DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Creeper
by John Frederick Freeman

It covered all
The cold east wall,
Its green, thin gold, purple, brown,
And flame running up and down;
Lifting its quiet bosom to every wind that crept
Up the high wall and in its darkness slept.
Then when the wind slept all the creeper turned
To undiminishing fire that burned and burned and burned.
But one black night
(For not in the light
May such treacheries be done)
Came with dishonoured weapon one
And cut the stem just where the branches thin
Their million-leaf'd wild wandering begin:
Cut the firm stem quite through, and so it bled,
And all the million leaves shivered and hung there dead.
The wall how cold,
The house how old
Became when that warm bright fire died,
And the fond wind could no more hide.
And it was strange that so much death could be
From one dark night-hour's darker felony;
And how the leaves being dead could not cast down
Their colours in bright pools of red and gold and brown.
--It did not die,
But flamed on high
Morn after morn, even when white snow
Covered all brightness, high and low;
And in the night when the snow glimmered wan
Still beautiful as a fire its brightness shone:
Its million quiet leaves quivering in my mind,
When from no earthly meadows crept the remembered wind.
A Ballad of John Nicholson
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

It fell in the year of Mutiny,
At darkest of the night,
John Nicholson by Jal'ndhar came,
On his way to Delhi fight.
And as he by Jal'ndhar came,
He thought what he must do,
And he sent to the Rajah fair greeting,
To try if he were true.
"God grant your Highness length of days,
And friends when need shall be;
And I pray you send your Captains hither,
That they may speak with me."
On the morrow through Jal'ndhar town
The Captains rode in state;
They came to the house of John Nicholson,
And stood before the gate.
The chief of them was Mehtab Singh,
He was both proud and sly;
His turban gleamed with rubies red,
He held his chin full high.
He marked his fellows how they put
Their shoes from off their feet;
"Now wherefore make ye such ado
These fallen lords to greet?
"They have ruled us for a hundred years,
In truth I know not how,
But though they be fain of mastery
They dare not claim it now."
Right haughtily before them all
The durbar hall he trod,
With rubies red his turban gleamed,
His feet with pride were shod.
They had not been an hour together,
A scanty hour or so,
When Mehtab Singh rose in his place
And turned about to go.
Then swiftly came John Nicholson
Between the door and him,
With anger smouldering in his eyes,
That made the rubies dim.
"You are over-hasty, Mehtab Singh,"---
Oh, but his voice was low!
He held his wrath with a curb of iron
That furrowed cheek and brow.
"You are overhasty, Mehtab Singh,
When that the rest are gone,
I have a word that may not wait
To speak with you alone."
The Captains passed in silence forth
And stood the door behind;
To go before the game was played
Be sure they had no mind.
But there within John Nicholson
Turned him on Mehtab Singh,
"So long as the soul is in my body
You shall not do this thing.
"Have ye served us for a hundred years
And yet ye know not why?
We brook no doubt of our mastery,
We rule until we die.
"Were I the one last Englishman
Drawing the breath of life,
And you the master-rebel of all
That stir this land to strife---
"Were I," he said, "but a Corporal,
And you a Rajput King,
So long as the soul was in my body
You should not do this thing.
"Take off, take off, those shoes of pride,
Carry them whence they came;
Your Captains saw your insolence,
And they shall see your shame."
When Mehtab Singh came to the door
His shoes they burned his hand,
For there in long and silent lines
He saw the Captains stand.
When Mehtab Singh rode from the gate
His chin was on his breast:
The Captains said, "When the strong command
Obedience is best."
The Gryphon
by Oliver Herford

It chanced that Allah, looking round,
When he had made his creatures, found
Half of an Eagle and a pair
Of extra Lion legs to spare.
So, hating waste, he took some glue
And made a Gryphon of the two.
But when his handiwork he eyed,
He frowned--and it was petrified,
Doomed for all time to represent
Impatience on a monument.
Sometimes upon our path to-day
Its living counterpart will stray--
Columbia's Eagle strutting in
An awf'ly English Lion's skin,
With glass in eye and swagg'ring gait:
Behold the Gryphon up to date.
Ismael.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Ismael, the Sultan, in the Ramazan,
Girdled with guards and many a yataghan,
Pachas and amins, viziers wisdom-gray,
And holy marabouts, betook his way
Through Mekinez. Written the angel's word,
Of Eden's Kauther, reads, "Slay! praying the Lord!
Pray! slaying the victims!" so the Sultan went,
The Cruel Sultan, with this good intent,
In white bournouse and sea-green caftan clad
First to the mosque. Long each muezzin had
Summoned the faithful unto prayer and let
The "Allah Akbar!" from each minaret,
Call to their thousand lamps of blazing gold.
Prostrated prayed the Sultan. On the old
Mosaics of the mosque whose hollow steamed
With aloes-incense lean ecstatics dreamed
On Allah and his Prophet, and how great
Is God, and how unstable man's estate.
Conviction on him, in this chanting low
Of Koran texts, the Caliph's passion so
Exalted rose, lamps of religious awe,
Loud smitings of the everlasting law
On unbelievers, - trebly manifest
The Faith's anointed sword he feels confessed.
So from the mosque, whose arabesques above 
The marvellous work of Oriental love 
Seen with new splendors of Heaven's blue and gold,
Applauding all, he, as the gates are rolled
Ogival back to let the many forth,
Cries war to all the unbelieving North.
Soon have they passed the tight bazaar; along
Close, crooked streets, too narrow for the throng;
The place of owls and tombs; the merloned wall,
Camel and steed and ass. Projecting all
Its towering battlements, his palace gray,
Seraglios and courts, against the day
Lifts, vanishes. And now, soul-set on hate,
From Mekinez they pass the scolloped gate.
Two dozing beggars, baking each a sore,
Sprawl in the sun the city gate before;
A leprous cripple and a thief, whose eyes 
Burnt out with burning iron, as supplies
The law for thieves, two fly-thick wounds blood-raw,
Lifted shrill voices as they heard or saw;
Praised God, and flung into the dust each face
With words of "victory and Allah's grace
Attend our Caliph, Mouley-Ismael!
Even at the cost of ours his days be well!"
And grimly smiling as he grimly passed,
"While God most merciful, who is, shall last, 
Now by Es Sirat! will a liar's word
And thief's prevail or prosper? Pray the Lord! 
What! at your lives' cost? my devout intent!
Even as 't is bidden let their necks be bent!
Though words be pious, evil at the soul
Naught is the prayer! So let their prayer be whole.
Nay! give them gold; but when the sequins cease
From the slaves' hands, by these my Soudanese
They die!" he said; and even as he said
Rolled in the dust each writhing, withered head.
And frowning westward, as the day grew late,
Four bleeding heads stared from the city gate
'Neath this inscription, for the passer-by,
"There is no virtue but in God the High."
Self And Soul.
by Madison Julius Cawein

It came to me in my sleep,
And I rose from my sleep and went
Out in the night to weep,
Over the bristling bent.
With my soul, it seemed, I stood
Alone in a moaning wood.
And my soul said, gazing at me,
"Shall I show you another land
Than other this flesh can see?"
And took into hers my hand.
We passed from the wood to a heath
As starved as the ribs of Death.
Three skeleton trees we pass,
Bare bones on an iron moor,
Where every leaf and the grass
Was a thorn and a thistle hoar.
And my soul said, looking on me,
"The past of your life you see."
And a swine-herd passed with his swine,
Deformed; and I heard him growl;
Two eyes of a sottish shine
Leered under two brows as foul.
And my soul said, "This is the lust
That soils my limbs with the dust."
And a goose wife hobbled by
On a crutch, with the devil's geese;
A-mumbling how life is a lie,
And cursing my soul without cease.
And my soul said, "This is desire;
The meaning of life is higher."
And we came to a garden, close
To a hollow of graves and tombs;
A garden as red as a rose
Hung over of obscene glooms;
The heart of each rose was a spark
That smouldered or splintered the dark.
And I was aware of a girl
With a wild-rose face, who came
With a mouth like a shell's split pearl,
Rose-clad in a robe of flame;
And she plucked the roses and gave,
And my flesh was her veriest slave.
She vanished. My lips would have kissed
The flowers she gave me with sighs,
But they writhed in my hands and hissed,
In their hearts were a serpent's eyes.
And my soul said, "Pleasure is she;
The joys of the flesh you see."
And I bowed with a heart too weary,
That longed for rest, for sleep;
And my eyes were heavy and teary,
And yearned for a way to weep.
And my soul smiled, "This may be!
Will you know me and follow me?"
For Class Meeting
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

It is a pity and a shame - alas! alas! I know it is,
To tread the trodden grapes again, but so it has been, so it is;
The purple vintage long is past, with ripened clusters bursting so
They filled the wine-vats to the brim,-'t is strange you will be thirsting so!
Too well our faithful memory tells what might be rhymed or sung about,
For all have sighed and some have wept since last year's snows were flung about;
The beacon flame that fired the sky, the modest ray that gladdened us,
A little breath has quenched their light, and deepening shades have saddened us.
No more our brother's life is ours for cheering or for grieving us,
One only sadness they bequeathed, the sorrow of their leaving us;
Farewell! Farewell! - I turn the leaf I read my chiming measure in;
Who knows but something still is there a friend may find a pleasure in?
For who can tell by what he likes what other people's fancies are?
How all men think the best of wives their own particular Nancies are?
If what I sing you brings a smile, you will not stop to catechise,
Nor read Bceotia's lumbering line with nicely scanning Attic eyes.
Perhaps the alabaster box that Mary broke so lovingly,
While Judas looked so sternly on, the Master so approvingly,
Was not so fairly wrought as those that Pilate's wife and daughters had,
Or many a dame of Judah's line that drank of Jordan's waters had.
Perhaps the balm that cost so dear, as some remarked officiously,
The precious nard that filled the room with fragrance so deliciously,
So oft recalled in storied page and sung in verse melodious,
The dancing girl had thought too cheap, - that daughter of Herodias.
Where now are all the mighty deeds that Herod boasted loudest of?
Where now the flashing jewelry the tetrarch's wife was proudest of?
Yet still to hear how Mary loved, all tribes of men are listening,
And still the sinful woman's tears like stars heaven are glistening.
'T is not the gift our hands have brought, the love it is we bring with it, - 
The minstrel's lips may shape the song, his heart in tune must sing with it;
And so we love the simple lays, and wish we might have more of them,
Our poet brothers sing for us, - there must be half a score of them.
It may be that of fame and name our voices once were emulous, - 
With deeper thoughts, with tenderer throbs their softening tones are tremulous;
The dead seem listening as of old, ere friendship was bereft of them;
The living wear a kinder smile, the remnant that is left of them.
Though on the once unfurrowed brows the harrow- teeth of Time may show,
Though all the strain of crippling years the halting feet of rhyme may show,
We look and hear with melting hearts, for what we all remember is
The morn of Spring, nor heed how chill the sky of gray November is.
Thanks to the gracious powers above from all mankind that singled us,
And dropped the pearl of friendship in the cup they kindly mingled us,
And bound us in a wreath of flowers with hoops of steel knit under it; - 
Nor time, nor space, nor chance, nor change, nor death himself shall sunder it!
From The Portuguese Of Semedo. - Sonnet. (Translations.)
by William Cullen Bryant

It is a fearful night; a feeble glare
Streams from the sick moon in the o'erclouded sky;
The ridgy billows, with a mighty cry,
Rush on the foamy beaches wild and bare;
No bark the madness of the waves will dare;
The sailors sleep; the winds are loud and high;
Ah, peerless Laura! for whose love I die,
Who gazes on thy smiles while I despair?
As thus, in bitterness of heart, I cried,
I turned, and saw my Laura, kind and bright,
A messenger of gladness, at my side:
To my poor bark she sprang with footstep light,
And as we furrowed Tago's heaving tide,
I never saw so beautiful a night.
Dane-Geld
by Rudyard Kipling

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
"We invaded you last night, we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!"
Quo Vadis
by Madison Julius Cawein

It is as if imperial trumpets broke
Again the silence on War's iron height;
And C'sar's armored legions marched to fight,
While Rome, blood-red upon her mountain-yoke,
Blazed like an awful sunset. At a stroke,
Again I see the living torches light
The horrible revels, and the bloated, white,
Bayed brow of Nero smiling through the smoke:
And here and there a little band of slaves
Among dark ruins; and the form of Paul,
Bearded and gaunt, expounding still the Word:
And towards the North the tottering architraves
Of empire; and, wild-waving over all,
The flaming figure of a Gothic sword.
Intended Tribute To The Author Of An Article In The Last Number Of The Quarterly Review, Entitled "Romanism In Ireland."
by Thomas Moore

It glads us much to be able to say,
That a meeting is fixt for some early day,
Of all such dowagers--he or she--
(No matter the sex, so they dowagers be,)
Whose opinions concerning Church and State
From about the time of the Curfew date--
Stanch sticklers still for days bygone,
And admiring them for their rust alone--
To whom if we would a leader give,
Worthy their tastes conservative,
We need but some mummy-statesman raise,
Who was pickled and potted in Ptolemy's days;
For that's the man, if waked from his shelf,
To conserve and swaddle this world like himself.
Such, we're happy to state, are the old he-dames
Who've met in committee and given their names
(In good hieroglyphics), with kind intent
To pay some handsome compliment
To their sister author, the nameless he,
Who wrote, in the last new Quarterly,
That charming assault upon Popery;
An article justly prized by them
As a perfect antediluvian gem--
The work, as Sir Sampson Legend would say,
Of some "fellow the Flood couldn't wash away."[1]
The fund being raised, there remained but to see
What the dowager-author's gift was to be.
And here, I must say, the Sisters Blue
Showed delicate taste and judgment too.
For finding the poor man suffering greatly
From the awful stuff he has thrown up lately--
So much so indeed to the alarm of all,
As to bring on a fit of what doctors call
The Antipapistico-monomania
(I'm sorry with such a long word to detain ye),
They've acted the part of a kind physician,
By suiting their gift to the patient's condition;
And as soon as 'tis ready for presentation,
We shall publish the facts for the gratification
Of this highly-favored and Protestant nation.
Meanwhile, to the great alarm of his neighbors,
He still continues his Quarterly labors;
And often has strong No-Popery fits,
Which frighten his old nurse out of her wits.
Sometimes he screams, like Scrub in the play,[2]
"Thieves! Jesuits! Popery!" night and day;
Takes the Printer's Devil for Doctor Dens,
And shies at him heaps of High-church pens;[3]
Which the Devil (himself a touchy Dissenter)
Feels all in his hide, like arrows, enter.
'Stead of swallowing wholesome stuff from the druggist's,
He will keep raving of "Irish Thuggists;"[4]
Tells us they all go murdering for fun
From rise of morn till set of sun,
Pop, pop, as fast as a minute-gun![5]
If askt, how comes it the gown and cassock are
Safe and fat, mid this general massacre--
How hap sit that Pat's own population
But swarms the more for this trucidation--
He refers you, for all such memoranda,
To the "archives of the Propaganda!"
This is all we've got, for the present, to say--
But shall take up the subject some future day.
Tolerance
by Thomas Hardy

"It is a foolish thing," said I,
"To bear with such, and pass it by;
Yet so I do, I know not why!"
And at each clash I would surmise
That if I had acted otherwise
I might have saved me many sighs.
But now the only happiness
In looking back that I possess -
Whose lack would leave me comfortless -
Is to remember I refrained
From masteries I might have gained,
And for my tolerance was disdained;
For see, a tomb. And if it were
I had bent and broke, I should not dare
To linger in the shadows there.
It Is A Beauteous Evening
by William Wordsworth

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquility;
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder, everlastingly.
Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year,
And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.
The Confessional
by Robert Browning

SPAIN.
I.
It is a lie, their Priests, their Pope,
Their Saints, their . . . all they fear or hope
Are lies, and lies, there! through my door
And ceiling, there! and walls and floor,
There, lies, they lie, shall still be hurled
Till spite of them I reach the world!
II.
You think Priests just and holy men!
Before they put me in this den
I was a human creature too,
With flesh and blood like one of you,
A girl that laughed in beauty's pride
Like lilies in your world outside.
III.
I had a lover, shame avaunt!
This poor wrenched body, grim and gaunt,
Was kissed all over till it burned,
By lips the truest, love e'er turned
His heart's own tint: one night they kissed
My soul out in a burning mist.
IV.
So, next day when the accustomed train
Of things grew round my sense again,
'That is a sin,' I said: and slow
With downcast eyes to church I go,
And pass to the confession-chair,
And tell the old mild father there.
V.
But when I falter Beltran's name,
'Ha?' quoth the father; 'much I blame
'The sin; yet wherefore idly grieve?
'Despair not, strenuously retrieve!
'Nay, I will turn this love of thine
'To lawful love, almost divine;
VI.
'For he is young, and led astray,
'This Beltran, and he schemes, men say,
'To change the laws of church and state;
'So, thine shall be an angel's fate,
'Who, ere the thunder breaks, should roll
'Its cloud away and save his soul.
VII.
'For, when he lies upon thy breast,
'Thou mayst demand and be possessed
'Of all his plans, and next day steal
'To me, and all those plans reveal,
'That I and every priest, to purge
'His soul, may fast and use the scourge.'
VIII.
That father's beard was long and white,
With love and truth his brow seemed bright;
I went back, all on fire with joy,
And, that same evening, bade the boy
Tell me, as lovers should, heart-free,
Something to prove his love of me.
IX.
He told me what he would not tell
For hope of heaven or fear of hell;
And I lay listening in such pride!
And, soon as he had left my side,
Tripped to the church by morning-light
To save his soul in his despite.
X.
I told the father all his schemes,
Who were his comrades, what their dreams;
'And now make haste,' I said, 'to pray
'The one spot from his soul away;
'To-night he comes, but not the same
'Will look!' At night he never came.
XI.
Nor next night: on the after-morn,
I went forth with a strength new-born.
The church was empty; something drew
My steps into the street; I knew
It led me to the market-place,
Where, lo, on high, the father's face!
XII.
That horrible black scaffold drest,
That stapled block . . . God sink the rest!
That head strapped back, that blinding vest,
Those knotted hands and naked breast,
Till near one busy hangman pressed,
And, on the neck these arms caressed . . .
XIII.
No part in aught they hope or fear!
No heaven with them, no hell! and here,
No earth, not so much space as pens
My body in their worst of dens
But shall bear God and man my cry,
Lies, lies, again, and still, they lie!
Looking Across
by Thomas Hardy

I
It is dark in the sky,
And silence is where
Our laughs rang high;
And recall do I
That One is out there.
II
The dawn is not nigh,
And the trees are bare,
And the waterways sigh
That a year has drawn by,
And Two are out there.
III
The wind drops to die
Like the phantom of Care
Too frail for a cry,
And heart brings to eye
That Three are out there.
IV
This Life runs dry
That once ran rare
And rosy in dye,
And fleet the days fly,
And Four are out there.
V
Tired, tired am I
Of this earthly air,
And my wraith asks: Why,
Since these calm lie,
Are not Five out there?
December 1915.
The Common Lot.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

It is a common fate - a woman's lot - 
To waste on one the riches of her soul,
Who takes the wealth she gives him, but cannot
Repay the interest, and much less the whole.
As I look up into your eyes and wait
For some response to my fond gaze and touch,
It seems to me there is no sadder fate
Than to be doomed to loving overmuch.
Are you not kind? Ah, yes, so very kind - 
So thoughtful of my comfort, and so true.
Yes, yes, dear heart; but I, not being blind,
Know that I am not loved as I love you.
One tenderer word, a little longer kiss,
Will fill my soul with music and with song;
And if you seem abstracted, or I miss
The heart-tone from your voice, my world goes wrong.
And oftentimes you think me childish - weak - 
When at some thoughtless word the tears will start;
You cannot understand how aught you speak
Has power to stir the depths of my poor heart.
I cannot help it, dear, - I wish I could,
Or feign indifference where I now adore;
For if I seemed to love you less you would,
Manlike, I have no doubt, love me the more.
'Tis a sad gift, that much applauded thing,
A constant heart; for fact doth daily prove
That constancy finds oft a cruel sting,
While fickle natures win the deeper love.
Immortality.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

It is an honorable thought,
And makes one lift one's hat,
As one encountered gentlefolk
Upon a daily street,
That we've immortal place,
Though pyramids decay,
And kingdoms, like the orchard,
Flit russetly away.