brighten for a race to come,
Prompting the wise, cheering the sorrowful,
And for the little children whom he loved
Meting out fitting words, like dewy pearls
Glittering along their path.
His chief delight
Was in his Master's work. How well performed
Speak ye whose feet upon Salvation's rock
Were planted through his prayers. His zeal involved
No element of self, but hand in hand
Walk'd with humility. He needeth not
Praise from our mortal lips. The monuments
Of bronze or marble, what are they to him
Who hath his firm abode above the stars?
--Yet may the people mourn, may freshly keep
The transcript of his life, nor wrongly ask
"When shall we look upon his like again?"
Canis Major
by Robert Lee Frost

The great Overdog
That heavenly beast
With a star in one eye
Gives a leap in the east.
He dances upright
All the way to the west
And never once drops
On his forefeet to rest.
I'm a poor underdog,
But to-night I will bark
With the great Overdog
That romps through the dark.
The Fox And The Bust.
by Jean de La Fontaine

[1]
The great are like the maskers of the stage;
Their show deceives the simple of the age.
For all that they appear to be they pass,
With only those whose type's the ass.
The fox, more wary, looks beneath the skin,
And looks on every side, and, when he sees
That all their glory is a semblance thin,
He turns, and saves the hinges of his knees,
With such a speech as once, 'tis said,
He utter'd to a hero's head.
A bust, somewhat colossal in its size,
Attracted crowds of wondering eyes.
The fox admired the sculptor's pains:
'Fine head,' said he, 'but void of brains!'
The same remark to many a lord applies.
May
by Madison Julius Cawein

The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed,
That spangle the woods and dance
No gleam of gold that the twilights hold
Is strong as their necromance:
For, under the oaks where the woodpaths lead,
The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed
Are the May's own utterance.
The azure stars of the bluet bloom,
That sprinkle the woodland's trance
No blink of blue that a cloud lets through
Is sweet as their countenance:
For, over the knolls that the woods perfume,
The azure stars of the bluet bloom
Are the light of the May's own glance.
With her wondering words and her looks she comes,
In a sunbeam of a gown;
She needs but think and the blossoms wink,
But look, and they shower down.
By orchard ways, where the wild bee hums,
With her wondering words and her looks she comes
Like a little maid to town.
To His Love Instead Of A Promised Picture-Book
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

The greater and the lesser ills:
He waved his grey hand wearily
Back to the anger of the sea,
Then forward to the blue of hills.
Out from the shattered barquenteen
The black frieze-coated sailors bore
Their dying despot to the shore
And wove a crazy palanquin.
They found a valley where the rain
Had worn the fern-wood to a paste
And tiny streams came down in haste
To eastward of the mountain chain.
And here was handiwork of Cretes,
And olives grew beside a stone,
And one slim phallos stood alone
Blasphemed at by the paroquets.
Hard by a wall of basalt bars
The night came like a settling bird,
And here he wept and slept and stirred
Faintly beneath the turning stars.
Then like a splash of saffron whey
That spills from out a bogwood bowl
Oozed from the mountain clefts the whole
Rich and reluctant light of day.
And when he neither moved nor spoke
And did not heed the morning call,
They laid him underneath the wall
And wrapped him in a purple cloak.
From the Modern Persian.
The Church Bells
by Edward Dyson

The Viennese authorities have melted down the great bell in St. Stephen's to supply metal for guns or muntions. Every poor village has made a similar gift. - Lokal Anzeiger.
The great bell booms across the town,
Reverberant and slow,
And drifting from their houses down
The calm-eyed people go.
Their feet fall on the portal stones
Their fathers' fathers trod;
And still the bell, with reverent tones,
From cottage nooks and purple thrones
Is calling souls to God.
The chapel bells with ardor spake
Above the poplars tall,
And perfumed Sabbath seemed to wake.
Responsive to their call
From dappled vale and green hillside
And nestling village hives
The peasants came in simple pride
To hear how their Lord Jesus died
To sweeten all their lives.
They boom beyond the battered town;
The hills are belching smoke;
And valleys charred and ranges brown
Are quaking 'neath the stroke.
The iron roar to Heaven swells,
And domes and steeples nod;
Through cities vast and ferny dells
And village streets the clamant bells
Are calling souls to God!
Autumn.
by Thomas Frederick Young

The grass is wet with heavy dew,
The leaves have changed their bright green hue,
To brighter red, or golden;
The morning sun shines with a glow,
As bright and pure as long ago,
In time ye left the olden.
One tree is cloth'd with scarlet dress,
And one, with brown leaf'd loveliness,
Delights the eye that gazes;
While others varied tints display,
But all, in beauteous array,
Delight us, and amaze us.
We see the trees in beauty clad,
But still that beauty makes us sad,
E'en while we may admire,
For death has caus'd that sudden bloom
Stern death, the tenant of the tomb,
Or funereal pyre.
The ruthless, bitter, biting air
Hath dried the life which flourish'd there,
Throughout the warmer seasons;
The nourishment hath ceas'd to flow
Through veins, where once it us'd to go - 
Hath ceas'd for diff'rent reasons.
And soon the leaves will strew the ground,
And whirl with rustling ardor round,
Or lie in heaps together,
Their hues of red, of brown, of gold,
Will blacken, as they change to mould
By action of the weather.
But leaves will grow where once they grew,
Will bud, and bloom, and perish too,
The same as all the others,
As we through youth, and joy, and grief,
Must find at last a sure relief,
As did our many brothers.
Like in the leaf, no life-blood flows,
When frosts of death the fountain close,
From which it flow'd, to nourish.
And like the leaf, another spring
Around us shall her gladness fling;
Another life shall flourish.
Our bodies turn to dust or mould.
As lifeless as the rocks, and cold,
But life's fair Tree is living.
And fadeless green leaves we shall be,
Because the Fountain of that Tree
Eternal life is giving.
The High Things
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

The Greatest Day that ever dawned,--
It was a Winter's Morn.
The Finest Temple ever built
Was a Shed where a Babe was born.
The Sweetest Robes by woman wrought
Were the Swaths by the Baby worn.
And the Fairest Hair the world has seen,
--Those Locks that were never shorn.
The Noblest Crown man ever wore,--
It was the Plaited Thorn.
The Grandest Death man ever died,--
It was the Death of Scorn.
The Sorest Grief by woman known
Was the Mother-Maid's forlorn.
The Deepest Sorrows e'er endured
Were by The Outcast borne.
The Truest Heart the world e'er broke
Was the Heart by man's sins torn.
Translations. - The Grave. (From Von Salis-Seewis.)
by George MacDonald

The grave is deep and soundless,
Its brink is ghastly lone;
With veil all dark and boundless
It hides a land unknown.
The nightingale's sweet closes
Down there come not at all;
And friendship's withered roses
On the mossy hillock fall.
Their hands young brides forsaken
Wring bleeding there in vain;
The cries of orphans waken
No answer to their pain.
Yet nowhere else for mortals
Dwells their implored repose;
Through none but those dark portals
Home to his rest man goes.
The poor heart, here for ever
By storm on storm beat sore,
Its true peace gaineth never
But where it beats no more.
People
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

The great gold apples of night
Hang from the street's long bough
Dripping their light
On the faces that drift below,
On the faces that drift and blow
Down the night-time, out of sight
In the wind's sad sough.
The ripeness of these apples of night
Distilling over me
Makes sickening the white
Ghost-flux of faces that hie
Them endlessly, endlessly by
Without meaning or reason why
They ever should be.
The Grave My Little Cottage Is,
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

The grave my little cottage is,
Where, keeping house for thee,
I make my parlor orderly,
And lay the marble tea,
For two divided, briefly,
A cycle, it may be,
Till everlasting life unite
In strong society.
Thomas Starr King
by John Greenleaf Whittier

The great work laid upon his twoscore years
Is done, and well done. If we drop our tears,
Who loved him as few men were ever loved,
We mourn no blighted hope nor broken plan
With him whose life stands rounded and approved
In the full growth and stature of a man.
Mingle, O bells, along the Western slope,
With your deep toll a sound of faith and hope!
Wave cheerily still, O banner, half-way down,
From thousand-masted bay and steepled town!
Let the strong organ with its loftiest swell
Lift the proud sorrow of the land, and tell
That the brave sower saw his ripened grain.
O East and West! O morn and sunset twain
No more forever! has he lived in vain
Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one, and told
Your bridal service from his lips of gold
The Boy-King's Prayer.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Le cheval galopait toujours.")
[Bk. XV. ii. 10.]
The good steed flew o'er river and o'er plain,
Till far away, - no need of spur or rein.
The child, half rapture, half solicitude,
Looks back anon, in fear to be pursued;
Shakes lest some raging brother of his sire
Leap from those rocks that o'er the path aspire.
On the rough granite bridge, at evening's fall,
The white horse paused by Compostella's wall,
('Twas good St. James that reared those arches tall,)
Through the dim mist stood out each belfry dome,
And the boy hailed the paradise of home.
Close to the bridge, set on high stage, they meet
A Christ of stone, the Virgin at his feet.
A taper lighted that dear pardoning face,
More tender in the shade that wrapped the place,
And the child stayed his horse, and in the shine
Of the wax taper knelt down at the shrine.
"O, my good God! O, Mother Maiden sweet!"
He said, "I was the worm beneath men's feet;
My father's brethren held me in their thrall,
But Thou didst send the Paladin of Gaul,
O Lord! and show'dst what different spirits move
The good men and the evil; those who love
And those who love not. I had been as they,
But Thou, O God! hast saved both life and soul to-day.
I saw Thee in that noble knight; I saw
Pure light, true faith, and honor's sacred law,
My Father, - and I learnt that monarchs must
Compassionate the weak, and unto all be just.
O Lady Mother! O dear Jesus! thus
Bowed at the cross where Thou didst bleed for us,
I swear to hold the truth that now I learn,
Leal to the loyal, to the traitor stern,
And ever just and nobly mild to be,
Meet scholar of that Prince of Chivalry;
And here Thy shrine bear witness, Lord, for me."
The horse of Roland, hearing the boy tell
His vow, looked round and spoke: "O King, 'tis well!"
Then on the charger mounted the child-king,
And rode into the town, while all the bells 'gan ring.
Dublin University Magazine
An Explanation of the Grasshopper
by Vachel Lindsay

The Grasshopper, the grasshopper,
I will explain to you: - 
He is the Brownies' racehorse,
The fairies' Kangaroo.
Millennium
by Ellis Parker Butler

The great millennium is at hand.
Redder apples grow on the tree.
A saxophone is in ev'ry band.
Brandy no longer taints our tea.
Dimples smile in the red-rouged knee.
The dowagers are no longer fat.
Radio now makes safe the sea,
And the Turk has bought him a derby hat.
Even our sauerkraut now is canned.
Verse is a dangsight more than free.
A 'highboy' now is the old dish stand.
Ev'ry flapper has her night key.
Chopin is jazzed into melody.
A child is a 'kiddie' and not a 'brat.'
Bosses and miners at last agree,
And the Turk has bought him a derby hat.
All firewaters are bravely banned.
There is a ballot for every she.
The hairpin now is a contraband.
A New York mayor gets some sympathy.
My dealer brings some coal to me.
The plumber is an aristocrat.
In Miami all millionaires may be,
And the Turk has bought him a derby hat.
Son, the millennium is at hand!
What though Armenians be mashed flat?
The world is getting just perfectly grand,
For the Turk has bought him a derby hat.
The Golden Rose
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

The Golden Rose is blowing still,
Is growing still, is glowing still,
In lonely vale, on lordly hill,
The Golden Rose is glowing still;--
If only you can find it!
The Golden Rose still breaks and blows,
Still breaks and blows, still gleams and glows,
'Mid icy blasts, and wintry snows,
The Golden Rose still breaks and blows;--
Search w ell and you may find it!
The Golden Rose can never die,
'Tis grafted on Eternity;
In hearts that Love doth glorify,
The Golden Rose can never die,--
May it be yours to find it!
The Troubadour, Pons De Capdeuil
by Madison Julius Cawein

In Provence, to his Lady, Azalis de Mercoeur in Anjou
The gray dawn finds me thinking still
Of thee who hadst my thoughts all night;
Of thee, who art my lute's sweet skill,
And of my soul the only light;
My star of song to whom I turn
My face and for whose love I yearn.
Thou dost not know thy troubadour
Lies sick to death; no longer sings:
That this alone may work his cure
To feel thy white hand, weighed with rings,
Smoothed softly through his heavy hair,
Or resting with the old love there.
To feel thy warm cheek laid to his;
Thy bosom fluttering with love;
Then on his eyes and lips thy kiss
Thy kiss alone were all enough
To heal his heart, to cure his soul,
And make his mind and body whole.
The drought, these three months past, hath slain
All green things in this weary land,
As in my life thy high disdain
Hath killed ambition: yea, my hand
Forgets its cunning; and my heart,
Sick to stagnation, all its art.
Once to my castle there at Puy,
In honor of thy beauty, came
The Angevin nobility,
To hear me sing of thee, whose fame
Was high as Helen's. Azalis,
Hast thou forgot? Forget'st thou this?
And in the lists how often there
I broke a spear for thee? and placed
The crown of beauty on thy hair,
While thou sat'st, like the fair moon faced,
Amid the human firmament
Of faces that toward thee bent.
I take my hawk, my peregrine
No falconer or page beside
And ride from morn till eve begin;
I ride forgetting that I ride,
And all save this: that thou no more
Dost ride beside me as of yore.
A heron sweeps above me: I
Remember then how oft were cast
Thy hawk and mine at such: and sigh
Thinking of thee and days long past,
When through the Anjou fields and bowers
We used to hawk and hunt for hours.
And when, unhappy, I return,
And take my lute and seek again
The terrace where, beside some urn,
The castle gathers, while the stain
Of sunset crimsons all the sea,
And sing old songs once loved of thee:
The soul within me overflows
With longing; and I seem to hear
Thy voice through fountains and the rose
Calling afar, while, wildly near,
The rossignol makes mute my tongue
With memories of things long sung.
Here in Provence I pine for thee;
And there in Anjou dost forget!
All beauty here is less to me
Than is the ribbon lightly set
At thy white throat; or, on thy foot,
The shoe that I have loved to lute.
Thy foot, that I have loved to kiss;
To kiss and sing of! Song hath died
In me since then, my Azalis;
Since to my soul e'en that 's denied:
Thy kiss, that now alone could cure
The sick heart of thy Troubadour.
To An Ungentle Critic
by Robert von Ranke Graves

The great sun sinks behind the town
Through a red mist of Volnay wine....
But what's the use of setting down
That glorious blaze behind the town?
You'll only skip the page, you'll look
For newer pictures in this book;
You've read of sunsets rich as mine.
A fresh wind fills the evening air
With horrid crying of night birds....
But what reads new or curious there
When cold winds fly across the air?
You'll only frown; you'll turn the page,
But find no glimpse of your "New Age
Of Poetry" in my worn-out words.
Must winds that cut like blades of steel
And sunsets swimming in Volnay,
The holiest, cruellest pains I feel,
Die stillborn, because old men squeal
For something new: "Write something new:
We've read this poem, that one too,
And twelve more like 'em yesterday"?
No, no! my chicken, I shall scrawl
Just what I fancy as I strike it,
Fairies and Fusiliers, and all
Old broken knock-kneed thought will crawl
Across my verse in the classic way.
And, sir, be careful what you say;
There are old-fashioned folk still like it.
Day
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The gray dawn on the mountain top
Is slow to pass away.
Still lays him by in sluggish dreams,
The golden God of day.
And then a light along the hills,
Your laughter silvery gay;
The Sun God wakes, a bluebird trills,
You come and it is day.
Night And Morning
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

The great brightness of the burning of the stars,
Little frightened love,
Is like your eyes,
When in the heavy dusk
You question the dark blue shadows,
Fearing an evil.
Below the night
The one clear line of dawn;
As it were your head
Where there is one golden hair
Though your hair is very brown.
From the Arabic (School of Ebn-el-Moattaz) (ninth century).
In Hospital - VIII - Staff-Nurse: Old Style
by William Ernest Henley

The greater masters of the commonplace,
REMBRANDT and good SIR WALTER - only these
Could paint her all to you:    experienced ease
And antique liveliness and ponderous grace;
The sweet old roses of her sunken face;
The depth and malice of her sly, grey eyes;
The broad Scots tongue that flatters, scolds, defies;
The thick Scots wit that fells you like a mace.
These thirty years has she been nursing here,
Some of them under SYME , her hero still.
Much is she worth, and even more is made of her.
Patients and students hold her very dear.
The doctors love her, tease her, use her skill.
They say 'The Chief' himself is half-afraid of her.
The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - Nebuchadnezzar's Image.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Babel disfatta.
The golden head was Babylon; she passed:
Persia came next, the silvern breast: whereto
Joined brazen flank and belly--these are you,
Ye men of Macedon! Now Rome's the last.
Rome on two iron legs towered tall and vast;
But at her feet were toes of clay, that drew
Downfall: those scattered tribes erewhile she knew
For lords; now 'neath her fatal sway they're cast.
Ah thirsty soil! From your parched fallow fumes
A smoke of pride, vain-glory, cruelty,
That blinds, infects, and blackens, and consumes!
To Daniel, to the Bible you refuse
Your rebel sense; for it is still your use
To screen yourself with lies and sophistry.
The Mound By The Lake
by Herman Melville

The grass shall never forget this grave.
When homeward footing it in the sun
After the weary ride by rail,
The stripling soldiers passed her door,
Wounded perchance, or wan and pale,
She left her household work undone--
Duly the wayside table spread,
With evergreens shaded, to regale
Each travel-spent and grateful one.
So warm her heart--childless--unwed,
Who like a mother comforted.
The Christ
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

The good intent of God became the Christ.
And lived on earth--the Living Love of God,
That men might draw to closer touch with heaven,
Since Christ in all the ways of man hath trod.
Amour 47
by Michael Drayton

The golden Sunne vpon his fiery wheeles
The horned Ram doth in his course awake,
And of iust length our night and day doth make,
Flinging the Fishes backward with his heeles:
Then to the Tropicke takes his full Careere,
Trotting his sun-steeds till the Palfrays sweat,
Bayting the Lyon in his furious heat,
Till Virgins smyles doe sound his sweet reteere.
But my faire Planet, who directs me still,
Vnkindly such distemperature doth bring,
Makes Summer Winter, Autumne in the Spring,
Crossing sweet nature by vnruly will.
Such is the sunne who guides my youthfull season,
Whose thwarting course depriues the world of reason.
A Bridal Song.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

1.
The golden gates of Sleep unbar
Where Strength and Beauty, met together,
Kindle their image like a star
In a sea of glassy weather!
Night, with all thy stars look down, -
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew, -
Never smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true.
Let eyes not see their own delight; -
Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight
Oft renew.
2.
Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
Holy stars, permit no wrong!
And return to wake the sleeper,
Dawn, - ere it be long!
O joy! O fear! what will be done
In the absence of the sun!
Come along!