DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Sailing Of The Sword
by William Morris

Across the empty garden-beds,
When the Sword went out to sea,
I scarcely saw my sisters' heads
Bowed each beside a tree.
I could not see the castle leads,
When the Sword went out to sea,
Alicia wore a scarlet gown,
When the Sword went out to sea,
But Ursula's was russet brown:
For the mist we could not see
The scarlet roofs of the good town,
When the Sword went out to sea.
Green holly in Alicia's hand,
When the Sword went out to sea;
With sere oak-leaves did Ursula stand;
O! yet alas for me!
I did but bear a peel'd white wand,
When the Sword went out to sea.
O, russet brown and scarlet bright,
When the Sword went out to sea,
My sisters wore; I wore but white:
Red, brown, and white, are three;
Three damozels; each had a knight,
When the Sword went out to sea.
Sir Robert shouted loud, and said:
When the Sword went out to sea,
Alicia, while I see thy head,
What shall I bring for thee?
O, my sweet Lord, a ruby red:
The Sword went out to sea.
Sir Miles said, while the sails hung down,
When the Sword went out to sea,
O, Ursula! while I see the town,
What shall I bring for thee?
Dear knight, bring back a falcon brown:
The Sword went out to sea.
But my Roland, no word he said
When the Sword went out to sea,
But only turn'd away his head;
A quick shriek came from me:
Come back, dear lord, to your white maid.
The Sword went out to sea.
The hot sun bit the garden-beds
When the Sword came back from sea;
Beneath an apple-tree our heads
Stretched out toward the sea;
Grey gleam'd the thirsty castle-leads,
When the Sword came back from sea.
Lord Robert brought a ruby red,
When the Sword came back from sea;
He kissed Alicia on the head:
I am come back to thee;
'Tis time, sweet love, that we were wed,
Now the Sword is back from sea!
Sir Miles he bore a falcon brown,
When the Sword came back from sea;
His arms went round tall Ursula's gown:
What joy, O love, but thee?
Let us be wed in the good town,
Now the Sword is back from sea!
My heart grew sick, no more afraid,
When the Sword came back from sea;
Upon the deck a tall white maid
Sat on Lord Roland's knee;
His chin was press'd upon her head,
When the Sword came back from sea!
The Falling Of Thrones
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Above the din of commerce, above the clamour and rattle
Of labour disputing with riches, of Anarchists' threats and groans,
Above the hurry and hustle and roar of that bloodless battle,
Where men are fighting for riches, I hear the falling of thrones.
I see no savage host, I hear no martial drumming,
But down in the dust at our feet lie the useless crowns of kings;
And the mighty spirit of Progress is steadily coming, coming,
And the flag of one republic abroad to the world he flings.
The Universal Republic, where worth, not birth, is royal;
Where the lowliest born may climb on a self-made ladder to fame;
Where the highest and proudest born, if he be not true and loyal,
Shall find no masking title to cover and gild his shame.
Not with the bellow of guns and not with sabres whetting,
But with growing minds of men is waged this swordless fray;
While over the dim horizon the sun of royalty, setting,
Lights, with a dying splendour, the humblest toiler's way.
Justice
by Rudyard Kipling

Across a world where all men grieve
And grieving strive the more,
The great days range like tides and leave
Our dead on every shore.
Heavy the load we undergo,
And our own hands prepare,
If we have parley with the foe,
The load our sons must bear.
Before we loose the word
That bids new worlds to birth,
Needs must we loosen first the sword
Of Justice upon earth;
Or else all else is vain
Since life on earth began,
And the spent world sinks back again
Hopeless of God and Man.
A People and their King
Through ancient sin grown strong,
Because they feared no reckoning
Would set no bound to wrong;
But now their hour is past,
And we who bore it find Evil
Incarnate hell at last
To answer to mankind.
For agony and spoil
Of nations beat to dust,
For poisoned air and tortured soil
And cold, commanded lust,
And every secret woe
The shuddering waters saw,
Willed and fulfilled by high and low,
Let them relearn the Law:
That when the dooms are read,
Not high nor low shall say:
"My haughty or my humble head
Has saved me in this day."
That, till the end of time,
Their remnant shall recall
Their fathers' old, confederate crime
Availed them not at all:
That neither schools nor priests,
Nor Kings may build again
A people with the heart of beasts
Made wise concerning men.
Whereby our dead shall sleep
In honour, unbetrayed,
And we in faith and honour keep
That peace for which they paid.
Songs Set To Music: 16. Set By Mr. Smith
by Matthew Prior

Accept, my Love, as true a heart
As ever lover gave;
'Tis free (it vows) from my art,
And proud to be your slave.
Then take it kindly, as 'twas meant,
And let the giver live,
Who with it would the world have sent
Had it been his to give.
And that Dorinda may not fear
I e'er will prove untrue,
My vows shall, ending with the year,
With it begin a new.
Laus Mariae.
by Sidney Lanier

Across the brook of Time man leaping goes
On stepping-stones of epochs, that uprise
Fixed, memorable, midst broad shallow flows
Of neutrals, kill-times, sleeps, indifferencies.
So twixt each morn and night rise salient heaps:
Some cross with but a zigzag, jaded pace
From meal to meal: some with convulsive leaps
Shake the green tussocks of malign disgrace:
And some advance by system and deep art
O'er vantages of wealth, place, learning, tact.
But thou within thyself, dear manifold heart,
Dost bind all epochs in one dainty Fact.
Oh, sweet, my pretty sum of history,
I leapt the breadth of Time in loving thee!
Baltimore, 1874-5.
Arms And The Man. - Pater Patr'.
by James Barron Hope

Achilles came from Homer's Jove-like brain,
Pavilioned 'mid his ships where Thetis trod;
But he whose image dominates this plain
Came from the hand of God!
Yet, of his life, which shall all time adorn
I dare not sing; to try the theme would be
To drink as 'twere that Scandinavian Horn
Whose tip was in the Sea.
I bow my head and go upon my ways,
Who tells that story can but gild the gold - 
Could I pile Alps on Apennines of praise
The tale would not be told.
Not his the blade which lyric fables say
Cleft Pyrenees from ridge to nether bed,
But his the sword which cleared the Sacred Way
For Freedom's feet to tread.
Not Caesar's genius nor Napoleon's skill
Gave him proud mast'ry o'er the trembling earth;
But great in honesty, and sense and will - 
He was the "man of worth."
He knew not North, nor South, nor West, nor East:
Childless himself, Father of States he stood,
Strong and sagacious as a Knight turned Priest,
And vowed to deeds of good.
Compared with all Earth's heroes I may say
He was, with even half his virtues hid,
Greater in what his hand refrained than they
Were great in what they did.
And thus his image dominates all time,
Uplifted like the everlasting dome
Which rises in a miracle sublime
Above eternal Rome.
On Rome's once blooming plain where'er we stray
That dome majestic rises on the view,
Its Cross a-glow with every wandering ray
That shines along the Blue.
So his vast image shadows all the lands,
So holds forever Man's adoring eye,
And o'er the Union which he left it stands
Our Cross against the sky!
In Sark
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Abreast and ahead of the sea is a crag's front cloven asunder
With strong sea-breach and with wasting of winds whence terror is shed
As a shadow of death from the wings of the darkness on waters that thunder
Abreast and ahead.
At its edge is a sepulchre hollowed and hewn for a lone man's bed,
Propped open with rock and agape on the sky and the sea thereunder,
But roofed and walled in well from the wrath of them slept its dead.
Here might not a man drink rapture of rest, or delight above wonder,
Beholding, a soul disembodied, the days and the nights that fled,
With splendour and sound of the tempest around and above him and under,
Abreast and ahead?
Lion, Tiger, And Traveller.
by John Gay

Accept, my Prince, the moral fable,
To youth ingenuous, profitable.
Nobility, like beauty's youth,
May seldom hear the voice of truth;
Or mark and learn the fact betimes
That flattery is the nurse of crimes.
Friendship, which seldom nears a throne,
Is by her voice of censure known.
To one in your exalted station
A courtier is a dedication;
But I dare not to dedicate
My verse e'en unto royal state.
My muse is sacred, and must teach
Truths which they slur in courtly speech.
But I need not to hide the praise,
Or veil the thoughts, a nation pays;
We in your youth and virtues trace
The dawnings of your royal race;
Discern the promptings of your breast,
Discern you succour the distrest,
Discern your strivings to attain
The heights above the lowly plain.
Thence shall Nobility inspire
Your bosom with her holy fire;
Impressing on your spirit all
Her glorious and heroical.
*         *         *         *         *
A tigress prowling for her prey
Assailed a traveller on his way;
A passing lion thought no shame
To rob the tigress of her game.
They fought: he conquered in the strife;
Of him the traveller begged for life.
His life the generous lion gave,
And him invited to his cave.
Arrived, they sat and shared the feast.
The lion spoke: he said, "What beast
Is strong enough to fight with me?
You saw the battle, fair and free.
My vassals fear me on my throne:
These hills and forests are my own.
The lesser tribes of wolf and bear
Regard my royal den with fear;
Their carcases, on either hand,
And bleaching bones now strew the land."
"It is so," said the man, "I saw
What well might baser natures awe;
But shall a monarch, like to you,
Place glory in so base a view?
Robbers invade a neighbour's right,
But Love and Justice have more might.
O mean and sordid are the boasts
Of plundered lands and wasted hosts!
Kings should by love and justice reign,
Nor be like pirates of the main.
Your clemency to me has shown
A virtue worthy of a throne:
If Heaven has made you great and strong,
Use not her gifts to do us wrong."
The lion answered: "It is plain
That I have been abused; my reign
By slaves and sophisters beset.
But tell me, friend, didst ever yet
Attend in human courts? You see,
My courtiers say they rule like me."
The Milkmaid. A New Song To An Old Tune.
by Henry Austin Dobson

Across the grass I see her pass;
She comes with tripping pace,--
A maid I know,--and March winds blow
Her hair across her face;--
With a hey, Dolly! ho, Dolly!
Dolly shall be mine,
Before the spray is white with May,
Or blooms the eglantine.
The March winds blow. I watch her go:
Her eye is brown and clear;
Her cheek is brown, and soft as down,
(To those who see it near!)--
With a hey, Dolly! ho, Dolly!
Dolly shall be mine,
Before the spray is white with May,
Or blooms the eglantine.
What has she not that those have got,--
The dames that walk in silk!
If she undo her 'kerchief blue,
Her neck is white as milk.
With a hey, Dolly! ho, Dolly!
Dolly shall be mine,
Before the spray is white with May,
Or blooms the eglantine.
Let those who will be proud and chill!
For me, from June to June,
My Dolly's words are sweet as curds--
Her laugh is like a tune;--
With a hey, Dolly! ho, Dolly!
Dolly shall be mine,
Before the spray is white with May,
Or blooms the eglantine.
Break, break to hear, O crocus-spear!
O tall Lent-lilies flame!
There'll be a bride at Easter-tide,
And Dolly is her name.
With a hey, Dolly! ho, Dolly!
Dolly shall be mine,
Before the spray is white with May,
Or blooms the eglantine.
The Shepherd To His Love
by Violet Jacob

Abune the hill ae muckle star is burnin',
Sae saft an' still, my dear, sae far awa,
There's ne'er a wind, noo day to nicht is turnin',
To lift the brainches o' the whisperin' shaw;
Aye, Jess, there's nane to see,
There's just the sheep an' me,
And ane's fair wastit when there micht be twa!
Alang the knowes there's no a beast that's movin',
They sheep o' mine lie sleepin' i' the dew;
There's jist ae thing that's wearyin' an' rovin',
An' that's mysel', that wearies, wantin' you.
What ails ye, that ye bide
In-by - an' me ootside
To curse an' daunder a' the gloamin' through?
To haud my tongue an' aye hae patience wi' ye
Is waur nor what a lass like you can guess;
For a' yer pranks I canna but forgi'e ye,
I'fegs! there's naucht can gar me lo'e ye less;
Heaven's i' yer een, an' whiles
There's heaven i' yer smiles,
But oh! ye tak' a deal o' courtin', Jess!
Dickens in Camp
by Bret Harte (Francis)

Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
The river sang below;
The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
Their minarets of snow.
The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted
The ruddy tints of health
On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted
In the fierce race for wealth;
Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure
A hoarded volume drew,
And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure
To hear the tale anew.
And then, while round them shadows gathered faster,
And as the firelight fell,
He read aloud the book wherein the Master
Had writ of 'Little Nell.'
Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy, for the reader
Was youngest of them all,
But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar
A silence seemed to fall;
The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,
Listened in every spray,
While the whole camp with 'Nell' on English meadows
Wandered and lost their way.
And so in mountain solitudes o'ertaken
As by some spell divine
Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken
From out the gusty pine.
Lost is that camp and wasted all its fire;
And he who wrought that spell?
Ah! towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
Ye have one tale to tell!
Lost is that camp, but let its fragrant story
Blend with the breath that thrills
With hop-vine's incense all the pensive glory
That fills the Kentish hills.
And on that grave where English oak and holly
And laurel wreaths entwine,
Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,
This spray of Western pine!
Elevation
by Charles Baudelaire

Above the ponds, beyond the valleys,
The woods, the mountains, the clouds, the seas,
Farther than the sun, the distant breeze,
The spheres that wilt to infinity
My spirit, you move with agility
And, like a good swimmer who swoons in the wave
You groove the depths immensity gave,
The inexpressible and male ecstasy.
>From this miasma of waste,
You will be purified in superior air
And drink a pure and divine liqueur,
A clear fire to replace the limpid space
Behind this boredom and fatigue, this vast chagrin
Whose weight moves the mists of existence,
Happy is he who vigorously fans the senses
Toward serene and luminous fields - wincing!
The one whose thoughts are like skylarks taken wing
Across the heavens mornings in full flight
Who hovers over life, understanding without effort
The language of flowers and mute things.
Absent Of Thee I Languish Still
by John Wilmot

Absent from thee I languish still;
Then ask me not, when I return?
The straying fool 'twill plainly kill
To wish all day, all night to mourn.
Dear! from thine arms then let me fly,
That my fantastic mind may prove
The torments it deserves to try
That tears my fixed heart from my love.
When, wearied with a world of woe,
To thy safe bosom I retire
where love and peace and truth does flow,
May I contented there expire,
Lest, once more wandering from that heaven,
I fall on some base heart unblest,
Faithless to thee, false, unforgiven,
And lose my everlasting rest.
Cloud Thoughts
by Paul Bewsher

Above the clouds I sail, above the clouds,
And wish my mind
Above its clouds could climb as well,
And leave behind
The world and all its crowds,
And ever dwell
In such a calm and limpid solitude
With ne'er a breath unkind or harsh or rude
To break the spell - 
With ne'er a thought to drive away
The golden splendour of the day.
Alone and lost beneath the tranquil blue,
My God! With you!
Written in an Aeroplane.
Adieu, Rydalian Laurels! That Have Grown
by William Wordsworth

Adieu, Rydalian Laurels! that have grown
And spread as if ye knew that days might come
When ye would shelter in a happy home,
On this fair Mount, a Poet of your own,
One who ne'er ventured for a Delphic crown
To sue the God; but, haunting your green shade
All seasons through, is humbly pleased to braid
Ground-flowers, beneath your guardianship, self-sown.
Farewell! no Minstrels now with harp new-strung
For summer wandering quit their household bowers;
Yet not for this wants Poesy a tongue
To cheer the Itinerant on whom she pours
Her spirit, while he crosses lonely moors,
Or musing sits forsaken halls among.
The Doom Of The Esquire Bedell.
by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Adown the torturing mile of street
I mark him come and go,
Thread in and out with tireless feet
The crossings to and fro;
A soul that treads without retreat
A labyrinth of woe.
Palsied with awe of such despair,
All living things give room,
They flit before his sightless glare
As horrid shapes, that loom
And shriek the curse that bids him bear
The symbol of his doom.
The very stones are coals that bake
And scorch his fevered skin;
A fire no hissing hail may slake
Consumes his heart within.
Still must he hasten on to rake
The furnace of his sin.
Still forward! forward!    For he feels
Fierce claws that pluck his breast,
And blindly beckon as he reels
Upon his awful quest:
For there is that behind his heels
Knows neither ruth nor rest.
The fiends in hell have flung the dice;
The destinies depend
On feet that run for fearful price,
And fangs that gape to rend;
And still the footsteps of his Vice
Pursue him to the end:--
The feet of his incarnate Vice
Shall dog him to the end.
Workworn
by Emily Pauline Johnson

Across the street, an humble woman lives;
To her 'tis little fortune ever gives;
Denied the wines of life, it puzzles me
To know how she can laugh so cheerily.
This morn I listened to her softly sing,
And, marvelling what this effect could bring
I looked: 'twas but the presence of a child
Who passed her gate, and looking in, had smiled.
But self-encrusted, I had failed to see
The child had also looked and laughed to me.
My lowly neighbour thought the smile God-sent,
And singing, through the toilsome hours she went.
O! weary singer, I have learned the wrong
Of taking gifts, and giving naught of song;
I thought my blessings scant, my mercies few,
Till I contrasted them with yours, and you;
To-day I counted much, yet wished it more - 
While but a child's bright smile was all your store,
If I had thought of all the stormy days,
That fill some lives that tread less favoured ways,
How little sunshine through their shadows gleamed,
My own dull life had much the brighter seemed;
If I had thought of all the eyes that weep
Through desolation, and still smiling keep,
That see so little pleasure, so much woe,
My own had laughed more often long ago;
If I had thought how leaden was the weight
Adversity lays at my kinsman's gate,
Of that great cross my next door neighbour bears,
My thanks had been more frequent in my prayers;
If I had watched the woman o'er the way,
Workworn and old, who labours day by day,
Who has no rest, no joy to call her own,
My tasks, my heart, had much the lighter grown.
The Ballad Of The Drover
by Henry Lawson

Across the stony ridges,
Across the rolling plain,
Young Harry Dale, the drover,
Comes riding home again.
And well his stock-horse bears him,
And light of heart is he,
And stoutly his old pack-horse
Is trotting by his knee.
Up Queensland way with cattle
He travelled regions vast;
And many months have vanished
Since home-folk saw him last.
He hums a song of someone
He hopes to marry soon;
And hobble-chains and camp-ware
Keep jingling to the tune.
Beyond the hazy dado
Against the lower skies
And yon blue line of ranges
The homestead station lies.
And thitherward the drover
Jogs through the lazy noon,
While hobble-chains and camp-ware
Are jingling to a tune.
An hour has filled the heavens
With storm-clouds inky black;
At times the lightning trickles
Around the drover's track;
But Harry pushes onward,
His horses' strength he tries,
In hope to reach the river
Before the flood shall rise.
The thunder from above him
Goes rolling o'er the plain;
And down on thirsty pastures
In torrents falls the rain.
And every creek and gully
Sends forth its little flood,
Till the river runs a banker,
All stained with yellow mud.
Now Harry speaks to Rover,
The best dog on the plains,
And to his hardy horses,
And strokes their shaggy manes;
'We've breasted bigger rivers
When floods were at their height
Nor shall this gutter stop us
From getting home to-night!'
The thunder growls a warning,
The ghastly lightnings gleam,
As the drover turns his horses
To swim the fatal stream.
But, oh! the flood runs stronger
Than e'er it ran before;
The saddle-horse is failing,
And only half-way o'er!
When flashes next the lightning,
The flood's grey breast is blank,
And a cattle dog and pack-horse
Are struggling up the bank.
But in the lonely homestead
The girl will wait in vain,
He'll never pass the stations
In charge of stock again.
The faithful dog a moment
Sits panting on the bank,
And then swims through the current
To where his master sank.
And round and round in circles
He fights with failing strength,
Till, borne down by the waters,
The old dog sinks at length.
Across the flooded lowlands
And slopes of sodden loam
The pack-horse struggles onward,
To take dumb tidings home.
And mud-stained, wet, and weary,
Through ranges dark goes he;
While hobble-chains and tinware
Are sounding eerily.
.         .         .         .         .
The floods are in the ocean,
The stream is clear again,
And now a verdant carpet
Is stretched across the plain.
But someone's eyes are saddened,
And someone's heart still bleeds
In sorrow for the drover
Who sleeps among the reeds.
Adieu To A Solider
by Walt Whitman

Adieu, O soldier!
You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,)
The rapid march, the life of the camp,
The hot contention of opposing fronts--the long manoeuver,
Red battles with their slaughter,--the stimulus--the strong, terrific game,
Spell of all brave and manly hearts--the trains of Time through you, and like of you, all fill'd,
With war, and war's expression.
Adieu, dear comrade!
Your mission is fulfill'd--but I, more warlike,
Myself, and this contentious soul of mine,
Still on our own campaigning bound,
Through untried roads, with ambushes, opponents lined,
Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis--often baffled,
Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out--aye here,
To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.
An Autumn Walk.
by W. M. MacKeracher

Adown the track that skirts the shallow stream
I wandered with blank mind; a bypath drew
My aimless steps aside, and, ere I knew,
The forest closed around me like a dream.
The gold-strewn sward, the horizontal gleam
Of the low sun, pouring its splendors through
The far-withdrawing vistas, filled the view,
And everlasting beauty was supreme.
I knew not past or future; 'twas a mood
Transcending time and taking in the whole.
I was both young and old; my lost childhood,
Years yet unlived, were gathered round one goal;
And death was there familiar. Long I stood,
And in eternity renewed my soul.
To O-, Of Her Dark Eyes
by Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell

Across what calm of tropic seas,
'Neath alien clusters of the nights,
Looked, in the past, such eyes as these?
Long-quenched, relumed, ancestral lights!
The generations fostered them;
And steadfast Nature, secretwise-
Thou seedling child of that old stem-
Kindled anew thy dark-bright eyes.
Was it a century or two
This lovely darkness rose and set,
Occluded by grey eyes and blue,
And Nature feigning to forget?
Some grandam gave a hint of it-
So cherished was it in thy race,
So fine a treasure to transmit
In its perfection to thy face.
Some father to some mother's breast
Entrusted it, unknowing.    Time
Implied, or made it manifest,
Bequest of a forgotten clime.
Hereditary eyes!    But this
Is single, singular, apart:-
New-made thy love, new-made thy kiss,
New-made thy errand to my heart.