DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Rat.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

The rat is the concisest tenant.
He pays no rent, --
Repudiates the obligation,
On schemes intent.
Balking our wit
To sound or circumvent,
Hate cannot harm
A foe so reticent.
Neither decree
Prohibits him,
Lawful as
Equilibrium.
A January Night
by Thomas Hardy

The rain smites more and more,
The east wind snarls and sneezes;
Through the joints of the quivering door
The water wheezes.
The tip of each ivy-shoot
Writhes on its neighbour's face;
There is some hid dread afoot
That we cannot trace.
Is it the spirit astray
Of the man at the house below
Whose coffin they took in to-day?
We do not know.
Rain
by Oliver Herford

The rain is raining everywhere,
Kittens to shelter fly -
But Human Folk wear overshoes,
To keep their hind paws dry.
Haunted
by Walter De La Mare

The rabbit in his burrow keeps
No guarded watch, in peace he sleeps;
The wolf that howls into the night
Cowers to her lair at morning light;
The simplest bird entwines a nest
Where she may lean her lovely breast,
Couched in the silence of the bough;
But thou, O man, what rest hast thou?
The deepest solitude can bring
Only a subtler questioning
In thy divided heart; thy bed
Recalls at dawn what midnight said;
Seek how thou wilt to feign content
Thy flaming ardour's quickly spent;
Soon thy last company is gone,
And leaves thee - with thyself - alone.
Pomp and great friends may hem thee round,
A thousand busy tasks be found;
Earth's thronging beauties may beguile
Thy longing lovesick heart awhile;
And pride, like clouds of sunset, spread
A changing glory round thy head;
But fade will all; and thou must come,
Hating thy journey, homeless, home.
Rave how thou wilt; unmoved, remote,
That inward presence slumbers not,
Frets out each secret from thy breast,
Gives thee no rally, pause, nor rest,
Scans close thy very thoughts, lest they
Should sap his patient power away,
Answers thy wrath with peace, thy cry
With tenderest taciturnity.
The rain,
by Alfred Edward Housman

The rain, it streams on stone and hillock,
The boot clings to the clay.
Since all is done that's due and right
Let's home; and now, my lad, good-night,
For I must turn away.
Good-night, my lad, for nought's eternal;
No league of ours, for sure.
Tomorrow I shall miss you less,
And ache of heart and heaviness
Are things that time should cure.
Over the hill the highway marches
And what's beyond is wide:
Oh soon enough will pine to nought
Remembrance and the faithful thought
That sits the grave beside.
The skies, they are not always raining
Nor grey the twelvemonth through;
And I shall meet good days and mirth,
And range the lovely lands of earth
With friends no worse than you.
But oh, my man, the house is fallen
That none can build again;
My man, how full of joy and woe
Your mother bore you years ago
To-night to lie in the rain.
Travel
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.
All night there isn't a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.
My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing,
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going.
Cherry-Tree Inn
by Henry Lawson

The rafters are open to sun, moon, and star,
Thistles and nettles grow high in the bar,
The chimneys are crumbling, the log fires are dead,
And green mosses spring from the hearthstone instead.
The voices are silent, the bustle and din,
For the railroad hath ruined the Cherry-tree Inn.
Save the glimmer of stars, or the moon's pallid streams,
And the sounds of the 'possums that camp on the beams,
The bar-room is dark and the stable is still,
For the coach comes no more over Cherry-tree Hill.
No riders push on through the darkness to win
The rest and the comfort of Cherry-tree Inn.
I drift from my theme, for my memory strays
To the carrying, digging, and bushranging days,
Far back to the seasons that I love the best,
When a stream of wild diggers rushed into the west,
But the `rushes' grew feeble, and sluggish, and thin,
Till scarcely a swagman passed Cherry-tree Inn.
Do you think, my old mate (if it's thinking you be),
Of the days when you tramped to the goldfields with me?
Do you think of the day of our thirty-mile tramp,
When never a fire could we light on the camp,
And, weary and footsore and drenched to the skin,
We tramped through the darkness to Cherry-tree Inn?
Then I had a sweetheart and you had a wife,
And Johnny was more to his mother than life;
But we solemnly swore, ere that evening was done,
That we'd never return till our fortunes were won.
Next morning to harvests of folly and sin
We tramped o'er the ranges from Cherry-tree Inn.
.    .    .    .    .
The years have gone over with many a change,
And there comes an old swagman from over the range,
And faint 'neath the weight of his rain-sodden load,
He suddenly thinks of the inn by the road.
He tramps through the darkness the shelter to win,
And reaches the ruins of Cherry-tree Inn.
The Floods
by Rudyard Kipling

The rain it rains without a stay
In the hills above us, in the hills;
And presently the floods break way
Whose strength is in the hills.
The trees they suck from every cloud,
The valley brooks they roar aloud,
Bank-high for the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!
The first wood down is sere and small,
From the hills--the brishings off the hills;
And then come by the bats and all
We cut last year in the hills;
And then the roots we tried to cleave
But found too tough and had to leave,
Polting down the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!
The eye shall look, the ear shall hark
To the hills, the doings in the hills!
And rivers mating in the dark
With tokens from the hills.
Now what is weak will surely go,
And what is strong must prove it so,
Stand Fast in the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!
The floods they shall not be afraid,
Nor the hills above 'em, nor the hills,
Of any fence which man has made
Betwixt him and the hills.
The waters shall not reckon twice
For any work of man's device,
But bid it down to the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!
The floods shall sweep corruption clean,
By the hills, the blessing of the hills,
That more the meadows may be green
New-mended from the hills.
The crops and cattle shall increase,
Nor little children shall not cease.
Go plough the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!
After A Night Of Rain
by Madison Julius Cawein

The rain made ruin of the rose and frayed
The lily into tatters: now the Morn
Looks from the hopeless East with eyes forlorn,
As from her attic looks a dull-eyed maid.
The coreopsis drips; the sunflowers fade;
The garden reeks with rain: beneath the thorn
The toadstools crowd their rims where, dim of horn,
The slow snail slimes the grasses gaunt and greyed.
Like some pale nun, in penitential weeds,
Weary with weeping, telling sad her beads,
Her rosary of pods of hollyhocks,
September comes, heavy of heart and head,
While in her path the draggled four-o'-clocks
Droop all their flowers, saying, "Summer's dead."
The Bittern.
by Walter R. Cassels

The reeds are idly waving o'er the marshy ground,
The rank and ragged herbage rots on many a mound,
And desolate pools and marshes deadly lie around.
There is no life nor motion, save the winds that fly
With the close-muffled clouds in silence through the sky,
There is no sound to stir it, save the Bittern's cry;
The Bittern, sitting sadly on the fluted edges
Of pillars once the prop and pride of palace ledges,
Now smear'd with damp decay and sunk in slimy sedges;
Shatter'd and sunken, with the sculptured architrave
Peering above the surface of the sluggish wave,
Like a gaunt limb thrust fleshless from a shallow grave.
The Bittern sitteth sadly on the time-worn stone,
Upon life's mouldering relics, fearfully alone,
Searing the silence ofttimes with his solemn tone.
The Bittern--monarch of the sad and dreary place,
Mocking the pride and pageant of a ruin'd race,
Whose very name's forgotten, and whose deeds have left no trace.
The pleasant songs of peace, the lute, the lover's sigh,
The statesman's eloquence, the warrior's battle-cry
Have pass'd,--and like their echo from the heedless sky,
The lonely Bittern's note comes sadly floating by.
Oh, melancholy sound! Shall thus for ever end
The glory and the greatness whither all hopes tend,
And as the Past comes booming shall the Present wend?
No ear to listen to the old and hard-earn'd glory,
That wore the heart out, made the locks grow scant and hoary,
No ear to listen, and no tongue to tell the story!
The Bittern sitteth 'midst the marshes of the Past,
Sitteth amidst the ruins, whilst the hours fleet fast,
And at his own hoarse cry he looketh round aghast.
The hours fleet fast unnoted, and the time is nigh,
When even he on noiseless wings shall soar on high,
Till his deep note is lost amid the azure sky.
Temptation.
by Thomas Frederick Young

The greatest glory consists, not in never falling, but in getting up every time you fall. - CONFUCIUS.
The raging force of passion's storm,
Say who can check at will.
Or cope with sin, in ev'ry form,
With ever conquering skill?
How oft we've tried, and hop'd and pray'd
To conquer in the right;
But still, how oft our hearts, dismay'd,
Have fail'd amid the fight.
But still we fought the wrong we loath'd,
And though we fought in vain,
Our wills in fleshly weakness cloth'd,
Would try the fight again.
And He, I apprehend, who sees,
And knows our struggles here.
Will lead us onward, by degrees,
To triumph, though we fear.
And even tho' we're never quit
Of these sharp earthly thorns,
In black despair we'll never sit,
Till danger's signal warns.
We'll gird ourselves anew, to fight
Our fell, determin'd foe,
And with experience's light,
Each time more skilful grow.
Rabbi Ismael
by John Greenleaf Whittier

The Rabbi Ishmael, with the woe and sin
Of the world heavy upon him, entering in
The Holy of Holies, saw an awful Face
With terrible splendor filling all the place.
"O Ishmael Ben Elisha!" said a voice,
"What seekest thou? What blessing is thy choice?"
And, knowing that he stood before the Lord,
Within the shadow of the cherubim,
Wide-winged between the blinding light and him,
He bowed himself, and uttered not a word,
But in the silence of his soul was prayer
"O Thou Eternal! I am one of all,
And nothing ask that others may not share.
Thou art almighty; we are weak and small,
And yet Thy children: let Thy mercy spare!"
Trembling, he raised his eyes, and in the place
Of the insufferable glory, lo! a face
Of more than mortal tenderness, that bent
Graciously down in token of assent,
And, smiling, vanished! With strange joy elate,
The wondering Rabbi sought the temple's gate.
Radiant as Moses from the Mount, he stood
And cried aloud unto the multitude
"O Israel, hear! The Lord our God is good!
Mine eyes have seen his glory and his grace;
Beyond his judgments shall his love endure;
The mercy of the All Merciful is sure!
Memorial Day -1892
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The quiet graves of our country's braves
Through thirty Junes and Decembers
Have solemnly lain under sun and rain,
And yet the Nation remembers.
The marching of feet and the flags on the street
Told once again this morning,
In the voice of the drum how the day had come
For those lowly beds' adorning.
Then swiftly back on Time's worn track
His three decades seemed driven,
And with startled eyes I saw arise,
From graves by fancy riven,
The Gray and Blue in a grand review.
Oh! vast were the hosts they numbered,
As they wheeled and swayed in a dress parade
O'er the graves where they long had slumbered.
The colours were not, as when they fought,
Ranked one against the other,
But a mingled hue of gray and blue,
As brother marching with brother.
And a blue flower lay on each coat of gray,
Like forget-me-nots on a boulder;
And the gray moss lace in its Southern grace
Was knotted on each blue shoulder.
The vision fled; but I think our dead,
If they could come back with the living,
Would clasp warm hands o'er hostile lands,
Forgetting old wrongs and forgiving.
'Mong the blossoms of Spring that you gather and bring
To graves that though lowly are royal,
Let the blue flower prevail, though modest and pale,
Since it speaks of the hue that was loyal.
But tie each bouquet with a ribbon of gray
And lay it on memory's altar,
For the dead who fought for the cause they thought
Was right, and who did not falter.
Wind And Rain
by Arthur Macy

The rain came down on Boston Town,
And the people said, "Oh, dear!
It's early yet for our annual wet, - 
'Twas dry this time last year."
In heavy suits and rubber boots
They went to the weather man,
And said, "Dear friend, do you intend
To change your present plan?"
In tones of scorn, he said, "Begone!
I've ordered a week of rain.
Away! disperse! or I'll do worse,
And order a hurricane!"
They sneered, "Oh, oh!" and they laughed, "Ho, ho!"
And they said, "You surely jest.
Your threats are vain, for a hurricane
Is the thing that we like best.
"Our throats are tinned, and a sharp east wind
We really couldn't do without;
But we complain of too much rain,
And we think we'd like a drought."
So the weather man took a palm-leaf fan
And he waved it up on high,
And he swept away the clouds so gray,
And the sun shone out in the sky.
And the sun shines down on Boston Town,
And the weather still is clear;
And they set their clocks by the equinox,
And never the east wind fear.
The Poet's Song
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

The rain had fallen, the Poet arose,
He pass'd by the town and out of the street;
A light wind blew from the gates of the sun,
And waves of shadow went over the wheat;
And he sat him down in a lonely place,
And chanted a melody loud and sweet,
That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud,
And the lark drop down at his feet.
The swallow stopt as he hunted the fly,
The snake slipt under a spray,
The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak,
And stared, with his foot on the prey;
And the nightingale thought, 'I have sung many songs,
But never a one so gay,
For he sings of what the world will be
When the years have died away.'
Day-Break.
by John Clare

The red east glows, the dewy cheek of Day
Has not yet met the sun's o'erpowering smile;
The dew-drops in their beauty still are gay,
Save those the shepherd's early steps defile.
Pleas'd will I linger o'er the scene awhile;
The black clouds melt away, the larks awaken--
Sing, rising bird, and I will join with thee:
With day-break's beauties I have much been taken,
As thy first anthem breath'd its melody.
I've stood and paus'd the varied cloud to see,
And warm'd in ecstacy, and look'd and warm'd,
When day's first rays, the far hill top adorning,
Fring'd the blue clouds with gold: O doubly charm'd
I hung in raptures then on early Morning.
Lodged
by Robert Lee Frost

The rain to the wind said,
'You push and I'll pelt.'
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged, though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.
Evolutions Of Soldiers
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

The red range heaves and compulsory sways, ah see! in the flush of a march
Softly-impulsive advancing as water towards a weir from the arch
Of shadow emerging as blood emerges from inward shades of our night
Encroaching towards a crisis, a meeting, a spasm and throb of delight.
The wave of soldiers, the coming wave, the throbbing red breast of approach
Upon us; dark eyes as here beneath the busbies glittering, dark threats that broach
Our beached vessel; darkened rencontre inhuman, and closed warm lips, and dark
Mouth-hair of soldiers passing above us, over the wreck of our bark.
And so, it is ebb-time, they turn, the eyes beneath the busbies are gone.
But the blood has suspended its timbre, the heart from out of oblivion
Knows but the retreat of the burning shoulders, the red-swift waves of the sweet
Fire horizontal declining and ebbing, the twilit ebb of retreat.
A Ballad Of Ducks
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

The railway rattled and roared and swung
With jolting and bumping trucks.
The sun, like a billiard red ball, hung
In the Western sky: and the tireless tongue
Of the wild-eyed man in the corner told
This terrible tale of the days of old,
And the party that ought to have kept the ducks.
"Well, it ain't all joy bein' on the land
With an overdraft that'd knock you flat;
And the rabbits have pretty well took command;
But the hardest thing for a man to stand
Is the feller who says 'Well I told you so!
You should ha' done this way, don't you know!',
I could lay a bait for a man like that.
"The grasshoppers struck us in ninety-one
And what they leave, well, it ain't de luxe.
But a growlin' fault-findin' son of a gun
Who'd lent some money to stock our run,
I said they'd eaten what grass we had,
Says he, 'Your management's very bad;
You had a right to have kept some ducks!'
"To have kept some ducks! And the place was white!
Wherever you went you had to tread
On grasshoppers guzzlin' day and night;
And then with a swoosh they rose in flight,
If you didn't look out for yourself they'd fly
Like bullets into your open eye
And knock it out of the back of your head.
"There isn't a turkey or goose or swan,
Or a duck that quacks, or a hen that clucks,
Can make a difference on a run
When a grasshopper plague has once begun;
'If you'd finance us,' I says, 'I'd buy
Ten thousand emus and have a try;
The job,' I says, 'is too big for ducks!
"'You must fetch a duck when you come to stay;
A great big duck, a Muscovy toff,
Ready and fit,' I says, 'for the fray;
And if the grasshoppers come our way
You turn your duck into the lucerne patch,
And I'd be ready to make a match
That the grasshoppers eat his feathers off!"
"He came to visit us by and by,
And it just so happened one day in spring
A kind of cloud came over the sky,
A wall of grasshoppers nine miles high,
And nine miles thick, and nine hundred wide,
Flyin' in regiments, side by side,
And eatin' up every living thing.
"All day long, like a shower of rain,
You'd hear 'em smackin' against the wall,
Tap, tap, tap, on the window pane,
And they'd rise and jump at the house again
Till their crippled carcasses piled outside.
But what did it matter if thousands died,
A million wouldn't be missed at all.
"We were drinkin' grasshoppers, so to speak,
Till we skimmed their carcasses off the spring;
And they fell so thick in the station creek
They choked the waterholes all the week.
There was scarcely room for a trout to rise,
And they'd only take artificial flies,
They got so sick of the real thing.
"An Arctic snowstorm was beat to rags
When the hoppers rose for their morning flight
With the flapping noise like a million flags:
And the kitchen chimney was stuffed with bags
For they'd fall right into the fire, and fry
Till the cook sat down and began to cry,
And never a duck or fowl in sight.
"We strolled across to the railroad track,
Under a cover beneath some trucks,
I sees a feather and hears a quack;
I stoops and I pulls the tarpaulin back,
Every duck in the place was there,
No good to them was the open air.
'Mister,' I says, 'There's your blanky ducks!'"
The Poet's Hat
by Robert Fuller Murray

The rain had fallen, the Poet arose,
He passed through the doorway into the street,
A strong wind lifted his hat from his head,
And he uttered some words that were far from sweet.
And then he started to follow the chase,
And put on a spurt that was wild and fleet,
It made the people pause in a crowd,
And lay odds as to which would beat.
The street cad scoffed as he hunted the hat,
The errand-boy shouted hooray!
The scavenger stood with his broom in his hand,
And smiled in a very rude way;
And the clergyman thought, 'I have heard many words,
But never, until to-day,
Did I hear any words that were quite so bad
As I heard that young man say.'
Delay
by Elizabeth Jennings

The radiance of the star that leans on me
Was shining years ago. The light that now
Glitters up there my eyes may never see,
And so the time lag teases me with how
Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent. The star's impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.
The Wild Kangaroo
by Henry Kendall

The rain-clouds have gone to the deep
The East like a furnace doth glow;
And the day-spring is flooding the steep,
And sheening the landscape below.
Oh, ye who are gifted with souls
That delight in the music of birds,
Come forth where the scattered mist rolls,
And listen to eloquent words!
Oh, ye who are fond of the sport,
And would travel yon wilderness through,
Gather each to his place for a life-stirring chase,
In the wake of the wild Kangaroo!
Gather each to his place
For a life-stirring chase
In the wake of the wild Kangaroo!
Beyond the wide rents of the fog,
The trees are illumined with gold;
And the bark of the shepherd's brave dog
Shoots away from the sheltering fold.
Down the depths of yon rock-border'd glade,
A torrent goes foaming along;
And the blind-owls retire into shade,
And the bell-bird beginneth its song.
By the side of that yawning abyss,
Where the vapours are hurrying to,
We will merrily pass, looking down to the grass
For the tracks of the wild Kangaroo!
We will merrily pass,
Looking down to the grass
For the tracks of the wild Kangaroo.
Ho, brothers, away to the woods;
Euroka hath clambered the hill;
But the morning there seldom intrudes,
Where the night-shadows slumber on still.
We will roam o'er these forest-lands wild,
And thread the dark masses of vines,
Where the winds, like the voice of a child,
Are singing aloft in the pines.
We must keep down the glee of our hounds;
We must steal through the glittering dew;
And the breezes shall sleep as we cautiously creep
To the haunts of the wild Kangaroo.
And the breezes shall sleep,
As we cautiously creep
To the haunts of the wild Kangaroo.
When we pass through a stillness like death
The swamp fowl and timorous quail,
Like the leaves in a hurricane's breath,
Will start from their nests in the vale;
And the forester, snuffing the air,
Will bound from his covert so dark,
While we follow along in the rear,
As arrows speed on to their mark!
Then the swift hounds shall bring him to bay,
And we'll send forth a hearty halloo,
As we gather them all to be in at the fall
At the death of the wild Kangaroo!
As we gather them all
To be in at the fall
At the death of the wild Kangaroo!
Small Song
by A. R. Ammons

The reeds give way to the wind
and give the wind away.