DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Paralysis
by Rupert Brooke

For moveless limbs no pity I crave,
That never were swift! Still all I prize,
Laughter and thought and friends, I have;
No fool to heave luxurious sighs
For the woods and hills that I never knew.
The more excellent way's yet mine! And you
Flower-laden come to the clean white cell,
And we talk as ever, am I not the same?
With our hearts we love, immutable,
You without pity, I without shame.
We talk as of old; as of old you go
Out under the sky, and laughing, I know,
Flit through the streets, your heart all me;
Till you gain the world beyond the town.
Then, I fade from your heart, quietly;
And your fleet steps quicken. The strong down
Smiles you welcome there; the woods that love you
Close lovely and conquering arms above you.
O ever-moving, O lithe and free!
Fast in my linen prison I press
On impassable bars, or emptily
Laugh in my great loneliness.
And still in the white neat bed I strive
Most impotently against that gyve;
Being less now than a thought, even,
To you alone with your hills and heaven.
Benjamin Peirce - Astronomer, Mathematician. 1809-1890
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

For him the Architect of all
Unroofed our planet's starlit hall;
Through voids unknown to worlds unseen
His clearer vision rose serene.
With us on earth he walked by day,
His midnight path how far away!
We knew him not so well who knew
The patient eyes his soul looked through;
For who his untrod realm could share
Of us that breathe this mortal air,
Or camp in that celestial tent
Whose fringes gild our firmament?
How vast the workroom where he brought
The viewless implements of thought!
The wit how subtle, how profound,
That Nature's tangled webs unwound;
That through the clouded matrix saw
The crystal planes of shaping law,
Through these the sovereign skill that planned, - 
The Father's care, the Master's hand!
To him the wandering stars revealed
The secrets in their cradle sealed
The far-off, frozen sphere that swings
Through ether, zoned with lucid rings;
The orb that rolls in dim eclipse
Wide wheeling round its long ellipse, - 
His name Urania writes with these
And stamps it on her Pleiades.
We knew him not? Ah, well we knew
The manly soul, so brave, so true,
The cheerful heart that conquered age,
The childlike silver-bearded sage.
No more his tireless thought explores
The azure sea with golden shores;
Rest, wearied frame I the stars shall keep
A loving watch where thou shalt sleep.
Farewell! the spirit needs must rise,
So long a tenant of the skies, - 
Rise to that home all worlds above
Whose sun is God, whose light is love.
M. W. Ransom
by John Charles McNeill

(Died October 8, 1904)
For him, who in a hundred battles stood
Scorning the cannon's mouth,
Grimy with flame and red with foeman's blood,
For thy sweet sake, O South;
Who, wise as brave, yielded his conquered sword
At a vain war's surcease,
And spoke, thy champion still, the statesman's word
In the calm halls of peace;
Who pressed the ruddy wine to thy faint lips,
Where thy torn body lay,
And saw afar time's white in-sailing ships
Bringing a happier day:
Oh, mourn for him, dear land that gave him birth!
Bow low thy sorrowing head!
Let thy seared leaves fall silent on the earth
Whereunder he lies dead!
In field and hall, in valor and in grace,
In wisdom's livery,
Gentle and brave, he moved with knightly pace,
A worthy son of thee!
Compensation.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.
For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears.
Remedies
by Unknown

For every ill beneath the sun
There is some remedy or none;
If there be one, resolve to find it;
If not, submit, and never mind it.
To His Book.
by Henry Austin Dobson

(HOR. EP. I., 20.)
For mart and street you seem to pine
With restless glances, Book of mine!
Still craving on some stall to stand,
Fresh pumiced from the binder's hand.
You chafe at locks, and burn to quit
Your modest haunt and audience fit
For hearers less discriminate.
I reared you up for no such fate.
Still, if you must be published, go;
But mind, you can't come back, you know!
"What have I done?" I hear you cry,
And writhe beneath some critic's eye;
"What did I want?"--when, scarce polite,
They do but yawn, and roll you tight.
And yet methinks, if I may guess
(Putting aside your heartlessness
In leaving me and this your home),
You should find favour, too, at Rome.
That is, they'll like you while you're young,
When you are old, you'll pass among
The Great Unwashed,--then thumbed and sped,
Be fretted of slow moths, unread,
Or to Ilerda you'll be sent,
Or Utica, for banishment!
And I, whose counsel you disdain,
At that your lot shall laugh amain,
Wryly, as he who, like a fool,
Thrust o'er the cliff his restive mule.
Nay! there is worse behind. In age
They e'en may take your babbling page
In some remotest "slum" to teach
Mere boys their rudiments of speech!
But go. When on warm days you see
A chance of listeners, speak of me.
Tell them I soared from low estate,
A freedman's son, to higher fate
(That is, make up to me in worth
What you must take in point of birth);
Then tell them that I won renown
In peace and war, and pleased the town;
Paint me as early gray, and one
Little of stature, fond of sun,
Quick-tempered, too,--but nothing more.
Add (if they ask) I'm forty-four,
Or was, the year that over us
Both Lollius ruled and Lepidus.
Cup Of Mixture
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

For every Guest who comes with him to sup,
The Host compounds a strangely mingled cup;--
Red Wine of Life and Dregs of Bitterness,
And, will-he, nil-he, each must drink it up.
For All We Have And Are
by Rudyard Kipling

For all we have and are,
For all our children's fate,
Stand up and take the war.
The Hun is at the gate!
Our world has passed away,
In wantonness o'erthrown.
There is nothing left to-day
But steel and fire and stone!
Though all we knew depart,
The old Commandments stand:
"In courage keep your heart,
In strength lift up your hand."
Once more we hear the word
That sickened earth of old:
"No law except the Sword
Unsheathed and uncontrolled."
Once more it knits mankind,
Once more the nations go
To meet and break and bind
A crazed and driven foe.
Comfort, content, delight,
The ages' slow-bought gain,
They shrivelled in a night.
Only ourselves remain
To face the naked days
In silent fortitude,
Through perils and dismays
Renewed and re-renewed.
Though all we made depart,
The old Commandments stand:
"In patience keep your heart,
In strength lift up your hand."
No easy hope or lies
Shall bring us to our goal,
But iron sacrifice
Of body, will, and soul.
There is but one task for all
One life for each to give.
What stands if Freedom fall?
Who dies if England live?
To Hilaire Belloc
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

For every tiny town or place
God made the stars especially;
Babies look up with owlish face
And see them tangled in a tree:
You saw a moon from Sussex Downs,
A Sussex moon, untravelled still,
I saw a moon that was the town's,
The largest lamp on Campden Hill.
Yea; Heaven is everywhere at home
The big blue cap that always fits,
And so it is (be calm; they come
To goal at last, my wandering wits),
So is it with the heroic thing;
This shall not end for the world's end,
And though the sullen engines swing,
Be you not much afraid, my friend.
This did not end by Nelson's urn
Where an immortal England sits--
Nor where your tall young men in turn
Drank death like wine at Austerlitz.
And when the pedants bade us mark
What cold mechanic happenings
Must come; our souls said in the dark,
"Belike; but there are likelier things."
Likelier across these flats afar
These sulky levels smooth and free
The drums shall crash a waltz of war
And Death shall dance with Liberty;
Likelier the barricades shall blare
Slaughter below and smoke above,
And death and hate and hell declare
That men have found a thing to love.
Far from your sunny uplands set
I saw the dream; the streets I trod
The lit straight streets shot out and met
The starry streets that point to God.
This legend of an epic hour
A child I dreamed, and dream it still,
Under the great grey water-tower
That strikes the stars on Campden Hill.
G. K. C.
Walt Whitman.
by James McIntyre

For erratic style he leads van,
Wildly wayward Walt Whitman,
He done grand work in civil war,
For he did dress many a scar,
And kindly wet the hot parched mouth
Of Northern soldiers wounded South.
Memorials Of A Tour On The Continent, 1820 - XVII. - Engelberg, The Hill Of Angels
by William Wordsworth

For gentlest uses, oft-times Nature takes
The work of Fancy from her willing hands;
And such a beautiful creation makes
As renders needless spells and magic wands,
And for the boldest tale belief commands.
When first mine eyes beheld that famous Hill,
The sacred Engelberg, celestial Bands,
With intermingling motions soft and still,
Hung round its top, on wings that changed their hues at will.
Clouds do not name those Visitants; they were
The very Angels whose authentic lays,
Sung from that heavenly ground in middle air,
Made known the spot where piety should raise
A holy Structure to the Almighty's praise.
Resplendent Apparition! if in vain
My ears did listen, 'twas enough to gaze;
And watch the slow departure of the train,
Whose skirts the glowing Mountain thirsted to detain.
For Him I Sing
by Walt Whitman

For him I sing,
I raise the Present on the Past,
(As some perennial tree, out of its roots, the present on the past:)
With time and space I him dilate--and fuse the immortal laws,
To make himself, by them, the law unto himself.
Demon and Beast
by William Butler Yeats

For certain minutes at the least
That crafty demon and that loud beast
That plague me day and night
Ran out of my sight;
Though I had long perned in the gyre,
Between my hatred and desire.
I saw my freedom won
And all laugh in the sun.
The glittering eyes in a death's head
Of old Luke Wadding's portrait said
Welcome, and the Ormondes all
Nodded upon the wall,
And even Strafford smiled as though
It made him happier to know
I understood his plan.
Now that the loud beast ran
There was no portrait in the Gallery
But beckoned to sweet company,
For all men's thoughts grew clear
Being dear as mine are dear.
But soon a tear-drop started up,
For aimless joy had made me stop
Beside the little lake
To watch a white gull take
A bit of bread thrown up into the air;
Now gyring down and perning there
He splashed where an absurd
Portly green-pated bird
Shook off the water from his back;
Being no more demoniac
A stupid happy creature
Could rouse my whole nature.
Yet I am certain as can be
That every natural victory
Belongs to beast or demon,
That never yet had freeman
Right mastery of natural things,
And that mere growing old, that brings
Chilled blood, this sweetness brought;
Yet have no dearer thought
Than that I may find out a way
To make it linger half a day.
O what a sweetness strayed
Through barren Thebaid,
Or by the Mareotic sea
When that exultant Anthony
And twice a thousand more
Starved upon the shore
And withered to a bag of bones!
What had the Caesars but their thrones?
Minstrelsy
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

For ever, since my childish looks
Could rest on Nature's pictured books;
For ever, since my childish tongue
Could name the themes our bards have sung;
So long, the sweetness of their singing
Hath been to me a rapture bringing!
Yet ask me not the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.
I know that much whereof I sing,
Is shapen but for vanishing;
I know that summer's flower and leaf
And shine and shade are very brief,
And that the heart they brighten, may,
Before them all, be sheathed in clay!
I do not know the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.
A few there are, whose smile and praise
My minstrel hope, would kindly raise:
But, of those few, Death may impress
The lips of some with silentness;
While some may friendship's faith resign,
And heed no more a song of mine.
Ask not, ask not the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.
The sweetest song that minstrels sing,
Will charm not Joy to tarrying;
The greenest bay that earth can grow,
Will shelter not in burning woe;
A thousand voices will not cheer,
When one is mute that aye is dear!
Is there, alas! no reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.
I do not know! The turf is green
Beneath the rain's fast-dropping sheen,
Yet asks not why that deeper hue
Doth all its tender leaves renew;
And I, like-minded, am content,
While music to my soul is sent,
To question not the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.
Years pass, my life with them shall pass:
And soon, the cricket in the grass
And summer bird, shall louder sing
Than she who owns a minstrel's string.
Oh then may some, the dear and few,
Recall her love, whose truth they knew;
When all forget to question why
She had delight in minstrelsy!
Begging Another
by Ben Jonson

For love's sake, kiss me once again;
I long, and should not beg in vain,
Here's none to spy or see;
Why do you doubt or stay?
I'll taste as lightly as the bee
That doth but touch his flower and flies away.
Once more, and faith I will be gone;
Can he that loves ask less than one?
Nay, you may err in this
And all your bounty wrong;
This could be called but half a kiss,
What we're but once to do, we should do long.
I will but mend the last, and tell
Where, how it should have relished well;
Join lip to lip, and try
Each suck other's breath.
And whilst our tongues perplexed lie,
Let who will, think us dead or wish our death.
For I Must Sing of All I Feel and Know
by James Thomson -  (Bysshe Vanolis)

For I must sing of all I feel and know,
Waiting with Memnon passive near the palms,
Until the heavenly light doth dawn and grow
And thrill my silence into mystic psalms;
From unknown realms the wind streams sad or gay,
The trees give voice responsive to its sway.
For I must sing: of mountains, deserts, seas,
Of rivers ever flowing, ever flowing;
Of beasts and birds, of grass and flowers and trees
Forever fading and forever growing;
Of calm and storm, of night and eve and noon,
Of boundless space, and sun and stars and moon;
And of the secret sympathies that bind
All beings to their wondrous dwelling-place;
And of the perfect Unity enshrined
In omnipresence throughout time and space,
Alike informing with its full control
The dust, the stars, the worm, the human soul;
And most supremely of my human kin,
Their thoughts and deeds, their valors and their fears,
Their griefs and joys, their virtue and their sin,
Their feasts and wars, their cradles and their biers,
Their temples, prisons, homes and ships and marts,
The subtlest windings of their brains and hearts.
So rich and sweet is Life. And what is Death?
The tranquil slumbers dear and strange and boon
That feed at whiles our waking being's breath;
The solemn midnight of this glorious noon,
With countless distant stars, and each a sun,
Revealed harmonious with our daily one.
The Coquette, And After - (Triolets)
by Thomas Hardy

I
For long the cruel wish I knew
That your free heart should ache for me
While mine should bear no ache for you;
For, long - the cruel wish! - I knew
How men can feel, and craved to view
My triumph - fated not to be
For long! . . . The cruel wish I knew
That your free heart should ache for me!
II
At last one pays the penalty -
The woman - women always do.
My farce, I found, was tragedy
At last! - One pays the penalty
With interest when one, fancy-free,
Learns love, learns shame . . . Of sinners two
At last ONE pays the penalty -
The woman - women always do!
Elegy On The Year 1788 A Sketch.
by Robert Burns

For Lords or Kings I dinna mourn,
E'en let them die, for that they're born,
But oh! prodigious to reflec'!
A Towmont, Sirs, is gane to wreck!
O Eighty-eight, in thy sma' space
What dire events ha'e taken place!
Of what enjoyments thou hast reft us!
In what a pickle thou hast left us!
The Spanish empire's tint a-head,
An' my auld toothless Bawtie's dead;
The tulzie's sair 'tween Pitt and Fox,
And our guid wife's wee birdie cocks;
The tane is game, a bluidie devil,
But to the hen-birds unco civil:
The tither's something dour o' treadin',
But better stuff ne'er claw'd a midden,
Ye ministers, come mount the pu'pit,
An' cry till ye be hearse an' roupet,
For Eighty-eight he wish'd you weel,
An' gied you a' baith gear an' meal;
E'en mony a plack, and mony a peck,
Ye ken yoursels, for little feck!
Ye bonnie lasses, dight your e'en,
For some o' you ha'e tint a frien';
In Eighty-eight, ye ken, was ta'en,
What ye'll ne'er ha'e to gie again.
Observe the very nowt an' sheep,
How dowf and dowie now they creep;
Nay, even the yirth itsel' does cry,
For Embro' wells are grutten dry.
O Eighty-nine, thou's but a bairn,
An' no owre auld, I hope, to learn!
Thou beardless boy, I pray tak' care,
Thou now has got thy daddy's chair,
Nae hand-cuff'd, mizl'd, hap-shackl'd Regent,
But, like himsel' a full free agent.
Be sure ye follow out the plan
Nae waur than he did, honest man!
As muckle better as ye can.
January 1, 1789.
Taylor's Song (From Maria Stuart)
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

For joys the hours of earth bestow
With sorrow thou must pay.
Though many follow close, yet know,
They're loaned but for a day.
With sighing in thy laughter's stead
Shall come a time of grief,
The load of usury bow thy head,
With loss of thy belief.
Mary Anne, Mary Anne,
Mary Anne, Mary Anne,
Hadst thou not smiled upon me, thou,
I were not weeping now.
May God help him who never can
Give only half his soul;
The time comes surely for that man
To take the sorrow whole.
May God help him who was so glad,
That he cannot forget,
Help him who lost the all he had,
But not his reason yet.
Mary Anne, Mary Anne,
Mary Anne, Mary Anne,
The flowers that my life had grown,
Died out when thou went gone.
Riding Together
by William Morris

For many, many days together
The wind blew steady from the East;
For many days hot grew the weather,
About the time of our Lady's Feast.
For many days we rode together,
Yet met we neither friend nor foe;
Hotter and clearer grew the weather,
Steadily did the East wind blow.
We saw the trees in the hot, bright weather,
Clear-cut, with shadows very black,
As freely we rode on together
With helms unlaced and bridles slack.
And often as we rode together,
We, looking down the green-bank'd stream,
Saw flowers in the sunny weather,
And saw the bubble-making bream.
And in the night lay down together,
And hung above our heads the rood,
Or watch'd night-long in the dewy weather,
The while the moon did watch the wood.
Our spears stood bright and thick together,
Straight out the banners stream'd behind,
As we gallop'd on in the sunny weather,
With faces turn'd towards the wind.
Down sank our threescore spears together,
As thick we saw the pagans ride;
His eager face in the clear fresh weather,
Shone out that last time by my side.
Up the sweep of the bridge we dash'd together,
It rock'd to the crash of the meeting spears,
Down rain'd the buds of the dear spring weather,
The elm-tree flowers fell like tears.
There, as we roll'd and writhed together,
I threw my arms above my head,
For close by my side, in the lovely weather,
I saw him reel and fall back dead.
I and the slayer met together,
He waited the death-stroke there in his place,
With thoughts of death, in the lovely weather,
Gapingly mazed at my madden'd face.
Madly I fought as we fought together;
In vain: the little Christian band
The pagans drown'd, as in stormy weather,
The river drowns low-lying land.
They bound my blood-stain'd hands together,
They bound his corpse to nod by my side:
Then on we rode, in the bright March weather,
With clash of cymbals did we ride.
We ride no more, no more together;
My prison-bars are thick and strong,
I take no heed of any weather,
The sweet Saints grant I live not long.
The Necklace Garden
by Paul Cameron Brown

For my part, I spied red berries
on a currant bush
lush in August;
the canopy of leaves
a nesting place for hornets
clocking one hundred
in & out of their ice-castle hive.
Birds had fled in horror,
there was a pallor
around the sun
and nearby a Hubbard squash
grew like Topsy
already several baskets in size.
I threatened suicide
in this herbivorous garden
amid wild canaries and butternuts;
my jangled nerves a lobster colour
only calmed by more grievously
afflicted tobacco hornworms,
their skins pierced by the radar alum
of wasps.
Transformed into insect angels
strumming away the afterlife,
they arrived as ghosts to comfort me.
Fresh, spring potatoes grew like serendipity
under a pleasant summer sky.
The smell of good earth
revived above
the saltpetre muddle
of the humanoid puzzle.
Later, the night became a lavender cloak,
her folds sweet orifices
of a pleasure bound woman.
A Valentine
by Edgar Allan Poe

For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,
Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda,
Shall find her own sweet name, that nestling lies
Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader.
Search narrowly the lines!, they hold a treasure
Divine, a talisman, an amulet
That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure,
The words, the syllables! Do not forget
The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor
And yet there is in this no Gordian knot
Which one might not undo without a sabre,
If one could merely comprehend the plot.
Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering
Eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus
Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing
Of poets, by poets, as the name is a poet's, too,
Its letters, although naturally lying
Like the knight Pinto, Mendez Ferdinando,
Still form a synonym for Truth, Cease trying!
You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you can do.
The Seer Of Hearts
by Theodosia Garrison

For mocking on men's faces
He only sees instead
The hidden, hundred traces
Of tears their eyes have shed.
Above their lips denying,
Through all their boasting dares,
He hears the anguished crying
Of old unanswered prayers.
And through the will's reliance
He only sees aright
A frightened child's defiance
Left lonely in the night.
For Myself Alone, I Would Not Be
by Louisa May Alcott

"For myself alone, I would not be
Ambitious in my wish; but, for you,
I would be trebled twenty times myself;
A thousand times more fair,
Ten thousand times more rich."
To His Honoured Friend, Sir John Mince.
by Robert Herrick

For civil, clean, and circumcised wit,
And for the comely carriage of it,
Thou art the man, the only man best known,
Mark'd for the true wit of a million:
From whom we'll reckon. Wit came in but since
The calculation of thy birth, brave Mince.
Fragment: To A Friend Released From Prison.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

For me, my friend, if not that tears did tremble
In my faint eyes, and that my heart beat fast
With feelings which make rapture pain resemble,
Yet, from thy voice that falsehood starts aghast,
I thank thee - let the tyrant keep
His chains and tears, yea, let him weep
With rage to see thee freshly risen,
Like strength from slumber, from the prison,
In which he vainly hoped the soul to bind
Which on the chains must prey that fetter humankind.
Prophecy
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heaven fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, 
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and the rained a ghastly dew
From the nation's airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the people plunging thro' the thunderstorm;
Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle flags were furl'd 
In the Parliament of men, the Federation of the world.
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.
A Good-By.
by Bliss Carman (William)

For love of the roving foot
And joy of the roving eye,
God send you store of morrows fair
And a good rest by and by!