DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Charge Of The Heavy Brigade At Balaclava
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

I
The charge of the gallant three hundred, the Heavy
Brigade
Down the hill, down the hill, thousands of Russians,
Thousands of horsemen, drew to the valley ? and
stayed;
For Scarlett and Scarlett's three hundred were riding by
When the points of the Russian lances arose in the sky;
And he called ?Left wheel into line!? and they wheeled
and obeyed.
Then he looked at the host that had halted he knew
not why,
And he turned half round and he bad his trumpeter
sound
To the charge, and he rode on ahead, as he waved
his blade
To the gallant three hundred those glory will never
fade?
?Follow,? and up the hill, up the hill, up the hill,
Followed the Heavy Brigade.
II
The trumpet, the gallop, the charge, and the might
of the fight!
Thousands of horsemen had gathered there on the
height,
With a wing pushed out to the left, and a wing to the
right,
And who shall escape if they close? but he dashed up
alone
Through the great gray slope of men,
Swayed his sabre, and held his own
Like an Englishman there and then;
All in a moment followed with force
Three that were next in their fiery course,
Fought for their lives in the narrow gap they had made?
Four amid thousands! and up the hill, up the hill,
Galloped the gallant three hundred, the Heavy Brigade.
III
Fell like a cannonshot,
Burst like a thunderbolt,
Crashed like a hurricane .
Broke through the mass from below,
Drove through the midst of the foe,
Plunged up and down, to and foe
Rode flashing blow upon blow,
Brave Inniskillens and Greys
Whirling their sabres in circles of light!
And some of us, all in amaze,
Who were held for a while from the fight,
And were only standing at gaze,
When the dark-muffled Russian crowd
Folded its wings from the left and the right,
And rolled them around like a cloud,?
O mad for the charge and the battle were we,
When our own good redcoats sank from sight,
Like drops of blood in a dark-gray sea,
And we turned to each other, whispering, whispering,
all dismayed,
?Lost are the gallant three hundred of Scarlett?s
Brigade!?
IV
?Lost one and all? were the words
Muttered in our dismay;
But they rode like Victors and Lords
Through the forest of lances and swords
In the heart of the Russian hordes,
They rode or they stood at bay?
Struck with the sword-hand and slew,
Down with the bridle-hand drew
The foe from the saddle and threw
Underfoot there in the fray?
Ranged like a storm or stood like a rock
In the wave of a stormy day;
Till suddenly shock upon shock
Staggered the mass from without,
Drove it in wild disarray,
For our men gallopt up with a cheer and a shout,
And the foeman surged, and wavered, and reeled
Up the hill, up the hill, up the hill, out of the field,
And over the brow and away.
V
Glory to each and to all, and the charge that they made!
Glory to all the three hundred, and to all the Brigade!
To William Theodore Peters On His Renaissance Cloak
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

The cherry-coloured velvet of your cloak
Time hath not soiled: its fair embroideries
Gleam as when centuries ago they spoke
To what bright gallant of Her Daintiness,
Whose slender fingers, long since dust and dead,
For love or courtesy embroidered
The cherry-coloured velvet of this cloak.
Ah! cunning flowers of silk and silver thread,
That mock mortality? the broidering dame,
The page they decked, the kings and courts are dead:
Gone the age beautiful; Lorenzo's name,
The Borgia's pride are but an empty sound;
But lustrous still upon their velvet ground,
Time spares these flowers of silk and silver thread.
Gone is that age of pageant and of pride:
Yet don your cloak, and haply it shall seem,
The curtain of old time is set aside;
As through the sadder coloured throng you gleam;
We see once more fair dame and gallant gay,
The glamour and the grace of yesterday:
The elder, brighter age of pomp and pride.
Cradle-Song At Twilight
by Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell

The child not yet is lulled to rest.
Too young a nurse, the slender Night
So laxly holds him to her breast
That throbs with flight.
He plays with her and will not sleep.
For other playfellows she sighs;
An unmaternal fondness keep
Her alien eyes.
From The Bush
by Henry Lawson

The Channel fog has lifted,
And see where we have come!
Round all the world we've drifted,
A hundred years from "home".
The fields our parents longed for,
Ah! we shall ne'er know how,
The wealth that they were wronged for
We'll see as strangers now!
The Dover cliffs have passed on,
In the morning light aglow,
That our fathers looked their last on
A weary time ago.
Now grin, and grin your bravest!
We need be strong to fight;
For you go home to picture
And I go home to write.
Hold up your head in England,
Tread firm on London streets;
We come from where the strong heart
Of all Australia beats!
Hold up your head in England
However poor you roam!
For no men are your betters
Who never sailed from home!
From a hundred years of hardships,
'Tis ours to tell the cost,
From a thousand miles of silence
Where London would be lost;
From where the glorious sunset
On sweeps of mulga glows,
Ah! we know more than England,
And more than Europe knows!
Hold up your head in London,
However poor you come,
For no man is your better
Who never sailed from home!
Our "home" and foreign fathers,
Where none but men dared go,
Have done more for the White Man
Than England e'er shall know!
The Song Of Australia
by Henry Lawson

The centuries found me to nations unknown,
My people have crowned me and made me a throne;
My royal regalia is love, truth, and light,
A girl called Australia, I've come to my right.
Though no fields of conquest grew red at my birth,
My dead were the noblest and bravest on earth;
Their strong sons are worthy to stand with the best,
My brave Overlanders ride west of the west.
My cities are seeking the clean and the right;
My Statesmen are speaking in London to-night;
The voice of my Bushmen is heard oversea;
My army and navy are coming to me.
By all my grim headlands my flag is unfurled,
My artists and singers are charming the world;
The White world shall know its young outpost with pride;
The fame of my poets goes ever more wide.
By old tow'r and steeple of nation grown grey
The name of my people is spreading to-day;
Through all the old nations my learners go forth;
My youthful inventors are startling the north.
In spite of all Asia, and safe from her yet,
Through wide Australasia my standards I'll set;
A grand world and bright world to rise in an hour,
The Wings of the White world, the Balance of Power.
Through storm, or serenely, whate'er I go through,
God grant I be queenly! God grant I be true!
To suffer in silence, and strike at a sign,
Till all the fair islands of these seas are mine.
Infantile Influence.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Lorsque l'enfant parait.")
[XIX., May 11, 1830.]
The child comes toddling in, and young and old
With smiling eyes its smiling eyes behold,
And artless, babyish joy;
A playful welcome greets it through the room,
The saddest brow unfolds its wrinkled gloom,
To greet the happy boy.
If June with flowers has spangled all the ground,
Or winter bleak the flickering hearth around
Draws close the circling seat;
The child still sheds a never-failing light;
We call; Mamma with mingled joy and fright
Watches its tottering feet.
Perhaps at eve as round the fire we draw,
We speak of heaven, or poetry, or law,
Or politics, or prayer;
The child comes in, 'tis now all smiles and play,
Farewell to grave discourse and poet's lay,
Philosophy and care.
When fancy wakes, but sense in heaviest sleep
Lies steeped, and like the sobs of them that weep
The dark stream sinks and swells,
The dawn, like Pharos gleaming o'er the sea,
Bursts forth, and sudden wakes the minstrelsy
Of birds and chiming bells;
Thou art my dawn; my soul is as the field,
Where sweetest flowers their balmy perfumes yield
When breathed upon by thee,
Of forest, where thy voice like zephyr plays,
And morn pours out its flood of golden rays,
When thy sweet smile I see.
Oh, sweetest eyes, like founts of liquid blue;
And little hands that evil never knew,
Pure as the new-formed snow;
Thy feet are still unstained by this world's mire,
Thy golden locks like aureole of fire
Circle thy cherub brow!
Dove of our ark, thine angel spirit flies
On azure wings forth from thy beaming eyes.
Though weak thine infant feet,
What strange amaze this new and strange world gives
To thy sweet virgin soul, that spotless lives
In virgin body sweet.
Oh, gentle face, radiant with happy smile,
And eager prattling tongue that knows no guile,
Quick changing tears and bliss;
Thy soul expands to catch this new world's light,
Thy mazed eyes to drink each wondrous sight,
Thy lips to taste the kiss.
Oh, God! bless me and mine, and these I love,
And e'en my foes that still triumphant prove
Victors by force or guile;
A flowerless summer may we never see,
Or nest of bird bereft, or hive of bee,
Or home of infant's smile.
HENRY HIGHTON, M.A.
Travels By The Fireside
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The ceaseless rain is falling fast,
And yonder gilded vane,
Immovable for three days past,
Points to the misty main,
It drives me in upon myself
And to the fireside gleams,
To pleasant books that crowd my shelf,
And still more pleasant dreams,
I read whatever bards have sung
Of lands beyond the sea,
And the bright days when I was young
Come thronging back to me.
In fancy I can hear again
The Alpine torrent's roar,
The mule-bells on the hills of Spain,
The sea at Elsinore.
I see the convent's gleaming wall
Rise from its groves of pine,
And towers of old cathedrals tall,
And castles by the Rhine.
I journey on by park and spire,
Beneath centennial trees,
Through fields with poppies all on fire,
And gleams of distant seas.
I fear no more the dust and heat,
No more I feel fatigue,
While journeying with another's feet
O'er many a lengthening league.
Let others traverse sea and land,
And toil through various climes,
I turn the world round with my hand
Reading these poets' rhymes.
From them I learn whatever lies
Beneath each changing zone,
And see, when looking with their eyes,
Better than with mine own.
The Cat And The Fox.
by Jean de La Fontaine

The cat and fox, when saints were all the rage,
Together went on pilgrimage.
Arch hypocrites and swindlers, they,
By sleight of face and sleight of paw,
Regardless both of right and law,
Contrived expenses to repay,
By eating many a fowl and cheese,
And other tricks as bad as these.
Disputing served them to beguile
The road of many a weary mile.
Disputing! but for this resort,
The world would go to sleep, in short.
Our pilgrims, as a thing of course,
Disputed till their throats were hoarse.
Then, dropping to a lower tone,
They talk'd of this, and talk'd of that,
Till Renard whisper'd to the cat,
'You think yourself a knowing one:
How many cunning tricks have you?
For I've a hundred, old and new,
All ready in my haversack.'
The cat replied, 'I do not lack,
Though with but one provided;
And, truth to honour, for that matter,
I hold it than a thousand better.'
In fresh dispute they sided;
And loudly were they at it, when
Approach'd a mob of dogs and men.
'Now,' said the cat, 'your tricks ransack,
And put your cunning brains to rack,
One life to save; I'll show you mine - 
A trick, you see, for saving nine.'
With that, she climb'd a lofty pine.
The fox his hundred ruses tried,
And yet no safety found.
A hundred times he falsified
The nose of every hound. - 
Was here, and there, and everywhere,
Above, and under ground;
But yet to stop he did not dare,
Pent in a hole, it was no joke,
To meet the terriers or the smoke.
So, leaping into upper air,
He met two dogs, that choked him there.
Expedients may be too many,
Consuming time to choose and try.
On one, but that as good as any,
'Tis best in danger to rely.
Earth Folk
by Walter De La Mare

The cat she walks on padded claws,
The wolf on the hills lays stealthy paws,
Feathered birds in the rain-sweet sky
At their ease in the air, flit low, flit high.
The oak's blind, tender roots pierce deep,
His green crest towers, dimmed in sleep,
Under the stars whose thrones are set
Where never prince hath journeyed yet.
Fancies.
by Emma Lazarus

The ceaseless whirr of crickets fills the ear
From underneath each hedge and bush and tree,
Deep in the dew-drenched grasses everywhere.
The simple sound dispels the fantasy
Of gloom and terror gathering round the mind.
It seems a pleasant thing to breathe, to be,
To hear the many-voiced, soft summer wind
Lisp through the dark thick leafage overhead - 
To see the rosy half-moon soar behind
The black slim-branching elms.    Sad thoughts have fled,
Trouble and doubt, and now strange reveries
And odd caprices fill us in their stead.
From yonder broken disk the redness dies,
Like gold fruit through the leaves the half-sphere gleams,
Then over the hoar tree-tops climbs the skies,
Blanched ever more and more, until it beams
Whiter than crystal.    Like a scroll unfurled,
And shadowy as a landscape seen in dreams,
Reveals itself the sleeping, quiet world,
Painted in tender grays and whites subdued - 
The speckled stream with flakes of light impearled,
The wide, soft meadow and the massive wood.
Naught is too wild for our credulity
In this weird hour: our finest dreams hold good.
Quaint elves and frolic flower-sprites we see,
And fairies weaving rings of gossamer,
And angels floating through the filmy air.
A Child-World
by James Whitcomb Riley

The Child-World - long and long since lost to view - 
A Fairy Paradise! - 
How always fair it was and fresh and new - 
How every affluent hour heaped heart and eyes
With treasures of surprise!
Enchantments tangible: The under-brink
Of dawns that launched the sight
Up seas of gold: The dewdrop on the pink,
With all the green earth in it and blue height
Of heavens infinite:
The liquid, dripping songs of orchard-birds - 
The wee bass of the bees, - 
With lucent deeps of silence afterwards;
The gay, clandestine whisperings of the breeze
And glad leaves of the trees.
*             *             *             *             *
O Child-World: After this world - just as when
I found you first sufficed
My soulmost need - if I found you again,
With all my childish dream so realised,
I should not be surprised.
Nursery Rhyme. CCCCXCVIII. Natural History.
by Unknown

The cat sat asleep by the side of the fire,
The mistress snored loud as a pig:
Jack took up his fiddle, by Jenny's desire,
And struck up a bit of a jig.
The Change Has Come
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The change has come, and Helen sleeps--
Not sleeps; but wakes to greater deeps
Of wisdom, glory, truth, and light,
Than ever blessed her seeking sight,
In this low, long, lethargic night,
Worn out with strife
Which men call life.
The change has come, and who would say
"I would it were not come to-day"?
What were the respite till to-morrow?
Postponement of a certain sorrow,
From which each passing day would borrow!
Let grief be dumb,
The change has come.
By the Sea
by Henry Kendall

The caves of the sea have been troubled to-day
With the water which whitens, and widens, and fills;
And a boat with our brother was driven away
By a wind that came down from the tops of the hills.
Behold I have seen on the threshold again
A face in a dazzle of hair!
Do you know that she watches the rain, and the main,
And the waves which are moaning there?
Ah, moaning and moaning there!
Now turn from your casements, and fasten your doors,
And cover your faces, and pray, if you can;
There are wails in the wind, there are sighs on the shores,
And alas, for the fate of a storm-beaten man!
Oh, dark falls the night on the rain-rutted verge,
So sad with the sound of the foam!
Oh, wild is the sweep and the swirl of the surge;
And his boat may never come home!
Ah, never and never come home!
Fragment
by John Clare

The cataract, whirling down the precipice,
Elbows down rocks and, shouldering, thunders through.
Roars, howls, and stifled murmurs never cease;
Hell and its agonies seem hid below.
Thick rolls the mist, that smokes and falls in dew;
The trees and greenwood wear the deepest green.
Horrible mysteries in the gulph stare through,
Roars of a million tongues, and none knows what they mean.
War-Baby
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

The Child like mustard-seed
Rolls out of the husk of death
Into the woman's fertile, fathomless lap.
Look, it has taken root!
See how it flourisheth.
See how it rises with magical, rosy sap!
As for our faith, it was there
When we did not know, did not care;
It fell from our husk like a little, hasty seed.
Sing, it is all we need.
Sing, for the little weed
Will flourish its branches in heaven when we slumber beneath.
The Cat And The Fox (Prose Fable)
by Jean de La Fontaine

The cat and the fox, in the manner of good little saints, started out upon a pilgrimage. They were both humbugs, arch-hypocrites, two downright highwaymen, who for the expenses of their journey indemnified themselves by seeing who could devour the most fowls and gobble the most cheese.
The way was long and therefore wearisome, so they shortened it by arguing. Argumentation is a great help. Without it one would go to sleep. Our pilgrims shouted themselves hoarse. Then having argued themselves out, they talked of other things.
At length the fox said to the cat, "You pretend that you're very clever. Do you know as much as I? I have a hundred ruses up my sleeve."
"No," answered the cat, "I have but one; but that is always ready to hand, and I maintain that it is worth a thousand other dodges."
Then they fell again to disputing one against the other on each side of the question, the whys and the wherefores, raising their voices higher and higher. Presently the sudden appearance of a pack of hounds stopped their noise.
The cat said to the fox, "Now, my friend, ransack that cunning brain of yours for one of your thousand ruses. Fetch down from your sleeve one of those certain stratagems. As for me, this is my dodge." So saying, he bounded to a tall tree and climbed to its top with alacrity.
The fox tried a hundred futile doublings; ran into a hundred holes; put the hounds at fault a hundred times; tried everywhere to find a safe place of retreat, but everywhere failed between being smoked out of one and driven out of another by the hounds. Finally, as he came out of a hole two nimble dogs set upon him and strangled him at the first grip.
Too many expedients may spoil the business. One loses time in choosing between them and in trying too many. Have only one; but let it be a good one.
Places Where Mortals Dine.
by Horatio Alger, Jr.

The case, too, was urgent, for there stood a sinner,
Whose fate hung on chance--a chance for his dinner;
A chance for all mortals, with truth I assert,
Who eat where his chance was, to counteract fate,
"To eat during life each a peck of pure dirt"
By eating at once the whole peck from one plate.
For true when I think of the places we eat at,
Or rather the places by hunger when driven
We rush in and swallow our bread and our meat at,
A bushel good measure in life will be given
To those who are living a "boarding-house life,"
Or those who are driven by fortune to journey,
And eat when we must with so dirty a knife,
I wish't could be done by the power of attorney;
Or where you must eat in a place called "saloon;"
Or "coffee-house" synonym of whisky and rum;
(I wish all the breed were sent off to the moon,
And earth was well clear of the coffee-house scum;)
Or where "Restauration" hangs out for sign,
At bar-room or cellar or dirty back room,
Where dishcloths for napkins are thought extra fine,
And table cloths look as though washed with a broom;
Where knives waiters spit on and wipe on their sleeves,
And plates needing polish, with coat tails are cleaned;
Where priests dine with harlots, and judges with thieves,
And mayors with villains his worship has screened.
James I
by Rudyard Kipling

The child of Mary Queen of Scots,
A shifty mother's shiftless son,
Bred up among intrigues and plots,
Learned in all things, wise in none.
Ungainly, babbling, wasteful, weak,
Shrewd, clever, cowardly, pedantic,
The sight of steel would blanch his cheek,
The smell of baccy drive him frantic.
He was the author of his line,
He wrote that witches should be burnt;
He wrote that monarchs were divine,
And left a son who, proved they weren't!
The Puzzler
by Rudyard Kipling

The Celt in all his variants from Builth to Ballyhoo,
His mental processes are plain, one knows what he will do,
And can logically predicate his finish by his start;
But the English, ah, the English!, they are quite a race apart.
Their psychology is bovine, their outlook crude and raw.
They abandon vital matters to be tickled with a straw;
But the straw that they were tickled with-the chaff that they were fed with,
They convert into a weaver's beam to break their foeman's head with.
For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State,
They arrive at their conclusions, largely inarticulate.
Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none;
But sometimes in a smoking-room, one learns why things were done.
Yes, sometimes in a smoking-room, through clouds of "Ers" an "Ums,"
Obliquely and by inference, illumination comes,
On some step that they have taken, or some action they approve
Embellished with the argot of the Upper Fourth Remove.
In telegraphic sentences half nodded to their friends,
They hint a matter's inwardness, and there the matter ends.
And while the Celt is talking from Valencia to Kirkwall,
The English, ah, the English!, don't say anything at all.
The Humble Home.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("L''glise est vaste et haute.")
[IV., June 29, 1839.]
The Church[1] is vast; its towering pride, its steeples loom on high;
The bristling stones with leaf and flower are sculptured wondrously;
The portal glows resplendent with its "rose,"
And 'neath the vault immense at evening swarm
Figures of angel, saint, or demon's form,
As oft a fearful world our dreams disclose.
But not the huge Cathedral's height, nor yet its vault sublime,
Nor porch, nor glass, nor streaks of light, nor shadows deep with time;
Nor massy towers, that fascinate mine eyes;
No, 'tis that spot - the mind's tranquillity - 
Chamber wherefrom the song mounts cheerily,
Placed like a joyful nest well nigh the skies.
Yea! glorious is the Church, I ween, but Meekness dwelleth here;
Less do I love the lofty oak than mossy nest it bear;
More dear is meadow breath than stormy wind:
And when my mind for meditation's meant,
The seaweed is preferred to the shore's extent, - 
The swallow to the main it leaves behind.
Author of "Critical Essays."
The Age Of Gold
by Madison Julius Cawein

The clouds that tower in storm, that beat
Arterial thunder in their veins;
The wildflowers lifting, shyly sweet,
Their perfect faces from the plains, - 
All high, all lowly things of Earth
For no vague end have had their birth.
Low strips of mist that mesh the moon
Above the foaming waterfall;
And mountains, that God's hand hath hewn,
And forests, where the great winds call, - 
Within the grasp of such as see
Are parts of a conspiracy;
To seize the soul with beauty; hold
The heart with love: and thus fulfill
Within ourselves the Age of Gold,
That never died, and never will, - 
As long as one true nature feels
The wonders that the world reveals.