DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Wreck Of The Hesperus
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.
The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his month,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.
Then up and spake an old Sailor,
Had sailed to the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.
"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.
Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast.
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.
Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable's length.
"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
And do not tremble so;
For    I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow."
He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.
"O father! I hear the church-bells ring,
O say, what may it be?"
"'Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"--
And he steered for the open sea.
"O father! I hear the sound of guns,
O say, what may it be?"
"Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!"
"O father! I see a gleaming light
O say, what may it be?"
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.
Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.
Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That saved she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave,
On the Lake of Galilee.
And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe.
And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.
The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.
She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!
At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.
The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.
Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's Woe!
The Stage-Driver's Story
by Bret Harte (Francis)

It was the stage-driver's story, as he stood with his back to the wheelers,
Quietly flecking his whip, and turning his quid of tobacco;
While on the dusty road, and blent with the rays of the moonlight,
We saw the long curl of his lash and the juice of tobacco descending.
'Danger! Sir, I believe you, indeed, I may say, on that subject,
You your existence might put to the hazard and turn of a wager.
I have seen danger? Oh, no! not me, sir, indeed, I assure you:
'Twas only the man with the dog that is sitting alone in yon wagon.
'It was the Geiger Grade, a mile and a half from the summit:
Black as your hat was the night, and never a star in the heavens.
Thundering down the grade, the gravel and stones we sent flying
Over the precipice side, a thousand feet plumb to the bottom.
'Half-way down the grade I felt, sir, a thrilling and creaking,
Then a lurch to one side, as we hung on the bank of the canyon;
Then, looking up the road, I saw, in the distance behind me,
The off hind wheel of the coach, just loosed from its axle, and following.
'One glance alone I gave, then gathered together my ribbons,
Shouted, and flung them, outspread, on the straining necks of my cattle;
Screamed at the top of my voice, and lashed the air in my frenzy,
While down the Geiger Grade, on three wheels, the vehicle thundered.
'Speed was our only chance, when again came the ominous rattle:
Crack, and another wheel slipped away, and was lost in the darkness.
Two only now were left; yet such was our fearful momentum,
Upright, erect, and sustained on two wheels, the vehicle thundered.
'As some huge boulder, unloosed from its rocky shelf on the mountain,
Drives before it the hare and the timorous squirrel, far leaping,
So down the Geiger Grade rushed the Pioneer coach, and before it
Leaped the wild horses, and shrieked in advance of the danger impending.
'But to be brief in my tale. Again, ere we came to the level,
Slipped from its axle a wheel; so that, to be plain in my statement,
A matter of twelve hundred yards or more, as the distance may be,
We traveled upon one wheel, until we drove up to the station.
'Then, sir, we sank in a heap; but, picking myself from the ruins,
I heard a noise up the grade; and looking, I saw in the distance
The three wheels following still, like moons on the horizon whirling,
Till, circling, they gracefully sank on the road at the side of the station.
'This is my story, sir; a trifle, indeed, I assure you.
Much more, perchance, might be said but I hold him of all men most lightly
Who swerves from the truth in his tale. No, thank you Well, since you are pressing,
Perhaps I don't care if I do: you may give me the same, Jim, no sugar.'
The Ideal
by Charles Baudelaire

It will not be these beauties of vignettes,
Poor products of a worthless century,
Feet in half-boots, fingers in castanets,
Who satisfy the yearning heart in me.
That poet of chlorosis, Gavarni,
Can keep his twittering troupe of sickly queens,
Since these pale roses do not let me see
My red ideal, the tlower of my dreams.
I need a heart abyssal in its depth,
A soul confirmed in crime, Lady Macbeth,
Aeschylus' dream, storm-born out of the south,
Or you, great Night of Michelangelo's,
Who calmly twist in an exotic pose
Those charms he fashioned for a Titan's mouth.
To Carlton Berry
by Paul Bewsher

KILLED IN AN AEROPLANE ACCIDENT, JULY, 1916
It was Thy will, O God. And so he died!
For seventeen sweet years he was a child
Upon whose grace Thy loving-kindness smiled,
For he was clean, and full of youthful pride;
And, when his years drew on, then Thou denied
That he by man's estate should be defiled,
And so Thou call'st him to Thy presence mild
To be with Thee for ever, by Thy side.
Nor is he dead! He lives in three great spheres.
His soul is with Thee in Thy home above:
His influence, - with friends of former years:
His memory with those he used to love.
He is an emblem of that Trinity
With whom he lives in happy ecstasy.
Isle of Grain, 1916.
The Deficit Demon (A Political Ballad)
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

It was the lunatic poet escaped from the local asylum,
Loudly he twanged on his banjo and sang with his voice like a saw-mill,
While as with fervour he sang there was borne o'er the shuddering wildwood,
Borne on the breath of the poet a flavour of rum and of onions.
He sang of the Deficit Demon that dwelt in the Treasury Mountains,
How it was small in its youth and a champion was sent to destroy it:
Dibbs he was sallied, and he boasted, "Soon I will wipe out the Monster,"
But while he was boasting and bragging the monster grew larger and larger.
One day as Dibbs bragged of his prowess in daylight the Deficit met him,
Settled his hash in one act and made him to all man a byword,
Sent hin, a raving ex-Premier, to dwell in the shades of oblivion,
And the people put forward a champion known as Sir Patrick the Portly.
As in the midnight the tom-cat who seeketh his love on the house top,
Lifteth his voice up and is struck by the fast whizzing brickbat,
Drops to the ground in a swoon and glides to the silent hereafter,
So fell Sir Patrick the Portly at the stroke of the Deficit Demon.
Then were the people amazed and they called for the champion of champions
Known as Sir 'Enry the Fishfag unequaled in vilification.
He is the man, said the people, to wipe out the Deficit Monster,
If nothing else fetches him through he can at the least talk its head off.
So he sharpened his lance of Freetrade and he practiced in loud-mouthing abusing,
"Poodlehead," "Craven," and "Mole-eyes" were things that he purposed to call it,
He went to the fight full of valour and all men are waiting the issue,
Though they know not his armour nor weapons excepting his power of abusing.
Loud sang the lunatic his song of the champions of valour
Until he was sighted and captured by fleet-footed keepers pursuing,
To whom he remarked with a smile as they ran him off back to the madhouse,
"If you want to back Parkes I'm your man, here's a cool three to one on the Deficit."
The Man From Waterloo
by Henry Lawson

It was the Man from Waterloo,
When work in town was slack,
Who took the track as bushmen do,
And humped his swag out back.
He tramped for months without a bob,
For most the sheds were full,
Until at last he got a job
At picking up the wool.
He found the work was rather rough,
But swore to see it through,
For he was made of sterling stuff,
The Man from Waterloo.
The first remark was like a stab
That fell his ear upon,
'Twas, 'There's another something scab
'The boss has taken on!'
They couldn't let the towny be,
They sneered like anything;
They'd mock him when he'd sound the 'g'
In words that end in 'ing.'
There came a man from Ironbark,
And at the shed he shore;
He scoffed his victuals like a shark,
And like a fiend he swore.
He'd shorn his flowing beard that day,
He found it hard to reap,
Because 'twas hot and in the way
While he was shearing sheep.
His loaded fork in grimy holt
Was poised, his jaws moved fast,
Impatient till his throat could bolt
The mouthful taken last.
He couldn't stand a something toff;
Much less a jackaroo;
And swore to take the trimmings off
The Man from Waterloo.
The towny saw he must be up
Or else be underneath,
And so one day, before them all,
He dared to clean his teeth.
The men came running from the shed,
And shouted, 'Here's a lark!'
'It's gone to clean its tooties!' said
The man from Ironbark.
His feeble joke was much enjoyed;
He sneered as bullies do,
And with a scrubbing-brush he guyed
The Man from Waterloo.
The Jackaroo made no remark
But peeled and waded in,
And soon the Man from Ironbark
Had three teeth less to grin!
And when they knew that he could fight
They swore to see him through,
Because they saw that he was right,
The Man from Waterloo.
Now in a shop in Sydney, near
The Bottle on the Shelf,
The tale is told, with trimmings, by
The Jackaroo himself.
'They made my life a hell,' he said;
'They wouldn't let me be;
They set the bully of the shed
'To take it out of me.
'The dirt was on him like a sheath,
'He seldom washed his phiz;
'He sneered because I cleaned my teeth,
'I guess I dusted his!
'I treated them as they deserved,
'I signed on one or two!
'They won't forget me soon,' observed
The Man from Waterloo.
Uncertainty
by Madison Julius Cawein

"'He cometh not,' she said."
- MARIANA
It will not be to-day and yet
I think and dream it will; and let
The slow uncertainty devise
So many sweet excuses, met
With the old doubt in hope's disguise.
The panes were sweated with the dawn;
Yet through their dimness, shriveled drawn,
The aigret of one princess-feather,
One monk's-hood tuft with oilets wan,
I glimpsed, dead in the slaying weather.
This morning, when my window's chintz
I drew, how gray the day was! - Since
I saw him, yea, all days are gray! - 
I gazed out on my dripping quince,
Defruited, gnarled; then turned away
To weep, but did not weep: but felt
A colder anguish than did melt
About the tearful-visaged year! - 
Then flung the lattice wide, and smelt
The autumn sorrow: Rotting near
The rain-drenched sunflowers bent and bleached,
Up which the frost-nipped gourd-vines reached
And morning-glories, seeded o'er
With ashen aiglets; whence beseeched
One last bloom, frozen to the core.
The podded hollyhocks, - that Fall
Had stripped of finery, - by the wall
Rustled their tatters; dripped and dripped,
The fog thick on them: near them, all
The tarnished, haglike zinnias tipped.
I felt the death and loved it: yea,
To have it nearer, sought the gray,
Chill, fading garth. Yet could not weep,
But wandered in an aimless way,
And sighed with weariness for sleep.
Mine were the fog, the frosty stalks;
The weak lights on the leafy walks;
The shadows shivering with the cold;
The breaking heart; the lonely talks;
The last, dim, ruined marigold.
But when to-night the moon swings low - 
A great marsh-marigold of glow - 
And all my garden with the sea
Moans, then, through moon and mist, I know
My love will come to comfort me.
A Hymn To The Lares.
by Robert Herrick

It was, and still my care is,
To worship ye, the Lares,
With crowns of greenest parsley
And garlic chives, not scarcely;
For favours here to warm me,
And not by fire to harm me;
For gladding so my hearth here
With inoffensive mirth here;
That while the wassail bowl here
With North-down ale doth troul here,
No syllable doth fall here
To mar the mirth at all here.
For which, O chimney-keepers!
(I dare not call ye sweepers)
So long as I am able
To keep a country table,
Great be my fare, or small cheer,
I'll eat and drink up all here.
Without, Not Within Her
by Thomas Hardy

It was what you bore with you, Woman,
Not inly were,
That throned you from all else human,
However fair!
It was that strange freshness you carried
Into a soul
Whereon no thought of yours tarried
Two moments at all.
And out from his spirit flew death,
And bale, and ban,
Like the corn-chaff under the breath
Of the winnowing-fan.
To My Book
by Ben Jonson

It will be looked for, book, when some but see
Thy title, Epigrams, and named of me,
Thou should'st be bold, licentious, full of gall,
Wormwood and sulphur, sharp and toothed withal,
Become a petulant thing, hurl ink and wit
As madmen stones, not caring whom they hit.
Deceive their malice who could wish it so,
And by thy wiser temper let men know
Thou art not covetous of least self-fame
Made from the hazard of another's shame
Much less with lewd, profane, and beastly phrase
To catch the world's loose laughter or vain gaze.
He that departs with his own honesty
For vulgar praise, doth it too dearly buy.
An Evening In Dandaloo
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

It was while we held our races,
Hurdles, sprints and steplechases,
Up in Dandaloo,
That a crowd of Sydney stealers,
Jockeys, pugilists and spielers
Brought some horses, real heelers,
Came and put us through.
Beat our nags and won our money,
Made the game by np means funny,
Made us rather blue;
When the racing was concluded,
Of our hard-earned coin denuded
Dandaloonies sat and brooded
There in Dandaloo.
*             *             *             *             *
Night came down on Johnson's shanty
Where the grog was no way scanty,
And a tumult grew
Till some wild, excited person
Galloped down the township cursing,
"Sydney push have mobbed Macpherson,
Roll up, Dandaloo!"
Great St Denis! what commotion!
Like the rush of stormy ocean
Fiery horsemen flew.
Dust and smoke and din and rattle,
Down the street they spurred their cattle
To the war-cry of the battle,
"Wade in, Dandaloo!"
So the boys might have their fight out,
Johnson blew the bar-room light out,
Then, in haste, withdrew.
And in darkness and in doubting
Raged the conflict and the shouting,
"Give the Sydney push a clouting,
Go it, Dandaloo!"
Jack Macpherson seized a bucket,
Every head he saw he struck it,
Struck in earnest, too;
And a man from Lower Wattle,
Whom a shearer tried to throttle,
Hit out freely with a bottle
There in Dandaloo.
Skin and hair were flying thickly,
When a light was fetched, and quickly
Brought a fact to view,
On the scene of the diversion
Every single, solid person
Come along to help Macpherson,
All were Dandaloo!
When the list of slain was tabled,
Some were drunk and some disabled,
Still we found it true.
In the darkness and the smother
We'd been belting one another;
Jack Macpherson bashed his brother
There in Dandaloo.
So we drank, and all departed,
How the "mobbing" yarn was started
No one ever knew,
And the stockmen tell the story
Of that conflict fierce and gory,
How he fought for love and glory
Up in Dandaloo.
It's a proverb now, or near it,
At the races you can hear it,
At the dog-fights, too!
Every shrieking, dancing drover
As the canines topple over
Yells applause to Grip or Rover,
"Give him 'Dandaloo'!"
And the teamster slowly toiling
Through the deep black country, soiling
Wheels and axles, too,
Lays the whip on Spot and Banker,
Rouses Tarboy with a flanker,
"Redman! Ginger! Heave there! Yank her
Wade in, Dandaloo!"
The Burghers Of Calais
by Marriott Edgar

It were after the Battle of Crecy,
The foe all lay dead on the ground,
And King Edward went out with his soldiers
To clean up the places around.
The first place they came to were Calais,
Where t' burghers all stood in a row,
And when Edward told them to surrender
They told Edward where he could go.
Said he, "I'll beleaguer this city,
I'll teach them to flout their new King"
Then he told all his lads to get camp-stools
And sit round the place in a ring.
Now the burghers knew now't about Crecy,
They laughed when they saw Edward's plan,
And thinking their side were still winning,
They shrugged and said- "San fairy Ann."
But they found at the end of a fortnight
That things wasn't looking so nice,
With nowt going out but the pigeons,
And nowt coming in but the mice.
For the soldiers sat round on their camp-stools,
And never a foot did they stir,
But passed their time doing their knitting,
And crosswords, and things like that there.
The burghers began to get desperate
Wi' t' food supply sinking so low,
For they'd nowt left but dry bread and water,
Or what they called in French "pang" and "oh"
They stuck it all autumn and winter,
But when at last spring came around
They was bothered, bewitched and beleaguered,
And cods' heads was tenpence a pound.
So they hung a white flag on the ramparts
To show they was sick of this 'ere,
And the soldiers, who'd finished their knitting,
All stood up and gave them a cheer.
When King Edward heard they had surrendered
He said to them, in their own tongue,
"You've kept me here all football season,
And twelve of you's got to be hung."
Then up stood the Lord Mayor of Calais,
"I'll make one" he gallantly cried-
Then he called to his friends on the Council
To make up the rest of the side.
When the townspeople heard of the hanging
They rushed in a crowd through the gate,
They was all weeping tears of compassion,
And hoping they wasn't too late.
With ropes round their necks the twelve heroes
Stood proudly awaiting their doom,
Till the hangman at last crooked his finger
And coaxingly said to them - "Come".
At that moment good Queen Phillippa
Ran out of her bower and said
"Oh, do have some mercy, my husband;
Oh don't be so spiteful, dear Ted."
Then down on her knee-joints before them
She flopped, and in accents that rang,
Said, "Please, Edward, just to oblige me,
You can't let these poor burghers hang".
The King was so touched with her pleading,
He lifted his wife by the hand
And he gave her all twelve as a keepsake
And peace once again reigned in the land.
Fragment.
by Frances Anne Kemble (Fanny)

It was the harvest time: the broad, bright moon
Was at her full, and shone upon the fields
Where we had toiled the livelong day, to pile
In golden sheaves the earth's abundant treasure.
The harvest task had given place to song
And merry dance; and these in turn were chased
By legends strange, and wild, unearthly tales
Of elves, and gnomes, and fairy sprites, that haunt
The woods and caves; where they do sleep all day,
And then come forth i' the witching hour of night,
To dance by moonlight on the green thick sward.
The speaker was an aged villager,
In whom his oft-told tale awoke no fears,
Such as he filled his gaping listeners with.
Nor ever was there break in his discourse,
Save when with gray eyes lifted to the moon,
He conjured from the past strange instances
Of kidnapp'd infants, from their cradles snatch'd,
And changed for elvish sprites; of blights, and blains,
Sent on the cattle by the vengeful fairies;
Of blasted crops, maim'd limbs, and unsound minds,
All plagues inflicted by these angered sprites.
Then would he pause, and wash his story down
With long-drawn draughts of amber ale; while all
The rest came crowding under the wide oak tree,
Piling the corn sheaves closer round the ring,
Whispering and shaking, laughing too, with fear;
And ever, if an acorn bobb'd from the boughs,
Or grasshopper from out the stubble chirrupp'd,
Blessing themselves from Robin Goodfellow!
Alexander
by Walter De La Mare

It was the Great Alexander,
Capped with a golden helm,
Sate in the ages, in his floating ship,
In a dead calm.
Voices of sea-maids singing
Wandered across the deep:
The sailors labouring on their oars
Rowed, as in sleep.
All the high pomp of Asia,
Charmed by that siren lay,
Out of their weary and dreaming minds,
Faded away.
Like a bold boy sate their Captain,
His glamour withered and gone,
In the souls of his brooding mariners,
While the song pined on.
Time, like a falling dew,
Life, like the scene of a dream,
Laid between slumber and slumber,
Only did seem....
O Alexander, then,
In all us mortals too,
Wax thou not bold - too bold
On the wave dark-blue!
Come the calm, infinite night,
Who then will hear
Aught save the singing
Of the sea-maids clear?
The Wantaritencant
by Henry Lawson

It watched me in the cradle laid, and from my boyhood's home
It glared above my shoulder-blade when I wrote my first 'pome';
It's sidled by me ever since, with greeny eyes aslant,
It is the thing (O, Priest and Prince!) that wants to write, but can't.
It yells and slobbers, mows and whines, It follows everywhere;
'Tis gloating on these very lines with red and baleful glare.
It murders friendship, love and truth (It makes the 'reader' pant),
It ruins editorial youth, the Wantaritencant.
Its slime is ever on my work, and ever on my name;
No toil nor trouble does It shirk, for It will write, all the same!
It tantalized when great thoughts burned, in trouble and in want;
It makes it hell for all concerned, the Wantaritencant.
And now that I would gladly die, or rest my weary mind,
I cannot rest to think that I must leave the Thing behind.
Its green rot damns the dead, for sure, that greatest curse extant,
'Twill kill Australian literature, the Wantaritencant!
You cannot kill or keep It still, or ease It off a bit;
It talks about Itself until the world believes in It.
It is a Scare, a Fright, a Ghast, a Gibber, and a Rant,
A future Horror and a Past, the Wantaritencant!
The Something That Saved Him
by Thomas Hardy

It was when
Whirls of thick waters laved me
Again and again,
That something arose and saved me;
Yea, it was then.
In that day
Unseeing the azure went I
On my way,
And to white winter bent I,
Knowing no May.
Reft of renown,
Under the night clouds beating
Up and down,
In my needfulness greeting
Cit and clown.
Long there had been
Much of a murky colour
In the scene,
Dull prospects meeting duller;
Nought between.
Last, there loomed
A closing-in blind alley,
Though there boomed
A feeble summons to rally
Where it gloomed.
The clock rang;
The hour brought a hand to deliver;
I upsprang,
And looked back at den, ditch and river,
And sang.