DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Song: The Cup.
by Edward Shanks

As a hot traveller
Going through stones and sands,
Who sees clear water stir
Amid the weary lands,
Takes in his hollowed hands
The clean and lively water,
That trickles down his throat
Like laughter, like laughter,
So when you come to me
Across these parch'd places
And all the waste I see
Flowered with your graces,
I take between my hands
Your face like a rare cup,
Where kisses mix with laughter,
And drink and drink them up
Like water, like water.
A Dirge.
by Eric Mackay

A Dirge.
I.
Art thou lonely in thy tomb?
Art thou cold in such a gloom?
Rouse thee, then, and make me room, -
Miserere Domine!
II.
Phantoms vex thy virgin sleep,
Nameless things around thee creep,
Yet be patient, do not weep, -
Miserere Domine!
III.
O be faithful! O be brave!
Naught shall harm thee in thy grave;
Let the restless spirits rave, -
Miserere Domine!
IV.
When my pilgrimage is done,
When the grace of God is won,
I will come to thee, my nun, -
Miserere Domine!
V.
Like a priest in flowing vest,
Like a pale, unbidden guest,
I will come to thee and rest, -
Miserere Domine!
The Glimpse
by Walter De La Mare

Art thou asleep? or have thy wings
Wearied of my unchanging skies?
Or, haply, is it fading dreams
Are in my eyes?
Not even an echo in my heart
Tells me the courts thy feet trod last,
Bare as a leafless wood it is,
The summer past.
My inmost mind is like a book
The reader dulls with lassitude,
Wherein the same old lovely words
Sound poor and rude.
Yet through this vapid surface, I
Seem to see old-time deeps; I see,
Past the dark painting of the hour,
Life's ecstasy.
Only a moment; as when day
Is set, and in the shade of night,
Through all the clouds that compassed her,
Stoops into sight
Pale, changeless, everlasting Dian,
Gleams on the prone Endymion,
Troubles the dulness of his dreams:
And then is gone.
At Sea.
by Bliss Carman (William)

As a brave man faces the foe,
Alone against hundreds, and sees Death grin in his teeth,
But, shutting his lips, fights on to the end
Without speech, without hope, without flinching,--
So, silently, grimly, the steamer
Lurches ahead through the night.
A beacon-light far off,
Twinkling across the waves like a star!
But no star in the dark overhead!
The splash of waters at the prow, and the evil light
Of the death-fires flitting like will-o'-the-wisps beneath! And beyond
Silence and night!
I sit by the taffrail,
Alone in the dark and the blown cold mist and the spray,
Feeling myself swept on irresistibly,
Sunk in the night and the sea, and made one with their footfall-less onrush,
Letting myself be borne like a spar adrift
Helplessly into the night.
Without fear, without wish,
Insensate save of a dull, crushed ache in my heart,
Careless whither the steamer is going,
Conscious only as in a dream of the wet and the dark
And of a form that looms and fades indistinctly
Everywhere out of the night.
O love, how came I here?
Shall I wake at thy side and smile at my dream?
The dream that grips me so hard that I cannot wake nor stir!
O love! O my own love, found but to be lost!
My soul sends over the waters a wild inarticulate cry,
Like a gull's scream heard in the night.
The mist creeps closer. The beacon
Vanishes astern. The sea's monotonous noises
Lapse through the drizzle with a listless, subsiding cadence.
And thou, O love, and the sea throb on in my brain together,
While the steamer plunges along,
Butting its way through the night.
The Redbreast Chasing The Butterfly
by William Wordsworth

Art thou the bird whom Man loves best,
The pious bird with the scarlet breast,
Our little English Robin;
The bird that comes about our doors
When Autumn-winds are sobbing?
Art thou the Peter of Norway Boors?
Their Thomas in Finland,
And Russia far inland?
The bird, that by some name or other
All men who know thee call their brother,
The darling of children and men?
Could Father Adam open his eyes
And see this sight beneath the skies,
He'd wish to close them again.
If the Butterfly knew but his friend,
Hither his flight he would bend;
And find his way to me,
Under the branches of the tree:
In and out, he darts about;
Can this be the bird, to man so good,
That, after their bewildering,
Covered with leaves the little children,
So painfully in the wood?
What ailed thee, Robin, that thou could'st pursue
A beautiful creature,
That is gentle by nature?
Beneath the summer sky
From flower to flower let him fly;
'Tis all that he wishes to do.
The cheerer Thou of our in-door sadness,
He is the friend of our summer gladness:
What hinders, then, that ye should be
Playmates in the sunny weather,
And fly about in the air together!
His beautiful wings in crimson are drest,
A crimson as bright as thine own:
Would'st thou be happy in thy nest,
O pious Bird! whom man loves best,
Love him, or leave him alone!
Epitaph.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

As a boy, reserved and naughty;
As a youth, a coxcomb and haughty;
As a man, for action inclined;
As a greybeard, fickle in mind. 
Upon thy grave will people read:
This was a very man, indeed!
Theodore the Poet
by Edgar Lee Masters

As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours
On the shore of the turbid Spoon
With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish's burrow,
Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead,
First his waving antennae, like straws of hay,
And soon his body, colored like soap-stone,
Gemmed with eyes of jet.
And you wondered in a trance of thought
What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all.
But later your vision watched for men and women
Hiding in burrows of fate amid great cities,
Looking for the souls of them to come out,
So that you could see
How they lived, and for what,
And why they kept crawling so busily
Along the sandy way where water fails
As the summer wanes.
The Seedling
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

As a quiet little seedling
Lay within its darksome bed,
To itself it fell a-talking,
And this is what it said:
"I am not so very robust,
But I 'll do the best I can;"
And the seedling from that moment
Its work of life began.
So it pushed a little leaflet
Up into the light of day,
To examine the surroundings
And show the rest the way.
The leaflet liked the prospect,
So it called its brother, Stem;
Then two other leaflets heard it,
And quickly followed them.
To be sure, the haste and hurry
Made the seedling sweat and pant;
But almost before it knew it
It found itself a plant.
The sunshine poured upon it,
And the clouds they gave a shower;
And the little plant kept growing
Till it found itself a flower.
Little folks, be like the seedling,
Always do the best you can;
Every child must share life's labor
Just as well as every man.
And the sun and showers will help you
Through the lonesome, struggling hours,
Till you raise to light and beauty
Virtue's fair, unfading flowers.
An Appeal
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

I
Art thou indeed among these,
Thou of the tyrannous crew,
The kingdoms fed upon blood,
O queen from of old of the seas,
England, art thou of them too
That drink of the poisonous flood,
That hide under poisonous trees?
II
Nay, thy name from of old,
Mother, was pure, or we dreamed
Purer we held thee than this,
Purer fain would we hold;
So goodly a glory it seemed,
A fame so bounteous of bliss,
So more precious than gold.
III
A praise so sweet in our ears,
That thou in the tempest of things
As a rock for a refuge shouldst stand,
In the bloodred river of tears
Poured forth for the triumph of kings;
A safeguard, a sheltering land,
In the thunder and torrent of years.
IV
Strangers came gladly to thee,
Exiles, chosen of men,
Safe for thy sake in thy shade,
Sat down at thy feet and were free.
So men spake of thee then;
Now shall their speaking be stayed?
Ah, so let it not be!
V
Not for revenge or affright,
Pride, or a tyrannous lust,
Cast from thee the crown of thy praise.
Mercy was thine in thy might;
Strong when thou wert, thou wert just;
Now, in the wrong-doing days,
Cleave thou, thou at least, to the right.
VI
How should one charge thee, how sway,
Save by the memories that were?
Not thy gold nor the strength of thy ships,
Nor the might of thine armies at bay,
Made thee, mother, most fair;
But a word from republican lips
Said in thy name in thy day.
VII
Hast thou said it, and hast thou forgot?
Is thy praise in thine ears as a scoff?
Blood of men guiltless was shed,
Children, and souls without spot,
Shed, but in places far off;
Let slaughter no more be, said
Milton; and slaughter was not.
VIII
Was it not said of thee too,
Now, but now, by thy foes,
By the slaves that had slain their France,
And thee would slay as they slew,
'Down with her walls that enclose
Freemen that eye us askance,
Fugitives, men that are true!'
IX
This was thy praise or thy blame
From bondsman or freeman, to be
Pure from pollution of slaves,
Clean of their sins, and thy name
Bloodless, innocent, free;
Now if thou be not, thy waves
Wash not from off thee thy shame.
X
Freeman he is not, but slave,
Whoso in fear for the State
Cries for surety of blood,
Help of gibbet and grave;
Neither is any land great
Whom, in her fear-stricken mood,
These things only can save.
XI
Lo, how fair from afar,
Taintless of tyranny, stands
Thy mighty daughter, for years
Who trod the winepress of war;
Shines with immaculate hands;
Slays not a foe, neither fears;
Stains not peace with a scar.
XII
Be not as tyrant or slave,
England; be not as these,
Thou that wert other than they.
Stretch out thine hand, but to save;
Put forth thy strength, and release;
Lest there arise, if thou slay,
Thy shame as a ghost from the grave.
The Camera Cage
by Paul Cameron Brown

As a child, all common sense decreed
pirates wore dear teeth    - 
enamel white, with tusks to rout an elephant
(the result from eating carrot sticks, I was told)
-    not a solitary doubt clutched my mind
ivory mingled naturally with black cord and sash
in the brain's Bluebearded eye.
Then, it was so matter of fact
like taking sausage to bed,
saying a proper good night
for the wisdom of the mother-provider
was similar to a pirate chief.
The let-down came in advanced picture book form,
childhood crisis accelerated on seeing
Kidd brain a member of his lusty crew
but the upstart taking the beating
was toothless and sore
no arcanely romantic rake at all,
more like a strange woman in the park
with whom no one dared to speak.
Caged Skylark
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage
Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells - 
That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,
Both sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sometimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.
Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest - 
Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.
Man's spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,
But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his b'nes r'sen.
Mischievous Joy.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

AS a butterfly renew'd,
When in life I breath'd my last,
To the spots my flight I wing,
Scenes of heav'nly rapture past,
Over meadows, to the spring,
Round the hill, and through the wood.
Soon a tender pair I spy,
And I look down from my seat
On the beauteous maiden's head 
When embodied there I meet
All I lost as soon as dead,
Happy as before am I.
Him she clasps with silent smile,
And his mouth the hour improves,
Sent by kindly Deities;
First from breast to mouth it roves,
Then from mouth to hands it flies,
And I round him sport the while.
And she sees me hov'ring near;
Trembling at her lovers rapture,
Up she springs I fly away,
"Dearest! let's the insect capture
Come! I long to make my prey
Yonder pretty little dear!"
Another. (Predestination)
by Robert Herrick

Art thou not destin'd? then with haste go on
To make thy fair predestination:
If thou can'st change thy life, God then will please
To change, or call back, His past sentences.
Wings
by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

As a blue-necked mallard alighting in a pool
Among marsh-marigolds and splashing wet
Green leaves and yellow blooms, like jewels set
In bright, black mud, with clear drops crystal-cool,
Bringing keen savours of the sea and stir
Of windy spaces where wild sunsets flame
To that dark inland dyke, the thought of her
Into my brooding stagnant being came.
And all my senses quickened into life,
Tingling and glittering, and the salt and fire
Sang through my singing blood in eager strife
Until through crystal airs we seemed to be
Soaring together, one fleet-winged desire
Of windy sunsets and the wandering sea.
A Baby Asleep After Pain
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

As a drenched, drowned bee
Hangs numb and heavy from a bending flower,
So clings to me
My baby, her brown hair brushed with wet tears
And laid against her cheek;
Her soft white legs hanging heavily over my arm
Swinging heavily to my movement as I walk.
My sleeping baby hangs upon my life,
Like a burden she hangs on me.
She has always seemed so light,
But now she is wet with tears and numb with pain
Even her floating hair sinks heavily,
Reaching downwards;
As the wings of a drenched, drowned bee
Are a heaviness, and a weariness.
Tales Of Brave Ulysses
by Paul Cameron Brown

Artists (astrologers never lie)
are birthed when
Venus is rising - 
not against cat's whelp
(eye of newt, tongue of frog)
calamitous mist or London fog;
far, ferny forbidding fenn.
When Venus rises, yes
dons Botticelli's cloak
or was it her hair
gathered in tresses
long by lovely handfuls
parading it all
on a patty shell
- her twin oysters ambrosia
a Ulyssean mirroring winedark sea,
purpling color of a robin's egg.
Artists are born
in something of Venus . . .
conceived along coral-corral
highway lariats, foam
of passion
modern cowgirl
lowering the drapes.
Joy And Sorrow.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

As a fisher-boy I fared
To the black rock in the sea,
And, while false gifts I prepared.
Listen'd and sang merrily,
Down descended the decoy,
Soon a fish attack'd the bait;
One exultant shout of joy, 
And the fish was captured straight.
Ah! on shore, and to the wood
Past the cliffs, o'er stock and stone,
One foot's traces I pursued,
And the maiden was alone.
Lips were silent, eyes downcast
As a clasp-knife snaps the bait,
With her snare she seized me fast,
And the boy was captured straight.
Heav'n knows who's the happy swain
That she rambles with anew!
I must dare the sea again,
Spite of wind and weather too.
When the great and little fish
Wail and flounder in my net,
Straight returns my eager wish
In her arms to revel yet!
The Sonnets XXXVII - As a decrepit father takes delight
by William Shakespeare

As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth;
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
Or any of these all, or all, or more,
Entitled in thy parts, do crowned sit,
I make my love engrafted, to this store:
So then I am not lame, poor, nor despis'd,
Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give
That I in thy abundance am suffic'd,
And by a part of all thy glory live.
Look what is best, that best I wish in thee:
This wish I have; then ten times happy me!
Nursery Rhyme. CXCV. Riddles.
by Unknown

[A storm of wind.]
Arthur O'Bower has broken his band,
He comes roaring up the land; - 
The King of Scots, with all his power,
Cannot turn Arthur of the Bower!
Sonnet VI.
by Fernando Ant'nio Nogueira Pessoa

As a bad orator, badly o'er-book-skilled,
Doth overflow his purpose with made heat,
And, like a clock, winds with withoutness willed
What should have been an inner instinct's feat;
Or as a prose-wit, harshly poet turned,
Lacking the subtler music in his measure,
With useless care labours but to be spurned,
Courting in alien speech the Muse's pleasure;
I study how to love or how to hate,
Estranged by consciousness from sentiment,
With a thought feeling forced to be sedate
Even when the feeling's nature is violent;
As who would learn to swim without the river,
When nearest to the trick, as far as ever.
A Circular
by Thomas Hardy

As "legal representative"
I read a missive not my own,
On new designs the senders give
For clothes, in tints as shown.
Here figure blouses, gowns for tea,
And presentation-trains of state,
Charming ball-dresses, millinery,
Warranted up to date.
And this gay-pictured, spring-time shout
Of Fashion, hails what lady proud?
Her who before last year was out
Was costumed in a shroud.
The Sonnets XXIII - As an unperfect actor on the stage
by William Shakespeare

As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put beside his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
O'ercharg'd with burthen of mine own love's might.
O! let my looks be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.
O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 01: As Evening Falls
by Conrad Potter Aiken

As evening falls,
And the yellow lights leap one by one
Along high walls;
And along black streets that glisten as if with rain,
The muted city seems
Like one in a restless sleep, who lies and dreams
Of vague desires, and memories, and half-forgotten pain . . .
Along dark veins, like lights the quick dreams run,
Flash, are extinguished, flash again,
To mingle and glow at last in the enormous brain
And die away . . .
As evening falls,
A dream dissolves these insubstantial walls,
A myriad secretly gliding lights lie bare . . .
The lovers rise, the harlot combs her hair,
The dead man's face grows blue in the dizzy lamplight,
The watchman climbs the stair . . .
The bank defaulter leers at a chaos of figures,
And runs among them, and is beaten down;
The sick man coughs and hears the chisels ringing;
The tired clown
Sees the enormous crowd, a million faces,
Motionless in their places,
Ready to laugh, and seize, and crush and tear . . .
The dancer smooths her hair,
Laces her golden slippers, and runs through the door
To dance once more,
Hearing swift music like an enchantment rise,
Feeling the praise of a thousand eyes.
As darkness falls
The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls
Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving,
Moving like music, secret and rich and warm.
How shall we live tonight? Where shall we turn?
To what new light or darkness yearn?
A thousand winding stairs lead down before us;
And one by one in myriads we descend
By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades,
Through half-lit halls which reach no end.
The Sleeper
by Walter De La Mare

As Ann came in one summer's day,
She felt that she must creep,
So silent was the clear cool house,
It seemed a house of sleep.
And sure, when she pushed open the door,
Rapt in the stillness there,
Her mother sat, with stooping head,
Asleep upon a chair;
Fast - fast asleep; her two hands laid
Loose-folded on her knee,
So that her small unconscious face
Looked half unreal to be:
So calmly lit with sleep's pale light
Each feature was; so fair
Her forehead - every trouble was
Smooth'd out beneath her hair.
But though her mind in dream now moved,
Still seemed her gaze to rest
From out beneath her fast-sealed lids,
Above her moving breast,
On Ann, as quite, quite still she stood;
Yet slumber lay so deep
Even her hands upon her lap
Seemed saturate with sleep.
And as Ann peeped, a cloudlike dread
Stole over her, and then,
On stealthy, mouselike feet she trod,
And tiptoed out again.
As At Thy Portals Also Death
by Walt Whitman

AS at thy portals also death,
Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds,
To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity,
To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me,
(I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still,
I sit by the form in the coffin,
I kiss and kiss convulsively again the sweet old lips, the cheeks, the closed eyes in the coffin;)
To her, the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth, life, love, to me the best,
I grave a monumental line, before I go, amid these songs,
And set a tombstone here.
The Years.
by Theodore Harding Rand

"Time in advance behind him hides his wings." - YOUNG.
As comes amain the glossy flying raven,
That with unwavering wing, breast on the view,
Cleaves slow the lucid air beneath the blue,
And seems scarce other than a figure graven - 
Ha! now the sweeping pinions flash as levin,
And all their silken cordage whistles loud! - 
Lo, the departing flight, like fleck of cloud,
Is swallowed quick by the awaiting heaven!
So lag and tarry, to the youth, the years
In their oncoming from the brooding sky,
Till bursts at middle life their rushing speed
All breathless with the world of hopes and fears;
And, lo, departing, the Eternal Eye
Winks them to moments in His endless brede!
Bite Bigger
by John Hartley

As aw hurried throo th' taan to mi wark,
(Aw wur lat, for all th' whistles had gooan,)
Aw happen'd to hear a remark,
'At ud fotch tears throo th' heart ov a stooan - 
It wur raanin, an' snawin, and cowd,
An' th' flagstoans wur covered wi' muck,
An' th' east wind booath whistled an' howl'd,
It saanded like nowt but ill luck;
When two little lads, donn'd i' rags,
Baght stockins or shoes o' ther feet,
Coom trapesin away ower th' flags,
Booath on 'em sodden'd wi th' weet. - 
Th' owdest mud happen be ten,
Th' young en be hauf on't, - noa moor;
As aw luk'd on, aw sed to misen,
God help fowk this weather 'at's poor!
Th' big en sam'd summat off th' graand,
An' aw luk'd just to see what 't could be;
'Twur a few wizend flaars he'd faand,
An' they seem'd to ha fill'd him wi glee:
An' he sed, "Come on, Billy, may be
We shall find summat else by an by,
An' if net, tha mun share thease wi me
When we get to some spot where its dry."
Leet-hearted they trotted away,
An' aw follow'd, coss 'twur i' mi rooad;
But aw thowt awd nee'er seen sich a day - 
It worn't fit ta be aght for a tooad.
Sooin th' big en agean slipt away,
An' sam'd summat else aght o'th' muck,
An' he cried aght, "Luk here, Bill! to-day
Arn't we blest wi' a seet o' gooid luck?
Here's a apple! an' th' mooast on it's saand:
What's rotten aw'll throw into th' street - 
Worn't it gooid to ligg thear to be faand?
Nah booath on us con have a treat."
Soa he wiped it, an' rubb'd it, an' then
Sed, Billy, "thee bite off a bit;
If tha hasn't been lucky thisen
Tha shall share wi' me sich as aw get."
Soa th' little en bate off a touch,
T'other's face beamed wi' pleasur all throo,
An' he said, "Nay, tha hasn't taen much,
Bite agean, an' bite bigger; nah do!"
Aw waited to hear nowt noa moor, - 
Thinks aw, thear's a lesson for me!
Tha's a heart i' thi breast, if tha'rt poor:
Th' world wur richer wi' moor sich as thee!
Tuppince wur all th' brass aw had,
An' awd ment it for ale when coom nooin,
But aw thowt aw'll goa give it yond lad,
He desarves it for what he's been dooin;
Soa aw sed, "Lad, here's tuppince for thee,
For thi sen," - an' they stared like two geese,
But he sed, woll th' tear stood in his e'e,
"Nah, it'll just be a penny a piece."
"God bless thi! do just as tha will,
An' may better days speedily come;
Tho' clam'd, an' hauf donn'd, mi lad, still
Tha'rt a deal nearer Heaven nur some."