DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Birth Of Pleasure.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

At the creation of the Earth
Pleasure, that divinest birth,
From the soil of Heaven did rise,
Wrapped in sweet wild melodies -
Like an exhalation wreathing
To the sound of air low-breathing
Through Aeolian pines, which make
A shade and shelter to the lake
Whence it rises soft and slow;
Her life-breathing [limbs] did flow
In the harmony divine
Of an ever-lengthening line
Which enwrapped her perfect form
With a beauty clear and warm.
The Reverie Of Poor Susan
by William Wordsworth

At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years:
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.
Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;
Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.
Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,
Down which she so often has tripped with her pail;
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's,
The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.
She looks, and her heart is in heaven: but they fade,
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade:
The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,
And the colours have all passed away from her eyes!
Glory
by Katharine Lee Bates

At the crowded gangway they kissed good-bye.
He had half a mind to scold her.
An officer's mother and not keep dry
The epaulet on his shoulder.
He had forgotten mother and fame,
His mind in a blood-mist floated,
But when reeling back from carnage they came,
One told him: "You are promoted!"
His friend smiled up from the wet red sand,
The look was afar, eternal,
But he tried to salute with his shattered hand:
"Room now for another colonel!"
Again he raged in that lurid hell
Where the country he loved had thrown him.
"You are promoted!" shrieked a shell.
His mother would not have known him.
The Vineyard
by Rudyard Kipling

At the eleventh hour he came,
But his wages were the same
As ours who all day long had trod
The wine-press of the Wrath of God.
When he shouldered through the lines
Of our cropped and mangled vines,
His unjaded eye could scan
How each hour had marked its man.
(Children of the morning-tide
With the hosts of noon had died,
And our noon contingents lay 
Dead with twilight's spent array.)
Since his back had felt no load ,
Virtue still in him abode;
So he swiftly made his own
Those last spoils we had not won.
We went home, delivered thence,
Grudging him no recompense
Till he portioned praise or blame
To our works before he came.
Till he showed us for our good,
Deaf to mirth, and blind to scorn,
How we might have best withstood 
Burdens that he had not born!
At Night.
by Thomas Moore

[1]
At night, when all is still around.
How sweet to hear the distant sound
Of footstep, coming soft and light!
What pleasure in the anxious beat,
With which the bosom flies to meet
That foot that comes so soft at night!
And then, at night, how sweet to say
"'Tis late, my love!" and chide delay,
Tho' still the western clouds are bright;
Oh! happy, too, the silent press,
The eloquence of mute caress.
With those we love exchanged at night!
Yasmini
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

At night, when Passion's ebbing tide
Left bare the Sands of Truth,
Yasmini, resting by my side,
Spoke softly of her youth.
"And one" she said "was tall and slim,
Two crimson rose leaves made his mouth,
And I was fain to follow him
Down to his village in the South.
"He was to build a hut hard by
The stream where palms were growing,
We were to live, and love, and lie,
And watch the water flowing.
"Ah, dear, delusive, distant shore,
By dreams of futile fancy gilt!
The riverside we never saw,
The palm leaf hut was never built!
"One had a Tope of Mangoe trees,
Where early morning, noon and late,
The Persian wheels, with patient ease,
Brought up their liquid, silver freight.
"And he was fain to rise and reach
That garden sloping to the sea,
Whose groves along the wave-swept beach
Should shelter him and love and me.
"Doubtless, upon that western shore
With ripe fruit falling to the ground,
There dwells the Peace he hungered for,
The lovely Peace we never found.
"Then there came one with eager eyes
And keen sword, ready for the fray.
He missed the storms of Northern skies,
The reckless raid and skirmish gay!
"He rose from dreams of war's alarms,
To make his daggers keen and bright,
Desiring, in my very arms,
The fiercer rapture of the fight!
"He left me soon; too soon, and sought
The stronger, earlier love again.
News reached me from the Cabul Court,
Afterwards nothing; doubtless slain.
"Doubtless his brilliant, haggard eyes,
Long since took leave of life and light,
And those lithe limbs I used to prize
Feasted the jackal and the kite.
"But the most loved! his sixteen years
Shone in his cheeks' transparent red.
My kisses were his first: my tears
Fell on his face when he was dead.
"He died, he died, I speak the truth,
Though light love leave his memory dim,
He was the Lover of my Youth
And all my youth went down with him.
"For passion ebbs and passion flows,
But under every new caress
The riven heart more keenly knows
Its own inviolate faithfulness.
"Our Gods are kind and still deem fit
As in old days, with those to lie,
Whose silent hearths are yet unlit
By the soft light of infancy.
"Therefore, one strange, mysterious night
Alone within the Temple shade,
Recipient of a God's delight
I lay enraptured, unafraid.
"Also to me the boon was given,
But mourning quickly followed mirth,
My son, whose father stooped from Heaven,
Died in the moment of his birth.
"When from the war beyond the seas
The reckless Lancers home returned,
Their spoils were laid across my knees
About my lips their kisses burned.
"Back from the Comradeship of Death,
Free from the Friendship of the Sword,
With brilliant eyes and famished breath
They came to me for their reward.
"Why do I tell you all these things,
Baring my life to you, unsought?
When Passion folds his wearied wings
Sleep should be follower, never Thought.
"Ay, let us sleep. The window pane
Grows pale against the purple sky.
The dawn is with us once again,
The dawn; which always means good-bye."
Within her little trellised room, beside the palm-fringed sea,
She wakeful in the scented gloom, spoke of her youth to me.
Stool-Ball.
by Robert Herrick

At stool-ball, Lucia, let us play
For sugar-cakes and wine:
Or for a tansy let us pay,
The loss, or thine, or mine.
If thou, my dear, a winner be
At trundling of the ball,
The wager thou shall have, and me,
And my misfortunes all.
But if, my sweetest, I shall get,
Then I desire but this:
That likewise I may pay the bet
And have for all a kiss.
The Shadow Of The Cross
by John McCrae

At the drowsy dusk when the shadows creep
From the golden west, where the sunbeams sleep,
An angel mused: "Is there good or ill
In the mad world's heart, since on Calvary's hill
'Round the cross a mid-day twilight fell
That darkened earth and o'ershadowed hell?"
Through the streets of a city the angel sped;
Like an open scroll men's hearts he read.
In a monarch's ear his courtiers lied
And humble faces hid hearts of pride.
Men's hate waxed hot, and their hearts grew cold,
As they haggled and fought for the lust of gold.
Despairing, he cried, "After all these years
Is there naught but hatred and strife and tears?"
He found two waifs in an attic bare;
-- A single crust was their meagre fare,
One strove to quiet the other's cries,
And the love-light dawned in her famished eyes
As she kissed the child with a motherly air:
"I don't need mine, you can have my share."
Then the angel knew that the earthly cross
And the sorrow and shame were not wholly loss.
At dawn, when hushed was earth's busy hum
And men looked not for their Christ to come,
From the attic poor to the palace grand,
The King and the beggar went hand in hand.
In Hospital - XXVII - Nocturn
by William Ernest Henley

At the barren heart of midnight,
When the shadow shuts and opens
As the loud flames pulse and flutter,
I can hear a cistern leaking.
Dripping, dropping, in a rhythm,
Rough, unequal, half-melodious,
Like the measures aped from nature
In the infancy of music;
Like the buzzing of an insect,
Still, irrational, persistent . . .
I must listen, listen, listen
In a passion of attention;
Till it taps upon my heartstrings,
And my very life goes dripping,
Dropping, dripping, drip-drip-dropping,
In the drip-drop of the cistern.
Sweet-Apple
by James Stephens

At the end of the bough, at the top of the tree
(As fragrant, as high, and as lovely as thou)
One sweet apple reddens which all men may see,
At the end of the bough.
Swinging full to the view, tho' the gatherers now
Pass, and evade, and o'erlook busily:
Overlook! nay, but pluck it! they cannot tell how.
For it swings out of reach as a cloud, and as free
As a star, or thy beauty, which seems too, I vow,
Remote as the sweet rosy apple - ah me!
At the end of the bough.
Love And Hope. (Swiss Air.)
by Thomas Moore

At morn, beside yon summer sea,
Young Hope and Love reclined;
But scarce had noon-tide come, when he
Into his bark leapt smilingly,
And left poor Hope behind.
"I go," said Love, "to sail awhile
"Across this sunny main;"
And then so sweet, his parting smile,
That Hope, who never dreamt of guile,
Believed he'd come again.
She lingered there till evening's beam
Along the waters lay;
And o'er the sands, in thoughtful dream,
Oft traced his name, which still the stream
As often washed away.
At length a sail appears in sight,
And toward the maiden moves!
'Tis Wealth that comes, and gay and bright,
His golden bark reflects the light,
But ah! it is not Love's.
Another sail--'twas Friendship showed
Her night-lamp o'er the sea;
And calm the light that lamp bestowed;
But Love had lights that warmer glowed,
And where, alas! was he?
Now fast around the sea and shore
Night threw her darkling chain;
The sunny sails were seen no more,
Hope's morning dreams of bliss were o'er--
Love never came again!
At That Hour When All Things Have Repose
by James Joyce

At that hour when all things have repose,
O lonely watcher of the skies,
Do you hear the night wind and the sighs
Of harps playing unto Love to unclose
The pale gates of sunrise?
When all things repose, do you alone
Awake to hear the sweet harps play
To Love before him on his way,
And the night wind answering in antiphon
Till night is overgone?
Play on, invisible harps, unto Love,
Whose way in heaven is aglow
At that hour when soft lights come and go,
Soft sweet music in the air above
And in the earth below.
Inspiration
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

At the golden gate of song
Stood I, knocking all day long,
But the Angel, calm and cold,
Still refused and bade me, "Hold."
Then a breath of soft perfume,
Then a light within the gloom;
Thou, Love, camest to my side,
And the gates flew open wide.
Long I dwelt in this domain,
Knew no sorrow, grief, or pain;
Now you bid me forth and free,
Will you shut these gates on me?
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
by Rudyard Kipling

At the hole where he went in
Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin.
Hear what little Red-Eye saith:
"Nag, come up and dance with death! "
Eye to eye and head to head,
(Keep the measure, Nag.)
This shall end when one is dead;
(At thy pleasure, Nag.)
Turn for turn and twist for twist,
(Run and hide thee, Nag.)
Hah! The hooded Death has missed!
(Woe betide thee, Nag!)
The Ghosts Of Revellers.
by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

At purple eyes beside the grain,
Our loves on altars we had burned,
And mixed our tribute with the dew,
Our tears, when rosy dawn returned.
Our voices we had joined with song
Of bird ecstatic, light, and free;
Our laughter rollicked with the brook
Running through darkness merrily.
At purple eyes beside the rim
Of frozen lakes our loves we burned,
And slid away when stillness reigned:
Deep the vast woods our bodies urned.
In starlit night along the shade
Of our dusk tombs our spirits glide;
We hear the echoing of the wind,
We breathe the sighs we living sighed.
That Last Invocation
by Walt Whitman

AT the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful, fortress'd house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.
Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks with a whisper,
Set ope the doors, O Soul!
Tenderly! be not impatient!
(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh!
Strong is your hold, O love.)
Almswomen
by Edmund Charles Blunden

At Quincey's moat the squandering village ends,
And there in the almshouse dwell the dearest friends
Of all the village, two old dames that cling
As close as any trueloves in the spring.
Long, long ago they passed threescore-and-ten,
And in this doll's house lived together then;
All things they have in common, being so poor,
And their one fear, Death's shadow at the door.
Each sundown makes them mournful, each sunrise
Brings back the brightness in their failing eyes.
How happy go the rich fair-weather days
When on the roadside folk stare in amaze
At such a honeycomb of fruit and flowers
As mellows round their threshold; what long hours
They gloat upon their steepling hollyhocks,
Bee's balsams, feathery southernwood, and stocks,
Fiery dragon's-mouths, great mallow leaves
For salves, and lemon-plants in bushy sheaves,
Shagged Esau's-hands with five green finger-tips.
Such old sweet names are ever on their lips.
As pleased as little children where these grow
In cobbled pattens and worn gowns they go,
Proud of their wisdom when on gooseberry shoots
They stuck eggshells to fright from coming fruits
The brisk-billed rascals; pausing still to see
Their neighbour owls saunter from tree to tree,
Or in the hushing half-light mouse the lane
Long-winged and lordly.
But when those hours wane,
Indoors they ponder, scared by the harsh storm
Whose pelting saracens on the window swarm,
And listen for the mail to clatter past
And church clock's deep bay withering on the blast;
They feed the fire that flings a freakish light
On pictured kings and queens grotesquely bright,
Platters and pitchers, faded calendars
And graceful hour-glass trim with lavenders.
Many a time they kiss and cry, and pray
That both be summoned in the self-same day,
And wiseman linnet tinkling in his cage
End too with them the friendship of old age,
And all together leave their treasured room
Some bell-like evening when the may's in bloom.
Wedding-Night. (Moods Of Love.)
by George Parsons Lathrop

At night, with shaded eyes, the summer moon
In tender meditation downward glances
At the dark earth, far-set in dim expanses,
And, welcomer than blazoned gold of noon,
Down through the air her steady lights are strewn.
The breezy forests sigh in moonlit trances,
And the full-hearted poet, waking, fancies
The smiling hills will break in laughter soon.
Oh thus, thou gentle Nature, dost thou shine
On me to-night. My very limbs would melt,
Like rugged earth beneath yon ray divine,
Into faint semblance of what they have felt:
Thine eye doth color me, O wife, O mine,
With peace that in thy spirit long hath dwelt!
Lar's Portion And The Poet's Part.
by Robert Herrick

At my homely country-seat
I have there a little wheat,
Which I work to meal, and make
Therewithal a holy cake:
Part of which I give to Lar,
Part is my peculiar.
Faintheart In A Railway Train
by Thomas Hardy

At nine in the morning there passed a church,
At ten there passed me by the sea,
At twelve a town of smoke and smirch,
At two a forest of oak and birch,
And then, on a platform, she:
A radiant stranger, who saw not me.
I queried, "Get out to her do I dare?"
But I kept my seat in my search for a plea,
And the wheels moved on. O could it but be
That I had alighted there!
In The Dawn.
by Margaret Steele Anderson

At night it is not strange that thou art dead;
I give thee to the stars, the moonlight snow;
But ah, when desolate I lift my head,
And thou art gone at early morning, No!
In Memoriam. - A. L. Gordon.
by Henry Kendall

At rest! Hard by the margin of that sea
Whose sounds are mingled with his noble verse,
Now lies the shell that never more will house
The fine, strong spirit of my gifted friend.
Yea, he who flashed upon us suddenly,
A shining soul with syllables of fire,
Who sang the first great songs these lands can claim
To be their own; the one who did not seem
To know what royal place awaited him
Within the Temple of the Beautiful,
Has passed away; and we who knew him, sit
Aghast in darkness, dumb with that great grief,
Whose stature yet we cannot comprehend;
While over yonder churchyard, hearsed with pines,
The night-wind sings its immemorial hymn,
And sobs above a newly-covered grave.
The bard, the scholar, and the man who lived
That frank, that open-hearted life which keeps
The splendid fire of English chivalry
From dying out; the one who never wronged
A fellow-man; the faithful friend who judged
The many, anxious to be loved of him,
By what he saw, and not by what he heard,
As lesser spirits do; the brave great soul
That never told a lie, or turned aside
To fly from danger; he, I say, was one
Of that bright company this sin-stained world
Can ill afford to lose.
They did not know,
The hundreds who had read his sturdy verse,
And revelled over ringing major notes,
The mournful meaning of the undersong
Which runs through all he wrote, and often takes
The deep autumnal, half-prophetic tone
Of forest winds in March; nor did they think
That on that healthy-hearted man there lay
The wild specific curse which seems to cling
For ever to the Poet's twofold life!
To Adam Lindsay Gordon, I who laid
Two years ago on Lionel Michael's grave
A tender leaf of my regard; yea I,
Who culled a garland from the flowers of song
To place where Harpur sleeps; I, left alone,
The sad disciple of a shining band
Now gone! to Adam Lindsay Gordon's name
I dedicate these lines; and if 'tis true
That, past the darkness of the grave, the soul
Becomes omniscient, then the bard may stoop
From his high seat to take the offering,
And read it with a sigh for human friends,
In human bonds, and gray with human griefs.
And having wove and proffered this poor wreath,
I stand to-day as lone as he who saw
At nightfall through the glimmering moony mists,
The last of Arthur on the wailing mere,
And strained in vain to hear the going voice.
The Western Window
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

At the head of a thousand roaring warriors,
With the sound of gongs,
My husband has departed
Following glory.
At first I was overjoyed
To have a young girl's liberty.
Now I look at the yellowing willow-leaves;
They were green the day he left.
I wonder if he also was glad?
From the Chinese of Wang Ch'ang Ling (eighth century).
To The Fire-Fly.[1]
by Thomas Moore

At morning, when the earth and sky
Are glowing with the light of spring,
We see thee not, thou humble fly!
Nor think upon thy gleaming wing.
But when the skies have lost their hue,
And sunny lights no longer play,
Oh then we see and bless thee too
For sparkling o'er the dreary way.
Thus let me hope, when lost to me
The lights that now my life illume,
Some milder joys may come, like thee,
To cheer, if not to warm, the gloom!
Hope
by Thomas Campbell

At summer eve, when heaven's aerial bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below,
Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye,
Whose sunbright summit mingles with the sky?
Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
Knitting
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

At the concert and the play
Everywhere you see them sitting,
Knitting, knitting.
Women who the other day
Thought of nothing but their frocks
Or their jewels or their locks,
Women who have lived for pleasure,
Who have known no work but leisure,
Now are knitting, knitting, knitting
For the soldiers over there.
On the trains and on the ships
With a diligence befitting,
They are knitting.
Some with smiles upon their lips,
Some with manners debonair,
Some with earnest look and air.
But each heart in its own fashion,
Weaves in pity and compassion
In their knitting, knitting, knitting
For the soldiers over there.
Hurried women to and fro
From their homes to labour flitting,
Knitting, knitting,
Busy handed come and go.
Broken bits of time they spare,
Just to feel they do their share,
Just to keep life's sense of beauty
In the doing of a duty,
They are knitting, knitting, knitting
For the soldiers over there.
What? (To Ethel)
by Abram Joseph Ryan

At the golden gates of the visions
I knelt me adown one day;
But sudden my prayer was a silence,
For I heard from the "Far away"
The murmur of many voices
And a silvery censer's sway.
I bowed in awe, and I listened --
The deeps of my soul were stirred,
But deepest of all was the meaning
Of the far-off music I heard,
And yet it was stiller than silence,
Its notes were the "Dream of a Word".
A word that is whispered in heaven,
But cannot be heard below;
It lives on the lips of the angels
Where'er their pure wings glow;
Yet only the "Dream of its Echo"
Ever reaches this valley of woe.
But I know the word and its meaning;
I reached to its height that day,
When prayer sank into a silence
And my heart was so far away;
But I may not murmur the music,
Nor the word may my lips yet say.
But some day far in the future,
And up from the dust of the dead,
And out of my lips when speechless
The mystical word shall be said,
'Twill come to thee, still as a spirit,
When the soul of the bard has fled.
Bells
by Sara Teasdale

At six o'clock of an autumn dusk
With the sky in the west a rusty red,
The bells of the mission down in the valley
Cry out that the day is dead.
The first star pricks as sharp as steel,
Why am I suddenly so cold?
Three bells, each with a separate sound
Clang in the valley, wearily tolled.
Bells in Venice, bells at sea,
Bells in the valley heavy and slow,
There is no place over the crowded world
Where I can forget that the days go.
The Shadow of the Cross
by John Alexander McCrae

At the drowsy dusk when the shadows creep
From the golden west, where the sunbeams sleep,
An angel mused:    "Is there good or ill
In the mad world's heart, since on Calvary's hill
'Round the cross a mid-day twilight fell
That darkened earth and o'ershadowed hell?"
Through the streets of a city the angel sped;
Like an open scroll men's hearts he read.
In a monarch's ear his courtiers lied
And humble faces hid hearts of pride.
Men's hate waxed hot, and their hearts grew cold,
As they haggled and fought for the lust of gold.
Despairing, he cried, "After all these years
Is there naught but hatred and strife and tears?"
He found two waifs in an attic bare;
-- A single crust was their meagre fare --
One strove to quiet the other's cries,
And the love-light dawned in her famished eyes
As she kissed the child with a motherly air:
"I don't need mine, you can have my share."
Then the angel knew that the earthly cross
And the sorrow and shame were not wholly loss.
At dawn, when hushed was earth's busy hum
And men looked not for their Christ to come,
From the attic poor to the palace grand,
The King and the beggar went hand in hand.