DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Auf Wiedersehen. - In Memory Of J.T.F.
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Until we meet again!    That is the meaning
Of the familiar words, that men repeat
At parting in the street.
Ah yes, till then! but when death intervening
Rends us asunder, with what ceaseless pain
We wait for the Again!
The friends who leave us do not feel the sorrow
Of parting, as we feel it, who must stay
Lamenting day by day,
And knowing, when we wake upon the morrow,
We shall not find in its accustomed place
The one beloved face.
It were a double grief, if the departed,
Being released from earth, should still retain
A sense of earthly pain;
It were a double grief, if the true-hearted,
Who loved us here, should on the farther shore
Remember us no more.
Believing, in the midst of our afflictions,
That death is a beginning, not an end,
We cry to them, and send
Farewells, that better might be called predictions,
Being fore-shadowings of the future, thrown
Into the vast Unknown.
Faith overleaps the confines of our reason,
And if by faith, as in old times was said,
Women received their dead
Raised up to life, then only for a season
Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain
Until we meet again!
Processional
by Madison Julius Cawein

Universes are the pages
Of that book whose words are ages;
Of that book which destiny
Opens in eternity.
There each syllable expresses
Silence; there each thought a guess is;
In whose rhetoric's cosmic runes
Roll the worlds and swarming moons.
There the systems, we call solar,
Equatorial and polar,
Write their lines of rushing light
On the awful leaves of night.
There the comets, vast and streaming,
Punctuate the heavens' gleaming
Scroll; and suns, gigantic, shine,
Periods to each starry line.
There, initials huge, the Lion
Looms and measureless Orion;
And, as 'neath a chapter done,
Burns the Great-Bear's colophon.
Constellated, hieroglyphic,
Numbering each page terrific,
Fiery on the nebular black,
Flames the hurling zodiac.
In that book, o'er which Chaldean
Wisdom pored and many an eon
Of philosophy long dead,
This is all that man has read:--
He has read how good and evil,--
In creation's wild upheaval,--
Warred; while God wrought terrible
At foundations red of Hell.
He has read of man and woman;
Laws and gods, both beast and human;
Thrones of hate and creeds of lust,
Vanished now and turned to dust.
Arts and manners that have crumbled;
Cities buried; empires tumbled:
Time but breathed on them its breath;
Earth is builded of their death.
These but lived their little hour,
Filled with pride and pomp and power;
What availed them all at last?
We shall pass as they have past.
Still the human heart will dream on
Love, part angel and part demon;
Yet, I question, what secures
Our belief that aught endures?
In that book, o'er which Chaldean
Wisdom pored and many an eon
Of philosophy long dead,
This is all that man has read.
Unto My Books So Good To Turn
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Unto my books so good to turn
Far ends of tired days;
It half endears the abstinence,
And pain is missed in praise.
As flavors cheer retarded guests
With banquetings to be,
So spices stimulate the time
Till my small library.
It may be wilderness without,
Far feet of failing men,
But holiday excludes the night,
And it is bells within.
I thank these kinsmen of the shelf;
Their countenances bland
Enamour in prospective,
And satisfy, obtained.
Chapter Headings - Kim
by Rudyard Kipling

Unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised,
With idiot moons and stars retracting stars?
Creep thou between, thy coming's all unnoised.
Heaven hath her high, as Earth her baser, wars
Heir to these tumults, this affright, that fray
(By Adam's, fathers', own, sin bound alway);
Peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say
Which planet mends thy threadbare fate, or mars.
Epilogue
by Herman Melville

If Luther's day expand to Darwin's year,
Shall that exclude the hope--foreclose the fear?
Unmoved by all the claims our times avow,
The ancient Sphinx still keeps the porch of shade;
And comes Despair, whom not her calm may cow,
And coldly on that adamantine brow
Scrawls undeterred his bitter pasquinade.
But Faith (who from the scrawl indignant turns)
With blood warm oozing from her wounded trust,
Inscribes even on her shards of broken urns
The sign o' the cross--the spirit above the dust!
Yea, ape and angel, strife and old debate--
The harps of heaven and dreary gongs of hell;
Science the feud can only aggravate--
No umpire she betwixt the chimes and knell:
The running battle of the star and clod
Shall run forever--if there be no God.
Degrees we know, unknown in days before;
The light is greater, hence the shadow more;
And tantalized and apprehensive Man
Appealing--Wherefore ripen us to pain?
Seems there the spokesman of dumb Nature's train.
But through such strange illusions have they passed
Who in life's pilgrimage have baffled striven--
Even death may prove unreal at the last,
And stoics be astounded into heaven.
Then keep thy heart, though yet but ill-resigned--
Clarel, thy heart, the issues there but mind;
That like the crocus budding through the snow--
That like a swimmer rising from the deep--
That like a burning secret which doth go
Even from the bosom that would hoard and keep;
Emerge thou mayst from the last whelming sea,
And prove that death but routs life into victory.
Gipsy Vans
by Rudyard Kipling

Unless you come of the gipsy stock
That steals by night and day,
Lock your heart with a double lock
And throw the key away.
Bury it under the blackest stone
Beneath your father's hearth,
And keep your eyes on your lawful own
And your feet to the proper path.
Then you can stand at your door and mock
When the gipsy vans come through...
For it isn't right that the Gorgio stock
Should live as the Romany do.
Unless you come of the gipsy blood
That takes and never spares,
Bide content with your given good
And follow your own affairs.
Plough and harrow and roll your land,
And sow what ought to be sowed;
But never let loose your heart from your hand,
Nor flitter it down the road!
Then you can thrive on your boughten food
As the gipsy vans come through...
For it isn't nature the Gorgio blood
Should love as the Romany do.
Unless you carry the gipsy eyes
That see but seldom weep, 
Keep your head from the naked skies
Or the stars'll trouble your sleep.
Watch your moon through your window-pane
And take what weather she brews;
But don't run out in the midnight rain
Nor home in the morning dews.
Then you can huddle and shut your eyes
As the gipsy vans come through...
For it isn't fitting the Gorgio ryes
Should walk as the Romany do.
Unless you come of the gipsy race
That counts all time the same,
Be you careful of Time and Place
And Judgment and Good Name:
Lose your life for to live your life
The way that you ought to do;
And when you are finished, your God and your wife
And the Gipsies'll laugh at you!
Then you can rot in your burying place
As the gipsy vans come through... 
For it isn't reason the Gorgio race
Should die as the Romany do.
Occult
by Madison Julius Cawein

Unto the soul's companionship
Of things that only seem to be,
Earth points with magic fingertip
And bids thee see
How Fancy keeps thee company.
For oft at dawn hast not beheld
A spirit of prismatic hue
Blow wide the buds, which night has swelled?
And stain them through
With heav'n's ethereal gold and blue?
While at her side another went
With gleams of enigmatic white?
A spirit who distributes scent,
To vale and height,
In footsteps of the rosy light?
And oft at dusk hast thou not seen
The star-fays bring their caravans
Of dew, and glitter all the green,
Night's shadow tans,
From many starbeam sprinkling-cans?
Nor watched with these the elfins go
Who tune faint instruments? whose sound
Is that moon-music insects blow
When all the ground
Sleeps, and the night is hushed around?
Invitation
by Richard Le Gallienne

Unless you come while still the world is green,
A place of birds and the blue dreaming sea,
In vain has all the singing summer been,
Unless you come, and share it all with me.
Ah! come, ere August flames its heart away,
Ere, like a golden widow, autumn goes
Across the woodlands, sad with thoughts of May,
An aster in her bosom for a rose.
The Dog-Star Rages.
by George Pope Morris

Unseal the city fountains,
And let the waters flow
In coolness from the mountains
Unto the plains below.
My brain is parched and erring,
The pavement hot and dry,
And not a breath is stirring
Beneath the burning sky.
The belles have all departed--
There does not linger one!
Of course the mart's deserted
By every mother's son,
Except the street musician
And men of lesser note,
Whose only earthly mission
Seems but to toil and vote!
A woman--blessings on her!--
Beneath my window see;
She's singing--what an honor!--
Oh! "Woodman, spare that tree!"
Her "man" the air is killing--
His organ's out of tune--
They're gone, with my last shilling, [See Notes (1)]
To Florence's saloon. [See Notes (2)]
New York is most compactly
Of brick and mortar made--
Thermometer exactly
One hundred in the shade!
A furnace would be safer
Than this my letter-room,
Where gleams the sun, a wafer,
About to seal my doom.
The town looks like an ogre,
The country like a bride;
Wealth hies to Saratoga,
And Worth to Sunny-side. [See Notes (3)]
While fashion seeks the islands
Encircled by the sea,
Taste find the Hudson Highlands
More beautiful and free.
The omnibuses rumble
Along their cobbled way--
The "twelve inside" more humble
Than he who takes the pay:
From morn till midnight stealing,
His horses come and go--
The only creatures feeling
The "luxury of wo!" [See Notes (4)]
We editors of papers,
Who coin our brains for bread
By solitary tapers
While others doze in bed,
Have tasks as sad and lonely,
However wrong or right,
But with this difference only,
The horses rest at night.
From twelve till nearly fifty
I've toiled and idled not,
And, though accounted thrifty,
I'm scarcely worth a groat;
However, I inherit
What few have ever gained--
A bright and cheerful spirit
That never has complained.
A stillness and a sadness
Pervade the City Hall,
And speculating madness
Has left the street of Wall.
The Union Square looks really
Both desolate and dark,
And that's the case, or nearly,
From Battery to Park.
Had I a yacht, like Miller,
That skimmer of the seas--
A wheel rigged on a tiller, [See Notes (5)]
And a fresh gunwale breeze,
A crew of friends well chosen,
And all a-taunto, I
Would sail for regions frozen--
I'd rather freeze than fry.
Oh, this confounded weather!
(As some one sang or said,)
My pen, thought but a feather,
Is heavier than lead;
At every pore I'm oosing--
(I'm "caving in" to-day)--
My plumptitude I'm losing,
And dripping fast away.
I'm weeping like the willow
That droops in leaf and bough--
Let Croton's sparkling billow
Flow through the city now;
And, as becomes her station,
The muse will close her prayer:
God save the Corporation!
Long live the valiant Mayor! [See Notes (6)]
Gladness
by Josephine Preston Peabody

Unto my Gladness then I cried:
'I will not be denied!
Answer me now; and tell me why
Thou dost not fall, as a broken star
Out of the Dark where such things are,
And where such bright things die.
How canst thou, with thy fountain dance
Shatter clear sight with radiance?--
How canst thou reach and soar, and fling,
Over my heart's dark shuddering,
Unearthly lights on everything?
What dost thou see? What dost thou know?'
My Gladness said to me, bowed below,
'Gladness I am: created so.'
'And dare'st thou, in my mortal veins
Sing, with the Spring's descending rains?
While in this hour, and momently,
Forth of myself I look, and see
Torn treasure of my heart's Desire;
And human glories in the mire,
That should make glad some paradise!--
The childhood strewn in foulest place,
The girlhood, plundered of its grace;
The eyelids shut upon spent eyes
That never looked upon thy face!
Answer me, thou, if answer be!'
My Gladness said to me:
'Weep if thou wilt; yea, weep, and doubt.
I may not let the Sun go out.'
Then to my Gladness still I cried:
'And how canst thou abide?--'
Here, where my listening heart must hark
These sorrows rising from the Dark
Where still they starve, and strive and die,
Who bear each heaviest penalty
Of humanhood;--nor grasp, nor guess,
The garment's hem of happiness!--
The spear-wound throbbing in my song,
It throbs more bitterly than wrong,--
It burns more wildly than despair,--
The will to share,
The will to share!
Little I knew,--the blind-fold I,--
Joy would become like agony,--
Like arrows of the Sun in me!
*             *             *             *             *
I hold thee here. I have thee, now,--
And I am human. But what art thou!'
My Gladness answered me:
'Wayfarer, wilt thou understand?--
Follow me on. And keep my hand.'
Mother Doorstep
by Victor James Daley

'Wanted Kind Person to take charge of baby Boy (or Girl),' etc. - Any newspaper, any day.
'Early this morning the body of an infant was found on a doorstep in -- Street,' etc. - Any newspaper, every other day.
Unto the Person kind there came
A young girl bearing her fruit of shame:
She fell and it had to pay the price
Innocent Lamb of Sacrifice!
Lovingly then the Person smiled,
Gazing upon the face of the child;
Smiled like an ogress - 'Don't despond!
I am of children all too fond.'
Then said the mother, speaking low,
Kissing the babe she had born in woe:
'Treat him tenderly-nurse him well.'
Hotly the tears on the baby fell.
Taking the mother's coin with a leer
Ogress remarked: 'Don't cry, my dear,
Motherly persons to me are known,
One is named Wood and another Stone.
'Either of them will your baby keep
Hushing him into a soft, long sleep,
Crooning a lonesome lullaby song;
They have been used to children long.'
Cold and yet kind was the nurse's breast;
Cold fell the rain on the babe at rest;
Pale was his face as an immortelle,
Old Mother Doorstep had nursed him well.
Discord
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Unreconciled by life's fleet years, that fled
With changeful clang of pinions wide and wild,
Though two great spirits had lived, and hence had sped
Unreconciled;
Though time and change, harsh time's imperious child,
That wed strange hands together, might not wed
High hearts by hope's misprision once beguiled;
Faith, by the light from either's memory shed,
Sees, radiant as their ends were undefiled,
One goal for each, not twain among the dead
Unreconciled.
A Prayer
by Sara Teasdale

Until I lose my soul and lie
Blind to the beauty of the earth,
Deaf though shouting wind goes by,
Dumb in a storm of mirth;
Until my heart is quenched at length
And I have left the land of men,
Oh, let me love with all my strength
Careless if I am loved again.
In The Night. (Translations From The Hebrew Poets Of Medaeval Spain.)
by Emma Lazarus

Unto the house of prayer my spirit yearns,
Unto the sources of her being turns,
To where the sacred light of heaven burns,
She struggles thitherward by day and night.
The splendor of God's glory blinds her eyes,
Up without wings she soareth to the skies,
With silent aspiration seeks to rise,
In dusky evening and in darksome night.
To her the wonders of God's works appear,
She longs with fervor Him to draw anear,
The tidings of His glory reach her ear,
From morn to even, and from night to night.
The banner of thy grace did o'er me rest,
Yet was thy worship banished from my breast.
Almighty, thou didst seek me out and test
To try and to instruct me in the night.
I dare not idly on my pillow lie,
With winged feet to the shrine I fain would fly,
When chained by leaden slumbers heavily,
Men rest in imaged shadows, dreams of night.
Infatuate I trifled youth away,
In nothingness dreamed through my manhood's day.
Therefore my streaming tears I may not stay,
They are my meat and drink by day and night.
In flesh imprisoned is the son of light,
This life is but a bridge when seen aright.
Rise in the silent hour and pray with might,
Awake and call upon thy God by night!
Hasten to cleanse thyself of sin, arise!
Follow Truth's path that leads unto the skies,
As swift as yesterday existence flies,
Brief even as a watch within the night.
Man enters life for trouble; all he has,
And all that he beholds, is pain, alas!
Like to a flower does he bloom and pass,
He fadeth like a vision of the night.
The surging floods of life around him roar,
Death feeds upon him, pity is no more,
To others all his riches he gives o'er,
And dieth in the middle hour of night.
Crushed by the burden of my sins I pray,
Oh, wherefore shunned I not the evil way?
Deep are my sighs, I weep the livelong day,
And wet my couch with tears night after night.
My spirit stirs, my streaming tears still run,
Like to the wild birds' notes my sorrows' tone,
In the hushed silence loud resounds my groan,
My soul arises moaning in the night.
Within her narrow cell oppressed with dread,
Bare of adornment and with grief-bowed head
Lamenting, many a tear her sad eyes shed,
She weeps with anguish in the gloomy night.
For tears my burden seem to lighten best,
Could I but weep my heart's blood, I might rest.
My spirit bows with mighty grief oppressed,
I utter forth my prayer within the night.
Youth's charm has like a fleeting shadow gone,
With eagle wings the hours of life have flown.
Alas! the time when pleasure I have known,
I may not now recall by day or night.
The haughty scorn pursues me of my foe,
Evil his thought, yet soft his speech and low.
Forget it not, but bear his purpose so
Forever in thy mind by day and night.
Observe a pious fast, be whole again,
Hasten to purge thy heart of every stain.
No more from prayer and penitence refrain,
But turn unto thy God by day and night.
HE SPEAKS: "My son, yea, I will send thee aid,
Bend thou thy steps to me, be not afraid.
No nearer friend than I am, hast thou made,
Possess thy soul in patience one more night."
Moses Ben Esra (About 1100).
A Pleasant Grove
by William Browne

Unto a pleasant grove or such like place,
Where here the curious cutting of a hedge:
There, by a pond, the trimming of the sedge:
Here the fine setting of well-shading trees:
The walks there mounting up by small degrees,
The gravel and the green so equal lie,
It, with the rest, draws on your ling'ring eye:
Here the sweet smells that do perfume the air,
Arising from the infinite repair
Of odoriferous buds and herbs of price,
(As if it were another Paradise)
So please the smelling sense, that you are fain
Where last you walk'd to turn and walk again.
There the small birds with their harmonious notes
Sing to a spring that smileth as she floats:
For in her face a many dimples show,
And often skips as it did dancing go:
Here further down an over-arched alley,
That from a hill goes winding in a valley,
You spy at end thereof a standing lake,
Where some ingenious artist strives to make
The water (brought in turning pipes of lead
Through birds of earth most lively fashioned)
To counterfeit and mock the sylvans all,
In singing well their own set madrigal.
This with no small delight retains your ear,
And makes you think none blest but who live there.
Then in another place the fruits that be
In gallant clusters decking each good tree,
Invite your hand to crop some from the stem,
And liking one, taste every sort of them:
Then to the arbours walk, then to the bowers,
Thence to the walks again, thence to the flowers,
Then to birds, and to the clear spring thence,
Now pleasing one, and then another sense.
Here one walks oft, and yet anew begin'th,
As if it were some hidden labyrinth;
So loath to part and so content to stay,
That when the gard'ner knocks for you away,
It grieves you so to leave the pleasures in it,
That you could wish that you had never seen it.
From Britannia's Pastorals.
Fragment: 'Unrisen Splendour Of The Brightest Sun'.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Unrisen splendour of the brightest sun,
To rise upon our darkness, if the star
Now beckoning thee out of thy misty throne
Could thaw the clouds which wage an obscure war
With thy young brightness!
To Virgil. - Translations From Horace.
by Charles Stuart Calverley

OD. i. 24.
Unshamed, unchecked, for one so dear
We sorrow. Lead the mournful choir,
Melpomene, to whom thy sire
Gave harp, and song-notes liquid-clear!
Sleeps He the sleep that knows no morn?
Oh Honour, oh twin-born with Right,
Pure Faith, and Truth that loves the light,
When shall again his like be born?
Many a kind heart for Him makes moan;
Thine, Virgil, first. But ah! in vain
Thy love bids heaven restore again
That which it took not as a loan:
Were sweeter lute than Orpheus given
To thee, did trees thy voice obey;
The blood revisits not the clay
Which He, with lifted wand, hath driven
Into his dark assemblage, who
Unlocks not fate to mortal's prayer.
Hard lot! Yet light their griefs who BEAR
The ills which they may not undo.
The Place Of Rest
by George William Russell

'The soul is its own witness and its own refuge'
Unto the deep the deep heart goes,
It lays its sadness nigh the breast:
Only the Mighty Mother knows
The wounds that quiver unconfessed.
It seeks a deeper silence still;
It folds itself around with peace,
Where thoughts alike of good or ill
In quietness unfostered cease.
It feels in the unwounding vast
For comfort for its hopes and fears:
The Mighty Mother bows at last;
She listens to her children's tears.
Where the last anguish deepens--there
The fire of beauty smites through pain:
A glory moves amid despair,
The Mother takes her child again.
Song
by Madison Julius Cawein

Unto the portal of the House of Song,
Symbols of wrong and emblems of unrest,
And mottoes of despair and envious jest,
And stony masks of scorn and hate belong.
Who enters here shall feel his soul denied
All welcome: lo! the chiselled form of Love,
That stares in marble on the shrine above
The tomb of Beauty, where he dreamed and died!
Who enters here shall know no poppyflowers
Of Rest, or harp-tones of serene Content;
Only sad ghosts of music and of scent
Shall mock the mind with their remembered powers.
Here must he wait till striving patience carves
His name upon the century-storied floor;
His heart's blood staining one dim pane the more
In Fame's high casement while he sings and starves.
Translations. - The Praise Of God. (Luther's Song-Book.)
by George MacDonald

Unto the seer, Isaiah, it was given
That, in the spirit, he saw the Lord of heaven
Up on a lofty throne, in radiance bright;
The skirt of his garment filled the temple quite;
Two seraphs at his side were standing there;
Six wings, he saw, each one of them did wear:
Two over their bright visages did meet,
With two of them they covered up their feet,
And with the other twain abroad did fly.
Each to the other called with a great cry,
Holy is God, the Lord of Zebaoth!
Holy is God, the Lord of Zebaoth!
Holy is God, the Lord of Zebaoth!
His glory great the whole world filled hath.
At the loud cry the beams and threshold shook,
And the whole house was full of cloud and smoke.
The Nameless
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Unnumbered gods may unremembered die;
A thousand creeds may perish and pass by;
Yet do I lift mine eyes to ONE on high.
Unnamed be HE from whom creation came;
There is no word whereby to speak His name
But petty men have mouthed it into shame.
I lift mine eyes, and with a river's force
My love's full tide goes sweeping on its course
To that supreme and all-embracing Source.
Then back through all those thirsting channels roll
The mighty billows of the Over Soul.
And I am He, the portion and the Whole.
As little streams before the flood-tide flee,
As rivers vanish to become the sea,
The I exists no more, for I AM HE,
The Infant M---- M----
by William Wordsworth

Unquiet Childhood here by special grace
Forgets her nature, opening like a flower
That neither feeds nor wastes its vital power
In painful struggles. Months each other chase,
And nought untunes that Infant's voice; no trace
Of fretful temper sullies her pure cheek;
Prompt, lively, self-sufficing, yet so meek
That one enrapt with gazing on her face
(Which even the placid innocence of death
Could scarcely make more placid, heaven more bright)
Might learn to picture, for the eye of faith,
The Virgin, as she shone with kindred light;
A nursling couched upon her mother's knee,
Beneath some shady palm of Galilee.