DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Ionicus
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

With failing feet and shoulders bowed
Beneath the weight of happier days,
He lagged among the heedless crowd,
Or crept along suburban ways.
But still through all his heart was young,
His mood a joy that nought could mar,
A courage, a pride, a rapture, sprung
Of the strength and splendour of England's war.
From ill-requited toil he turned
To ride with Picton and with Pack,
Among his grammars inly burned
To storm the Afghan mountain-track.
When midnight chimed, before Quebec
He watched with Wolfe till the morning star;
At noon he saw from Victory's deck
The sweep and splendour of England's war.
Beyond the book his teaching sped,
He left on whom he taught the trace
Of kinship with the deathless dead,
And faith in all the Island Race.
He passed: his life a tangle seemed,
His age from fame and power was far;
But his heart was night to the end, and dreamed
Of the sound and splendour of England's war.
Bound For California.
by Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

With buoyant heart he left his home for that bright wond'rous land
Where gold ore gleams in countless mines, and gold dust strews the sand;
And youth's dear ties were riven all, for as wild, as vain, a dream
As the meteor false that leads astray the traveller with its gleam.
Vainly his father frowned dissent, his mother, tearful, prayed,
Vainly his sisters, with fond words, his purpose would have stayed;
He heard them all with heedless ear, with dauntless heart and bold - 
Whisp'ring to soothe each yearning fear "I go to win you gold."
Restless he paced the deck until he saw the sails unfurled
Of the ship which was to bear him to that new and distant world;
And when his comrades stood with him and watched the lessening land,
His clear laugh rose the loudest 'mid that gay gold-seekers' band.
In changing moods of grief and mirth the ocean way was passed,
And all were weary, when the cry of "Land" was heard at last.
Like birds escaped from thraldom long, the happy, smiling crowd
Thronged to the deck with eager looks, rejoicing long and loud.
Yet one was missing 'mid that band who foremost should have been,
Whose hopeful heart had cheered them oft when winds blew fierce and keen;
And when dead calms or drizzling rains made the ocean way seem long
Had wiled the time with lively tale, with jest, or stirring song.
But a sudden change had come o'er him, his ringing voice was hushed,
The smooth young cheek grew pallid, or, at times, was deeply flushed;
And now he lay in his lonely cot, a prey to sickness drear,
His frame all filled with racking pain - his heart with doubt and fear.
"Oh, raise me up," he faintly breathed, "that I one glance may win
Of that long looked for promised land I ne'er may enter in;
Till I recall the tender words of friends, well loved of old - 
The friends I left without a pang, in idle search for gold."
The Exile's prayer was soon obeyed, and round his fevered brow
The cool land breeze is playing, but death's damps are on it now!
His spirit passed from earth away as Sol's last dying beams
Lit up the golden Eldorado of all his boyish dreams.
The Dying Year
by Mary Gardiner Horsford

With dirge-like music, low,
Sounds forth again the solemn harp of Time;
Mass for the buried hours, a funeral chime
O'er human joy and woe.
The sere leaves wail around thy passing bier,
Speed to thy dreamless rest, departing year!
Yet, ere thy sable pall
Cross the wide threshold of the mighty Past,
Give back the treasures on thy bosom cast;
Earth would her gems recall:
Give back the lily's bloom and violet's breath,
The summer leaves that bowed before the reaper Death.
Give back the dreams of fame,
The aspirations strong for glory won;
Hopes that went out perchance when set thy sun,
Nor left nor trace nor name:
Give back the wasted hours, half-uttered prayer,
The high resolves forgot that stained thine annals fair.
Give back the flow of thought,
That woke within the poet's yearning breast,
Soothing its wild and passionate unrest;
Love's rainbow-visions, wrought
Of youth's deep, fearless trust, that light the scroll
With an intenser glow, - records of heart and soul!
Give back - for thou hast more - 
Give back the kindly words we loved so well,
Voices, whose music on the spirit fell,
But tenderness to pour;
The steps that never now around us tread,
Faces that haunt our sleep: give back, give back the dead.
Give back! - who shall explore
Creation's boundless realms to mark thy prey?
Who mount where man has never thought to sway,
Or science dared to soar?
Oh! who shall tell what suns have set for aye,
What worlds gone out, what systems passed away?
Not till the stars shall fall,
And earth and sky before God's mandate flee,
Shall human vision look, or spirit see,
Beneath thy mystic pall:
But hark! with accent clear, and flute-like swell,
Floats up the New Year's voice, - Departed one, farewell!
Comradery
by Madison Julius Cawein

With eyes hand-arched he looks into
The morning's face; then turns away
With truant feet, all wet with dew,
Out for a holiday.
The hill brook sings; incessant stars,
Foam-fashioned, on its restless breast;
And where he wades its water-bars
Its song is happiest.
A comrade of the chinquapin,
He looks into its knotty eyes
And sees its heart; and, deep within,
Its soul that makes him wise.
The wood-thrush knows and follows him,
Who whistles up the birds and bees;
And round him all the perfumes swim
Of woodland loam and trees.
Where'er he pass the silvery springs'
Foam-people sing the flowers awake;
And sappy lips of bark-clad things
Laugh ripe each berried brake.
His touch is a companionship;
His word an old authority:
He comes, a lyric on his lip,
The woodboy - Poesy.
The Girl's Lamentation
by William Allingham

With grief and mourning I sit to spin;
My Love passed by, and he didn't come in;
He passes by me, both day and night,
And carries off my poor heart's delight.
There is a tavern in yonder town,
My Love goes there and he spends a crown;
He takes a strange girl upon his knee,
And never more gives a thought to me.
Says he, 'We'll wed without loss of time,
And sure our love's but a little crime;'
My apron-string now it's wearing short,
And my Love he seeks other girls to court.
O with him I'd go if I had my will,
I'd follow him barefoot o'er rock and hill;
I'd never once speak of all my grief
If he'd give me a smile for my heart's relief.
In our wee garden the rose unfolds,
With bachelor's-buttons and marigolds;
I'll tie no posies for dance or fair,
A willow-twig is for me to wear.
For a maid again I can never be,
Till the red rose blooms on the willow tree.
Of such a trouble I've heard them tell,
And now I know what it means full well.
As through the long lonesome night I lie,
I'd give the world if I might but cry;
But I mus'n't moan there or raise my voice,
And the tears run down without any noise.
And what, O what will my mother say?
She'll wish her daughter was in the clay.
My father will curse me to my face;
The neighbours will know of my black disgrace.
My sister's buried three years, come Lent;
But sure we made far too much lament.
Beside her grave they still say a prayer,
I wish to God 'twas myself was there!
The Candlemas crosses hang near my bed;
To look at them puts me much in dread,
They mark the good time that's gone and past:
It's like this year's one will prove the last.
The oldest cross it's a dusty brown,
But the winter winds didn't shake it down;
The newest cross keeps the colour bright;
When the straw was reaping my heart was light.
The reapers rose with the blink of morn,
And gaily stook'd up the yellow corn;
To call them home to the field I'd run,
Through the blowing breeze and the summer sun.
When the straw was weaving my heart was glad,
For neither sin nor shame I had,
In the barn where oat-chaff was flying round,
And the thumping flails made a pleasant sound.
Now summer or winter to me it's one;
But oh! for a day like the time that's gone.
I'd little care was it storm or shine,
If I had but peace in this heart of mine.
Oh! light and false is a young man's kiss,
And a foolish girl gives her soul for this.
Oh! light and short is the young man's blame,
And a helpless girl has the grief and shame.
To the river-bank once I thought to go,
And cast myself in the stream below;
I thought 'twould carry us far out to sea,
Where they'd never find my poor babe and me.
Sweet Lord, forgive me that wicked mind!
You know I used to be well-inclined.
Oh, take compassion upon my state,
Because my trouble is so very great.
My head turns round with the spinning wheel,
And a heavy cloud on my eyes I feel.
But the worst of all is at my heart's core;
For my innocent days will come back no more.
Silence
by Walter De La Mare

With changeful sound life beats upon the ear;
Yet striving for release
The most delighting string's
Sweet jargonings,
The happiest throat's
Most easeful, lovely notes
Fall back into a veiling silentness.
Even 'mid the rumour of a moving host,
Blackening the clear green earth,
Vainly 'gainst that thin wall
The trumpets call,
Or with loud hum
The smoke-bemuffled drum:
From that high quietness no reply comes forth.
When all at peace, two friends at ease alone
Talk out their hearts, - yet still,
Between the grace-notes of
The voice of love
From each to each
Trembles a rarer speech,
And with its presence every pause doth fill.
Unmoved it broods, this all-encompassing hush
Of one who stooping near,
No smallest stir will make
Our fear to wake;
But yet intent
Upon some mystery bent,
Hearkens the lightest word we say, or hear.
The Night March
by Herman Melville

With banners furled and clarions mute,
An army passes in the night;
And beaming spears and helms salute
The dark with bright.
In silence deep the legions stream,
With open ranks, in order true;
Over boundless plains they stream and gleam--
No chief in view!
Afar, in twinkling distance lost,
(So legends tell) he lonely wends
And back through all that shining host
His mandate sends.
The Golden Wedding Of Longwood
by John Greenleaf Whittier

With fifty years between you and your well-kept wedding vow,
The Golden Age, old friends of mine, is not a fable now.
And, sweet as has life's vintage been through all your pleasant past,
Still, as at Cana's marriage-feast, the best wine is the last!
Again before me, with your names, fair Chester's landscape comes,
Its meadows, woods, and ample barns, and quaint, stone-builded homes.
The smooth-shorn vales, the wheaten slopes, the boscage green and soft,
Of which their poet sings so well from towered Cedarcroft.
And lo! from all the country-side come neighbors, kith and kin;
From city, hamlet, farm-house old, the wedding guests come in.
And they who, without scrip or purse, mob-hunted, travel-worn,
In Freedom's age of martyrs came, as victors now return.
Older and slower, yet the same, files in the long array,
And hearts are light and eyes are glad, though heads are badger-gray.
The fire-tried men of Thirty-eight who saw with me the fall,
Midst roaring flames and shouting mob, of Pennsylvania Hall;
And they of Lancaster who turned the cheeks of tyrants pale,
Singing of freedom through the grates of Moyamensing jail!
And haply with them, all unseen, old comrades, gone before,
Pass, silently as shadows pass, within your open door,
The eagle face of Lindley Coates, brave Garrett's daring zeal,
Christian grace of Pennock, the steadfast heart of Neal.
Ah me! beyond all power to name, the worthies tried and true,
Grave men, fair women, youth and maid, pass by in hushed review.
Of varying faiths, a common cause fused all their hearts in one.
God give them now, whate'er their names, the peace of duty done!
How gladly would I tread again the old-remembered places,
Sit down beside your hearth once more and look in the dear old faces!
And thank you for the lessons your fifty years are teaching,
For honest lives that louder speak than half our noisy preaching;
For your steady faith and courage in that dark and evil time,
When the Golden Rule was treason, and to feed the hungry, crime;
For the poor slave's house of refuge when the hounds were on his track,
And saint and sinner, church and state, joined hands to send him back.
Blessings upon you! What you did for each sad, suffering one,
So homeless, faint, and naked, unto our Lord was done!
Fair fall on Kennett's pleasant vales and Longwood's bowery ways
The mellow sunset of your lives, friends of my early days.
May many more of quiet years be added to your sum,
And, late at last, in tenderest love, the beckoning angel come.
Dear hearts are here, dear hearts are there, alike below, above;
Our friends are now in either world, and love is sure of love
Fancy Free.
by Juliana Horatia Ewing

A GIRL'S SONG.
With bark and bound and frolic round
My dog and I together run;
While by our side a brook doth glide,
And laugh and sparkle in the sun.
We ask no more of fortune's store
Than thus at our sweet wills to roam:
And drink heart's ease from every breeze
That blows about the hills of home.
As, fancy free,
With game and glee,
We happy three
Dance down the glen.
And yet they say that some fine day
This vagrant stream may serve a mill;
My doggy guard a master's yard;
My free heart choose another's will.
How this may fare we little care,
My dog and I, as still we run!
Whilst by our side the brook doth glide,
And laugh and sparkle in the sun.
For, fancy free,
With game and glee,
We happy three
Dance down the glen.
The Christ Of The 'Never'
by Henry Lawson

With eyes that are narrowed to pierce
To the awful horizons of land,
Through the blaze of hot days, and the fierce
White heat-waves that flow on the sand;
Through the Never Land westward and nor'ward,
Bronzed, bearded, and gaunt on the track,
Low-voiced and hard-knuckled, rides forward
The Christ of the Outer Out-back.
For the cause that will ne'er be relinquished
Despite all the cynics on earth,
In the ranks of the bush undistinguished
By manner or dress, if by birth;
God's preacher, of churches unheeded,
God's vineyard, though barren the sod,
Plain spokesman where spokesman is needed,
Rough link 'twixt the bushman and God.
He works where the hearts of a nation
Are withered in flame from the sky,
Where the sinners work out their salvation
In a hell-upon-earth ere they die.
In the camp or the lonely hut lying
In a waste that seems out of God's sight,
He's the doctor, the mate of the dying
Through the smothering heat of the night.
By his work in the hells of the shearers,
Where the drinking is ghastly and grim,
Where the roughest and worst of his hearers
Have listened bareheaded to him;
By his paths through the parched desolation,
Hot rides, and the long, terrible tramps;
By the hunger, the thirst, the privation
Of his work in the farthermost camps;
By his worth in the light that shall search men
And prove, ay! and justify, each,
I place him in front of all churchmen
Who feel not, who know not, but preach!
On Donne's Poetry
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,
Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots;
Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,
Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.
The Scottish Engineer
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

With eyes that searched in the dark,
Peering along the line,
Stood the grim Scotsman, Hector Clark,
Driver of "Forty-nine".
And the veldt-fire flamed on the hills ahead,
Like a blood-red beacon sign.
There was word of a fight to the north,
And a column too hardly pressed,
So they started the Highlanders forth.
Heedless of food or rest.
But the pipers gaily played,
Chanting their fierce delight,
And the armoured carriages rocked and swayed.
Laden with men of the Scots Brigade,
Hurrying up to the fight,
And the grim, grey Highland engineer
Driving them into the night.
Then a signal light glowed red,
And a picket came to the track.
"Enemy holding the line ahead;
Three of our mates we have left for dead,
Only we two got back."
And far to the north through the still night air
They heard the rifles crack.
And the boom of a gun rang out,
Like the sound of a deep appeal,
And the picket stood in doubt
By the side of the driving-wheel.
But the engineer looked down,
With his hand on the starting-bar,
"Ride ye back to the town,
Ye know what my orders are,
Maybe they're wanting the Scots Brigade
Up on those hills afar.
"I am no soldier at all,
Only an engineer;
But I could not bear that the folk should say
Over in Scotland, Glasgow way,
That Hector Clark stayed here
With the Scots Brigade till the foe was gone,
With ever a rail to run her on.
Ready behind! Stand clear!
"Fireman, get you gone
Into the armoured train,
I will drive her alone;
One more trip, and perhaps the last,
With a well-raked fire and an open blast;
Hark to the rifles again!"
*             *             *             *             *
On through the choking dark,
Never a lamp nor a light,
Never an engine spark
Showing her hurried flight,
Over the lonely plain
Rushed the great armoured train,
Hurrying up to the fight.
Then with her living freight
On to the foe she came,
And the rides snapped their hate.
And the darkness spouted flame.
Over the roar of the fray
The hungry bullets whined,
As she dashed through the foe that lay
Loading and firing blind,
Till the glare of the furnace, burning clear,
Showed them the form of the engineer
Sharply and well defined.
Through! They are safely through!
Hark to the column's cheer!
Surely the driver knew
He was to halt her here;
But he took no heed of the signals red,
And the fireman found, when he climbed ahead,
There on the door of his engine, dead,
The Scottish Engineer!
Elegiac Musings - In The Grounds Of Coleorton Hall, The Seat Of The Late Sir G. H. Beaumont, Bart.
by William Wordsworth

With copious eulogy in prose or rhyme
Graven on the tomb we struggle against Time,
Alas, how feebly! but our feelings rise
And still we struggle when a good man dies:
Such offering Beaumont dreaded and forbade,
A spirit meek in self-abasement clad.
Yet 'here' at least, though few have numbered days
That shunned so modestly the light of praise 
His graceful manners, and the temperate ray
Of that arch fancy which would round him play,
Brightening a converse never known to swerve
From courtesy and delicate reserve;
That sense, the bland philosophy of life,
Which checked discussion ere it warmed to strife 
Those rare accomplishments, and varied powers,
Might have their record among sylvan bowers.
Oh, fled for ever! vanished like a blast
That shook the leaves in myriads as it passed; 
Gone from this world of earth, air, sea, and sky,
From all its spirit-moving imagery,
Intensely studied with a painter's eye,
A poet's heart; and, for congenial view,
Portrayed with happiest pencil, not untrue
To common recognitions while the line
Flowed in a course of sympathy divine; 
Oh! severed, too abruptly, from delights
That all the seasons shared with equal rights; 
Rapt in the grace of undismantled age,
From soul-felt music, and the treasured page
Lit by that evening lamp which loved to shed
Its mellow lustre round thy honoured head;
While Friends beheld thee give with eye, voice, mien,
More than theatric force to Shakespeare's scene; 
If thou hast heard me, if thy Spirit know
Aught of these bowers and whence their pleasures flow;
If things in our remembrance held so dear,
And thoughts and projects fondly cherished here,
To thy exalted nature only seem
Time's vanities, light fragments of earth's dream
Rebuke us not! The mandate is obeyed
That said, "Let praise be mute where I am laid;"
The holier deprecation, given in trust
To the cold marble, waits upon thy dust;
Yet have we found how slowly genuine grief
From 'silent' admiration wins relief.
Too long abashed thy Name is like a rose
That doth "within itself its sweetness close;"
A drooping daisy changed into a cup
In which her bright-eyed beauty is shut up.
Within these groves, where still are flitting by
Shades of the Past, oft noticed with a sigh,
Shall stand a votive Tablet, haply free,
When towers and temples fall, to speak of Thee!
If sculptured emblems of our mortal doom
Recall not there the wisdom of the Tomb,
Green ivy risen from out the cheerful earth,
Will fringe the lettered stone; and herbs spring forth,
Whose fragrance, by soft dews and rain unbound,
Shall penetrate the heart without a wound;
While truth and love their purposes fullfil,
Commemorating genius, talent, skill,
That could not lie concealed where Thou wert known;
Thy virtues 'He' must judge, and He alone,
The God upon whose mercy they are thrown.
Thought-Magnets
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

With each strong thought, with every earnest longing
For aught thou deemest needful to thy soul,
Invisible vast forces are set thronging
Between thee and that goal
'Tis only when some hidden weakness alters
And changes thy desire, or makes it less,
That this mysterious army ever falters
Or stops short of success.
Thought is a magnet; and the longed-for pleasure,
Or boon, or aim, or object, is the steel;
And its attainment hangs but on the measure
Of what thy soul can feel.
The Fox Hunters.
by George W. Doneghy

I.
With fleet-limbed steeds and baying pack
They follow close on Reynard's track,
And wake the slumbering echoes round
With music of the horn and hound;
Through wood and field, o'er hill and dale,
They course him in the moonlight pale,
And sport they find which brings delight--
These reckless riders of the night!
II.
The game is up! away, away!
Nor hedge nor fence their course can stay;
They clear them at a single leap,
And like the wind they onward sweep!
O'er fallen trunk and hidden ditch
The fearless horsemen plunge and pitch,
And heedless all they follow on
With ringing shout and winding horn!
III.
Thy wondrous ride, oh Tam O'Shanter,
To speed like theirs was but a canter;
Had you bestrode that night instead
Of gray mare Meg a thoroughbred
(Such as Kentuckians only breed--
To Scotia then an unknown steed),
No carline could have caught his rump
And left your brute with scarce a stump!
IV.
His foaming horse with throbbing sides
Unslackened yet his pace he rides,
Till in among the yelping hounds
The foremost huntsman proudly bounds,
And sees the leaders of the chase
(Two matchless dogs that set the pace)
O'ertake the game and win the race!
And then dismounts and feels the flush
Of victory as he takes the brush!
V.
O royal sport, befitting kings!
It bids the demon Care take wings,
And the rose's hue to the cheek it brings!
And sweeter music none can hear
Than that which greets the list'ning ear--
By distance mellowed to a key
That breathes divinest harmony--
And wakes the slumbering echoes round--
The winding horn and baying hound!
You And To-Day
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

With every rising of the sun
Think of your life as just begun.
The past has shrived and buried deep
All yesterdays - there let them sleep,
Nor seek to summon back one ghost
Of that innumerable host.
Concern yourself with but to-day;
Woo it and teach it to obey
Your wish and will.    Since time began
To-day has been the friend of man.
But in his blindness and his sorrow
He looks to yesterday and to-morrow.
You and to-day! a soul sublime
And the great pregnant hour of time.
With God between to bind the train,
Go forth, I say - attain - attain.