DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Senlin, A Biography: Part 02: His Futile Preoccupations - 07
by Conrad Potter Aiken

It is noontime, Senlin says. The sky is brilliant
Above a green and dreaming hill.
I lay my trowel down. The pool is cloudless,
The grass, the wall, the peach-tree, all are still.
It appears to me that I am one with these:
A hill, upon whose back are a wall and trees.
It is noontime: all seems still
Upon this green and flowering hill.
Yet suddenly out of nowhere in the sky,
A cloud comes whirling, and flings
A lazily coiled vortex of shade on the hill.
It crosses the hill, and a bird in the peach-tree sings.
Amazing! Is there a change?
The hill seems somehow strange.
It is noontime. And in the tree
The leaves are delicately disturbed
Where the bird descends invisibly.
It is noontime. And in the pool
The sky is blue and cool.
Yet suddenly out of nowhere,
Something flings itself at the hill,
Tears with claws at the earth,
Lunges and hisses and softly recoils,
Crashing against the green.
The peach-tree braces itself, the pool is frightened,
The grass-blades quiver, the bird is still;
The wall silently struggles against the sunlight;
A terror stiffens the hill.
The trees turn rigidly, to face
Something that circles with slow pace:
The blue pool seems to shrink
From something that slides above its brink.
What struggle is this, ferocious and still,
What war in sunlight on this hill?
What is it creeping to dart
Like a knife-blade at my heart?
It is noontime, Senlin says, and all is tranquil:
The brilliant sky burns over a greenbright earth.
The peach-tree dreams in the sun, the wall is contented.
A bird in the peach-leaves, moving from sun to shadow,
Phrases again his unremembering mirth,
His lazily beautiful, foolish, mechanical mirth.
Evening Song Of Senlin
by Conrad Potter Aiken

It is moonlight. Alone in the silence
I ascend my stairs once more,
While waves, remote in a pale blue starlight,
Crash on a white sand shore.
It is moonlight. The garden is silent.
I stand in my room alone.
Across my wall, from the far-off moon,
A rain of fire is thrown . . .
There are houses hanging above the stars,
And stars hung under a sea:
And a wind from the long blue vault of time
Waves my curtain for me . . .
I wait in the dark once more,
Swung between space and space:
Before my mirror I lift my hands
And face my remembered face.
Is it I who stand in a question here,
Asking to know my name? . . .
It is I, yet I know not whither I go,
Nor why, nor whence I came.
It is I, who awoke at dawn
And arose and descended the stair,
Conceiving a god in the eye of the sun,
In a woman's hands and hair.
It is I whose flesh is gray with the stones
I builded into a wall:
With a mournful melody in my brain
Of a tune I cannot recall . . .
There are roses to kiss: and mouths to kiss;
And the sharp-pained shadow of death.
I remember a rain-drop on my cheek,
A wind like a fragrant breath . . .
And the star I laugh on tilts through heaven;
And the heavens are dark and steep . . .
I will forget these things once more
In the silence of sleep.
Arrow And Bow
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

It is easy to stand in the pulpit, or in the closet to kneel,
And say:    'God do this; God do that! - 
Make the world better; relieve the sorrows of man; for the sake of
Thy Son,
Oh, forgive all sin!'    Then, having planned out God's work, to feel
Our duty is done.
It is easy to be religious this way - 
Easy to pray.
It is harder to stand on the highway, or walk in the crowded mart;
And say:    'I am He.    I am He.
'Mine the world-burden; mine the sorrows of men; mine the Christ-work
'To forgive my brother's sin,' and then to live the Christ-part and never to shirk.
It is hard for you and me
To be religious this way,
Day after day.
But God is no longer in heaven; we drove Him out with our prayers,
Drove Him out with our sermons and creeds, and our endless plaints and despairs.
He came down over the borders, and Christ, too, came along;
They are looking the whole world over to see just what is wrong.
God has grown weary of hearing His praises sung on earth;
And Jesus is weary of hearing the story about His birth;
And the way to win Their favour, that is surer than any other,
Is to join in a song of Brotherhood and praises of one another.
No; God is no longer in heaven; He has come down on earth to see
That nothing is wrong with the world He made; THE WRONG IS IN YOU AND ME.
He meant the earth for a garden-spot, where mill and factory stand;
Childhood, he meant for growing-time - but look at the toiling band!
Woman was meant for mother and mate - now look at the slaves of lust.
And the good folks shake their heads and say, 'We must pray to God and trust.'
God has a billion books of our prayers unopened upon his shelves,
For the things we are begging Him to do, He wants us to do ourselves.
Jehovah, Jesus, and each soul in space
Are one and undividable.    Until
We see God shining in each neighbour's face
And find Him in ourselves and hail Him there,
What use is prayer?
Let us be still.
How can we love the whole and not each part?
How worship God, and harbour in the heart
Hate of God's members - for all men are that.
Too long our souls have sat,
Like poor blind beggars at the door of God.
He never made a beggar - we are kings!
Let us rise up, for it is time we trod
The mountain-tops; time that we did the things
We have so long asked God to do.
He waits for you
To look deep in your brother's eyes and see
The God within;
To hear you say 'Lo, thou art He; Lo, thou art He.'
This is the only way to end all sin,
The difficult, one way.
A prayer without a deed is an arrow without a bow-string;
A deed without a prayer is a bow-string without an arrow.
The heart of a man should be like a quiver full of arrows,
And the hand of a man should be like a strong bow strung for action.
The heart of a man should keep his arrows ever ascending,
And the hand and the mind of a man should keep at a work unending.
A Niello
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
It is not early spring and yet
Of bloodroot blooms along the stream,
And blotted banks of violet,
My heart will dream.
Is it because the windflower apes
The beauty that was once her brow,
That the white memory of it shapes
The April now?
Because the wild-rose wears the blush
That once made sweet her maidenhood,
Its thought makes June of barren bush
And empty wood?
And then I think how young she died
Straight, barren Death stalks down the trees,
The hard-eyed Hours by his side,
That kill and freeze.
II.
When orchards are in bloom again
My heart will bound, my blood will beat,
To hear the redbird so repeat,
On boughs of rosy stain,
His blithe, loud song, like some far strain
From out the past, among the bloom,
(Where bee and wasp and hornet boom)
Fresh, redolent of rain.
When orchards are in bloom once more,
Invasions of lost dreams will draw
My feet, like some insistent law,
Through blossoms to her door:
In dreams I'll ask her, as before,
To let me help her at the well;
And fill her pail; and long to tell
My love as once of yore.
I shall not speak until we quit
The farm-gate, leading to the lane
And orchard, all in bloom again,
Mid which the bluebirds sit
And sing; and through whose blossoms flit
The catbirds crying while they fly:
Then tenderly I'll speak, and try
To tell her all of it.
And in my dream again she'll place
Her hand in mine, as oft before,
When orchards are in bloom once more,
With all her young-girl grace:
And we shall tarry till a trace
Of sunset dyes the heav'ns; and then
We'll part; and, parting, I again
Shall bend and kiss her face.
And homeward, singing, I shall go
Along the cricket-chirring ways,
While sunset, one long crimson blaze
Of orchards, lingers low:
And my dead youth again I'll know,
And all her love, when spring is here
Whose memory holds me many a year,
Whose love still haunts me so!
III.
I would not die when Springtime lifts
The white world to her maiden mouth,
And heaps its cradle with gay gifts,
Breeze-blown from out the singing South:
Too full of life and loves that cling;
Too heedless of all mortal woe,
The young, unsympathetic Spring,
That Death should never know.
I would not die when Summer shakes
Her daisied locks below her hips,
And naked as a star that takes
A cloud, into the silence slips:
Too rich is Summer; poor in needs;
In egotism of loveliness
Her pomp goes by; and never heeds
One life the more or less.
But I would die when Autumn goes,
The dark rain dripping from her hair,
Through forests where the wild wind blows
Death and the red wreck everywhere:
Sweet as love's last farewells and tears
To fall asleep when skies are gray,
In the old autumn of my years,
Like a dead leaf borne far away.
Nemesis
by Henry Lawson

It is night-time when the saddest and the darkest memories haunt,
When outside the printing office the most glaring posters flaunt,
When the love-wrong is accomplished. And I think of things and mark
That the blackest lies are written, told, and printed after dark.
'Tis the time of 'late editions'. It is night when, as of old,
Foulest things are done for hatred, for ambition, love and gold.
Racing from the senseless city down the dull suburban streets,
Come again the ragged newsboys yelping with their paltry sheets,
Lying posters meaning nothing, double columns meaning less,
Twisted facts and reckless falsehoods, dodges of the Daily Press.
In the town the roar and rattle of the great machines once more,
Greedy for the extra penny, while the 'Public' howls for war.
War because of one poor blunder made in panic far away,
While a thousand men were lying on the battlefield to-day:
Dead heaped on the helpless dying, blinded eyes and brains that swim,
Parched or choked with their own life-blood, battered head and broken limb.
Wounds too ghastly to be pictured. Things to seem like men no more,
Crying out to Christ for water, and oblivion, that is war.
And the poets of the nation, singing-birds or carrion-birds,
Bluff with cheap alliteration and the boom of empty words,
Catch the crowd with cheating phrases, as a jingo laureate flings
Recklessly his high defiance in the 'grinning teeth of Things'.
They pretend to lead who follow this day's crowd with lying tact;
Let them fling their high defiance in the stony face of Fact.
And so Russia, maimed and baited, seeing nought but storm to come,
Sailed upon a desperate venture, cursed by treachery at home;
Seeing danger in each shadow, thinking doubtless now and then
Of the swift fate of her warship with its seven hundred men;
And she struck out in the darkness at the ally of her foe,
Struck out blindly as a wounded dying bear might strike a blow.
Ah, we well might howl for vengeance, we who killed for killing's sake,
Murdered helpless men in daylight, in cold blood by no mistake,
We who burnt the homes of women when the nights were cold and damp;
We who murdered little children in the concentration camp!
(When the farmers downed the lion for a season in his pride,
Say, did Russia take advantage then, while England's hands were tied?)
Wipe away the blood that binds you!, struggle to your feet again,
Shake them from your shoulders, Ivan, Ivan nearly mad with pain.
You must fight it single-handed on the deck or in the trench.
Look not to the boorish German! Look not to the fickle French!
Rather look to blinded England when her sight is clear again.
(And remember in the future there is chivalry in Spain.)
Scoff at Russia on the ocean and her helplessness forget,
But on land the braggart Mongol has not done with Ivan yet;
He's a fierce and cruel tyrant (we are not as others are);
But his slaves would die by thousands for their country and the Czar,
While a single broken column drags a battery through the mire,
And a single battered cruiser has a gun that she can fire.
Sonnet. Death.
by Thomas Hood

It is not death, that sometime in a sigh
This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight;
That sometime these bright stars, that now reply
In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night;
That warm conscious flesh shall perish quite,
And all life's ruddy springs forget to flow;
That thoughts shall cease, and the immortal sprite
Be lapp'd in alien clay and laid below;
It is not death to know this, - but to know
That pious thoughts, which visit at new graves
In tender pilgrimage, will cease to go
So duly and so oft, - and when grass waves
Over the past-away, there may be then
No resurrection in the minds of men.
Frost Flowers
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

It is not long since, here among all these folk
in London, I should have held myself
of no account whatever,
but should have stood aside and made them way
thinking that they, perhaps,
had more right than I - for who was I?
Now I see them just the same, and watch them.
But of what account do I hold them?
Especially the young women. I look at them
as they dart and flash
before the shops, like wagtails on the edge of a pool.
If I pass them close, or any man,
like sharp, slim wagtails they flash a little aside
pretending to avoid us; yet all the time
calculating.
They think that we adore them - alas, would it were true!
Probably they think all men adore them,
howsoever they pass by.
What is it, that, from their faces fresh as spring,
such fair, fresh, alert, first-flower faces,
like lavender crocuses, snowdrops, like Roman hyacinths,
scyllas and yellow-haired hellebore, jonquils, dim anemones,
even the sulphur auriculas,
flowers that come first from the darkness, and feel cold to the touch,
flowers scentless or pungent, ammoniacal almost;
what is it, that, from the faces of the fair young women
comes like a pungent scent, a vibration beneath
that startles me, alarms me, stirs up a repulsion?
They are the issue of acrid winter, these first- flower young women;
their scent is lacerating and repellant,
it smells of burning snow, of hot-ache,
of earth, winter-pressed, strangled in corruption;
it is the scent of the fiery-cold dregs of corruption,
when destruction soaks through the mortified, decomposing earth,
and the last fires of dissolution burn in the bosom of the ground.
They are the flowers of ice-vivid mortification,
thaw-cold, ice-corrupt blossoms,
with a loveliness I loathe;
for what kind of ice-rotten, hot-aching heart must they need to root in!
Kavin Again.
by Bliss Carman (William)

It is not anything he says,
It's just his presence and his smile,
The blarney of his silences
That cocker and beguile.
Enough
by Sara Teasdale

It is enough for me by day
To walk the same bright earth with him;
Enough that over us by night
The same great roof of stars is dim.
I do not hope to bind the wind
Or set a fetter on the sea,
It is enough to feel his love,
Blow by like music over me.
Worth While
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

It is easy enough to be pleasant
When life flows by like a song,
But the man worth while is the one who will smile
When everything goes dead wrong.
For the test of the heart is trouble,
And it always comes with the years,
And the smile that is worth the praises of earth
Is the smile that shines through tears.
It is easy enough to be prudent
When nothing tempts you to stray,
When without or within no voice of sin
Is luring your soul away;
But it's only a negative virtue
Until it is tried by fire,
And the life that is worth the honour on earth
Is the one that resists desire.
By the cynic, the sad, the fallen,
Who had no strength for the strife,
The world's highway is cumbered to-day - 
They make up the sum of life;
But the virtue that conquers passion,
And the sorrow that hides in a smile - 
It is these that are worth the homage on earth,
For we find them but once in a while.
A Voice From the Farm
by James Whitcomb Riley

It is my dream to have you here with me,
Out of the heated city's dust and din -
Here where the colts have room to gambol in,
And kine to graze, in clover to the knee.
I want to see your wan face happily
Lit with the wholesome smiles that have not been
In use since the old games you used to win
When we pitched horseshoes: And I want to be
At utter loaf with you in this dim land
Of grove and meadow, while the crickets make
Our own talk tedious, and the bat wields
His bulky flight, as we cease converse and
In a dusk like velvet smoothly take
Our way toward home across the dewy fields.
Senlin, A Biography: Part 02: His Futile Preoccupations - 05
by Conrad Potter Aiken

It is noontime, Senlin says, and a street piano
Strikes sharply against the sunshine a harsh chord,
And the universe is suddenly agitated,
And pain to my heart goes glittering like a sword.
Do I imagine it? The dust is shaken,
The sunlight quivers, the brittle oak-leaves tremble.
The world, disturbed, conceals its agitation;
And I, too, will dissemble.
Yet it is sorrow has found my heart,
Sorrow for beauty, sorrow for death;
And pain twirls slowly among the trees.
The street-piano revolves its glittering music,
The sharp notes flash and dazzle and turn,
Memory's knives are in this sunlit silence,
They ripple and lazily burn.
The star on which my shadow falls is frightened,
It does not move; my trowel taps a stone,
The sweet note wavers amid derisive music;
And I, in horror of sunlight, stand alone.
Do not recall my weakness, savage music!
Let the knives rest!
Impersonal, harsh, the music revolves and glitters,
And the notes like poniards pierce my breast.
And I remember the shadows of webs on stones,
And the sound or rain on withered grass,
And a sorrowful face that looked without illusions
At its image in the glass.
Do not recall my childhood, pitiless music!
The green blades flicker and gleam,
The red bee bends the clover, deeply humming;
In the blue sea above me lazily stream
Cloud upon thin-brown cloud, revolving, scattering;
The mulberry tree rakes heaven and drops its fruit;
Amazing sunlight sings in the opened vault
On dust and bones, and I am mute.
It is noon; the bells let fall soft flowers of sound.
They turn on the air, they shrink in the flare of noon.
It is night; and I lie alone, and watch through the window
The terrible ice-white emptiness of the moon.
Small bells, far off, spill jewels of sound like rain,
A long wind hurries them whirled and far,
A cloud creeps over the moon, my bed is darkened,
I hold my breath and watch a star.
Do not disturb my memories, heartless music!
I stand once more by a vine-dark moonlit wall,
The sound of my footsteps dies in a void of moonlight,
And I watch white jasmine fall.
Is it my heart that falls? Does earth itself
Drift, a white petal, down the sky?
One bell-note goes to the stars in the blue-white silence,
Solitary and mournful, a somnolent cry.
It Is Not A Word
by Sara Teasdale

It is not a word spoken,
Few words are said;
Nor even a look of the eyes
Nor a bend of the head,
But only a hush of the heart
That has too much to keep,
Only memories waking
That sleep so light a sleep.
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet V
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

It is most true that eyes are form'd to serue
The inward light, and that the heauenly part
Ought to be King, from whose rules who do swerue,
Rebels to nature, striue for their owne smart.
It is most true, what we call Cupids dart
An image is, which for ourselues we carue,
And, foolse, adore in temple of our hart,
Till that good god make church and churchmen starue.
True, that true beautie virtue is indeed,
Whereof this beautie can be but a shade,
Which, elements with mortal mixture breed.
True, that on earth we are but pilgrims made,
And should in soule up to our countrey moue:
True, and yet true that I must Stella loue.
A Ni'llo
by Madison Julius Cawein

I
It is not early spring and yet
Of bloodroot blooms along the stream,
And blotted banks of violet,
My heart will dream.
Is it because the windflower apes
The beauty that was once her brow,
That the white memory of it shapes
The April now?
Because the wild-rose wears the blush
That once made sweet her maidenhood,
Its thought makes June of barren bush
And empty wood?
And then I think how young she died - 
Straight, barren Death stalks down the trees,
The hard-eyed Hours by his side,
That kill and freeze.
II
When orchards are in bloom again
My heart will bound, my blood will beat,
To hear the redbird so repeat,
On boughs of rosy stain,
His blithe, loud song, - like some far strain
From out the past, - among the bloom, - 
(Where bee and wasp and hornet boom) - 
Fresh, redolent of rain.
When orchards are in bloom once more,
Invasions of lost dreams will draw
My feet, like some insistent law,
Through blossoms to her door:
In dreams I'll ask her, as before,
To let me help her at the well;
And fill her pail; and long to tell
My love as once of yore.
I shall not speak until we quit
The farm-gate, leading to the lane
And orchard, all in bloom again,
Mid which the bluebirds sit
And sing; and through whose blossoms flit
The catbirds crying while they fly:
Then tenderly I'll speak, and try
To tell her all of it.
And in my dream again she'll place
Her hand in mine, as oft before, - 
When orchards are in bloom once more, - 
With all her young-girl grace:
And we shall tarry till a trace
Of sunset dyes the heav'ns; and then - 
We'll part; and, parting, I again
Shall bend and kiss her face.
And homeward, singing, I shall go
Along the cricket-chirring ways,
While sunset, one long crimson blaze
Of orchards, lingers low:
And my dead youth again I'll know,
And all her love, when spring is here - 
Whose memory holds me many a year,
Whose love still haunts me so!
III
I would not die when Springtime lifts
The white world to her maiden mouth,
And heaps its cradle with gay gifts,
Breeze-blown from out the singing South:
Too full of life and loves that cling;
Too heedless of all mortal woe,
The young, unsympathetic Spring,
That Death should never know.
I would not die when Summer shakes
Her daisied locks below her hips,
And naked as a star that takes
A cloud, into the silence slips:
Too rich is Summer; poor in needs;
In egotism of loveliness
Her pomp goes by, and never heeds
One life the more or less.
But I would die when Autumn goes,
The dark rain dripping from her hair,
Through forests where the wild wind blows
Death and the red wreck everywhere:
Sweet as love's last farewells and tears
To fall asleep when skies are gray,
In the old autumn of my years,
Like a dead leaf borne far away.
Improvisations: Light And Snow: 10
by Conrad Potter Aiken

It is night time, and cold, and snow is falling,
And no wind grieves the walls.
In the small world of light around the arc-lamp
A swarm of snowflakes falls and falls.
The street grows silent. The last stranger passes.
The sound of his feet, in the snow, is indistinct.
What forgotten sadness is it, on a night like this,
Takes possession of my heart?
Why do I think of a camellia tree in a southern garden,
With pink blossoms among dark leaves,
Standing, surprised, in the snow?
Why do I think of spring?
The snowflakes, helplessly veering,
Fall silently past my window;
They come from darkness and enter darkness.
What is it in my heart is surprised and bewildered
Like that camellia tree,
Beautiful still in its glittering anguish?
And spring so far away!
Senlin, A Biography: Part 02: His Futile Preoccupations - 10
by Conrad Potter Aiken

It is moonlight. Alone in the silence
I ascend my stairs once more,
While waves, remote in a pale blue starlight,
Crash on a white sand shore.
It is moonlight. The garden is silent.
I stand in my room alone.
Across my wall, from the far-off moon,
A rain of fire is thrown . . .
There are houses hanging above the stars,
And stars hung under a sea:
And a wind from the long blue vault of time
Waves my curtain for me . . .
I wait in the dark once more,
Swung between space and space:
Before my mirror I lift my hands
And face my remembered face.
Is it I who stand in a question here,
Asking to know my name? . . .
It is I, yet I know not whither I go,
Nor why, nor whence I came.
It is I, who awoke at dawn
And arose and descended the stair,
Conceiving a god in the eye of the sun,
In a woman's hands and hair.
It is I whose flesh is gray with the stones
I builded into a wall:
With a mournful melody in my brain
Of a tune I cannot recall . . .
There are roses to kiss: and mouths to kiss;
And the sharp-pained shadow of death.
I remember a rain-drop on my cheek,
A wind like a fragrant breath . . .
And the star I laugh on tilts through heaven;
And the heavens are dark and steep . . .
I will forget these things once more
In the silence of sleep.