DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Translations. - Three Pairs And One. (From Genestet.)
by George MacDonald

You have two ears--and but one mouth:
Let this, friend, be a token--
Much should be heard, and not so much
Be spoken.
You have two eyes--and but one mouth:
That is an indication--
Much must you see, but little serves
Relation.
You have two hands--and but one mouth:
Receive the hint you meet with--
For labour two, but only one
To eat with.
Radio Poem
by Bertolt Brecht

You little box, held to me escaping
So that your valves should not break
Carried from house to house to ship from sail to train,
So that my enemies might go on talking to me,
Near my bed, to my pain
The last thing at night, the first thing in the morning,
Of their victories and of my cares,
Promise me not to go silent all of a sudden.
To One Who Ran Down The English
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

You make our faults too gross, and thence maintain
Our darker future. May your fears be vain!
At times the small black fly upon the pane
May seem the black ox of the distant plain.
Down About Old Shakertown.
by George W. Doneghy

You may boast about the landscapes fair so far across the sea
Of castled Rhine, and southern France, and favored Italy--
But have you seen, when Springtime flings the scented blossoms down,
The forests and the meadows green around old Shakertown?
You may boast of some that bask beneath perpetual Summer's smiles--
Those "Eden's of the eastern wave"--the sunny Grecian isles--
And others that perhaps you've seen, of beauty and renown,
But come and view the country spread around old Shakertown!
O come and boast that you have been where Nature's lavish hand
Bestowed the gifts of wood and field that vie with any land--
Where valleys wear a velvet robe--the hills an emerald crown
Of bluegrass shimmering in the sun, around old Shakertown!
O come to old Kentucky then, and to her garden spot,
Then wander wheresoe'er you will, it ne'er will be forgot--
For Nature's face is wreathed in smiles nor wears a single frown
To mar the beauty she has spread around old Shakertown!
Earth's Lyric.
by Bliss Carman (William)

April. You hearken, my fellow,
Old slumberer down in my heart?
There's a whooping of ice in the rivers;
The sap feels a start.
The snow-melted torrents are brawling;
The hills, orange-misted and blue,
Are touched with the voice of the rainbird
Unsullied and new.
The houses of frost are deserted,
Their slumber is broken and done,
And empty and pale are the portals
Awaiting the sun.
The bands of Arcturus are slackened;
Orion goes forth from his place
On the slopes of the night, leading homeward
His hound from the chase.
The Pleiades weary and follow
The dance of the ghostly dawn;
The revel of silence is over;
Earth's lyric comes on.
A golden flute in the cedars,
A silver pipe in the swales,
And the slow large life of the forest
Wells bade and prevails.
A breath of the woodland spirit
Has blown out the bubble of spring
To this tenuous hyaline glory
One touch sets a-wing.
A Word To The Calvinists
by Anne Bronte

You may rejoice to think yourselves secure,
You may be grateful for the gift divine,
That grace unsought which made your black hearts pure
And fits your earthborn souls in Heaven to shine.
But is it sweet to look around and view
Thousands excluded from that happiness,
Which they deserve at least as much as you,
Their faults not greater nor their virtues less?
And wherefore should you love your God the more
Because to you alone his smiles are given,
Because He chose to pass the many o'er
And only bring the favoured few to Heaven?
And wherefore should your hearts more grateful prove
Because for all the Saviour did not die?
Is yours the God of justice and of love
And are your bosoms warm with charity?
Say does your heart expand to all mankind
And would you ever to your neighbour do,
The weak, the strong, the enlightened and the blind
As you would have your neighbour do to you?
And, when you, looking on your fellow men
Behold them doomed to endless misery,
How can you talk of joy and rapture then?
May God withhold such cruel joy from me!
That none deserve eternal bliss I know:
Unmerited the grace in mercy given,
But none shall sink to everlasting woe
That have not well deserved the wrath of Heaven.
And, O! there lives within my heart
A hope long nursed by me,
(And should its cheering ray depart
How dark my soul would be)
That as in Adam all have died
In Christ shall all men live
And ever round his throne abide
Eternal praise to give;
That even the wicked shall at last
Be fitted for the skies
And when their dreadful doom is past
To life and light arise.
I ask not how remote the day
Nor what the sinner's woe
Before their dross is purged away,
Enough for me to know
That when the cup of wrath is drained,
The metal purified,
They'll cling to what they once disdained,
And live by Him that died.
Foreign Lands
by Henry Lawson

You may roam the wide seas over, follow, meet, and cross the sun,
Sail as far as ships can sail, and travel far as trains can run;
You may ride and tramp wherever range or plain or sea expands,
But the crowd has been before you, and you'll not find 'Foreign Lands;'
For the Early Days are over,
And no more the white-winged rover
Sinks the gale-worn coast of England bound for bays in Foreign Lands.
Foreign Lands are in the distance dim and dreamlike, faint and far,
Long ago, and over yonder, where our boyhood fancies are,
For the land is by the railway cramped as though with iron bands,
And the steamship and the cable did away with Foreign Lands.
Ah! the days of blue and gold!
When the news was six months old, 
But the news was worth the telling in the days of Foreign Lands.
Here we slave the dull years hopeless for the sake of Wool and Wheat
Here the homes of ugly Commerce, niggard farm and haggard street;
Yet our mothers and our fathers won the life the heart demands, 
Less than fifty years gone over, we were born in Foreign Lands.
When the gipsies stole the children still, in village tale and song,
And the world was wide to travel, and the roving spirit strong;
When they dreamed of South Sea Islands, summer seas and coral strands, 
Then the bravest hearts of England sailed away to Foreign Lands,
'Fitting foreign', flood and field, 
Half the world and orders sealed, 
And the first and best of Europe went to fight in Foreign Lands.
Canvas towers on the ocean, homeward bound and outward bound, 
Glint of topsails over islands, splash of anchors in the sound;
Then they landed in the forests, took their strong lives in their hands,
And they fought and toiled and conquered, making homes in Foreign Lands,
Through the cold and through the drought, 
Further on and further out, 
Winning half the world for England in the wilds of Foreign Lands.
Love and pride of life inspired them when the simple village hearts
Followed Master Will and Harry, gone abroad to 'furrin parts'
By our townships and our cities, and across the desert sands
Are the graves of those who fought and died for us in Foreign Lands, 
Gave their young lives for our sake
(Was it all a grand mistake?)
Sons of Master Will and Harry born abroad in Foreign Lands!
Ah, my girl, our lives are narrow, and in sordid days like these,
I can hate the things that banished 'Foreign Lands across the seas,'
But with all the world before us, God above us, hearts and hands,
I can sail the seas in fancy far away to Foreign Lands.
Bequest.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

You left me, sweet, two legacies, --
A legacy of love
A Heavenly Father would content,
Had He the offer of;
You left me boundaries of pain
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,
Your consciousness and me.
Poem Of Remembrance For A Girl Or A Boy
by Walt Whitman

You just maturing youth! You male or female!
Remember the organic compact of These States,
Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thenceforward to the rights, life, liberty, equality of man,
Remember what was promulged by the founders, ratified by The States, signed in black and white by the Commissioners, and read by Washington at the head of the army,
Remember the purposes of the founders, - Remember Washington;
Remember the copious humanity streaming from every direction toward America;
Remember the hospitality that belongs to nations and men; (Cursed be nation, woman, man, without hospitality!)
Remember, government is to subserve individuals,
Not any, not the President, is to have one jot more than you or me,
Not any habitan of America is to have one jot less than you or me.
Anticipate when the thirty or fifty millions, are to become the hundred, or two hundred millions, of equal freemen and freewomen, amicably joined.
Recall ages - One age is but a part - ages are but a part;
The eternal equilibrium of things is great, and the eternal overthrow of things is great,
And there is another paradox.
Recall the angers, bickerings, delusions, superstitions, of the idea of caste,
Recall the bloody cruelties and crimes.
Anticipate the best women;
I say an unnumbered new race of hardy and well-defined women are to spread through all These States,
I say a girl fit for These States must be free, capable, dauntless, just the same as a boy.
Anticipate your own life - retract with merciless power,
Shirk nothing - retract in time - Do you see those errors, diseases, weaknesses, lies, thefts?
Do you see that lost character? - Do you see decay, consumption, rum-drinking, dropsy, fever, mortal cancer or inflammation?
Do you see death, and the approach of death?
In The Afternoon
by James Whitcomb Riley

You in the hammock; and I, near by,
Was trying to read, and to swing you, too;
And the green of the sward was so kind to the eye,
And the shade of the maples so cool and blue,
That often I looked from the book to you
To say as much, with a sigh.
You in the hammock. The book we'd brought
From the parlor - to read in the open air, -
Something of love and of Launcelot
And Guinevere, I believe, was there -
But the afternoon, it was far more fair
Than the poem was, I thought.
You in the hammock; and on and on.
I droned and droned through the rhythmic stuff -
But, with always a half of my vision gone
Over the top of the page - enough
To caressingly gaze at you, swathed in the fluff
Of your hair and your odorous "lawn."
You in the hammock - and that was a year -
Fully a year ago, I guess -
And what do we care for their Guinevere
And her Launcelot and their lordliness! -
You in the hammock still, and - Yes -
Kiss me again, my dear!
The Old Cafe
by Arthur Macy

You know,
Don't you, Joe,
Those merry evenings long ago?
You know the room, the narrow stair,
The wreaths of smoke that circled there,
The corner table where we sat
For hours in after-dinner chat,
And magnified
Our little world inside.
You know,
Don't you, Joe?
Ah, those nights divine!
The simple, frugal wine,
The airs on crude Italian strings,
The joyous, harmless revelings,
Just fit for us - or kings!
At times a quaint and wickered flask
Of rare Chianti, or from the homelier cask
Of modest Pilsener a stein or so,
Amid the merry talk would flow;
Or red Bordeaux
From vines that grew where dear Montaigne
Held his domain.
And you remember that dark eye,
None too shy;
In fact, she seemed a bit too free
For you and me.
You know,
Don't you, Joe?
Then Pegasus I knew,
And then I read to you
My callow rhymes
So many, many times;
And something in the place
Lent them a certain grace,
Until I scarce believed them mine,
Under the magic of the wine;
But now I read them o'er,
And see grave faults I had not seen before,
And wonder how
You could have listened with such placid brow,
And somehow apprehend
You sank the critic in the friend.
You know,
Don't you, Joe?
And when we talked of books,
How learned were our looks!
And few the bards we could not quote,
From gay Catullus' lines to Milton's purer note.
Mayhap we now are wiser men,
But we knew more than all the scholars then;
And our conceit
Was grand, ineffable, complete!
We know,
Don't we, Joe?
Gone are those golden nights
Of innocent Bohemian delights,
And we are getting on;
And anon,
Years sad and tremulous
May be in store for us;
But should we ever meet
Upon some quiet street,
And you discover in an old man's eye
Some transient sparkle of the days gone by,
Then you will guess, perchance,
The meaning of the glance;
You'll know,
Won't you, Joe?
To-Day You Understand.
by Jean Blewett

You lifted eyes pain-filled to me,
Sad, questioning eyes that did demand
Why I should thrust back, childishly,
The friendship warm you offered me - 
Ah, sweet, to-day you understand!
'Twas that my heart beat rapturously
At word of thine, at touch of hand,
At tender glance vouchsafed to me
The while I knew it must not be - 
Ah, sweet, to-day you understand!
There's neither pain nor mystery
In that far-off and fragrant land
To which you journeyed fearlessly;
By gates of pearl and jasper sea - 
Ah, sweet, to-day you understand!
The Ol' Tunes
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

You kin talk about yer anthems
An' yer arias an' sich,
An' yer modern choir-singin'
That you think so awful rich;
But you orter heerd us youngsters
In the times now far away,
A-singin' o' the ol' tunes
In the ol'-fashioned way.
There was some of us sung treble
An' a few of us growled bass,
An' the tide o' song flowed smoothly
With its 'comp'niment o' grace;
There was spirit in that music,
An' a kind o' solemn sway,
A-singin' o' the ol' tunes
In the ol'-fashioned way.
I remember oft o' standin'
In my homespun pantaloons--
On my face the bronze an' freckles
O' the suns o' youthful Junes--
Thinkin' that no mortal minstrel
Ever chanted sich a lay
As the ol' tunes we was singin'
In the ol'-fashioned way.
The boys 'ud always lead us,
An' the girls 'ud all chime in
Till the sweetness o' the singin'
Robbed the list'nin' soul o' sin;
An' I used to tell the parson
'T was as good to sing as pray,
When the people sung the ol' tunes
In the ol'-fashioned way.
How I long ag'in to hear 'em
Pourin' forth from soul to soul,
With the treble high an' meller,
An' the bass's mighty roll;
But the times is very diff'rent,
An' the music heerd to-day
Ain't the singin' o' the ol' tunes
In the ol'-fashioned way.
Little screechin' by a woman,
Little squawkin' by a man,
Then the organ's twiddle-twaddle,
Jest the empty space to span,--
An' ef you should even think it,
'T is n't proper fur to say
That you want to hear the ol' tunes
In the ol'-fashioned way.
But I think that some bright mornin',
When the toils of life air o'er,
An' the sun o' heaven arisin'
Glads with light the happy shore,
I shall hear the angel chorus,
In the realms of endless day,
A-singin' o' the ol' tunes
In the ol'-fashioned way.
The Quarry
by Walter De La Mare

You hunted me with all the pack,
Too blind, too blind, to see
By no wild hope of force or greed
Could you make sure of me.
And like a phantom through the glades,
With tender breast aglow,
The goddess in me laughed to hear
Your horns a-roving go.
She laughed to think no mortal ever
By dint of mortal flesh
The very Cause that was the Hunt
One moment could enmesh:
That though with captive limbs I lay,
Stilled breath and vanquished eyes,
He that hunts Love with horse and hound
Hunts out his heart and eyes.
A Pot of Tea
by Robert William Service

You make it in your mess-tin by the brazier's rosy gleam;
You watch it cloud, then settle amber clear;
You lift it with your bay'nit, and you sniff the fragrant steam;
The very breath of it is ripe with cheer.
You're awful cold and dirty, and a-cursin' of your lot;
You scoff the blushin' 'alf of it, so rich and rippin' 'ot;
It bucks you up like anythink, just seems to touch the spot:
God bless the man that first discovered Tea!
Since I came out to fight in France, which ain't the other day,
I think I've drunk enough to float a barge;
All kinds of fancy foreign dope, from caffy and doo lay,
To rum they serves you out before a charge.
In back rooms of estaminays I've gurgled pints of cham;
I've swilled down mugs of cider till I've felt a bloomin' dam;
But 'struth! they all ain't in it with the vintage of Assam:
God bless the man that first invented Tea!
I think them lazy lumps o' gods wot kips on asphodel
Swigs nectar that's a flavour of Oolong;
I only wish them sons o' guns a-grillin' down in 'ell
Could 'ave their daily ration of Suchong.
Hurrah! I'm off to battle, which is 'ell and 'eaven too;
And if I don't give some poor bloke a sexton's job to do,
To-night, by Fritz's campfire, won't I 'ave a gorgeous brew
(For fightin' mustn't interfere with Tea).
To-night we'll all be tellin' of the Boches that we slew,
As we drink the giddy victory in Tea.
Baby Tortoise
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

You know what it is to be born alone,
Baby tortoise!
The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell,
Not yet awake,
And remain lapsed on earth,
Not quite alive.
A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.
To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open,
Like some iron door;
To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base
And reach your skinny little neck
And take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage,
Alone, small insect,
Tiny bright-eye,
Slow one.
To take your first solitary bite
And move on your slow, solitary hunt.
Your bright, dark little eye,
Your eye of a dark disturbed night,
Under its slow lid, tiny baby tortoise,
So indomitable.
No one ever heard you complain.
You draw your head forward, slowly, from your little wimple
And set forward, slow-dragging, on your four- pinned toes,
Rowing slowly forward.
Whither away, small bird?
Rather like a baby working its limbs,
Except that you make slow, ageless progress
And a baby makes none.
The touch of sun excites you,
And the long ages, and the lingering chill
Make you pause to yawn,
Opening your impervious mouth,
Suddenly beak-shaped, and very wide, like some suddenly gaping pincers;
Soft red tongue, and hard thin gums,
Then close the wedge of your little mountain front,
Your face, baby tortoise.
Do you wonder at the world, as slowly you turn your head in its wimple
And look with laconic, black eyes?
Or is sleep coming over you again,
The non-life?
You are so hard to wake.
Are you able to wonder?
Or is it just your indomitable will and pride of the first life
Looking round
And slowly pitching itself against the inertia
Which had seemed invincible?
The vast inanimate,
And the fine brilliance of your so tiny eye.
Challenger.
Nay, tiny shell-bird,
What a huge vast inanimate it is, that you must row against,
What an incalculable inertia.
Challenger.
Little Ulysses, fore-runner,
No bigger than my thumb-nail,
Buon viaggio.
All animate creation on your shoulder,
Set forth, little Titan, under your battle-shield.
The ponderous, preponderate,
Inanimate universe;
And you are slowly moving, pioneer, you alone.
How vivid your travelling seems now, in the troubled sunshine,
Stoic, Ulyssean atom;
Suddenly hasty, reckless, on high toes.
Voiceless little bird,
Resting your head half out of your wimple
In the slow dignity of your eternal pause.
Alone, with no sense of being alone,
And hence six times more solitary;
Fulfilled of the slow passion of pitching through immemorial ages
Your little round house in the midst of chaos.
Over the garden earth,
Small bird,
Over the edge of all things.
Traveller,
With your tail tucked a little on one side
Like a gentleman in a long-skirted coat.
All life carried on your shoulder,
Invincible fore-runner.
The Cross, the Cross
Goes deeper in than we know,
Deeper into life;
Right into the marrow
And through the bone.
The Cure
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

You may talk of reformations, of the Economic Plan,
That shall stem the Social Evil in its course;
But the Ancient Sin of nations, must be got at in THE MAN.
If you want to cleanse a river, seek the source.
Ever since his first beginning, Man has had his way, in lust.
He has never learned the law of Self-Control;
And the World condones his sinning, and the Doctors say he must,
And the Churches shut their eyes, and take his toll.
And the lauded 'Lovely Mothers' send the son out into life
With no knowledge-welded armour for the fight;
'He will make his way like others, through the Oat field, to the Wife';
'He will somehow be led onward, to the light.'
Yes, his leaders, they shall find him.    On the highways at each turn,
(Since you did not choose to counsel or to warn,)
They shall tempt him, then shall bind him; they shall blight, and they shall burn,
Down to offspring and descendants yet unborn.
It can never end through preaching; it can never end through laws;
This social sore, no punishment can heal.
It must be the mother's teaching of the purpose, and the cause,
And God's glory, lying under sex appeal.
She must feel no fear to name it to the children it has brought;
She must speak of it as sacred, and sublime;
She must beautify, not shame it, by her speech and by her thought;
Till they listen, and respect it, for all time.
From the heart they rested under ere they saw the light of day,
Must the daughters and the sons be taught this truth;
Till they think of it with wonder, as a holy thing alway;
While love's wisdom guides them safely through their youth.
Oh, the world has made its devil, and the Mothers let it grow;
And the Man has dragged their thoughts down to the earth.
There will be no Social Evil, when each waking mind shall know
All the grandeur and the beauty hid in birth.
When each Mother sets the fashion to win confidence, and trust,
And to teach the mighty lesson, Self-Control,
We can lift the great Sex passion from the darkness and the dust,
And enshrine it on the altar of the soul.
You Know Where You Did Despise
by Alexander Pope

You know where you did despise
(Tother day) my little Eyes,
Little Legs, and little Thighs,
And some things, of little Size,
You know where.
You, tis true, have fine black eyes,
Taper legs, and tempting Thighs,
Yet what more than all we prize
Is a Thing of little Size,
You know where.
His Mistress To Him At His Farewell
by Robert Herrick

You may vow I'll not forget
To pay the debt
Which to thy memory stands as due
As faith can seal it you.
Take then tribute of my tears;
So long as I have fears
To prompt me, I shall ever
Languish and look, but thy return see never.
Oh then to lessen my despair,
Print thy lips into(the air,
So by this
Means, I may kiss thy kiss,
When as some kind
Wind
Shall hither waft it: And, in lieu,
My lips shall send a thousand back to you.
A Bunch Of Triolets
by Robert Fuller Murray

TO ---
You like the trifling triolet:
Well, here are three or four.
Unless your likings I forget,
You like the trifling triolet.
Against my conscience I abet
A taste which I deplore;
You like the trifling triolet:
Well, here are three or four.
Have you ever met with a pretty girl
Walking along the street,
With a nice new dress and her hair in curl?
Have you ever met with a pretty girl,
When her hat blew off and the wind with a whirl
Wafted it right to your feet?
Have you ever met with a pretty girl
Walking along the street?
I ran into a lady's arms,
Turning a corner yesterday.
To my confusion, her alarms,
I ran into a lady's arms.
So close a vision of her charms
Left me without a word to say.
I ran into a lady's arms,
Turning a corner yesterday.
How many maids you love,
How many maids love you!
Your conscious blushes prove
How many maids you love.
Each trusts you like a dove,
But would she, if she knew
How many maids you love,
How many maids love you?
The Refugee's Haven.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Vous voil' dans la froide Angleterre.")
[Bk. III. xlvii., Jersey, Sept. 19, 1854.]
You may doubt I find comfort in England
But, there, 'tis a refuge from dangers!
Where a Cromwell dictated to Milton,
Republicans ne'er can be strangers!