DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Freedom In Brazil
by John Greenleaf Whittier

With clearer light, Cross of the South, shine forth
In blue Brazilian skies;
And thou, O river, cleaving half the earth
From sunset to sunrise,
From the great mountains to the Atlantic waves
Thy joy's long anthem pour.
Yet a few years (God make them less!) and slaves
Shall shame thy pride no more,
No fettereel feet thy shaded margins press;
But all men shall walk free
Where thou, the high-priest of the wilderness,
Hast wedded sea to sea.
And thou, great-hearted ruler, through whose mouth
The word of God is said,
Once more, "Let there be light!" Son of the South,
Lift up thy honored head,
Wear unashamed a crown by thy desert
More than by birth thy own,
Careless of watch and ward; thou art begirt
By grateful hearts alone.
The moaned wall and battle-ship may fail,
But safe shall justice prove;
Stronger than greaves of brass or iron mail
The panoply of love.
Crowned doubly by man's blessing and God's grace,
Thy future is secure;
Who frees a people makes his statue's place
In Time's Valhalla sure.
Lo! from his Neva's banks the Scythian Czar
Stretches to thee his hand,
Who, with the pencil of the Northern star,
Wrote freedom on his land.
And he whose grave is holy by our calm
And prairied Sangamon,
From his gaunt hand shall drop the martyr's palm
To greet thee with "Well done!"
And thou, O Earth, with smiles thy face make sweet,
And let thy wail be stilled,
To hear the Muse of prophecy repeat
Her promise half fulfilled.
The Voice that spake at Nazareth speaks still,
No sound thereof hath died;
Alike thy hope and Heaven's eternal will
Shall yet be satisfied.
The years are slow, the vision tarrieth long,
And far the end may be;
But, one by one, the fiends of ancient wrong
Go out and leave thee free
Thought.
by Thomas Frederick Young

The blight of life, the demon, Thought - BYRON.
With demon's shriek or angel's voice,
'Mid hellish gloom, or heav'nly light,
Thought haunts our path o'er land and sea,
And dwells with us, by day and night.
In roomy hall, or narrow hut,
It withers, blasts and kills with gloom,
Or gently onward smooths the path
Of him, who gives the tyrant room.
With siren voice it soothes our woe;
It dwells with us in blissful dreams;
But when we wake, it tells us then,
That it is far from what it seems.
Rebellious o'er its prostrate slave,
Its iron chain of bondage swings,
Or, govern'd by a master hand,
In numbers loud and strong, it sings.
And, with its keys of rarest mould,
Its stores of hoarded wealth unlocks,
It dives for man beneath the sea,
And cleaves for him the hardest rocks.
Forever thus it lives and acts,
With angel host, or demon throng, - 
To sing with voice of heav'nly love,
Or shout, with dismal, hellish song.
Thus shall it live, thus shall it act,
While ages shall their cycles roll;
It leaves us when we reach the grave
But oh? it rises with the soul.
And still it lives in that beyond,
As here it lives in this our sphere,
To light our road and cheer our path,
Or torture us with nameless fear.
The Paean Of Peace
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

With ever some wrong to be righting,
With self ever seeking for place,
The world has been striving and fighting
Since man was evolved out of space.
Bold history into dark regions
His torchlight has fearlessly cast,
He shows us tribes warring in legions,
In jungles of ages long passed.
Religion, forgetting her station,
Forgetting her birthright from God,
Set nation to warring with nation
And scattered dissension abroad.
Dear creeds have made men kill each other,
Fair faith has bred hate and despair,
And brother has battled with brother
Because of a difference in prayer.
But earth has grown wiser and kinder,
For man is evolving a soul:
From wars of an age that was blinder,
We rise to a peace-girdled goal.
Where once men would murder in treason
And slaughter each other in hordes,
They now meet together and reason,
With thoughts for their weapons, not swords.
The brute in humanity dwindles
And lessens as time speeds along,
And the spark of Divinity kindles
And blazes up brightly and strong.
The seer can behold in the distance
The race that shall people the world -
Strong men of a godlike existence
Unarmed, and with war banners furled.
No longer the bloodthirsty savage
Man's vast spirit strength shall unfold;
And tales of red warfare and ravage
Shall seem like ghost stories of old.
For the booming of guns and the rattle
Of carnage and conflict shall cease,
And the bugle-call, leading to battle,
Shall change to a paean of peace.
Composed In One Of The Valleys Of Westmoreland, On Easter Sunday
by William Wordsworth

With each recurrence of this glorious morn
That saw the Saviour in his human frame
Rise from the dead, 'erewhile the Cottage-dame
Put on fresh raiment, till that hour unworn:
Domestic hands the home-bred wool had shorn,
And she who span it culled the daintiest fleece,
In thoughtful reverence to the Prince of Peace,
Whose temples bled beneath the platted thorn.
A blest estate when piety sublime
These humble props disdained not! O green dales!
Sad may 'I' be who heard your sabbath chime
When Art's abused inventions were unknown;
Kind Nature's various wealth was all your own;
And benefits were weighed in Reason's scales!
Mrs. Macqueen (Or The Lollie-Shop)
by Walter De La Mare

With glass like a bull's-eye,
And shutters of green,
Down on the cobbles
Lives Mrs. MacQueen,
At six she rises;
At nine you see
Her candle shine out
In the linden tree:
And at half-past nine
Not a sound is nigh
But the bright moon's creeping
Across the sky;
Or a far dog baying;
Or a twittering bird
In its drowsy nest,
In the darkness stirred;
Or like the roar
Of a distant sea
A long-drawn S-s-sh
In the linden tree.
Origin Of Ireland, The
by Unknown

With due condescension, I'd call your attention
To what I shall mention of Erin so green,
And without hesitation I will show how that nation
Became of creation the gem and the queen.
'Twas early one morning, without any warning,
That Vanus was born in the beautiful say,
And by the same token, and sure 'twas provoking,
Her pinions were soaking and wouldn't give play.
Old Neptune, who knew her, began to pursue her,
In order to woo her, the wicked old Jew,
And almost had caught her atop of the water,
Great Jupiter's daughter! which never would do.
But Jove, the great janius, looked down and saw Vanus,
And Neptune so heinous pursuing her wild,
And he spoke out in thunder, he'd rend him asunder,
And sure 'twas no wonder, for tazing his child.
A star that was flying hard by him espying,
He caught with small trying, and down let it snap;
It fell quick as winking, on Neptune a-sinking,
And gave him, I'm thinking, a bit of a rap.
That star it was dry land, both low land and high land,
And formed a sweet island, the land of my birth;
Thus plain is the story, that sent down from glory,
Old Erin asthore as the gem of the earth!
Upon Erin nately jumped Vanus so stately,
But fainted, kase lately so hard she was pressed,
Which much did bewilder, but ere it had killed her
Her father distilled her a drop of the best.
That sup was victorious, it made her feel glorious,
A little uproarious, I fear it might prove,
So how can you blame us that Ireland's so famous
For drinking and beauty, for fighting and love?
To God.
by Robert Herrick

With golden censers, and with incense, here
Before Thy virgin-altar I appear,
To pay Thee that I owe, since what I see
In, or without, all, all belongs to Thee.
Where shall I now begin to make, for one
Least loan of Thine, half restitution?
Alas! I cannot pay a jot; therefore
I'll kiss the tally, and confess the score.
Ten thousand talents lent me, Thou dost write;
'Tis true, my God, but I can't pay one mite.
The White Ships and the Red
by Alfred Joyce Kilmer (Joyce)

(For Alden March)
With drooping sail and pennant
That never a wind may reach,
They float in sunless waters
Beside a sunless beach.
Their mighty masts and funnels
Are white as driven snow,
And with a pallid radiance
Their ghostly bulwarks glow.
Here is a Spanish galleon
That once with gold was gay,
Here is a Roman trireme
Whose hues outshone the day.
But Tyrian dyes have faded,
And prows that once were bright
With rainbow stains wear only
Death's livid, dreadful white.
White as the ice that clove her
That unforgotten day,
Among her pallid sisters
The grim Titanic lay.
And through the leagues above her
She looked aghast, and said:
"What is this living ship that comes
Where every ship is dead?"
The ghostly vessels trembled
From ruined stern to prow;
What was this thing of terror
That broke their vigil now?
Down through the startled ocean
A mighty vessel came,
Not white, as all dead ships must be,
But red, like living flame!
The pale green waves about her
Were swiftly, strangely dyed,
By the great scarlet stream that flowed
From out her wounded side.
And all her decks were scarlet
And all her shattered crew.
She sank among the white ghost ships
And stained them through and through.
The grim Titanic greeted her
"And who art thou?" she said;
"Why dost thou join our ghostly fleet
Arrayed in living red?
We are the ships of sorrow
Who spend the weary night,
Until the dawn of Judgment Day,
Obscure and still and white."
"Nay," said the scarlet visitor,
"Though I sink through the sea,
A ruined thing that was a ship,
I sink not as did ye.
For ye met with your destiny
By storm or rock or fight,
So through the lagging centuries
Ye wear your robes of white.
"But never crashing iceberg
Nor honest shot of foe,
Nor hidden reef has sent me
The way that I must go.
My wound that stains the waters,
My blood that is like flame,
Bear witness to a loathly deed,
A deed without a name.
"I went not forth to battle,
I carried friendly men,
The children played about my decks,
The women sang -- and then --
And then -- the sun blushed scarlet
And Heaven hid its face,
The world that God created
Became a shameful place!
"My wrong cries out for vengeance,
The blow that sent me here
Was aimed in Hell.    My dying scream
Has reached Jehovah's ear.
Not all the seven oceans
Shall wash away that stain;
Upon a brow that wears a crown
I am the brand of Cain."
When God's great voice assembles
The fleet on Judgment Day,
The ghosts of ruined ships will rise
In sea and strait and bay.
Though they have lain for ages
Beneath the changeless flood,
They shall be white as silver,
But one -- shall be like blood.
Lines written in an Album.
by W. M. MacKeracher

With beauty and grace that greet the eye,
How pleasing 'tis to trace,
Within, the beauty of holiness, -
That higher, heavenly grace!
The Death Of The Fly.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

With eagerness he drinks the treach'rous potion,
Nor stops to rest, by the first taste misled;
Sweet is the draught, but soon all power of motion
He finds has from his tender members fled;
No longer has he strength to plume his wing,
No longer strength to raise his head, poor thing!
E'en in enjoyment's hour his life he loses,
His little foot to bear his weight refuses;
So on he sips, and ere his draught is o'er,
Death veils his thousand eyes for evermore.
To One In Bedlam
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

With delicate, mad hands, behind his sordid bars,
Surely he hath his posies, which they tear and twine;
Those scentless wisps of straw, that miserably line
His strait, caged universe, whereat the dull world stares,
Pedant and pitiful. O, how his rapt gaze wars
With their stupidity! Know they what dreams divine
Lift his long, laughing reveries like enchaunted wine,
And make his melancholy germane to the stars'?
O lamentable brother! if those pity thee,
Am I not fain of all thy lone eyes promise me;
Half a fool's kingdom, far from men who sow and reap,
All their days, vanity? Better than mortal flowers,
Thy moon-kissed roses seem: better than love or sleep,
The star-crowned solitude of thine oblivious hours!
Place Aux Dames
by Arthur Macy

[To M.]
With brilliant friends surrounding me,
So cosy at the Club I'm sitting;
While you at home I seem to see,
Attending strictly to your knitting.
When women have their rights, my dear,
We'll hear no more of wrongs so shocking: - 
You with your friends shall gather here;
I'll stay at home and darn the stocking!
Prologue: In Darkness
by John Collings Squire, Sir

With my sleeping beloved huddled tranquil beside me, why do I lie awake,
Listening to the loud clock's hurry in the darkness, and feeling my heart's fierce ache
That beats one response to the brain's many questionings, and in solitude bears the weight
Of all the world's evil and misery and frustration, and the senseless pressure of fate?
Is it season of ploughing and sowing, this long vigil, that so certainly it recurs?
In this unsought return of a pain that was ended, is it here that a song first stirs?
Can it be that from this, when to-night's gone from memory, there will spring of a sudden, some time,
Like a silver lily breaking from black deadly waters, the thin-blown shape of a rhyme?
Blind Fiddler - Wilkie (Exhibition, 1807.)
by William Lisle Bowles

With mirth unfeigned the cottage chimney rings,
Though only vocal with four fiddle-strings:
And see, the poor blind fiddler draws his bow,
And lifts intent his time-denoting toe;
While yonder maid, as blythe as birds in June,
You almost hear her whistle to the tune!
Hard by, a lad, in imitative guise,
Fixed, fiddle-like, the broken bellows plies;
Before the hearth, with looks of honest joy,
The father chirrups to the chattering boy,
And snaps his lifted thumbs with mimic glee,
To the glad urchin on his mother's knee!
Ghost Tales
by Paul Cameron Brown

With leaves twitching
the autumn air
and the burnt almond
breath of landscape
heaving relief,
the afternoon heavy-footedly
walks across
evening's threshold.
II
A garment is held high
as adrenalin in the marble
glow of wintery air.
Mud puddles reflect the faery shrimp
of clouds while cone-shaped
coniferous trees perch on lawns like
starlings.
III
High above to skating and
sugar-icing rinks in misty hues,
a ginger-bread man
manoeuvres past the ghost tails of a dead
luna moth.
Departure.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

With many a thousand kiss not yet content,
At length with One kiss I was forced to go;
After that bitter parting's depth of woe,
I deem'd the shore from which my steps I bent,
Its hills, streams, dwellings, mountains, as I went,
A pledge of joy, till daylight ceased to glow;
Then on my sight did blissful visions grow
In the dim-lighted, distant firmament,
And when at length the sea confined my gaze,
My ardent longing fill'd my heart once more;
What I had lost, unwillingly I sought.
Then Heaven appear'd to shed its kindly rays:
Methought that all I had possess'd of yore
Remain'd still mine that I was reft of nought.
To The Same Flower (Daisy)
by William Wordsworth

With little here to do or see
Of things that in the great world be,
Daisy! again I talk to thee,
For thou art worthy,
Thou unassuming Common-place
Of Nature, with that homely face,
And yet with something of a grace,
Which Love makes for thee!
Oft on the dappled turf at ease
I sit, and play with similies,
Loose types of things through all degrees,
Thoughts of thy raising:
And many a fond and idle name
I give to thee, for praise or blame,
As is the humour of the game,
While I am gazing.
A nun demure of lowly port;
Or sprightly maiden, of Love's court,
In thy simplicity the sport
Of all temptations;
A queen in crown of rubies drest;
A starveling in a scanty vest;
Are all, as seems to suit thee best,
Thy appellations.
A little cyclops, with one eye
Staring to threaten and defy,
That thought comes next, and instantly
The freak is over,
The shape will vanish, and behold
A silver shield with boss of gold,
That spreads itself, some faery bold
In fight to cover!
I see thee glittering from afar,
And then thou art a pretty star;
Not quite so fair as many are
In heaven above thee!
Yet like a star, with glittering crest,
Self-poised in air thou seem'st to rest;
May peace come never to his nest,
Who shall reprove thee!
Bright 'Flower'! for by that name at last,
When all my reveries are past,
I call thee, and to that cleave fast,
Sweet silent creature!
That breath'st with me in sun and air,
Do thou, as thou art wont, repair
My heart with gladness, and a share
Of thy meek nature!
One Who Died Young
by Madison Julius Cawein

With her 't is well now. She died young,
With all her hope and faith unmarred,
Nor lived to see the pearls, Love strung,
Without regard,
Cast, lost among
The disillusions that make life so hard.
Time on her body now can lay
No soiling hand and spoil what's fair:
He shall not turn the gold hair gray,
Nor bring crabbed Care,
Day after day,
To line the white brow with the heart's despair.
Far better thus. Yea, even so,
To die before faith turns to dust,
Before the heart has learned to know,
As learn it must,
Of love the woe,
And of all human life the deep disgust.
The Hereditary Prince Of Weimar, On His Proceeding To Paris.
by Friedrich Schiller

(SUNG IN A CIRCLE OF FRIENDS.)
With one last bumper let us hail
The wanderer beloved,
Who takes his leave of this still vale
Wherein in youth he roved.
From loving arms, from native home,
He tears himself away,
To yonder city proud to roam,
That makes whole lands its prey.
Dissension flies, all tempests end,
And chained is strife abhorred;
We in the crater may descend
From whence the lava poured.
A gracious fate conduct thee through
Life's wild and mazy track!
A bosom nature gave thee true, 
A bosom true bring back!
Thou'lt visit lands that war's wild train
Had crushed with careless heed;
Now smiling peace salutes the plain,
And strews the golden seed.
The hoary Father Rhine thou'lt greet,
Who thy forefather [58] blest
Will think of, whilst his waters fleet
In ocean's bed to rest.
Do homage to the hero's manes,
And offer to the Rhine,
The German frontier who maintains,
His own-created wine, 
So that thy country's soul thy guide
May be, when thou hast crossed
On the frail bark to yonder side,
Where German faith is lost!
Verses Left By Mr Pope. On His Lying In The Same Bed Which Wilmot, The Celebrated Earl Of Rochester, Slept In At Adderbury, Then Belonging To The Duke Of Argyll, July 9, 1739.
by Alexander Pope

1 With no poetic ardour fired,
I press the bed where Wilmot lay;
That here he loved, or here expired,
Begets no numbers, grave or gay.
2 Beneath thy roof, Argyll, are bred
Such thoughts as prompt the brave to lie
Stretch'd out in honour's nobler bed,
Beneath a nobler roof--the sky.
3 Such flames as high in patriots burn,
Yet stoop to bless a child or wife;
And such as wicked kings may mourn,
When freedom is more dear than life.
The Woman
by Madison Julius Cawein

With her fair face she made my heaven,
Beneath whose stars and moon and sun
I worshiped, praying, having striven,
For wealth through which she might be won.
And yet she had no soul: A woman
As fair and cruel as a god;
Who played with hearts as nothing human,
And tossed them by and on them trod.
She killed a soul; she did it nightly;
Luring it forth from peace and prayer,
To strangle it, and laughing lightly,
Cast it into the gutter there.
And yet, not for a purer vision
Would I exchange; or Paradise
Possess instead of Hell, my prison,
Where burns the passion of her eyes.
An Army Corps On The March
by Walt Whitman

With its cloud of skirmishers in advance,
With now the sound of a single shot, snapping like a whip, and now an irregular volley,
The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades press on;
Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun--the dust-cover'd men,
In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground,
With artillery interspers'd--the wheels rumble, the horses sweat,
As the army corps advances.
Answered By Dr. Swift (To Lady Carteret)
by Jonathan Swift

WITH half an eye your riddle I spy,
I observe your wicket hemm'd in by a thicket,
And whatever passes is strain'd through glasses.
You say it is quiet: I flatly deny it.
It wanders about, without stirring out;
No passion so weak but gives it a tweak;
Love, joy, and devotion, set it always in motion.
And as for trie tragic effects of its magic,
Which you say it can kill, or revive at its will,
The dead are all sound, and they live above ground:
After all you have writ, it cannot be wit;
Which plainly does follow, since it flies from Apollo.
Its cowardice such it cries at a touch;
'Tis a perfect milksop, grows drunk with a drop,
Another great fault, it cannot bear salt:
And a hair can disarm it of every charm.
Praises For My Francisca
by Charles Baudelaire

With new chords I'll sing your praises,
Little shoot, because you dally
In the heart's sweet solitude.
Be into a garland woven,
o my captivating woman
Through whom sins are all absolved!
As I would obliging Lethe,
Let me freely sip your kisses,
So magnetically imbued.
When the storm of all my vices
Put in peril all my pathways,
You, Divinity, appeared,
As redeeming as the Lodestar,
Saviour in our bitter shipwrecks...
On your altar hangs my heart!
Lovely pool that fills with virtue,
Of eternal youth the fountain,
Bring my silent lips to speech!
You have purified the filthy
And have smoothed out all the rudeness,
What was weak, you have made strong.
In my hunger, you're the tavern,
In the darkness, you're my lantern
Guide me always in the right.
Now add potency to mankind,
Wholesome bath that is anointed
With the most entrancing scents!
Gleam around my loins and guard them
O thou corselet of virtue
Made of water angel-dyed;
Drinking bowl that gleams with gemstones,
Salted bread and tender morsel,
My Francisca, heaven's wine!
Brockley Coomb
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

With many a pause and oft reverted eye
I climb the Coomb's ascent: sweet songsters near
Warble in shade their wild-wood melody:
Far off the unvarying Cuckoo soothes my ear.
Up scour the startling stragglers of the flock
That on green plots o'er precipices browse:
From the deep fissures of the naked rock
The Yew-tree bursts! Beneath its dark green boughs
('Mid which the May-thorn blends its blossoms white)
Where broad smooth stones jut out in mossy seats,
I rest: -and now have gained the topmost site.
Ah! what a luxury of landscape meets
My gaze! Proud towers, and Cots more dear to me,
Elm-shadowed Fields, and prospect-bounding Sea.
Deep sighs my lonely heart: I drop the tear:
Enchanting spot! O were my Sara here.
Memorials Of A Tour On The Continent, 1820 - XXIV. - The Italian Itinerant And The Swiss Goatherd. - Part II
by William Wordsworth

I
With nodding plumes, and lightly drest
Like foresters in leaf-green vest,
The Helvetian Mountaineers, on ground
For Tell's dread archery renowned,
Before the target stood, to claim
The guerdon of the steadiest aim.
Loud was the rifle-gun's report
A startling thunder quick and short!
But, flying through the heights around,
Echo prolonged a tell-tale sound
Of hearts and hands alike "prepared
The treasures they enjoy to guard!"
And, if there be a favoured hour
When Heroes are allowed to quit
The tomb, and on the clouds to sit
With tutelary power,
On their Descendants shedding grace
This was the hour, and that the place.
II
But Truth inspired the Bards of old
When of an iron age they told,
Which to unequal laws gave birth,
And drove Astraea from the earth.
A gentle Boy (perchance with blood
As noble as the best endued,
But seemingly a Thing despised;
Even by the sun and air unprized;
For not a tinge or flowery streak
Appeared upon his tender cheek)
Heart-deaf to those rebounding notes,
Apart, beside his silent goats,
Sate watching in a forest shed,
Pale, ragged, with bare feet and head;
Mute as the snow upon the hill,
And, as the saint he prays to, still.
Ah, what avails heroic deed?
What liberty? if no defense
Be won for feeble Innocence.
Father of all! though willful Manhood read
His punishment in soul-distress,
Grant to the morn of life its natural blessedness!