DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (In Memory)
by Helen Leah Reed

Sage of the silver pen!
Wherever thy thought was heard,
Thou wert a leader of men.
Poet of honored word!
Knight of the eagle glance,
Piercing the depths of wrong,
"Justice" thy cry, and thy lance
True in its aim, and strong.
Man of the ruddy heart
Beating warm for our kind!
Thine was the hero's part;
Eyes wert thou to the blind:
Thou a staff to the weak,
Here we our tribute lay - 
Homage thou didst not seek - 
Twined with a wreath of bay,
A garland woven of love,
Woven of love and tears,
Pure as the note of a dove,
Voicing thy peaceful years.
(Read at the Memorial Meeting Nov. 20, 1911.)
Alternative Song For The Severd Head In "The King Of The Great Clock Tower"
by William Butler Yeats

Saddle and ride, I heard a man say,
Out of Ben Bulben and Knocknarea,
i(What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower?)
All those tragic characters ride
But turn from Rosses' crawling tide,
The meet's upon the mountain-side.
i(A slow low note and an iron bell.)
What brought them there so far from their home.
Cuchulain that fought night long with the foam,
i(What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower?)
Niamh that rode on it; lad and lass
That sat so still and played at the chess?
What but heroic wantonness?
i(A slow low note and an iron bell.)
Aleel, his Countess; Hanrahan
That seemed but a wild wenching man;
i(What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower?)
And all alone comes riding there
The King that could make his people stare,
Because he had feathers instead of hair.
i(A slow low note and an iron bell.)
She Says She Loves Me Best Of A'.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "Onagh's Waterfall."
I.
Sae flaxen were her ringlets,
Her eyebrows of a darker hue,
Bewitchingly o'er-arching
Twa laughin' een o' bonnie blue.
Her smiling sae wyling,
Wad make a wretch forget his woe;
What pleasure, what treasure,
Unto these rosy lips to grow:
Such was my Chloris' bonnie face,
When first her bonnie face I saw;
And ay my Chloris' dearest charm,
She says she lo'es me best of a'.
II.
Like harmony her motion;
Her pretty ankle is a spy,
Betraying fair proportion,
Wad mak a saint forget the sky.
Sae warming, sae charming,
Her faultless form and gracefu' air;
Ilk feature - auld Nature
Declar'd that she could do nae mair:
Hers are the willing chains o' love,
By conquering beauty's sovereign law;
And ay my Chloris' dearest charm,
She says she lo'es me best of a'.
III.
Let others love the city,
And gaudy show at sunny noon;
Gie me the lonely valley,
The dewy eve, and rising moon;
Fair beaming, and streaming,
Her silver light the boughs amang;
While falling, recalling,
The amorous thrush concludes his sang;
There, dearest Chloris, wilt thou rove
By wimpling burn and leafy shaw,
And hear my vows o' truth and love,
And say thou lo'es me best of a'?
Ermine
by Unknown

Said an envious, erudite ermine:
"There's one thing I cannot determine:
When a man wears my coat,
He's a person of note,
While I'm but a species of vermin!"
The Coming Bye And Bye.
by William Schwenck Gilbert

Sad is that woman's lot who, year by year,
Sees, one by one, her beauties disappear;
As Time, grown weary of her heart-drawn sighs,
Impatiently begins to "dim her eyes!"
Herself compelled, in life's uncertain gloamings,
To wreathe her wrinkled brow with well saved "combings" 
Reduced, with rouge, lipsalve, and pearly grey,
To "make up" for lost time, as best she may!
Silvered is the raven hair,
Spreading is the parting straight,
Mottled the complexion fair,
Halting is the youthful gait.
Hollow is the laughter free,
Spectacled the limpid eye,
Little will be left of me,
In the coming bye and bye!
Fading is the taper waist 
Shapeless grows the shapely limb,
And although securely laced,
Spreading is the figure trim!
Stouter than I used to be,
Still more corpulent grow I 
There will be too much of me
In the coming bye and bye!
Dialogue Between A Sovereign And A One Pound Note.
by Thomas Moore

"o ego non felix, quam tu fugis, ut pavet acres
agna lupos, capreaeque leones."--HOR.
Said a Sovereign to a Note,
In the pocket of his coat,
Where they met in a neat purse of leather,
"How happens it, I prithee,
"That, tho' I'm wedded with thee,
"Fair Pound, we can never live together?
"Like your sex, fond of change
"With Silver you can range,
"And of lots of young sixpences be mother;
"While with me--upon my word,
"Not my Lady and my Lord
"Of Westmouth see so little of each other!"
The indignant Note replied
(Lying crumpled by his side),
"Shame, shame, it is yourself that roam, Sir--
"One cannot look askance,
"But, whip! you're off to France,
"Leaving nothing but old rags at home, Sir.
"Your scampering began
"From the moment Parson Van,
"Poor man, made us one in Love's fetter;
"'For better or for worse'
"Is the usual marriage curse,
"But ours is all 'worse' and no 'better.'
"In vain are laws past,
"There's nothing holds you fast,
"Tho' you know, sweet Sovereign, I adore you--
"At the smallest hint in life,
"You forsake your lawful wife,
"As other Sovereigns did before you.
"I flirt with Silver, true--
"But what can ladies do,
"When disowned by their natural protectors?
"And as to falsehood, stuff!
"I shall soon be false enough,
"When I get among those wicked Bank Directors."
The Sovereign, smiling on her,
Now swore upon his honor,
To be henceforth domestic and loyal;
But, within an hour or two,
Why--I sold him to a Jew,
And he's now at No. 10, Palais Royal.
The Poet And The Bird
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Said a people to a poet "Go out from among us straightway!
While we are thinking earthly things, thou singest of divine.
There's a little fair brown nightingale, who, sitting in the gateways
Makes fitter music to our ears than any song of thine!"
The poet went out weeping the nightingale ceased chanting;
"Now, wherefore, O thou nightingale, is all thy sweetness done?"
I cannot sing my earthly things, the heavenly poet wanting,
Whose highest harmony includes the lowest under sun."
The poet went out weeping, and died abroad, bereft there
The bird flew to his grave and died, amid a thousand wails:
And, when I last came by the place, I swear the music left there
Was only of the poet's song, and not the nightingale's.
The River Duddon - A Series Of Sonnets, 1820. - XXIII - Sheep-Washing
by William Wordsworth

Sad thoughts, avaunt! partake we their blithe cheer
Who gathered in betimes the unshorn flock
To wash the fleece, where haply bands of rock,
Checking the stream, make a pool smooth and clear
As this we look on. Distant Mountains hear,
Hear and repeat, the turmoil that unites
Clamour of boys with innocent despites
Of barking dogs, and bleatings from strange fear.
And what if Duddon's spotless flood receive
Unwelcome mixtures as the uncouth noise
Thickens, the pastoral River will forgive
Such wrong; nor need 'we' blame the licensed joys,
Though false to Nature's quiet equipoise:
Frank are the sports, the stains are fugitive.
The Saddest Thought.
by W. M. MacKeracher

Sad is the wane of beauty to the fair,
Sad is the flux of fortune to the proud,
Sad is the look dejected lovers wear,
And sad is worth beneath detraction's cloud.
Sad is our youth's inexorable end,
Sad is the bankruptcy of fancy's wealth,
Sad is the last departure of a friend,
And sadder than most things is loss of health.
And yet more sad than these to think upon
Is this - the saddest thought beneath the sun -
Life, flowing like a river, almost gone
Into eternity, and nothing done.
Let me be spared that bootless last regret:
Let me work now; I may do something yet.
Remorse.
by John Milton Hay

Sad is the thought of sunniest days
Of love and rapture perished,
And shine through memory's tearful haze
The eyes once fondliest cherished.
Reproachful is the ghost of toys
That charmed while life was wasted.
But saddest is the thought of joys
That never yet were tasted.
Sad is the vague and tender dream
Of dead love's lingering kisses,
To crushed hearts haloed by the gleam
Of unreturning blisses;
Deep mourns the soul in anguished pride
For the pitiless death that won them, -
But the saddest wail is for lips that died
With the virgin dew upon them.
Bear And Whale.
by James McIntyre

A fable of the British and Russian dispute of 1885.
Russians suffer sad distress
For lack of freedom of the press,
But oft' times they are full able
To enlighten with a fable.
And they enjoy a humorous tale
Of a bear and monster whale,
The bear he went to the sea shore
The mighty ocean to explore.
And this it quick enraged the whale
Who beat the ocean with his tail,
With foaming words he told the bear
That he would strip his hide and hair.
If he ever found him more
Encroaching on his sea shore,
The bear replied I will not quail
At frothing words of any whale.
For you are a lump of blubber,
Whale rejoined you are land lubber,
Thus bandying epithets so vile,
Of bear grease and of whale oil.
Sharks and fishes of the ocean
Were thrown into great commotion,
The hawks and eagles of the air,
Lions and tigers gathered there.
Bear he wished the whale to slaughter,
But he was afraid of water,
The great whale feared that he might strand
If he ventured on the dry land.
So at last great Russia Bear
Went back again to his own lair,
And British whale content to be
Greatest monarch of the sea.
Fall
by Madison Julius Cawein

Sad-hearted spirit of the solitudes,
Who comest through the ruin-wedded woods!
Gray-gowned with fog, gold-girdled with the gloom
Of tawny twilights; burdened with perfume
Of rain-wet uplands, chilly with the mist;
And all the beauty of the fire-kissed
Cold forests crimsoning thy indolent way,
Odorous of death and drowsy with decay.
I think of thee as seated 'mid the showers
Of languid leaves that cover up the flowers, - 
The little flower-sisterhoods, whom June
Once gave wild sweetness to, as to a tune
A singer gives her soul's wild melody, - 
Watching the squirrel store his granary.
Or, 'mid old orchards I have pictured thee:
Thy hair's profusion blown about thy back;
One lovely shoulder bathed with gipsy black;
Upon thy palm one nestling cheek, and sweet
The rosy russets tumbled at thy feet.
Was it a voice lamenting for the flowers?
A heart-sick bird, that sang of happier hours?
A cricket dirging days that soon must die?
Or did the ghost of Summer wander by?
Song Of Proserpine While Gathering Flowers On The Plain Of Enna.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

1.
Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth,
Thou from whose immortal bosom
Gods, and men, and beasts have birth,
Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom,
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.
2.
If with mists of evening dew
Thou dost nourish these young flowers
Till they grow, in scent and hue,
Fairest children of the Hours,
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.
The Voice
by Rupert Brooke

Safe in the magic of my woods
I lay, and watched the dying light.
Faint in the pale high solitudes,
And washed with rain and veiled by night,
Silver and blue and green were showing.
And the dark woods grew darker still;
And birds were hushed; and peace was growing;
And quietness crept up the hill;
And no wind was blowing
And I knew
That this was the hour of knowing,
And the night and the woods and you
Were one together, and I should find
Soon in the silence the hidden key
Of all that had hurt and puzzled me
Why you were you, and the night was kind,
And the woods were part of the heart of me.
And there I waited breathlessly,
Alone; and slowly the holy three,
The three that I loved, together grew
One, in the hour of knowing,
Night, and the woods, and you....
And suddenly
There was an uproar in my woods,
The noise of a fool in mock distress,
Crashing and laughing and blindly going,
Of ignorant feet and a swishing dress,
And a Voice profaning the solitudes.
The spell was broken, the key denied me
And at length your flat clear voice beside me
Mouthed cheerful clear flat platitudes.
You came and quacked beside me in the wood.
You said, "The view from here is very good!"
You said, "It's nice to be alone a bit!"
And, "How the days are drawing out!" you said.
You said, "The sunset's pretty, isn't it?"
* * * * *
By God! I wish, I wish that you were dead!
Omens
by Madison Julius Cawein

Sad o'er the hills the poppy sunset died.
Slow as a fungus breaking through the crusts
Of forest leaves, the waning half-moon thrusts,
Through gray-brown clouds, one milky silver side;
In her vague light the dogwoods, vale-descried,
Seem nervous torches flourished by the gusts;
The apple-orchards seem the restless dusts
Of wind-thinned mists upon the hills they hide.
It is a night of omens whom late May
Meets, like a wraith, among her train of hours;
An apparition, with appealing eye
And hesitant foot, that walks a willowed way,
And, speaking through the fading moon and flowers,
Bids her prepare her gentle soul to die.
What They Saw
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Sad man, Sad man, tell me, pray,
What did you see to-day?
I saw the unloved and unhappy old, waiting for slow delinquent death to come.
Pale little children toiling for the rich, in rooms where sunlight is ashamed to go.
The awful alms-house, where the living dead rot slowly in their hideous open graves.
And there were shameful things;
Soldiers and forts, and industries of death, and devil ships, and loud-winged devil birds,
All bent on slaughter and destruction.    These and yet more shameful things mine eyes beheld.
Old men upon lascivious conquest bent, and young men living with no thought of God;
And half clothed women puffing at a weed, aping the vices of the underworld - 
Engrossed in shallow pleasures and intent on being barren wives.
These things I saw.
(How God must loathe His earth.)
Glad man, Glad man, tell me, pray,
What did you see to-day?
I saw an aged couple, in whose eyes
Shone that deep light of mingled love and faith
Which makes the earth one room of Paradise,
And leaves no sting in death.
I saw fair regiments of children pour,
Rank after rank, out of the schoolroom door
By Progress mobilised.    They seemed to say
'Let ignorance make way;
We are the heralds of a better day.'
I saw the college and the church that stood
For all things sane and good.
I saw God's helpers in the shop and slum
Blazing a path for health and hope to come;
And men and women of large soul and mind
Absorbed in toil for bettering their kind.
Then, too, I saw life's sweetest sight and best - 
Pure mothers with dear babies at the breast,
These things I saw.
(How God must love His earth.)
Rizpah
by Henry Kendall

Said one who led the spears of swarthy Gad,
To Jesse's mighty son: 'My Lord, O King,
I, halting hard by Gibeon's bleak-blown hill
Three nightfalls past, saw dark-eyed Rizpah, clad
In dripping sackcloth, pace with naked feet
The flinty rock where lie unburied yet
The sons of her and Saul; and he whose post
Of watch is in those places desolate,
Got up, and spake unto thy servant here
Concerning her yea, even unto me:
'Behold,' he said, 'the woman seeks not rest,
Nor fire, nor food, nor roof, nor any haunt
Where sojourns man; but rather on yon rock
Abideth, like a wild thing, with the slain,
And watcheth them, lest evil wing or paw
Should light upon the comely faces dead,
To spoil them of their beauty. Three long moons
Hath Rizpah, daughter of Aiah, dwelt
With drouth and cold and rain and wind by turns,
And many birds there are that know her face,
And many beasts that flee not at her step,
And many cunning eyes do look at her
From serpent-holes and burrows of the rat.
Moreover,' spake the scout, 'her skin is brown
And sere by reason of exceeding heat;
And all her darkness of abundant hair
Is shot with gray, because of many nights
When grief hath crouched in fellowship with frost
Upon that desert rock. Yea, thus and thus
Fares Rizpah,' said the spy, O King, to me.'
But David, son of Jesse, spake no word,
But turned himself, and wept against the wall.
We have our Rizpahs in these modern days
Who've lost their households through no sin of theirs,
On bloody fields and in the pits of war;
And though their dead were sheltered in the sod
By friendly hands, these have not suffered less
Than she of Judah did, nor is their love
Surpassed by hers. The Bard who, in great days
Afar off yet, shall set to epic song
The grand pathetic story of the strife
That shook America for five long years,
And struck its homes with desolation he
Shall in his lofty verse relate to men
How, through the heat and havoc of that time,
Columbia's Rachael in her Rama wept
Her children, and would not be comforted;
And sing of Woman waiting day by day
With that high patience that no man attains,
For tidings, from the bitter field, of spouse,
Or son, or brother, or some other love
Set face to face with Death. Moreover, he
Shall say how, through her sleepless hours at night,
When rain or leaves were dropping, every noise
Seemed like an omen; every coming step
Fell on her ears like a presentiment
And every hand that rested on the door
She fancied was a herald bearing grief;
While every letter brought a faintness on
That made her gasp before she opened it,
To read the story written for her eyes,
And cry, or brighten, over its contents.
The Final Tax
by Ellis Parker Butler

Said Statesman A to Statesman Z:
'What can we tax that is not paying?
We're taxing every blessed thing'
Here's what our people are defraying:
'Tariff tax, income tax,
Tax on retail sales,
Club tax, school tax,
Tax on beers and ales,
'City tax, county tax,
Tax on obligations,
War tax. wine tax,
Tax on corporations,
'Brewer tax, sewer tax,
Tax on motor cars,
Bond tax, stock tax,
Tax on liquor bars,
'Bridge tax, check tax,
Tax on drugs and pills,
Gas tax, ticket tax,
Tax on gifts in wills,
'Poll tax, dog tax,
Tax on money loaned,
State tax, road tax,
Tax on all things owned,
'Stamp tax, land tax,
Tax on wedding ring,
High tax, low tax,
Tax on everything!'
Said Statesman A to Statesman Z:
'That is the list, a pretty bevy;
No thing or act that is untaxed;
There's nothing more on which to levy.'
Said Statesman Z to Statesman A:
'The deficit each moment waxes;
This is no time for us to fail'
We will decree a tax on taxes.'
The Three Bushes
by William Butler Yeats

Said lady once to lover,
"None can rely upon
A love that lacks its proper food;
And if your love were gone
How could you sing those songs of love?
I should be blamed, young man.
i(O my dear, O my dear.)
Have no lit candles in your room,"
That lovely lady said,
"That I at midnight by the clock
May creep into your bed,
For if I saw myself creep in
I think I should drop dead."
i(O my dear, O my dear.)
"I love a man in secret,
Dear chambermaid," said she.
"I know that I must drop down dead
If he stop loving me,
Yet what could I but drop down dead
If I lost my chastity?
i(O my dear, O my dear.)
"So you must lie beside him
And let him think me there.
And maybe we are all the same
Where no candles are,
And maybe we are all the same
That strip the body bare."
i(O my dear, O my dear.)
But no dogs barked, and midnights chimed,
And through the chime she'd say,
"That was a lucky thought of mine,
My lover. looked so gay";
But heaved a sigh if the chambermaid
Looked half asleep all day.
i(O my dear, O my dear.)
"No, not another song," said he,
"Because my lady came
A year ago for the first time
At midnight to my room,
And I must lie between the sheets
When the clock begins to chime."
i(O my dear, O my d-ear.)
"A laughing, crying, sacred song,
A leching song," they said.
Did ever men hear such a song?
No, but that day they did.
Did ever man ride such a race?
No, not until he rode.
i(O my dear, O my dear.)
But when his horse had put its hoof
Into a rabbit-hole
He dropped upon his head and died.
His lady saw it all
And dropped and died thereon, for she
Loved him with her soul.
i(O my dear, O my dear.)
The chambermaid lived long, and took
Their graves into her charge,
And there two bushes planted
That when they had grown large
Seemed sprung from but a single root
So did their roses merge.
i(O my dear, O my dear.)
When she was old and dying,
The priest came where she was;
She made a full confession.
Long looked he in her face,
And O he was a good man
And understood her case.
O i(my dear, O my dear.)
He bade them take and bury her
Beside her lady's man,
And set a rose-tree on her grave,
And now none living can,
When they have plucked a rose there,
Know where its roots began.
O i(my dear, O my dear.)
Said Grenfell To My Spirit
by Henry Lawson

Said Grenfell to my spirit, "You've been writing very free
Of the charms of other places, and you don't remember me.
You have claimed another native place and think it's Nature's law,
Since you never paid a visit to a town you never saw:
So you sing of Mudgee Mountains, willowed stream and grassy flat:
But I put a charm upon you and you won't get over that."
O said Grenfell to my spirit, "Though you write of breezy peaks,
Golden Gullies, wattle sidings, and the pools in sheoak creeks,
Of the place your kin were born in and the childhood that you knew,
And your father's distant Norway (though it has some claim on you),
Though you sing of dear old Mudgee and the home on Pipeclay Flat,
You were born on Grenfell goldfield, and you can't get over that."
Hope And Despair
by Lascelles Abercrombie

Said God, "You sisters, ere ye go
Down among men, my work to do,
I will on each a badge bestow:
Hope I love best, and gold for her,
Yet a silver glory for Despair,
For she is my angel too."
Then like a queen, Despair
Put on the stars to wear.
But Hope took ears of corn, and round
Her temples in a wreath them bound.
Which think ye lookt the more fair?
The Unsainting Of Kavin.
by Bliss Carman (William)

Saint Kavin was a gentleman,
He came from Tipperary;
And woman was the only thing
That ever made him scary.
For Kavin was a tender youth,
And he was very simple;
He feared the wiles of maiden smiles,
And fainted at a dimple.
But when Kathleen at seventeen
Came down the street one morning,
The luck of man came over him
And took him without warning.
Afraid to meet a foolish fate
By green sea or by dry land,
He fled away without delay
And sought a desert island.
But even there he felt despair;
For happiness is only
The hope of doing something else;
And he was very lonely.
He vowed to lead a life of prayer
Because that he had lost her;
And every time he thought of her
He said a Pater noster.
Yet hard it is for man to change
The less love for the greater;
And every time he reached Amen,
He must go back to Pater.
And so he grew a year or two
Disconsolate and holy,
While friends he'd known long since had grown
Papas and roly-poly.
Until one day, one blessed day,
A-moping like a Hindoo,
He saw Kathleen in mournful mien
A-passing by his window.
He threw away his rosary,
His Paters and his Aves;
For love is stronger than the wind
That wafts a thousand navies.
The holy man went forth to war,
But not against the devil.
He led the maid within for shade,
And treated her most civil.
He gave her cakes, he gave her wine,
He set his best before her;
And then invited her to dine--
Thenceforth--with her adorer.
Her little head went round for joy;
She tried to kick the rafter:
So Kavin was a saint no more,
And happy ever after.