DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
In The Shadow Of The Beeches
by Madison Julius Cawein

In the shadow of the beeches,
Where the fragile wildflowers bloom;
Where the pensive silence pleaches
Green a roof of cool perfume,
Have you felt an awe imperious
As when, in a church, mysterious
Windows paint with God the gloom?
In the shadow of the beeches,
Where the rock-ledged waters flow;
Where the sun's slant splendor bleaches
Every wave to foaming snow,
Have you felt a music solemn
As when minster arch and column
Echo organ worship low?
In the shadow of the beeches,
Where the light and shade are blent;
Where the forest bird beseeches,
And the breeze is brimmed with scent, - 
Is it joy or melancholy
That o'erwhelms us partly, wholly,
To our spirit's betterment?
In the shadow of the beeches
Lay me where no eye perceives;
Where, - like some great arm that reaches
Gently as a love that grieves, - 
One gnarled root may clasp me kindly,
While the long years, working blindly,
Slowly change my dust to leaves.
The Power Of Fable (Prose Fable)
by Jean de La Fontaine

In the old, vain, and fickle city of Athens, an orator,[2] seeing how the light-hearted citizens were blind to certain dangers which threatened the state, presented himself before the tribune, and there sought, by the very tyranny of his forceful eloquence, to move the heart of the republic towards a sense of the common welfare.
But the people neither heard nor heeded. Then the orator had recourse to more urgent arguments and stronger metaphors, potent enough to touch hearts of stone. He spoke in thunders that might have raised the dead; but his words were carried away on the wind. The beast of many heads[3] did not deign to hear the launching of these thunderbolts. It was engrossed in something quite different. A fight between two urchins was what the crowd found so engaging; not the orator's warnings.
What then did the speaker do? He tried another plan. "Ceres," he began, "made a voyage one day with an eel and a swallow. After a time the three travellers were stopped by a river. This the eel got over by swimming and the swallow by flying - - "
"Well! what about Ceres? What did she do?" cried the crowd with one voice.
"She did what she did!" retorted the speaker in anger. "But first she raged against you. What! Does it take a child's story to open your ears, you who should be eager for any news of the peril that menaces; you, the only state in Greece that takes no heed? You ask what Ceres did. Why do you not ask what Philip[4] does?"
At this reproach the assembly was stirred. A mere fable brought them open-eared to all the orator would say.
We are all Athenians in this respect. I myself am, even as I point this moral. I should take the utmost pleasure now in hearing "The Ass's Skin"[5] told to me. The world is old, they say: so it is; but, nevertheless, it is as greedy of amusement as a child.
Meadowlarks
by Sara Teasdale

In the silver light after a storm,
Under dripping boughs of bright new green,
I take the low path to hear the meadowlarks
Alone and high-hearted as if I were a queen.
What have I to fear in life or death
Who have known three things: the kiss in the night,
The white flying joy when a song is born,
And meadowlarks whistling in silver light.
Willaloo.
by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

By E. A. P.
In the sad and sodden street,
To and fro,
Flit the fever-stricken feet
Of the freshers as they meet,
Come and go,
Ever buying, buying, buying
Where the shopmen stand supplying,
Vying, vying
All they know,
While the Autumn lies a-dying
Sad and low
As the price of summer suitings when the winter breezes blow,
Of the summer, summer suitings that are standing in a row
On the way to Jericho.
See the freshers as they row
To and fro,
Up and down the Lower River for an afternoon or so--
(For the deft manipulation
Of the never-resting oar,
Though it lead to approbation,
Will induce excoriation)--
They are infinitely sore,
Keeping time, time, time
In a sort of Runic rhyme
Up and down the way to Iffley in an afternoon or so;
(Which is slow).
Do they blow?
'Tis the wind and nothing more,
'Tis the wind that in Vacation has a tendency to go:
But the coach's objurgation and his tendency to 'score'
Will be sated--nevermore.
See the freshers in the street,
The elite!
Their apparel how unquestionably neat!
How delighted at a distance,
Inexpensively attired,
I have wondered with persistence
At their butterfly existence!
How admired!
And the payment--O, the payment!
It is tardy for the raiment:
Yet the haberdasher gloats as he sells,
And he tells,
'This is best
To be dress'd
Rather better than the rest,
To be noticeably drest,
To be swells,
To be swells, swells, swells, swells,
Swells, swells, swells,
To be simply and indisputably swells.'
See the freshers one or two,
Just a few,
Now on view,
Who are sensibly and innocently new;
How they cluster, cluster, cluster
Round the rugged walls of Worcester!
See them stand,
Book in hand,
In the garden ground of John's!
How they dote upon their Dons!
See in every man a Blue!
It is true
They are lamentably few;
But I spied
Yesternight upon the staircase just a pair of boots outside
Upon the floor,
Just a little pair of boots upon the stairs where I reside,
Lying there and nothing more;
And I swore
While these dainty twins continued sentry by the chamber door
That the hope their presence planted should be with me evermore,
Should desert me--nevermore.
Man
by Paul Cameron Brown

In the old air
by his rocker,
a silent trapeze of thought
suspends an aging man.
Each movement as of the katydid
droning -
a monologue with the past;
a buzz escaping across
still, warm air.
Elsewhere, cicadas whittle about the octogenarian heat.
Nestled quietly, a supine stare erodes both time & place
unto bearded grey -
nuances clasped
in a breathless chat with death.
In The Morning Of Life.
by Thomas Moore

In the morning of life, when its cares are unknown,
And its pleasures in all their new lustre begin,
When we live in a bright-beaming world of our own,
And the light that surrounds us is all from within;
Oh 'tis not, believe me, in that happy time
We can love, as in hours of less transport we may;--
Of our smiles, of our hopes, 'tis the gay sunny prime,
But affection is truest when these fade away.
When we see the first glory of youth pass us by,
Like a leaf on the stream that will never return;
When our cup, which had sparkled with pleasure so high,
First tastes of the other, the dark-flowing urn;
Then, then is the time when affection holds sway
With a depth and a tenderness joy never knew;
Love, nursed among pleasures, is faithless as they,
But the love born of Sorrow, like Sorrow, is true.
In climes full of sunshine, tho' splendid the flowers,
Their sighs have no freshness, their odor no worth;
'Tis the cloud and the mist of our own Isle of showers,
That call the rich spirit of fragrancy forth.
So it is not mid splendor, prosperity, mirth,
That the depth of Love's generous spirit appears;
To the sunshine of smiles it may first owe its birth,
But the soul of its sweetness is drawn out by tears.
The Hive At Gettysburg
by John Greenleaf Whittier

In the old Hebrew myth the lion's frame,
So terrible alive,
Bleached by the desert's sun and wind, became
The wandering wild bees' hive;
And he who, lone and naked-handed, tore
Those jaws of death apart,
In after time drew forth their honeyed store
To strengthen his strong heart.
Dead seemed the legend: but it only slept
To wake beneath our sky;
Just on the spot whence ravening Treason crept
Back to its lair to die,
Bleeding and torn from Freedom's mountain bounds,
A stained and shattered drum
Is now the hive where, on their flowery rounds,
The wild bees go and come.
Unchallenged by a ghostly sentinel,
They wander wide and far,
Along green hillsides, sown with shot and shell,
Through vales once choked with war.
The low reveille of their battle-drum
Disturbs no morning prayer;
With deeper peace in summer noons their hum
Fills all the drowsy air.
And Samson's riddle is our own to-day,
Of sweetness from the strong,
Of union, peace, and freedom plucked away
From the rent jaws of wrong.
From Treason's death we draw a purer life,
As, from the beast he slew,
A sweetness sweeter for his bitter strife
The old-time athlete drew
Camp Followers
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In the old wars of the world there were camp followers,
Women of ancient sins who gave themselves for hire,
Women of weak wills and strong desire.
And, like the poison ivy in the woods
That winds itself about tall virile trees
Until it smothers them, so these
Ruined the bodies and the souls of men.
More evil were they than Red War itself,
Or Pestilence, or Famine.    Now in this war - 
This last most awful carnage of the world - 
All the old wickedness exists as then:
But as a foul stream from a festering fen
Is met and scattered by a mountain brook
Leaping along its beautiful, bright course,
So now the force
Of these new Followers of the camp has come
Straight from God's Source
To cleanse the world and cleanse the minds of men.
Good women, of great courage and large hearts,
Women whose slogan is self-sacrifice,
Willing to pay the price
God asks of pioneers, now play their parts
In this stupendous drama of the age
As Followers of the Camps.
They come in the name of God our Father,
They come in the name of Christ our Brother,
They come in the name of All Humanity,
To give their gold, their labour, and their love
To help the suffering souls in this war-riddled earth,
The New Women of the Race - 
The New Camp Followers - 
The Centuries shall do honour to their names.
In The Seventies
by Thomas Hardy

"Qui deridetur ab amico suo sicut ego." - JOB.
In the seventies I was bearing in my breast,
Penned tight,
Certain starry thoughts that threw a magic light
On the worktimes and the soundless hours of rest
In the seventies; aye, I bore them in my breast
Penned tight.
In the seventies when my neighbours - even my friend -
Saw me pass,
Heads were shaken, and I heard the words, "Alas,
For his onward years and name unless he mend!"
In the seventies, when my neighbours and my friend
Saw me pass.
In the seventies those who met me did not know
Of the vision
That immuned me from the chillings of mis-prision
And the damps that choked my goings to and fro
In the seventies; yea, those nodders did not know
Of the vision.
In the seventies nought could darken or destroy it,
Locked in me,
Though as delicate as lamp-worm's lucency;
Neither mist nor murk could weaken or alloy it
In the seventies! - could not darken or destroy it,
Locked in me.
After Combat
by Alfred Lichtenstein

In the sky the howitzers no longer explode,
The cannoneers rest next to their guns.
The infantry pitch tents now,
And the pale moon slowly rises.
On yellow fields in red trousers, the French are ablaze,
Ashen pale from death and powder.
Among them German medics squat.
The day becomes grayer, its sun redder.
Field kitchens steam.    Towns are put to the torch.
Broken carts stand at roadsides.
Panting cyclists, hot and tanned, loiter
At a scorched wooden fence.
And orderlies are already moving
From regiment to division.
In the morning, in the morning,
by Alfred Edward Housman

In the morning, in the morning,
In the happy field of hay,
Oh they looked at one another
By the light of day.
In the blue and silver morning
On the haycock as they lay,
Oh they looked at one another
And they looked away.
The Tea Party.
by Kate Greenaway

In the pleasant green Garden
We sat down to tea;
"Do you take sugar?" and
"Do you take milk?"
She'd got a new gown on 
A smart one of silk.
We all were so happy
As happy could be,
On that bright Summer's day
When she asked us to tea.
At Sea
by Sara Teasdale

In the pull of the wind I stand, lonely,
On the deck of a ship, rising, falling,
Wild night around me, wild water under me,
Whipped by the storm, screaming and calling.
Earth is hostile and the sea hostile,
Why do I look for a place to rest?
I must fight always and die fighting
With fear an unhealing wound in my breast.
In The Placid Summer Midnight
by William Ernest Henley

In the placid summer midnight,
Under the drowsy sky,
I seem to hear in the stillness
The moths go glimmering by.
One by one from the windows
The lights have all been sped.
Never a blind looks conscious -
The street is asleep in bed!
But I come where a living casement
Laughs luminous and wide;
I hear the song of a piano
Break in a sparkling tide;
And I feel, in the waltz that frolics
And warbles swift and clear,
A sudden sense of shelter
And friendliness and cheer . . .
A sense of tinkling glasses,
Of love and laughter and light -
The piano stops, and the window
Stares blank out into the night.
The blind goes out, and I wander
To the old, unfriendly sea,
The lonelier for the memory
That walks like a ghost with me.
The Splitter
by Edward Dyson

In the morn when the keen blade bites the tree,
And the chips on the dead leaves dance,
And the bush echoes back right merrily
Blow for blow as the sunbeams glance
From the axe when it sweeps in circles true,
Then the splitter at heart is gay;
He exults in the work he's set to do,
And he feels like a boy at play.
Swinging free with a stroke that's straight and strong
To the heart of the messmate sent,
He is cheered by the magpie's morning song
With the ring of the metal blent,
But the birds in their terror scatter high
When she falls with a rush and bound,
And the quivering saplings split and fly,
And the ranges all roar around.
Who is lord when the axeman mounts his spar,
And the breeze on his brown breast blows,
When the scent of the new wood floats afar,
And the gum from its red wounds flows?
With the bush at his back he laughs at care,
With a pipe and a right good mate,
There is drink in the billy, grub to spare,
And a bunk in the ten-by-eight.
When the sun's in the west, from nooks aloft
Where the stringy is straight and tall,
Come the strains of a chorus quaint and soft,
Or the clink of the wedge and maul;
From the gully a murmur of broken talk
Or the song that the crosscut sings;
For the bush is a-dream, and high the hawk
Hangs at rest on his cradling wings.
But at night, by the tent, when tea is done
And when euchre's begun to flag,
In the bush he may hear a distant gun
Or the neigh of a lonely nag,
Then the splitter has thoughts no longer gay,
And sorrows he cannot drown,
For he dreams of a girl who's far away,
Or the joys of a spree in town.
In The Shadow Of The Beeches.
by Madison Julius Cawein

In the shadow of the beeches,
Where the fragile wildflowers bloom;
Where the pensive silence pleaches
Green a roof of cool perfume,
Have you felt an awe imperious
As when, in a church, mysterious
Windows paint with God the gloom?
In the shadow of the beeches,
Where the rock-ledged waters flow;
Where the sun's sloped splendor bleaches
Every wave to foaming snow,
Have you felt a music solemn
As when minster arch and column
Echo organ-worship low?
In the shadow of the beeches,
Where the light and shade are blent;
Where the forest-bird beseeches,
And the breeze is brimmed with scent,
Is it joy or melancholy
That o'erwhelms us partly, wholly,
To our spirit's betterment?
In the shadow of the beeches
Lay me where no eye perceives;
Where, like some great arm that reaches
Gently as a love that grieves,
One gnarled root may clasp me kindly
While the long years, working blindly,
Slowly change my dust to leaves.
Spring
by Unknown

In the spring the housemaid's fancy
Lightly turns from pot and pan
To the greater necromancy
Of a young unmarried man.
You can hold her through the winter,
And she'll work around and sing,
But it's just as good as certain
She will marry in the spring.
Matri Dilectissimae - I.M. - In The Waste Hour
by William Ernest Henley

In the waste hour
Between to-day and yesterday
We watched, while on my arm -
Living flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone -
Dabbled in sweat the sacred head
Lay uncomplaining, still, contemptuous, strange:
Till the dear face turned dead,
And to a sound of lamentation
The good, heroic soul with all its wealth -
Its sixty years of love and sacrifice,
Suffering and passionate faith - was reabsorbed
In the inexorable Peace,
And life was changed to us for evermore.
Was nothing left of her but tears
Like blood-drops from the heart?
Nought save remorse
For duty unfulfilled, justice undone,
And charity ignored?    Nothing but love,
Forgiveness, reconcilement, where in truth,
But for this passing
Into the unimaginable abyss
These things had never been?
Nay, there were we,
Her five strong sons!
To her Death came - the great Deliverer came! -
As equal comes to equal, throne to throne.
She was a mother of men.
The stars shine as of old.    The unchanging River,
Bent on his errand of immortal law,
Works his appointed way
To the immemorial sea.
And the brave truth comes overwhelmingly home:-
That she in us yet works and shines,
Lives and fulfils herself,
Unending as the river and the stars.
Dearest, live on
In such an immortality
As we thy sons,
Born of thy body and nursed
At those wild, faithful breasts,
Can give - of generous thoughts,
And honourable words, and deeds
That make men half in love with fate!
Live on, O brave and true,
In us thy children, in ours whose life is thine -
Our best and theirs!    What is that best but thee -
Thee, and thy gift to us, to pass
Like light along the infinite of space
To the immitigable end?
Between the river and the stars,
O royal and radiant soul,
Thou dost return, thine influences return
Upon thy children as in life, and death
Turns stingless!    What is Death
But Life in act?    How should the Unteeming Grave
Be victor over thee,
Mother, a mother of men?
The Tiger.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In the still jungle of the senses lay
A tiger soundly sleeping, till one day
A bold young hunter chanced to come that way.
"How calm," he said, "that splendid creature lies!
I long to rouse him into swift surprise."
The well aimed arrow shot from amorous eyes,
And lo! the tiger rouses up and turns,
A coal of fire his glowing eyeball burns,
His mighty frame with savage hunger yearns.
He crouches for a spring; his eyes dilate - 
Alas! bold hunter, what shall be thy fate?
Thou canst not fly; it is too late, too late.
Once having tasted human flesh, ah! then,
Woe, woe unto the whole rash world of men.
The wakened tiger will not sleep again.
Superstition
by Madison Julius Cawein

In the waste places, in the dreadful night,
When the wood whispers like a wandering mind,
And silence sits and listens to the wind,
Or, 'mid the rocks, to some wild torrent's flight;
Bat-browed thou wadest with thy wisp of light
Among black pools the moon can never find;
Or, owlet-eyed, thou hootest to the blind
Deep darkness from some cave or haunted height.
He who beholds but once thy fearsome face,
Never again shall walk alone! but wan
And terrible attendants shall be his
Unutterable things that have no place
In God or Beauty that compel him on,
Against all hope, where endless horror is.
Wild Asters
by Sara Teasdale

In the spring I asked the daisies
If his words were true,
And the clever, clear-eyed daisies
Always knew.
Now the fields are brown and barren,
Bitter autumn blows,
And of all the stupid asters
Not one knows.
September
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the turbulent beauty
Of a gusty Autumn day,
Poet on a sunny headland
Sighed his soul away.
Farms the sunny landscape dappled,
Swandown clouds dappled the farms,
Cattle lowed in mellow distance
Where far oaks outstretched their arms.
Sudden gusts came full of meaning,
All too much to him they said,
Oh, south winds have long memories,
Of that be none afraid.
I cannot tell rude listeners
Half the tell-tale South-wind said,--
'T would bring the blushes of yon maples
To a man and to a maid.
The Stranger
by Walter De La Mare

In the woods as I did walk,
Dappled with the moon's beam,
I did with a Stranger talk,
And his name was Dream.
Spurred his heel, dark his cloak,
Shady-wide his bonnet's brim;
His horse beneath a silvery oak
Grazed as I talked with him.
Softly his breast-brooch burned and shone;
Hill and deep were in his eyes;
One of his hands held mine, and one
The fruit that makes men wise.
Wondrously strange was earth to see,
Flowers white as milk did gleam;
Spread to Heaven the Assyrian Tree,
Over my head with Dream.
Dews were still betwixt us twain;
Stars a trembling beauty shed;
Yet - not a whisper comes again
Of the words he said.
The Geate A-vallen To
by William Barnes

In the zunsheen of our zummers
Wi' the hay time now a-come,
How busy wer we out a-vield
Wi' vew a-left at hwome,
When waggons rumbled out ov yard
Red wheeled, wi' body blue,
And back behind 'em loudly slamm'd
The geate a'vallen to.
Drough daysheen ov how many years
The geate ha' now a-swung
Behind the veet o' vull-grown men
And vootsteps of the young.
Drough years o' days it swung to us
Behind each little shoe,
As we tripped lightly on avore
The geate a-vallen to.
In evenen time o' starry night
How mother zot at hwome,
And kept her bleazen vier bright
Till father should ha? come,
An' how she quicken'd up and smiled
An' stirred her vier anew,
To hear the trampen ho'ses' steps
An' geate a-vallen to.
There?s moon-sheen now in nights o' fall
When leaves be brown vrom green,
When, to the slammen o' the geate,
Our Jenny's ears be keen,
When the wold dog do wag his tail,
An' Jean could tell to who,
As he do come in drough the geate,
The geate a-vallen to.
An' oft do come a saddened hour
When there must goo away
One well-beloved to our heart's core,
Vor long, perhaps vor aye:
An' oh! it is a touchen thing
The loven heart must rue,
To hear behind his last farewell
The geate a-vallen to.
The Operation
by Alfred Lichtenstein

In the sunlight doctors tear a woman apart.
Here the open red body gapes.    And heavy blood
Flows, dark wine, into a white bowl.    One sees
Very clearly the rose-red cyst.    Lead gray,
The limp head hangs down.    The hollow mouth
Rattles.    The sharp yellow chin points upward.
The room shines, cool and friendly.    A nurse
Savors quite a bit of sausage in the background.
Oliver Basselin
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In the Valley of the Vire
Still is seen an ancient mill,
With its gables quaint and queer,
And beneath the window-sill,
On the stone,
These words alone:
"Oliver Basselin lived here."
Far above it, on the steep,
Ruined stands the old Chateau;
Nothing but the donjon-keep
Left for shelter or for show.
Its vacant eyes
Stare at the skies,
Stare at the valley green and deep.
Once a convent, old and brown,
Looked, but ah! it looks no more,
From the neighboring hillside down
On the rushing and the roar
Of the stream
Whose sunny gleam
Cheers the little Norman town.
In that darksome mill of stone,
To the water's dash and din,
Careless, humble, and unknown,
Sang the poet Basselin
Songs that fill
That ancient mill
With a splendor of its own.
Never feeling of unrest
Broke the pleasant dream he dreamed;
Only made to be his nest,
All the lovely valley seemed;
No desire
Of soaring higher
Stirred or fluttered in his breast.
True, his songs were not divine;
Were not songs of that high art,
Which, as winds do in the pine,
Find an answer in each heart;
But the mirth
Of this green earth
Laughed and revelled in his line.
From the alehouse and the inn,
Opening on the narrow street,
Came the loud, convivial din,
Singing and applause of feet,
The laughing lays
That in those days
Sang the poet Basselin.
In the castle, cased in steel,
Knights, who fought at Agincourt,
Watched and waited, spur on heel;
But the poet sang for sport
Songs that rang
Another clang,
Songs that lowlier hearts could feel.
In the convent, clad in gray,
Sat the monks in lonely cells,
Paced the cloisters, knelt to pray,
And the poet heard their bells;
But his rhymes
Found other chimes,
Nearer to the earth than they.
Gone are all the barons bold,
Gone are all the knights and squires,
Gone the abbot stern and cold,
And the brotherhood of friars;
Not a name
Remains to fame,
From those mouldering days of old!
But the poet's memory here
Of the landscape makes a part;
Like the river, swift and clear,
Flows his song through many a heart;
Haunting still
That ancient mill,
In the Valley of the Vire.