DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Waterfall
by Henry Kendall

The song of the water
Doomed ever to roam,
A beautiful exile,
Afar from its home.
The cliffs on the mountain,
The grand and the gray,
They took the bright creature
And hurled it away!
I heard the wild downfall,
And knew it must spill
A passionate heart out
All over the hill.
Oh! was it a daughter
Of sorrow and sin,
That they threw it so madly
Down into the lynn?
.    .    .    .    .
And listen, my Sister,
For this is the song
The Waterfall taught me
The ridges among:
'Oh where are the shadows
So cool and so sweet
And the rocks,' saith the water,
'With the moss on their feet?
'Oh, where are my playmates
The wind and the flowers
The golden and purple
Of honey-sweet bowers,
'Mine eyes have been blinded
Because of the sun;
And moaning and moaning
I listlessly run.
'These hills are so flinty!
Ah! tell me, dark Earth,
What valley leads back to
The place of my birth?
'What valley leads up to
The haunts where a child
Of the caverns I sported,
The free and the wild?
'There lift me,' it crieth,
'I faint from the heat;
With a sob for the shadows
So cool and so sweet.'
Ye rocks, that look over
With never a tear,
I yearn for one half of
The wasted love here!
My sister so wistful,
You know I believe,
Like a child for the mountains
This water doth grieve.
Ah! you with the blue eyes
And golden-brown hair,
Come closer and closer
And truly declare:
Supposing a darling
Once happened to sin,
In a passionate space,
Would you carry her in
If your fathers and mothers,
The grand and the gray,
Had taken the weak one
And hurled her away?
Syringas.
by Hattie Howard

The smallest flower beside my path,
In loveliness of bloom,
Some element of comfort hath
To rid my heart of gloom;
But these, of spotless purity,
And fragrant as the rose,
As sad a sight recall to me
As time shall e'er disclose.
Oh, there are pictures on the brain
Sometimes by shadows made,
Till dust is blent with dust again,
That never, never fade;
And things supremely bright and fair
As ever known in life
Suggest the darkness of despair,
And sanguinary strife.
I shut my eyes; 'tis all in vain - 
The battle-field appears,
And one among the thousands slain
In manhood's brilliant years;
An elbow pillowing his head,
And on the crimson sand
Syringa-blooms, distained and dead,
Within his rigid hand.
Could she foresee, who from the stem
Had plucked that little spray
Of flowers, that he would cherish them
Unto his dying day?
"Give these to M -    - ; - 'tis almost night - 
And tell her - that - I love - "
Alas! the letter he would write
Was finished up above.
And so, with each recurring spring,
On Decoration day,
When to our heroes' graves we bring
The blossom-wealth of May,
While martial strains are soft and low,
And music seems a prayer,
Unto a hallowed spot I go,
And leave syringas there.
The Chevalier's Lament.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "Captain O'Kean."
I.
The small birds rejoice in the green leaves returning,
The murmuring streamlet winds clear thro' the vale;
The hawthorn trees blow in the dew of the morning,
And wild scatter'd cowslips bedeck the green dale:
But what can give pleasure, or what can seem fair,
While the lingering moments are number'd by care?
No flow'rs gaily springing, nor birds sweetly singing,
Can soothe the sad bosom of joyless despair.
II.
The deed that I dared, could it merit their malice,
A king and a father to place on his throne?
His right are these hills, and his right are these valleys,
Where the wild beasts find shelter, but I can find none;
But 'tis not my sufferings thus wretched, forlorn:
My brave gallant friends! 'tis your ruin I mourn;
Your deeds proved so loyal in hot-bloody trial
Alas! I can make you no sweeter return!
The Sloth.
by Oliver Herford

The Sloth en-joys a life of Ease;
He hangs in-vert-ed from the trees,
And views life up-side down.
If you, my child, are noth-ing loath
To live in In-dol-ence and Sloth,
Un-heed-ing the World's frown,
You, too, un-vexed by Toil and Strife,
May take a hu-mor-ous view of life.
L'Envoi
by Rudyard Kipling

The smoke upon your Altar dies,
The flowers decay,
The Goddess of your sacrifice
Has flown away.
What profit then to sing or slay
The sacrifice from day to day?
"We know the Shrine is void," they said.
"The Goddess flown,
"Yet wreaths are on the altar laid,
"The Altar-Stone
"Is black withfumes of sacrifice,
"Albeit She has Bed our eyes.
"For, it may be, if still we sing
"And tend the Shrine,
"Some Deity on wandering wing
"May there incline,
"And, finding all in order meet,
"Stay while we Worship at Her feet."
The League And Covenant.
by Robert Burns

The solemn League and Covenant
Cost Scotland blood, cost Scotland tears;
But it sealed freedom's sacred cause,
If thou'rt a slave, indulge thy sneers.
Childhood.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("L'enfant chantait.")
[Bk. I. xxiii., Paris, January, 1835.]
The small child sang; the mother, outstretched on the low bed,
With anguish moaned, - fair Form pain should possess not long;
For, ever nigher, Death hovered around her head:
I hearkened there this moan, and heard even there that song.
The child was but five years, and, close to the lattice, aye
Made a sweet noise with games and with his laughter bright;
And the wan mother, aside this being the livelong day
Carolling joyously, coughed hoarsely all the night.
The mother went to sleep 'mong them that sleep alway;
And the blithe little lad began anew to sing...
Sorrow is like a fruit: God doth not therewith weigh
Earthward the branch strong yet but for the blossoming.
NELSON R. TYERMAN.
Seringapatam
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

"The sleep that Tippoo Sahib sleeps
Heeds not the cry of man;
The faith that Tippoo Sahib keeps
No judge on earth may scan;
He is the lord of whom ye hold
Spirit and sense and limb,
Fetter and chain are all ye gain
Who dared to plead with him."
Baird was bonny and Baird was young,
His heart was strong as steel,
But life and death in the balance hung,
For his wounds were ill to heal.
"Of fifty chains the Sultan gave
We have filled but forty-nine:
We dare not fail of the perfect tale
For all Golconda's mine."
That was the hour when Lucas first
Leapt to his long renown;
Like summer rains his anger burst,
And swept their scruples down.
"Tell ye the lord to whom ye crouch,
His fetters bite their fill:
To save your oath I'll wear them both,
And step the lighter still."
The seasons came, the seasons passed,
They watched their fellows die;
But still their thought was forward cast,
Their courage still was high.
Through tortured days and fevered nights
Their limbs alone were weak,
And year by year they kept their cheer,
And spoke as freemen speak.
But once a year, on the fourth of June,
Their speech to silence died,
And the silence beat to a soundless tune
And sang with a wordless pride;
Till when the Indian stars were bright,
And bells at home would ring,
To the fetters' clank they rose and drank
"England! God save the King!"
The years came, and the years went,
The wheel full-circle rolled;
The tyrant's neck must yet be bent,
The price of blood be told:
The city yet must hear the roar
Of Baird's avenging guns,
And see him stand with lifted hand
By Tippoo Sahib's sons.
The lads were bonny, the lads were young,
But he claimed a pitiless debt;
Life and death in the balance hung,
They watched it swing and set.
They saw him search with sombre eyes,
They knew the place he sought;
They saw him feel for the hilted steel,
They bowed before his thought.
But he--he saw the prison there
In the old quivering heat,
Where merry hearts had met despair
And died without defeat;
Where feeble hands had raised the cup
For feebler lips to drain,
And one had worn with smiling scorn
His double load of pain.
"The sleep that Tippoo Sahib sleeps
Hears not the voice of man;
The faith that Tippoo Sahib keeps
No earthly judge may scan;
For all the wrong your father wrought
Your father's sons are free;
Where Lucas lay no tongue shall say
That Mercy bound not me."
The sloe was lost in flower,
by Alfred Edward Housman

The sloe was lost in flower,
The April elm was dim;
That was the lover's hour,
The hour for lies and him.
If thorns are all the bower,
If north winds freeze the fir,
Why, 'tis another's hour,
The hour for truth and her.
Odes From Horace. - To William Hayley, Esq. Book The Fourth, Ode The Seventh, Imitated.
by Anna Seward

The snows dissolve, the rains no more pollute,
Green are the sloping fields, and uplands wide,
And green the trees luxuriant tresses shoot,
And, in their daisied banks, the shrinking rivers glide.
Beauty, and Love, the blissful change have hail'd,
While, in smooth mazes, o'er the painted mead,
[1]Aglaia ventures, with her limbs unveil'd,
Light thro' the dance each Sister-Grace to lead.
But O! reflect, that Sport, and Beauty, wing
Th' unpausing Hour! - if Winter, cold and pale,
Flies from the soft, and violet-mantled Spring,
Summer, with sultry breath, absorbs the vernal gale.
Reflect, that Summer-glories pass away
When mellow Autumn shakes her golden sheaves;
While she, as Winter reassumes his sway,
Speeds, with disorder'd vest, thro' rustling leaves.
But a short space the Moon illumes the skies;
Yet she repairs her wanings, and again
Silvers the vault of Night; - but no supplies,
To feed their wasting fires, the lamps of Life obtain.
When our pale Form shall pensive vigils keep
Where COLLINS, AKENSIDE, and SHENSTONE roam,
Or quiet with the Despot, JOHNSON, sleep,
In that murk cell, the Body's final home,
To senseless dust, and to a fleeting shade
Changes the life-warm Being! - Ah! who knows
If the next dawn our eye-lids may pervade?
Darken'd and seal'd, perchance, in long, and last repose!
When vivid Thought's unceasing force assails,
It shakes, from Life's frail glass, the ebbing sands;
Their course run out, ah! what to us avails
Our fame's high note, tho' swelling it expands!
Reflect, that each convivial joy we share
Amid encircling Friends, with grace benign,
Escapes the grasp of our rapacious Heir; - 
Pile then the steaming board, and quaff the rosy wine!
Illustrious HAYLEY! - in that cruel hour,
When o'er thee Fate the sable flag shall wave,
Not thy keen wit, thy fancy's splendid power,
Knowledge, or worth, shall snatch thee from the grave.
Not to his MASON's grief, from Death's dim plains
Was honor'd GRAY's departed form resign'd;
No tears dissolve the cold Lethean chains,
That, far from busy Life, the mortal semblance bind.
Then, for the bright creations of the brain,
O! do not thou from health's gay leisure turn,
Lest we, like tuneful MASON, sigh in vain,
And grasp a timeless, tho' a LAUREL'D URN!
Compensation.
by Freeman Edwin Miller

The softest beams of the stars are born in the farthest skies,
And fairest rays of the sun where evening shadows rise;
The sweetest songs of the bird are sung in the darkest days,
And rarest blooms of the spring are found in the wildest ways.
The brightest blush of the rose is blown as the petals fade.
The greenest grass of the earth is grown in the hidden glade;
The fondest rhyme of the rill is heard in the secret vale,
And lightest lays of the breeze are borne from the dying gale.
The highest hopes of the heart in saddest of sorrows grow,
The purest pleasures of joy arise in the wane of woe;
The gladdest smiles of the lips are seen in the hours of pain,
And proudest days of the free are spent by the broken chain.
The grandest deeds of the race are writ on the faded scroll,
The truest rivers of good from villainous fountains roll;
The perfect raptures of life are reared in the arms of care,
And Hope with her joys dispels the darkness of our despair.
A Welcome To Her Royal Highness Marie Alexandrovna, Duchess Of Edinburgh.
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

The son of him with whom we strove for power'
Whose will is lord thro' all his world-domain'
Who made the serf a man, and burst his chain'
Has given our prince his own imperial Flower,
Alexandrovna.
And welcome, Russian flower, a people's pride,
To Britain, when her flowers begin to blow !
From love to love, from home to home you go,
From mother unto mother, stately bride,
Marie Alexandrovna!
II.
The golden news along the steppes is blown,
And at thy name the Tartar tents are stirr'd ;
Elburz and all the Caucasus have heard ;
And all the sultry palms of India known,
Alexandrovna.
The voices of our universal sea
On capes of Afric as on cliffs of Kent,
The Maoris and that Isle of Continent,
And loyal pines of Canada mumur thee,
Marie Alexandrovna!
III.
Fair empires branching, both, in lusty life!'
Yet Harold's England fell to Norman swords;
Yet thine own land has bow'd to Tartar hordes
Since English Harold gave its throne a wife,
Alexandrovna!
For thrones and peoples are as waifs that swing,
And float or fall, in endless ebb and flow;
But who love best have best the grace to know
That Love by right divine is deathless king, 
Marie Alexandrovna!
IV.
And Love has led thee to the stranger land,
Where men are bold and strongly say their say;'
See, empire upon empire smiles to-day,
As thou with thy young lover hand in hand
Alexandrovna
So now thy fuller life is in the west,
Whose hand at home was gracious to thy poor:
Thy name was blest within the narrow door ;
Here also, Marie, shall thy name be blest,
Marie Alexandrovna!
V.
Shall fears and jealous hatreds flame again?
Or at thy coming, Princess, everywhere,
The blue heaven break, and some diviner air
Breathe thro' the world and change the hearts of men,
Alexandrovna?
But hearts that change not, love that cannot cease,
And peace be yours, the peace of soul in soul!
And howsoever this wild world may roll,
Between your peoples truth and manful peace,
Alfred'Alexandrovna
Night In the City
by Ellis Parker Butler

The sluggish clouds hang low upon the town,
And from yon lamp in chilled and sodden rays
The feeble light gropes through the heavy mist
And dies, extinguished in the stagnant maze.
From moisty eaves the drops fall slowly down
To strike with leaden sound the walk below,
And in dark, murky pools upon the street
The water stands, as lacking life to flow.
With hopeless brain, oppressed and sad at heart,
Toil's careworn slave turns out his flickering light
And treads in dreams his dulling round again,
Where weary day succeeds to dismal night.
Sonnet CLIV.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Giunto Alessandro alla famosa tomba.
HE FEARS THAT HE IS INCAPABLE OF WORTHILY CELEBRATING HER.
The son of Philip, when he saw the tomb
Of fierce Achilles, with a sigh, thus said:
"O happy, whose achievements erst found room
From that illustrious trumpet to be spread
O'er earth for ever!"--But, beyond the gloom
Of deep Oblivion shall that loveliest maid,
Whose like to view seems not of earthly doom,
By my imperfect accents be convey'd?
Her of the Homeric, the Orph'an Lyre,
Most worthy, or that shepherd, Mantua's pride,
To be the theme of their immortal lays;
Her stars and unpropitious fate denied
This palm:--and me bade to such height aspire,
Who, haply, dim her glories by my praise.
CAPEL LOFFT.
When Alexander at the famous tomb
Of fierce Achilles stood, the ambitious sigh
Burst from his bosom--"Fortunate! on whom
Th' eternal bard shower'd honours bright and high."
But, ah! for so to each is fix'd his doom,
This pure fair dove, whose like by mortal eye
Was never seen, what poor and scanty room
For her great praise can my weak verse supply?
Whom, worthiest Homer's line and Orpheus' song,
Or his whom reverent Mantua still admires--
Sole and sufficient she to wake such lyres!
An adverse star, a fate here only wrong,
Entrusts to one who worships her dear name,
Yet haply injures by his praise her fame.
MACGREGOR.
The End Of The World
by Gordon Bottomley

The snow had fallen many nights and days;
The sky was come upon the earth at last,
Sifting thinly down as endlessly
As though within the system of blind planets
Something had been forgot or overdriven.
The dawn now seemed neglected in the grey
Where mountains were unbuilt and shadowless trees
Rootlessly paused or hung upon the air.
There was no wind, but now and then a sigh
Crossed that dry falling dust and rifted it
Through crevices of slate and door and casement.
Perhaps the new moon's time was even past.
Outside, the first white twilights were too void
Until a sheep called once, as to a lamb,
And tenderness crept everywhere from it;
But now the flock must have strayed far away.
The lights across the valley must be veiled,
The smoke lost in the greyness or the dusk.
For more than three days now the snow had thatched
That cow-house roof where it had ever melted
With yellow stains from the beasts' breath inside;
But yet a dog howled there, though not quite lately.
Someone passed down the valley swift and singing.
Yes, with locks spreaded like a son of morning;
But if he seemed too tall to be a man
It was that men had been so long unseen,
Or shapes loom larger through a moving snow.
And he was gone and food had not been given him.
When snow slid from an overweighted leaf,
Shaking the tree, it might have been a bird
Slipping in sleep or shelter, whirring wings;
Yet never bird fell out, save once a dead one, 
And in two days the snow had covered it.
The dog had howled again, or thus it seemed
Until a lean fox passed and cried no more.
All was so safe indoors where life went on
Glad of the close enfolding snow, O glad
To be so safe and secret at its heart,
Watching the strangeness of familiar things.
They knew not what dim hours went on, went by,
For while they slept the clock stopt newly wound
As the cold hardened. Once they watched the road,
Thinking to be remembered. Once they doubted
If they had kept the sequence of the days,
Because they heard not any sound of bells.
A butterfly, that hid until the Spring
Under a ceiling's shadow, dropt, was dead.
The coldness seemed more nigh, the coldness deepened
As a sound deepens into silences;
It was of earth and came not by the air;
The earth was cooling and drew down the sky.
The air was crumbling. There was no more sky.
Rails of a broken bed charred in the grate,
And when he touched the bars he thought the sting
Came from their heat, he could not feel such cold ...
She said 'O, do not sleep,
Heart, heart of mine, keep near me. No, no; sleep.
I will not lift his fallen, quiet eyelids,
Although I know he would awaken then, 
He closed them thus but now of his own will.
He can stay with me while I do not lift them.'
The Quadroon Girl
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Slaver in the broad lagoon
Lay moored with idle sail;
He waited for the rising moon,
And for the evening gale.
Under the shore his boat was tied,
And all her listless crew
Watched the gray alligator slide
Into the still bayou.
Odors of orange-flowers, and spice,
Reached them from time to time,
Like airs that breathe from Paradise
Upon a world of crime.
The Planter, under his roof of thatch,
Smoked thoughtfully and slow;
The Slaver's thumb was on the latch,
He seemed in haste to go.
He said, "My ship at anchor rides
In yonder broad lagoon;
I only wait the evening tides,
And the rising of the moon.
Before them, with her face upraised,
In timid attitude,
Like one half curious, half amazed,
A Quadroon maiden stood.
Her eyes were large, and full of light,
Her arms and neck were bare;
No garment she wore save a kirtle bright,
And her own long, raven hair.
And on her lips there played a smile
As holy, meek, and faint,
As lights in some cathedral aisle
The features of a saint.
"The soil is barren,--the farm is old";
The thoughtful planter said;
Then looked upon the Slaver's gold,
And then upon the maid.
His heart within him was at strife
With such accursed gains:
For he knew whose passions gave her life,
Whose blood ran in her veins.
But the voice of nature was too weak;
He took the glittering gold!
Then pale as death grew the maiden's cheek,
Her hands as icy cold.
The Slaver led her from the door,
He led her by the hand,
To be his slave and paramour
In a strange and distant land!
Night In May.
by Charles Hamilton Musgrove

The snowy clouds, soft sleeping lambkins, lie
Along the dark blue meadows of the sky,
And the bright stars, like golden daffodils,
Are blooming thickly by.
And Luna, gentle shepherdess, the while
Keeps near her flock and guards it with her smile;
I almost fancy I can hear her song
Down to this shadowed stile.
Lo! Zephyrus, fond lover, comes to woo;
With airy step he hastes the pastures through,
And steals a kiss from Luna as she nods
Drowsy with fragrant dew.
She starts; the little lambs aroused from sleep,
Fly hence; but Luna near her swain doth keep.
Oh, it was ever thus since lover came
'Twixt shepherdess and sheep!
The Speech Of Silence.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The solemn Sea of Silence lies between us;
I know thou livest, and them lovest me,
And yet I wish some white ship would come sailing
Across the ocean, beating word from thee.
The dead calm awes me with its awful stillness.
No anxious doubts or fears disturb my breast;
I only ask some little wave of language,
To stir this vast infinitude of rest.
I am oppressed with this great sense of loving;
So much I give, so much receive from thee;
Like subtle incense, rising from a censer,
So floats the fragrance of thy love round me.
All speech is poor, and written words unmeaning;
Yet such I ask, blown hither by some wind,
To give relief to this too perfect knowledge,
The Silence so impresses on my mind.
How poor the love that needeth word or message,
To banish doubt or nourish tenderness!
I ask them but to temper love's convictions
The Silence all too fully doth express.
Too deep the language which the spirit utters;
Too vast the knowledge which my soul hath stirred.
Send some white ship across the Sea of Silence,
And interrupt its utterance with a word.
Summer Noontide
by Madison Julius Cawein

The slender snail clings to the leaf,
Gray on its silvered underside;
And slowly, slowlier than the snail, with brief
Bright steps, whose ripening touch foretells the sheaf,
Her warm hands berry-dyed,
Comes down the tanned Noontide.
The pungent fragrance of the mint
And pennyroyal drench her gown,
That leaves long shreds of trumpet-blossom tint
Among the thorns, and everywhere the glint
Of gold and white and brown
Her flowery steps waft down.
The leaves, like hands with emerald veined,
Along her way try their wild best
To reach the jewel whose hot hue was drained
From some rich rose that all the June contained
The butterfly, soft pressed
Upon her sunny breast.
Her shawl, the lace-like elder bloom,
She hangs upon the hillside brake,
Smelling of warmth and of her breast's perfume,
And, lying in the citron-colored gloom
Beside the lilied lake,
She stares the buds awake.
Or, with a smile, through watery deeps
She leads the oaring turtle's legs;
Or guides the crimson fish, that swims and sleeps
From pad to pad, from which the young frog leaps;
And to its nest's green eggs
The bird that pleads and begs.
Then 'mid the fields of unmown hay
She shows the bees where sweets are found;
And points the butterflies, at airy play,
And dragonflies, along the water-way,
Where honeyed flowers abound
For them to flicker 'round.
Or, where ripe apples pelt with gold
Some barn around which, coned with snow,
The wild-potato blooms she mount its old
Mossed roof, and through warped sides, the knots have holed
Lets her long glances glow
Into the loft below.
To show the mud-wasp at its cell
Slenderly busy; swallows, too,
Packing against a beam their nest's clay shell;
And crouching in the dark the owl as well
With all her downy crew
Of owlets gray of hue.
These are her joys, and until dusk
Lounging she walks where reapers reap,
From sultry raiment shaking scents of musk,
Rustling the corn within its silken husk,
And driving down heav'n's deep
White herds of clouds like sheep.
Cupido
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The solid, solid universe
Is pervious to Love;
With bandaged eyes he never errs,
Around, below, above.
His blinding light
He flingeth white
On God's and Satan's brood,
And reconciles
By mystic wiles
The evil and the good.