DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - The Samaritan.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Da Roma ad Ostia.
From Rome to Ostia a poor man went;
Thieves robbed and wounded him upon the way;
Some monks, great saints, observed him where he lay,
And left him, on their breviaries intent.
A Bishop passed thereby, and careless bent
To sign the cross, a blessing brief to say;
But a great Cardinal, to clutch their prey,
Followed the thieves, falsely benevolent.
At last there came a German Lutheran,
Who builds on faith, merit of works withstands;
He raised and clothed and healed the dying man.
Now which of these was worthiest, most humane?
The heart is better than the head, kind hands
Than cold lip-service; faith without works is vain.
Who understands
What creed is good and true for self and others?--
But none can doubt the good he doth his brothers.
Evening On The Farm
by Madison Julius Cawein

From out the hills where twilight stands,
Above the shadowy pasture lands,
With strained and strident cry,
Beneath pale skies that sunset bands,
The bull-bats fly.
A cloud hangs over, strange of shape,
And, colored like the half-ripe grape,
Seems some uneven stain
On heaven's azure; thin as crape,
And blue as rain.
By ways, that sunset's sardonyx
O'erflares, and gates the farm-boy clicks,
Through which the cattle came,
The mullein-stalks seem giant wicks
Of downy flame.
From woods no glimmer enters in,
Above the streams that, wandering, win
To where the wood pool bids,
Those haunters of the dusk begin, - 
The katydids.
Adown the dark the firefly marks
Its flight in gold and emerald sparks;
And, loosened from his chain,
The shaggy mastiff bounds and barks,
And barks again.
Each breeze brings scents of hill-heaped hay;
And now an owlet, far away,
Cries twice or thrice, "T-o-o-w-h-o-o";
And cool dim moths of mottled gray
Flit through the dew.
The silence sounds its frog-bassoon,
Where, on the woodland creek's lagoon, - 
Pale as a ghostly girl
Lost 'mid the trees, - looks down the moon
With face of pearl.
Within the shed where logs, late hewed,
Smell forest-sweet, and chips of wood
Make blurs of white and brown,
The brood-hen cuddles her warm brood
Of teetering down.
The clattering guineas in the tree
Din for a time; and quietly
The henhouse, near the fence,
Sleeps, save for some brief rivalry
Of cocks and hens.
A cowbell tinkles by the rails,
Where, streaming white in foaming pails,
Milk makes an uddery sound;
While overhead the black bat trails
Around and round.
The night is still. The slow cows chew
A drowsy cud. The bird that flew
And sang is in its nest.
It is the time of falling dew,
Of dreams and rest.
The beehives sleep; and round the walk,
The garden path, from stalk to stalk
The bungling beetle booms,
Where two soft shadows stand and talk
Among the blooms.
The stars are thick: the light is dead
That dyed the west: and Drowsyhead,
Tuning his cricket-pipe,
Nods, and some apple, round and red,
Drops over-ripe.
Now down the road, that shambles by,
A window, shining like an eye
Through climbing rose and gourd,
Shows Age and young Rusticity
Seated at board.
Finding
by Rupert Brooke

From the candles and dumb shadows,
And the house where love had died,
I stole to the vast moonlight
And the whispering life outside.
But I found no lips of comfort,
No home in the moon's light
(I, little and lone and frightened
In the unfriendly night),
And no meaning in the voices. . . .
Far over the lands and through
The dark, beyond the ocean,
I willed to think of YOU!
For I knew, had you been with me
I'd have known the words of night,
Found peace of heart, gone gladly
In comfort of that light.
Oh! the wind with soft beguiling
Would have stolen my thought away;
And the night, subtly smiling,
Came by the silver way;
And the moon came down and danced to me,
And her robe was white and flying;
And trees bent their heads to me
Mysteriously crying;
And dead voices wept around me;
And dead soft fingers thrilled;
And the little gods whispered. . . .
But ever
Desperately I willed;
Till all grew soft and far
And silent . . .
And suddenly
I found you white and radiant,
Sleeping quietly,
Far out through the tides of darkness.
And I there in that great light
Was alone no more, nor fearful;
For there, in the homely night,
Was no thought else that mattered,
And nothing else was true,
But the white fire of moonlight,
And a white dream of you.
Autumn.
by W. M. MacKeracher

From shy expectancy to burgeoning,
From burgeoning to ripeness and decline,
The seasons run their various course and bring
Again at last the sober days benign.
And spring's pied garland, worn for Beauty's sake,
And summer's crown of pride, less fair appear
Than the subdued, enchanted tints that make
The aureole of the senescent year.
So grows the good man old - meek, glad, sublime;
More lovely than in all his youthful bloom,
Grander than in the vigor of his prime,
He lights with radiance life's autumnal gloom,
And through the fading avenue of Time
Walks in triumphal glory to his tomb.
Sexagenarius Loquitur
by Arthur Conan Doyle

From our youth to our age
We have passed each stage
In old immemorial order,
From primitive days
Through flowery ways
With love like a hedge as their border.
Ah, youth was a kingdom of joy,
And we were the king and the queen,
When I was a year
Short of thirty, my dear,
And you were just nearing nineteen.
But dark follows light
And day follows night
As the old planet circles the sun;
And nature still traces
Her score on our faces
And tallies the years as they run.
Have they chilled the old warmth in your heart?
I swear that they have not in mine,
Though I am a year
Short of sixty, my dear,
And you are well, say thirty-nine.
The Hermit's Sacrifice.
by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

From Rome's palaces and villas
Gaily issued forth a throng;
From her humbler habitations
Moved a human tide along.
Haughty dames and blooming maidens,
Men who knew not mercy's sway,
Thronged into the Coliseum
On that Roman holiday.
From the lonely wilds of Asia,
From her jungles far away,
From the distant torrid regions,
Rome had gathered beasts of prey.
Lions restless, roaring, rampant,
Tigers with their stealthy tread,
Leopards bright, and fierce, and fiery,
Met in conflict wild and dread.
Fierce and fearful was the carnage
Of the maddened beasts of prey,
As they fought and rent each other
Urged by men more fierce than they.
Till like muffled thunders breaking
On a vast and distant shore,
Fainter grew the yells of tigers,
And the lions' dreadful roar.
On the crimson-stained arena
Lay the victims of the fight;
Eyes which once had glared with anguish,
Lost in death their baleful light.
Then uprose the gladiators
Armed for conflict unto death,
Waiting for the prefect's signal,
Cold and stern with bated breath.
"Ave Caesar, morituri,
Te, salutant," rose the cry
From the lips of men ill-fated,
Doomed to suffer and to die.
Then began the dreadful contest,
Lives like chaff were thrown away,
Rome with all her pride and power
Butchered for a holiday.
Eagerly the crowd were waiting,
Loud the clashing sabres rang;
When between the gladiators
All unarmed a hermit sprang.
"Cease your bloodshed," cried the hermit,
"On this carnage place your ban;"
But with flashing swords they answered,
"Back unto your place, old man."
From their path the gladiators
Thrust the strange intruder back,
Who between their hosts advancing
Calmly parried their attack.
All undaunted by their weapons,
Stood the old heroic man;
While a maddened cry of anger
Through the vast assembly ran.
"Down with him," cried out the people,
As with thumbs unbent they glared,
Till the prefect gave the signal
That his life should not be spared.
Men grew wild with wrathful passion,
When his fearless words were said
Cruelly they fiercely showered
Stones on his devoted head.
Bruised and bleeding fell the hermit,
Victor in that hour of strife;
Gaining in his death a triumph
That he could not win in life.
Had he uttered on the forum
Struggling thoughts within him born,
Men had jeered his words as madness,
But his deed they could not scorn.
Not in vain had been his courage,
Nor for naught his daring deed;
From his grave his mangled body
Did for wretched captives plead.
From that hour Rome, grown more thoughtful,
Ceased her sport in human gore;
And into her Coliseum
Gladiators came no more.
Rainfall
by Emily Pauline Johnson

From out the west, where darkling storm-clouds float,
The 'waking wind pipes soft its rising note.
From out the west, o'erhung with fringes grey,
The wind preludes with sighs its roundelay,
Then blowing, singing, piping, laughing loud,
It scurries on before the grey storm-cloud;
Across the hollow and along the hill
It whips and whirls among the maples, till
With boughs upbent, and green of leaves blown wide,
The silver shines upon their underside.
A gusty freshening of humid air,
With showers laden, and with fragrance rare;
And now a little sprinkle, with a dash
Of great cool drops that fall with sudden splash;
Then over field and hollow, grass and grain,
The loud, crisp whiteness of the nearing rain.
The Prisoner
by John Charles McNeill

From pacing, pacing without hope or quest
He leaned against his window-bars to rest
And smelt the breeze that crept up from the west.
It came with sundown noises from the moors,
Of milking time and loud-voiced rural chores,
Of lumbering wagons and of closing doors.
He caught a whiff of furrowed upland sweet,
And certain scents stole up across the street
That told him fireflies winked among the wheat.
Over the dusk hill woke a new moon's light,
Shadowed the woods and made the waters white,
And watched above the quiet tents of night.
Alas, that the old Mother should not know
How ached his heart to be entreated so,
Who heard her calling and who could not go!
A National Hymn. - Government House, March 1880.
by John Campbell

From our Dominion never
Take Thy protecting hand,
United, Lord, for ever
Keep Thou our fathers' land!
From where Atlantic terrors
Our hardy seamen train,
To where the salt sea mirrors
The vast Pacific chain.
Aye one with her whose thunder
Keeps world-watch with the hours,
Guard Freedom's home and wonder,
"This Canada of ours."
Fair days of fortune send her,
Be Thou her Shield and Sun!
Our land, our flag's Defender,
Unite our hearts as one!
One flag, one land, upon her
May every blessing rest I
For loyal faith and honour
Her children's deeds attest
Aye one with her, &c.
No stranger's foot, insulting,
Shall tread our country's soil;
While stand her sons exulting
For her to live and toil.
She hath the victor's guerdon,
Her's are the conquering hours,
No foeman's yoke shall burden
"This Canada of ours."
Aye one with her, &c.
Our sires, when times were sorest,
Asked none but aid Divine,
And cleared the tangled forest,
And wrought the buried mine.
They tracked the floods and fountains,
And won, with master-hand,
Far more than gold in mountains,
The glorious Prairie-land.
Aye one with her, &c,
O Giver of earth's treasure,
Make Thou our nation strong;
Pour forth Thine hot displeasure
On all who work our wrong!
To our remotest border
Let plenty still increase,
Let Liberty and Order,
Bid ancient feuds to cease.
Aye one with her, &c.
May Canada's fair daughters
Keep house for hearts as bold
As theirs who o'er the waters
Came hither first of old.
The pioneers of nations!
They showed the world the way;
Tis ours to keep their stations,
And lead the van to-day.
Aye one with her, &c.
Inheritors of glory,
O countrymen! we swear
To guard the flag whose story
Shall onward victory bear.
Where'er through earth's far regions
Its triple crosses fly,
For God, for home, our legions
Shall win, or fighting die!
Aye one with her, &c.
Evening On The Farm
by Madison Julius Cawein

From out the hills, where twilight stands,
Above the shadowy pasture lands,
With strained and strident cry
Beneath pale skies that sunset bands,
The bull-bats fly.
A cloud hands over, strange of shape,
And, colored like the half-ripe grape,
Seems some uneven stain
On heaven's azure, thin as crape
And blue as rain.
By ways, that sunset's sardonyx
O'erflares, and gates the farmboy clicks,
Through which the cattle came,
The mullein stalks seem giant wicks
Of downy flame.
From woods no glimmer enters in,
Above the streams that wandering win
From out the violet hills,
Those haunters of the dusk begin,
The whippoorwills.
Adown the dark the firefly marks
Its flight in golden-emerald sparks;
And, loosened from this chain,
The shaggy watchdog bounds and barks,
And barks again.
Each breeze brings scents of hill-heaped hay;
And now an owlet, far away,
Cries twice or thrice,"Twohoo;"
And cool dim moths of mottled gray
Flit through the dew.
The silence sounds its frog-bassoon,
Where on the woodland creek's lagoon,
Pale as a ghostly girl
Lost 'mid the trees, looks down the moon
With face of pearl.
Within the shed where logs, late hewed,
Smell forest-sweet, and chips of wood
Make blurs of white and brown,
The brood-hen cuddles her warm brood
Of teetering down.
The clattering guineas in the tree
Din for time; and quietly
The henhouse, near the fence,
Sleeps, save for some brief rivalry
Of cocks and hens.
A cow-bell tinkles by the rails,
Where, streaming white in foaming pails,
Milk makes an uddery sound;
While overhead the black bat trails
Around and 'round.
The night is still. The slow cows chew
A drowsy cud. The bird that flew
And sang is in its nest.
It is the time of falling dew,
Of dreams and rest.
The brown bees sleep; and 'round the walk,
The garden path, from stalk to stalk
The bungling beetle booms,
Where two soft shadows stand and talk
Among the blooms.
The stars are thick: the light is dead
That dyed the West: and Drowsyhead,
Tuning his cricket-pipe,
Nods, and some apple, round and red,
Drops over ripe.
Now down the road, that shambles by,
A window, shining like an eye
Through climbing rose and gourd,
Shows where Toil sups and these things lie,
His heart and hoard.
Sympathetic Horror
by Charles Baudelaire

'From that sky livid, bizarre
as your tortured destiny,
what thoughts fill your empty heart,
Freethinker, answer me.'
Insatiable and avid
for vague and obscure skies,
I'll not groan like Ovid,
banned from Rome and paradise.
Skies, shores split and seamed,
my pride's mirrored in you:
your clouds in mourning, too,
are the hearses of my dreams,
Hell's reflected in your light,
where my heart takes delight.
Cancelled Stanza Of The Mask Of Anarchy.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

From the cities where from caves,
Like the dead from putrid graves,
Troops of starvelings gliding come,
Living Tenants of a tomb.
The Taxidermist.
by Hattie Howard

From other men he stands apart,
Wrapped in sublimity of thought
Where futile fancies enter not;
With starlike purpose pressing on
Where Agassiz and Audubon
Labored, and sped that noble art
Yet in its pristine dawn.
Something to conquer, to achieve,
Makes life well worth the struggle hard;
Its petty ills to disregard,
In high endeavor day by day
With this incentive - that he may
Somehow mankind the richer leave
When he has passed away.
Forest and field he treads alone,
Finding companionship in birds,
In reptiles, rodents, yea, in herds
Of drowsy cattle fat and sleek;
For these to him a language speak
To common multitudes unknown
As tones of classic Greek.
Unthinking creatures and untaught,
They to his nature answer back
Something his fellow mortals lack;
And oft educe from him the sigh
That they unnoticed soon must die,
Leaving of their existence naught
To be remembered by.
Man may aspire though in the slough;
May dream of glory, strive for fame,
Thirst for the prestige of a name.
And shall these friends, that so invite
The study of the erudite,
Ever as he beholds them now
Perish like sparks of light?
Nay, 'tis his purpose and design
To keep them: not like mummies old
Papyrus-mantled fold on fold,
But elephant, or dove, or swan,
Its native hue and raiment on,
In effigy of plumage fine,
Or skin its native tawn.
What God hath wrought thus time shall tell,
And thus endowment rich and vast
Be rescued from the buried past;
And rare reliques that never fade
Be in the manikin portrayed
Till taxidermy witness well
The debt to science paid.
Lo! one appeareth unforetold - 
This re-creator, yea, of men;
Making him feel as born again
Who looketh up with reverent eyes,
Through wonders that his soul surprise,
That great Creator to behold
All-powerful, all-wise.
The Deer & The Lion
by Walter Crane

From the hounds the swift Deer sped away,
To his cave, where in past times he lay
Well concealed; unaware
Of a Lion couched there,
For a spring that soon made him his prey.
Fate Can Meet As Well As Follow
From The Dark Chambers Of Dejection Freed
by William Wordsworth

From the dark chambers of dejection freed,
Spurning the unprofitable yoke of care,
Rise, Gillies, rise; the gales of youth shall bear
Thy genius forward like a winged steed.
Though bold Bellerophon (so Jove decreed
In wrath) fell headlong from the fields of air,
Yet a rich guerdon waits on minds that dare,
If aught be in them of immortal seed,
And reason govern that audacious flight
Which heavenward they direct. Then droop not thou,             
Erroneously renewing a sad vow
In the low dell 'mid Roslin's faded grove:
A cheerful life is what the Muses love,
A soaring spirit is their prime delight.
Rhymes Of A Life-Time
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

From the first gleam of morning to the gray
Of peaceful evening, lo, a life unrolled!
In woven pictures all its changes told,
Its lights, its shadows, every flitting ray,
Till the long curtain, falling, dims the day,
Steals from the dial's disk the sunlight's gold,
And all the graven hours grow dark and cold
Where late the glowing blaze of noontide lay.
Ah! the warm blood runs wild in youthful veins, - 
Let me no longer play with painted fire;
New songs for new-born days! I would not tire
The listening ears that wait for fresher strains
In phrase new-moulded, new-forged rhythmic chains,
With plaintive measures from a worn-out lyre.
Nephelidia
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

From the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine,
Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float,
Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine,
These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten with throbs through the throat?
Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's appalled agitation,
Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise of pride in the past;
Flushed with the famishing fullness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation,
Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast?
Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror,
Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death:
Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional exquisite error,
Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by beatitude's breath.
Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit and soul of our senses
Sweetens the stress of suspiring suspicion that sobs in the semblance and sound of a sigh;
Only this oracle opens Olympian, in mystical moods and triangular tenses
"Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day when we die."
Mild is the mirk and monotonous music of memory, melodiously mute as it may be,
While the hope in the heart of a hero is bruised by the breach of men's rapiers, resigned to the rod;
Made meek as a mother whose bosom-beats bound with the bliss-bringing bulk of a balm-breathing baby,
As they grope through the grave-yard of creeds, under skies growing green at a groan for the grimness of God.
Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old, and its binding is blacker than bluer:
Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, and their dews are the wine of the bloodshed of things;
Till the darkling desire of delight shall be free as a fawn that is freed from the fangs that pursue her,
Till the heart-beats of hell shall be hushed by a hymn from the hunt that has harried the kennel of kings.
The Laurels
by John Greenleaf Whittier

"From these wild rocks I look to-day
O'er leagues of dancing waves, and see
The far, low coast-line stretch away
To where our river meets the sea.
The light wind blowing off the land
Is burdened with old voices; through
Shut eyes I see how lip and hand
The greeting of old days renew.
O friends whose hearts still keep their prime,
Whose bright example warms and cheers,
Ye teach us how to smile at Time,
And set to music all his years!
I thank you for sweet summer days,
For pleasant memories lingering long,
For joyful meetings, fond delays,
And ties of friendship woven strong.
As for the last time, side by side,
You tread the paths familiar grown,
I reach across the severing tide,
And blend my farewells with your own.
Make room, O river of our home!
For other feet in place of ours,
And in the summers yet to come,
Make glad another Feast of Flowers!
Hold in thy mirror, calm and deep,
The pleasant pictures thou hast seen;
Forget thy lovers not, but keep
Our memory like thy laurels green
Memorials Of A Tour On The Continent, 1820 - XXXVI. - At Dover
by William Wordsworth

From the Pier's head, musing, and with increase
Of wonder, I have watched this sea-side Town,
Under the white cliff's battlemented crown,
Hushed to a depth of more than Sabbath peace:
The streets and quays are thronged, but why disown
Their natural utterance: whence this strange release
From social noise, silence elsewhere unknown?
A Spirit whispered, "Let all wonder cease;
Ocean's o'erpowering murmurs have set free
Thy sense from pressure of life's common din;
As the dread Voice that speaks from out the sea
Of God's eternal Word, the Voice of Time
Doth deaden, shocks of tumult, shrieks of crime,
The shouts of folly, and the groans of sin."
Hymn Of Pan.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

1.
From the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb
Listening to my sweet pipings.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.
2.
Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and the waves,
To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.
3.
I sang of the dancing stars,
I sang of the daedal Earth,
And of Heaven - and the giant wars,
And Love, and Death, and Birth, -
And then I changed my pipings, -
Singing how down the vale of Maenalus
I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed.
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!
It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed:
All wept, as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood,
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.
Vulcan.
by Walter R. Cassels

From the darksome earth-mine lifted,
From the clay and from the rock
Loosen'd out with many a shock;
Slowly from the clay-dross sifted,
Molten in the fire bright-burning,
Ever purer, whiter turning--
Ho! the anvil, cool and steady,
For the soften'd rod make ready!
Blow, thou wind, upon the flame,
Raise it ever higher, hotter,
Till, like clay before the potter,
Soft become the iron frame,
Bending at the worker's will,
All his purpose to fulfil--
Ho! the fire-purged rod is ready
For the anvil, cool and steady!
At each stroke the sparks fly brightly
Upward from the glowing mass;
Hail! the stroke that makes them pass,
Fall it heavy, fall it lightly!
Now the stubborn strength bends humbly,
To the Master yielding dumbly;
From the metal, purged and glowing,
Forms of freest grace are flowing.
Wield thine hammer well, strong arm!
Strength to Beauty [*] wedded brings
Glory out of rudest things,
Facts from mere imaginings;
Strike from steel its hidden charm!
Little reck the rocks the blow
That makes the living water flow;
Little recks man's soul the rod
That scourges it through tears to God.