DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
In Time Of Need
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

Better than I,
Thou knowest, Lord,
All my necessity,
And with a word
Thou canst it all supply.
Help other is there none
Save Thee alone;
Without Thee I'm undone.
And so, to Thee I cry,--
O, be Thou nigh!
For, better far than I,
Thou knowest, Lord,
All my necessity.
Love In A Garden.
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
Between the rose's and the canna's crimson,
Beneath her window in the night I stand;
The jeweled dew hangs little stars, in rims, on
The white moonflowers each a spirit hand
That points the path to mystic shadowland.
Awaken, sweet and fair!
And add to night try grace!
Suffer its loveliness to share
The white moon of thy face,
The darkness of thy hair.
Awaken, sweet and fair!
II.
A moth, like down, swings on th' alth'a's pistil,
Ghost of a tone that haunts its bell's deep dome;
And in the August-lily's cone of crystal
A firefly blurs, the lantern of a gnome,
Green as a gem that gleams through hollow foam.
Approach! the moment flies!
Thou sweetheart of the South!
Come! mingle with night's mysteries
The red rose of thy mouth,
The starlight of thine eyes.
Approach! the moment flies!
III.
Dim through the dusk, like some unearthly presence,
Bubbles the Slumber-song of some wild bird;
And with it borne, faint on a breeze-sweet essence,
The rainy murmur of a fountain's heard
As if young lips had breathed a perfumed word.
How long, my love, my bliss!
How long must I await
With night, that all impatience is,
Thy greeting at the gate,
And at the gate thy kiss?
How long, my love, my bliss!
Slovenly Betsy
by Heinrich Hoffmann

Betsy would never wash herself
When from her bed she rose,
But just as quickly as she could
She hurried on her clothes.
To keep her clothes all nice and clean
Miss Betsy took no pains;
In holes her stockings always were,
Her dresses filled with stains.
Sometimes she went day after day
And never combed her hair,
While little feathers from her bed
Stuck on it here and there.
The schoolboys, when they Betsy saw,
Would point her out, and cry,
"Oh! Betsy, what a sight you are!
Oh! Slovenly Betsy, fie!"
One rainy day her parents went
Some pleasant friends to meet.
They took Betsy along with them,
All dressed so clean and neat.
Nice little boys and girls were there,
With whom our Betsy played,
Until of playing she grew tired,
And to the garden strayed.
Out in the rain she danced awhile,
But 'twas not long before
Flat down she tumbled in the mud,
And her best clothes she tore.
Oh! what a sight she was, indeed,
When in the room she came;
The guests all loudly laughed at her,
And she almost died with shame.
She turned, and to her home she ran,
And then, as here you see,
She washed her clothes, and since has been
As neat as she could be.
Nocturne ["Betimes, I seem to see in dreams"]
by Abram Joseph Ryan

Betimes, I seem to see in dreams
What when awake I may not see;
Can night be God's more than the day?
Do stars, not suns, best light his way?
Who knoweth? Blended lights and shades
Arch aisles down which He walks to me.
I hear him coming in the night
Afar, and yet I know not how;
His steps make music low and sweet;
Sometimes the nails are in his feet;
Does darkness give God better light
Than day, to find a weary brow?
Does darkness give man brighter rays
To find the God, in sunshine lost?
Must shadows wrap the trysting-place
Where God meets hearts with gentlest grace?
Who knoweth it? God hath His ways
For every soul here sorrow-tossed.
The hours of day are like the waves
That fret against the shores of sin:
They touch the human everywhere,
The Bright-Divine fades in their glare;
And God's sweet voice the spirit craves
Is heard too faintly in the din.
When all the senses are awake,
The mortal presses overmuch
Upon the great immortal part --
And God seems further from the heart.
Must souls, like skies, when day-dawns break,
Lose star by star at sunlight's touch?
But when the sun kneels in the west,
And grandly sinks as great hearts sink;
And in his sinking flings adown
Bright blessings from his fading crown,
The stars begin their song of rest,
And shadows make the thoughtless think.
The human seems to fade away;
And down the starred and shadowed skies
The heavenly comes -- as memories come
Of home to hearts afar from home;
And thro' the darkness after day
Many a winged angel flies.
And somehow, tho' the eyes see less,
Our spirits seem to see the more;
When we look thro' night's shadow-bars
The soul sees more than shining stars,
Yea -- sees the very loveliness
That rests upon the "Golden Shore".
Strange reveries steal o'er us then,
Like keyless chords of instruments,
With music's soul without the notes;
And subtle, sad, and sweet there floats
A melody not made by men,
Nor ever heard by outer sense.
And "what has been", and "what will be",
And "what is not", but "might have been",
The dim "to be", the "mournful gone",
The little things life rested on
In "Long-ago's", give tone, not key,
To reveries beyond our ken.
Nursery Rhyme. DXLII. Natural History.
by Unknown

Betty Pringle had a little pig,
Not very little and not very big,
When he was alive he lived in clover,
But now he's dead, and that's all over.
So Billy Pringle he laid down and cried,
And Betty Pringle she laid down and died;
So there was an end of one, two, and three:
Billy Pringle he,
Betty Pringle she,
And the piggy wiggy.
To Julia In The Temple.
by Robert Herrick

Besides us two, i' th' temple here's not one
To make up now a congregation.
Let's to the altar of perfumes then go,
And say short prayers; and when we have done so,
Then we shall see, how in a little space
Saints will come in to fill each pew and place.
The Dead Dream
by Madison Julius Cawein

Between the darkness and the day
As, lost in doubt, I went my way,
I met a shape, as faint as fair,
With star-like blossoms in its hair:
Its body, which the moon shone through,
Was partly cloud and partly dew:
Its eyes were bright as if with tears,
And held the look of long-gone years;
Its mouth was piteous, sweet yet dread,
As if with kisses of the dead:
And in its hand it bore a flower,
In memory of some haunted hour.
I knew it for the Dream I'd had
In days when life was young and glad.
Why had it come with love and woe
Out of the happy Long-Ago?
Upon my brow I felt its breath,
Heard ancient. words of faith and death,
Sweet with the immortality
Of many a fragrant memory:
And to my heart again I took
Its joy and sorrow in a look,
And kissed its eyes and held it fast,
And bore it home from out the past
My Dream of Beauty and of Truth,
I dreamed had perished with my Youth.
Epitaph
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bethink, poor heart, what bitter kind of jest
Mad Destiny this tender stripling played;
For a warm breast of maiden to his breast,
She laid a slab of marble on his head.
They say, through patience, chalk
Becomes a ruby stone;
Ah, yes! but by the true heart's blood
The chalk is crimson grown.
The Host
by Arthur Macy

Between the two perplexed I go,
A shuttlecock, tossed to and fro.
I gaze on one, and know that she
Is all that womankind can be;
I seek the other, and she seems
The perfect idol of my dreams;
And so between the charming pair
My heart is ever in the air.
And yet, although it be my fate
To hover indeterminate,
I rest content, nor ask for more
Than this sweet game of battledore.
Amor Profanus
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

Beyond the pale of memory,
In some mysterious dusky grove;
A place of shadows utterly,
Where never coos the turtle-dove,
A world forgotten of the sun:
I dreamed we met when day was done,
And marvelled at our ancient love.
Met there by chance, long kept apart,
We wandered through the darkling glades;
And that old language of the heart
We sought to speak: alas! poor shades!
Over our pallid lips had run
The waters of oblivion,
Which crown all loves of men or maids.
In vain we stammered: from afar
Our old desire shone cold and dead:
That time was distant as a star,
When eyes were bright and lips were red.
And still we went with downcast eye
And no delight in being nigh,
Poor shadows most uncomforted.
Ah, Lalage! while life is ours,
Hoard not thy beauty rose and white,
But pluck the pretty, fleeting flowers
That deck our little path of light:
For all too soon we twain shall tread
The bitter pastures of the dead:
Estranged, sad spectres of the night.
To Wolcott Balestier
by Rudyard Kipling

Beyond the path of the outmost sun through utter darkness hurled,
Further than ever comet flared or vagrant star-dust swirled,
Live such as fought and sailed and ruled and loved and made our world.
They are purged of pride because they died, they know the worth of their bays,
They sit at wine with the Maidens Nine and the Gods of the Elder Days,
It is their will to serve or be still as fitteth our Father's praise.
'Tis theirs to sweep through the ringing deep where Azrael's outposts are,
Or buffet a path through the Pit's red wrath when God goes out to war,
Or hang with the reckless Seraphim on the rein of a red-maned star.
They take their mirth in the joy of the Earth, they dare not grieve for her pain,
They know of toil and the end of toil, they know God's law is plain,
So they whistle the Devil to make them sport who know that Sin is vain.
And ofttimes cometh our wise Lord God, master of every trade,
And tells them tales of His daily toil, of Edens newly made;
And they rise to their feet as He passes by, gentlemen unafraid.
To these who are cleansed of base Desire, Sorrow and Lust and Shame,
Gods for they knew the hearts of men, men for they stooped to Fame,
Borne on the breath that men call Death, my brother's spirit came.
He scarce had need to doff his pride or slough the dross of Earth,
E'en as he trod that day to God so walked he from his birth,
In simpleness and gentleness and honour and clean mirth.
So cup to lip in fellowship they gave him welcome high
And made him place at the banquet board, the Strong Men ranged thereby,
Who had done his work and held his peace and had no fear to die.
Beyond the loom of the last lone star, through open darkness hurled,
Further than rebel comet dared or hiving star-swarm swirled,
Sits he with those that praise our God for that they served His world.
The Mothers.
by Charles Hamilton Musgrove

Beyond the tumult and the proud acclaim,
Beyond the circle where the glory beats
With withering light upon the mighty seats,
They hear the far-resounding trump of fame;
On other lips they hear the one-loved name
In vaunting or derision, and they weep
To know that they shall never lull to sleep
Those tired heads, crowned with desolating flame.
Beyond the hot arena's baleful glow,
Beyond the towering pomp they dimly see,
They sit and watch the fateful pageants go
Through war's red arch, or up to Calvary,
The First Love still within their hearts impearled--
Mothers of all the masters of the world!
A Town Window
by John Drinkwater

Beyond my window in the night
Is but a drab inglorious street,
Yet there the frost and clean starlight
As over Warwick woods are sweet.
Under the grey drift of the town
The crocus works among the mould
As eagerly as those that crown
The Warwick spring in flame and gold.
And when the tramway down the hill
Across the cobbles moans and rings,
There is about my window-sill
The tumult of a thousand wings.
The Sissy Boy.
by Edwin C. Ranck

Beware the Sissy Boy my child,
Not because he's very wild;
The Sissy Boy is never that,
Although he'll run if you say "Scat!"
The Sissy Boy's infinitesimal,
He is not worth a duodecimal.
If you should take a custard pie
And hit a Sissy in the eye,
He would not go before a jury,
He'd only blush and say "Oh Fury!"
For he is perfumed, sweet and mild,
That's just his kind, my dearest child.
One should never strike a Sissy,
He is too lady-like and prissy.
You do not need to use your fist
But merely slap him on the wrist,
And if this will not make him budge,
Then glare at him and say "Oh Fudge!"
The Sissy sports a pink cravat
And often wears a high silk hat;
His voice is like a turtle dove's
And he always wears the "cutest" gloves.
At playing ping-pong he's inured,
And his finger-nails are manicured.
He uses powder on his face
And his handkerchiefs are trimmed with lace;
He loves to play progressive euchre
And spend his papa's hard-earned lucre.
He wears an air of nonchalance
And always takes in every dance.
Socially, he's quite a pet
And always fashionably in debt.
He hates to be considered slow
And poses as a famous beau.
He loves to cut a swath and dash
When papa dear puts up the cash.
This, my child, is the Sissy Boy
Who acts so womanly and coy.
His head's as soft as new-made butter;
His aim in life is just to flutter;
Yet he goes along with unconcern
And marries a woman with money to burn.
Vignettes Overseas
by Sara Teasdale

I. Off Gilbatrar
Beyond the sleepy hills of Spain,
The sun goes down in yellow mist,
The sky is fresh with dewy stars
Above a sea of amethyst.
Yet in the city of my love
High noon burns all the heavens bare
For him the happiness of light,
For me a delicate despair.
II. Off Algeirs
Oh give me neither love nor tears,
Nor dreams that sear the night with fire,
Go lightly on your pilgrimage
Unburdened by desire.
Forget me for a month, a year,
But, oh, beloved, think of me
When unexpected beauty burns
Like sudden sunlight on the sea.
III. Naples
Nisida and Prosida are laughing in the light,
Capri is a dewy flower lifting into sight,
Posilipo kneels and looks in the burnished sea,
Naples crowds her million roofs close as close can be;
Round about the mountain's crest a flag of smoke is hung-
Oh when God made Italy he was gay and young!
IV. Capri
When beauty grows too great to bear
How shall I ease me of its ache,
For beauty more than bitterness
Makes the heart break.
Now while I watch the dreaming sea
With isles like flowers against her breast,
Only one voice in all the world
Could give me rest.
V. Night Song at Amalfi
I asked the heaven of stars
What I should give my love
It answered me with silence,
Silence above.
I asked the darkened sea
Down where the fishers go
It answered me with silence,
Silence below.
Oh, I could give him weeping,
Or I could give him song
But how can I give silence
My whole life long?
VI. Ruins of Paestum
On lowlands where the temples lie
The marsh-grass mingles with the flowers,
Only the little songs of birds
Link the unbroken hours.
So in the end, above my heart
Once like the city wild and gay,
The slow white stars will pass by night,
The swift brown birds by day.
VII. Rome
Oh for the rising moon
Over the roofs of Rome,
And swallows in the dusk
Circling a darkened dome!
Oh for the measured dawns
That pass with folded wings
How can I let them go
With unremembered things?
VIII.    Florence
The bells ring over the Arno,
Midnight, the long, long chime;
Here in the quivering darkness
I am afraid of time.
Oh, gray bells cease your tolling,
Time takes too much from me,
And yet to rock and river
He gives eternity.
IX.    Villa Serbelloni, Bellaggio
The fountain shivers lightly in the rain,
The laurels drip, the fading roses fall,
The marble satyr plays a mournful strain
That leaves the rainy fragrance musical.
Oh dripping laurel, Phoebus sacred tree,
Would that swift Daphne's lot might come to me,
Then would I still my soul and for an hour
Change to a laurel in the glancing shower.
X.    Stresa
The moon grows out of the hills
A yellow flower,
The lake is a dreamy bride
Who waits her hour.
Beauty has filled my heart,
It can hold no more,
It is full, as the lake is full,
From shore to shore.
XI.    Hamburg
The day that I come home,
What will you find to say,
Words as light as foam
With laughter light as spray?
Yet say what words you will
The day that I come home;
I shall hear the whole deep ocean
Beating under the foam.
The Monastery.
by Charles Hamilton Musgrove

Beyond the wall the passion flower is blooming,
Strange hints of life along the winds are blown;
Within, the cowled and silent men are kneeling
Before an image on a cross of stone,
And on their lifted faces, wan as death,
I read this simple message of their faith:
"The trail of flame is ashen,
And pleasure's lees are gray,
And gray the fruit of passion
Whose ripeness is decay;
The stress of life is rancor,
A madness born to slay;
They only miss its canker
Who live with God and pray."
Beyond the wall lies Babylon, the mighty;
Faint echoes of her songs come drifting by;
Within there is a hymn of consecration,
A psalm that lifts the fervent soul on high;
And yet, sometimes, where bows the hooded choir,
There comes the old call of the World's Desire:
"The rose's dust is ashen
Be petals white or red,
And vain the sighs of passion
When summer's light is fled;
The garden's fruitful measure
Is crowned with bloom today;
They only miss its treasure
Who turn their hearts away."
Beyond The Years
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

I
Beyond the years the answer lies,
Beyond where brood the grieving skies
And Night drops tears.
Where Faith rod-chastened smiles to rise
And doff its fears,
And carping Sorrow pines and dies--
Beyond the years.
II
Beyond the years the prayer for rest
Shall beat no more within the breast;
The darkness clears,
And Morn perched on the mountain's crest
Her form uprears--
The day that is to come is best,
Beyond the years.
III
Beyond the years the soul shall find
That endless peace for which it pined,
For light appears,
And to the eyes that still were blind
With blood and tears,
Their sight shall come all unconfined
Beyond the years.
Thistle-Down
by Emily Pauline Johnson

Beyond a ridge of pine with russet tips
The west lifts to the sun her longing lips,
Her blushes stain with gold and garnet dye
The shore, the river and the wide far sky;
Like floods of wine the waters filter through
The reeds that brush our indolent canoe.
I beach the bow where sands in shadows lie;
You hold my hand a space, then speak good-bye.
Upwinds your pathway through the yellow plumes
Of goldenrod, profuse in August blooms,
And o'er its tossing sprays you toss a kiss;
A moment more, and I see only this - 
The idle paddle you so lately held,
The empty bow your pliant wrist propelled,
Some thistles purpling into violet,
Their blossoms with a thousand thorns afret,
And like a cobweb, shadowy and grey,
Far floats their down - far drifts my dream away.
Between Us Now
by Thomas Hardy

Between us now and here -
Two thrown together
Who are not wont to wear
Life's flushest feather -
Who see the scenes slide past,
The daytimes dimming fast,
Let there be truth at last,
Even if despair.
So thoroughly and long
Have you now known me,
So real in faith and strong
Have I now shown me,
That nothing needs disguise
Further in any wise,
Or asks or justifies
A guarded tongue.
Face unto face, then, say,
Eyes mine own meeting,
Is your heart far away,
Or with mine beating?
When false things are brought low,
And swift things have grown slow,
Feigning like froth shall go,
Faith be for aye.
Epilogue.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Beyond the moon, within a land of mist,
Lies the dim Garden of all Dead Desires,
Walled round with morning's clouded amethyst,
And haunted of the sunset's shadowy fires;
There all lost things we loved hold ghostly tryst - 
Dead dreams, dead hopes, dead loves, and dead desires.
Sad are the stars that day and night exist
Above the Garden of all Dead Desires;
And sad the roses that within it twist
Deep bow'rs; and sad the wind that through it quires;
But sadder far are they who there hold tryst - 
Dead dreams, dead hopes, dead loves, and dead desires.
There, like a dove, upon the twilight's wrist,
Soft in the Garden of all Dead Desires,
Sleep broods; and there, where never a serpent hissed,
On the wan willows music hangs her lyres,
'OLIAN dials by which phantoms tryst - 
Dead dreams, dead hopes, dead loves, and dead desires.
There you shall hear low voices; kisses kissed,
Faint in the Garden of all Dead Desires,
By lips the anguish of vain song makes whist;
And meet with shapes that art's despair attires;
And gaze in eyes where all sweet sorrows tryst - 
Dead dreams, dead hopes, dead loves, and dead desires.
Thither we go, dreamer and realist,
Bound for the Garden of all Dead Desires,
Where we shall find, perhaps, all Life hath missed,
All Life hath longed for when the soul aspires,
All Earth's elusive loveliness at tryst - 
Dead dreams, dead hopes, dead loves, and dead desires.
Oriental Romance
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
Beyond lost seas of summer she
Dwelt on an island of the sea,
Last scion of that dynasty,
Queen of a race forgotten long.
With eyes of light and lips of song,
From seaward groves of blowing lemon,
She called me in her native tongue,
Low-leaned on some rich robe of Yemen.
II.
I was a king. Three moons we drove
Across green gulfs, the crimson clove
And cassia spiced, to claim her love.
Packed was my barque with gums and gold;
Rich fabrics; sandalwood, grown old
With odor; gems; and pearls of Oman,
Than her white breasts less white and cold;
And myrrh, less fragrant than this woman.
III.
From Bassora I came. We saw
Her eagle castle on a claw
Of soaring precipice, o'erawe
The surge and thunder of the spray.
Like some great opal, far away
It shone, with battlement and spire,
Wherefrom, with wild aroma, day
Blew splintered lights of sapphirine fire.
IV.
Lamenting caverns dark, that keep
Sonorous echoes of the deep,
Led upward to her castle steep....
Fair as the moon, whose light is shed
In Ramadan, was she, who led
My love unto her island bowers,
To find her... lying young and dead
Among her maidens and her flowers.
Beyond.
by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick

Beyond yon dim old mountain's shadowy height,
The restless sun droops low his grand old face;
While downward sweeps the trembling veil of night,
To hide the earth; the frost king's filmy lace
Rests on the mountain's hoary snow-crowned head,
And adds to it a softened grace; the light
Which dies afar in faint and fading red
In purple shadows circles near.
The flight
Of birds across the vast and silent plains
Awakes the echoes of the sleeping earth;
Of all the summer beauty naught remains,
There come no tidings of the spring's glad birth.
Beyond the valley and far-off height
The birds in wandering do take their way;
Ah, whither is their strange and trackless flight
Amid the dying embers of the day;
Into the clouds that seek to veil the sun
They seem to float on strange bright wings of fire;
Beyond the shades that tell us day is done
They soar on spirit wings that never tire.
Ah, strange, strange mysteries indeed are these;
To watch the sunlight fade and die away,
To hear the whispering of the dark pine trees,
To see the deepening shadows 'round us play,
And then to feel that all that 'round us lies
Is e'en beyond the knowledge of the soul.
We seek to grasp the truth, it quickly flies
And leaves us full of doubt.
Around us roll
The spheres that light the way to heaven's shore,
And soon their lights will brighten all the sky;
And yet we dare not read their mystic lore
But only stand and wait and wonder why,
Beyond, beyond in deep mysterious space
They wander through the darkness all the night,
Each one within its own allotted place.
The stars' dim course, the birds' lone dreamy flight,
Will ever fill our souls with doubt and fear.
We walk upon life's unknown shadowy shore
With wandering steps, while through the heavens clear
The stars their music sing forevermore.
Cheery Beggar
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Beyond M'gdalen and by the Bridge, on a place called there the Plain,
In Summer, in a burst of summertime
Following falls and falls of rain,
When the air was sweet-and-sour of the flown fineflower of
Those goldnails and their gaylinks that hang along a lime;
.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .
The motion of that man's heart is fine
Whom want could not make p'ne, p'ne
That struggling should not sear him, a gift should cheer him
Like that poor pocket of pence, poor pence of mine.