DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
To F. W.
by William Ernest Henley

Let us be drunk, and for a while forget,
Forget, and, ceasing even from regret,
Live without reason and despite of rhyme,
As in a dream preposterous and sublime,
Where place and hour and means for once are met.
Where is the use of effort?    Love and debt
And disappointment have us in a net.
Let us break out, and taste the morning prime . . .
Let us be drunk.
In vain our little hour we strut and fret,
And mouth our wretched parts as for a bet:
We cannot please the tragicaster Time.
To gain the crystal sphere, the silver dime,
Where Sympathy sits dimpling on us yet,
Let us be drunk!
***
When you are old, and I am passed away -
Passed, and your face, your golden face, is gray -
I think, whate'er the end, this dream of mine,
Comforting you, a friendly star will shine
Down the dim slope where still you stumble and stray.
So may it be:    that so dead Yesterday,
No sad-eyed ghost but generous and gay,
May serve you memories like almighty wine,
When you are old!
Dear Heart, it shall be so.    Under the sway
Of death the past's enormous disarray
Lies hushed and dark.    Yet though there come no sign,
Live on well pleased:    immortal and divine
Love shall still tend you, as God's angels may,
When you are old.
***
Beside the idle summer sea
And in the vacant summer days,
Light Love came fluting down the ways,
Where you were loitering with me.
Who has not welcomed, even as we,
That jocund minstrel and his lays
Beside the idle summer sea
And in the vacant summer days?
We listened, we were fancy-free;
And lo! in terror and amaze
We stood alone - alone at gaze
With an implacable memory
Beside the idle summer sea.
Let Us Forget.
by James Whitcomb Riley

Let us forget.    What matters it that we
Once reigned o'er happy realms of long-ago,
And talked of love, and let our voices low,
And ruled for some brief sessions royally?
What if we sung, or laughed, or wept maybe?
It has availed not anything, and so
Let it go by that we may better know
How poor a thing is lost to you and me.
But yesterday I kissed your lips, and yet
Did thrill you not enough to shake the dew
From your drenched lids - and missed, with no regret,
Your kiss shot back, with sharp breaths failing you;
And so, to-day, while our worn eyes are wet
With all this waste of tears, let us forget!
In the Night.
by Emma Lazarus

Let us go in: the air is dank and chill
With dewy midnight, and the moon rides high
O'er ghostly fields, pale stream, and spectral hill.
This hour the dawn seems farthest from the sky
So weary long the space that lies between
That sacred joy and this dark mystery
Of earth and heaven: no glimmering is seen,
In the star-sprinkled east, of coming day,
Nor, westward, of the splendor that hath been.
Strange fears beset us, nameless terrors sway
The brooding soul, that hungers for her rest,
Out worn with changing moods, vain hopes' delay,
With conscious thought o'erburdened and oppressed.
The mystery and the shadow wax too deep;
She longs to merge both sense and thought in sleep.
Let The Memorial Hill Remember
by Yehuda Amichai

Let the memorial hill remember instead of me,
that's what it's here for. Let the par in-memory-of remember,
let the street that's-named-for remember,
let the well-known building remember,
let the synagogue that's named after God remember
let the rolling Torah scroll remember, let the prayer
for the memory of the dead remember. Let the flags remember
those multicolored shrouds of history: the bodies they wrapped
have long since turned to dust. Let the dust remember.
Let the dung remember at the gate. Let the afterbirth remember.
Let the beasts of the field and birds of the heavens eat and remember.
Let all of them remember so that I can rest.
Before
by Robert Browning

I.
Let them fight it out, friend! things have gone too far.
God must judge the couple: leave them as they are
Whichever one's the guiltless, to his glory,
And whichever one the guilt's with, to my story!
II.
Why, you would not bid men, sunk in such a slough,
Strike no arm out further, stick and stink as now,
Leaving right and wrong to settle the embroilment,
Heaven with snaky hell, in torture and entoilment?
III.
Who's the culprit of them? How must he conceive
God, the queen he caps to, laughing in his sleeve,
'Tis but decent to profess oneself beneath her:
Still, one must not be too much in earnest, either!
IV.
Better sin the whole sin, sure that God observes;
Then go live his life out! Life will try his nerves,
When the sky, which noticed all, makes no disclosure,
And the earth keeps up her terrible composure.
V.
Let him pace at pleasure, past the walls of rose,
Pluck their fruits when grape-trees graze him as he goes!
For he 'gins to guess the purpose of the garden,
With the sly mute thing, beside there, for a warden.
VI.
What's the leopard-dog-thing, constant at his side,
A leer and lie in every eye of its obsequious hide?
When will come an end to all the mock obeisance,
And the price appear that pays for the misfeasance?
VII.
So much for the culprit. Who's the martyred man?
Let him bear one stroke more, for be sure he can!
He that strove thus evil's lump with good to leaven,
Let him give his blood at last and get his heaven!
VIII.
All or nothing, stake it! Trust she God or no?
Thus far and no farther? farther? be it so!
Now, enough of your chicane of prudent pauses,
Sage provisos, sub-intents and saving-clauses!
IX.
Ah, 'forgive' you bid him? While God's champion lives,
Wrong shall be resisted: dead, why, he forgives.
But you must not end my friend ere you begin him;
Evil stands not crowned on earth, while breath is in him.
X.
Once more, Will the wronger, at this last of all,
Dare to say, 'I did wrong,' rising in his fall?
No? Let go then! Both the fighters to their places!
While I count three, step you back as many paces!
Love's Burial
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Let us clear a little space,
And make Love a burial-place.
He is dead, dear, as you see,
And he wearies you and me.
Growing heavier, day by day,
Let us bury him, I say.
Wings of dead white butterflies,
These shall shroud him, as he lies
In his casket rich and rare,
Made of finest maiden-hair.
With the pollen of the rose
Let us his white eyelids close.
Put the rose thorn in his hand,
Shorn of leaves - you understand.
Let some holy water fall
On his dead face, tears of gall - 
As we kneel to him and say,
"Dreams to dreams," and turn away.
Those gravediggers, Doubt, Distrust,
They will lower him to the dust.
Let us part here with a kiss - 
You go that way, I go this.
Since we buried Love to-day
We will walk a separate way.
The Labour Agitator
by Henry Lawson

Let the liar call me liar,
And the robber call me thief.
They can only fan the fire
That is born of my belief.
While I'm speaking, while I'm writing,
To reform the wrongful laws,
Well I know that I am fighting
For the grand old Cause.
See the army of the rebels
Marching on for evermore.
We are countless as the pebbles
That are strewn along the shore.
Agitating, agitating,
Till the Truth has sealed the fate
Of the wrongs that I am hating
With the grand old Hate.
Though no battle banner rustles
In a smoke that blurs the blue,
As when 'heroes' poured from Brussels
To the field of Waterloo,
Though we do not hear the rattle
Of the rifles in the wars,
There is glory in the battle
For the grand old Cause.
See the army of the rebels
Marching on for evermore.
We are countless as the pebbles
That are strewn along the shore.
Agitating, agitating,
Till the Truth has sealed the fate
Of the wrongs that I am hating
With the grand old Hate.
No! I look not to the reaping
In the dynasty of men,
For I know that I'll be sleeping
In a slandered grave e'er then.
Till his right to man is given
We'll rebel, and we'll rebel
As we would rebel in heaven
If it proved a hell.
See the army of the rebels
Marching on for evermore.
We are countless as the pebbles
That are strewn along the shore.
Agitating, agitating,
Till the Truth has sealed the fate
Of the wrongs that I am hating
With the grand old Hate.
No! There's neither creed nor nation
Where the Labour flag's unfurled,
For the Labour agitation
Breaks the barriers of the world.
Let the rulers fly in terror
With their scornful lips uncurled,
One by one the gods of error
From their thrones are hurled.
See the army of the rebels
Marching on for evermore.
We are countless as the pebbles
That are strewn along the shore.
Agitating, agitating,
Till the Truth has sealed the fate
Of the wrongs that I am hating
With the grand old Hate.
Elegy
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Let them bury your big eyes
In the secret earth securely,
Your thin fingers, and your fair,
Soft, indefinite-colored hair,--
All of these in some way, surely,
From the secret earth shall rise;
Not for these I sit and stare,
Broken and bereft completely;
Your young flesh that sat so neatly
On your little bones will sweetly
Blossom in the air.
But your voice,--never the rushing
Of a river underground,
Not the rising of the wind
In the trees before the rain,
Not the woodcock's watery call,
Not the note the white-throat utters,
Not the feet of children pushing
Yellow leaves along the gutters
In the blue and bitter fall,
Shall content my musing mind
For the beauty of that sound
That in no new way at all
Ever will be heard again.
Sweetly through the sappy stalk
Of the vigorous weed,
Holding all it held before,
Cherished by the faithful sun,
On and on eternally
Shall your altered fluid run,
Bud and bloom and go to seed;
But your singing days are done;
But the music of your talk
Never shall the chemistry
Of the secret earth restore.
All your lovely words are spoken.
Once the ivory box is broken,
Beats the golden bird no more.
At A Dance Of Girls
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

Let the wind's breath
Blow in the glades of the clouds
Until they close;
So that the beauty of these girls
May not escape.
From the Japanese of So-dzyo Hend-zyo.
To The Patron Of Poets, M. End. Porter.
by Robert Herrick

Let there be patrons, patrons like to thee,
Brave Porter! poets ne'er will wanting be:
Fabius and Cotta, Lentulus, all live
In thee, thou man of men! who here do'st give
Not only subject-matter for our wit,
But likewise oil of maintenance to it:
For which, before thy threshold, we'll lay down
Our thyrse for sceptre, and our bays for crown.
For, to say truth, all garlands are thy due:
The laurel, myrtle, oak, and ivy too.
A Roadway
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Let those who will stride on their barren roads
And prick themselves to haste with self-made goads,
Unheeding, as they struggle day by day,
If flowers be sweet or skies be blue or gray:
For me, the lone, cool way by purling brooks,
The solemn quiet of the woodland nooks,
A song-bird somewhere trilling sadly gay,
A pause to pick a flower beside the way.
A March Snow.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Let the old snow be covered with the new:
The trampled snow, so soiled, and stained, and sodden.
Let it be hidden wholly from our view
By pure white flakes, all trackless and untrodden.
When Winter dies, low at the sweet Spring's feet,
Let him be mantled in a clean, white sheet.
Let the old life be covered by the new:
The old past life so full of sad mistakes,
Let it be wholly hidden from the view
By deeds as white and silent as snow-flakes.
Ere this earth life melts in the eternal Spring
Let the white mantle of repentance, fling
Soft drapery about it, fold on fold,
Even as the new snow covers up the old.
Song: Let Us Go Back
by Victoria Mary Sackville-West

Let us go back together to the hills.
Weary am I of palaces and courts,
Weary of words disloyal to my thoughts,, 
Come, my beloved, let us to the hills.
Let us go back together to the land,
And wander hand in hand upon the heights;
Kings have we seen, and manifold delights,, 
Oh, my beloved, let us to the land!
Lone and unshackled, let us to the road
Which holds enchantment round each hidden bend,
Our course uncompassed and our whim its end,
Our feet once more, beloved, to the road!
Another. (Charms.)
by Robert Herrick

Let the superstitious wife
Near the child's heart lay a knife:
Point be up, and haft be down
(While she gossips in the town);
This, 'mongst other mystic charms,
Keeps the sleeping child from harms.
Amor Mysticus. Translations. From The Spanish Of Sor Marcela De Carpio.
by John Milton Hay

Let them say to my Lover
That here I lie!
The thing of His pleasure,
His slave am I.
Say that I seek Him
Only for love,
And welcome are tortures
My passion to prove.
Love giving gifts
Is suspicious and cold;
I have all, my Beloved,
When Thee I hold.
Hope and devotion
The good may gain;
I am but worthy
Of passion and pain.
So noble a Lord
None serves in vain,
For the pay of my love
Is my love's sweet pain.
I love Thee, to love Thee, -
No more I desire;
By faith is nourished
My love's strong fire.
I kiss Thy hands
When I feel their blows;
In the place of caresses
Thou givest me woes.
But in Thy chastising
Is joy and peace.
O Master and Love,
Let Thy blows not cease.
Thy beauty, Beloved,
With scorn is rife,
But I know that Thou lovest me,
Better than life.
And because thou lovest me,
Lover of mine,
Death can but make me
Utterly Thine.
I die with longing
Thy face to see;
Oh! sweet is the anguish
Of death to me!
A Last Word
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

Let us go hence: the night is now at hand;
The day is overworn, the birds all flown;
And we have reaped the crops the gods have sown
Despair and death; deep darkness o'er the land,
Broods like an owl; we cannot understand
Laughter or tears, for we have only known
Surpassing vanity: vain things alone
Have driven our perverse and aimless band.
Let us go hence, somewhither strange and cold,
To Hollow Lands where just men and unjust
Find end of labour, where's rest for the old,
Freedom to all from love and fear and lust.
Twine our torn hands!    O pray the earth enfold
Our life-sick hearts and turn them into dust.
Moon-Marketing
by Richard Le Gallienne

Let's go to market in the moon,
And buy some dreams together,
Slip on your little silver shoon,
And don your cap and feather;
No need of petticoat or stocking - 
No one up there will think it shocking.
Across the dew,
Just I and you,
With all the world behind us;
Away from rules,
Away from fools,
Where nobody can find us.
Lines.
by Thomas Hood

Let us make a leap, my dear,
In our love, of many a year,
And date it very far away,
On a bright clear summer day,
When the heart was like a sun
To itself, and falsehood none;
And the rosy lips a part
Of the very loving heart,
And the shining of the eye
But a sign to know it by; - 
When my faults were all forgiven,
And my life deserved of Heaven.
Dearest, let us reckon so,
And love for all that long ago;
Each absence count a year complete,
And keep a birthday when we meet.
To Be Merry
by Robert Herrick

Let's now take our time,
While we're in our prime,
And old, old age is afar off;
For the evil, evil days
Will come on apace,
Before we can be aware of.
The German Fleet
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Lie down, and let the billows hide your shame,
Oh, shorn and naked outcast of the seas!
You who confided to each ocean breeze
Your coming conquests, and made loud acclaim
Of your own grandeur and exalted fame;
You who have catered to they world's disease;
You who have drunk hate's wine, and found the lees;
Lie down! and let all men forget your name!
You dreamed of world dominion! you! the spawn
Of hell and hatred - Foe to all things free - 
Sworn enemy to honour, truth and right;
Too poor a thing now for the Devil's pawn,
Let the large mercy of the outraged sea
Engulf and hide you evermore from sight.
Tribute To The Memory Of The Same Dog
by William Wordsworth

Lie here, without a record of thy worth,
Beneath a covering of the common earth!
It is not from unwillingness to praise,
Or want of love, that here no Stone we raise;
More thou deserv'st; but 'this' man gives to man,
Brother to brother, 'this' is all we can.
Yet they to whom thy virtues made thee dear
Shall find thee through all changes of the year:
This Oak points out thy grave; the silent tree
Will gladly stand a monument of thee.
We grieved for thee, and wished thy end were past;
And willingly have laid thee here at last:
For thou hadst lived till everything that cheers
In thee had yielded to the weight of years;
Extreme old age had wasted thee away,
And left thee but a glimmering of the day;
Thy ears were deaf, and feeble were thy knees,
I saw thee stagger in the summer breeze,
Too weak to stand against its sportive breath,
And ready for the gentlest stroke of death.
It came, and we were glad; yet tears were shed;
Both man and woman wept when thou wert dead;
Not only for a thousand thoughts that were,
Old household thoughts, in which thou hadst thy share;
But for some precious boons vouchsafed to thee,
Found scarcely anywhere in like degree!
For love, that comes wherever life and sense
Are given by God, in thee was most intense;
A chain of heart, a feeling of the mind,
A tender sympathy, which did thee bind
Not only to us Men, but to thy Kind:
Yea, for thy fellow-brutes in thee we saw
A soul of love, love's intellectual law:
Hence, if we wept, it was not done in shame;
Our tears from passion and from reason came,
And, therefore, shalt thou be an honoured name!
When The Duke Of Clarence Died
by Henry Lawson

Let us sing in tear-choked numbers how the Duke of Clarence went,
Just to make a royal sorrow rather more pre-eminent.
Ladies sighed and sobbed and drivelled, toadies spoke with bated breath,
And the banners floating half-mast made a mockery of death,
And they said Australia sorrowed for the Prince's death, they lied!
She had done with kings and princes ere the Duke of Clarence died.
What's a death in lofty places? What's a noble birth?, say I,
To the poor who die in hundreds, as a man should never die?
Can they shed a tear, or sorrow for a royal dunce's fate?
No! for royalty has taught them how to sing the songs of hate;
O'er the sounds of grief in Europe, and the lands across the tide
Rose the growl of revolution, when the Duke of Clarence died.
We, it matters not how lonely our o'er-burdened lives are spent,
Claim in common with a Clarence, straight from Adam our descent!
Even the man they call a 'bastard' has a lineage to himself,
Though he traces not his fathers through the sordid line of Guelph,
And, perhaps in some foul garret in his misery and pride,
One of Nature's Kings was dying when the Duke of Clarence died.
Ah! the workgirl's bloodless fingers, in the plundered human hive,
Sew the banners of rebellion, while the kings and princes thrive;
In the cold of northern winter, in the south in dust and heat,
Weary workmen preach sedition at the corners of the street.
They pre-eminent in sorrow! 'tis pre-eminence in cheek;
We shall hear what care and pain is when the slums begin to speak;
Hundreds starved to pay the shadow of a crown upon his head!
Yellow gold (at last impotent) fought with death beside his bed.
And, perhaps, a Prince of Nature sat despairing by the side
Of a noble mother STARVING when the Duke of Clarence died.
Ignoble living, splendid dead! behold the pomp of royal woe!
Lo, the funeral! battle-hero never yet was buried so.
Who and what was he? What has he done to benefit mankind?
Has he nought to show Saint Peter save a royal race behind?
Who is worthy? Who is noble? God! shall gold alone decide?
Better men like dogs were buried ere the Duke of Clarence died.
Thrones of earth and earthly rulers soon shall all be swept aside,
And 'twere better for his comfort that the Duke of Clarence died.
Tempora Mutantur
by William Schwenck Gilbert

Letters, letters, letters, letters!
Some that please and some that bore,
Some that threaten prison fetters
(Metaphorically, fetters
Such as bind insolvent debtors)
Invitations by the score.
One from COGSON, WILES, and RAILER,
My attorneys, off the Strand;
One from COPPERBLOCK, my tailor
My unreasonable tailor
One in FLAGG'S disgusting hand.
One from EPHRAIM and MOSES,
Wanting coin without a doubt,
I should like to pull their noses
Their uncompromising noses;
One from ALICE with the roses
Ah, I know what that's about !
Time was when I waited, waited
For the missives that she wrote,
Humble postmen execrated
Loudly, deeply execrated
When I heard I wasn't fated
To be gladdened with a note!
Time was when I'd not have bartered
Of her little pen a dip
For a peerage duly gartered
For a peerage starred and gartered
With a palace-office chartered,
Or a Secretaryship.
But the time for that is over,
And I wish we'd never met.
I'm afraid I've proved a rover
I'm afraid a heartless rover
Quarters in a place like Dover
Tend to make a man forget.
Bills for carriages and horses,
Bills for wine and light cigar,
Matters that concern the Forces
News that may affect the Forces
News affecting my resources,
Much more interesting are!
And the tiny little paper,
With the words that seem to run
From her little fingers taper
(They are very small and taper),
By the tailor and the draper
Are in interest outdone.
And unopened it's remaining!
I can read her gentle hope
Her entreaties, uncomplaining
(She was always uncomplaining),
Her devotion never waning
Through the little envelope!
Praise Day
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Let us halt now for a space in our hurrying;
Let us take time to look up and look out;
Let us refuse for a spell to be worrying;
Let us decline to both question and doubt.
If one goes cavilling,
Hair splitting, flaw hunting - ready for strife - 
All the best pleasure is missed in the travelling
Onward through life.
Just for to-day we will put away sorrowing - 
Just for to-day not a tear shall be shed;
Nor will we fear anything, or go borrowing
Pain from the future by profitless dread.
Thought shall go frolicking,
Pleasuring, treasuring everything bright - 
Tasting the joy that is found just in rollicking
On through the light.
Just for to-day all the ills that need bettering
We will omit from our notebook of mind;
All that is good we will mark by red-lettering; - 
Those things alone we are seeking to find.
Things to be sad over,
Pine over, whine over - pass them, I say!
Nothing is noted save what we are glad over - 
This is Praise Day.
A Morning Walk
by Thomas Edward Brown

"Lie there," I said, "my Sorrow! lie thou there!
And I will drink the lissome air,
And see if yet the heavens have gained their blue."
Then rose my Sorrow as an aged man,
And stared, as such a one will stare,
A querulous doubt through tears that freshly ran;
Wherefore I said: "Content! thou shalt go too."
So went we throughthe sunlit crocus-glade,
I and my Sorrow, casting shade
On all the innocent things that upward pree,
And coax for smiles: but, as I went, I bowed,
And whispered    "Be no whit afraid!
He will pass sad and gentle as a cloud,
It is my Sorrow leave him unto me'
And every floweret in that happy place
Yearned up into the weary face
With pitying love, and held its golden breath,
Regardless seeming he, as though within
Was nothing apt for their sweet grace,
Nor any sense save such as is akin
To charnel glooms and emptiness of death.
Then sung a lusty bird, whose throat was clear
And strong with elemental cheer,
Till very heaven seemed lifted with the joy
Jet after jet tumultuous music burst
Fount-like, and filled the expanding sphere;
Whereat my soul was fain to slake its thirst,
Intent, and ravished with that blest employ.
The songster ceased articulate as a bell,
The rippling echoes fell and fell
Upon the shore of silence. Then I turned
To call upon my Sorrow, he was not;
But O, what splendour filled the dell I
There I there I O, there! upon the very spot
Where he had been an awful glory burned.
It was as though the mouth of God had kissed
And purpled into amethyst
Wan lips, as though red-quickening ichor rills
Had flushed his heart: 'twas he no more, no more!
'Twas she, my soul's evangelist,
My rose, my love, and lovelier than before,
Dew-nurtured on the far Celestial hills.
"O love," I cried, "I come, I come to thee!
Stay! stay !
"But softly, silently,
As pales the moon before the assault of day,
So, spectral-white against the brighter blue,
Faded my darling. But with me
Walks never more that shadow.
God is true,
And God was in that bird, believe it as ye may.