DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Merlin's Song
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

I
Of Merlin wise I learned a song,--
Sing it low or sing it loud,
It is mightier than the strong,
And punishes the proud.
I sing it to the surging crowd,--
Good men it will calm and cheer,
Bad men it will chain and cage--
In the heart of the music peals a strain
Which only angels hear;
Whether it waken joy or rage
Hushed myriads hark in vain,
Yet they who hear it shed their age,
And take their youth again.
II
Hear what British Merlin sung,
Of keenest eye and truest tongue.
Say not, the chiefs who first arrive
Usurp the seats for which all strive;
The forefathers this land who found
Failed to plant the vantage-ground;
Ever from one who comes to-morrow
Men wait their good and truth to borrow.
But wilt thou measure all thy road,
See thou lift the lightest load.
Who has little, to him who has less, can spare,
And thou, Cyndyllan's son! beware
Ponderous gold and stuffs to bear,
To falter ere thou thy task fulfil,--
Only the light-armed climb the hill.
The richest of all lords is Use,
And ruddy Health the loftiest Muse.
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea,
Drink the wild air's salubrity:
When the star Canope shines in May,
Shepherds are thankful and nations gay.
The music that can deepest reach,
And cure all ill, is cordial speech:
Mask thy wisdom with delight,
Toy with the bow, yet hit the white.
Of all wit's uses, the main one
Is to live well with who has none.
The Shepherd And The Lion.
by Jean de La Fontaine

[1]
Of fables judge not by their face;
They give the simplest brute a teacher's place.
Bare precepts were inert and tedious things;
The story gives them life and wings.
But story for the story's sake
Were sorry business for the wise;
As if, for pill that one should take,
You gave the sugary disguise.
For reasons such as these,
Full many writers great and good
Have written in this frolic mood,
And made their wisdom please.
But tinsel'd style they all have shunn'd with care;
With them one never sees a word to spare.
Of Phaedrus some have blamed the brevity,
While Aesop uses fewer words than he.
A certain Greek,[2] however, beats
Them both in his larconic feats.
Each tale he locks in verses four;
The well or ill I leave to critic lore.
At Aesop's side to see him let us aim,
Upon a theme substantially the same.
The one selects a lover of the chase;
A shepherd comes, the other's tale to grace.
Their tracks I keep, though either tale may grow
A little in its features as I go.
The one which Aesop tells is nearly this: - 
A shepherd from his flock began to miss,
And long'd to catch the stealer of, his sheep.
Before a cavern, dark and deep,
Where wolves retired by day to sleep,
Which he suspected as the thieves,
He set his trap among the leaves;
And, ere he left the place,
He thus invoked celestial grace: - 
'O king of all the powers divine,
Against the rogue but grant me this delight,
That this my trap may catch him in my sight,
And I, from twenty calves of mine,
Will make the fattest thine.'
But while the words were on his tongue,
Forth came a lion great and strong.
Down crouch'd the man of sheep, and said,
With shivering fright half dead,
'Alas! that man should never be aware
Of what may be the meaning of his prayer!
To catch the robber of my flocks,
O king of gods, I pledged a calf to thee:
If from his clutches thou wilt rescue me,
I'll raise my offering to an ox.'
'Tis thus the master-author[3] tells the story:
Now hear the rival of his glory.
The Scamps
by Henry Lawson

Of home, name and wealth and ambition bereft,
We are children of fortune and luck:
They deny there's a shred of our characters left,
But they cannot deny us the pluck!
We are vagabond scamps, we are kings over all,
There is little on earth we desire,
We are devils who stand with our backs to the wall,
And who call on the cowards to fire!
There are some of us here who were noble and good,
And who learnt in ingratitude's schools,
They were born of the selfish and misunderstood,
They were soft, they were 'smoodgers' or fools.
With their hands in their pockets to help every friend
In a fix, and they never asked how:
Beware of them you who have money to lend,
For it's little you'd get from them now.
There are some of us here who were lovers of old,
In the days that were nearer to God;
The girl was more precious than honour or gold,
And they worshipped the ground where she trod;
But she trampled their hearts and they suffered and knew
How the soul of a woman to read,
They will never again to a woman be true;
Let the girls who may meet them take heed!
There are some of us here who were devils from birth,
Who would steal the eye out of a friend,
But we judge not or blame not the worst on the earth,
For it comes to the same in the end.
There are some of us here who were ruined by wrong,
To whom justice and love came too late,
And they threw them aside and go singing a song,
And they know that their mistress is fate.
We were some of us failures at suicide, too,
We are most of us back from the dead,
But we've all found the courage to battle it through,
Till the strength of our bodies is sped:
With a flag that is dyed with our hearts'-blood unfurled,
We are marching and marching afar,
We are comrades of all who are fighting the world,
For the world made us all what we are.
Life And Death. A Quatrain.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Of our own selves God makes a glass, wherein
Two shadows image them as might a breath:
And one is Life, whose other name is Sin;
And one is Love, whose other name is Death.
The Flower-Angels
by George MacDonald

Of old, with goodwill from the skies--
God's message to them given--
The angels came, a glad surprise,
And went again to heaven.
But now the angels are grown rare,
Needed no more as then;
Far lowlier messengers can bear
God's goodwill unto men.
Each year, the snowdrops' pallid dawn
Breaks from the earth below;
Light spreads, till, from the dark updrawn,
The noontide roses glow.
The snowdrops first--the dawning gray;
Then out the roses burn!
They speak their word, grow dim--away
To holy dust return.
Of oracles were little dearth,
Should heaven continue dumb;
From lowliest corners of the earth
God's messages will come.
In thy face his we see, O Lord,
And are no longer blind;
Need not so much his rarer word,
In flowers even read his mind.
Sonnet. The Beggar.
by Thomas Gent

Of late I saw him on his staff reclined,
Bow'd down beneath a weary weight of woes,
Without a roof to shelter from the wind
His head, all hoar with many a winter's snows.
All trembling he approach'd, he strove to speak;
The voice of misery scarce my ear assail'd;
A flood of sorrow swept his furrow'd cheek,
Remembrance check'd him, and his utt'rance fail'd.
For he had known full many a better day;
And when the poor man at his threshold bent,
He drove him not with aching heart away,
But freely shared what Providence had sent.
How hard for him, the stranger's boon to crave,
And live to want the mite his bounty gave!
On Hearing The Bag-Pipe And Seeing "The Stranger" Played At Inverary
by John Keats

Of late two dainties were before me plac'd
Sweet, holy, pure, sacred and innocent,
From the ninth sphere to me benignly sent
That Gods might know my own particular taste:
First the soft Bag-pipe mourn'd with zealous haste,
The Stranger next with head on bosom bent
Sigh'd; rueful again the piteous Bag-pipe went,
Again the Stranger sighings fresh did waste.
O Bag-pipe thou didst steal my heart away
O Stranger thou didst re-assert thy sway
Again thou Stranger gav'st me fresh alarm
Alas! I could not choose. Ah! my poor heart
Mum chance art thou with both oblig'd to part.
Upon Young Mr Rogers Of Gloucestershire.
by John Dryden

Of gentle blood, his parents' only treasure,
Their lasting sorrow, and their vanish'd pleasure,
Adorn'd with features, virtues, wit, and grace,
A large provision for so short a race;
More moderate gifts might have prolong'd his date,
Too early fitted for a better state;
But, knowing heaven his home, to shun delay,
He leap'd o'er age, and took the shortest way.
Prometheus Or The Poet's Forethought
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Of Prometheus, how undaunted
On Olympus' shining bastions
His audacious foot he planted,
Myths are told and songs are chanted,
Full of promptings and suggestions.
Beautiful is the tradition
Of that flight through heavenly portals,
The old classic superstition
Of the theft and the transmission
Of the fire of the Immortals!
First the deed of noble daring,
Born of heavenward aspiration,
Then the fire with mortals sharing,
Then the vulture,--the despairing
Cry of pain on crags Caucasian.
All is but a symbol painted
Of the Poet, Prophet, Seer;
Only those are crowned and sainted
Who with grief have been acquainted,
Making nations nobler, freer.
In their feverish exultations,
In their triumph and their yearning,
In their passionate pulsations,
In their words among the nations,
The Promethean fire is burning.
Shall it, then, be unavailing,
All this toil for human culture?
Through the cloud-rack, dark and trailing,
Must they see above them sailing
O'er life's barren crags the vulture?
Such a fate as this was Dante's,
By defeat and exile maddened;
Thus were Milton and Cervantes,
Nature's priests and Corybantes,
By affliction touched and saddened.
But the glories so transcendent
That around their memories cluster,
And, on all their steps attendant,
Make their darkened lives resplendent
With such gleams of inward lustre!
All the melodies mysterious,
Through the dreary darkness chanted;
Thoughts in attitudes imperious,
Voices soft, and deep, and serious,
Words that whispered, songs that haunted!
All the soul in rapt suspension,
All the quivering, palpitating
Chords of life in utmost tension,
With the fervor of invention,
With the rapture of creating!
Ah, Prometheus! heaven-scaling!
In such hours of exultation
Even the faintest heart, unquailing,
Might behold the vulture sailing
Round the cloudy crags Caucasian!
Though to all there is not given
Strength for such sublime endeavor,
Thus to scale the walls of heaven,
And to leaven with fiery leaven
All the hearts of men for ever;
Yet all bards, whose hearts unblighted
Honor and believe the presage,
Hold aloft their torches lighted,
Gleaming through the realms benighted,
As they onward bear the message!
Thoughts
by Walt Whitman

Of Public Opinion; 
Of a calm and cool fiat, sooner or later, (How impassive! How certain and final!) 
Of the President with pale face, asking secretly to himself, What will the people say at last? 
Of the frivolous Judge'Of the corrupt Congressman, Governor, Mayor'Of such as these, standing helpless and exposed; 
Of the mumbling and screaming priest'(soon, soon deserted;)
Of the lessening, year by year, of venerableness, and of the dicta of officers, statutes, pulpits, schools; 
Of the rising forever taller and stronger and broader, of the intuitions of men and women, and of self-esteem, and of personality; 
Of the New World'Of the Democracies, resplendent, en-masse; 
Of the conformity of politics, armies, navies, to them and to me, 
Of the shining sun by them'Of the inherent light, greater than the rest,
Of the envelopment of all by them, and of the effusion of all from them.
Hoffer
by William Wordsworth

Of mortal parents is the Hero born
By whom the undaunted Tyrolese are led?
Or is it Tell's great Spirit, from the dead
Returned to animate an age forlorn?
He comes like Phoebus through the gates of morn
When dreary darkness is discomfited,
Yet mark his modest state! upon his head,
That simple crest, a heron's plume, is worn.
O Liberty! they stagger at the shock
From van to rear, and with one mind would flee,
But half their host is buried: rock on rock
Descends: beneath this godlike Warrior, see!
Hills, torrents, woods, embodied to bemock
The Tyrant, and confound his cruelty.
Thought
by Walt Whitman

Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness; 
As I stand aloof and look, there is to me something profoundly affecting in large masses of men, following the lead of those who do not believe in men.
Canadian Hunter.
by James McIntyre

Of Kentucky's great hunter bold
Old Daniel Boone oft tales are told,
Of wild beasts he had no fear,
But dangers loved that pioneer.
Canada has hunters many,
Yet perhaps there is not any
For skill and boldness can compare
With our own Daniel Hebner.
In youth he was both tall and strong,
And supple as a willow thong,
He never fled from savage bear,
Though bruin on hind legs would rear.
In hunting mink, or fox or coon,
He was a second Daniel Boone,
His rifle oft brought down the deer,
Which to his table brought good cheer.
But through his life his highest aim
Was to kill the savage game,
To track the wild cat to its lair
And see its eyes so fiercely glare.
But he oft longs for a cut ham,
Sweet as from bear near to Putnam,
For he waged his fiercest war
In big swamp of Dorchester.
Now in the winter Dan he rides
Warm 'mong his bear and coon skin hides,
He lets the younger men now snare
The beaver, muskrat and otter.
Thought
by Walt Whitman

Of Justice'As if Justice could be anything but the same ample law, expounded by natural judges and saviors, 
As if it might be this thing or that thing, according to decisions.
Opposition.
by Sidney Lanier

Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill,
Complain no more; for these, O heart,
Direct the random of the will
As rhymes direct the rage of art.
The lute's fixt fret, that runs athwart
The strain and purpose of the string,
For governance and nice consort
Doth bar his wilful wavering.
The dark hath many dear avails;
The dark distils divinest dews;
The dark is rich with nightingales,
With dreams, and with the heavenly Muse.
Bleeding with thorns of petty strife,
I'll ease (as lovers do) my smart
With sonnets to my lady Life
Writ red in issues from the heart.
What grace may lie within the chill
Of favor frozen fast in scorn!
When Good's a-freeze, we call it Ill!
This rosy Time is glacier-born.
Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill,
Complain thou not, O heart; for these
Bank-in the current of the will
To uses, arts, and charities.
Baltimore, 1879-80.
Nature's Music.
by Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

Of many gifts bestowed on earth
To cheer a lonely hour,
Oh is there one of equal worth
With music's magic power?
'Twill charm each angry thought to rest,
'Twill gloomy care dispel,
And ever we its power can test, - 
All nature breathes its spell.
There's music in the sighing tone
Of the soft, southern breeze
That whispers thro' the flowers lone,
And bends the stately trees,
And - in the mighty ocean's chime,
The crested breakers roar,
The wild waves, ceaseless surge sublime,
Breaking upon the shore.
There's music in the bulbul's note,
Warbling its vesper lay
In some fair spot, from man remote,
Where wind and flowers play;
But, oh! beyond the sweetest strain
Of bird, or wave, or grove
Is that soother of our hours of pain - 
The voice of those we love.
When sorrow weigheth down the heart
The night birds sweetest lay - 
The harp's most wild and thrilling art - 
Care cannot chase away;
But let affection's voice be heard,
New springs of life 'twill ope, - 
One word - one little loving word - 
Will bring relief and hope.
Genius And Criticism.
by Thomas Moore

scripsit quidem fata, sed sequitur.
SENECA.
Of old, the Sultan Genius reigned,
As Nature meant, supreme alone;
With mind unchekt, and hands unchained,
His views, his conquests were his own.
But power like his, that digs its grave
With its own sceptre, could not last;
So Genius' self became the slave
Of laws that Genius' self had past.
As Jove, who forged the chain of Fate,
Was, ever after, doomed to wear it:
His nods, his struggles all too late--
"Qui semel jussit, semper paret."
To check young Genius' proud career,
The slaves who now his throne invaded,
Made Criticism his prime Vizir,
And from that hour his glories faded.
Tied down in Legislation's school,
Afraid of even his own ambition,
His very victories were by rule,
And he was great but by permission.
His most heroic deeds--the same,
That dazzled, when spontaneous actions--
Now, done by law, seemed cold and tame,
And shorn of all their first attractions.
If he but stirred to take the air,
Instant, the Vizir's Council sat--
"Good Lord, your Highness can't go there--
"Bless me, your Highness can't do that."
If, loving pomp, he chose to buy
Rich jewels for his diadem,
"The taste was bad, the price was high--
"A flower were simpler than a gem."
To please them if he took to flowers--
"What trifling, what unmeaning things!
"Fit for a woman's toilet hours,
"But not at all the style for Kings."
If, fond of his domestic sphere,
He played no more the rambling comet--
"A dull, good sort of man, 'twas clear,
"But, as for great or brave, far from it."
Did he then look o'er distant oceans,
For realms more worthy to enthrone him?--
"Saint Aristotle, what wild notions!
"Serve a 'ne exeat regno' on him."
At length, their last and worst to do,
They round him placed a guard of watchmen,
Reviewers, knaves in brown, or blue
Turned up with yellow--chiefly Scotchmen;
To dog his footsteps all about
Like those in Longwood's prison grounds,
Who at Napoleon's heels rode out,
For fear the Conqueror should break bounds.
Oh for some Champion of his power,
Some Ultra spirit, to set free,
As erst in Shakespeare's sovereign hour,
The thunders of his Royalty!--
To vindicate his ancient line,
The first, the true, the only one,
Of Right eternal and divine,
That rules beneath the blessed sun.
Dick * * * *, A Character.
by Thomas Moore

Of various scraps and fragments built,
Borrowed alike from fools and wits,
Dick's mind was like a patchwork quilt,
Made up of new, old, motley bits--
Where, if the Co. called in their shares,
If petticoats their quota got
And gowns were all refunded theirs,
The quilt would look but shy, God wot.
And thus he still, new plagiaries seeking,
Reversed ventriloquism's trick,
For, 'stead of Dick thro' others speaking,
'Twas others we heard speak thro' Dick.
A Tory now, all bounds exceeding,
Now best of Whigs, now worst of rats;
One day with Malthus, foe to breeding,
The next with Sadler, all for brats.
Poor Dick!--and how else could it be?
With notions all at random caught,
A sort of mental fricassee,
Made up of legs and wings of thought--
The leavings of the last Debate, or
A dinner, yesterday, of wits,
Where Dick sate by and, like a waiter,
Had the scraps for perquisites.
Of That So Sweet Imprisonment
by James Joyce

Of that so sweet imprisonment
My soul, dearest, is fain,
Soft arms that woo me to relent
And woo me to detain.
Ah, could they ever hold me there
Gladly were I a prisoner!
Dearest, through interwoven arms
By love made tremulous,
That night allures me where alarms
Nowise may trouble us;
But sleep to dreamier sleep be wed
Where soul with soul lies prisoned.
The Lay Of Christine. Translated From The Icelandic.
by William Morris

Of silk my gear was shapen,
Scarlet they did on me,
Then to the sea-strand was I borne
And laid in a bark of the sea.
O well were I from the World away.
Befell it there I might not drown,
For God to me was good;
The billows bare me up a-land
Where grew the fair green-wood.
O well were I from the World away.
There came a Knight a-riding
With three swains along the way
And he took me up, the little-one,
On the sea-sand as I lay.
O well were I from the World away.
He took me up, and bare me home
To the house that was his own,
And there bode I so long with him
That I was his love alone.
O well were I from the World away.
But the very first night we lay abed
Befell his sorrow and harm,
That thither came the King's ill men,
And slew him on mine arm.
O well were I from the World away.
There slew they Adalbright the King,
Two of his swains slew they,
But the third sailed swiftly from the land
Sithence I saw him never a day.
O well were I from the World away.
O wavering hope of this world's bliss,
How shall men trow in thee?
My Grove of Gems is gone away
For mine eyes no more to see!
O well were I from the World away.
Each hour the while my life shall last
Remembereth him alone,
Such heavy sorrow have I got
From our meeting long agone.
O well were I from the World away.
O, early in the morning-tide
Men cry: "Christine the fair,
Art thou well content with that true love
Thou sittest loving there?"
O well were I from the World away.
Ah, yea, so well I love him,
And so dear my love shall be,
That the very God of Heaven aloft
Worshippeth him and me.
O well were I from the World away.
"Ah, all the red gold I have got
Well would I give to-day,
Only for this and nothing else
From the world to win away."
O well were I from the World away.
"Nay, midst all folk upon the earth
Keep thou thy ruddy gold,
And love withal the mighty lord
That wedded thee of old."
O well were I from the World away.
Of The Visage Of Things
by Walt Whitman

Of the visages of things - And of piercing through to the accepted hells beneath;
Of ugliness - To me there is just as much in it as there is in beauty - And now the ugliness of human beings is acceptable to me;
Of detected persons - To me, detected persons are not, in any respect, worse than undetected persons - and are not in any respect worse than I am myself;
Of criminals - To me, any judge, or any juror, is equally criminal - and any reputable person is also - and the President is also
Sonnet CCII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

I' ho pregato Amor, e nel riprego.
HE PLEADS THE EXCESS OF HIS PASSION IN PALLIATION OF HIS FAULT.
Oft have I pray'd to Love, and still I pray,
My charming agony, my bitter joy!
That he would crave your grace, if consciously
From the right path my guilty footsteps stray.
That Reason, which o'er happier minds holds sway,
Is quell'd of Appetite, I not deny;
And hence, through tracks my better thoughts would fly,
The victor hurries me perforce away,
You, in whose bosom Genius, Virtue reign
With mingled blaze lit by auspicious skies--
Ne'er shower'd kind star its beams on aught so rare!
You, you should say with pity, not disdain;
"How could he 'scape, lost wretch! these lightning eyes--
So passionate he, and I so direly fair?"
WRANGHAM.
A Trinity
by Hilaire Belloc

Of three in One and One in three
My narrow mind would doubting be
Till Beauty, Grace and Kindness met
And all at once were Juliet.
Sonnet VIII
by Alan Seeger

Oft as by chance, a little while apart
The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn,
Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart,
Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn:
Not though high heaven should rend would deeper awe
Fill me than penetrates my spirit thus,
Nor all those signs the Patmian prophet saw
Seem a new heaven and earth so marvelous;
But, clad thenceforth in iridescent dyes,
The fair world glistens, and in after days
The memory of kind lips and laughing eyes
Lives in my step and lightens all my face, - 
So they who found the Earthly Paradise
Still breathed, returned, of that sweet, joyful place.
To Julia.
by Robert Herrick

Offer thy gift; but first the law commands
Thee, Julia, first, to sanctify thy hands:
Do that, my Julia, which the rites require,
Then boldly give thine incense to the fire.