DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Flag Of The Free
by Edward Smyth Jones

Flag of the free, our sable sires
Have borne thee oft before
Into hot battles' hell-lit fires,
Against the fiercest foe.
When first he shook his shaggy mein,
And made the welkin ring,
Brave Attucks fell upon the Plain,
Thy stripes first crimsoning!
Thy might and majesty we hurl,
Against the bolts of Mars;
And from thy ample folds unfurl
Thy field of flaming stars!
Fond hope to nations in distress,
Thy starry gleam shall give;
The stricken in the wilderness
Shall look to thee and live.
What matter if where Boreas roars,
Or where sweet zephyr smiles?
What matter if where eagle soars,
Or in the sunlit isles?
Thy flowing crimson stripes shall wave
Above the bluish brine;
Emblazoned ensign of the brave,
And Liberty enshrine!
Flag of the free, still float on high
Through every age to come;
Bright beacon of the azure sky,
True light of Freedom's dome.
'Till nations all shall cease to grope
In vain for liberty--
O shine, last lingering star of hope
Of all humanity!
Sonnets From The Portuguese XXXVIII
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
And ever since, it grew more clean and white.
Slow to world-greetings, quick with its 'O, list,'
When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
I could not wear here, plainer to my sight,
Than that first kiss. The second passed in height
The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed,
Half falling on the hair. O beyond meed!
That was the chrism of love, which love's own crown,
With sanctifying sweetness, did precede
The third upon my lips was folded down
In perfect, purple state; since when, indeed,
I have been proud and said, 'My love, my own.'
By Any Other Name.
by James Whitcomb Riley

First the teacher called the roll,
Clos't to the beginnin',
"Addeliney Bowersox!"
Set the school a-grinnin'.
Wintertime, and stingin'-cold
When the session took up - 
Cold as we all looked at her,
Though she couldn't look up!
Total stranger to us, too - 
Country-folks ain't allus
Nigh so shameful unpolite
As some people call us! - 
But the honest facts is, then,
Addeliney Bower-
Sox's feelin's was so hurt
She cried half an hour!
My dest was acrost from her 'n:
Set and watched her tryin'
To p'tend she didn't keer,
And a kind o' dryin'
Up her tears with smiles - -tel I
Thought, "Well, 'Addeliney
Bowersox' is plain, but she's
Purty as a piney!"
It's be'n many of a year
Sence that most oncommon
Cur'ous name o' Bowersox
Struck me so abomin-
Nubble and outlandish-like! - 
I changed it to Adde-
Liney Daubenspeck - and that
Nearly killed her Daddy!
Upon Jolly's Wife.
by Robert Herrick

First, Jolly's wife is lame; then next loose-hipp'd:
Squint-ey'd, hook-nos'd; and lastly, kidney-lipp'd.
Lines To A Stupid Picture.
by Henry Austin Dobson

"--the music of the moon
Sleeps in the plain eggs of the nightingale."
Aylmer's Field.
Five geese,--a landscape damp and wild,--
A stunted, not too pretty, child,
Beneath a battered gingham;
Such things, to say the least, require
A Muse of more-than-average Fire
Effectively to sing 'em.
And yet--Why should they? Souls of mark
Have sprung from such;--e'en Joan of Arc
Had scarce a grander duty;
Not always ('tis a maxim trite)
From righteous sources comes the right,--
From beautiful, the beauty.
Who shall decide where seed is sown?
Maybe some priceless germ was blown
To this unwholesome marish;
(And what must grow will still increase,
Though cackled round by half the geese
And ganders in the parish.)
Maybe this homely face may hide
A Sta'l before whose mannish pride
Our frailer sex shall tremble;
Perchance this audience anserine
May hiss (O fluttering Muse of mine!)--
May hiss--a future Kemble!
Or say the gingham shadows o'er
An undeveloped Hannah More!--
A latent Mrs. Trimmer!!
Who shall affirm it?--who deny?--
Since of the truth nor you nor I
Discern the faintest glimmer?
So then--Caps off, my Masters all;
Reserve your final word,--recall
Your all-too-hasty strictures;
Caps off, I say, for Wisdom sees
Undreamed potentialities
In most unhopeful pictures.
Change Upon Change
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Five months ago the stream did flow,
The lilies bloomed within the sedge,
And we were lingering to and fro,
Where none will track thee in this snow,
Along the stream, beside the hedge.
Ah, Sweet, be free to love and go!
For if I do not hear thy foot,
The frozen river is as mute,
The flowers have dried down to the root:
And why, since these be changed since May,
Shouldst thou change less than they.
And slow, slow as the winter snow
The tears have drifted to mine eyes;
And my poor cheeks, five months ago
Set blushing at thy praises so,
Put paleness on for a disguise.
Ah, Sweet, be free to praise and go!
For if my face is turned too pale,
It was thine oath that first did fail,
It was thy love proved false and frail,
And why, since these be changed enow,
Should I change less than thou.
The Masque Of The Months.
by Henry Austin Dobson

(For A Fresco.)
Firstly thou, churl son of Janus,
Rough for cold, in drugget clad,
Com'st with rack and rheum to pain us;--
Firstly thou, churl son of Janus.
Caverned now is old Sylvanus;
Numb and chill are maid and lad.
After thee thy dripping brother,
Dank his weeds around him cling;
Fogs his footsteps swathe and smother,--
After thee thy dripping brother.
Hearth-set couples hush each other,
Listening for the cry of Spring.
Hark! for March thereto doth follow,
Blithe,--a herald tabarded;
O'er him flies the shifting swallow,--
Hark! for March thereto doth follow.
Swift his horn, by holt and hollow,
Wakes the flowers in winter dead.
Thou then, April, Iris' daughter,
Born between the storm and sun;
Coy as nymph ere Pan hath caught her,--
Thou then, April, Iris' daughter.
Now are light, and rustling water;
Now are mirth, and nests begun.
May the jocund cometh after,
Month of all the Loves (and mine);
Month of mock and cuckoo-laughter,--
May the jocund cometh after.
Beaks are gay on roof and rafter;
Luckless lovers peak and pine.
June the next, with roses scented,
Languid from a slumber-spell;
June in shade of leafage tented;--
June the next, with roses scented.
Now her Itys, still lamented,
Sings the mournful Philomel.
Hot July thereafter rages,
Dog-star smitten, wild with heat;
Fierce as pard the hunter cages,--
Hot July thereafter rages.
Traffic now no more engages;
Tongues are still in stall and street.
August next, with cider mellow,
Laughs from out the poppied corn;
Hook at back, a lusty fellow,--
August next, with cider mellow.
Now in wains the sheafage yellow
'Twixt the hedges slow is borne.
Laden deep with fruity cluster,
Then September, ripe and hale;
Bees about his basket fluster,--
Laden deep with fruity cluster.
Skies have now a softer lustre;
Barns resound to flap of flail.
Thou then, too, of woodlands lover,
Dusk October, berry-stained;
Wailed about of parting plover,--
Thou then, too, of woodlands lover.
Fading now are copse and cover;
Forests now are sere and waned.
Next November, limping, battered,
Blinded in a whirl of leaf;
Worn of want and travel-tattered,--
Next November, limping, battered.
Now the goodly ships are shattered,
Far at sea, on rock and reef.
Last of all the shrunk December
Cowled for age, in ashen gray;
Fading like a fading ember,--
Last of all the shrunk December.
Him regarding, men remember
Life and joy must pass away.
Consider The Lilies Of The Field
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Flowers preach to us if we will hear: - 
The rose saith in the dewy morn:
I am most fair;
Yet all my loveliness is born
Upon a thorn.
The poppy saith amid the corn:
Let but my scarlet head appear
And I am held in scorn;
Yet juice of subtle virtue lies
Within my cup of curious dyes.
The lilies say: Behold how we
Preach without words of purity.
The violets whisper from the shade
Which their own leaves have made:
Men scent our fragrance on the air,
Yet take no heed
Of humble lessons we would read.
But not alone the fairest flowers:
The merest grass
Along the roadside where we pass,
Lichen and moss and sturdy weed,
Tell of His love who sends the dew,
The rain and sunshine too,
To nourish one small seed.
Nowhere, Everywhere
by John Frederick Freeman

Flesh and blood, bone and skin,
Are the house that beauty lives in.
Formed in darkness, grown in light
Are they the substance of delight.
Who could have dreamed the things he sees
In these strong lovely presences--
In cheeks of children, thews of men,
Women's bodies beloved of men?
Who could have dreamed a thing so wise
As that clear look of the child's eyes?
Who the thin texture of her hand
But with a hand's touch understand?
Shaped in eternity were these
Body's miracles, where the seas
Their continuous rhythm learned,
And the stars in their bright order burned.
From stars and seas was motion caught
When flesh, blood, bone and skin were wrought
Into swift lovely liveliness.
Oh, but beauty less and less
Than beauty grows. The cheeks fall in,
Colour dies from the smooth skin,
And muscles slack and bones are brittle;
Veins and arteries little by little
Delay the tides of the blood:
That is a ditch that was a flood.
Then all but dry bones disappears,
White bones that lie a hundred years
Cheated of resurrection....
Where is that beauty gone?
Escaped even while we watched it so,
And none guessed the way it would go?
Only it's fled, and here alone
Lie blood and skin and flesh and bone.
Where is the beauty that was here?
--Nowhere, everywhere.
Autumn Feelings.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Flourish greener, as ye clamber,
Oh ye leaves, to seek my chamber,
Up the trellis'd vine on high!
May ye swell, twin-berries tender,
Juicier far, and with more splendour
Ripen, and more speedily!
O'er ye broods the sun at even
As he sinks to rest, and heaven
Softly breathes into your ear
All its fertilising fullness,
While the moon's refreshing coolness,
Magic-laden, hovers near;
And, alas! ye're watered ever
By a stream of tears that rill
From mine eyes tears ceasing never,
Tears of love that nought can still!
Mrs. Browning's Grave At Florence.
by Horatio Alger, Jr.

Florence wears an added grace,
All her earlier honors crowning;
Dante's birthplace, Art's fair home,
Holds the dust of Barrett Browning.
Guardian of the noble dead
That beneath thy soil lie sleeping,
England, with full heart, commends
This new treasure to thy keeping.
Take her, she is half thine own;
In her verses' rich outpouring,
Breathes the warm Italian heart,
Yearning for the land's restoring.
From thy skies her poet-heart
Caught a fresher inspiration,
And her soul obtained new strength,
With her bodily translation.
Freely take what thou hast given,
Less her verses' rhythmic beauty,
Than the stirring notes that called
Trumpet-like thy sons to duty.
Rarest of exotic flowers
In thy native chaplet twining,
To the temple of thy great
Add her--she is worth enshrining.
Song, By A Person Of Quality, Written In The Year 1733.
by Alexander Pope

1 Fluttering, spread thy purple pinions,
Gentle Cupid, o'er my heart,
I a slave in thy dominions;
Nature must give way to art.
2 Mild Arcadians, ever blooming,
Nightly nodding o'er your flocks,
See my weary days consuming,
All beneath yon flowery rocks.
3 Thus the Cyprian goddess, weeping,
Mourn'd Adonis, darling youth:
Him the boar, in silence creeping,
Gored with unrelenting tooth.
4 Cynthia, tune harmonious numbers;
Fair Discretion, string the lyre;
Soothe my ever-waking slumbers:
Bright Apollo, lend thy choir.
5 Gloomy Pluto, king of terrors,
Arm'd in adamantine chains,
Lead me to the crystal mirrors,
Watering soft Elysian plains.
6 Mournful cypress, verdant willow,
Gilding my Aurelia's brows,
Morpheus hovering o'er my pillow,
Hear me pay my dying vows.
7 Melancholy smooth Maeander,
Swiftly purling in a round,
On thy margin lovers wander,
With thy flowery chaplets crown'd.
8 Thus when Philomela, drooping,
Softly seeks her silent mate,
See the bird of Juno stooping;
Melody resigns to fate.
Song.
by Thomas Moore

Fly from the world, O Bessy! to me,
Thou wilt never find any sincerer;
I'll give up the world, O Bessy! for thee,
I can never meet any that's dearer.
Then tell me no more, with a tear and a sigh,
That our loves will be censured by many;
All, all have their follies, and who will deny
That ours is the sweetest of any?
When your lip has met mine, in communion so sweet,
Have we felt as if virtue forbid it?--
Have we felt as if heaven denied them to meet?--
No, rather 'twas heaven that did it.
So innocent, love, is the joy we then sip,
So little of wrong is there in it,
That I wish all my errors were lodged on your lip,
And I'd kiss them away in a minute.
Then come to your lover, oh! fly to his shed,
From a world which I know thou despisest;
And slumber will hover as light o'er our bed!
As e'er on the couch of the wisest.
And when o'er our pillow the tempest is driven,
And thou, pretty innocent, fearest,
I'll tell thee, it is not the chiding of heaven,
'Tis only our lullaby, dearest.
And, oh! while, we lie on our deathbed, my love,
Looking back on the scene of our errors,
A sigh from my Bessy shall plead then above,
And Death be disarmed of his terrors,
And each to the other embracing will say,
"Farewell! let us hope we're forgiven."
Thy last fading glance will illumine the way,
And a kiss be our passport to heaven!
Illusions
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Flow, flow the waves hated,
Accursed, adored,
The waves of mutation;
No anchorage is.
Sleep is not, death is not;
Who seem to die live.
House you were born in,
Friends of your spring-time,
Old man and young maid,
Day's toil and its guerdon,
They are all vanishing,
Fleeing to fables,
Cannot be moored.
See the stars through them,
Through treacherous marbles.
Know the stars yonder,
The stars everlasting,
Are fugitive also,
And emulate, vaulted,
The lambent heat lightning
And fire-fly's flight.
When thou dost return
On the wave's circulation,
Behold the shimmer,
The wild dissipation,
And, out of endeavor
To change and to flow,
The gas become solid,
And phantoms and nothings
Return to be things,
And endless imbroglio
Is law and the world,--
Then first shalt thou know,
That in the wild turmoil,
Horsed on the Proteus,
Thou ridest to power,
And to endurance.
Mare Rubrum
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

1858
Flash out a stream of blood-red wine,
For I would drink to other days,
And brighter shall their memory shine,
Seen flaming through its crimson blaze!
The roses die, the summers fade,
But every ghost of boyhood's dream
By nature's magic power is laid
To sleep beneath this blood-red stream!
It filled the purple grapes that lay,
And drank the splendors of the sun,
Where the long summer's cloudless day
Is mirrored in the broad Garonne;
It pictures still the bacchant shapes
That saw their hoarded sunlight shed, - 
The maidens dancing on the grapes, - 
Their milk-white ankles splashed with red.
Beneath these waves of crimson lie,
In rosy fetters prisoned fast,
Those flitting shapes that never die, - 
The swift-winged visions of the past.
Kiss but the crystal's mystic rim,
Each shadow rends its flowery chain,
Springs in a bubble from its brim,
And walks the chambers of the brain.
Poor beauty! Time and fortune's wrong
No shape nor feature may withstand;
Thy wrecks are scattered all along,
Like emptied sea-shells on the sand;
Yet, sprinkled with this blushing rain,
The dust restores each blooming girl,
As if the sea-shells moved again
Their glistening lips of pink and pearl.
Here lies the home of school-boy life,
With creaking stair and wind-swept hall,
And, scarred by many a truant knife,
Our old initials on the wall;
Here rest, their keen vibrations mute,
The shout of voices known so well,
The ringing laugh, the wailing flute,
The chiding of the sharp-tongued bell.
Here, clad in burning robes, are laid
Life's blossomed joys, untimely shed,
And here those cherished forms have strayed
We miss awhile, and call them dead.
What wizard fills the wondrous glass?
What soil the enchanted clusters grew?
That buried passions wake and pass
In beaded drops of fiery dew?
Nay, take the cup of blood-red wine, - 
Our hearts can boast a warmer glow,
Filled from a vintage more divine,
Calmed, but not chilled, by winter's snow!
To-night the palest wave we sip
Rich as the priceless draught shall be
That wet the bride of Cana's lip, - 
The wedding wine of Galilee!
Fragment: The Vine-Shroud.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Flourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow
Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste of thee;
For thou dost shroud a ruin, and below
The rotting bones of dead antiquity.
A Love Song In The Modern Taste. 1733
by Jonathan Swift

Fluttering spread thy purple pinions,
Gentle Cupid, o'er my heart:
I a slave in thy dominions;
Nature must give way to art.
Mild Arcadians, ever blooming
Nightly nodding o'er your flocks,
See my weary days consuming
All beneath yon flowery rocks.
Thus the Cyprian goddess weeping
Mourn'd Adonis, darling youth;
Him the boar, in silence creeping,
Gored with unrelenting tooth.
Cynthia, tune harmonious numbers;
Fair Discretion, string the lyre;
Sooth my ever-waking slumbers:
Bright Apollo, lend thy choir.
Gloomy Pluto, king of terrors,
Arm'd in adamantine chains,
Lead me to the crystal mirrors,
Watering soft Elysian plains.
Mournful cypress, verdant willow,
Gilding my Aurelia's brows,
Morpheus, hovering o'er my pillow,
Hear me pay my dying vows.
Melancholy smooth Meander,
Swiftly purling in a round,
On thy margin lovers wander,
With thy flowery chaplets crown'd.
Thus when Philomela drooping
Softly seeks her silent mate,
See the bird of Juno stooping;
Melody resigns to fate.
The Hollow.
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
Fleet swallows soared and darted
'Neath empty vaults of blue;
Thick leaves close clung or parted
To let the sunlight through;
Each wild rose, honey-hearted,
Bowed full of living dew.
II.
Down deep, fair fields of Heaven,
Beat wafts of air and balm,
From southmost islands driven
And continents of calm;
Bland winds by which were given
Hid hints of rustling palm.
III.
High birds soared high to hover;
Thick leaves close clung to slip;
Wild rose and snowy clover
Were warm for winds to dip,
And one ungentle lover,
A bee with robber lip.
IV.
Dart on, O buoyant swallow!
Kiss leaves and willing rose!
Whose musk the sly winds follow,
And bee that booming goes; - 
But in this quiet hollow
I'll walk, which no one knows.
V.
None save the moon that shineth
At night through rifted trees;
The lonely flower that twineth
Frail blooms that no one sees;
The whippoorwill that pineth;
The sad, sweet-swaying breeze;
VI.
The lone white stars that glitter;
The stream's complaining wave;
Gray bats that dodge and flitter;
Black crickets hid that rave;
And me whose life is bitter,
And one white head stone grave.
Thought On The Seasons
by William Wordsworth

Flattered with promise of escape
From every hurtful blast,
Spring takes, O sprightly May! thy shape,
Her loveliest and her last.
Less fair is summer riding high
In fierce solstitial power,
Less fair than when a lenient sky
Brings on her parting hour.
When earth repays with golden sheaves
The labours of the plough,
And ripening fruits and forest leaves
All brighten on the bough;
What pensive beauty autumn shows,
Before she hears the sound
Of winter rushing in, to close
The emblematic round!
Such be our Spring, our Summer such;
So may our Autumn blend
With hoary Winter, and Life touch,
Through heaven-born hope, her end!
Farewell Frost, Or Welcome Spring
by Robert Herrick

Fled are the frosts, and now the fields appear
Reclothed in fresh and verdant diaper;
Thaw'd are the snows; and now the lusty Spring
Gives to each mead a neat enamelling;
The palms put forth their gems, and every tree
Now swaggers in her leafy gallantry.
The while the Daulian minstrel sweetly sings
With warbling notes her Terean sufferings.
What gentle winds perspire! as if here
Never had been the northern plunderer
To strip the trees and fields, to their distress,
Leaving them to a pitied nakedness.
And look how when a frantic storm doth tear
A stubborn oak or holm, long growing there,
But lull'd to calmness, then succeeds a breeze
That scarcely stirs the nodding leaves of trees;
So when this war, which tempest-like doth spoil
Our salt, our corn, our honey, wine, and oil,
Falls to a temper, and doth mildly cast
His inconsiderate frenzy off, at last,
The gentle dove may, when these turmoils cease,
Bring in her bill, once more, the branch of Peace
Upon Flood Or A Thankful Man.
by Robert Herrick

Flood, if he has for him and his a bit,
He says his fore and after grace for it:
If meat he wants, then grace he says to see
His hungry belly borne on legs jail-free.
Thus have, or have not, all alike is good
To this our poor yet ever patient Flood.
By The River.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Flow on, ye lays so loved, so fair,
On to Oblivion's ocean flow!
May no rapt boy recall you e'er,
No maiden in her beauty's glow!
My love alone was then your theme,
But now she scorns my passion true.
Ye were but written in the stream;
As it flows on, then, flow ye too!
Flower In The Crannied Wall
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower'but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
Our Hero
by Robert William Service

"Flowers, only flowers - bring me dainty posies,
Blossoms for forgetfulness," that was all he said;
So we sacked our gardens, violets and roses,
Lilies white and bluebells laid we on his bed.
Soft his pale hands touched them, tenderly caressing;
Soft into his tired eyes came a little light;
Such a wistful love-look, gentle as a blessing;
There amid the flowers waited he the night.
"I would have you raise me; I can see the West then:
I would see the sun set once before I go."
So he lay a-gazing, seemed to be at rest then,
Quiet as a spirit in the golden glow.
So he lay a-watching rosy castles crumbling,
Moats of blinding amber, bastions of flame,
Rugged rifts of opal, crimson turrets tumbling;
So he lay a-dreaming till the shadows came.
"Open wide the window; there's a lark a-singing;
There's a glad lark singing in the evening sky.
How it's wild with rapture, radiantly winging:
Oh it's good to hear that when one has to die.
I am horror-haunted from the hell they found me;
I am battle-broken, all I want is rest.
Ah! It's good to die so, blossoms all around me,
And a kind lark singing in the golden West.
"Flowers, song and sunshine, just one thing is wanting,
Just the happy laughter of a little child."
So we brought our dearest, Doris all-enchanting;
Tenderly he kissed her; radiant he smiled.
"In the golden peace-time you will tell the story
How for you and yours, sweet, bitter deaths were ours. . . .
God bless little children!" So he passed to glory,
So we left him sleeping, still amid the flow'rs.
Nursery Rhyme. CCCXLI. Games.
by Unknown

[From Yorkshire. A game to alarm children.]
Flowers, flowers, high-do!
Sheeny, greeny, rino! - 
Sheeny greeny,
Sheeny greeny,
Rum tum fra!
January 1, 1828
by Nathaniel Parker Willis

Fleetly hath passed the year. The seasons came
Duly as they are wont, the gentle Spring,
And the deliscious Summer, and the cool,
Rich Autumn, with the nodding of the grain,
And Winter, like and old and hoary man,
Frosty and stiff, and are so chronicled,
We have read gladness in the new green leaf,
And in the first-blown violets; we have drunk
Cool water from the rock, and in the shade
Sunk to the noontide slumber; we have pluck'd
The mellow fruitage of the bending tree,
And girded to our pleasant wanderings
When the cool wind came freshly from the hills;
And when the tinting of the Autumn leaves
Had faded from its glory, we have sat
By the good fires of Winter, and rejoiced
Over the fulness of the gathered sheaf.
'God hath been very good!' 'Tis He whose hand
Moulded the sunny hills, and hollow'd out
The shelter of the valleys, and doth keep
The fountains in their secret places cool;
And it is he who leadeth up the sun,
And ordereth the starry influences,
And tempereth the keenness of the frost
And therefore, in the plenty of the feast,
And in the lifting of the cup, let Him
Have praises for the well-completed year