DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Ten O'Clock And Four O'Clock
by John Frederick Freeman

It stands there
Tall and solitary on the edge
Of the last hill, green on the green hill.
Ten o'clock the tree's called, no one knows why.
Perhaps it was planted there at ten o'clock
Or someone was hanged there at ten o'clock--
A hundred such good reasons might be found,
But no one knows. It vexed me that none knew,
Seeing it miles and miles off and then nearer
And nearer yet until, beneath the hill,
I looked up, up, and saw it nodding there,
A single tree upon the sharp-edged hill,
Holding its leaves though in the orchard all
Leaves and fruit were stripped or hung but few
Red and yellow over the littered grass.
--It vexed me, the brave tree and senseless name,
As I went through the valley looking up
And then looked round on elm and beech and chestnut
And all that lingering flame amid the hedge
That marked the miles and miles.
Then I forgot:
For through the apple-orchard's shadow I saw
Between the dark boughs of the cherry-orchard
A great slow fire which Time had lit to burn
The mortal seasons up, and leave bare black
Unchanging Winter.
Weston-sub-Edge.
The Wee Man. - A Romance.
by Thomas Hood

It was a merry company,
And they were just afloat,
When lo! a man, of dwarfish span,
Came up and hailed the boat.
"Good morrow to ye, gentle folks,
And will you let me in?
A slender space will serve my case,
For I am small and thin."
They saw he was a dwarfish man,
And very small and thin;
Not seven such would matter much,
And so they took him in.
They laughed to see his little hat,
With such a narrow brim;
They laughed to note his dapper coat,
With skirts so scant and trim.
But barely had they gone a mile,
When, gravely, one and all
At once began to think the man
Was not so very small:
His coat had got a broader skirt,
His hat a broader brim;
His leg grew stout, and soon plumped out
A very proper limb.
Still on they went, and as they went,
More rough the billows grew, - 
And rose and fell, a greater swell,
And he was swelling too!
And lo! where room had been for seven,
For six there scarce was space!
For five! - for four! - for three! - not more
Than two could find a place!
There was not even room for one!
They crowded by degrees - 
Ay - closer yet, till elbows met,
And knees were jogging knees.
"Good sir, you must not sit a-stern,
The wave will else come in!"
Without a word he gravely stirred,
Another seat to win.
"Good sir, the boat has lost her trim,
You must not sit a-lee!"
With smiling face and courteous grace,
The middle seat took he.
But still, by constant quiet growth,
His back became so wide,
Each neighbor wight, to left and right,
Was thrust against the side.
Lord! how they chided with themselves,
That they had let him in;
To see him grow so monstrous now,
That came so small and thin.
On every brow a dewdrop stood,
They grew so scared and hot, - 
"I' the name of all that's great and tall,
Who are ye, sir, and what?"
Loud laughed the Gogmagog, a laugh
As loud as giant's roar - 
"When first I came, my proper name
Was Little - now I'm Moore!"[1]
Insomnia.
by Madison Julius Cawein

It seems that dawn will never climb
The eastern hills;
And, clad in mist and flame and rime,
Make flashing highways of the rills.
The night is as an ancient way
Through some dead land,
Whereon the ghosts of Memory
And Sorrow wander hand in hand.
By which man's works ignoble seem,
Unbeautiful;
And grandeur, but the ruined dream
Of some proud queen, crowned with a skull.
A way past-peopled, dark and old,
That stretches far
Its only real thing, the cold
Vague light of sleep's one fitful star.
Home, Sweet Home.
by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

"It shall be a royal mansion,
A fair and beautiful thing,
It will be the presence-chamber
Of thy Saviour, Lord and King.
"Thy house shall be bound with pinions
To mansions of rest above,
But grace shall forge all the fetters
With the links and cords of love.
"Thou shalt be free in this mansion
From sorrow and pain of heart,
For the peace of God shall enter,
And never again depart."
Sharers of a common country,
They had met in deadly strife;
Men who should have been as brothers
Madly sought each other's life.
In the silence of the even,
When the cannon's lips were dumb,
Thoughts of home and all its loved ones
To the soldier's heart would come.
On the margin of a river,
'Mid the evening's dews and damps,
Could be heard the sounds of music
Rising from two hostile camps.
One was singing of its section
Down in Dixie, Dixie's land,
And the other of the banner
Waved so long from strand to strand.
In the land where Dixie's ensign
Floated o'er the hopeful slave,
Rose the song that freedom's banner,
Starry-lighted, long might wave.
From the fields of strife and carnage,
Gentle thoughts began to roam,
And a tender strain of music
Rose with words of "Home, Sweet Home."
Then the hearts of strong men melted,
For amid our grief and sin
Still remains that "touch of nature,"
Telling us we all are kin.
In one grand but gentle chorus,
Floating to the starry dome,
Came the words that brought them nearer,
Words that told of "Home, Sweet Home."
For awhile, all strife forgotten,
They were only brothers then,
Joining in the sweet old chorus,
Not as soldiers, but as men.
Men whose hearts would flow together,
Though apart their feet might roam,
Found a tie they could not sever,
In the mem'ry of each home.
Never may the steps of carnage
Shake our land from shore to shore,
But may mother, home and Heaven,
Be our watchwords evermore.
The Old Sedan Chair.
by Henry Austin Dobson

"What's not destroyed by Time's devouring Hand?
Where's Troy, and where's the May-Pole in the Strand?"
Bramston's "Art of Politicks."
It stands in the stable-yard, under the eaves,
Propped up by a broom-stick and covered with leaves:
It once was the pride of the gay and the fair,
But now 'tis a ruin,--that old Sedan chair!
It is battered and tattered,--it little avails
That once it was lacquered, and glistened with nails;
For its leather is cracked into lozenge and square,
Like a canvas by Wilkie,--that old Sedan chair!
See,--here came the bearing-straps; here were the holes
For the poles of the bearers--when once there were poles;
It was cushioned with silk, it was wadded with hair,
As the birds have discovered,--that old Sedan chair!
"Where's Troy?" says the poet! Look,--under the seat,
Is a nest with four eggs,--'tis the favoured retreat
Of the Muscovy hen, who has hatched, I dare swear,
Quite an army of chicks in that old Sedan chair!
And yet--Can't you fancy a face in the frame
Of the window,--some high-headed damsel or dame,
Be-patched and be-powdered, just set by the stair,
While they raise up the lid of that old Sedan chair?
Can't you fancy Sir Plume, as beside her he stands,
With his ruffles a-droop on his delicate hands,
With his cinnamon coat, with his laced solitaire,
As he lifts her out light from that old Sedan chair?
Then it swings away slowly. Ah, many a league
It has trotted 'twixt sturdy-legged Terence and Teague;
Stout fellows!--but prone, on a question of fare,
To brandish the poles of that old Sedan chair!
It has waited by portals where Garrick has played;
It has waited by Heidegger's "Grand Masquerade;"
For my Lady Codille, for my Lady Bellair,
It has waited--and waited, that old Sedan chair!
Oh, the scandals it knows! Oh, the tales it could tell
Of Drum and Ridotto, of Rake and of Belle,--
Of Cock-fight and Levee, and (scarcely more rare!)
Of F'te-days at Tyburn, that old Sedan chair!
"Heu! quantum mutata," I say as I go.
It deserves better fate than a stable-yard, though!
We must furbish it up, and dispatch it,--"With Care,"--
To a Fine-Art Museum--that old Sedan chair!
The Snow.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.
It makes an even face
Of mountain and of plain, --
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the east again.
It reaches to the fence,
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil
On stump and stack and stem, --
The summer's empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them.
It ruffles wrists of posts,
As ankles of a queen, --
Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been.
Striking.
by Charles Stuart Calverley

It was a railway passenger,
And he lept out jauntilie.
"Now up and bear, thou stout porter,
My two chattels to me.
"Bring hither, bring hither my bag so red,
And portmanteau so brown:
(They lie in the van, for a trusty man
He labelled them London town:)
"And fetch me eke a cabman bold,
That I may be his fare, his fare;
And he shall have a good shilling,
If by two of the clock he do me bring
To the Terminus, Euston Square."
"Now, - so to thee the saints alway,
Good gentleman, give luck, -
As never a cab may I find this day,
For the cabman wights have struck:
And now, I wis, at the Red Post Inn,
Or else at the Dog and Duck,
Or at Unicorn Blue, or at Green Griffin,
The nut-brown ale and the fine old gin
Right pleasantly they do suck."
"Now rede me aright, thou stout porter,
What were it best that I should do:
For woe is me, an I reach not there
Or ever the clock strike two."
"I have a son, a lytel son;
Fleet is his foot as the wild roebuck's:
Give him a shilling, and eke a brown,
And he shall carry thy chattels down,
To Euston, or half over London town,
On one of the station trucks."
Then forth in a hurry did they twain fare,
The gent, and the son of the stout porter,
Who fled like an arrow, nor turned a hair,
Through all the mire and muck:
"A ticket, a ticket, sir clerk, I pray:
For by two of the clock must I needs away."
"That may hardly be," the clerk did say,
"For indeed - the clocks have struck."
The Haunted Castle.
by Marietta Holley

It stands alone on a haunted shore,
With curious words of deathless lore
On its massive gate impearled;
And its carefully guarded mystic key
Locks in its silent mystery
From the seeking eyes of the world.
Oft do its stately walls repeat
Echoes of music wildly sweet
Swelling to gladness high - 
With mournful ballads of ancient time,
And funeral hymns - and a nursery rhyme
Dying away in a sigh.
Pictures out of each haunted room,
Up through the ghostly shadows loom,
And gleam with a spectral light;
Pictures lit with a radiant glow,
And some that image such desolate woe
That, weeping, you turn from the sight.
Shining like stars in the twilight gloom
Brows as white as a lily's bloom
Gleam from its lattice and door;
And voices soft as a seraph's note,
Through its mysterious chambers float
Back from eternity's shore.
In the mournful silence of midnight air
You hear on its stately and winding stair
The echoes of fairy feet.
Gentle footsteps that lightly fall
Through the enchanted castle hall,
And up in the golden street.
And still in a dark forsaken tower,
Crowned with a withered cypress flower,
Is a bowed head turned away;
A face like carved marble white,
Sweet eyes drooping away from the light,
Shunning the eye of day.
And oft when the light burns low and dim
A haggard form ungainly and grim
Unbidden enters the door;
With chiding eyes whose burning light
You fain would bury in darkness and night,
Never to meet you more.
Mysteries strange its still walls keep,
Strange are the forms that through it sweep - 
Walking by night and by day.
But evermore will the castle hall
Echo their footsteps' phantom fall,
Till its walls shall crumble away.
Farewell
by Alfred Lichtenstein

It sure was fine to be a soldier for a year.
But it is finer to feel free again.
There was enough of depravity and pain
In these merciless human mills.
Sergeants, Barrack walls, farewell.
Farewell canteens, marching songs.
Lighthearted, I leave the city and capitol.
Kuno is leaving, Kuno is never coming back.
Now, fate, drive me where you will.
I am not tugging on my jacket from now on.
I lift my eyes into the world.
A wind is starting up.    Locomotives roar.
The White-Footed Deer.
by William Cullen Bryant

It was a hundred years ago,
When, by the woodland ways,
The traveller saw the wild deer drink,
Or crop the birchen sprays.
Beneath a hill, whose rocky side
O'erbrowed a grassy mead,
And fenced a cottage from the wind,
A deer was wont to feed.
She only came when on the cliffs
The evening moonlight lay,
And no man knew the secret haunts
In which she walked by day.
White were her feet, her forehead showed
A spot of silvery white,
That seemed to glimmer like a star
In autumn's hazy night.
And here, when sang the whippoorwill,
She cropped the sprouting leaves,
And here her rustling steps were heard
On still October eves.
But when the broad midsummer moon
Rose o'er that grassy lawn,
Beside the silver-footed deer
There grazed a spotted fawn.
The cottage dame forbade her son
To aim the rifle here;
"It were a sin," she said, "to harm
Or fright that friendly deer.
"This spot has been my pleasant home
Ten peaceful years and more;
And ever, when the moonlight shines,
She feeds before our door.
"The red men say that here she walked
A thousand moons ago;
They never raise the war-whoop here,
And never twang the bow.
"I love to watch her as she feeds,
And think that all is well
While such a gentle creature haunts
The place in which we dwell."
The youth obeyed, and sought for game
In forests far away,
Where, deep in silence and in moss,
The ancient woodland lay.
But once, in autumn's golden time,
He ranged the wild in vain,
Nor roused the pheasant nor the deer,
And wandered home again.
The crescent moon and crimson eve
Shone with a mingling light;
The deer, upon the grassy mead,
Was feeding full in sight.
He raised the rifle to his eye,
And from the cliffs around
A sudden echo, shrill and sharp,
Gave back its deadly sound.
Away into the neighbouring wood
The startled creature flew,
And crimson drops at morning lay
Amid the glimmering dew.
Next evening shone the waxing moon
As sweetly as before;
The deer upon the grassy mead
Was seen again no more.
But ere that crescent moon was old,
By night the red men came,
And burnt the cottage to the ground,
And slew the youth and dame.
Now woods have overgrown the mead,
And hid the cliffs from sight;
There shrieks the hovering hawk at noon,
And prowls the fox at night.
A Man Of Many Parts
by James Whitcomb Riley

It was a man of many parts,
Who in his coffer mind
Had stored the Classics and the Arts
And Sciences combined;
The purest gems of poesy
Came flashing from his pen -
The wholesome truths of History
He gave his fellow men.
He knew the stars from "Dog" to Mars;
And he could tell you, too,
Their distances - as though the cars
Had often checked him through -
And time 'twould take to reach the sun,
Or by the "Milky Way,"
Drop in upon the moon, or run
The homeward trip, or stay.
With Logic at his fingers' ends,
Theology in mind,
He often entertained his friends
Until they died resigned;
And with inquiring mind intent
Upon Alchemic arts
A dynamite experiment -
.     .     .     .     .     .     .
A man of many parts!
This Way To The Sixties: John Lennon's Death Five Years After
by Paul Cameron Brown

It was a red letter day and all within a decade, the sixties.
Psychadelic and all because the Electric Circus opened up
Walking Yonge Street in the December cold, aging
"hippies", the word itself a joke, reminisced:
National Guardsmen, for one, doing post-mortems on
their rifle butts, record covers carrying the first life-
sized zippers and mashed up rubber dolls; Cher Bono
getting up nerve and a career to name her child
Chastity but walking off with a card.
By the end of the decade they were asking questions.
We had landed on the moon per schedule but who
would have believed in the efficacy of Rock or the
efficency of napham before Vietnam? Frosted hair.
Body paint. The sixties produced a lot of it. With one
bullet, the Beatles, the secular saviours, were
breaking up. Before they had finished reuniting the
world. Before the history of music could be written.
Before John Lennon, did we dare trust ourselves,
World leaders, gurus?
That was the meaning of the assassination.
History won't budge an inch for neophytes, The
Clockwork Orange was instructive but didn't go far
enough. Frodo wouldn't live in Yorkville today if
given a chance.
Now for the most poignant mental lapse of the Candle
carriers, mourners and mock biers with frozen
flowers. Simply the reminder half the population
didn't share his vision. Veterans grumbled. The press
paid more attention to this solitary event than
Armistice Day. Schoolchildren tittered. What was
that? The so-called generation gap seemed poised on
that comment. Then John's comment the Beatles were
more popular than Jesus Christ
Donovan didn't survive tunes like Epistle to Dippy.
Lennon won't survive the Elvis Beatle syndrome.
The lights are going out on the sixties,
The eighties are austere.
Cherry cokes are the memory of a laugh.
The Purple Onion only causes perplexion like Charlie
Brown's Great Pumpkin.
Forget about words like "catalyst".
Lennon was the conflageration.
Graffiti after him has renewed licence.
The M.A. Degree. After Wordsworth
by Robert Fuller Murray

It was a phantom of delight
When first it gleamed upon my sight,
A scholarly distinction, sent
To be a student's ornament.
The hood was rich beyond compare,
The gown was a unique affair.
By this, by that my mind was drawn
Then, in my academic dawn;
A dancing shape, an image gay
Before me then was my M.A.
I saw it upon nearer view,
A glory, yet a bother too!
For I perceived that I should be
Involved in much Philosophy
(A branch in which I could but meet
Works that were neither light nor sweet);
In Mathematics, not too good
For human nature's daily food;
And Classics, rendered in the styles
Of Kelly, Bohn, and Dr. Giles.
And now I own, with some small spleen,
A most confounded ass I've been;
The glory seems an empty breath,
And I am nearly bored to death
With Reason, Consciousness, and Will,
And other things beyond my skill,
Discussed in books all darkly planned
And more in number than the sand.
Yet that M.A. still haunts my sight,
With something of its former light.
Broken Pitcher, The
by William Edmondstoune Aytoun

It was a Moorish maiden was sitting by a well,
And what the maiden thought of I cannot, cannot tell.
When by there rode a valiant knight from the town of Oviedo,
Alphonso Guzman was he hight, the Count of Desparedo.
"Oh, maiden, Moorish maiden! why sitt'st thou by the spring?
Say, dost thou seek a lover, or any other thing?
Why gazest thou upon me, with eyes so large and wide,
And wherefore doth the pitcher lie broken by thy side?"
"I do not seek a lover, thou Christian knight so gay,
Because an article like that hath never come my way;
And why I gaze upon you, I cannot, cannot tell,
Except that in your iron hose you look uncommon swell.
"My pitcher it is broken, and this the reason is,
A shepherd came behind me, and tried to snatch a kiss;
I would not stand his nonsense, so ne'er a word I spoke,
But scored him on the costard, and so the jug was broke.
"My uncle, the Alcayde, he waits for me at home,
And will not take his tumbler until Zorayda come.
I cannot bring him water, the pitcher is in pieces,
And so I'm sure to catch it, 'cos he wallops all his nieces."
"Oh, maiden, Moorish maiden! wilt thou be ruled by me!
So wipe thine eyes and rosy lips, and give me kisses three;
And I'll give thee my helmet, thou kind and courteous lady,
To carry home the water to thy uncle, the Alcayde."
He lighted down from off his steed, he tied him to a tree,
He bowed him to the maiden, and took his kisses three:
"To wrong thee, sweet Zorayda, I swear would be a sin!"
He knelt him at the fountain, and he dipped his helmet in.
Up rose the Moorish maiden, behind the knight she steals,
And caught Alphonso Guzman up tightly by the heels;
She tipped him in, and held him down beneath the bubbling water,
"Now, take thou that for venturing to kiss Al Hamet's daughter!"
A Christian maid is weeping in the town of Oviedo;
She waits the coming of her love, the Count of Desparedo.
I pray you all in charity, that you will never tell,
How he met the Moorish maiden beside the lonely well.
Summer And Winter.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

It was a bright and cheerful afternoon,
Towards the end of the sunny month of June,
When the north wind congregates in crowds
The floating mountains of the silver clouds
From the horizon - and the stainless sky
Opens beyond them like eternity.
All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds,
The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds;
The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze,
And the firm foliage of the larger trees.
It was a winter such as when birds die
In the deep forests; and the fishes lie
Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes
Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes
A wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when,
Among their children, comfortable men
Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold:
Alas, then, for the homeless beggar old!
Bonnie New South Wales
by Henry Lawson

It surely cannot be too soon, and never is too late,
It tones with all Australia's tune to praise one's native State,
And so I bring an old refrain from days of posts and rails,
And lift the good old words again, for Sunny New South Wales.
She bore me on her tented fields, and wore my youth away,
And little gold of all she yields repays my toil to-day;
By track and camp and bushman's hut, by streets where courage fails, 
I've sung for all Australia, but my heart's in New South Wales.
The waratah and wattle there in all their glory grow, 
And if they bloom on hills elsewhere, I'm not supposed to know,
The tales that other States may tell, I never hear the tales!
For I, her son, have sinned as well as Bonnie New South Wales.
I only know her heart is good to sweetheart and to mate,
And pregnant with our nationhood from Sunset to the Gate;
I only know her sons sail home on every ship that sails,
Though round the world ten times they roam from dear old New South Wales.
In Memoriam. - Richard Ely Collins,
by Lydia Howard Sigourney

Son of Mr. MORRIS COLLINS, died at Wethersfield, September 5th, 1862, aged 3 months and 27 days.
It was a sad and lovely sight
They call'd us to behold,
That infant forehead high and fair,
Those beauteous features sculptured rare,
Yet breathless all, and cold.
Heard it in dreams, an angel voice
Soft as the zephyr's tone?
The yearning of a Mother mild
To clasp once more her three months' child
But a few days her own?
Just a few days of wasting pain
She linger'd by its side,
And then consign'd to stranger arms
The frail unfolding of the charms
She would have watch'd with pride.
Yet happy babe! to reach a home
Beyond all sorrowing cares,
Where none a Mother's loss can moan
Or seek for bread, and find a stone,
Or fall in fatal snares.
Thrice happy,--to have pass'd away
Ere Time's sore ills invade,--
From fragrant buds that drooping shed
Their life-sigh o'er thy coffin-bed--
To flowers that never fade.