DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
To John Ruskin. (After Reading His "Modern Painters.")
by Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Yes, you do well to mock us, you
Who knew our bitter woe - 
To jeer the false, deny the true
In us blind struggling low,
While, on your pleasant place aloft
With flowers and clouds and streams,
At our black sweat and toil you scoffed
That marred your idle dreams.
"Oh, freedom, what was that to us,"
(You'd shout down to us there),
"Except the freedom foul, vicious,
From all of good and fair?
"Obedience, faith, humility,
To us were empty names." - 
The like to you (might we reply)
Whose noisy life proclaims
Presumption, want of human love,
Impatience, filthy breath, {32}
The snob in soul who looks above,
Trampling on what's beneath.
When did you strive, in nobler part,
With love and gentleness,
To help one soul, to win one heart
To joy and hope and peace?
Go to, vain prophet, without faith
In God who maketh new,
With hankerings for this putrid death,
This Flesh-feast of the Few,
This Social Structure of red mud,
This Edifice of slime,
Whose bricks are bones, whose mortar's blood,
Whose pinnacle is Crime! - 
Go to, for we who strain our power
For light and warmth and scope,
For wives', for children's happier hour,
Can teach you faith and hope.
Hark to the shout of those who cleared
The Missionary Ridge!
Look on those dead who never feared
The battle's bloody bridge!
Watch the stern swarm at that last breach
March up that came not thence - 
And learn Democracy can teach
Divine obedience. {33}
Pass through that South at last brought low
Where loyal freemen live,
And learn Democracy knows how
To utterly forgive.
Come then, and take this free-given bread
Of us who've scarce enough;
Hush your proud lips, bow down your head
And worship human love!
A Two-Years' Idyll
by Thomas Hardy

Yes; such it was;
Just those two seasons unsought,
Sweeping like summertide wind on our ways;
Moving, as straws,
Hearts quick as ours in those days;
Going like wind, too, and rated as nought
Save as the prelude to plays
Soon to come larger, life-fraught:
Yes; such it was.
"Nought" it was called,
Even by ourselves that which springs
Out of the years for all flesh, first or last,
Commonplace, scrawled
Dully on days that go past.
Yet, all the while, it upbore us like wings
Even in hours overcast:
Aye, though this best thing of things,
"Nought" it was called!
What seems it now?
Lost: such beginning was all;
Nothing came after: romance straight forsook
Quickly somehow
Life when we sped from our nook,
Primed for new scenes with designs smart and tall . . .
A preface without any book,
A trumpet uplipped, but no call;
That seems it now.
The Jubilee Of A Magazine
by Thomas Hardy

(To the Editor)
Yes; your up-dated modern page -
All flower-fresh, as it appears -
Can claim a time-tried lineage,
That reaches backward fifty years
(Which, if but short for sleepy squires,
Is much in magazines' careers).
- Here, on your cover, never tires
The sower, reaper, thresher, while
As through the seasons of our sires
Each wills to work in ancient style
With seedlip, sickle, share and flail,
Though modes have since moved many a mile!
The steel-roped plough now rips the vale,
With cog and tooth the sheaves are won,
Wired wheels drum out the wheat like hail;
But if we ask, what has been done
To unify the mortal lot
Since your bright leaves first saw the sun,
Beyond mechanic furtherance what
Advance can rightness, candour, claim?
Truth bends abashed, and answers not.
Despite your volumes' gentle aim
To straighten visions wry and wrong,
Events jar onward much the same!
- Had custom tended to prolong,
As on your golden page engrained,
Old processes of blade and prong,
And best invention been retained
For high crusades to lessen tears
Throughout the race, the world had gained! . . .
But too much, this, for fifty years.
Ash Wednesday
by Alfred Lichtenstein

Yesterday I still went powdered and addicted
Into the many-colored sounding world.
Today everything has long since drowned.
Here is a thing.
There is a thing.
Something seems like this.
Something seems otherwise.
How easily someone blows out
The whole flowering earth.
The sky is cold and blue.
Or the moon is yellow and flat.
A forest has many individual trees.
There's nothing more to cry about.
There's nothing more to scream about.
Where am I -
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part II. - XX - Monastic Voluptuousness
by William Wordsworth

Yet more, round many a Convent's blazing fire
Unhallowed threads of revelry are spun;
There Venus sits disguised like a Nun,
While Bacchus, clothed in semblance of a Friar,
Pours out his choicest beverage high and higher
Sparkling, until it cannot choose but run
Over the bowl, whose silver lip hath won
An instant kiss of masterful desire
To stay the precious waste. Through every brain
The domination of the sprightly juice
Spreads high conceits to madding Fancy dear,
Till the arched roof, with resolute abuse
Of its grave echoes, swells a choral strain,
Whose votive burthen is, "Our Kingdom's Here!"
Sock It To 'Em
by Thomas O'Hagan

"A Canadian lieutenant writes his mother from the front that what he most needs for the winter is good warm socks." - Press Despatch.
Yes, Wilhelm, sure you'll get it,
The storm is o'er your head;
It is bursting in the trenches
And you're just as good as dead.
You put your foot on Belgium
And defied your fate and doom,
And now the whole world hates you
And the cry is "Sock it to 'em!"
True, your Taubchens still are sailing,
But your battleships are not;
They are coop'd up in a corner
Save the submerg'd ones that fought.
You are saving time and fuel,
But you're sad and filled with gloom,
For the very winds are whispering
"Blow hard and sock it to 'em."
You have sought more spacious realm
In the free and genial sun:
Has your sceptre widened any
With the salvo of each gun?
Your "World-Power" seems to narrow,
And your hope lies in a tomb,
While dark Fate weaves your chaplet
And whispers "Sock it to 'em!"
For Theodore Botrel.
Sonnets: Idea LIV
by Michael Drayton

Yet read at last the story of my woe,
The dreary abstracts of my endless cares,
With my life's sorrow interlin'd so,
Smoked with my sighs, and blotted with my tears,
The sad memorials of my miseries,
Penned in the grief of mine afflicted ghost,
My life's complaint in doleful elegies,
With so pure love as time could never boast.
Receive the incense which I offer here,
By my strong faith ascending to thy fame,
My zeal, my hope, my vows, my praise, my prayer,
My soul's oblations to thy sacred name;
Which name my Muse to highest heavens shall raise,
By chaste desire, true love, and virtuous praise.
Epitaph XIII. On Dr Francis Atterbury,[1] Bishop Of Rochester, Who Died In Exile At Paris, 1732.
by Alexander Pope

SHE.
Yes, we have lived--one pang, and then we part!
May Heaven, dear father! now have all thy heart.
Yet ah! how once we loved, remember still,
Till you are dust like me.
HE.
Dear shade! I will:
Then mix this dust with thine--O spotless ghost!
O more than fortune, friends, or country lost!
Is there on earth one care, one wish beside?
Yes--Save my country, Heaven!
--He said, and died.
Yet At The Last
by Rudyard Kipling

Yet at the last, ere our spearmen had found him,
Yet at the last, ere a sword-thrust could save,
Yet at the last, with his masters around him,
He spoke of the Faith as a master to slave.
Yet at the last, though the Kafirs had maimed him,
Broken by bondage and wrecked by the river,
Yet at the last, tho' the darkness had claimed him,
He called upon Allah, and died a Believer!
Rake-Hell Muses
by Thomas Hardy

Yes; since she knows not need,
Nor walks in blindness,
I may without unkindness
A true thing tell:
Which would be truth, indeed,
Though worse in speaking,
Were her poor footsteps seeking
A pauper's cell.
I judge, then, better far
She now have sorrow,
Than gladness that to-morrow
Might know its knell. -
It may be men there are
Could make of union
A lifelong sweet communion -
A passioned spell;
But I, to save her name
And bring salvation
By altar-affirmation
And bridal bell;
I, by whose rash unshame
These tears come to her:-
My faith would more undo her
Than my farewell!
Chained to me, year by year
My moody madness
Would wither her old gladness
Like famine fell.
She'll take the ill that's near,
And bear the blaming.
'Twill pass. Full soon her shaming
They'll cease to yell.
Our unborn, first her moan,
Will grow her guerdon,
Until from blot and burden
A joyance swell;
In that therein she'll own
My good part wholly,
My evil staining solely
My own vile vell.
Of the disgrace, may be
"He shunned to share it,
Being false," they'll say. I'll bear it;
Time will dispel
The calumny, and prove
This much about me,
That she lives best without me
Who would live well.
That, this once, not self-love
But good intention
Pleads that against convention
We two rebel.
For, is one moonlight dance,
One midnight passion,
A rock whereon to fashion
Life's citadel?
Prove they their power to prance
Life's miles together
From upper slope to nether
Who trip an ell?
- Years hence, or now apace,
May tongues be calling
News of my further falling
Sinward pell-mell:
Then this great good will grace
Our lives' division,
She's saved from more misprision
Though I plumb hell.
Odes Of Anacreon - Ode XXIX.
by Thomas Moore

Yes--loving is a painful thrill,
And not to love more painful still
But oh, it is the worst of pain,
To love and not be loved again!
Affection now has fled from earth,
Nor fire of genius, noble birth,
Nor heavenly virtue, can beguile,
From beauty's cheek one favoring smile.
Gold is the woman's only theme,
Gold is the woman's only dream.
Oh! never be that wretch forgiven--
Forgive him not, indignant heaven!
Whose grovelling eyes could first adore,
Whose heart could pant for sordid ore.
Since that devoted thirst began,
Man has forgot to feel for man;
The pulse of social life is dead,
And all its fonder feelings fled!
War too has sullied Nature's charms,
For gold provokes the world to arms;
And oh! the worst of all its arts,
It renders asunder loving hearts.
Yesterday And To-Morrow
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Yesterday I held your hand,
Reverently I pressed it,
And its gentle yieldingness
From my soul I blessed it.
But to-day I sit alone,
Sad and sore repining;
Must our gold forever know
Flames for the refining?
Yesterday I walked with you,
Could a day be sweeter?
Life was all a lyric song
Set to tricksy meter.
Ah, to-day is like a dirge,--
Place my arms around you,
Let me feel the same dear joy
As when first I found you.
Let me once retrace my steps,
From these roads unpleasant,
Let my heart and mind and soul
All ignore the present.
Yesterday the iron seared
And to-day means sorrow.
Pause, my soul, arise, arise,
Look where gleams the morrow.
The Swiss Alps.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Yesterday brown was still thy head, as the locks of my loved one,
Whose sweet image so dear silently beckons afar.
Silver-grey is the early snow to-day on thy summit,
Through the tempestuous night streaming fast over thy brow.
Youth, alas, throughout life as closely to age is united
As, in some changeable dream, yesterday blends with to-day.
Uri, October 7th, 1797.
The Divinity
by Matthew Arnold

'Yes, write it in the rock!' Saint Bernard said,
'Grave it on brass with adamantine pen!
''Tis God himself becomes apparent, when
'God's wisdom and God's goodness are display'd,
'For God of these his attributes is made.'
Well spake the impetuous Saint, and bore of men
The suffrage captive; now, not one in ten
Recalls the obscure opposer he outweigh'd.
God's wisdom and God's goodness! Ay, but fools
Mis-define these till God knows them no more.
Wisdom and goodness, they are God! what schools
Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore?
This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules;
'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore.
To - .
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Yet look on me - take not thine eyes away,
Which feed upon the love within mine own,
Which is indeed but the reflected ray
Of thine own beauty from my spirit thrown.
Yet speak to me - thy voice is as the tone
Of my heart's echo, and I think I hear
That thou yet lovest me; yet thou alone
Like one before a mirror, without care
Of aught but thine own features, imaged there;
And yet I wear out life in watching thee;
A toil so sweet at times, and thou indeed
Art kind when I am sick, and pity me...
Choose You This Day Whom Ye Will Serve
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Yes, tyrants, you hate us, and fear while you hate
The self-ruling, chain-breaking, throne-shaking State!
The night-birds dread morning, - your instinct is true, - 
The day-star of Freedom brings midnight for you!
Why plead with the deaf for the cause of mankind?
The owl hoots at noon that the eagle is blind!
We ask not your reasons, - 't were wasting our time, - 
Our life is a menace, our welfare a crime!
We have battles to fight, we have foes to subdue, - 
Time waits not for us, and we wait not for you!
The mower mows on, though the adder may writhe
And the copper-head coil round the blade of his scythe!
"No sides in this quarrel," your statesmen may urge,
Of school-house and wages with slave-pen scourge! - 
No sides in the quarrel! proclaim it as well
To the angels that fight with the legions of hell!
They kneel in God's temple, the North and the South,
With blood on each weapon and prayers in each mouth.
Whose cry shall be answered? Ye Heavens, attend
The lords of the lash as their voices ascend!
"O Lord, we are shaped in the image of Thee, - 
Smite down the base millions that claim to be free,
And lend thy strong arm to the soft-handed race
Who eat not their bread in the sweat of their face!"
So pleads the proud planter. What echoes are these?
The bay of his bloodhound is borne on the breeze,
And, lost in the shriek of his victim's despair,
His voice dies unheard. - Hear the Puritan's prayer!
"O Lord, that didst smother mankind in thy flood,
The sun is as sackcloth, the moon is as blood,
The stars fall to earth as untimely are cast
The figs from the fig-tree that shakes in the blast!
"All nations, all tribes in whose nostrils is breath
Stand gazing at Sin as she travails with Death!
Lord, strangle the monster that struggles to birth,
Or mock us no more with thy 'Kingdom on Earth!'
"If Ammon and Moab must reign in the land
Thou gavest thine Israel, fresh from thy hand,
Call Baal and Ashtaroth out of their graves
To be the new gods for the empire of slaves!"
Whose God will ye serve, O ye rulers of men?
Will ye build you new shrines in the slave-breeder's den?
Or bow with the children of light, as they call
On the Judge of the Earth and the Father of All?
Choose wisely, choose quickly, for time moves apace, - 
Each day is an age in the life of our race!
Lord, lead them in love, ere they hasten in fear
From the fast-rising flood that shall girdle the sphere!
Puss In The Corner.
by Lizzie Lawson

"You are a naughty pussy-cat,
I think it right to mention that,
To all who see your picture here,
'Twas you who broke my Bunny dear.
An hour ago, as you can tell,
I left him here, alive and well;
And now he's dead and, what is more,
You've broke his leg I'm pretty sure.
For you my puss I'll never care,
No never, never, never, there,
And you are in disgrace you know,
And in the corner you must go.
What crying? Then I must cry too
And I can't bear to punish you;
Perhaps my Bunny isn't dead,
Perhaps you've only stunned his head.
And though I'm sure you broke his leg,
It may be mended with a peg,
And though he's very, very, funny,
My Bunny's not a real Bunny,
And I'll forgive and tell you that,
You're my own precious pussy cat."
Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours
by Walt Whitman

Yet, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also;
Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles!
Earth to a chamber of mourning turns, I hear the o'erweening, mocking voice,
Matter is conqueror, matter, triumphant only, continues onward.
Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me,
The call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarm'd, uncertain,
The Sea I am quickly to sail, come tell me,
Come tell me where I am speeding, tell me my destination.
I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you,
I approach, hear, behold, the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes, your mute inquiry,
Whither I go from the bed I recline on, come tell me:
Old age, alarm'd, uncertain, A young woman's voice, appealing to me for comfort;
A young man's voice, Shall I not escape?
The Man Of The Nation.
by Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Yonder the band is playing
And the fine young people walk.
They are envying each other and talking
Their pretty empty talk.
There, in the shade on the outskirts,
Stretched on the grass, I see
A man with a slouch hat, smoking.
That is the man for me!
That is the Man of the Nation;
He works and much endures.
When all the rest is rotten,
He rises and cuts and cures.
He's the soldier of the Crimea,
Fighting to honour fools;
He's the grappler and strangler of Lee
Lord of the terrible tools.
He's in all the conquered nations
That have won their own at last,
And in all that yet shall win it.
And the world by him goes past!
O strong sly world, this nameless
Still, much-enduring Man,
Is the hand of God that shall clutch you
For all you have done, or can!
Conversation
by Charles Baudelaire

You are a pink and lovely autumn sky!
But sadness in me rises like the sea,
And leaves in ebbing only bitter clay
On my sad lip, the smart of memory.
Your hand slides up my fainting breast at will;
But, love, it only finds a ravaged pit
Pillaged by woman's savage tooth and nail.
My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it.
It is a palace sullied by the rout;
They drink, they pull each others hair, they kill!
A perfume swims around your naked throat! ...
O Beauty, scourge of souls, you want it still!
You with hot eyes that flash in fiery feasts,
Burn up these meagre scraps spared by the beasts!
Uhland's "Chapel"
by Eugene Field

Yonder stands the hillside chapel
Mid the evergreens and rocks,
All day long it hears the song
Of the shepherd to his flocks.
Then the chapel bell goes tolling--
Knelling for a soul that's sped;
Silent and sad the shepherd lad
Hears the requiem for the dead.
Shepherd, singers of the valley,
Voiceless now, speed on before;
Soon shall knell that chapel bell
For the songs you'll sing no more.
Extract. From A Prologue Written And Spoken By The Author, At The Opening Of The Kilkenny Theatre, October, 1809.
by Thomas Moore

Yet, even here, tho' Fiction rules the hour,
There shine some genuine smiles, beyond her power;
And there are tears, too--tears that Memory sheds
Even o'er the feast that mimic fancy spreads,
When her heart misses one lamented guest,[1]
Whose eye so long threw light o'er all the rest!
There, there, indeed, the Muse forgets her task,
And drooping weeps behind Thalia's mask.
Forgive this gloom--forgive this joyless strain,
Too sad to welcome pleasure's smiling train.
But, meeting thus, our hearts will part the lighter,
As mist at dawn but makes the setting brighter;
Gay Epilogue will shine where Prologue fails--
As glow-worms keep their splendor for their tails.
I know not why--but time, methinks, hath past
More fleet than usual since we parted last.
It seems but like a dream of yesternight.
Whose charm still hangs, with fond, delaying light;
And, ere the memory lose one glowing hue
Of former joy, we come to kindle new.
Thus ever may the flying moments haste
With trackless foot along life's vulgar waste,
But deeply print and lingeringly move,
When thus they reach the sunny spots we love.
Oh yes, whatever be our gay career,
Let this be still the solstice of the year,
Where Pleasure's sun shall at its height remain,
And slowly sink to level life again.
To Laura In Death. Sonnet XLIII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Quel rosignuol che s' soave piagne.
THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE REMINDS HIM OF HIS UNHAPPY LOT.
Yon nightingale, whose bursts of thrilling tone,
Pour'd in soft sorrow from her tuneful throat,
Haply her mate or infant brood bemoan,
Filling the fields and skies with pity's note;
Here lingering till the long long night is gone,
Awakes the memory of my cruel lot--
But I my wretched self must wail alone:
Fool, who secure from death an angel thought!
O easy duped, who thus on hope relies!
Who would have deem'd the darkness, which appears,
From orbs more brilliant than the sun should rise?
Now know I, made by sad experience wise,
That Fate would teach me by a life of tears,
On wings how fleeting fast all earthly rapture flies!
WRANGHAM.
Yon nightingale, whose strain so sweetly flows,
Mourning her ravish'd young or much-loved mate,
A soothing charm o'er all the valleys throws
And skies, with notes well tuned to her sad state:
And all the night she seems my kindred woes
With me to weep and on my sorrows wait;
Sorrows that from my own fond fancy rose,
Who deem'd a goddess could not yield to fate.
How easy to deceive who sleeps secure!
Who could have thought that to dull earth would turn
Those eyes that as the sun shone bright and pure?
Ah! now what Fortune wills I see full sure:
That loathing life, yet living I should see
How few its joys, how little they endure!
ANON., OX., 1795.
That nightingale, who now melodious mourns
Perhaps his children or his consort dear,
The heavens with sweetness fills; the distant bourns
Resound his notes, so piteous and so clear;
With me all night he weeps, and seems by turns
To upbraid me with my fault and fortune drear,
Whose fond and foolish heart, where grief sojourns,
A goddess deem'd exempt from mortal fear.
Security, how easy to betray!
The radiance of those eyes who could have thought
Should e'er become a senseless clod of clay?
Living, and weeping, late I've learn'd to say
That here below--Oh, knowledge dearly bought!--
Whate'er delights will scarcely last a day!
CHARLEMONT.
The Baffled Knight
by Frank Sidgwick

The Text is from Ravenscroft's Deuteromelia (1609), reprinted almost verbatim in Tom Durfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy.
The Story was sufficiently popular not only to have been revived, at the end of the seventeenth century, but to have had three other 'Parts' added to it, the whole four afterwards being combined into one broadside.
In similar Spanish, Portuguese, and French ballads, the damsel escapes by saying she is a leper, or the daughter of a leper, or otherwise diseased. Much the same story is told in Danish and German ballads.
THE BAFFLED KNIGHT
1.
Yonder comes a courteous knight,
Lustely raking over the lay;
He was well ware of a bonny lasse,
As she came wand'ring over the way.
Then she sang downe a downe, hey downe derry     (bis)
2.
'Jove you speed, fayre ladye,' he said,
'Among the leaves that be so greene;
If I were a king, and wore a crowne,
Full soone, fair lady, shouldst thou be a queen.
3.
'Also Jove save you, faire lady,
Among the roses that be so red;
If I have not my will of you,
Full soone, faire lady, shall I be dead.'
4.
Then he lookt east, then hee lookt west,
Hee lookt north, so did he south;
He could not finde a privy place,
For all lay in the divel's mouth.
5.
'If you will carry me, gentle sir,
A mayde unto my father's hall,
Then you shall have your will of me,
Under purple and under paule.'
6.
He set her up upon a steed,
And him selfe upon another,
And all the day he rode her by,
As though they had been sister and brother.
7.
When she came to her father's hall,
It was well walled round about;
She yode in at the wicket-gate,
And shut the foure-ear'd foole without.
8.
'You had me,' quoth she, 'abroad in the field,
Among the corne, amidst the hay,
Where you might had your will of mee,
For, in good faith, sir, I never said nay.
9.
'Ye had me also amid the field,
Among the rushes that were so browne,
Where you might had your will of me,
But you had not the face to lay me downe.'
10.
He pulled out his nut-browne sword,
And wipt the rust off with his sleeve,
And said, 'Jove's curse come to his heart,
That any woman would beleeve!'
11.
When you have your own true-love
A mile or twaine out of the towne,
Spare not for her gay clothing,
But lay her body flat on the ground.