DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
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- Life.
In Hospital - XXI - Romance
by William Ernest Henley

'Talk of pluck!' pursued the Sailor,
Set at euchre on his elbow,
'I was on the wharf at Charleston,
Just ashore from off the runner.
'It was grey and dirty weather,
And I heard a drum go rolling,
Rub-a-dubbing in the distance,
Awful dour-like and defiant.
'In and out among the cotton,
Mud, and chains, and stores, and anchors,
Tramped a squad of battered scarecrows -
Poor old Dixie's bottom dollar!
'Some had shoes, but all had rifles,
Them that wasn't bald was beardless,
And the drum was rolling Dixie,
And they stepped to it like men, sir!
'Rags and tatters, belts and bayonets,
On they swung, the drum a-rolling,
Mum and sour.    It looked like fighting,
And they meant it too, by thunder!'
Requiem.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Taken from men this morning,
Carried by men to-day,
Met by the gods with banners
Who marshalled her away.
One little maid from playmates,
One little mind from school, --
There must be guests in Eden;
All the rooms are full.
Far as the east from even,
Dim as the border star, --
Courtiers quaint, in kingdoms,
Our departed are.
Fox's Dingle
by Robert von Ranke Graves

Take now a country mood,
Resolve, distil it: 
Nine Acre swaying alive,
June flowers that fill it,
Spicy sweet-briar bush,
The uneasy wren
Fluttering from ash to birch
And back again.
Milkwort on its low stem,
Spread hawthorn tree,
Sunlight patching the wood,
A hive-bound bee....
Girls riding nim-nim-nim,
Ladies, trot-trot,
Gentlemen hard at gallop,
Shouting, steam-hot.
Now over the rough turf
Bridles go jingle,
And there's a well-loved pool,
By Fox's Dingle,
Where Sweetheart, my brown mare,
Old Glory's daughter,
May loll her leathern tongue
In snow-cool water.
Sonnets: Idea III
by Michael Drayton

Taking my pen, with words to cast my woe,
Duly to count the sum of all my cares,
I find my griefs innumerable grow,
The reck'nings rise to millions of despairs.
And thus dividing of my fatal hours,
The payments of my love I read and cross;
Subtracting, set my sweets unto my sours,
My joys' arrearage leads me to my loss.
And thus mine eyes a debtor to thine eye,
Which by extortion gaineth all their looks,
My heart hath paid such grievous usury,
That all their wealth lies in thy beauty's books.
And all is thine which hath been due to me,
And I a bankrupt, quite undone by thee.
A Day
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Talk not of sad November, when a day
Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon,
And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June,
Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray.
On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines
Lay their long shafts of shadow: the small rill,
Singing a pleasant song of summer still,
A line of silver, down the hill-slope shines.
Hushed the bird-voices and the hum of bees,
In the thin grass the crickets pipe no more;
But still the squirrel hoards his winter store,
And drops his nut-shells from the shag-bark trees.
Softly the dark green hemlocks whisper: high
Above, the spires of yellowing larches show,
Where the woodpecker and home-loving crow
And jay and nut-hatch winter's threat defy.
O gracious beauty, ever new and old!
O sights and sounds of nature, doubly dear
When the low sunshine warns the closing year
Of snow-blown fields and waves of Arctic cold!
Close to my heart I fold each lovely thing
The sweet day yields; and, not disconsolate,
With the calm patience of the woods I wait
For leaf and blossom when God gives us Spring!
Middleton's Rouseabout
by Henry Lawson

Tall and freckled and sandy,
Face of a country lout;
This was the picture of Andy,
Middleton's Rouseabout.
Type of a coming nation,
In the land of cattle and sheep,
Worked on Middleton's station,
`Pound a week and his keep.'
On Middleton's wide dominions
Plied the stockwhip and shears;
Hadn't any opinions,
Hadn't any `idears'.
Swiftly the years went over,
Liquor and drought prevailed;
Middleton went as a drover,
After his station had failed.
Type of a careless nation,
Men who are soon played out,
Middleton was: and his station
Was bought by the Rouseabout.
Flourishing beard and sandy,
Tall and robust and stout;
This is the picture of Andy,
Middleton's Rouseabout.
Now on his own dominions
Works with his overseers;
Hasn't any opinions,
Hasn't any `idears'.
Jessy Lewars.
by Robert Burns

Talk not to me of savages
From Afric's burning sun,
No savage e'er could rend my heart
As, Jessy, thou hast done.
But Jessy's lovely hand in mine,
A mutual faith to plight,
Not even to view the heavenly choir
Would be so blest a sight.
Man And Wife
by Robert Lowell

Tamed by Miltown, we lie on Mother's bed;
the rising sun in war paint dyes us red;
in broad daylight her gilded bed-posts shine,
abandoned, almost Dionysian.
At last the trees are green on Marlborough Street,
blossoms on our magnolia ignite
the morning with their murderous five days' white.
All night I've held your hand,
as if you had
a fourth time faced the kingdom of the mad,
its hackneyed speech, its homicidal eye,
and dragged me home alive.... Oh my Petite,
clearest of all God's creatures, still all air and nerve:
you were in our twenties, and I,
once hand on glass
and heart in mouth,
out drank the Rahvs in the heat
of Greenwich Village, fainting at your feet,
too boiled and shy
and poker-faced to make a pass,
while the shrill verve
of your invective scorched the traditional South.
Now twelve years later, you turn your back.
Sleepless, you hold
your pillow to your hollows like a child;
your old-fashioned tirade,
loving, rapid, merciless,
breaks like the Atlantic Ocean on my head.
The Wellington Spa.
by Thomas Moore

"And drink oblivion to our woes."
Anna Matilda.
Talk no more of your Cheltenham and Harrowgate springs,
'Tis from Lethe we now our potations must draw;
Yon Lethe's a cure for--all possible things,
And the doctors have named it the Wellington Spa.
Other physical waters but cure you in part;
One cobbles your gout--t'other mends your digestion--
Some settle your stomach, but this--bless your heart!--
It will settle for ever your Catholic Question.
Unlike too the potions in fashion at present,
This Wellington nostrum, restoring by stealth,
So purges the memory of all that's unpleasant,
That patients forget themselves into rude health.
For instance, the inventor--his having once said
"He should think himself mad if at any one's call,
"He became what he is"--is so purged from his head
That he now doesn't think he's a madman at all.
Of course, for your memories of very long standing--
Old chronic diseases that date back undaunted
To Brian Boroo and Fitz-Stephens' first landing--
A devil of a dose of the Lethe is wanted.
But even Irish patients can hardly regret
An oblivion so much in their own native style,
So conveniently planned that, whate'er they forget,
They may go on remembering it still all the while!
O'Brien Of Ara.[1]
by Thomas Osborne Davis

Air--The Piper of Blessington.
I.
Tall are the towers of O'Ceinneidigh[2]--
Broad are the lands of MacCarrthaigh[3]--
Desmond feeds five hundred men a-day;
Yet, here's to O'Briain[4] of Ara!
Up from the Castle of Druim-aniar,[5]
Down from the top of Camailte,
Clansman and kinsman are coming here
To give him the CEAD MILE FAILTE.
II.
See you the mountains look huge at eve--
So is our chieftain in battle--
Welcome he has for the fugitive,--
Uisce-beatha[6] fighting, and cattle!
Up from the Castle of Druim-aniar,
Down from the top of Camailte
Gossip and ally are coming here
To give him the CEAD MILE FAILTE.
III.
Horses the valleys are tramping on,
Sleek from the Sacsanach manger--
Creachts the hills are encamping on,
Empty the bawns of the stranger!
Up from the Castle of Druim-aniar,
Down from the top of Camailte,
Ceithearn[7] and buannacht are coming here
To give him the CEAD MILE FAILTE.
IV.
He has black silver from Cill-da-lua[8]--
Rian[9] and Cearbhall[10] are neighbours--
'N Aonach[11] submits with a fuilili'--
Butler is meat for our sabres!
Up from the Castle of Druim-aniar
Down from the top of Camailte,
Rian and Cearbhall are coming here
To give him the CEAD MILE FAILTE.
V.
'Tis scarce a week since through Osairghe[12]
Chased he the Baron of Durmhagh[13]--
Forced him five rivers to cross, or he
Had died by the sword of Red Murchadh![14]
Up from the Castle of Druim-aniar,
Down from the top of Camailte,
All the Ui Bhriain are coming here
To give him the CEAD MILE FAILTE.
VI.
Tall are the towers of O'Ceinneidigh--
Broad are the lands of MacCarrthaigh--
Desmond feeds five hundred men a-day;
Yet, here's to O'Briain of Ara!
Up from the Castle of Druim-aniar,
Down from the top of Camailte,
Clansman and kinsman are coming here
To give him the CEAD MILE FAILTE.
A Psalm Of Life
by William F. Kirk

Tal me not, yu knocking fallers,
Life ban only empty dream;
Dar ban planty fun, ay tal yu,
Ef yu try Yohn Yohnson's scheme.
Yohn ban yust a section foreman,
Vorking hard vay up on Soo;
He ban yust so glad in morning
As ven all his vork ban tru.
"Vork," say Yohn, "ban vat yu mak it.
Ef yu tenk yure vork ban hard,
Yu skol having planty headaches, - 
Yes, yu bet yure life, old pard;
But ay alvays yerk my coat off,
Grab my shovel and my pick,
And dis yob ant seem lak hard von
Ef ay du it purty qvick."
Yohn ban foreman over fallers.
He ant have to vork, yu see;
But, yu bet, he ant no loafer,
And he yust digs in, by yee!
"Listen, Olaf," he skol tal me,
"Making living ant no trick.
And the hardest yob ban easy
Ef yu only du it qvick!"
"Let us den be op and yumping,
Always glad to plow tru drift;
Ven our vork ban done, den let us
Give some oder faller lift.
Den, ay bet yu, old Saint Peter,
He skol tenk ve're purty slick;
Ve can go tru gates, ay bet yu,
Ef ve only du it qvick!"
The River Duddon - A Series Of Sonnets, 1820. - IV - Take, Cradled Nursling Of The Mountain
by William Wordsworth

Take, cradled Nursling of the mountain, take
This parting glance, no negligent adieu!
A Protean change seems wrought while I pursue
The curves, a loosely-scattered chain doth make;
Or rather thou appear'st a glistering snake,
Silent, and to the gazer's eye untrue,
Thridding with sinuous lapse the rushes, through
Dwarf willows gliding, and by ferny brake.
Starts from a dizzy steep the undaunted Rill
Robed instantly in garb of snow-white foam;
And laughing dares the Adventurer, who hath clomb
So high, a rival purpose to fulfill;
Else let the dastard backward wend, and roam,
Seeking less bold achievement, where he will!
Circumstance
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Talk not to me of souls that do conceive
Sublime ideals, but, deterred by Fate
And bound by circumstances, sit desolate,
And long for heights they never can achieve.
It is not so.    That which we most desire,
With understanding, we at last obtain,
In part or whole.    I hold there is no rain,
No deluge, that can quench a heavenly fire.
Show me thy labour, I straightway will name
The nature of thy thoughts.    Who bends the bow,
And lets the arrow from the strained string go,
Strikes somewhere near the object of his aim.
We build our ships from timbers of the brain;
With products of the soul we load the hold;
Where lies the blame if they bring back no gold,
Or if they spring a leak upon the main?
There is no Fate, no Providence, no Chance,
The will is all.    So be it thou art pure,
And strong of purpose, thy success is sure;
But fools and sluggards prate of circumstance.
Araluen
by Henry Kendall

Take this rose, and very gently place it on the tender, deep
Mosses where our little darling, Araluen, lies asleep.
Put the blossom close to baby kneel with me, my love, and pray;
We must leave the bird we've buried say good-bye to her to-day.
In the shadow of our trouble we must go to other lands,
And the flowers we have fostered will be left to other hands:
Other eyes will watch them growing other feet will softly tread
Where two hearts are nearly breaking, where so many tears are shed.
Bitter is the world we live in: life and love are mixed with pain;
We will never see these daisies never water them again.
Ah! the saddest thought in leaving baby in this bush alone
Is that we have not been able on her grave to place a stone:
We have been too poor to do it; but, my darling, never mind
God is in the gracious heavens, and His sun and rain are kind:
They will dress the spot with beauty, they will make the grasses grow:
Many winds will lull our birdie, many songs will come and go.
Here the blue-eyed Spring will linger, here the shining month will stay,
Like a friend, by Araluen, when we two are far away;
But beyond the wild, wide waters, we will tread another shore
We will never watch this blossom, never see it any more.
Girl, whose hand at God's high altar in the dear, dead year I pressed,
Lean your stricken head upon me this is still your lover's breast!
She who sleeps was first and sweetest none we have to take her place;
Empty is the little cradle absent is the little face.
Other children may be given; but this rose beyond recall,
But this garland of your girlhood, will be dearest of them all.
None will ever, Araluen, nestle where you used to be,
In my heart of hearts, you darling, when the world was new to me;
We were young when you were with us, life and love were happy things
To your father and your mother ere the angels gave you wings.
You that sit and sob beside me you, upon whose golden head
Many rains of many sorrows have from day to day been shed;
Who because your love was noble, faced with me the lot austere
Ever pressing with its hardship on the man of letters here
Let me feel that you are near me, lay your hand within mine own;
You are all I have to live for, now that we are left alone.
Three there were, but one has vanished. Sins of mine have made you weep;
But forgive your baby's father now that baby is asleep.
Let us go, for night is falling; leave the darling with her flowers;
Other hands will come and tend them other friends in other hours.
Talk With Prudence To A Beggar
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Talk with prudence to a beggar
Of 'Potosi' and the mines!
Reverently to the hungry
Of your viands and your wines!
Cautious, hint to any captive
You have passed enfranchised feet!
Anecdotes of air in dungeons
Have sometimes proved deadly sweet!
To A Lady - With Flowers From A Roman Wall
by Walter Scott (Sir)

Take these flowers which, purple waving,
On the ruin'd rampart grew,
Where, the sons of freedom braving,
Rome's imperial standards flew.
Warriors from the breach of danger
Pluck no longer laurels there;
They but yield the passing stranger
Wild-flower wreaths the Beauty's hair.
On Catullus
by Walter Savage Landor

Tell me not what too well I know
About the bard of Sirmio.
Yes, in Thalia's son
Such stains there are, as when a Grace
Sprinkles another's laughing face
With nectar, and runs on.
Against Constancy
by John Wilmot

Tell me no more of constancy,
The frivolous pretense
Of old age, narrow jealousy,
Disease, and want of sense.
Let duller fools on whom kind chance
Some easy heart has thrown,
Despairing higher to advance,
Be kind to one alone.
Old men and weak, whose idle flame,
Their own defects discovers,
Since changing can but spread their shame,
Ought to be constant lovers,
But we, whose hearts do justly swell
With no vainglorious pride,
Who know how we in love excel,
Long to be often tried.
Then bring my bath and strew my bed,
As each kind night returns:
I'll change a mistress till I'm dead,
And fate change me for worms.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - XLIII - Inside Of King's College Chapel, Cambridge
by William Wordsworth

Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,
With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned
Albeit labouring for a scanty band
Of white robed Scholars only this immense
And glorious Work of fine intelligence!
Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more;
So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells,
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering and wandering on as loth to die;
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.
A Medley: Tears, Idle Tears (The Princess)
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a summering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!
The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - To Telesius Of Cosenza.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Telesio, il telo.
Telesius, the arrow from thy bow
Midmost his band of sophists slays that high
Tyrant of souls that think; he cannot fly:
While Truth soars free, loosed by the self-same blow.
Proud lyres with thine immortal praises glow,
Smitten by bards elate with victory:
Lo, thine own Cavalcante, stormfully
Lightning, still strikes the fortress of the foe!
Good Gaieta bedecks our saint serene
With robes translucent, light-irradiate,
Restoring her to all her natural sheen;
The while my tocsin at the temple-gate
Of the wide universe proclaims her queen,
Pythia of first and last ordained by fate.
The Woodlark
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Teevo cheetio cheevio chee:
O where, what can th't be?
Weedio-weedio: there again!
So tiny a trickle of s'ng-strain;
And all round not to be found
For brier, bough, furrow, or gr'en ground
Before or behind or far or at hand
Either left either right
Anywhere in the s'nlight.
Well, after all! Ah but hark - 
'I am the little woodlark.
.     .     .     .     .     .     .
To-day the sky is two and two
With white strokes and strains of the blue
.     .     .     .     .     .     .
Round a ring, around a ring
And while I sail (must listen) I sing
.     .     .     .     .     .     .
The skylark is my cousin and he
Is known to men more than me
.     .     .     .     .     .     .
. . . when the cry within
Says Go on then I go on
Till the longing is less and the good gone
But down drop, if it says Stop,
To the all-a-leaf of the tr'etop
And after that off the bough
.     .     .     .     .     .     .
I 'm so v'ry, O s' very glad
That I d' th'nk there is not to be had . . .
.     .     .     .     .     .     .
The blue wheat-acre is underneath
And the braided ear breaks out of the sheath,
The ear in milk, lush the sash,
And crush-silk poppies aflash,
The blood-gush blade-gash
Flame-rash rudred
Bud shelling or broad-shed
Tatter-tassel-tangled and dingle-a-dangled
Dandy-hung dainty head.
.     .     .     .     .     .     .
And down ... the furrow dry
Sunspurge and oxeye
And laced-leaved lovely
Foam-tuft fumitory
.     .     .     .     .     .     .
Through the velvety wind V-winged
To the nest's nook I balance and buoy
With a sweet joy of a sweet joy,
Sweet, of a sweet, of a sweet joy
Of a sweet - a sweet - sweet - joy.'
He Had So Much Work To Do
by Henry Lawson

Tell a simple little story of a settler in the West,
Where the soldier birds and farmers, and selectors never rest
While the sun shines, and they often work in rainy weather, too:
But it's all about a young man who had so much work to do.
One of Mason's sons, Jim Mason, and the straightest of the lot,
(They were all straight for that matter) Jim was working for old Scott, 
(Scott that fired at Brummy Hughson, when the 'stick-ups' used to be),
Jim was courting Mary Kelly down at Lowes, at Wilbertree.
Jim was trucking for a sawmill to make money for the home,
He was making, out of Mudgee, for the family to come,
And a load-chain snapped the switch-bar, and Black Anderson found Jim,
In the morning, in a creek-bed, with a log on top of him.
There was riding for the doctor, just the same old reckless race:
And a spring cart with a mattress came and took him from the place,
To the hospital at Gulgong, but they couldn't pull him through, 
And Jim said 'It seems a pity, I, had so much work to do.'
'There's the hut, it's close-up finished; and the forty acres fenced;
And, I've cleared enough for ploughin', but the dam is just commenced!'
Then he said, and for a moment from the nurse his eyes he hid, 
'But I'm glad we wasn't married, for there might have been a kid.'
That was all, at least it wasn't for he didn't die until
He had 'fixed it up for Mary with a proper lawyer will,'
And the 'Forty acre paddick,' 'And I only hope,' said he,
'That she'll get some decent feller when she's quite got over me.'
Poor old broken-hearted Mason and his 'missus' took their spell,
But another son and Mary finished Jim's work very well.
They have grown-up sons and daughters, some on new selections, too,
And their hands and hearts are fitted for the work they have to do.
Now, my brothers! see the moral, lest the truth should come too late!
We are far too apt to quarrel with the writer's fancied fate, 
Damn the Past! and leave to-morrow: millions are worse off than you!
Think, ere you would 'drown your sorrow,' of the work that you should do.
Though the fates have seemed unkind to our unhappy brotherhood,
We are too apt to be blind to our great power to do good;
Many thousands, starved and stinted, for a line of comfort come,
We can write, and have it printed, They must suffer and be dumb.
Think not of the hours we wasted in 'oblivion' foully won,
Or the bitter cups we tasted. Let us work! that, when life's done,
We shall have in bush or city, shaped our future course so true
That they'll say 'It is a pity, they had so much more to do.'
From Eclogue ij
by Michael Drayton

Tell me fayre flocke, (if so you can conceaue)
The sodaine cause of my night-sunnes eclipse,
If this be wrought me my light to bereaue,
By Magick spels, from some inchanting lips
Or vgly Saturne from his combust sent,
This fatall presage of deaths dreryment.
Oh cleerest day-starre, honored of mine eyes,
Yet sdaynst mine eyes should gaze vpon thy light,
Bright morning sunne, who with thy sweet arise,
Expell'st the clouds of my harts lowring night,
Goddes reiecting sweetest sacrifice,
Of mine eyes teares ay offered to thine eyes.
May purest heauens scorne my soules pure desires?
Or holy shrines hate Pilgrims orizons?
May sacred temples gaynsay sacred prayers?
Or Saints refuse the poores deuotions?
Then Orphane thoughts with sorrow be you waind,
When loues Religion shalbe thus prophayn'd.
Yet needes the earth must droope with visage sad,
When siluer dewes been turn'd to bitter stormes,
The Cheerful Welkin, once in sables clad,
Her frownes foretell poore humaine creatures harmes.
And yet for all to make amends for this,
The clouds sheed teares, and weepen at my misse.