DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
A College Career
by Robert Fuller Murray

I
When one is young and eager,
A bejant and a boy,
Though his moustache be meagre,
That cannot mar his joy
When at the Competition
He takes a fair position,
And feels he has a mission,
A talent to employ.
With pride he goes each morning
Clad in a scarlet gown,
A cap his head adorning
(Both bought of Mr. Brown);
He hears the harsh bell jangle,
And enters the quadrangle,
The classic tongues to mangle
And make the ancients frown.
He goes not forth at even,
He burns the midnight oil,
He feels that all his heaven
Depends on ceaseless toil;
Across his exercises
A dream of many prizes
Before his spirit rises,
And makes his raw blood boil.
II
Though he be green as grass is,
And fresh as new-mown hay
Before the first year passes
His verdure fades away.
His hopes now faintly glimmer,
Grow dim and ever dimmer,
And with a parting shimmer
Melt into 'common day.'
He cares no more for Liddell
Or Scott; and Smith, and White,
And Lewis, Short, and Riddle
Are 'emptied of delight.'
Todhunter and Colenso
(Alas, that friendships end so!)
He curses in extenso
Through morning, noon, and night.
No more with patient labour
The midnight oil he burns,
But unto some near neighbour
His fair young face he turns,
To share the harmless tattle
Which bejants love to prattle,
As wise as infant's rattle
Or talk of coots and herns.
At midnight round the city
He carols wild and free
Some sweet unmeaning ditty
In many a changing key;
And each succeeding verse is
Commingled with the curses
Of those whose sleep disperses
Like sal volatile.
He shaves and takes his toddy
Like any fourth year man,
And clothes his growing body
After another plan
Than that which once delighted
When, in the days benighted,
Like some wild thing excited
About the fields he ran.
III
A sweet life and an idle
He lives from year to year,
Unknowing bit or bridle
(There are no proctors here),
Free as the flying swallow
Which Ida's Prince would follow
If but his bones were hollow,
Until the end draws near.
Then comes a Dies Irae,
When full of misery
And torments worse than fiery
He crams for his degree;
And hitherto unvexed books,
Dry lectures, abstracts, text-books,
Perplexing and perplexed books,
Make life seem vanity.
IV
Before admiring sister
And mother, see, he stands,
Made Artium Magister
With laying on of hands.
He gives his books to others
(Perchance his younger brothers),
And free from all such bothers
Goes out into all lands.
When Philoctetes In The Lemnian Isle
by William Wordsworth

When Philoctetes in the Lemnian isle
Like a form sculptured on a monument
Lay couched; on him or his dread bow unbent
Some wild Bird oft might settle and beguile
The rigid features of a transient smile,
Disperse the tear, or to the sigh give vent,
Slackening the pains of ruthless banishment
From his loved home, and from heroic toil.
And trust that spiritual Creatures round us move,
Griefs to allay which Reason cannot heal;
Yea, veriest reptiles have sufficed to prove
To fettered wretchedness, that no Bastile
Is deep enough to exclude the light of love,
Though man for brother man has ceased to feel.
On Leaving Pine Cottage.
by Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney

When our bosoms were lightest,
And day-dreams were brightest,
The gay vision melted away;
By sorrow 'twas shaded,
Too quickly it faded;
How transient its halcyon sway!
From my heart would you sever,
(Harsh fate!) and forever,
The friends who to life gave a charm,
What oblivion effaces
Fond mem'ry retraces,
And pictures each well-beloved form.
Some accent well known,
Some melodious tone,
Through my bosom like witchery shed,
Shall awake the sad sigh,
To the hours gone by,
And the friends, like a fairy dream, fled.
Long remembrance shall treasure
Those moments of pleasure,
When time flew unheeded away;
Joy's light skiff was near us,
Hope ventured to steer us,
And brighten our path with her ray.
We sailed down the stream
'Neath her luminous beam,
Our spirits were closely entwined;
What are joys of the bowl
To this calm flow of soul,
This heavenly mingling of mind?
Pure Friendship was there
With celestial air,
Her cestus around us she threw;
"Be united," she cried,
"Ne'er may discord divide
A union so blissful and true."
But those hours are past,
They were too bright to last;
Joyous moments but seldom are given,
That man may be taught,
Worldly pleasures are naught, 
True happiness dwells but in Heaven.
Night Song,
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When on thy pillow lying,
Half listen, I implore,
And at my lute's soft sighing,
Sleep on! what wouldst thou more?
For at my lute's soft sighing
The stars their blessings pour
On feelings never-dying;
Sleep on! what wouldst thou more?
Those feelings never-dying
My spirit aid to soar
From earthly conflicts trying;
Sleep on! what wouldst thou more?
From earthly conflicts trying
Thou driv'st me to this shore;
Through thee I'm thither flying, 
Sleep on! what wouldst thou more?
Through thee I'm hither flying,
Thou wilt not list before
In slumbers thou art lying:
Sleep on! what wouldst thou more?
Gain And Gettings.
by Robert Herrick

When others gain much by the present cast,
The cobblers' getting time is at the last.
When On A Summer's Morn
by William Henry Davies

When on a summer's morn I wake,
And open my two eyes,
Out to the clear, born-singing rills
My bird-like spirit flies,
To hear the Blackbird, Cuckoo, Thrush,
Or any bird in song;
And common leaves that hum all day,
Without a throat or tongue.
And when Time strikes the hour for sleep,
Back in my room alone,
My heart has many a sweet bird's song -
And one that's all my own.
Garden And Cradle
by Eugene Field

When our babe he goeth walking in his garden,
Around his tinkling feet the sunbeams play;
The posies they are good to him,
And bow them as they should to him,
As fareth he upon his kingly way;
And birdlings of the wood to him
Make music, gentle music, all the day,
When our babe he goeth walking in his garden.
When our babe he goeth swinging in his cradle,
Then the night it looketh ever sweetly down;
The little stars are kind to him,
The moon she hath a mind to him
And layeth on his head a golden crown;
And singeth then the wind to him
A song, the gentle song of Bethlem-town,
When our babe he goeth swinging in his cradle.
The Elephant
by Hilaire Belloc

When people call this beast to mind,
They marvel more and more
At such a little tail behind,
So large a trunk before.
In Pearl And Gold
by Madison Julius Cawein

When pearl and gold, o'er deeps of musk,
The moon curves, silvering the dusk,
As in a garden, dreaming,
A lily slips its dewy husk
A firefly in its gleaming,
I of my garden am a guest;
My garden, that, in beauty dressed
Of simple shrubs and oldtime flowers,
Chats with me of the perished hours,
When she companioned me in life,
Living remote from care and strife.
It says to me:"How sad and slow
The hours of daylight come and go,
Until the Night walks here again
With moon and starlight in her train,
And she and I with perfumed words
Of winds and waters, dreaming birds,
And flowers and crickets and the moon,
For hour on hour, in soul commune.
And you, and you,
Sit here and listen in the dew
For her, the love, you used to know,
Who often walked here, long ago,
Long ago;
The young, sweet love you used to know
Long ago!
Whom oft I watched with violet eye,
Or eye of dew, as she passed by:
As she passed by.
And I reply, with half a sigh:
"You knew her too as well as I,
That young sweet love of long-ago!
That young sweet love, who walked here slow.
Oh, speak no more of the days gone by,
Dear days gone by,
Lest I lay me down on your heart and die!"
Fontinella[1] To Florinda
by Jonathan Swift

When on my bosom thy bright eyes,
Florinda, dart their heavenly beams,
I feel not the least love surprise,
Yet endless tears flow down in streams;
There's nought so beautiful in thee,
But you may find the same in me.
The lilies of thy skin compare;
In me you see them full as white:
The roses of your cheeks, I dare
Affirm, can't glow to more delight.
Then, since I show as fine a face,
Can you refuse a soft embrace?
Ah! lovely nymph, thou'rt in thy prime!
And so am I, while thou art here;
But soon will come the fatal time,
When all we see shall disappear.
'Tis mine to make a just reflection,
And yours to follow my direction.
Then catch admirers while you may;
Treat not your lovers with disdain;
For time with beauty flies away,
And there is no return again.
To you the sad account I bring,
Life's autumn has no second spring.
Uranus1
by Arthur Hugh Clough

When on the primal peaceful blank profound,
Which in its still unknowing silence holds
All knowledge, ever by withholding holds,
When on that void (like footfalls in far rooms),
In faint pulsations from the whitening East
Articulate voices first were felt to stir,
And the great child, in dreaming grown to man,
Losing his dream to piece it up began;
Then Plato in me said,
''Tis but the figured ceiling overhead,
With cunning diagrams bestarred, that shine
In all the three dimensions, are endowed
With motion too by skill mechanical,
That thou in height, and depth, and breadth, and power.
Schooled unto pure Mathesis, might proceed
To higher entities, whereof in us
Copies are seen, existent they themselves
In the sole kingdom of the Mind and God.
Mind not the stars, mind thou thy Mind and God.'
By that supremer Word
O'ermastered, deafly heard
Were hauntings dim of old astrologies;
Chaldean mumblings vast, with gossip light
From modern ologistic fancyings mixed,
Of suns and stars, by hypothetic men
Of other frame than ours inhabited,
Of lunar seas and lunar craters huge.
And was there atmosphere, or was there not?
And without oxygen could life subsist?
And was the world originally mist?
Talk they as talk they list,
I, in that ampler voice,
Unheeding, did rejoice.
The Death Of Autumn
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

When reeds are dead and a straw to thatch the marshes,
And feathered pampas-grass rides into the wind
Like aged warriors westward, tragic, thinned
Of half their tribe, and over the flattened rushes,
Stripped of its secret, open, stark and bleak,
Blackens afar the half-forgotten creek,--
Then leans on me the weight of the year, and crushes
My heart.    I know that Beauty must ail and die,
And will be born again,--but ah, to see
Beauty stiffened, staring up at the sky!
Oh, Autumn!    Autumn!--What is the Spring to me?
Because The Good Are Never Fair
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

When she appears the daylight envies her garment,
The wanton daylight envies her garment
To show it to the jealous sun.
And when she walks,
All women tall and tiny
Want her figure and start crying.
Because of your mouth,
Long life to the Agata valley,
Long life to pearls.
Watchers have discovered paradise in your cheeks,
But I am undecided,
For there is a hint of the tops of flames
In their purple shining.
From the Arabic of Ahmed Bey Chawky (contemporary).
Fox-Hunting
by Rudyard Kipling

When Samson set my brush afire 
To spoil the Timnites barley,
I made my point for Leicestershire 
And left Philistia early. 
Through Gath and Rankesborough Gorse I fled, 
And took the Coplow Road, sir!
And was a Gentleman in Red
When all the Quorn wore woad, sir! 
When Rome lay massed on Hadrian's Wall, 
And nothing much was doing,
Her bored Centurions heard my call 
O' nights when I went wooing. 
They raised a pack-they ran it well 
(For I was there to run 'em) 
From Aesica to Carter Fell,
And down North Tyne to Hunnum. 
When William, landed hot for blood, 
And Harold's hosts were smitten,
I lay at earth in Battle Wood
While Domesday Book was written. 
Whatever harm he did to man,
I owe him pure affection; 
For in his righteous reign began 
The first of Game Protection.
When Charles, my namesake, lost his mask, 
And Oliver dropped his'n,
I found those Northern Squires a task, 
To keep 'em out of prison.
In boots as big as milking-pails, 
With holsters on the pommel, 
They chevied me across the Dales 
Instead of fighting Cromwell. 
When thrifty Walpole took the helm, 
And hedging came in fashion, 
The March of Progress gave my realm 
Enclosure and Plantation.
'Twas then, to soothe their discontent, 
I showed each pounded Master, 
However fast the Commons went,
I went a little faster!
When Pigg and Jorrocks held the stage, 
And Steam had linked the Shires,
I broke the staid Victorian age 
To posts, and rails, and wires. 
Then fifty mile was none too far 
To go by train to cover,
Till some dam' sutler pupped a car, 
And decent sport was over! 
When men grew shy of hunting stag, 
For fear the Law might try 'em, 
The Car put up an average bag
Of twenty dead per diem. 
Then every road was made a rink 
For Coroners to sit on;
And so began, in skid and stink, 
The real blood-sport of Britain!
Friendship
by Joseph Horatio Chant

When presses hard my load of care,
And other friends from me depart,
I want a friend my grief to share,
With faithful speech and loving heart.
I want a friend of noble mind,
Who loves me more than praise or pelf,
Reproves my faults with spirit kind,
And thinks of me as well as self--
A friend whose ear is ever closed
Against traducers' poison breath;
And, though in me be not disclosed
An equal love, yet loves till death--
A friend who knows my weakness well,
And ever seeks to calm my fears;
If words should fail the storm to quell,
Will soothe my fevered heart with tears--
A friend not moved by jealousy
Should I outrun him in life's race;
And though I doubt, still trusts in me
With loyal heart and cloudless face.
True friendship knows both joy and grief,
The sweetest pleasure, keenest pain;
Its sharpest pangs are ever brief,
Mere flitting clouds before the rain.
But soon the joy returns again
With bluer sky and brighter light;
The grief proves but a narrow glen
All full of flowers, though hid from sight.
And e'en in darkness we inhale
The fragrant odors love emits;
Friendship like this can never fail--
On love's strong throne its monarch sits.
True friendship is of greater worth
Than words, though they were solid gold.
To all the glittering gems of earth
I it prefer, a thousandfold.
One Friend I have who knows my heart,
And loves me with a changeless love;
I love Him, too--nor death can part
Us two, for we will love above.
A woman's love to His is faint;
No brother cleaves as close as He;
No seraph words could ever paint
The love this Friend now bears to me.
The Cornet
by Conrad Potter Aiken

When she came out, that white little Russian dancer,
With her bright hair, and her eyes, so young, so young,
He suddenly lost his leader, and all the players,
And only heard an immortal music sung,
Of dryads flashing in the green woods of April,
On cobwebs trembing over the deep, wet grass:
Fleeing their shadows with laughter, with hands uplifted,
Through the whirled sinister sun he saw them pass,
Lovely immortals gone, yet existing somewhere,
Still somewhere laughing in woods of immortal green,
Young he had lived among fires, or dreamed of living,
Lovers in youth once seen, or dreamed he had seen. . .
And watched her knees flash up, and her young hands beckon,
And the hair that streamed behind, and the taunting eyes.
He felt this place dissolving in living darkness,
And through the darkness he felt his childhood rise.
Soft, and shining, and sweet, hands filled with petals. . .
And watching her dance, he was grateful to forget
The fiddlers, leaning and drawing their bows together,
And the tired fingers on the stops of his cornet.
Dora Williams
by Edgar Lee Masters

When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me
I went to Springfield. There I met a lush,
Whose father just deceased left him a fortune.
He married me when drunk.
My life was wretched.
A year passed and one day they found him dead.
That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago.
After a time met Tyler Rountree, villain.
I moved on to New York. A gray-haired magnate
Went mad about me - so another fortune.
He died one night right in my arms, you know.
(I saw his purple face for years thereafter. )
There was almost a scandal.
I moved on, This time to Paris. I was now a woman,
Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich.
My sweet apartment near the Champs Elysees
Became a center for all sorts of people,
Musicians, poets, dandies, artists, nobles,
Where we spoke French and German, Italian, English.
I wed Count Navigato, native of Genoa.
We went to Rome. He poisoned me, I think.
Now in the Campo Santo overlooking
The sea where young Columbus dreamed new worlds,
See what they chiseled: "Contessa Navigato
Implora eterna quiete."
With A Flower.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

When roses cease to bloom, dear,
And violets are done,
When bumble-bees in solemn flight
Have passed beyond the sun,
The hand that paused to gather
Upon this summer's day
Will idle lie, in Auburn, --
Then take my flower, pray!
Envy.
by Jean Blewett

When Satan sends - to vex the mind of man
And urge him on to meanness and to wrong - 
His satellites, there is not one that can
Acquit itself like envy. Not so strong
As lust, so quick as fear, so big as hate - 
A pigmy thing, the twin of sordid greed - 
Its work all noble things to underrate,
Decry fair face, fair form, fair thought, fair deed,
A sneer it has for what is highest, best,
For love's soft voice, and virtue's robe of white;
Truth is not true, and pity is not kind,
A great task done is but a pastime light.
Tormented and tormenting is the mind
That grants to envy room to make its nest.
The Pirates In England
by Rudyard Kipling

When Rome was rotten-ripe to her fall,
And the sceptre passed from her hand,
The pestilent Picts leaped over the wall
To harry the English land.
The little dark men of the mountain and waste,
So quick to laughter and tears,
They came panting with hate and haste
For the loot of five hundred years.
They killed the trader, they sacked the shops,
They ruined temple and town,
They swept like wolves through the standing crops
Crying that Rome was down.
They wiped out all that they could find
Of beauty and strength and worth,
But they could not wipe out the Viking's Wind
That brings the ships from the North.
They could not wipe out the North-East gales
Nor what those gales set free,
The pirate ships with their close-reefed sails,
Leaping from sea to sea.
They had forgotten the shield-hung hull
Seen nearer and more plain,
Dipping into the troughs like a gull,
And gull-like rising again.
The painted eyes that glare and frown 
In the high snake-headed stem,
Searching the beach while her sail comes down,
They had forgotten them!
There was no Count of the Saxon Shore
To meet her hand to hand,
As she took the beach with a grind and a roar,
And the pirates rushed inland!
The Dark Little Rose
by Michael Earls

IRELAND
When shall we find the spring come in,
And the fragrant air it blows?
And when shall the bounty of summer win
Fairer than fields of Camolin
For the dark little Rose?
Long was the winter, the storms how long!
What flower may live i' the snows!
No bloom shall last under heels of wrong,
If the heart-blood be not deathless strong,
As the dark little Rose.
Sing hers the culture sweeter than rain
That healed old Europe's woes;
Older than bowers of Lille and Louvain
Grew by the Rhine and the towns of Spain
From the dark little Rose.
Leagues in the sunlight never shall fail
While the broad, round ocean flows;
Though never a fleet goes up Kinsale,
See, all the world is within the pale
Of the dark little Rose.
Rest
by George MacDonald

I.
When round the earth the Father's hands
Have gently drawn the dark;
Sent off the sun to fresher lands,
And curtained in the lark;
'Tis sweet, all tired with glowing day,
To fade with fading light,
And lie once more, the old weary way,
Upfolded in the night.
If mothers o'er our slumbers bend,
And unripe kisses reap,
In soothing dreams with sleep they blend,
Till even in dreams we sleep.
And if we wake while night is dumb,
'Tis sweet to turn and say,
It is an hour ere dawning come,
And I will sleep till day.
II.
There is a dearer, warmer bed,
Where one all day may lie,
Earth's bosom pillowing the head,
And let the world go by.
There come no watching mother's eyes,
The stars instead look down;
Upon it breaks, and silent dies,
The murmur of the town.
The great world, shouting, forward fares:
This chamber, hid from none,
Hides safe from all, for no one cares
For him whose work is done.
Cheer thee, my friend; bethink thee how
A certain unknown place,
Or here or there, is waiting now,
To rest thee from thy race.
III.
Nay, nay, not there the rest from harms,
The still composed breath!
Not there the folding of the arms,
The cool, the blessed death!
That needs no curtained bed to hide
The world with all its wars,
No grassy cover to divide
From sun and moon and stars.
It is a rest that deeper grows
In midst of pain and strife;
A mighty, conscious, willed repose,
The death of deepest life.
To have and hold the precious prize
No need of jealous bars;
But windows open to the skies,
And skill to read the stars!
IV.
Who dwelleth in that secret place,
Where tumult enters not,
Is never cold with terror base,
Never with anger hot.
For if an evil host should dare
His very heart invest,
God is his deeper heart, and there
He enters in to rest.
When mighty sea-winds madly blow,
And tear the scattered waves,
Peaceful as summer woods, below
Lie darkling ocean caves:
The wind of words may toss my heart,
But what is that to me!
Tis but a surface storm--thou art
My deep, still, resting sea.
Trusting Still.
by John Hartley

When shall we meet again?
One more year passed;
One more of grief and pain; - 
Maybe the last.
Are the years sending us
Farther apart?
Or love still blending us
Heart into heart?
Do love's fond memories
Brighten the way,
Or faith's fell enemies
Darken thy day?
Oh! could the word unkind
Be recalled now,
Or in the years behind
Buried lie low,
How would my heart rejoice
As round it fell,
Sweet cadence of thy voice,
Still loved so well.
Sometimes when sad it seems
Whisperings say:
"Cherish thy baseless dreams,
Yet whilst thou may,
Try not to pierce the veil,
Lest thou should'st see,
Only a dark'ning vale
Stretching for thee."
But Hope's mist-shrouded sun
Once more breaks out,
Chasing the shadows dim,
Heavy with doubt.
And far ahead I see,
Two rays entwine;
One faint, as soul of me,
One bright like thine.
And in that welcome sign,
Clearly I view,
Proof of this trust of mine, - 
Thou art still true.
The Yellowhammer
by John Clare

When shall I see the white-thorn leaves agen,
And yellowhammers gathering the dry bents
By the dyke side, on stilly moor or fen,
Feathered with love and nature's good intents?
Rude is the tent this architect invents,
Rural the place, with cart ruts by dyke side.
Dead grass, horse hair, and downy-headed bents
Tied to dead thistles--she doth well provide,
Close to a hill of ants where cowslips bloom
And shed oer meadows far their sweet perfume.
In early spring, when winds blow chilly cold,
The yellowhammer, trailing grass, will come
To fix a place and choose an early home,
With yellow breast and head of solid gold.
Sonnet LXXIII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Quando giugne per gli occhi al cor profondo.
HE DESCRIBES THE STATE OF TWO LOVERS, AND RETURNS IN THOUGHT TO HIS OWN SUFFERINGS.
When reaches through the eyes the conscious heart
Its imaged fate, all other thoughts depart;
The powers which from the soul their functions take
A dead weight on the frame its limbs then make.
From the first miracle a second springs,
At times the banish'd faculty that brings,
So fleeing from itself, to some new seat,
Which feeds revenge and makes e'en exile sweet.
Thus in both faces the pale tints were rife,
Because the strength which gave the glow of life
On neither side was where it wont to dwell--
I on that day these things remember'd well,
Of that fond couple when each varying mien
Told me in like estate what long myself had been.
MACGREGOR.