DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Le Panneau
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Under the rose-tree's dancing shade
There stands a little ivory girl,
Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl
With pale green nails of polished jade.
The red leaves fall upon the mould,
The white leaves flutter, one by one,
Down to a blue bowl where the sun,
Like a great dragon, writhes in gold.
The white leaves float upon the air,
The red leaves flutter idly down,
Some fall upon her yellow gown,
And some upon her raven hair.
She takes an amber lute and sings,
And as she sings a silver crane
Begins his scarlet neck to strain,
And flap his burnished metal wings.
She takes a lute of amber bright,
And from the thicket where he lies
Her lover, with his almond eyes,
Watches her movements in delight.
And now she gives a cry of fear,
And tiny tears begin to start:
A thorn has wounded with its dart
The pink-veined sea-shell of her ear.
And now she laughs a merry note:
There has fallen a petal of the rose
Just where the yellow satin shows
The blue-veined flower of her throat.
With pale green nails of polished jade,
Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl,
There stands a little ivory girl
Under the rose-tree's dancing shade.
The Tendril's Fate
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Under the snow, in the dark and the cold,
A pale little sprout was humming;
Sweetly it sang, 'neath the frozen mould,
Of the beautiful days that were coming.
"How foolish your songs!" said a lump of clay;
"What is there, I ask, to prove them?
Just look at the walls between you and the day,
Now, have you the strength to move them?"
But under the ice and under the snow
The pale little sprout kept singing,
"I cannot tell how, but I know, I know,
I know what the days are bringing.
"Birds, and blossoms, and buzzing bees,
Blue, blue skies above me,
Bloom on the meadows and buds on the trees
And the great glad sun to love me."
A pebble spoke next:    "You are quite absurd,"
It said, "with your song's insistence;
For I never saw a tree or a bird,
So of course there are none in existence."
"But I know, I know," the tendril cried,
In beautiful sweet unreason;
Till lo! from its prison, glorified,
It burst in the glad spring season.
The Trees At Night
by William Kerr

Under vague silver moonlight
The trees are lovely and ghostly,
In the pale blue of the night
There are few stars to see.
The leaves are green still, but brown-blent:
They stir not, only known
By a poignant delicate scent
To the lonely moon blown.
The lonely lovely trees sigh
For summer spent and gone:
A few homing leaves drift by,
Poor souls bewildered and wan.
After the Hunt
by Henry Kendall

Underneath the windy mountain walls
Forth we rode, an eager band,
By the surges and the verges and the gorges,
Till the night was on the land
On the hazy, mazy land!
Far away the bounding prey
Leapt across the ruts and logs,
But we galloped, galloped, galloped on,
Till we heard the yapping of the dogs
The yapping and the yelping of the dogs.
Oh, it was a madly merry day
We shall not so soon forget,
And the edges and the ledges and the ridges
Haunt us with their echoes yet
Echoes, echoes, echoes yet!
While the moon is on the hill
Gleaming through the streaming fogs,
Don't you hear the yapping of the dogs
The yapping and the yelping of the dogs?
The Caterpillar
by Robert von Ranke Graves

Under this loop of honeysuckle,
A creeping, coloured caterpillar,
I gnaw the fresh green hawthorn spray,
I nibble it leaf by leaf away.
Down beneath grow dandelions,
Daisies, old-man's-looking-glasses;
Rooks flap croaking across the lane.
I eat and swallow and eat again.
Here come raindrops helter-skelter;
I munch and nibble unregarding:
Hawthorn leaves are juicy and firm.
I'll mind my business: I'm a good worm.
When I'm old, tired, melancholy,
I'll build a leaf-green mausoleum
Close by, here on this lovely spray,
And die and dream the ages away.
Some say worms win resurrection,
With white wings beating flitter-flutter,
But wings or a sound sleep, why should I care?
Either way I'll miss my share.
Under this loop of honeysuckle,
A hungry, hairy caterpillar,
I crawl on my high and swinging seat,
And eat, eat, eat, as one ought to eat.
The Owls
by Charles Baudelaire

Under the overhanging yews,
The dark owls sit in solemn state,
Like stranger gods; by twos and twos
Their red eyes gleam. They meditate.
Motionless thus they sit and dream
Until that melancholy hour
When, with the sun's last fading gleam,
The nightly shades assume their power.
From their still attitude the wise
Will learn with terror to despise
All tumult, movement, and unrest;
For he who follows every shade,
Carries the memory in his breast,
Of each unhappy journey made.
Undue Significance A Starving Man Attaches
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Undue significance a starving man attaches
To food
Far off; he sighs, and therefore hopeless,
And therefore good.
Partaken, it relieves indeed, but proves us
That spices fly
In the receipt. It was the distance
Was savory.
Parnell's Funeral
by William Butler Yeats

PARNELL'S FUNERAL
Under the Great Comedian's tomb the crowd.
A bundle of tempestuous cloud is blown
About the sky; where that is clear of cloud
Brightness remains; a brighter star shoots down;
What shudders run through all that animal blood?
What is this sacrifice? Can someone there
Recall the Cretan barb that pierced a star?
Rich foliage that the starlight glittered through,
A frenzied crowd, and where the branches sprang
A beautiful seated boy; a sacred bow;
A woman, and an arrow on a string;
A pierced boy, image of a star laid low.
That woman, the Great Mother imaging,
Cut out his heart. Some master of design
Stamped boy and tree upon Sicilian coin.
An age is the reversal of an age:
When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone,
We lived like men that watch a painted stage.
What matter for the scene, the scene once gone:
It had not touched our lives. But popular rage,
i{Hysterica passio} dragged this quarry down.
None shared our guilt; nor did we play a part
Upon a painted stage when we devoured his heart.
Come, fix upon me that accusing eye.
I thirst for accusation. All that was sung.
All that was said in Ireland is a lie
Bred out of the c-ontagion of the throng,
Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die.
Leave nothing but the nothingS that belong
To this bare soul, let all men judge that can
Whether it be an animal or a man.
The rest I pass, one sentence I unsay.
Had de Valera eaten parnell's heart
No loose-lipped demagogue had won the day.
No civil rancour torn the land apart.
Had Cosgrave eaten parnell's heart, the land's
Imagination had been satisfied,
Or lacking that, government in such hands.
O'Higgins its sole statesman had not died.
Had even O'Duffy -- but I name no more --
Their school a crowd, his master solitude;
Through Jonathan Swift's clark grove he passed, and there
plucked bitter wisdom that enriched his blood.
Under The Trees.
by Charles Stuart Calverley

"Under the trees!" Who but agrees
That there is magic in words such as these?
Promptly one sees shake in the breeze
Stately lime-avenues haunted of bees:
Where, looking far over buttercupp'd leas,
Lads and "fair shes" (that is Byron, and he's
An authority) lie very much at their ease;
Taking their teas, or their duck and green peas,
Or, if they prefer it, their plain bread and cheese:
Not objecting at all though it's rather a squeeze
And the glass is, I daresay, at 80 degrees.
Some get up glees, and are mad about Ries
And Sainton, and Tamberlik's thrilling high Cs;
Or if painters, hold forth upon Hunt and Maclise,
And the tone and the breadth of that landscape of Lee's;
Or if learned, on nodes and the moon's apogees,
Or, if serious, on something of AKHB's,
Or the latest attempt to convert the Chaldees;
Or in short about all things, from earthquakes to fleas.
Some sit in twos or (less frequently) threes,
With their innocent lambswool or book on their knees,
And talk, and enact, any nonsense you please,
As they gaze into eyes that are blue as the seas;
And you hear an occasional "Harry, don't tease"
From the sweetest of lips in the softest of keys,
And other remarks, which to me are Chinese.
And fast the time flees; till a ladylike sneeze,
Or a portly papa's more elaborate wheeze,
Makes Miss Tabitha seize on her brown muffatees,
And announce as a fact that it's going to freeze,
And that young people ought to attend to their Ps
And their Qs, and not court every form of disease:
Then Tommy eats up the three last ratafias,
And pretty Louise wraps her robe de cerise
Round a bosom as tender as Widow Machree's,
And (in spite of the pleas of her lorn vis-a-vis)
Goes to wrap up her uncle - a patient of Skey's,
Who is prone to catch chills, like all old Bengalese:-
But at bedtime I trust he'll remember to grease
The bridge of his nose, and preserve his rupees
From the premature clutch of his fond legatees;
Or at least have no fees to pay any M. D.s
For the cold his niece caught, sitting under the Trees.
The Bourne
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Underneath the growing grass,
Underneath the living flowers,
Deeper than the sound of showers:
There we shall not count the hours
By the shadows as they pass.
Youth and health will be but vain,
Beauty reckoned of no worth:
There a very little girth
Can hold round what once the earth
Seemed too narrow to contain.
Epitaph XVI. Another, On The Same.
by Alexander Pope

Under this marble, or under this sill,
Or under this turf, or e'en what they will;
Whatever an heir, or a friend in his stead,
Or any good creature shall lay o'er my head,
Lies one who ne'er cared, and still cares not a pin
What they said, or may say, of the mortal within:
But who, living and dying, serene still and free,
Trusts in God, that as well as he was, he shall be.
The Desire To Paint
by Charles Baudelaire

Unhappy perhaps is the man, but happy the artist, who is torn with this desire.
I burn to paint a certain woman who has appeared to me so rarely, and so swiftly fled away, like some beautiful, regrettable thing the traveller must leave behind him in the night. It is already long since I saw her.
She is beautiful, and more than beautiful: she is overpowering. The colour black preponderates in her; all that she inspires is nocturnal and profound.
Her eyes are two caverns where mystery vaguely stirs and gleams; her glance illuminates like a ray of light; it is an explosion in the darkness.
I would compare her to a black sun if one could conceive of a dark star overthrowing light and happiness.
But it is the moon that she makes one dream of most readily; the moon, who has without doubt touched her with her own influence; not the white moon of the idylls, who resembles a cold bride, but the sinister and intoxicating moon suspended in the depths of a stormy night, among the driven clouds; not the discreet peaceful moon who visits the dreams of pure men, but the moon torn from the sky, conquered and revolted, that the witches of Thessaly hardly constrain to dance upon the terrified grass.
Her small brow is the habitation of a tenacious will and the love of prey. And below this inquiet face, whose mobile nostrils breathe in the unknown and the impossible, glitters, with an unspeakable grace, the smile of a large mouth ; white, red, and delicious; a mouth that makes one dream of the miracle of some superb flower unclosing in a volcanic land.
There are women who inspire one with the desire to woo them and win them; but she makes one wish to die slowly beneath her steady gaze.
The Fitzroy Blacksmith
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

With Apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ("The Village Blacksmith")
Under the spreading deficit,
The Fitzroy Smithy stands;
The smith, a spendthrift man is he,
With too much on his hands;
But the muscles of his brawny jaw
Are strong as iron bands.
Pay out, pay put, from morn till night,
You can hear the sovereigns go;
Or you'll hear him singing "Old Folks at Home",
In a deep bass voice and slow,
Like a bullfrog down in the village well
When the evening sun is low.
The Australian going "home" for loans
Looks in at the open door;
He loves to see the imported plant,
And to hear the furnace roar,
And to watch the private firms smash up
Like chaff on the threshing-floor.
Toiling, rejoicing, borrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some scheme begun
That never sees its close.
Something unpaid for, someone done,
Has earned a night's repose.
Time.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality,
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea?
Unfolded Out Of The Folds
by Walt Whitman

Unfolded out of the folds of the woman, man comes unfolded, and is always to come unfolded;
Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth, is to come the superbest man of the earth;
Unfolded out of the friendliest woman, is to come the friendliest man;
Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman, can a man be form'd of perfect body;
Unfolded only out of the inimitable poem of the woman, can come the poems of man, (only thence have my poems come;)
Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant woman I love, only thence can appear the strong and arrogant man I love;
Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-muscled woman I love, only thence come the brawny embraces of the man;
Unfolded out of the folds of the woman's brain, come all the folds of the man's brain, duly obedient;
Unfolded out of the justice of the woman, all justice is unfolded;
Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy:
A man is a great thing upon the earth, and through eternity, but every jot of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman,
First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in himself.
Epitaph - On the Countess Dowager of Pembroke
by William Browne

Underneath this sable herse
Lies the subject of all verse:
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother:
Death, ere thou hast slain another,
Fair and learn'd, and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.
Marble piles let no man raise
To her name: for after days
Some kind woman born as she,
Reading this, like Niobe
Shall turn marble, and become
Both her mourner and her tomb.
The Battle Autumn Of 1862.
by Kate Seymour Maclean

Under the orchard boughs,
That drop red leaves like coals into the grass.
The golden arrows of the sunset fall;
And on the vine-hung wall
Great purple clusters in delicious drowse,
Beakers of chrysolite and amethyst,
Yet by the sun unkissed,
Lean down to all the wooing lips that pass,
Brimful of red, red wine
Sweet as brown peasants glean along the castled Rhine
All sights and sounds are of the Autumn weather;
The urchin rock'ng in the trees
Shakes silver laughter with the apples down,--
And wading to the knees
Among the stubble and the husks so brown,
The oxen keeping every patient step together,
Bring in the creaking wain,
High-piled with yellow maize and sheaves of rustling grain.
While in the mill, with ceaseless whirr and drone,
With moss and lichens to the roof o'ergrown
An undertone to every other sound,
The blind old horse goes round
Gathered along the farm-house eaves
In noisy congress, see the swallows sit,
Or whirling in mid air like autumn leaves,
In airy wheels they flit.
Bright rovers of all summer skies,
I follow them with wistful eyes
To-morrow's sunset they will be
A thousand leagues by land and sea
Beyond this wintry hemisphere
Heaven gathers round their joyous wings
The sunlight of perpetual springs,
Soft airs and fragrant blossomings
Through all the glad round year.
I hear as though I did not hear,
Along the upland fields remote,
The plough-boy's whistle, silver clear:
For hark' the herds-man's graver note,
Who hums beneath the orchard boughs,
The ballad of that grand old man,
Who marshalled freedom's battle van,
And fell,--no laurel round his brows.
To-day the hero-martyr's grave
Is shaken by the armed tread
Of patriotic soldiers o'er his head
Not by the footsteps of one slave!
So grows the work that he began,
Wrought out in slow and toilsome ways,
Yet ever building through the days,
A grander heritage for man.
Oh! harvest years, foretold so long!
Through seas of blood, through years of wrong,
A people patient brave and strong,
In camp and field, and battle clang,
'Mid cannon's roar and trumpet's peal,
And shock of war, and clash of steel,
For you each steadfast blade out-sprang!
In you each loyal heart kept faith
As strong as life, as stern as death;
Though human lives like summer grain
Were sown on every battle-plain;
Blood of our bravest and our best,
The red, red wine of life was pressed,
And lost like summer rain.
In dust and smoke of carnage whirled,
Before those dying eyes still swam
Those coming years so grand and calm,
The golden Autumns of the world!
Through frost and snow and wintry rains,
Speed, silent hours!--the Nation waits,
While at her feet the slave in chains,
Kneels, listening for the coming fates;
And round him droops in soil and dust,
The bright flag of her stripes and stars:
Speed, Autumn hours!--we wait in trust
No tale of traitor lips can dim,
Till Liberty's white hand unbars
The broad gates of the glad New Year,
Unfurls our banner free and clear,
And ushers Peace and Freedom in!
Northward.
by John Milton Hay

Under the high unclouded sun
That makes the ship and shadow one,
I sail away as from the fort
Booms sullenly the noonday gun.
The odorous airs blow thin and fine,
The sparkling waves like emeralds shine,
The lustre of the coral reefs
Gleams whitely through the tepid brine.
And glitters o'er the liquid miles
The jewelled ring of verdant isles,
Where generous Nature holds her court
Of ripened bloom and sunny smiles.
Encinctured by the faithful seas
Inviolate gardens load the breeze,
Where flaunt like giant-warders' plumes
The pennants of the cocoa-trees.
Enthroned in light and bathed in balm,
In lonely majesty the Palm
Blesses the isles with waving hands, -
High-Priest of the eternal Calm.
Yet Northward with an equal mind
I steer my course, and leave behind
The rapture of the Southern skies, -
The wooing of the Southern wind.
For here o'er Nature's wanton bloom
Falls far and near the shade of gloom,
Cast from the hovering vulture-wings
Of one dark thought of woe and doom.
I know that in the snow-white pines
The brave Norse fire of freedom shines,
And fain for this I leave the land
Where endless summer pranks the vines.
O strong, free North, so wise and brave!
O South, too lovely for a slave!
Why read ye not the changeless truth, -
The free can conquer but to save?
May God upon these shining sands
Send Love and Victory clasping hands,
And Freedom's banners wave in peace
For ever o'er the rescued lands!
And here, in that triumphant hour,
Shall yielding beauty wed with power;
And blushing earth and smiling sea
In dalliance deck the bridal bower.
KEY WEST, 1864.
Confession (French)
by Charles Baudelaire

Une fois, une seule, aimable et douce femme,
A mon bras votre bras poli
S'appuya (sur le fond t'n'breux de mon 'me
Ce souvenir n'est point p'li);
Il 'tait tard ; ainsi qu'une m'daille neuve
La pleine lune s''talait,
Et la solennit' de la nuit, comme un fleuve,
Sur Paris dormant ruisselait.
Et le long des maisons, sous les portes coch'res,
Des chats passaient furtivement,
L'oreille au guet, ou bien, comme des ombres ch'res,
Nous accompagnaient lentement.
Tout ' coup, au milieu de l'intimit' libre
'close ' la p'le clart',
De vous, riche et sonore instrument o' ne vibre
Que la radieuse gaiet',
De vous, claire et joyeuse ainsi qu'une fanfare
Dans le matin 'tincelant,
Une note plaintive, une note bizarre
S''chappa, tout en chancelant
Comme une enfant ch'tive, horrible, sombre, immonde,
Dont sa famille rougirait,
Et qu'elle aurait longtemps, pour la cacher au monde,
Dans un caveau mise au secret.
Pauvre ange, elle chantait, votre note criarde:
'Que rien ici-bas n'est certain,
Et que toujours, avec quelque soin qu'il se farde,
Se trahit l''go'sme humain ;
Que c'est un dur m'tier que d''tre belle femme,
Et que c'est le travail banal
De la danseuse folle et froide qui se p'me
Dans un sourire machinal ;
Que b'tir sur les c'urs est une chose sotte;
Que tout craque, amour et beaut',
Jusqu'' ce que l'Oubli les jette dans sa hotte
Pour les rendre ' l''ternit'!'
J'ai souvent 'voqu' cette lune enchant'e,
Ce silence et cette langueur,
Et cette confidence horrible chuchot'e
Au confessionnal du c'ur.
Claws
by Paul Cameron Brown

Unfolding gazes
throw over
the little reality
surly door.
The dumb
clatter
of ripples
shudder the better life.
Filial Piety - On The Wayside Between Preston And Liverpool
by William Wordsworth

Untouched through all severity of cold;
Inviolate, whate'er the cottage hearth
Might need for comfort, or for festal mirth;
That Pile of Turf is half a century old:
Yes, Traveler! fifty winters have been told
Since suddenly the dart of death went forth
'Gainst him who raised it, his last work on earth:
Thence has it, with the Son, so strong a hold
Upon his Father's memory, that his hands,
Through reverence, touch it only to repair
Its waste. Though crumbling with each breath of air,
In annual renovation thus it stands
Rude Mausoleum! but wrens nestle there,
And red-breasts warble when sweet sounds are rare.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part I. - XXXIX - Papal Dominion
by William Wordsworth

Unless to Peter's Chair the viewless wind
Must come and ask permission when to blow,
What further empire would it have? for now
A ghostly Domination, unconfined
As that by dreaming Bards to Love assigned,
Sits there in sober truth, to raise the low,
Perplex the wise, the strong to overthrow;
Through earth and heaven to bind and to unbind!
Resist the thunder quails thee! crouch rebuff
Shall be thy recompense! from land to land
The ancient thrones of Christendom are stuff
For occupation of a magic wand,
And 'tis the Pope that wields it: whether rough
Or smooth his front, our world is in his hand!
Through Time And Bitter Distance"[1]
by Emily Pauline Johnson

Unknown to you, I walk the cheerless shore.
The cutting blast, the hurl of biting brine
May freeze, and still, and bind the waves at war,
Ere you will ever know, O! Heart of mine,
That I have sought, reflected in the blue
Of these sea depths, some shadow of your eyes;
Have hoped the laughing waves would sing of you,
But this is all my starving sight descries - 
I
Far out at sea a sail
Bends to the freshening breeze,
Yields to the rising gale
That sweeps the seas;
II
Yields, as a bird wind-tossed,
To saltish waves that fling
Their spray, whose rime and frost
Like crystals cling
III
To canvas, mast and spar,
Till, gleaming like a gem,
She sinks beyond the far
Horizon's hem.
IV
Lost to my longing sight,
And nothing left to me
Save an oncoming night, - 
An empty sea.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
by Oliver Herford

Unless I'm very much misled,
Chesterton's easier done than said.
I have not seen him, but his looks
I can imagine from his books.
Upon Gorgonius.
by Robert Herrick

Unto Pastillus rank Gorgonius came
To have a tooth twitched out of's native frame;
Drawn was his tooth, but stank so, that some say,
The barber stopped his nose, and ran away.