DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Receiving Sight.
by Hattie Howard

In hours of meditation fraught
With mem'ries of departed days,
Comes oft a tender, loving thought
Of one who shared our youthful plays.
In gayest sports and pleasures rife
Whose happy nature reveled so,
That on her ardent, joyous life
A shadow lay, we did not know;
And bade her look one summer night
Up to the sky that seemed to hold,
In dying sunset splendor bright,
All hues of sapphire, red, and gold.
How strange the spell that mystified
Us all, and hushed our wonted glee,
As sadly her sweet voice replied,
"Why, don't you know I cannot see?"
Too true! those eyes bereft of sight
No blemish bare, no drop-serene,
But nothing in this world of light
And beauty they had ever seen.
A dozen years in gentle ruth
Their impress lent to brow and cheek,
When precious words of sacred truth
Led her the Saviour's face to seek.
Responsive unto earnest prayers
Commingling love and penitence,
A blessing came - not unawares - 
In new and strange experience.
And all was light, as Faith's clear eye
A brighter world than ours divined;
For never clouds obscured the sky
That she could see, while we were blind.
Oh, it must be an awful thing
To be shut out from light of day! - 
From summer's grace, and bloom of spring
In gladness words cannot portray.
But haply into every heart
May enter that Celestial Light
That doth to life's dark ways impart
A radiance hid from mortal sight.
In India's Dreamy Land
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In India's land one listens aghast
To the people who scream and bawl;
For each caste yells at a lower caste,
And the Britisher yells at them all.
The Sonnets CLII - In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn
by William Shakespeare

In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,
But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing;
In act thy bed-vow broke, and new faith torn,
In vowing new hate after new love bearing:
But why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee,
When I break twenty? I am perjur'd most;
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee,
And all my honest faith in thee is lost:
For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy;
And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,
Or made them swear against the thing they see;
For I have sworn thee fair; more perjur'd I,
To swear against the truth so foul a lie.!
Welcome To The Prince Of Wales.
by James McIntyre

Lines written when the Prince of Wales was about embarking for Canada, May, 1860.
In his long voyage o'er the sea,
To where doth grow the maple tree,
May he be blest with pleasant gales,
The coming man, the Prince of Wales.
The maple grows but in good soil,
Where nature doth reward for toil
The farmer splitting his fence rails,
He welcome bids the Prince of Wales.
In the woods the axe is ringing
And the yeoman merry singing,
The song resounds o'er hills and dales,
Our future king the Prince of Wales.
Round the brow of our future chief
We'll weave a wreath of maple leaf,
For o'er broad Canada prevails
Kind feelings to the Prince of Wales.
When in this land the Prince arrives,
May he have many pleasant drives,
And on our lakes have merry sails,
Great king of princes, Prince of Wales.
A Wraith Of Summertime.
by James Whitcomb Riley

In its color, shade and shine,
'T was a summer warm as wine,
With an effervescent flavoring of flowered bough and vine,
And a fragrance and a taste
Of ripe roses gone to waste,
And a dreamy sense of sun- and moon- and star-light interlaced.
'Twas a summer such as broods
O'er enchanted solitudes,
Where the hand of Fancy leads us through voluptuary moods,
And with lavish love out-pours
All the wealth of out-of-doors,
And woos our feet o'er velvet paths and honeysuckle floors.
'Twas a summertime long dead, - 
And its roses, white and red,
And its reeds and water-lilies down along the river-bed, - 
O they all are ghostly things - 
For the ripple never sings,
And the rocking lily never even rustles as it rings!
Chase Henry
by Edgar Lee Masters

In life I was the town drunkard;
When I died the priest denied me burial
In holy ground.
The which redounded to my good fortune.
For the Protestants bought this lot,
And buried my body here,
Close to the grave of the banker Nicholas,
And of his wife Priscilla.
Take note, ye prudent and pious souls,
Of the cross - currents in life
Which bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame
The Ghost. - A Very Serious Ballad.
by Thomas Hood

"I'll be your second." - LISTON.
In Middle Row, some years ago,
There lived one Mr. Brown;
And many folks considered him
The stoutest man in town.
But Brown and stout will both wear out - 
One Friday he died hard,
And left a widow'd wife to mourn,
At twenty pence a yard.
Now widow B. in two short months
Thought mourning quite a tax;
And wished, like Mr. Wilberforce,
To manumit her blacks.
With Mr. Street she soon was sweet;
The thing came thus about:
She asked him in at home, and then
At church, he asked her out!
Assurance such as this the man
In ashes could not stand;
So like a Phoenix he rose up
Against the Hand in Hand!
One dreary night the angry sprite
Appeared before her view;
It came a little after one,
But she was after two!
"O Mrs. B., O Mrs. B.!
Are these your sorrow's deeds,
Already getting up a flame,
To burn your widows' weeds?
"It's not so long since I have left
For aye the mortal scene;
My memory - like Rogers's - 
Should still be bound in green!
"Yet if my face you still retrace,
I almost have a doubt - 
I'm like an old Forget-me-not,
With all the leaves torn out!
"To think that on that finger joint
Another pledge should cling;
O Bess! upon my very soul
It struck like 'Knock and Ring,'"
"A ton of marble on my breast
Can't hinder my return;
Your conduct, ma'am, has set my blood
A-boiling in my urn!"
"Remember, oh! remember, how
The marriage rite did run, - 
If ever we one flesh should be
'Tis now - when I have none!
"And you, Sir - once a bosom friend - 
Of perjured faith convict,
As ghostly toe can give no blow,
Consider you are kick'd.
"A hollow voice is all I have,
But this I tell you plain,
Marry come up! - you marry, ma'am,
And I'll come up again."
More he had said, but chanticleer
The spritely shade did shock
With sudden crow, - and off he went,
Like fowling-piece at cock!
In Midnight Sleep
by Walt Whitman

In midnight sleep, of many a face of anguish,
Of the look at first of the mortally wounded - of that indescribable look;
Of the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide,
I dream, I dream, I dream.
Of scenes of nature, fields and mountains;
Of skies, so beauteous after a storm - and at night the moon so unearthly bright,
Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and gather the heaps,
I dream, I dream, I dream.
Long, long have they pass'd - faces and trenches and fields;
Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure - or away from the fallen,
Onward I sped at the time - But now of their forms at night,
I dream, I dream, I dream.
Lovers, And A Reflection.
by Charles Stuart Calverley

In moss-prankt dells which the sunbeams flatter
(And heaven it knoweth what that may mean:
Meaning, however, is no great matter)
Where woods are a-tremble, with rifts atween;
Thro' God's own heather we wonn'd together,
I and my Willie (O love my love):
I need hardly remark it was glorious weather,
And flitterbats waver'd alow, above:
Boats were curtseying, rising, bowing,
(Boats in that climate are so polite),
And sands were a ribbon of green endowing,
And O the sundazzle on bark and bight!
Thro' the rare red heather we danced together,
(O love my Willie!) and smelt for flowers:
I must mention again it was gorgeous weather,
Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours:-
By rises that flush'd with their purple favours,
Thro' becks that brattled o'er grasses sheen,
We walked and waded, we two young shavers,
Thanking our stars we were both so green.
We journeyed in parallels, I and Willie,
In fortunate parallels! Butterflies,
Hid in weltering shadows of daffodilly
Or marjoram, kept making peacock eyes:
Songbirds darted about, some inky
As coal, some snowy (I ween) as curds;
Or rosy as pinks, or as roses pinky -
They reck of no eerie To-come, those birds!
But they skim over bents which the midstream washes,
Or hang in the lift 'neath a white cloud's hem;
They need no parasols, no goloshes;
And good Mrs. Trimmer she feedeth them.
Then we thrid God's cowslips (as erst His heather)
That endowed the wan grass with their golden blooms;
And snapt - (it was perfectly charming weather) -
Our fingers at Fate and her goddess-glooms:
And Willie 'gan sing (O, his notes were fluty;
Wafts fluttered them out to the white-wing'd sea) -
Something made up of rhymes that have done much duty,
Rhymes (better to put it) of "ancientry:"
Bowers of flowers encounter'd showers
In William's carol - (O love my Willie!)
Then he bade sorrow borrow from blithe to-morrow
I quite forget what - say a daffodilly:
A nest in a hollow, "with buds to follow,"
I think occurred next in his nimble strain;
And clay that was "kneaden" of course in Eden -
A rhyme most novel, I do maintain:
Mists, bones, the singer himself, love-stories,
And all least furlable things got "furled;"
Not with any design to conceal their "glories,"
But simply and solely to rhyme with "world."
* * *
O if billows and pillows and hours and flowers,
And all the brave rhymes of an elder day,
Could be furled together, this genial weather,
And carted, or carried on "wafts" away,
Nor ever again trotted out - ah me!
How much fewer volumes of verse there'd be!
Farewell To Lord And Lady Dufferin
by Nora Pembroke (Margaret Moran Dixon McDougall)

In leaving us, whom thou hast governed well
Holding the helm of state through all these years
The land at large unites in a farewell
That's mingled with regret akin to tears
My Lord, we welcomed you in coming here
As one our gracious Queen thought fit to send
Your term of office hath so made you dear
We say farewell to you as friend to friend
It is not homage paid to honours worn
Lightly, as that which comes to one unsought;
Nor to thy high desent, oh nobly born
Nor to the aristocracy of thought.
And yet we do not undervalue here
Honours the nobles of our land enjoy;
We hold in high esteem the British Peer,
Warm to the ancient name of Clandeboye.
Warmly we feel to one who is akin
To that most marvellous genius Sheridan;
But warmer still the tribute that you win,
Paid, not to Lord, or Viceroy, to the man,
Who of no party, yet both far and near,
In distant wilderness and crowded mart,
With words that rouse and stimulate and cheer,
Has drawn the whole Dominion to your heart.
From Essex, by thy waters, sweet St. Clair,
To Gaspe, sentry on a stormy coast;
From Prima Vista to Vancouver, where
Will your departure be regretted most?
No Viceroy of this land has ever left
Such large regrets, as you my Lord, will do;
For admiration, confidence, respect
Are felt for you the wide Dominion through.
The miner at his work, the axeman where
He hews out fortune with enduring toil;
The farmer with his plenty and to spare,
For laughing harvests crown our fruitful son.
The fisher on our coast, the pioneer
Who strives the distant wilderness to tame;
The Indian hunter, wild unknown to fear,
On his swift horse swooping upon his game
From settlers fanned by keen Atlantic air,
To those the broad Pacific's breezes cool,
To forest shade and prairie verdure, where
Sit Indian maidens in the mission school
Never did Governor before receive
Such loyal homage as your heart has won,
Nor left so fair a record as you leave,
Or stood so near to us as you have done
You have the kindly sympathetic heart
Of her who loved the common people well,
The noble lady who with witching art
Taught us to sing the "Emigrant's Farewell.'
And the dear lady who has reigned your queen
Over the gaieties of Rideau Hall,
Her genial, gracious courtesies have been,
A talisman to win the hearts of all
Oh, Earl, and Countess, if good wishes may
Add anything to your most brilliant state,
The wide Dominion with one heart will pray
You may be blessed of God as well as great
The Rhodora:
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER?
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool.
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.
Cologne
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In K'hln, a town of monks and bones,
And pavements fang'd with murderous stones
And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches;
I counted two and seventy stenches,
All well defined, and several stinks!
Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?
Peace
by W.J. Turner

In low chalk hills the great King's body lay,
And bright streams fell, tinkling like polished tin,
As though they carried off his armoury,
And spread it glinting through his wide domain.
Old bearded soldiers sat and gazed dim-eyed
At the strange brightness flowing under trees,
And saw his sword flashing in ancient battles,
And drank, and swore, and trembled helplessly.
And bright-haired maidens dipped their cold white arms,
And drew them glittering colder, whiter, still;
The sky sparkled like the dead King's blue eye
Upon the sentries that were dead as trees.
His shining shield lay in an old grey town,
And white swans sailed so still and dreamfully,
They seemed the thoughts of those white, peaceful hills
Mirrored that day within his glazing eyes.
And in the square the pale cool butter sold,
Cropped from the daisies sprinkled on the downs,
And old wives cried their wares, like queer day owls,
Piercing the old men's sad and foolish dreams.
And Time flowed on till all the realm forgot
The great King lying in the low chalk hills;
Only the busy water dripping through
His hard white bones knew of him lying there.
The Golden Dream.
by Samuel Griswold Goodrich

In midnight dreams the Wizard came,
And beckoned me away 
With tempting hopes of wealth and fame,
He cheered my lonely way.
He led me o'er a dusky heath,
And there a river swept,
Whose gay and glassy tide beneath,
Uncounted treasure, slept.
The wooing ripples lightly dashed
Around the cherished store,
And circling eddies brightly flashed
Above the yellow ore.
I bent me o'er the deep smooth stream,
And plunged the gold to get, 
But oh! it vanished with my dream 
And I got dripping wet!
O'er lonely heath and darksome hill,
As shivering home I went,
The mocking Wizard whispered shrill,
'Thou'dst better been content!'
The Phantom Ship
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In Mather's Magnalia Christi,
Of the old colonial time,
May be found in prose the legend
That is here set down in rhyme.
A ship sailed from New Haven,
And the keen and frosty airs,
That filled her sails at parting,
Were heavy with good men's prayers.
"O Lord! if it be thy pleasure"--
Thus prayed the old divine--
"To bury our friends in the ocean,
Take them, for they are thine!"
But Master Lamberton muttered,
And under his breath said he,
"This ship is so crank and walty
I fear our grave she will be!"
And the ships that came from England,
When the winter months were gone,
Brought no tidings of this vessel
Nor of Master Lamberton.
This put the people to praying
That the Lord would let them hear
What in his greater wisdom
He had done with friends so dear.
And at last their prayers were answered:--
It was in the month of June,
An hour before the sunset
Of a windy afternoon,
When, steadily steering landward,
A ship was seen below,
And they knew it was Lamberton, Master,
Who sailed so long ago.
On she came, with a cloud of canvas,
Right against the wind that blew,
Until the eye could distinguish
The faces of the crew.
Then fell her straining topmasts,
Hanging tangled in the shrouds,
And her sails were loosened and lifted,
And blown away like clouds.
And the masts, with all their rigging,
Fell slowly, one by one,
And the hulk dilated and vanished,
As a sea-mist in the sun!
And the people who saw this marvel
Each said unto his friend,
That this was the mould of their vessel,
And thus her tragic end.
And the pastor of the village
Gave thanks to God in prayer,
That, to quiet their troubled spirits,
He had sent this Ship of Air.
The Crowd And Company.
by Robert Herrick

In holy meetings there a man may be
One of the crowd, not of the company.
The Quarrel of the Dogs and Cats.
by Jean de La Fontaine

In mansion deck'd with frieze and column,
Dwelt dogs and cats in multitudes;
Decrees, promulged in manner solemn,
Had pacified their ancient feuds.
Their lord had so arranged their meals and labours,
And threaten'd quarrels with the whip,
That, living in sweet cousinship,
They edified their wondering neighbours.
At last, some dainty plate to lick,
Or profitable bone to pick,
Bestow'd by some partiality,
Broke up the smooth equality.
The side neglected were indignant
At such a slight malignant.
From words to blows the altercation
Soon grew a perfect conflagration.
In hall and kitchen, dog and cat
Took sides with zeal for this or that.
New rules upon the cat side falling
Produced tremendous caterwauling.
Their advocate, against such rules as these,
Advised recurrence to the old decrees.
They search'd in vain, for, hidden in a nook,
The thievish mice had eaten up the book.
Another quarrel, in a trice,
Made many sufferers with the mice;
For many a veteran whisker'd-face,
With craft and cunning richly stored,
And grudges old against the race,
Now watch'd to put them to the sword;
Nor mourn'd for this that mansion's lord.
Look wheresoever we will, we see
No creature from opponents free.
'Tis nature's law for earth and sky;
'Twere vain to ask the reason why:
God's works are good, - I cannot doubt it, - 
And that is all I know about it.
In midnights of November,
by Alfred Edward Housman

In midnights of November,
When Dead Man's Fair is nigh,
And danger in the valley,
And anger in the sky,
Around the huddling homesteads
The leafless timber roars,
And the dead call the dying
And finger at the doors.
Oh, yonder faltering fingers
Are hands I used to hold;
Their false companion drowses
And leaves them in the cold.
Oh, to the bed of ocean,
To Africk and to Ind,
I will arise and follow
Along the rainy wind.
The night goes out and under
With all its train forlorn;
Hues in the east assemble
And cocks crow up the morn.
The living are the living
And dead the dead will stay,
And I will sort with comrades
That face the beam of day.
The Lowestoft Boat
by Rudyard Kipling

In Lowestoft a boat was laid,
Mark well what I do say!
And she was built for the herring-trade,
But she has gone a-rovin', a-rovin', a-rovin',
The Lord knows where!
They gave her Government coal to burn,
And a Q.F. gun at bow and stern,
And sent her out a-rovin', etc.
Her skipper was mate of a bucko ship
Which always killed one man per trip,
So he is used to rovin', etc.
Her mate was skipper of a chapel in Wales,
And so he fights in topper and tails,
Religi-ous tho' rovin', etc.
Her engineer is fifty-eight,'
So he's prepared to meet his fate,
Which ain't unlikely rovin', etc.
Her leading-stoker's seventeen,
So he don't know what the Judgments mean,
Unless he cops 'em rovin', etc.
Her cook was chef in the Lost Dogs' Home,
Mark well what I do say!
And I'm sorry for Fritz when they all come
A-rovin', a-rovin', a-roarin' and a-rovin',
Round the North Sea rovin',
The Lord knows where!
Lyonesse
by Alan Seeger

In Lyonesse was beauty enough, men say:
Long Summer loaded the orchards to excess,
And fertile lowlands lengthening far away,
In Lyonesse.
Came a term to that land's old favoredness:
Past the sea-walls, crumbled in thundering spray,
Rolled the green waves, ravening, merciless.
Through bearded boughs immobile in cool decay,
Where sea-bloom covers corroding palaces,
The mermaid glides with a curious glance to-day,
In Lyonesse.
Mare Rubrum
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

In Life's Red Sea with faith I plant my feet,
And wait the sound of that sustaining word
Which long ago the men of Israel heard,
When Pharaoh's host behind them, fierce and fleet,
Raged on, consuming with revengeful heat.
Why are the barrier waters still unstirred?--
That struggling faith may die of hope deferred?
Is God not sitting in His ancient seat?
The billows swirl above my trembling limbs,
And almost chill my anxious heart to doubt
And disbelief, long conquered and defied.
But tho' the music of my hopeful hymns
Is drowned by curses of the raging rout,
No voice yet bids th' opposing waves divide!
Damaetas. [1]
by George Gordon Byron

In law an infant, [2] and in years a boy,
In mind a slave to every vicious joy;
From every sense of shame and virtue wean'd,
In lies an adept, in deceit a fiend;
Vers'd in hypocrisy, while yet a child;
Fickle as wind, of inclinations wild;
Woman his dupe, his heedless friend a tool;
Old in the world, though scarcely broke from school;
Dam'tas ran through all the maze of sin,
And found the goal, when others just begin:
Ev'n still conflicting passions shake his soul,
And bid him drain the dregs of Pleasure's bowl;
But, pall'd with vice, he breaks his former chain,
And what was once his bliss appears his bane.
Toys And Tragedy.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Enfants, on vous dira plus tard.")
[January, 1871.]
In later years, they'll tell you grandpapa
Adored his little darlings; for them did
His utmost just to pleasure them and mar
No moments with a frown or growl amid
Their rosy rompings; that he loved them so
(Though men have called him bitter, cold, and stern,)
That in the famous winter when the snow
Covered poor Paris, he went, old and worn,
To buy them dolls, despite the falling shells,
At which laughed Punch, and they, and shook his bells.
Visions.
by Charles Stuart Calverley

"She was a phantom," &c.
In lone Glenartney's thickets lies couched the lordly stag,
The dreaming terrier's tail forgets its customary wag;
And plodding ploughmen's weary steps insensibly grow quicker,
As broadening casements light them on towards home, or home-brewed liquor.
It is (in fact) the evening - that pure and pleasant time,
When stars break into splendour, and poets into rhyme;
When in the glass of Memory the forms of loved ones shine -
And when, of course, Miss Goodchild's is prominent in mine.
Miss Goodchild! - Julia Goodchild! - how graciously you smiled
Upon my childish passion once, yourself a fair-haired child:
When I was (no doubt) profiting by Dr. Crabb's instruction,
And sent those streaky lollipops home for your fairy suction!
"She wore" her natural "roses, the night when first we met" -
Her golden hair was gleaming 'neath the coercive net:
"Her brow was like the snawdrift," her step was like Queen Mab's,
And gone was instantly the heart of every boy at Crabb's.
The parlour-boarder chasseed tow'rds her on graceful limb;
The onyx decked his bosom - but her smiles were not for him:
With ME she danced - till drowsily her eyes "began to blink,"
And I brought raisin wine, and said, "Drink, pretty creature, drink!"
And evermore, when winter comes in his garb of snows,
And the returning schoolboy is told how fast he grows;
Shall I - with that soft hand in mine - enact ideal Lancers,
And dream I hear demure remarks, and make impassioned answers:-
I know that never, never may her love for me return -
At night I muse upon the fact with undisguised concern -
But ever shall I bless that day: (I don't bless, as a rule,
The days I spent at "Dr. Crabb's Preparatory School.")
And yet - we two MAY meet again - (Be still, my throbbing heart!) -
Now rolling years have weaned us from jam and raspberry tart:-
One night I saw a vision - 'Twas when musk-roses bloom
I stood - WE stood - upon a rug, in a sumptuous dining-room:
One hand clasped hers - one easily reposed upon my hip -
And "BLESS YE!" burst abruptly from Mr. Goodchild's lip:
I raised my brimming eye, and saw in hers an answering gleam -
My heart beat wildly - and I woke, and lo! it was a dream.