DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Rallying Song For Freedom In The North To "The United Left"
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

(Tirol, 1874)
(See Note 61)
Dishonored by the higher, but loved by all the low, - 
Say, is it not the pathway that the new has to go?
By those who ought to guard it betrayed, oh yes, betrayed, - 
Say, is it not thus truth ever progress has made?
Some summer day beginning, a murmur in the grain,
It grows to be a roaring through the forests amain,
Until the sea shall bear it with thunder-trumpets' tone,
Where nothing, nothing's heard but it alone, it alone.
With Northern allies warring we take the Northern
For God and for our freedom - is the watchword we bring.
That God, who gave us country and language, and all,
We find Him in our doing, if we hear and heed His call.
That doing we will forward, we many, although weak,
'Gainst all in fearless fighting, who the truth will not seek: - 
Some summer day beginning, a murmur in the grain,
It goes now as a roaring through the forests amain.
'T will grow to be a storm ere men think that this can be,
With voice of thunder sweeping o'er the infinite sea.
What nation God's call follows, earth's greatest power shall show,
And carry all before it, though it high stand or low.
The Farmer's Treasure
by Walter Crane

"Dig deeply, my Sons! through this field!
There's a Treasure"--he died: unrevealed
The spot where 'twas laid,
They dug as he bade;
And the Treasure was found in the yield.
Productive Labour Is The Only Source Of Wealth
Tommy Smith
by James Whitcomb Riley

Dimple-cheeked and rosy-lipped,
With his cap-rim backward tipped,
Still in fancy I can see
Little Tommy smile on me -
Little Tommy Smith.
Little unsung Tommy Smith -
Scarce a name to rhyme it with;
Yet most tenderly to me
Something sings unceasingly -
Little Tommy Smith.
On the verge of some far land
Still forever does he stand,
With his cap-rim rakishly
Tilted; so he smiles on me -
Little Tommy Smith.
Elder-blooms contrast the grace
Of the rover's radiant face -
Whistling back, in mimicry,
"Old - Bob - White!" all liquidly -
Little Tommy Smith.
O my jaunty statuette
Of first love, I see you yet.
Though you smile so mistily,
It is but through tears I see,
Little Tommy Smith.
But, with crown tipped back behind,
And the glad hand of the wind
Smoothing back your hair, I see
Heaven's best angel smile on me, -
Little Tommy Smith.
Snow-Drops
by Kate Seymour Maclean

Dimly and dumbly under the ground,
Groping the walls of their prison round,
The roots of the aged and garrulous trees
Are sending electrical messages
From the under-world to the world without
And quickening pulses that course in each
Fettered and bound and frozen thing,
Rootlets that tremble, and fibres that reach
Are pushing inanimate fingers out,
To ask further inarticulate speech
For tidings of Spring
And the fine invisible sprite which dwells
In cups and discs, in blossoms and bells,
Fleeter than Ariel's wing hath flown
Beyond this cloudy and frozen zone,
To the summer land of the South,
Beyond those rugged sentinels
Which winter seta in the snow-capped hills,
From the breath of whose cruel mouth,
Sighing, the leaves in forest and wold,
Shivered and died in the nights a'cold,
Died and were buried under the snow,
Long moons ago.
Now over the tropic's broad ellipse
The sprite hath passed, as fleet and fast
As the light of falling stars, that cast
A sudden radiance and eclipse;
And all the buds that are folded close
As the inner leaves of an unblown rose,
In bulb, or cone, or scale, or sheath,
And sealed with the odorous gums that breathe
Like the breath of the singing and sighing pine,
When the dews are falling at evening time,
Through cone, and sheath, and bulb, and scale--
Tremble, and cry All hail!
And look where a rosier beam hath cleft
The damp and fragrant-smelling earth,
A handful of snow-drops peeping forth;
As if King Winter had dropped and left--
Stumbling and tripping the steep hills down--
Had clutched his robe and dropped his crown:
Or as if the very snow had power,
Out of itself to fashion a flower;
So vase-like, slender, and exquisite,
Like an alabaster lamp alit,--
And shining with a sea-green light,
As if it had but newly come
Up from some subterranean palace,
The haunt of fairy or of gnome,
With its waxen taper still alight,
And beaming in its leafy chalice,
That lit the revellers down below,
When the nights were long, and the moon was low
You might have heard, far-off and sweet,
The sound of the elfin revelries,
Like a bugle strain blown over seas,
And the patter and beat of dancing feet,--
If you had been like me awake,
What time the Great Bear seems to shake,
Down through the trackless realms of air,
Frost-lances from his shaggy hair;
And all around--beneath--across,
The round globe lies stabbed through with frost.
Now the touches of the sun,
Like some potent alchemist,
In heat and dews, in rain and mist,
As in a subtle menstruum,
Hath dissolved the icy charm,
And laid on that cold breast of hers,--
Nature's breast--that faintly stirs,
With his fragrant kisses warm,
Sweet as myrrh and cinnamon,--
Snow-drops, spring's bright harbingers,
First-born children of the sun.
Like a sudden burst of leaf and bloom,
The sun shines redly through the gloom,
And the wind with its many melodies
Hath a murmurous sound like the noise of bees,
Singing and humming,--blowing and growing,
Of springing blade, and of fountain flowing;
And night and silence under the ground
Listen--and thrill--and move to the sound,
And answer, Spring is coming!
Prelude: The Troops
by Siegfried Loraine Sassoon

Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom
Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals
Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots
And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky
Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down
The stale despair of night, must now renew
Their desolation in the truce of dawn,
Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace.
Yet these, who cling to life with stubborn hands,
Can grin through storms of death and find a gap
In the clawed, cruel tangles of his defence.
They march from safety, and the bird-sung joy
Of grass-green thickets, to the land where all
Is ruin, and nothing blossoms but the sky
That hastens over them where they endure
Sad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods,
And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for doom.
O my brave brown companions, when your souls
Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead
Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,
Death will stand grieving in that field of war
Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent.
And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass
Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell;
The unreturning army that was youth;
The legions who have suffered and are dust.
Information (Prose)
by John Hartley

Divine Service was held in the Temperance Hall, when the celebrated Dr. Foaming Drinkwater preached from the text Exodus 16 ch. 33 v., "And Moses said unto Aaron, take a pot," and in an eloquent sermon of 1h. 55m. the Revd. lecturer clearly showed that a pot of beer was not alluded to in the text. Collections were made at the close of the service.
The Death Of Autumn.
by Kate Seymour Maclean

Discrowned and desolate,
And wandering with dim eyes and faded hair,
Singing sad songs to comfort her despair,
Grey Autumn meets her fate.
Forsaken and alone
She haunts the ruins of her queenly state,
Like banished Eve at Eden's flaming gate,
Making perpetual moan.
Crazed with her grief she moves
Along the banks of the frost-charmed rills,
And all the hollows of the wooded hills,
Searching for her lost loves.
From verdurous base to cope,
The sunny hill-sides, and sweet pasture lands,
Where bubbling brooks reach ever-dimpled hands
Along the amber slope,--
And valleys drowsed between,
In the rich purple of the vintage time,
When cups of gold that drop with fragrant wine,
From orchard branches lean;--
And far beyond them, spread
Broad fields thick set with sheaves of yellow wheat,
Where scarlet poppies, slumberously sweet,
Glow with a dusky red--
To the remotest zone
Of hazy woodland pencilled on the sky,
On whose far spires the clouds of sunset lie,--
She held her regal throne!
Queen of a princely race,
Whose ministers were all the elements;
Sunshine, and rain, and dew she did dispense
With a right royal grace.
Now, not a breath of air,
Nor sunbeam, nor the voice of beast or bird,
Stirring the lonely woods, hath any word
To comfort her despair.
Insidious, day by day
A smouldering flame, a lurid crimson creeps
Into the ashy whiteness of her cheeks,
And burns her life away.
The cavernous woods are dumb!
Through their oracular depths and secret nooks,
To the mute supplication of her looks
No mystic voices come
And through the still grey air
The night comes down, and hangs her lamp on high,
Like a wan lily blossomed on the sky,
Shining so ghostly fair,
Or looming up the heights,
Those awful spectres of the frozen zone
Splinter the crystal of heaven's sapphire dome,
With arrowy-glancing lights.
The while hoarse night winds rave,
The old year looking backward to his prime
With dim fond eyes, down the last steps of time
Goes maundering to his grave!
The Quarrel Between The Dogs And The Cats And Between The Cats And The Mice (Prose Fable)
by Jean de La Fontaine

Discord has always reigned in the universe; of this our world furnishes a thousand different instances, for with us the sinister goddess has many subjects.
Let us begin with the four elements. Here you may be astonished to observe that they are, throughout, in antagonism to each other. Besides these four potentates how many other forces of all descriptions are everlastingly at war!
In bygone times there was a house which was full of cats and dogs who lived together like amicable cousins, for this reason: Their master had made a hundred irrevocable laws and rules, settling their respective tasks, their meals, and every other incident of their lives, and at the same time he threatened with the whip the first one who should promote a quarrel. The kindly, almostly brotherly nature of this union was very edifying to the neighbours.
But at last the concord ceased. Some little favouritism in the bestowal of a bone, or a dish of food, caused the outraged remainder to raise furious protests. I have heard some chroniclers attribute the discord to an affair of love and jealousy. At any rate, whatever the origin, the altercation speedily fired both hall and kitchen, and divided the company into partisans for this cat or for that dog.
A new rule was made, which exasperated the cats, and their complaints deafened the whole neighbourhood. Their advocate advised returning absolutely to the old rules and decrees. The law books were searched for, but could nowhere be found. And that was no wonder, for the books which had been hidden in a corner by one set of partisans at first had been at last devoured by mice. This gave rise to another law-suit, which the mice lost and had to pay for.
Many old cats, cunning, subtle, and sharp, and bearing a grudge against the whole race of mice beside, lay in wait for them, caught them, and cleared them out of the house, much to the advantage of the master of the establishment.
So, returning to my moral, one cannot find under heaven any animal, any being, any creature who has not his opponent. This appears to be a law of nature. It would be time wasted to seek for a reason. God does well whatever he does. Beyond that I know nothing; but I do know that people come to high words over nothing three times out of four. Ah, ye human folk! even at the age of sixty you ought to be sent back to the schoolmaster.
Upon Julia's Breasts.
by Robert Herrick

Display thy breasts, my Julia - there let me
Behold that circummortal purity,
Between whose glories there my lips I'll lay,
Ravish'd in that fair via lactea.
Prologue To The University Of Oxford.
by John Dryden

Discord and plots, which have undone our age,
With the same ruin have o'erwhelm'd the stage.
Our house has suffer'd in the common woe,
We have been troubled with Scotch rebels too.
Our brethren are from Thames to Tweed departed,
And of our sisters, all the kinder-hearted,
To Edinburgh gone, or coach'd, or carted.
With bonny bluecap there they act all night
For Scotch half-crown, in English three-pence hight.
One nymph, to whom fat Sir John Falstaff's lean,
There with her single person fills the scene.
Another, with long use and age decay'd,
Dived here old woman, and rose there a maid.
Our trusty doorkeepers of former time
There strut and swagger in heroic rhyme.
Tack but a copper-lace to drugget suit,
And there's a hero made without dispute:
And that, which was a capon's tail before,
Becomes a plume for Indian emperor.
But all his subjects, to express the care
Of imitation, go, like Indians, bare:
Laced linen there would be a dangerous thing;
It might perhaps a new rebellion bring;
The Scot, who wore it, would be chosen king.
But why should I these renegades describe,
When you yourselves have seen a lewder tribe?
Teague has been here, and, to this learned pit,
With Irish action slander'd English wit:
You have beheld such barbarous Macs appear,
As merited a second massacre:
Such as, like Cain, were branded with disgrace,
And had their country stamp'd upon their face.
When strollers durst presume to pick your purse,
We humbly thought our broken troop not worse.
How ill soe'er our action may deserve,
Oxford's a place where wit can never starve.
Christmas In India
by Rudyard Kipling

Dim dawn behind the tamerisks, the sky is saffron-yellow,
As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow
That the Day, the staring Easter Day, is born.
O the white dust on the highway! O the stenches in the byway!
O the clammy fog that hovers over earth!
And at Home they're making merry 'neath the white and scarlet berry,
What part have India's exiles in their mirth?
Full day begind the tamarisks, the sky is blue and staring,
As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke,
And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope or caring,
To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke.
Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly,
Call on Rama, he may hear, perhaps, your voice!
With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars,
And to-day we bid "good Christian men rejoice!"
High noon behind the tamarisks, the sun is hot above us,
As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan.
They will drink our healths at dinner, those who tell us how they love us,
And forget us till another year be gone!
Oh the toil that knows no breaking! Oh the Heimweh, ceaseless, aching!
Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain!
Youth was cheap, wherefore we sold it.
Gold was good, we hoped to hold it,
And to-day we know the fulness of our gain!
Grey dusk behind the tamarisks, the parrots fly together,
As the sun is sinking slowly over Home;
And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether.
That drags us back howe'er so far we roam.
Hard her service, poor her payment, she in ancient, tattered raiment,
India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.
If a year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter,
The door is shut, we may not look behind.
Black night behind the tamarisks, the owls begin their chorus,
As the conches from the temple scream and bray.
With the fruitless years behind us and the hopeless years before us,
Let us honor, O my brother, Christmas Day!
Call a truce, then, to our labours, let us feast with friends and neighbours,
And be merry as the custom of our caste;
For, if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after,
We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.
The Looking-Glass
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Dinah stan' befo' de glass,
Lookin' moughty neat,
An' huh purty shadder sass
At huh haid an' feet.
While she sasshay 'roun' an' bow,
Smilin' den an' poutin' now,
An' de lookin'-glass, I 'low,
Say: "Now, ain't she sweet?"
All she do, de glass it see,
Hit des see, no mo',
Seems to me, hit ought to be
Drappin' on de flo'.
She go w'en huh time git slack,
Kissin' han's an' smilin' back,
Lawsy, how my lips go smack,
Watchin' at de do'.
Wisht I was huh lookin'-glass,
Wen she kissed huh han';
Does you t'ink I 'd let it pass,
Settin' on de stan'?
No; I'd des' fall down an' break,
Kin' o' glad 't uz fu' huh sake;
But de diffunce, dat whut make
Lookin'-glass an' man.
The Dying Bard
by Walter Scott (Sir)

I.
Dinas Emlinn, lament; for the moment is nigh,
When mute in the woodlands thine echoes shall die:
No more by sweet Teivi Cadwallon shall rave,
And mix his wild notes with the wild dashing wave.
II.
In spring and in autumn thy glories of shade
Unhonour'd shall flourish, unhonour'd shall fade;
For soon shall be lifeless the eye and the tongue,
That view'd them with rapture, with rapture that sung.
III.
Thy sons, Dinas Emlinn, may march in their pride,
And chase the proud Saxon from Prestatyn's side;
But where is the harp shall give life to their name?
And where is the bard shall give heroes their fame?
IV.
And oh, Dinas Emlinn! thy daughters so fair,
Who heave the white bosom, and wave the dark hair;
What tuneful enthusiast shall worship their eye,
When half of their charms with Cadwallon shall die?
V.
Then adieu, silver Teivi! I quit thy loved scene,
To join the dim choir of the bards who have been;
With Lewarch, and Meilor, and Merlin the Old,
And sage Taliessin, high harping to hold.
VI.
And Adieu, Dinas Emlinn! still green be thy shades,
Unconquer'd thy warriors, and matchless thy maids!
And thou, whose faint warblings my weakness can tell,
Farewell, my loved Harp! my last treasure, farewell!
Illustrated Books And Newspapers
by William Wordsworth

Discourse was deemed Man's noblest attribute,
And written words the glory of his hand;
Then followed Printing with enlarged command
For thought, dominion vast and absolute
For spreading truth, and making love expand.
Now prose and verse sunk into disrepute
Must lacquey a dumb Art that best can suit
The taste of this once-intellectual Land.
A backward movement surely have we here,
From manhood, back to childhood; for the age
Back towards caverned life's first rude career.
Avaunt this vile abuse of pictured page!
Must eyes be all in all, the tongue and ear
Nothing? Heaven keep us from a lower stage!
Moss on a Wall
by Henry Kendall

Dim dreams it hath of singing ways,
Of far-off woodland water-heads,
And shining ends of April days
Amongst the yellow runnel-beds.
Stoop closer to the ruined wall,
Whereon the wilful wilding sleeps,
As if its home were waterfall
By dripping clefts and shadowy steeps.
A little waif, whose beauty takes
A touching tone because it dwells
So far away from mountain lakes,
And lily leaves, and lightening fells.
Deep hidden in delicious floss
It nestles, sister, from the heat
A gracious growth of tender moss
Whose nights are soft, whose days are sweet.
Swift gleams across its petals run
With winds that hum a pleasant tune,
Serene surprises of the sun,
And whispers from the lips of noon.
The evening-coloured apple-trees
Are faint with July's frosty breath.
But lo! this stranger getteth ease,
And shines amidst the strays of Death.
And at the turning of the year,
When August wanders in the cold,
The raiment of the nursling here
Is rich with green and glad with gold.
Oh, friend of mine, to one whose eyes
Are vexed because of alien things,
For ever in the wall moss lies
The peace of hills and hidden springs.
From faithless lips and fickle lights
The tired pilgrim sets his face,
And thinketh here of sounds and sights
In many a lovely forest-place.
And when by sudden fits and starts
The sunset on the moss doth burn,
He often dreams, and, lo! the marts
And streets are changed to dells of fern.
For, let me say, the wilding placed
By hands unseen amongst these stones,
Restores a Past by Time effaced,
Lost loves and long-forgotten tones!
As sometimes songs and scenes of old
Come faintly unto you and me,
When winds are wailing in the cold,
And rains are sobbing on the sea.
Sonnets. IV.
by John Milton

Diodati, e te'l diro con maraviglia,
Quel ritroso io ch'amor spreggiar solea
E de suoi lacci spesso mi ridea
Gia caddi, ov'huom dabben talhor s'impiglia.
Ne treccie d'oro, ne guancia vermiglia
M' abbaglian si, ma sotto nova idea
Pellegrina bellezza che'l cuor bea,
Portamenti alti honesti, e nelle ciglia
Quel sereno fulgor d' amabil nero,
Parole adorne di lingua piu d'una,
E'l cantar che di mezzo l'hemispero
Traviar ben puo la faticosa Luna,
E degil occhi suoi auventa si gran fuoco
Che l 'incerar gli oreechi mi fia poco.
De Tea Fabula.
by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Plain Language from truthful James[1].
Do I sleep?    Do I dream?
Am I hoaxed by a scout?
Are things what they seem,
Or is Sophists about?
Is our "to ti en einai" a failure, or is Robert Browning played out?
Which expressions like these
May be fairly applied
By a party who sees
A Society skied
Upon tea that the Warden of Keble had biled with legitimate pride.
'Twas November the third,
And I says to Bill Nye,
'Which it's true what I've heard:
If you're, so to speak, fly,
There's a chance of some tea and cheap culture, the sort recommended as High.'
Which I mentioned its name,
And he ups and remarks:
'If dress-coats is the game
And pow-wow in the Parks,
Then I 'm nuts on Sordello and Hohenstiel-Schwangau and similar Snarks.'
Now the pride of Bill Nye
Cannot well be express'd;
For he wore a white tie
And a cut-away vest:
Says I, 'Solomon's lilies ain't in it, and they was reputed well dress'd.'
But not far did we wend,
When we saw Pippa pass
On the arm of a friend
--Doctor Furnivall 'twas,
And he wore in his hat two half-tickets for London, return, second-class.
'Well,' I thought, 'this is odd.'
But we came pretty quick
To a sort of a quad
That was all of red brick,
And I says to the porter,--'R. Browning: free passes; and kindly look slick.'
But says he, dripping tears
In his check handkerchief,
'That symposium's career's
Been regrettably brief,
For it went all its pile upon crumpets and busted on gunpowder-leaf!'
Then we tucked up the sleeves
Of our shirts (that were biled),
Which the reader perceives
That our feelings were riled,
And we went for that man till his mother had doubted the traits of her child.
Which emotions like these
Must be freely indulged
By a party who sees
A Society bulged
On a reef the existence of which its prospectus had never divulged.
But I ask,--Do I dream?
Has it gone up the spout?
Are things what they seem,
Or is Sophists about?
Is our "to ti en einai" a failure, or is Robert Browning played out?
Nursery Rhyme. CCCCVI. Jingles.
by Unknown

[The first line of the following is the burden of a song in the 'Tempest,' act i, sc. 2. and also of one in the 'Merchant of Venice, act iii, sc. 2.]
Ding dong bell,
Pussy's in the well!
Who put her in? - 
Little Tommy Lin.
Who pulled her out? - 
Dog with long snout.
What a naughty boy was that
To drown poor pussy-cat,
Who never did any harm,
But kill'd the mice in his father's barn.
Fairyland
by Edgar Allan Poe

Dim vales- and shadowy floods,
And cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can't discover
For the tears that drip all over!
Huge moons there wax and wane,
Again, again, again,
Every moment of the night,
Forever changing places,
And they put out the star-light
With the breath from their pale faces.
About twelve by the moon-dial,
One more filmy than the rest
(A kind which, upon trial,
They have found to be the best)
Comes down, still down, and down,
With its centre on the crown
Of a mountain's eminence,
While its wide circumference
In easy drapery falls
Over hamlets, over halls,
Wherever they may be,
O'er the strange woods- o'er the sea,
Over spirits on the wing,
Over every drowsy thing,
And buries them up quite
In a labyrinth of light,
And then, how deep!- O, deep!
Is the passion of their sleep.
In the morning they arise,
And their moony covering
Is soaring in the skies,
With the tempests as they toss,
Like- almost anything,
Or a yellow Albatross.
They use that moon no more
For the same end as before,
Videlicet, a tent,
Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,
Into a shower dissever,
Of which those butterflies
Of Earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again,
(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.