DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Coltsfoot And Larkspur Speedwell
by Walter Crane

In the race of the flowers that's run due,
As the HARTSTONGUE pants at the well
And the HOUNDSTONGUE laps the SUNDEW.
Here's VENUS'-COMBE for MAIDENHAIR:
While KING-CUPS drink BELLA-DONNA,
Glad in purple and gold so fair,
Though the DEADLY NIGHTSHADE'S upon her.
Behold LONDON PRIDE robed & crowned,
Ushered in by the GOLDEN ROD,
While a floral crowd press around,
Just to win from her crest a nod.
The FOXGLOVES are already on.
Not only in pairs but dozens;
They've come out to see all the fun,
With sisters and aunts and cousins.
The STITCHWORK looked up with a sigh
At BATCHELOR'S BUTTONS unsewn:
Single Daisies were not in her eye,
For the grass was just newly mown.
The HORSE-TAIL, 'scaped from WOLFE'S CLAW,
Rides off with a LADIES' LAGES.
The FRIAR'S-COWL hides a doctor of law,
And the BISHOP'S-WEED covers his grace's
The SNAPDRAGON opened his jaw,
But, at sight of Scotch THISTLE, turned pale:
He'd too many points of the law
For a dragon without a scale.
Little JENNY-CREEPER lay low,
Till happy thoughts made her gladder;
How to rise in the world she'd know,
So she climbed up JACOB'S LADDER
SWEET WILLIAM with MARYGOLD
Seek HEARTSEASE in the close box-border.
Where, starched in their ruff's stiff fold,
DUTCH DAHLIAS prim, keep order.
NARCISSUS bends over the brook,
Intent upon DAFFA-DOWN-DILLY:
While EYEBRIGHT observes from her nook,
And wonders he could be so silly.
A LANCE FOR A LAD 'gainst KING'S SPEAR.
When the BUGLE sounds for the play
A LADIES MANTLE flaunting there
Is the banner that leads the fray.
KNIGHT'S SPUR to the LADIES BOWER
To seek for the LADIES SLIPPER.
'Twas lost in the wood in a summer shower
When the CLOWN'S WORT tried to trip her.
TOAD-FLAX is spun for BUTTER-AND-EGGS
On a LADIES' CUSHION sits THRIFT
She never wastes, or steals, or begs,
But she can't give poor RAGWORT a lift.
QUEEN OF THE MEADS is MEADOWSWEET,
In the realm of grasses wide:
But not in all her court you meet
The turbaned TURK'S HEAD in his pride.
Fair BETHLEHEM' STAR shineth bright,
In a lowly place, as of old,
And through the green gloom glows the light
Of ST. JOHN'S-WORT--a nimbus of gold.
But the hours of the sun swift glide,
And the flowers with them are speeding.
Though LOVE-IN-A-MIST may hide.
When Time's in the garden weeding.
There's TRAVELLER'S JOY
To entwine,
At our journey's end for greeting,
We can talk over SOPS-IN-WINE,
And drink to our next merry meeting.
In The New Garden In All The Parts
by Walt Whitman

In the new garden, in all the parts,
In cities now, modern, I wander,
Though the second or third result, or still further, primitive yet,
Days, places, indifferent - though various, the same,
Time, Paradise, the Mannahatta, the prairies, finding me unchanged,
Death indifferent - Is it that I lived long since? Was I buried very long ago?
For all that, I may now be watching you here, this moment;
For the future, with determined will, I seek - the woman of the future,
You, born years, centuries after me, I seek.
In the Neolithic Age
by Rudyard Kipling

In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage
For food and fame and woolly horses' pelt.
I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,
And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.
Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring
Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove;
And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg
Were about me and beneath me and above.
But a rival, of Solutre, told the tribe my style was outre,
'Neath a tomahawk, of diorite, he fell
And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart
Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle.
Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting-dogs fed full,
And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;
And I wiped my mouth and said, "It is well that they are dead,
For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong."
But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole-shrine he came,
And he told me in a vision of the night:
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
"And every single one of them is right!" . . . . . . .
Then the silence closed upon me till
They put new clothing on me
Of whiter, weaker flesh and bone more frail;
And I stepped beneath Time's finger, once again a tribal singer,
And a minor poet certified by Traill!
Still they skirmish to and fro, men my messmates on the snow
When we headed off the aurochs turn for turn;
When the rich Allobrogenses never kept amanuenses,
And our only plots were piled in lakes at Berne.
Still a cultured Christian age sees us scuffle, squeak, and rage,
Still we pinch and slap and jabber, scratch and dirk;
Still we let our business slide, as we dropped the half-dressed hide,
To show a fellow-savage how to work.
Still the world is wondrous large, seven seas from marge to marge.
And it holds a vast of various kinds of man;
And the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu
And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.
Here's my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose
And the reindeer roamed where Paris roars to-night:
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
"And every single one of them is right!"
To Sarah, While Singing.
by Thomas Gent

Written at the Cottage of T. LEWIS, Esq. Woodbury Downs.
In the retirement of this lovely spot,
Sacred to friendship, industry, and worth,
To boundless hospitality and mirth,
Be ever peace and joy--all care forgot,
Save that which carest for a higher, holier, lot!
And thou, sweet girl, whose lovely modest mien,
Cheers the gay banquet with unconscious wiles,
Long mayest thou grace it with affection's smiles,
The vocal syren of this sylvan scene.
Warbling thy sweetest notes 'midst flowers and woodlands green.
Long be the social circle's grace and pride,
Of parents' hopes, the dearest and the best,
"The Dove of promise to this ark of rest:"
Who, when around the world's fierce billows ride,
Beareth the branch that speaks of the receding tide!
July, 1827
The Sonnets CXXVII - In the old age black was not counted fair
by William Shakespeare

In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
But now is black beauty's successive heir,
And beauty slander'd with a bastard shame:
For since each hand hath put on Nature's power,
Fairing the foul with Art's false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profan'd, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Sland'ring creation with a false esteem:
Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so.
Genesis
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

In the outer world that was before this earth,
That was before all shape or space was born,
Before the blind first hour of time had birth,
Before night knew the moonlight or the morn;
Yea, before any world had any light,
Or anything called God or man drew breath,
Slowly the strong sides of the heaving night
Moved, and brought forth the strength of life and death.
And the sad shapeless horror increate
That was all things and one thing, without fruit,
Limit, or law; where love was none, nor hate,
Where no leaf came to blossom from no root;
The very darkness that time knew not of,
Nor God laid hand on, nor was man found there,
Ceased, and was cloven in several shapes; above
Light, and night under, and fire, earth, water, and air.
Sunbeams and starbeams, and all coloured things,
All forms and all similitudes began;
And death, the shadow cast by life's wide wings,
And God, the shade cast by the soul of man.
Then between shadow and substance, night and light,
Then between birth and death, and deeds and days,
The illimitable embrace and the amorous fight
That of itself begets, bears, rears, and slays,
The immortal war of mortal things that is
Labour and life and growth and good and ill,
The mild antiphonies that melt and kiss,
The violent symphonies that meet and kill,
All nature of all things began to be.
But chiefliest in the spirit (beast or man,
Planet of heaven or blossom of earth or sea)
The divine contraries of life began.
For the great labour of growth, being many, is one;
One thing the white death and the ruddy birth;
The invisible air and the all-beholden sun,
And barren water and many-childed earth.
And these things are made manifest in men
From the beginning forth unto this day:
Time writes and life records them, and again
Death seals them lest the record pass away.
For if death were not, then should growth not be,
Change, nor the life of good nor evil things;
Nor were there night at all nor light to see,
Nor water of sweet nor water of bitter springs.
For in each man and each year that is born
Are sown the twin seeds of the strong twin powers;
The white seed of the fruitful helpful morn,
The black seed of the barren hurtful hours.
And he that of the black seed eateth fruit,
To him the savour as honey shall be sweet;
And he in whom the white seed hath struck root,
He shall have sorrow and trouble and tears for meat.
And him whose lips the sweet fruit hath made red
In the end men loathe and make his name a rod;
And him whose mouth on the unsweet fruit hath fed
In the end men follow and know for very God.
And of these twain, the black seed and the white,
All things come forth, endured of men and done;
And still the day is great with child of night,
And still the black night labours with the sun.
And each man and each year that lives on earth
Turns hither or thither, and hence or thence is fed;
And as a man before was from his birth,
So shall a man be after among the dead.
Communion
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

In the silence of my heart,
I will spend an hour with thee,
When my love shall rend apart
All the veil of mystery:
All that dim and misty veil
That shut in between our souls
When Death cried, "Ho, maiden, hail!"
And your barque sped on the shoals.
On the shoals? Nay, wrongly said.
On the breeze of Death that sweeps
Far from life, thy soul has sped
Out into unsounded deeps.
I shall take an hour and come
Sailing, darling, to thy side.
Wind nor sea may keep me from
Soft communings with my bride.
I shall rest my head on thee
As I did long days of yore,
When a calm, untroubled sea
Rocked thy vessel at the shore.
I shall take thy hand in mine,
And live o'er the olden days
When thy smile to me was wine,--
Golden wine thy word of praise,
For the carols I had wrought
In my soul's simplicity;
For the petty beads of thought
Which thine eyes alone could see.
Ah, those eyes, love-blind, but keen
For my welfare and my weal!
Tho' the grave-door shut between,
Still their love-lights o'er me steal.
I can see thee thro' my tears,
As thro' rain we see the sun.
What tho' cold and cooling years
Shall their bitter courses run,--
I shall see thee still and be
Thy true lover evermore,
And thy face shall be to me
Dear and helpful as before.
Death may vaunt and Death may boast,
But we laugh his pow'r to scorn;
He is but a slave at most,--
Night that heralds coming morn.
I shall spend an hour with thee
Day by day, my little bride.
True love laughs at mystery,
Crying, "Doors of Death, fly wide."
The Play
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In the rosy light of my day's fair morning,
Ere ever a storm cloud darkened the west,
Ere even a shadow of night gave warning
When life seemed only a pleasure quest,
Why then all humour and comedy scorning -
I liked high tragedy best.
I liked the challenge, the fierce fought duel,
With a death or a parting in every act.
I liked the villain to be more cruel
Than the basest villain could be in fact:
For it fed the fires of my mind with the fuel
Of the things that my life lacked.
But as time passed on, and I met real sorrow,
And she played at night on the stage -my heart,
I found I could not forget on the morrow
The pain I had felt in her tragic part.
For alas! no longer I needed to borrow
My grief from the actor's art.
And as life grows older, and therefore sadder
(Though sweeter maybe with its autumn haze),
I find more pleasure in watching the gladder
And lighter order of humorous plays.
Where the mirth is as mad, or maybe madder,
Than the mirth of my lost days.
I like to be forced to laugh and be merry,
Though the earth with sorrow and pain is rife:
I like for an evening at least to bury
All thoughts of trouble, or pain, or strife.
In sooth, I like to be moved to the very
Emotions I miss in life.
The Stranger
by Walter De La Mare

In the nook of a wood where a pool freshed with dew
Glassed, daybreak till evening, blue sky glimpsing through
Then a star; or a slip of May-moon silver-white,
Thridding softly aloof the quiet of night,
Was a thicket of flowers.
Willow herb, mint, pale speedwell and rattle
Water hemlock and sundew - to the wind's tittle-tattle
They nodded, dreamed, swayed in jocund delight,
In beauty and sweetness arrayed, still and bright.
By turn scampered rabbit; trotted fox; bee and bird
Paused droning, sang shrill, and the fair water stirred.
Plashed green frog, or some brisk little flickering fish - 
Gudgeon, stickleback, minnow - set the ripples a-swish.
A lone pool, a pool grass-fringed, crystal-clear:
Deep, placid, and cool in the sweet of the year;
Edge-parched when the sun to the Dog Days drew near;
And with winter's bleak rime hard as glass, robed in snow,
The whole wild-wood sleeping, and nothing a-blow
But the wind from the North - bringing snow.
That is all. Save that one long, sweet, June night-tide straying,
The harsh hemlock's pale umbelliferous bloom
Tenting nook, dense with fragrance and secret with gloom,
In a beaming of moon-colored light faintly raying,
On buds orbed with dew phosphorescently playing,
Came a Stranger - still-footed, feat-fingered, clear face
Unhumanly lovely: ... and supped in that place.
A Song Of Life.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In the rapture of life and of living,
I lift up my heart and rejoice,
And I thank the great Giver for giving
The soul of my gladness a voice.
In the glow of the glorious weather,
In the sweet-scented sensuous air,
My burdens seem light as a feather - 
They are nothing to bear.
In the strength and the glory of power,
In the pride and the pleasure of wealth,
(For who dares dispute me my dower
Of talents and youth-time and health?)
I can laugh at the world and its sages - 
I am greater than seers who are sad,
For he is most wise in all ages
Who knows how to be glad.
I lift up my eyes to Apollo,
The god of the beautiful days,
And my spirit soars off like a swallow
And is lost in the light of its rays.
Are you troubled and sad? I beseech you
Come out of the shadows of strife - 
Come out in the sun while I teach you
The secret of life.
Come out of the world - come above it - 
Up over its crosses and graves,
Though the green earth is fair and I love it,
We must love it as masters, not slaves.
Come up where the dust never rises - 
But only the perfume of flowers - 
And your life shall be glad with surprises
Of beautiful hours.
Come up where the rare golden wine is
Apollo distills in my sight,
And your life shall be happy as mine is,
And as full of delight.
In Time Of Doubt
by Robert Fuller Murray

'In the shadow of Thy wings, O Lord of Hosts, whom I extol,
I will put my trust for ever,' so the kingly David sings.
'Thou shalt help me, Thou shalt save me, only
Thou shalt keep me whole,
In the shadow of Thy wings.'
In our ears this voice triumphant, like a blowing trumpet, rings,
But our hearts have heard another, as of funeral bells that toll,
'God of David where to find Thee?'    No reply the question brings.
Shadows are there overhead, but they are of the clouds that roll,
Blotting out the sun from sight, and overwhelming earthly things.
Oh, that we might feel Thy presence!    Surely we could rest our soul
In the shadow of Thy wings.
Alcyone
by Archibald Lampman

In the silent depth of space,
Immeasurably old, immeasurably far,
Glittering with a silver flame
Through eternity,
Rolls a great and burning star,
With a noble name,
Alcyone!
In the glorious chart of heaven
It is marked the first of seven;
'Tis a Pleiad:
And a hundred years of earth
With their long-forgotten deeds have come and gone,
Since that tiny point of light,
Once a splendour fierce and bright,
Had its birth
In the star we gaze upon.
It has travelled all that time - 
Thought has not a swifter flight - 
Through a region where no faintest gust
Of life comes ever, but the power of night
Dwells stupendous and sublime,
Limitless and void and lonely,
A region mute with age, and peopled only
With the dead and ruined dust
Of worlds that lived eternities ago.
Man! when thou dost think of this,
And what our earth and its existence is,
The half-blind toils since life began,
The little aims, the little span,
With what passion and what pride,
And what hunger fierce and wide,
Thou dost break beyond it all,
Seeking for the spirit unconfined
In the clear abyss of mind
A shelter and a peace majestical.
For what is life to thee,
Turning toward the primal light,
With that stern and silent face,
If thou canst not be
Something radiant and august as night,
Something wide as space?
Therefore with a love and gratitude divine
Thou shalt cherish in thine heart for sign
A vision of the great and burning star,
Immeasurably old, immeasurably far,
Surging forth its silver flame
Through eternity;
And thine inner heart shall ring and cry
With the music strange and high,
The grandeur of its name
Alcyone!
Prison
by Violet Jacob

In the prison-house of the dark
I lay with open eyes,
And pale beyond the pale windows
I saw the dawn rise.
From past the bounds of space
Where earthly vapours climb,
There stirred the voice I shall not hear
On this side Time.
There is one death for the body,
And one death for the heart,
And one prayer for the hope of the end,
When some links part.
Christ, from uncounted leagues,
Beyond the sun and moon,
Strike with the sword of Thine own pity - 
Bring the dawn soon.
The Daisies
by James Stephens

In the scented bud of the morning - O,
When the windy grass went rippling far,
I saw my dear one walking slow
In the field where the daisies are.
We did not laugh and we did not speak
As we wandered happily to and fro;
I kissed my dear on either cheek
In the bud of the morning - O.
A lark sang up from the breezy land,
A lark sang down from a cloud afar,
And she and I went hand in hand
In the field where the daisies are.
The Banished Bejant. From The Unpublished Remains Of Edgar Allan Poe
by Robert Fuller Murray

In the oldest of our alleys,
By good bejants tenanted,
Once a man whose name was Wallace--
William Wallace--reared his head.
Rowdy Bejant in the college
He was styled:
Never had these halls of knowledge
Welcomed waster half so wild!
Tassel blue and long and silken
From his cap did float and flow
(This was cast into the Swilcan
Two months ago);
And every gentle air that sported
With his red gown,
Displayed a suit of clothes, reported
The most alarming in the town.
Wanderers in that ancient alley
Through his luminous window saw
Spirits come continually
From a case well packed with straw,
Just behind the chair where, sitting
With air serene,
And in a blazer loosely fitting,
The owner of the bunk was seen.
And all with cards and counters straying
Was the place littered o'er,
With which sat playing, playing, playing,
And wrangling evermore,
A group of fellows, whose chief function
Was to proclaim,
In voices of surpassing unction,
Their luck and losses in the game.
But stately things, in robes of learning,
Discussed one day the bejant's fate:
Ah, let us mourn him unreturning,
For they resolved to rusticate!
And now the glory he inherits,
Thus dished and doomed,
Is largely founded on the merits
Of the Old Tom consumed.
And wanderers, now, within that alley
Through the half-open shutters see,
Old crones, that talk continually
In a discordant minor key:
While, with a kind of nervous shiver,
Past the front door,
His former set go by for ever,
But knock--or ring--no more.
The Burial Of The Poet
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

RICHARD HENRY DANA
In the old churchyard of his native town,
And in the ancestral tomb beside the wall,
We laid him in the sleep that comes to all,
And left him to his rest and his renown.
The snow was falling, as if Heaven dropped down
White flowers of Paradise to strew his pall;--
The dead around him seemed to wake, and call
His name, as worthy of so white a crown.
And now the moon is shining on the scene,
And the broad sheet of snow is written o'er
With shadows cruciform of leafless trees,
As once the winding-sheet of Saladin
With chapters of the Koran; but, ah! more
Mysterious and triumphant signs are these.
A Song Of Swords
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

"A drove of cattle came into a village called Swords; and was stopped by the rioters."--Daily Paper.
In the place called Swords on the Irish road
It is told for a new renown
How we held the horns of the cattle, and how
We will hold the horns of the devils now
Ere the lord of hell with the horn on his brow
Is crowned in Dublin town.
Light in the East and light in the West,
And light on the cruel lords,
On the souls that suddenly all men knew,
And the green flag flew and the red flag flew,
And many a wheel of the world stopped, too,
When the cattle were stopped at Swords.
Be they sinners or less than saints
That smite in the street for rage,
We know where the shame shines bright; we know
You that they smite at, you their foe,
Lords of the lawless wage and low,
This is your lawful wage.
You pinched a child to a torture price
That you dared not name in words;
So black a jest was the silver bit
That your own speech shook for the shame of it,
And the coward was plain as a cow they hit
When the cattle have strayed at Swords.
The wheel of the torrent of wives went round
To break men's brotherhood;
You gave the good Irish blood to grease
The clubs of your country's enemies;
you saw the brave man beat to the knees:
And you saw that it was good.
The rope of the rich is long and long--
The longest of hangmen's cords;
But the kings and crowds are holding their breath,
In a giant shadow o'er all beneath
Where God stands holding the scales of Death
Between the cattle and Swords.
Haply the lords that hire and lend
The lowest of all men's lords,
Who sell their kind like kine at a fair,
Will find no head of their cattle there;
But faces of men where cattle were:
Faces of men--and Swords.
Lip-Labour.
by Robert Herrick

In the old Scripture I have often read,
The calf without meal ne'er was offered;
To figure to us nothing more than this,
Without the heart lip-labour nothing is.
Will Yer Write It Down For Me?
by Henry Lawson

In the parlour of the shanty where the lives have all gone wrong,
When a singer or reciter gives a story or a song,
Where the poet's heart is speaking to their hearts in every line,
Till the hardest curse and blubber at the thoughts of Auld Lang Syne;
Then a boozer lurches forward with an oath for all disguise, 
Prayers and curses in his soul, and tears and liquor in his eyes, 
Grasps the singer or reciter with a death-grip by the hand:
'That's the truth, bloke! Sling it at 'em! Oh! Gorbli'me, that was grand!
'Don't mind me; I've got 'em. You know! What's yer name, bloke! Don't yer see?
'Who's the bloke what wrote the po'try? Will yer write it down fer me?'
And the backblocks' bard goes through it, ever seeking as he goes
For the line of least resistance to the hearts of men he knows;
And he tracks their hearts in mateship, and he tracks them out alone, 
Seeking for the power to sway them, till he finds it in his own,
Feels what they feel, loves what they love, learns to hate what they condemn,
Takes his pen in tears and triumph, and he writes it down for them.