DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Nutting Song
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The November sun invites me,
And although the chill wind smites me,
I will wander to the woodland
Where the laden trees await;
And with loud and joyful singing
I will set the forest ringing,
As if I were king of Autumn,
And Dame Nature were my mate,--
While the squirrel in his gambols
Fearless round about me ambles,
As if he were bent on showing
In my kingdom he'd a share;
While my warm blood leaps and dashes,
And my eye with freedom flashes,
As my soul drinks deep and deeper
Of the magic in the air.
There's a pleasure found in nutting,
All life's cares and griefs outshutting,
That is fuller far and better
Than what prouder sports impart.
Who could help a carol trilling
As he sees the baskets filling?
Why, the flow of song keeps running
O'er the high walls of the heart.
So when I am home returning,
When the sun is lowly burning,
I will once more wake the echoes
With a happy song of praise,--
For the golden sunlight blessing,
And the breezes' soft caressing,
And the precious boon of living
In the sweet November days.
Abraham's Sacrifice.
by Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

The noontide sun streamed brightly down
Moriah's mountain crest,
The golden blaze of his vivid rays
Tinged sacred Jordan's breast;
While towering palms and flowerets sweet,
Drooped low 'neath Syria's burning heat.
In the sunny glare of the sultry air
Toiled up the mountain side
The Patriarch sage in stately age,
And a youth in health's gay pride,
Bearing in eyes and in features fair
The stamp of his mother's beauty rare.
She had not known when one rosy dawn,
Ere they started on their way,
She had smoothed with care his clustering hair,
And knelt with him to pray,
That his father's hand and will alike
Were nerved at his young heart to strike.
The Heavenly Power that with such dower
Of love fills a mother's heart,
Ardent and pure, that can all endure,
Of her life itself a part,
Knew too well that love beyond all price
To ask of her such a sacrifice.
Though the noble boy with laughing joy
Had borne up the mountain road
The altar wood, which in mournful mood
His sire had helped to load,
Type of Him who dragged up Calvary,
The cross on which he was doomed to die.
The hot breath of noon began, full soon,
On his youthful frame to tell;
On the ivory brow, flushed, wearied now,
It laid its burning spell;
And listless - languid - he journeyed on,
The smiles from his lips and bright eyes gone.
Once did he say, on their toilsome way,
"Father, no victim is near,"
But with heavy sigh and tear-dimmed eye,
In accents sad though clear,
Abraham answered: "The Lord, our guide,
A fitting sacrifice will provide."
The altar made and the fuel laid,
Lo! the victim stretched thereon
Is Abraham's son, his only one,
Who at morning's blushing dawn
Had started with smiles that care defied
To travel on at his father's side.
With grief-struck brow the Patriarch now
Bares the sharp and glittering knife;
On that mournful pyre, oh hapless sire!
Must he take his darling's life?
Will fails not, though his eyes are dim,
God gave his boy - he belongs to him.
With anguish riven, he casts towards Heaven
One look, imploring, wild,
That doth mutely pray for strength to slay
His own, his only child;
When forth on the air swells a glad command,
And an angel stays his trembling hand.
The offering done, the sire and son
Come down Moriah's steep,
Joy gleaming now on Abraham's brow,
In his heart thanksgiving deep;
While with love from His lofty and glorious Throne
Heaven's King hath smiled on sire and son.
Song Of The Battle Of Hastings.
by William Lisle Bowles

The Norman armament beneath thy rocks, St Valerie,
Is moored; and, streaming to the morn, three hundred banners fly,
Of crimson silk; with golden cross, effulgent o'er the rest,
That banner, proudest in the fleet, streams, which the Lord had blessed.
The gale is fair, the sails are set, cheerily the south wind blows,
And Norman archers, all in steel, have grasped their good yew-bows;
Aloud the harpers strike their harps, whilst morning light is flung
Upon the cross-bows and the shields, that round the masts are hung.
Speed on, ye brave! 'tis William leads; bold barons, at his word,
Lo! sixty thousand men of might for William draw the sword.
So, bound to England's southern shore, we rolled upon the seas,
And gallantly the white sails set were, and swelling to the breeze.
On, on, to victory or death! now rose the general cry;
The minstrels sang, On, on, ye brave, to death or victory!
Mark yonder ship, how straight she steers; ye knights and barons brave,
'Tis William's ship, and proud she rides, the foremost o'er the wave.
And now we hailed the English coast, and, lo! on Beachy Head,
The radiance of the setting sun majestical is shed.
The fleet sailed on, till, Pevensey! we saw thy welcome strand;
Duke William now his anchor casts, and dauntless leaps to land.
The English host, by Harold led, at length appear in sight,
And now they raise a deafening shout, and stand prepared for fight;
The hostile legions halt a while, and their long lines display,
Now front to front they stand, in still and terrible array.
Give out the word, God, and our right! rush like a storm along,
Lift up God's banner, and advance, resounding Roland's song!
Ye spearmen, poise your lances well, by brave Montgomerie led,
Ye archers, bend your bows, and draw your arrows to the head.
They draw - the bent bows ring - huzzah! another flight, and hark!
How the sharp arrowy shower beneath the sun goes hissing dark.
Hark! louder grows the deadly strife, till all the battle-plain
Is red with blood, and heaped around with men and horses slain.
On, Normans, on! Duke William cried, and Harold, tremble thou,
Now think upon thy perjury, and of thy broken vow.
The banner of thy armed knight, thy shield, thy helm are vain - 
The fatal shaft has sped, - by Heaven! it hisses in his brain!
So William won the English crown, and all his foemen beat,
And Harold, and his Britons brave, lay silent at his feet.
Enough! the day is breaking, cried the King:
Away! away! be armed at my side,
Without attendants, and to horse, to horse!
The River Duddon - A Series Of Sonnets, 1820. - XX - The Plain Of Donnerdale
by William Wordsworth

The old inventive Poets, had they seen,
Or rather felt, the entrancement that detains
Thy waters, Duddon! 'mid these flowery plains
The still repose, the liquid lapse serene,
Transferred to bowers imperishably green,
Had beautified Elysium! But these chains
Will soon be broken; a rough course remains,
Rough as the past; where Thou, of placid mien,
Innocuous as a firstling of the flock,
And countenanced like a soft cerulean sky,
Shalt change thy temper; and, with many a shock
Given and received in mutual jeopardy,
Dance, like a Bacchanal, from rock to rock,
Tossing her frantic thyrsus wide and high!
Odes From Horace. - [1]To Telephus. Book The Third, Ode The Nineteenth.
by Anna Seward

The number of the vanish'd years
That mark each famous Grecian reign,
This night, my Telephus, appears
Thy solemn pleasure to explain;
Or else assiduously to dwell,
In conscious eloquence elate,
On those who conquer'd, those who fell
At sacred Troy's devoted gate.
But at what price the cask, so rare,
Of luscious chian may be ours,
Who shall the tepid baths prepare,
And who shall strew the blooming flowers;
Beneath what roof we next salute,
And when shall smile these gloomy skies,
Thy wondrous eloquence is mute,
Nor here may graver topics rise. - 
Fill a bright bumper, - to the Moon!
She's new! - auspicious be her birth!
One to the Midnight! - 't is our noon
Of jocund thought, and festal mirth!
And one to him, for whom the feasts
This night are held with poignant [2]gust,
MURENA, whom his Rome invests
With solemn honors, sacred trust!
Kind omens shall his voice convey,
That may each rising care beguile;
Propitious fled the Birds to-day?
Will Love be ours, and Fortune smile? - 
Arrange the cups of various size,
The least containing bumpers three,
And nine the rest. - Come, no disguise!
Nor yet constraint, the choice is free!
All but the BARD's - the bowl of nine
He is, in duty, bound to fill;
The Muses number to decline
Were treason at Aonia's hill.
For here the Sisters shall preside,
So they allow us leave to laugh;
Unzon'd the Graces round us glide,
While we the liquid ruby quaff.
Yet they, in kind and guardian care,
Dreading left wild inebriate glee
With broils disturb our light career,
Would stint us to their number, three.
Away ye Prudes! - the caution wise
Becomes not this convivial hour,
That every dull restraint defies,
And laughs at all their frigid power. - 
Thou say'st I rave; - and true thou say'st,
Nor must thou check the flowing vein,
For sprightly nonsense suits him best
Whom grave reflection leads to pain.
Why mute the pipe's enlivening note?
Why sleeps the charming lyre so long?
O! let their strains around us float,
Mix'd with the sweet and jocund song!
And lavish be the roses strewn!
Ye flutes, ye lyres, exulting breathe!
The festal Hour disdains to own
The mournful note, the niggard wreath.
Old Lycon, with the venal Fair,
Who courts yet hates his vile embrace,
Our lively strains shall muttering hear,
While Envy pales each sullen face:
THOU, with thy dark luxuriant hair,
Thou, Telephus, as Hesper bright,
Thou art accomplish'd Chloe's care,
Whose glance is Love's delicious light.
Thy utmost wish the Fair-One crowns,
And thy calm'd heart may well pursue
The paths of knowledge; - Lyce frowns,
And I, distasteful, shun their view.
From themes, that wake the powers of mind,
The wounded Spirit sick'ning turns;
To those be then this hour consign'd,
That Mirth approves, tho' Wisdom spurns.
They shall disarm my Lyce's frown,
The frolic jest, the lively strain,
In flowing bowls, shall gaily drown
The memory of her cold disdain.
The Owl And The Pussy-Cat.
by Edward Lear

I.
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat:
They took some honey, and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!"
II.
Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl,
How charmingly sweet you sing!
Oh! let us be married; too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?"
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the bong-tree grows;
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood,
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
III.
"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
Worship
by John Greenleaf Whittier

The Pagan's myths through marble lips are spoken,
And ghosts of old Beliefs still flit and moan
Round fane and altar overthrown and broken,
O'er tree-grown barrow and gray ring of stone.
Blind Faith had martyrs in those old high places,
The Syrian hill grove and the Druid's wood,
With mother's offering, to the Fiend's embraces,
Bone of their bone, and blood of their own blood.
Red altars, kindling through that night of error,
Smoked with warm blood beneath the cruel eye
Of lawless Power and sanguinary Terror,
Throned on the circle of a pitiless sky;
Beneath whose baleful shadow, overcasting
All heaven above, and blighting earth below,
The scourge grew red, the lip grew pale with fasting,
And man's oblation was his fear and woe!
Then through great temples swelled the dismal moaning
Of dirge-like music and sepulchral prayer;
Pale wizard priests, o'er occult symbols droning,
Swung their white censers in the burdened air
As if the pomp of rituals, and the savor
Of gums and spices could the Unseen One please;
As if His ear could bend, with childish favor,
To the poor flattery of the organ keys!
Feet red from war-fields trod the church aisles holy,
With trembling reverence: and the oppressor there,
Kneeling before his priest, abased and lowly,
Crushed human hearts beneath his knee of prayer.
Not such the service the benignant Father
Requireth at His earthly children's hands
Not the poor offering of vain rites, but rather
The simple duty man from man demands.
For Earth He asks it: the full joy of heaven
Knoweth no change of waning or increase;
The great heart of the Infinite beats even,
Untroubled flows the river of His peace.
He asks no taper lights, on high surrounding
The priestly altar and the saintly grave,
No dolorous chant nor organ music sounding,
Nor incense clouding tip the twilight nave.
For he whom Jesus loved hath truly spoken
The holier worship which he deigns to bless
Restores the lost, and binds the spirit broken,
And feeds the widow and the fatherless!
Types of our human weakness and our sorrow!
Who lives unhaunted by his loved ones dead?
Who, with vain longing, seeketh not to borrow
From stranger eyes the home lights which have fled?
O brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother;
Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there;
To worship rightly is to love each other,
Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer.
Follow with reverent steps the great example
Of Him whose holy work was "doing good;"
So shall the wide earth seem our Father's temple,
Each loving life a psalm of gratitude.
Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangor
Of wild war music o'er the earth shall cease;
Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger,
And in its ashes plant the tree of peace!
The Old Year.
by W. M. MacKeracher

The old year is dying,
Its last hour is hieing
Over the verge;
The night winds are plying,
And are mournfully sighing
Its funeral dirge.
And now, in its even,
While its spirit is riven
Through the bright zone,
Beyond the heaven
To whence it was given -
To the unknown.
Its sadness in ending
Like a cloud is descending
Over my soul,
And the thoughts that are pending
With the low winds are blending,
Helping their dole.
A year of existence
Has passed to the distance
Ne'er to return:
To the right was resistance,
From duty desistance,
Nor would I learn.
But duty neglected
And virtue rejected
We may amend;
Then why be dejected? -
So sorely affected?
Whence does it tend?
Is it that pleasure
In liberal measure
I have not known?
Ah! rapturous pleasure
In memory I treasure,
But - it is flown.
Opportunity wasted,
Though far we have passed it,
We may retrieve;
But beakers once tasted
Of bliss while they lasted
Bitterness leave.
Winter Nightfall
by John Collings Squire, Sir

The old yellow stucco
Of the time of the Regent
Is flaking and peeling:
The rows of square windows
In the straight yellow building
Are empty and still;
And the dusty dark evergreens
Guarding the wicket
Are draped with wet cobwebs,
And above this poor wilderness
Toneless and sombre
Is the flat of the hill.
They said that a colonel
Who long ago died here
Was the last one to live here:
An old retired colonel,
Some Fraser or Murray,
I don't know his name;
Death came here and summoned him,
And the shells of him vanished
Beyond all speculation;
And silence resumed here,
Silence and emptiness,
And nobody came.
Was it wet when he lived here,
Were the skies dun and hurrying,
Was the rain so irresolute?
Did he watch the night coming,
Did he shiver at nightfall
Before he was dead?
Did the wind go so creepily,
Chilly and puffing,
With drops of cold rain in it?
Was the hill's lifted shoulder
So lowering and menacing,
So dark and so dread?
Did he turn through his doorway
And go to his study,
And light many candles?
And fold in the shutters,
And heap up the fireplace
To fight off the damps?
And muse on his boyhood,
And wonder if India
Ever was real?
And shut out the loneliness
With pig-sticking memoirs
And collections of stamps?
Perhaps.    But he's gone now,
He and his furniture
Dispersed now for ever;
And the last of his trophies,
Antlers and photographs,
Heaven knows where.
And there's grass in his gateway,
Grass on his footpath,
Grass on his door-step;
The garden's grown over,
The well-chain is broken,
The windows are bare.
And I leave him behind me,
For the straggling, discoloured
Rags of the daylight,
And hills and stone walls
And a rick long forgotten
Of blackening hay:
The road pale and sticky,
And cart-ruts and nail marks,
And wind-ruffled puddles,
And the slop of my footsteps
In this desolate country's
Cadaverous clay.
For The Union Dead
by Robert Lowell

Relinquunt Ommia Servare Rem Publicam.
The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.
Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the crowded, compliant fish.
My hand draws back. I often sign still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized
fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.
Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
a girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,
shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.
Two months after marching through Boston,
half of the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.
Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is a lean
as a compass-needle.
He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.
He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.
On a thousand small town New England greens
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic
The stone statutes of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year-
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns'
Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."
The ditch is nearer.
There are no statutes for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling
over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
when I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.
Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessed break.
The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.
The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,
and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft! a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.
Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!
The Old Remain, The Young Are Gone
by Madison Julius Cawein

The old remain, the young are gone.
The farm dreams lonely on the hill:
From early eve to early dawn
A cry goes with the whippoorwill
"The old remain, the young are gone."
Where run the roads they wander on?
The young, whose hearts romped shouting here:
Whose feet thrilled rapture through this lawn,
Where sadness walks now all the year.
The old remain, the young are gone.
To what far glory are they drawn?
And do they weary of the quest?
And serve they now a king or pawn
There in the cities of unrest?
The old remain, the young are gone.
They found the life here gray and wan,
Too kind, too poor, too full of peace:
The great mad world of brain and brawn
Called to their young hearts without cease.
The old remain, the young are gone.
They left us to our Avalon,
The ancient fields, the house and trees,
Where we at sunset and at dawn
May sit with dreams and memories.
The old remain, the young are gone.
Dear Heart, draw near and lean upon
My heart, and gaze no more through tears:
We have our love; our work well done,
To help us face the wistful years.
The old remain, the young are gone.
Blood Road
by Katharine Lee Bates

The Old Year groaned as he trudged away,
His guilty shadow black on the snow,
And the heart of the glad New Year turned grey
At the road Time bade him go.
"O Gaffer Time, is it blood-road still?
Is the noontide dark as the stormy morn?
Is man's will yet as a wild beast's will?
When shall the Christ be born?"
He laughed as he answered, grim Gaffer Time,
Whose laugh is sadder than all men's moan.
"That name rides high on our wrath and crime,
For the Light in darkness shone.
"And thou, fair youngling, wilt mend the tale?"
The New Year stared on the misty word,
Where at foot of a cross all lustrous pale
Men raged for their gods of gold.
"Come back, Old Year, with thy burden bent.
Come back and settle thine own dark debt."
"Nay, let me haste where the years repent,
For I've seen what I would forget."
"And I, the first of a stately train,
The tramp of a century heard behind,
Must I be fouled with thy murder-stain?
Is there no pure path to find?"
The Old Year sneered as he limped away
To the place of his penance dim and far.
The New Year stood in the gates of day,
Crowned with the morning star.