DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Norse Nature (In Ringerike During The Student Meeting Of 1869)
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

(See Note 39)
We wander and sing with glee
Of glorious Norway, fair to see.
Let sweetly the tones go twining
In colors so softly shining
On mountain, forest, fjord, and shore,
'Neath heaven's azure arching o'er.
The warmth of the nation's heart,
The depth, the strength, its songs impart,
Here opens its eyes to greet you,
Rejoicing just now to meet you,
And giving, grateful for the chance,
In love a self-revealing glance.
Here wakened our history first,
Here Halfdan dreamed of greatness erst,
In vision of hope beholding
The kingdom's future unfolding,
And Nore stood and summons gave,
While forth to conquest called the wave.
Here singing we must unroll
Of our dear land the pictured scroll!
Let calm turn to storm of wildness,
Bring might into bonds of mildness:
Then Norsemen mustering, each shall see
This is our land's whole history.
To them first our way we wing,
The hundred harbors in the spring,
Where follow fond love and yearning,
When sea-ward the ships are turning.
For Norway's weal pure prayers exhale
From sixty thousand men that sail.
See sloping the skerried coasts,
With gulls and whales and fishing-posts,
And vessels in shelter riding,
While boats o'er the sea are gliding,
And nets in fjord and seines in sound,
And white with spawn the ocean's ground.
See Lofoten's tumult grand,
Where tow'ring cliffs in ocean stand,
Whose summits the fogs are cleaving,
Beneath them the surges heaving,
And all is darkness, mystery, dread,
But 'mid the tumult sails are spread.
Here ships of the Arctic sea;
Through snow and gloom their course must be;
Commands from the masthead falling
The boats toward the ice are calling;
And shot on shot and seal on seal,
And souls and bodies strong as steel.
On mountains we now shall guest,
When eventide to all brings rest,
In dairy on highland meadow,
On hay-field 'neath slanting shadow,
While to the alphorn's tender tone
Great Nature's voice responds alone.
But quickly we must away,
If a11 the land we would survey, - 
The mines of our metal treasures,
The hills of our hunters' pleasures,
The foam-white river's rush and noise,
The timber-driver's foot-sure poise.
Returning, we linger here,
These valleys broad to us are dear,
Whose men in their faithful living
To Norway are honor giving;
Their fathers, strong in brain and brawn,
Lent luster to our morning-dawn.
We wander and sing with glee
Of glorious Norway fair to see.
Our present to labor binds us,
Each how of the past reminds us,
Our future shall be sure and bright,
As God we trust and do the right.
Covenent
by Rudyard Kipling

We thought we ranked above the chance of ill.
Others might fall, not we, for we were wise,
Merchants in freedom. So, of our free-will
We let our servants drug our strength with lies.
The pleasure and the poison had its way
On us as on the meanest, till we learned
That he who lies will steal, who steals will slay.
Neither God's judgment nor man's heart was turned.
Yet there remains His Mercy to be sought
Through wrath and peril till we cleanse the wrong
By that last right which our forefathers claimed
When their Law failed them and its stewards were bought.
This is our cause. God help us, and make strong
Our will to meet Him later, unashamed!
Nature's Lesson
by Nancy Rebecca Campbell Glass

We traveled by a mountain's edge,
It was September calm and bright,
Nature had decked its rocky ledge
With flowers of varied hue and height.
It seemed a miracle that they
Should flourish in that meager soil,
As noble spirits oftenest may
Gleam forth through poverty and toil.
Below were rippling, sparkling streams
Through meadows kissed by shadowy hills,
Reflecting autumn's peaceful dreams
Within those swift, translucent rills.
This lesson should these scenes impart
As on the road of life we go,
To do our duty and take heart,
As flowers bloom and streamlets flow.
Perhaps in ages yet to be
May flowers wave here e'en as today,
These streams still rush in merry glee
To cheer and charm who here may stray;
But we upon Time's rapid tide
Like morning mists will disappear;
But if by faith to Christ allied,
Heaven's glory is both sure and clear.
We look from Nature to her God;
We feel his presence from above;
We know that when the earth he trod,
He preached through her his wondrous love.
What is there in our flitting years
With this pure treasure can compare?
His love can wipe away our tears,
His love can lighten every care.
We Two, How Long We Were Fool'd
by Walt Whitman

We two, how long we were fool'd!
Now transmuted, we swiftly escape, as Nature escapes;
We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return;
We become plants, leaves, foliage, roots, bark;
We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks;
We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side;
We browse, we are two among the wild herds, spontaneous as any;
We are two fishes swimming in the sea together;
We are what the locust blossoms are, we drop scent around the lanes, mornings and evenings;
We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals;
We are two predatory hawks, we soar above, and look down;
We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves, orbic and stellar, we are as two comets;
We prowl fang'd and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey;
We are two clouds, forenoons and afternoons, driving overhead;
We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves, rolling over each other, and interwetting each other;
We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious:
We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influence of the globe;
We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two have;
We have voided all but freedom, and all but our own joy.
A Sea-Side Walk
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

We walked beside the sea,
After a day which perished silently
Of its own glory, like the Princess weird
Who, combating the Genius, scorched and seared,
Uttered with burning breath, "Ho! victory!"
And sank adown, an heap of ashes pale;
So runs the Arab tale.
The sky above us showed
An universal and unmoving cloud,
On which, the cliffs permitted us to see
Only the outline of their majesty,
As master-minds, when gazed at by the crowd!
And, shining with a gloom, the water grey
Swang in its moon-taught way.
Nor moon nor stars were out.
They did not dare to tread so soon about,
Though trembling, in the footsteps of the sun.
The light was neither night's nor day's, but one
Which, life-like, had a beauty in its doubt;
And Silence's impassioned breathings round
Seemed wandering into sound.
O solemn-beating heart
Of nature! I have knowledge that thou art
Bound unto man's by cords he cannot sever,
And, what time they are slackened by him ever,
So to attest his own supernal part,
Still runneth thy vibration fast and strong,
The slackened cord along.
For though we never spoke
Of the grey water anal the shaded rock,
Dark wave and stone, unconsciously, were fused
Into the plaintive speaking that we used,
Of absent friends and memories unforsook;
And, had we seen each other's face, we had
Seen haply, each was sad.
Thirst.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

We thirst at first, -- 't is Nature's act;
And later, when we die,
A little water supplicate
Of fingers going by.
It intimates the finer want,
Whose adequate supply
Is that great water in the west
Termed immortality.
June
by Richard Le Gallienne

We thought that winter, love, would never end,
That the dark year had slain the innocent May,
Nor hoped that your soft hand, this summer day,
Would lie, as now, in mine, beloved friend;
And, like some magic spring, your dream-deep eyes
Hold all the summer skies.
But lo! the world again is mad with flowers,
The long white silence spake, small bird by bird,
Blade after blade, amid the song of showers,
The grass stole back once more, and there was heard
The ancient music of the vernal spheres,
Half laughter and half tears.
Ah! love, and now too swiftly, like some groom,
Raining hot kisses on his bride's young mouth,
The mad young year, delirious with the South,
Squanders his fairy treasure, bloom on bloom;
Too soon the wild rose hastens to be sweet,
Too swift, O June, thy feet.
Tarry a little, summer, crowd not so
All glory and gladness in so brief a day,
Teach all thy dancing flowers a step more slow,
And bid thy wild musicians softlier play,
O hast thou thought, that like a madman spends,
The longest summer ends.
Valenciennes
by Thomas Hardy

(1793)
BY CORP'L TULLIDGE: see "The Trumpet-Major"
IN MEMORY OF S. C. (PENSIONER). DIED 184-
We trenched, we trumpeted and drummed,
And from our mortars tons of iron hummed
Ath'art the ditch, the month we bombed
The Town o' Valencieen.
'Twas in the June o' Ninety-dree
(The Duke o' Yark our then Commander been)
The German Legion, Guards, and we
Laid siege to Valencieen.
This was the first time in the war
That French and English spilled each other's gore;
Few dreamt how far would roll the roar
Begun at Valencieen!
'Twas said that we'd no business there
A-topperen the French for disagreen;
However, that's not my affair -
We were at Valencieen.
Such snocks and slats, since war began
Never knew raw recruit or veteran:
Stone-deaf therence went many a man
Who served at Valencieen.
Into the streets, ath'art the sky,
A hundred thousand balls and bombs were fleen;
And harmless townsfolk fell to die
Each hour at Valencieen!
And, sweaten wi' the bombardiers,
A shell was slent to shards anighst my ears:
'Twas nigh the end of hopes and fears
For me at Valencieen!
They bore my wownded frame to camp,
And shut my gapen skull, and washed en clean,
And jined en wi' a zilver clamp
Thik night at Valencieen.
"We've fetched en back to quick from dead;
But never more on earth while rose is red
Will drum rouse Corpel!" Doctor said
O' me at Valencieen.
'Twer true. No voice o' friend or foe
Can reach me now, or any liven been;
And little have I power to know
Since then at Valencieen!
I never hear the zummer hums
O' bees; and don' know when the cuckoo comes;
But night and day I hear the bombs
We threw at Valencieen . . .
As for the Duke o' Yark in war,
There be some volk whose judgment o' en is mean;
But this I say a was not far
From great at Valencieen.
O' wild wet nights, when all seems sad,
My wownds come back, as though new wownds I'd had;
But yet at times I'm sort o' glad
I fout at Valencieen.
Well: Heaven wi' its jasper halls
Is now the on'y Town I care to be in . . .
Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls
As we did Valencieen!
1878-1897.
We Two Boys Together Clinging
by Walt Whitman

We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving,
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.
Our Limitations
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

We trust and fear, we question and believe,
From life's dark threads a trembling faith to weave,
Frail as the web that misty night has spun,
Whose dew-gemmed awnings glitter in the sun.
While the calm centuries spell their lessons out,
Each truth we conquer spreads the realm of doubt;
When Sinai's summit was Jehovah's throne,
The chosen Prophet knew his voice alone;
When Pilate's hall that awful question heard,
The Heavenly Captive answered not a word.
Eternal Truth! beyond our hopes and fears
Sweep the vast orbits of thy myriad spheres!
From age to age, while History carves sublime
On her waste rock the flaming curves of time,
How the wild swayings of our planet show
That worlds unseen surround the world we know.
Thanksgiving
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

We walk on starry fields of white
And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
Of pleasures sweet and tender.
Our cares are bold and push their way
Upon our thought and feeling.
They hang about us all the day,
Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy
We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives
And conquers if we let it.
There's not a day in all the year
But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear
To brim the past's wide measure.
But blessings are like friends, I hold,
Who love and labor near us.
We ought to raise our notes of praise
While living hearts can hear us.
Full many a blessing wears the guise
Of worry or of trouble.
Farseeing is the soul and wise
Who knows the mask is double.
But he who has the faith and strength
To thank his God for sorrow
Has found a joy without alloy
To gladden every morrow.
We ought to make the moments notes
Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;
The hours and days a silent phrase
Of music we are living.
And so the theme should swell and grow
As weeks and months pass o'er us,
And rise sublime at this good time,
A grand Thanksgiving chorus.
A Warning
by Richard Le Gallienne

We that were born, beloved, so far apart,
So many seas and lands,
The gods, one sudden day, joined heart to heart,
Locked hands in hands,
Distance relented and became our friend,
And met, for our sakes, world's end with world's end.
The earth was centred in one flowering plot
Beneath thy feet, and all the rest was not.
Now wouldst thou rend our nearness, and again
Bring distance back, and place
Poles and equators, mountain range and plain,
Between me and thy face,
Undoing what the gods divinely planned;
Heart, canst thou part? hand, loose me from thy hand?
Not twice the gods their slighted gifts bestow;
Bethink thee well, beloved, ere thou dost go.
We That Were Friends
by James Elroy Flecker

We that were friends to-night have found
A sudden fear, a secret flame:
I am on fire with that soft sound
You make, in uttering my name.
Forgive a young and boastful man
Whom dreams delight and passions please,
And love me as great women can
Who have no children at their knees.
Ein Feste Burg ist Unser Gott - (Luther's Hymn)
by John Greenleaf Whittier

We wait beneath the furnace-blast
The pangs of transformation;
Not painlessly doth God recast
And mould anew the nation.
Hot burns the fire
Where wrongs expire;
Nor spares the hand
That from the land
Uproots the ancient evil.
The hand-breadth cloud the sages feared
Its bloody rain is dropping;
The poison plant the fathers spared
All else is overtopping.
East, West, South, North,
It curses the earth;
All justice dies,
And fraud and lies
Live only in its shadow.
What gives the wheat-field blades of steel?
What points the rebel cannon?
What sets the roaring rabble's heel
On the old star-spangled pennon?
What breaks the oath
Of the men o' the South?
What whets the knife
For the Union's life?
Hark to the answer: Slavery!
Then waste no blows on lesser foes
In strife unworthy freemen.
God lifts to-day the veil, and shows
The features of the demon
O North and South,
Its victims both,
Can ye not cry,
'Let slavery die!'
And union find in freedom?
What though the cast-out spirit tear
The nation in his going?
We who have shared the guilt must share
The pang of his o'erthrowing!
Whate'er the loss,
Whate'er the cross,
Shall they complain
Of present pain
Who trust in God's hereafter?
For who that leans on His right arm
Was ever yet forsaken?
What righteous cause can suffer harm
If He its part has taken?
Though wild and loud,
And dark the cloud,
Behind its folds
His hand upholds
The calm sky of to-morrow!
Above the maddening cry for blood,
Above the wild war-drumming,
Let Freedom's voice be heard, with good
The evil overcoming.
Give prayer and purse
To stay the Curse
Whose wrong we share,
Whose shame we bear,
Whose end shall gladden Heaven!
In vain the bells of war shall ring
Of triumphs and revenges,
While still is spared the evil thing
That severs and estranges.
But blest the ear
That yet shall hear
The jubilant bell
That rings the knell
Of Slavery forever!
Then let the selfish lip be dumb,
And hushed the breath of sighing;
Before the joy of peace must come
The pains of purifying.
God give us grace
Each in his place
To bear his lot,
And, murmuring not,
Endure and wait and labor!
The Two April Mornings
by William Wordsworth

We walked along, while bright and red
Uprose the morning sun;
And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said
`The will of God be done!'
A village schoolmaster was he,
With hair of glittering grey;
As blithe a man as you could see
On a spring holiday.
And on that morning, through the grass
And by the steaming rills
We travelled merrily, to pass
A day among the hills.
`Our work,' said I, `was well begun;
Then, from thy breast what thought,
Beneath so beautiful a sun,
So sad a sigh has brought?'
A second time did Matthew stop;
And fixing still his eye
Upon the eastern mountain-top,
To me he made reply:
`Yon cloud with that long purple cleft
Brings fresh into my mind
A day like this, which I have left
Full thirty years behind.
`And just above yon slope of corn
Such colours, and no other,
Were in the sky, that April morn,
Of this the very brother.
`With rod and line I sued the sport
Which that sweet season gave,
And, to the churchyard come, stopped short
Beside my daughter's grave.
`Nine summers had she scarcely seen,
The pride of all the vale;
And then she sang: she would have been
A very nightingale.
`Six feet in earth my Emma lay;
And yet I loved her more
For so it seemed, than till that day
I e'er had loved before.
`And turning from her grave, I met
Beside the churchyard yew
A blooming girl, whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew.
`A basket on her head she bare;
Her brow was smooth and white:
To see a child so very fair,
It was a pure delight!
`No fountain from its rocky cave
E'er tripped with foot so free;
She seemed as happy as a wave
That dances on the sea.
`There came from me a sigh of pain
Which I could ill confine;
I looked at her, and looked again:
And did not wish her mine!'
Matthew is in his grave, yet now
Methinks I see him stand
As that moment, with a bough
Of wilding in his hand.
The Passing Of Scotty
by Henry Lawson

We throw us down on the dusty plain
When the gold has gone from the west,
But we rise and tramp on the track again,
For we're tired, too tired to rest.
Darker and denser the shadows fall
That are cramping each aching brow,
Scotty the Wrinkler! you've solved it all,
Give us a wrinkle now.
But no one lieth so still in death
As the rover who never could rest;
And he's free of thought as he's free of breath,
And his hands are crossed on his breast.
You have earned your rest, you brave old tramp,
As I hope in the end we will.
Ah me! 'Twas a long, long way to camp
Since the days when they called you 'Phil'.
What have they done with your quaint old soul
Now they have passed you through?
But we can't but think, as our swags we roll,
That it's right, old man, with you;
You learned some truth in the storm and strife
Of the outcast battler's ways;
And you left some light in the vagabond's life
Ere you vanished beyond the haze.
One by one in the far ahead,
In the smothering haze of drought,
Where hearts are loyal and hopes are dead,
The forms of our mates fade out.
'Tis a distant goal and a weary load,
But we follow the Wrinkler home,
As, staggering into the short, straight road,
From the blind branch tracks we come.
We leave our mark and we play our part
In the nation's pregnant days,
And we find a place in the Bushman's heart
Ere we vanish beyond the haze.
Together
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

We two in the fever and fervour and glow
Of life's high tide have rejoiced together;
We have looked out over the glittering snow,
And known we were dwelling in Summer weather,
For the seasons are made by the heart I hold,
And not by outdoor heat or cold.
We two, in the shadows of pain and woe,
Have journeyed together in dim, dark places,
Where black-robed Sorrow walked to and fro,
And Fear and Trouble, with phantom faces,
Peered out upon us and froze our blood,
Though June's fair roses were all in bud.
We two have measured all depths, all heights,
We have bathed in tears, we have sunned in laughter!
We have known all sorrows and delights - 
They never could keep us apart hereafter.
Whether your spirit went high or low,
My own would follow, and find you, I know.
If they took my soul into Paradise,
And told me I must be content without you,
I would weary them so with my lonesome cries,
And the ceaseless questions I asked about you,
They would open the gates and set me free,
Or else they would find you and bring you to me.
The Lonely Road
by Virna Sheard

We used to fear the lonely road
That twisted round the hill;
It dipped down to the river-way,
And passed the haunted mill,
And then crept on, until it reached
The churchyard, green and still.
No pipers ever took that road,
No gipsies, brown and gay;
No shepherds with their gentle flocks,
No loads of scented hay;
No market-waggons jingled by
On any Saturday.
The dog-wood there flung wide its stars,
In April, silvery sweet;
The squirrels crossed that path all day
On tiny flying feet;
The wild, brown rabbits knew each turn,
Each shadowy safe retreat.
And there the golden-belted bee
Sang his sweet summer song,
The crickets chirped there to the moon
With steady note and strong;
Till cold and silence wrapped them round
When autumn nights grew long.
But, oh! they brought the lonely dead
Along that quiet way,
With strange procession, dark and slow,
On sunny days and grey;
We used to watch them, wonder-eyed,
Nor care again to play.
And we forgot each merry jest;
The birds on bush and tree
Silenced the song within their throats
And with us watched to see,
The soft, slow passing out of sight
Of that dark mystery.
*    *    *    *    *
We fear no more the lonely road
That winds around the hill;
Far from the busy world's highway
And the gods' slow-grinding mill;
It only seems a peaceful path,
Pleasant, and green, and still.
A Faery Song
by William Butler Yeats

We who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told:
Give to these children, new from the world,
Silence and love;
And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,
And the stars above:
Give to these children, new from the world,
Rest far from men.
Is anything better, anything better?
Tell us it then:
Us who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told.
St. Alexis - Patron of Beggars
by Alfred Joyce Kilmer (Joyce)

We who beg for bread as we daily tread
Country lane and city street,
Let us kneel and pray on the broad highway
To the saint with the vagrant feet.
Our altar light is a buttercup bright,
And our shrine is a bank of sod,
But still we share St. Alexis' care,
The Vagabond of God.
They gave him a home in purple Rome
And a princess for his bride,
But he rowed away on his wedding day
Down the Tiber's rushing tide.
And he came to land on the Asian strand
Where the heathen people dwell;
As a beggar he strayed and he preached and prayed
And he saved their souls from hell.
Bowed with years and pain he came back again
To his father's dwelling place.
There was none to see who this tramp might be,
For they knew not his bearded face.
But his father said, "Give him drink and bread
And a couch underneath the stair."
So Alexis crept to his hole and slept.
But he might not linger there.
For when night came down on the seven-hilled town,
And the emperor hurried in,
Saying, "Lo, I hear that a saint is near
Who will cleanse us of our sin,"
Then they looked in vain where the saint had lain,
For his soul had fled afar,
From his fleshly home he had gone to roam
Where the gold-paved highways are.
We who beg for bread as we daily tread
Country lane and city street,
Let us kneel and pray on the broad highway
To the saint with the vagrant feet.
Our altar light is a buttercup bright,
And our shrine is a bank of sod,
But still we share St. Alexis' care,
The Vagabond of God!