DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
All That I Was I Am
by John Frederick Freeman

Hateful it seems now, yet was I not happy?
Starved of the things I loved, I did not know
I loved them, and was happy lacking them.
If bitterness comes now (and that is hell)
It is when I forget that I was happy,
Accusing Fate, that sits and nods and laughs,
Because I was not born a bird or tree.
Let accusation sleep, lest God's own finger
Point angry from the cloud in which He hides.
Who may regret what was, since it has made
Himself himself? All that I was I am,
And the old childish joy now lives in me
At sight of a green field or a green tree.
Repaired
by Edward Dyson

Hauled I was from out the tip
Fritz made with his demonstration,
All broke up, a fractured hip
In me Darby Kell a rip
Settn' up a cool sensation
Like excessive ventilation
One 'and cluttered up a treat,
On me oath you wouldn't know it
From a 'and some plate of meat.
They had sorter pied me feet,
And a bullet of the foe hit
Where no decent bloke could show it.
'Arf a year they've botched me now;
Ev'ry scientific schemer
In the cor' has faked me prow,
Soled 'n' heeled a bloke somehow,
Gawd, the last one was a screamer.
Wirin' up me flamin' femur!
Comes a guy and pipes you square,
Gogglin' at you through his glasses,
Swings you in the barber's chair,
Tilts you this end up with care,
Lets you have a whiff of gasses
Chattin' off-hand with the lasses.
Then he slices clean 'n' swift,
Like a cobbler cuts his leather,
Gives the splintered knob a lift,
S'elp me tater, it's a gift
How they glues you all together,
Sayin' it's bin nicer weather!
Surgeon wipes his 'ands, a verse
Chort1e softly as he pitches
Probes and sponges to the nurse,
Thinks the lunch might have bin worse;
Close your little gap he hitches,
Whistlin' as he jabs the stitches.
I'm caught in with fiddle-strings,
Stuck about with bits 'n' patches,
Fixed with ligatures 'n' springs,
Lath 'n' plastered, swung in slings
Skewered with little wooden matches,
Hung with hinges, knobs 'n' latches.
Till I lay behind me screen,
Serious 'n' sober one day,
Satisfied 'n' all serene,
'Arf a man 'n' 'arf machine
What they winds up ev'ry Monday
'N' it tilts all ways by Sunday.
'Ome again I'll come, a neat,
Semi-autymatic loafer,
Number up, 'n' all complete,
Creakin' round on Collins Street,
With a license (which I'll owe for)
My own car and my own shofer!
Perseverance.
by Robert Herrick

Hast thou begun an act? ne'er then give o'er:
No man despairs to do what's done before.
The Boys
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

1859
Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys?
If there has, take him out, without making a noise.
Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite!
Old Time is a liar! We're twenty to-night!
We're twenty! We're twenty! Who says we are more?
He's tipsy, - young jackanapes! - show him the door!
"Gray temples at twenty?" - Yes! white if we please;
Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze!
Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake!
Look close, - you will see not a sign of a flake!
We want some new garlands for those we have shed, - 
And these are white roses in place of the red.
We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told,
Of talking (in public) as if we were old: - 
That boy we call "Doctor," and this we call "Judge;"
It 's a neat little fiction, - of course it 's all fudge.
That fellow's the "Speaker," - the one on the right;
"Mr. Mayor," my young one, how are you to-night?
That's our "Member of Congress," we say when we chaff;
There's the "Reverend" What's his name? - don't make me laugh.
That boy with the grave mathematical look
Made believe he had written a wonderful book,
And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was true!
So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too!
There's a boy, we pretend, with a three-decker brain,
That could harness a team with a logical chain;
When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire,
We called him "The Justice," but now he's "The Squire."
And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith, - 
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith;
But he shouted a song for the brave and the free, - 
Just read on his medal, "My country," "of thee!"
You hear that boy laughing? - You think he's all fun;
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!
Yes, we 're boys, - always playing with tongue or with pen, - 
And I sometimes have asked, - Shall we ever be men?
Shall we always be youthful, and laughing, and gay,
Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?
Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!
The stars of its winter, the dews of its May!
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
Dear Father, take care of thy children, THE BOYS!
A Parting.
by W. M. MacKeracher

Has the last farewell been spoken?
Have I ta'en the parting token
From thy lips so sweet?
Has their last soft word been spoken
Till again we meet?
Why is not thy hand extended?
Is my maiden queen offended?
Or does she forget?
No! my queen is not offended,
She is kindly yet.
For her eye is softly beaming,
And with tenderness is teeming,
Gentle as the dove's:
With a holy light is beaming -
Dare I call it love's?
But the time is fast advancing;
From the heaven of its glancing
I must rend my heart:
Treacherous Time is fast advancing,
And I must depart.
Ah! the pain the parting brings me!
As a serpent's fang it stings me,
Leaves me almost dead:
Ah! the faintness that it brings me
With the future fled!
'Tis a darkened night of sorrow,
Waiting for the light of morrow;
Thus it seems to me:
'Tis a night of pain and sorrow
While I want for thee.
Two long weeks of weary waiting,
All my happiness belating;
When will they be o'er?
Two long weeks of woful waiting
E'er I see thee more.
The Bother
by Rudyard Kipling

Hastily Adam our driver swallowed a curse in the darkness,
Petrol nigh at end and something wrong with a sprocket
Made him speer for the nearest town, when lo! at the crossways
Four blank letterless arms the virginal signpost extended.
"Look!" thundered Hugh the Radical. "This is the England we boast of,
Bland, white-bellied, obese, but utterly useless for business.
They are repainting the signs and have left the job in the middle.
They are repainting the signs and traffic may stop till they've done it,
Which is to say: till the son-of-a-gun of a local contractor,
Having laboriously wiped out every name for
Probably thirty miles round, be minded to finish his labour!
Had not the fool the sense to paint out and paint in together?"
Thus, not seeing his speech belied his Radical Gospel
(Which is to paint out the earth and then write "Damn" on the shutter),
Hugh embroidered the theme imperially and stretched it
From some borough in Wales through our Australian possessions,
Making himself, reformer-wise, a bit of a nuisance
Till, with the help of Adam, we cast him out on the landscape.
Regression Spoils Resolution.
by Robert Herrick

Hast thou attempted greatness? then go on:
Back-turning slackens resolution.
Haunted.
by William Schwenck Gilbert

Haunted? Ay, in a social way
By a body of ghosts in dread array;
But no conventional spectres they -
Appalling, grim, and tricky:
I quail at mine as I'd never quail
At a fine traditional spectre pale,
With a turnip head and a ghostly wail,
And a splash of blood on the dickey!
Mine are horrible, social ghosts, -
Speeches and women and guests and hosts,
Weddings and morning calls and toasts,
In every bad variety:
Ghosts who hover about the grave
Of all that's manly, free, and brave:
You'll find their names on the architrave
Of that charnel-house, Society.
Black Monday black as its school-room ink -
With its dismal boys that snivel and think
Of its nauseous messes to eat and drink,
And its frozen tank to wash in.
That was the first that brought me grief,
And made me weep, till I sought relief
In an emblematical handkerchief,
To choke such baby bosh in.
First and worst in the grim array-
Ghosts of ghosts that have gone their way,
Which I wouldn't revive for a single day
For all the wealth of PLUTUS -
Are the horrible ghosts that school-days scared:
If the classical ghost that BRUTUS dared
Was the ghost of his "Caesar" unprepared,
I'm sure I pity BRUTUS.
I pass to critical seventeen;
The ghost of that terrible wedding scene,
When an elderly Colonel stole my Queen,
And woke my dream of heaven.
No schoolgirl decked in her nurse-room curls
Was my gushing innocent Queen of Pearls;
If she wasn't a girl of a thousand girls,
She was one of forty-seven!
I see the ghost of my first cigar,
Of the thence-arising family jar -
Of my maiden brief (I was at the Bar,
And I called the Judge "Your wushup!")
Of reckless days and reckless nights,
With wrenched-off knockers, extinguished lights,
Unholy songs and tipsy fights,
Which I strove in vain to hush up.
Ghosts of fraudulent joint-stock banks,
Ghosts of "copy, declined with thanks,"
Of novels returned in endless ranks,
And thousands more, I suffer.
The only line to fitly grace
My humble tomb, when I've run my race,
Is, "Reader, this is the resting-place
Of an unsuccessful duffer."
I've fought them all, these ghosts of mine,
But the weapons I've used are sighs and brine,
And now that I'm nearly forty-nine,
Old age is my chiefest bogy;
For my hair is thinning away at the crown,
And the silver fights with the worn-out brown;
And a general verdict sets me down
As an irreclaimable fogy.
The Cask Of Hate
by Charles Baudelaire

Hate is the cask of the Dana'des;
Vengeance, distraught, has red and brawny arms,
With which she hurls into her empty dark
Buckets of blood and tears from dead men's eyes.
Satan makes secret holes through which will fly
Out of these depths a thousand years of pain,
Though Hate will use her victims once again,
Resuscitating them to squeeze them dry.
Hate is a drunkard in a tavern's depths
Who feels a constant thirst, from drinking born,
That thrives and multiplies like Hydra's heads.
But happy drinkers know their conqueror,
And Hate is dealt a bitter fate, unable
Ever to fall asleep under the table.
The Better Day
by Archibald Lampman

Harsh thoughts, blind angers, and fierce hands,
That keep this restless world at strife,
Mean passions that, like choking sands,
Perplex the stream of life,
Pride and hot envy and cold greed,
The cankers of the loftier will,
What if ye triumph, and yet bleed?
Ah, can ye not be still?
Oh, shall there be no space, no time,
No century of weal in store,
No freehold in a nobler clime,
Where men shall strive no more?
Where every motion of the heart
Shall serve the spirit's master-call,
Where self shall be the unseen part,
And human kindness all?
Or shall we but by fits and gleams
Sink satisfied, and cease to rave,
Find love but in the rest of dreams,
And peace but in the grave?
Haunted
by William Schwenck Gilbert

Haunted? Ay, in a social way
By a body of ghosts in dread array;
But no conventional spectres they
Appalling, grim, and tricky:
I quail at mine as I'd never quail
At a fine traditional spectre pale,
With a turnip head and a ghostly wail,
And a splash of blood on the dickey!
Mine are horrible, social ghosts,
Speeches and women and guests and hosts,
Weddings and morning calls and toasts,
In every bad variety:
Ghosts who hover about the grave
Of all that's manly, free, and brave:
You'll find their names on the architrave
Of that charnel-house, Society.
Black Monday black as its school-room ink
With its dismal boys that snivel and think
Of its nauseous messes to eat and drink,
And its frozen tank to wash in.
That was the first that brought me grief,
And made me weep, till I sought relief
In an emblematical handkerchief,
To choke such baby bosh in.
First and worst in the grim array-
Ghosts of ghosts that have gone their way,
Which I wouldn't revive for a single day
For all the wealth of PLUTUS
Are the horrible ghosts that school-days scared:
If the classical ghost that BRUTUS dared
Was the ghost of his "Caesar" unprepared,
I'm sure I pity BRUTUS.
I pass to critical seventeen;
The ghost of that terrible wedding scene,
When an elderly Colonel stole my Queen,
And woke my dream of heaven.
No schoolgirl decked in her nurse-room curls
Was my gushing innocent Queen of Pearls;
If she wasn't a girl of a thousand girls,
She was one of forty-seven!
I see the ghost of my first cigar,
Of the thence-arising family jar
Of my maiden brief (I was at the Bar,
And I called the Judge "Your wushup!")
Of reckless days and reckless nights,
With wrenched-off knockers, extinguished lights,
Unholy songs and tipsy fights,
Which I strove in vain to hush up.
Ghosts of fraudulent joint-stock banks,
Ghosts of "copy, declined with thanks,"
Of novels returned in endless ranks,
And thousands more, I suffer.
The only line to fitly grace
My humble tomb, when I've run my race,
Is, "Reader, this is the resting-place
Of an unsuccessful duffer."
I've fought them all, these ghosts of mine,
But the weapons I've used are sighs and brine,
And now that I'm nearly forty-nine,
Old age is my chiefest bogy;
For my hair is thinning away at the crown,
And the silver fights with the worn-out brown;
And a general verdict sets me down
As an irreclaimable fogy.
The Philosophical Egotist.
by Friedrich Schiller

Hast thou the infant seen that yet, unknowing of the love
Which warms and cradles, calmly sleeps the mother's heart above 
Wandering from arm to arm, until the call of passion wakes,
And glimmering on the conscious eye the world in glory breaks?
And hast thou seen the mother there her anxious vigil keep?
Buying with love that never sleeps the darling's happy sleep?
With her own life she fans and feeds that weak life's trembling rays,
And with the sweetness of the care, the care itself repays.
And dost thou Nature then blaspheme that both the child and mother
Each unto each unites, the while the one doth need the other? 
All self-sufficing wilt thou from that lovely circle stand 
That creature still to creature links in faith's familiar band?
Ah! dar'st thou, poor one, from the rest thy lonely self estrange?
Eternal power itself is but all powers in interchange!
Inscriptions - Supposed To Be Found In And Near A Hermit's Cell, 1818 - III
by William Wordsworth

Hast thou seen, with flash incessant,
Bubbles gliding under ice,
Bodied forth and evanescent,
No one knows by what device?
Such are thoughts! A wind-swept meadow
Mimicking a troubled sea,
Such is life; and death a shadow
From the rock eternity!
Idle
by Pamela S. Vining, (J. C. Yule)

"Work to-day in my vineyard!"
Hast thou, then, been called to labor
In the vineyard of thy Lord,
With the promise that, if faithful,
Thou shall win a sure reward? - 
Look! the tireless sun is hasting
Toward the zenith, and the day,
Which in vanity thou'rt wasting,
Speedeth rapidly away!
Lo! the field is white for harvest,
And the laborers are few;
Canst thou, then, oh, slothful servant!
Find no work that thou canst do?
Sitting idle in the vineyard!
Sleeping, while the noon-day flies!
Dreaming, while with every pulse-beat
Some unsaved one droops and dies!
Waken! overburdened lab'rers,
Fainting in the sultry ray,
Cry against thee to the Master
As thou dream'st the hours away
Waken! patient angels bearing
Home Earth's harvest, grieving see
One by one the bright hours waning,
And no sheaf secured by thee!
And at last, when toil is ended,
And the blessed "Harvest home,"
By exulting angels chanted,
Cheers the lab'rers as they come,
What wilt thou do, slothful servant,
With no gathered sheaf to bring?
How canst thou stand, empty-handed,
In the presence of thy King?
Lo! the field is white for harvest,
And the laborers are few;
Canst thou, then, oh, slothful servant.
Find no work that thou canst do?
Angels wait to bear the tidings
Of some good that thou hast done;
Then, to patient, earnest labor,
Waken, ere the set of sun!
Haste Hurtful.
by Robert Herrick

Haste is unhappy; what we rashly do
Is both unlucky, aye, and foolish, too.
Where war with rashness is attempted, there
The soldiers leave the field with equal fear.
To Warren Hastings, Esq. By An Old Schoolfellow Of His At Westminster.
by William Cowper

Hastings! I knew thee young, and of a mind,
While young, humane, conversable, and kind,
Nor can I well believe thee, gentle then,
Now grown a villain, and the worst of men.
But rather some suspect, who have oppress'd
And worried thee, as not themselves the best.
On The Night Train
by Henry Lawson

Have you seen the bush by moonlight, from the train, go running by?
Blackened log and stump and sapling, ghostly trees all dead and dry;
Here a patch of glassy water; there a glimpse of mystic sky?
Have you heard the still voice calling, yet so warm, and yet so cold:
"I'm the Mother-Bush that bore you! Come to me when you are old"?
Did you see the Bush below you sweeping darkly to the Range,
All unchanged and all unchanging, yet so very old and strange!
While you thought in softened anger of the things that did estrange?
(Did you hear the Bush a-calling, when your heart was young and bold:
"I'm the Mother-bush that nursed you; Come to me when you are old"?)
In the cutting or the tunnel, out of sight of stock or shed,
Did you hear the grey Bush calling from the pine-ridge overhead:
"You have seen the seas and cities, all is cold to you, or dead,
All seems done and all seems told, but the grey-light turns to gold!
I'm the Mother-Bush that loves you, come to me now you are old"?
Epimetheus Or The Poet's Afterthought
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Have I dreamed? or was it real,
What I saw as in a vision,
When to marches hymeneal
In the land of the Ideal
Moved my thought o'er Fields Elysian?
What! are these the guests whose glances
Seemed like sunshine gleaming round me?
These the wild, bewildering fancies,
That with dithyrambic dances
As with magic circles bound me?
Ah! how cold are their caresses!
Pallid cheeks, and haggard bosoms!
Spectral gleam their snow-white dresses,
And from loose dishevelled tresses
Fall the hyacinthine blossoms!
O my songs! whose winsome measures
Filled my heart with secret rapture!
Children of my golden leisures!
Must even your delights and pleasures
Fade and perish with the capture?
Fair they seemed, those songs sonorous,
When they came to me unbidden;
Voices single, and in chorus,
Like the wild birds singing o'er us
In the dark of branches hidden.
Disenchantment!    Disillusion!
Must each noble aspiration
Come at last to this conclusion,
Jarring discord, wild confusion,
Lassitude, renunciation?
Not with steeper fall nor faster,
From the sun's serene dominions,
Not through brighter realms nor vaster,
In swift ruin and disaster,
Icarus fell with shattered pinions!
Sweet Pandora! dear Pandora!
Why did mighty Jove create thee
Coy as Thetis, fair as Flora,
Beautiful as young Aurora,
If to win thee is to hate thee?
No, not hate thee! for this feeling
Of unrest and long resistance
Is but passionate appealing,
A prophetic whisper stealing
O'er the chords of our existence.
Him whom thou dost once enamour,
Thou, beloved, never leavest;
In life's discord, strife, and clamor,
Still he feels thy spell of glamour;
Him of Hope thou ne'er bereavest.
Weary hearts by thee are lifted,
Struggling souls by thee are strengthened,
Clouds of fear asunder rifted,
Truth from falsehood cleansed and sifted,
Lives, like days in summer, lengthened!
Therefore art thou ever clearer,
O my Sibyl, my deceiver!
For thou makest each mystery clearer,
And the unattained seems nearer,
When thou fillest my heart with fever!
Muse of all the Gifts and Graces!
Though the fields around us wither,
There are ampler realms and spaces,
Where no foot has left its traces:
Let us turn and wander thither!
The Hunters Of Men
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Have ye heard of our hunting, o'er mountain and glen,
Through cane-brake and forest, the hunting of men?
The lords of our land to this hunting have gone,
As the fox-hunter follows the sound of the horn;
Hark! the cheer and the hallo! the crack of the whip,
And the yell of the hound as he fastens his grip!
All blithe are our hunters, and noble their match,
Though hundreds are caught, there are millions to catch.
So speed to their hunting, o'er mountain and glen,
Through cane-brake and forest, the hunting of men!
Gay luck to our hunters! how nobly they ride
In the glow of their zeal, and the strength of their pride!
The priest with his cassock flung back on the wind,
Just screening the politic statesman behind;
The saint and the sinner, with cursing and prayer,
The drunk and the sober, ride merrily there.
And woman, kind woman, wife, widow, and maid,
For the good of the hunted, is lending her aid:
Her foot's in the stirrup, her hand on the rein,
How blithely she rides to the hunting of men!
Oh, goodly and grand is our hunting to see,
In this "land of the brave and this home of the free."
Priest, warrior, and statesman, from Georgia to Maine,
All mounting the saddle, all grasping the rein;
Right merrily hunting the black man, whose sin
Is the curl of his hair and the hue of his skin!
Woe, now, to the hunted who turns him at bay!
Will our hunters be turned from their purpose and prey?
Will their hearts fail within them? their nerves tremble, when
All roughly they ride to the hunting of men?
Ho! alms for our hunters! all weary and faint,
Wax the curse of the sinner and prayer of the saint.
The horn is wound faintly, the echoes are still,
Over cane-brake and river, and forest and hill.
Haste, alms for our hunters! the hunted once more
Have turned from their flight with their backs to the shore:
What right have they here in the home of the white,
Shadowed o'er by our banner of Freedom and Right?
Ho! alms for the hunters! or never again
Will they ride in their pomp to the hunting of men!
Alms, alms for our hunters! why will ye delay,
When their pride and their glory are melting away?
The parson has turned; for, on charge of his own,
Who goeth a warfare, or hunting, alone?
The politic statesman looks back with a sigh,
There is doubt in his heart, there is fear in his eye.
Oh, haste, lest that doubting and fear shall prevail,
And the head of his steed take the place of the tail.
Oh, haste, ere he leave us! for who will ride then,
For pleasure or gain, to the hunting of men
Answer From Norway To The Speeches In The Swedish House Of Nobles, 1860
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

Have you heard what says the Swede now,
Young Norwegian man?
Have you seen what forms proceed now,
Border-watch to plan?
Shades of those from life departed,
Our forefathers single-hearted,
Who, when words like these were said,
Mounted guard and knew no dread.
Says the Swede now: That our cherished
Norseland's banner red,
That which flew when Magnus perished,
As to-day outspread,
Which o'er Fredrikshald victorious
And o'er Adler waved all glorious,
That the Swedish yellow-blue
Must in shame henceforth eschew.
Says the Swede now: Lost their luster
Have our memories,
Brighter honors shall we muster,
If we borrow his.
Bids us forth to L'tzen stumble,
Close this straw-thatched cottage humble,
Drag our grandsire's ancient seat
To the Swedes for honor meet.
Let it stand, that poor old lumber,
To us dear for aye;
Sweden's ground it could but cumber,
And it might not pay.
For, we know from history's pages,
Some sat there in former ages,
Sverre Priest and other men,
Who may wish to come again.
Says the Swede now: We must know it,
He our freedom gave,
But the Swedish sword can mow it,
Send it to its grave.
Yet the case is not alarming,
He must fare with good fore-arming,
For in truth some fell of yore,
There where he would break a door.
Says the Swede now: We a clever
Little boy remain,
Very suitable to ever
Hold his mantle's train.
But would Christie be so pliant,
With his comrades self-reliant,
If they still at Eidsvold stood,
Sword-girt, building Norway's good?
Big words oft the Swede was saying,
Only small were we,
But they never much were weighing,
When the test should be.
On the little cutter sailing,
Wessel and Norse youth prevailing,
Sweden's flag and frigate chased
From the Kattegat in haste.
Sweden's noblemen are shaking
Charles the Twelfth's proud hat;
We, in council or war-making,
Peers are for all that.
If things take the worse turn in there,
Aid from Torgny we shall win there.
Then o'er all the Northland's skies
Greater freedom's sun shall rise.