DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The River Duddon - A Series Of Sonnets, 1820. - To The Rev. Dr. Wordsworth
by William Wordsworth

The Minstrels played their Christmas tune
To-night beneath my cottage-eaves;
While, smitten by a lofty moon,
The encircling laurels, thick with leaves,
Gave back a rich and dazzling sheen,
That overpowered their natural green.
Through hill and valley every breeze
Had sunk to rest with folded wings:
Keen was the air, but could not freeze,
Nor check, the music of the strings;
So stout and hardy were the band
That scraped the chords with strenuous hand;
And who but listened? till was paid
Respect to every Inmate's claim:
The greeting given, the music played,
In honour of each household name,
Duly pronounced with lusty call,
And "merry Christmas" wished to all!
O Brother! I revere the choice
That took thee from thy native hills;
And it is given thee to rejoice:
Though public care full often tills
(Heaven only witness of the toil)
A barren and ungrateful soil.
Yet, would that Thou, with me and mine,
Hadst heard this never-failing rite;
And seen on other faces shine
A true revival of the light
Which Nature and these rustic Powers,
In simple childhood, spread through ours.
For pleasure hath not ceased to wait
On these expected annual rounds;
Whether the rich man's sumptuous gate
Call forth the unelaborate sounds,
Or they are offered at the door
That guards the lowliest of the poor.
How touching, when, at midnight, sweep
Snow-muffled winds, and all is dark,
To hear, and sink again to sleep!
Or, at an earlier call, to mark,
By blazing fire, the still suspense
Of self-complacent innocence;
The mutual nod, the grave disguise
Of hearts with gladness brimming o'er;
And some unbidden tears that rise
For names once heard, and heard no more;
Tears brightened by the serenade
For infant in the cradle laid.
Ah! not for emerald fields alone,
With ambient streams more pure and bright
Than fabled Cytherea's zone
Glittering before the Thunderer's sight,
Is to my heart of hearts endeared
The ground where we were born and reared!
Hail, ancient Manners! sure defence,
Where they survive, of wholesome laws;
Remnants of love whose modest sense
Thus into narrow room withdraws;
Hail, Usages of pristine mould,
And ye that guard them, Mountains old!
Bear with me, Brother! quench the thought
That slights this passion, or condemns;
If thee fond Fancy ever brought
From the proud margin of the Thames,
And Lambeth's venerable towers,
To humbler streams, and greener bowers.
Yes, they can make, who fail to find,
Short leisure even in busiest days;
Moments, to cast a look behind,
And profit by those kindly rays
That through the clouds do sometimes steal,
And all the far-off past reveal.
Hence, while the imperial City's din
Beats frequent on thy satiate ear,
A pleased attention I may win
To agitations less severe,
That neither overwhelm nor cloy,
But fill the hollow vale with joy!
A Lament
by Charles Kingsley

The merry merry lark was up and singing,
And the hare was out and feeding on the lea;
And the merry merry bells below were ringing,
When my child's laugh rang through me.
Now the hare is snared and dead beside the snow-yard,
And the lark beside the dreary winter sea;
And the baby in his cradle in the churchyard
Sleeps sound till the bell brings me.
Eversley, 1848.
The Bad Squire
by Charles Kingsley

The merry brown hares came leaping
Over the crest of the hill,
Where the clover and corn lay sleeping
Under the moonlight still.
Leaping late and early,
Till under their bite and their tread
The swedes and the wheat and the barley
Lay cankered and trampled and dead.
A poacher's widow sat sighing
On the side of the white chalk bank,
Where under the gloomy fir-woods
One spot in the ley throve rank.
She watched a long tuft of clover,
Where rabbit or hare never ran;
For its black sour haulm covered over
The blood of a murdered man.
She thought of the dark plantation,
And the hares, and her husband's blood,
And the voice of her indignation
Rose up to the throne of God.
'I am long past wailing and whining - 
I have wept too much in my life:
I've had twenty years of pining
As an English labourer's wife.
'A labourer in Christian England,
Where they cant of a Saviour's name,
And yet waste men's lives like the vermin's
For a few more brace of game.
'There's blood on your new foreign shrubs, squire,
There's blood on your pointer's feet;
There's blood on the game you sell, squire,
And there's blood on the game you eat.
'You have sold the labouring-man, squire,
Body and soul to shame,
To pay for your seat in the House, squire,
And to pay for the feed of your game.
'You made him a poacher yourself, squire,
When you'd give neither work nor meat,
And your barley-fed hares robbed the garden
At our starving children's feet;
'When, packed in one reeking chamber,
Man, maid, mother, and little ones lay;
While the rain pattered in on the rotting bride-bed,
And the walls let in the day.
'When we lay in the burning fever
On the mud of the cold clay floor,
Till you parted us all for three months, squire,
At the dreary workhouse door.
'We quarrelled like brutes, and who wonders?
What self-respect could we keep,
Worse housed than your hacks and your pointers,
Worse fed than your hogs and your sheep?
'Our daughters with base-born babies
Have wandered away in their shame,
If your misses had slept, squire, where they did,
Your misses might do the same.
'Can your lady patch hearts that are breaking
With handfuls of coals and rice,
Or by dealing out flannel and sheeting
A little below cost price?
'You may tire of the jail and the workhouse,
And take to allotments and schools,
But you've run up a debt that will never
Be paid us by penny-club rules.
'In the season of shame and sadness,
In the dark and dreary day,
When scrofula, gout, and madness
Are eating your race away;
'When to kennels and liveried varlets
You have cast your daughter's bread,
And, worn out with liquor and harlots,
Your heir at your feet lies dead;
'When your youngest, the mealy-mouthed rector,
Lets your soul rot asleep to the grave,
You will find in your God the protector
Of the freeman you fancied your slave.'
She looked at the tuft of clover,
And wept till her heart grew light;
And at last, when her passion was over,
Went wandering into the night.
But the merry brown hares came leaping
Over the uplands still,
Where the clover and corn lay sleeping
On the side of the white chalk hill.
Eversley, 1847.
From Yeast.
Respite.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The mighty conflict, which we call existence,
Doth wear upon the body and the soul.
Our vital forces wasted in resistance,
So much there is to conquer and control.
The rock which meets the billows with defiance.
Undaunted and unshaken day by day,
In spite of its unyielding self-reliance,
Is by the warfare surely worn away.
And there are depths and heights of strong emotions
That surge at times within the human breast,
More fierce than all the tides of all the oceans
Which sweep on ever in divine unrest.
I sometimes think the rock worn with adventures,
And sad with thoughts of conflicts yet to be,
Must envy the frail reed which no one censures,
When overcome 'tis swallowed by the sea.
This life is all resistance and repression,
Dear God, if in that other world unseen,
Not rest, we find, but new life and progression,
Grant us a respite in the grave between.
To The Author Of Memoirs Of The House of Brandenburgh
by Mark Akenside

The men renown'd as chiefs of human race,
And born to lead in counsels or in arms,
Have seldom turn'd their feet from glory's chace
To dwell with books or court the Muse's charms.
Yet, to our eyes if haply time hath brought
Some genuine transcript of their calmer thought,
There still we own the wise, the great, or good;
And C'sar there and Xenophon are seen,
As clear in spirit and sublime of mien,
As on Pharsalian plains, or by the Assyrian flood.
Say thou too, Frederic, was not this thy aim?
Thy vigils could the student's lamp ingage,
Except for this? except that future fame
Might read thy genius in the faithful page?
That if hereafter envy shall presume
With words irreverent to inscribe thy tomb,
And baser weeds upon thy palms to fling,
That hence posterity may try thy reign,
Assert thy treaties, and thy wars explain,
And view in native lights the hero and the king.
O evil foresight and pernicious care!
Wilt thou indeed abide by this appeal?
Shall we the lessons of thy pen compare
With private honor or with public zeal?
Whence then at things divine those darts of scorn?
Why are the woes, which virtuous men have borne
For sacred truth, a prey to laughter given?
What fiend, what foe of nature urg'd thy arm
The Almighty of his scepter to disarm?
To push this earth adrift and leave it loose from heaven?
Ye godlike shades of legislators old,
Ye who made Rome victorious, Athens wise,
Ye first of mortals with the bless'd inroll'd,
Say did not horror in your bosoms rise,
When thus by impious vanity impell'd
A magistrate, a monarch, ye beheld
Affronting civil order's holiest bands?
Those bands which ye so labor'd to improve?
Those hopes and fears of justice from above,
Which tam'd the savage world to your divine commands?
Alushta By Day
by Adam Bernard Mickiewicz

The mighty mountain flings its mist-veil down;
With little flowers the gracious fields are bright,
And from the forest colors flash to sight
Like gems that drop from off a Calif's crown.
Upon the meadows settles shimmering down
A band of butterflies in rainbow flight;
Cicadas call and call in day's delight,
And bees are dreaming in a blossom's crown.
The waves beneath the cliff are thunder-pale,
Now upward, upward in their rage they rise
And tawny are their crests as tigers' eyes.
The sun is focused on one white, far sail
And on blue, shining deeps as smooth as glass
Wherein slim cranes are shadowed as they pass.
The Lyre Of Anacreon
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

The minstrel of the classic lay
Of love and wine who sings
Still found the fingers run astray
That touched the rebel strings.
Of Cadmus he would fain have sung,
Of Atreus and his line;
But all the jocund echoes rung
With songs of love and wine.
Ah, brothers! I would fain have caught
Some fresher fancy's gleam;
My truant accents find, unsought,
The old familiar theme.
Love, Love! but not the sportive child
With shaft and twanging bow,
Whose random arrows drove us wild
Some threescore years ago;
Not Eros, with his joyous laugh,
The urchin blind and bare,
But Love, with spectacles and staff,
And scanty, silvered hair.
Our heads with frosted locks are white,
Our roofs are thatched with snow,
But red, in chilling winter's spite,
Our hearts and hearthstones glow.
Our old acquaintance, Time, drops in,
And while the running sands
Their golden thread unheeded spin,
He warms his frozen hands.
Stay, winged hours, too swift, too sweet,
And waft this message o'er
To all we miss, from all we meet
On life's fast-crumbling shore:
Say that, to old affection true,
We hug the narrowing chain
That binds our hearts, - alas, how few
The links that yet remain!
The fatal touch awaits them all
That turns the rocks to dust;
From year to year they break and fall, - 
They break, but never rust.
Say if one note of happier strain
This worn-out harp afford, - 
One throb that trembles, not in vain, - 
Their memory lent its chord.
Say that when Fancy closed her wings
And Passion quenched his fire,
Love, Love, still echoed from the strings
As from Anacreon's lyre!
Microcosm
by Madison Julius Cawein

The memory of what we've lost
Is with us more than what we've won;
Perhaps because we count the cost
By what we could, yet have not done.
'Twixt act and purpose fate hath drawn
Invisible threads we can not break,
And puppet-like these move us on
The stage of life, and break or make.
Less than the dust from which we're wrought,
We come and go, and still are hurled
From change to change, from naught to naught,
Heirs of oblivion and the world.
Tefkir Name. - Suleika (Speaks).
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The mirror tells me, I am fair!
Thou sayest, to grow old my fate will be.
Nought in God's presence changeth e'er,
Love him, for this one moment, then, in me.
The Barrier
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Midnight wooed the Morning-Star,
And prayed her: "Love come nearer;
Your swinging coldly there afar
To me but makes you dearer!"
The Morning-Star was pale with dole
As said she, low replying:
"Oh, lover mine, soul of my soul,
For you I too am sighing.
"But One ordained when we were born,
In spite of Love's insistence,
That Night might only view the Morn
Adoring at a distance."
But as she spoke the jealous Sun
Across the heavens panted.
"Oh, whining fools," he cried, "have done;
Your wishes shall be granted!"
He hurled his flaming lances far;
The twain stood unaffrighted--
And Midnight and the Morning-Star
Lay down in death united!
The Thief Of Beauty.
by Muriel Stuart

The mind is Beauty's thief, the poet takes
The golden spendthrift's trail among the blooms
Where she stands tossing silver in the lakes,
And twisting bright swift threads on airy looms.
Her ring the poppy snatches, and the rose
With laughter plunders all her gusty plumes.
He steals behind her, gathering, as she goes
Heedless of summer's end certain and soon, -
Of winter rattling at the door of June.
When Beauty lies hand-folded, pale and still,
Forsaken of her lovers and her lords,
And winter keeps cold watch upon the hill
Then he lets fall his bale of coloured words.
At frosty midnight June shall rise in flame,
Move at his magic with her bells and birds;
The rose will redden as he speaks her name,
He shall release earth's frozen bosom there,
And with great words shall cuff the whining air!
The Morning Of Life.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Le voile du matin.")
[Bk. V. viii., April, 1822.]
The mist of the morning is torn by the peaks,
Old towers gleam white in the ray,
And already the glory so joyously seeks
The lark that's saluting the day.
Then smile away, man, at the heavens so fair,
Though, were you swept hence in the night,
From your dark, lonely tomb the owlets would stare
At the sun rising newly as bright.
But out of earth's trammels your soul would have flown
Where glitters Eternity's stream,
And you shall have waked 'midst pure glories unknown,
As sunshine disperses a dream.
Respite
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The mighty conflict, which we call existence,
Doth wear upon the body and the soul,
Our vital forces wasted in resistance,
So much there is to conquer and control.
The rock which meets the billows with defiance,
Undaunted and unshaken day by day,
In spite of its unyielding self-reliance,
Is by the warfare surely worn away.
And there are depths and heights of strong emotions
That surge at times within the human breast,
More fierce than all the tides of all the oceans
Which sweep on ever in divine unrest.
I sometimes think the rock worn with adventures,
And sad with thoughts of conflicts yet to be,
Must envy the frail reed which no one censures,
When, overcome, 'tis swallowed by the sea.
This life is all resistance and repression.
Dear God, if in that other world unseen,
Not rest we find, but new life and progression,
Grant us a respite in the grave between.
Elegy In A Country Churchyard
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The men that worked for England
They have their graves at home:
And bees and birds of England
About the cross can roam.
But they that fought for England,
Following a falling star,
Alas, alas for England
They have their graves afar.
And they that rule in England,
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas for England
They have no graves as yet.
Flowers Of The Dust
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

The Mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small--
So soft and slow the great wheels go they scarcely move at all;
But the souls of men fall into them and are powdered into dust,
And in that dust grow the Passion-Flowers--Love, Hope, Trust.
Most wondrous their upspringing, in the dust of the Grinding-Mills,
And rare beyond the telling the fragrance each distils.
Some grow up tall and stately, and some grow sweet and small,
But Life out of Death is in each one--with purpose grow they all.
For that dust is God's own garden, and the Lord Christ tends it fair,
With oh, such loving tenderness! and oh, such patient care!
In sorrow the seeds are planted, they are watered with bitter tears,
But their roots strike down to the Water-Springs and the Sources of the Years.
These flowers of Christ's own providence, they wither not nor die,
But flourish fair, and fairer still, through all eternity.
In the Dust of the Mills and in travail the amaranth seeds are sown,
But the Flowers in their full beauty climb the Pillars of the Throne.
The Minstrel-Boy.
by Thomas Moore

The Minstrel-Boy to the war is gone,
In the ranks of death you'll find him;
His father's sword he has girded on.
And his wild harp slung behind him.
"Land of song!" said the warrior-bard,
"Tho' all the world betrays thee,
"One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,
"One faithful harp shall praise thee!"
The Minstrel fell!--but the foeman's chain
Could not bring his proud soul under;
The harp he loved ne'er spoke again,
For he tore its chords asunder;
And said, "No chains shall sully thee,
"Thou soul of love and bravery!
"Thy songs were made for the pure and free,
"They shall never sound in slavery."
The Mind's Liberty
by William Henry Davies

The mind, with its own eyes and ears,
May for these others have no care;
No matter where this body is,
The mind is free to go elsewhere.
My mind can be a sailor, when
This body's still confined to land;
And turn these mortals into trees,
That walk in Fleet Street or the Strand.
So, when I'm passing Charing Cross,
Where porters work both night and day,
I ofttimes hear sweet Malpas Brook,
That flows thrice fifty miles away.
And when I'm passing near St Paul's,
I see, beyond the dome and crowd,
Twm Barlum, that green pap in Gwent,
With its dark nipple in a cloud.
An Ode. The Merchant, To Secure
by Matthew Prior

The merchant, to secure his treasure,
Conveys it in a borrow'd name:
Euphelia serves to grace my measure:
But Cloe is my real flame.
My softest verse, my darling lyre,
Upon Euphelia's toilet lay;
When Cloe noted her desire,
That I should sing, that I should play.
My lyre I tune, my voice I raise,
But with my numbers mix my sighs;
And, whilst I sing Euphelia's praise,
I fix my soul on Cloe's eyes.
Fair Cloe blush'd: Euphelia frown'd:
I sung, and gazed: I play'd, and trembled:
And Venus to the Loves around
Remark'd how ill we all dissembled.
Morning
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The mist has left the greening plain,
The dew-drops shine like fairy rain,
The coquette rose awakes again
Her lovely self adorning.
The Wind is hiding in the trees,
A sighing, soothing, laughing tease,
Until the rose says "Kiss me, please,"
'Tis morning, 'tis morning.
With staff in hand and careless-free,
The wanderer fares right jauntily,
For towns and houses are, thinks he,
For scorning, for scorning.
My soul is swift upon the wing,
And in its deeps a song I bring;
Come, Love, and we together sing,
"'Tis morning, 'tis morning."
The Battle Eve Of The Brigade.
by Thomas Osborne Davis

Air--Contented I am.
I.
The mess-tent is full, and the glasses are set,
And the gallant Count Thomond is president yet;
The veteran stands, like an uplifted lance,
Crying--"Comrades, a health to the monarch of France!"
With bumpers and cheers they have done as he bade,
For King Louis is loved by the Irish Brigade.
II.
"A health to King James," and they bent as they quaffed,
"Here's to George the Elector," and fiercely they laughed,
"Good luck to the girls we wooed long ago,
Where Shannon and Barrow and Blackwater flow;"
"God prosper Old Ireland,"--you'd think them afraid,
So pale grew the chiefs of the Irish Brigade.
III.
"But, surely, that light cannot come from our lamp,
And that noise--are they all getting drunk in the camp?"
"Hurrah! boys, the morning of battle is come,
And the g'n'rale's beating on many a drum."
So they rush from the revel to join the parade:
For the van is the right of the Irish Brigade.
IV.
They fought as they revelled, fast, fiery, and true,
And, though victors, they left on the field not a few;
And they who survived fought and drank as of yore,
But the land of their heart's hope they never saw more;
For in far foreign fields, from Dunkirk to Belgrade,
Lie the soldiers and chiefs of the Irish Brigade.
The Clerks And The Bells
by Rudyard Kipling

The merry clerks of Oxenford they stretch themselves at ease
Unhelmeted on unbleached sward beneath unshrivelled trees.
For the leaves, the leaves, are on the bough, the bark is on the bole,
And East and West men's housen stand all even-roofed and whole.
(Men's housen doored and glazed and floored and whole at every turn!)
And so the Bells of Oxenford ring: 'Time it is to learn!'
The merry clerks of Oxenford they read and they are told
Of famous men who drew the sword in furious fights of old.
They heark and mark it faithfully, but never clerk will write
What vision rides 'twixt book and eye from any nearer fight.
(Whose supplication rends the soul? Whose night-long cries repeat?)
And so the Bells of Oxenford ring: 'Time it is to eat!'
The merry clerks of Oxenford they sit them down anon
At tables fair with silver-ware and naperies thereon,
Free to refuse or dainty choose what dish shall seem them good;
For they have done with single meats, and waters streaked with blood . . .
(That three days' fast is overpast when all those guns said 'Nay'!)
And so the Bells of Oxenford ring: 'Time it is to play!'
The merry clerks of Oxenford they hasten one by one
Or band in companies abroad to ride, or row, or run
By waters level with fair meads all goldenly bespread,
Where flash June's clashing dragon-flies but no man bows his head,
(Though bullet-wise June's dragon flies deride the fearless air!)
And so the Bells of Oxenford ring: 'Time it is for prayer!'
The pious clerks of Oxenford they kneel at twilight-tide
For to receive and well believe the Word of Him Who died.
And, though no present wings of Death hawk hungry round that place,
Their brows are bent upon their hands that none may see their face
(Who set aside the world and died? What life shall please Him best?)
And so the Bells of Oxenford ring: 'Time it is to rest!'
The merry clerks of Oxenford lie under bolt and bar
Lest they should rake the midnight clouds or chase a sliding star.
In fear of fine and dread rebuke, they round their full-night sleep,
And leave that world which once they took for older men to keep.
(Who walks by dreams what ghostly wood in search of play-mate slain?)
Until the Bells of Oxenford ring in the light again.
Unburdened breeze, unstricken trees, and all God's works restored
In this way live the merry clerks, the clerks of Oxenford!
After Many Days
by Robert Fuller Murray

The mist hangs round the College tower,
The ghostly street
Is silent at this midnight hour,
Save for my feet.
With none to see, with none to hear,
Downward I go
To where, beside the rugged pier,
The sea sings low.
It sings a tune well loved and known
In days gone by,
When often here, and not alone,
I watched the sky.
That was a barren time at best,
Its fruits were few;
But fruits and flowers had keener zest
And fresher hue.
Life has not since been wholly vain,
And now I bear
Of wisdom plucked from joy and pain
Some slender share.
But, howsoever rich the store,
I'd lay it down,
To feel upon my back once more
The old red gown.
Saxe.
by James McIntyre

The mind that's sad it doth relax
The humor of the witty Saxe,
He puts us in a cheerful mood,
Mirthful as our own Tom Hood.