DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Leedle Dutch Baby
by James Whitcomb Riley

Leedle Dutch baby haff come ter town!
Jabber und jump till der day gone down -
Jabber und sphlutter und sphlit hees jaws -
Vot a Dutch baby dees Londsmon vas!
I dink dose mout' vas leedle too vide
Ober he laugh fon dot altso-side!
Haff got blenty off deemple und vrown?
Hey! Leedle Dutchman come ter town!
Leedle Dutch baby, I dink me proud
Ober your fader can schquall dot loud
Ven he vas leedle Dutch baby like you
Und yoost don't gare, like he alvays do!
Guess ven dey vean him on beer, you bet
Dot's der because dot he aind veaned yet!
Vot you said off he dringk you down?
Hey! Leedle Dutchman come ter town!
Leedle Dutch baby, yoost schquall avay -
Schquall fon preakfast till gisterday!
Better you all time gry und shout
Dan shmile me vonce fon der coffin out!
Vot I gare off you keek my nose
Downside-up mit your heels und toes -
Downside, oder der oopside-down?
Hey! Leedle Dutchman come ter town!
Anima Mundi
by Richard Le Gallienne

Let all things vanish, if but you remain;
For if you stay, beloved, what is gone?
Yet, should you go, all permanence is vain,
And all the piled abundance is as none.
With you beside me in the desert sand,
Your smile upon me, and on mine your hand,
Oases green arise, and camel-bells;
For in the long adventure of your eyes
Are all the wandering ways to Paradise.
Existence, in your being, comes and goes;
What were the garden, love, without the rose?
In vain were ears to hear,
And eyes in vain,
Lacking your ordered music, sphere to sphere,
Blind, should your beauty blossom not again.
The pulse that shakes the world with rhythmic beat
Is but the passing of your little feet;
And all the singing vast of all the seas,
Down from the pole
To the Hesperides,
Is but the praying echo of your soul.
Therefore, beloved, know that this is true - 
The world exists and vanishes in you!
Tis not a lover's fancy; ask the sky
If all its stars depend not, even as I,
Upon your eyelids, when they open or close;
And let the garden answer with the rose.
Nursery Rhyme. CXXXIX. Songs.
by Unknown

Lend me thy mare to ride a mile?
She is lamed, leaping over a stile.
Alack! and I must keep the fair!
I'll give thee money for thy mare.
Oh, oh! say you so?
Money will make the mare to go!
High Frequency Draw (High Alert)
by Paul Cameron Brown

Les bougies sur les tombeaux
(The candles on the graves)
antilles dread locks ...
french chocolate it is not.
Days Come And Go
by Madison Julius Cawein

Leaves fall and flowers fade,
Days come and go:
Now is sweet Summer laid
Low in her leafy glade,
Low like a fragrant maid,
Low, low, ah, low.
Tears fall and eyelids ache,
Hearts overflow:
Here for our dead love's sake
Let us our farewells make
Will he again awake?
Ah, no, no, no.
Winds sigh and skies are gray,
Days come and go:
Wild birds are flown away:
Where are the blooms of May?
Dead, dead, this many a day,
Under the snow.
Lips sigh and cheeks are pale,
Hearts overflow:
Will not some song or tale,
Kiss, or a flower frail,
With our dead love avail?
Ah, no, no, no.
Prayer
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Lean on thyself until thy strength is tried;
Then ask God's help; it will not be denied.
Use thine own sight to see the way to go;
When darkness falls ask God the path to show.
Think for thyself and reason out thy plan;
God has His work and thou hast thine, oh, man.
Exert thy will and use it for control;
God gave thee jurisdiction of thy soul.
All thine immortal powers bring into play;
Think, act, strive, reason, then look up and pray.
Lesbia Hath A Beaming Eye.
by Thomas Moore

Lesbia hath a beaming eye,
But no one knows for whom it beameth;
Right and left its arrows fly,
But what they aim at no one dreameth.
Sweeter 'tis to gaze upon
My Nora's lid that seldom rises;
Few its looks, but every one,
Like unexpected light, surprises!
Oh, My Nora Creina, dear,
My gentle, bashful Nora Creina,
Beauty lies
In many eyes,
But love in yours, My Nora Creina.
Lesbia wears a robe of gold,
But all so close the nymph hath laced it,
Not a charm of beauty's mould
Presumes to stay where nature placed it.
Oh! my Nora's gown for me,
That floats as wild as mountain breezes,
Leaving every beauty free
To sink or swell as Heaven pleases.
Yes, my Nora Creina, dear.
My simple, graceful Nora Creina,
Nature's dress
Is loveliness--
The dress you wear, my Nora Creina.
Lesbia hath a wit refined,
But, when its points are gleaming round us,
Who can tell if they're designed
To dazzle merely, or to wound us?
Pillowed on my Nora's heart,
In safer slumber Love reposes--
Bed of peace! whose roughest part
Is but the crumpling of the roses.
Oh! my Nora Creina dear,
My mild, my artless Nora Creina,
Wit, though bright,
Hath no such light,
As warms your eyes, my Nora Creina.
Less Than The Cloud To The Wind
by Sara Teasdale

Less than the cloud to the wind,
Less than the foam to the sea,
Less than the rose to the storm
Am I to thee.
More than the star to the night,
More than the rain to the lea,
More than heaven to earth
Art thou to me.
Coptic Song.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Leave we the pedants to quarrel and strive,
Rigid and cautious the teachers to be!
All of the wisest men e'er seen alive
Smile, nod, and join in the chorus with me:
"Vain 'tis to wait till the dolt grows less silly!
Play then the fool with the fool, willy-nilly, 
Children of wisdom, remember the word!"
Merlin the old, from his glittering grave,
When I, a stripling, once spoke to him, gave
Just the same answer as that I've preferr'd;
"Vain 'tis to wait till the dolt grows less silly!
Play then the fool with the fool, willy-nilly, 
Children of wisdom, remember the word!"
And on the Indian breeze as it booms,
And in the depths of Egyptian tombs,
Only the same holy saying I've heard:
"Vain 'tis to wait till the dolt grows less silly!
Play then the fool with the fool, willy-nilly, 
Children of wisdom, remember the word!"
The New Chum Jackeroo
by Henry Lawson

Let bushmen think as bushmen will,
And say whate'er they choose,
I hate to hear the stupid sneer
At New Chum Jackaroos.
He may not ride as you can ride,
Or do what you can do;
But sometimes you'd seem small beside
The New Chum Jackaroo.
His share of work he never shirks,
And through the blazing drought,
He lives the old things down, and works
His own salvation out.
When older, wiser chums despond
He battles brave of heart,
'Twas he who sailed of old beyond
The margin of the chart.
'Twas he who proved the world was round,
In crazy square canoes;
The lands you're living in were found
By New Chum Jackaroos.
He crossed the deserts hot and bare,
From barren, hungry shores,
The plains that you would scarcely dare
With all your tanks and bores.
He fought a way through stubborn hills
Towards the setting sun,
Your fathers all and Burke and Wills
Were New Chums, every one.
When England fought with all the world
In those brave days gone by,
And all its strength against her hurled,
He held her honour high.
By Southern palms and Northern pines,
Where'er was life to lose,
She held her own with thin red lines
Of New Chum Jackaroos.
Through shot and shell and solitudes,
Wherever feet have gone,
The New Chums fought while eye-glass dudes
And Johnnies led them on.
And though he wear a foppish coat,
And these old things forget,
In stormy times I'd give a vote
For Cuffs and Collars yet.
Let Honour Speak
by John Frederick Freeman

Let Honour speak, for only Honour can
End nobly what in nobleness began.
Nor hate nor anger may, though just their cause,
This strife prolong, if Honour whisper, Pause!
Let Honour speak.
For Honour keeps the ashes of the dead,
Accounts the anguish of all widowhead,
All childlessness, all sacrifice, defeat,
And all our dead have died for, though to live was sweet.
Let Honour speak,
Nor weariness nor weakness murmur, Stay!
Nor for this Now England's To be betray.
All else be dumb, for only Honour can
End nobly what in nobleness began.
Venite Descendamus
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

Let be at last; give over words and sighing,
Vainly were all things said:
Better at last to find a place for lying,
Only dead.
Silence were best, with songs and sighing over;
Now be the music mute;
Now let the dead, red leaves of autumn cover
A vain lute.
Silence is best: for ever and for ever,
We will go down and sleep,
Somewhere beyond her ken, where she need never
Come to weep.
Let be at last: colder she grows and colder;
Sleep and the night were best;
Lying at last where we cannot behold her,
We may rest.
A Celebration Of Charis: I. His Excuse For Loving
by Ben Jonson

Let it not your wonder move,
Less your laughter, that I love.
Though I now write fifty years,
I have had, and have, my peers;
Poets, though divine, are men,
Some have lov'd as old again.
And it is not always face,
Clothes, or fortune, gives the grace;
Or the feature, or the youth.
But the language and the truth,
With the ardour and the passion,
Gives the lover weight and fashion.
If you then will read the story,
First prepare you to be sorry
That you never knew till now
Either whom to love or how;
But be glad, as soon with me,
When you know that this is she
Of whose beauty it was sung;
She shall make the old man young,
Keep the middle age at stay,
And let nothing high decay,
Till she be the reason why
All the world for love may die.
Despair
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Let me close the eyes of my soul
That I may not see
What stands between thee and me.
Let me shut the ears of my heart
That I may not hear
A voice that drowns yours, my dear.
Let me cut the cords of my life,
Of my desolate being,
Since cursed is my hearing and seeing.
Rhymes On The Road. Extract VII. Venice.
by Thomas Moore

Lord Byron's Memoirs, written by himself.--Reflections, when about to read them.
Let me a moment--ere with fear and hope
Of gloomy, glorious things, these leaves I ope--
As one in fairy tale to whom the key
Of some enchanter's secret halls is given,
Doubts while he enters slowly, tremblingly,
If he shall meet with shapes from hell or heaven--
Let me a moment think what thousands live
O'er the wide earth this instant who would give,
Gladly, whole sleepless nights to bend the brow
Over these precious leaves, as I do now.
How all who know--and where is he unknown?
To what far region have his songs not flown,
Like PSAPHON'S birds[1] speaking their master's name,
In every language syllabled by Fame?--
How all who've felt the various spells combined
Within the circle of that mastermind,--
Like spells derived from many a star and met
Together in some wondrous amulet,--
Would burn to know when first the Light awoke
In his young soul,--and if the gleams that broke
From that Aurora of his genius, raised
Most pain or bliss in those on whom they blazed;
Would love to trace the unfolding of that power,
Which had grown ampler, grander, every hour;
And feel in watching o'er his first advance
As did the Egyptian traveller[2] when he stood
By the young Nile and fathomed with his lance
The first small fountains of that mighty flood.
They too who mid the scornful thoughts that dwell
In his rich fancy, tingeing all its streams,--
As if the Star of Bitterness which fell
On earth of old,[3] had touched them with its beams,--
Can track a spirit which tho' driven to hate,
From Nature's hands came kind, affectionate;
And which even now, struck as it is with blight,
Comes out at times in love's own native light;--
How gladly all who've watched these struggling rays
Of a bright, ruined spirit thro' his lays,
Would here inquire, as from his own frank lips,
What desolating grief, what wrongs had driven
That noble nature into cold eclipse;
Like some fair orb that, once a sun in heaven.
And born not only to surprise but cheer
With warmth and lustre all within its sphere,
Is now so quenched that of its grandeur lasts
Naught but the wide, cold shadow which it casts.
Eventful volume! whatsoe'er the change
Of scene and clime--the adventures bold and strange--
The griefs--the frailties but too frankly told--
The loves, the feuds thy pages may unfold,
If Truth with half so prompt a hand unlocks
His virtues as his failings, we shall find
The record there of friendships held like rocks,
And enmities like sun-touched snow resigned;
Of fealty, cherisht without change or chill,
In those who served him, young, and serve him still;
Of generous aid given, with that noiseless art
Which wakes not pride, to many a wounded heart;
Of acts--but, no--not from himself must aught
Of the bright features of his life be sought.
While they who court the world, like Milton's cloud,
"Turn forth their silver lining" on the crowd,
This gifted Being wraps himself in night;
And keeping all that softens and adorns
And gilds his social nature hid from sight,
Turns but its darkness on a world he scorns.
Vengeance.
by Madison Julius Cawein

I
Let it sink, let it sink
On the pungent-petaled pink
By those poppy puffs;
Fairy-fashioned downiness,
Light, weak moth in furry dress
Of white fluffy stuffs.
II
Where the thin light slipping sweet
Dimples prints of Fairy feet
On the white-rose blooms,
One dim blossom delicate
Droops a face all pale with hate,
Dead with sick perfumes.
III
And I read the riddle wove
In this rose's course of love
For the fickle pink: - 
Thou the rose's phantom art
Stealing to the pink's false heart
Vampire-like to drink.
Attainment
by Michael Earls

Let me go back again. There is the road,
O memory! The humble garden lane
So young with me. Let me rebuild again
The start of faith and hope by that abode;
Amend with morning freshness all the code
Of youth's desire; remap my chart's demesne
With tuneful joy, and plan a far campaign
For better marches in ambition's mode.
Ah, no, my heart! More certain now the skies
For joy abide: the cage of tree and sod,
Horizons firm that faith and hope attain,
Far realms of innocence in children's eyes,
And hearts harmonious with the will of God:--
These might I miss if I were back again.
The Sonnets CXVI - Let me not to the marriage of true minds
by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
Songs For The People.
by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Let me make the songs for the people,
Songs for the old and young;
Songs to stir like a battle-cry
Wherever they are sung.
Not for the clashing of sabres,
For carnage nor for strife;
But songs to thrill the hearts of men
With more abundant life.
Let me make the songs for the weary,
Amid life's fever and fret,
Till hearts shall relax their tension,
And careworn brows forget.
Let me sing for little children,
Before their footsteps stray,
Sweet anthems of love and duty,
To float o'er life's highway.
I would sing for the poor and aged,
When shadows dim their sight;
Of the bright and restful mansions,
Where there shall be no night.
Our world, so worn and weary,
Needs music, pure and strong,
To hush the jangle and discords
Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.
Music to soothe all its sorrow,
Till war and crime shall cease;
And the hearts of men grown tender
Girdle the world with peace.
Our Yankee Girls
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Let greener lands and bluer skies,
If such the wide earth shows,
With fairer cheeks and brighter eyes,
Match us the star and rose;
The winds that lift the Georgian's veil,
Or wave Circassia's curls,
Waft to their shores the sultan's sail, - 
Who buys our Yankee girls?
The gay grisette, whose fingers touch
Love's thousand chords so well;
The dark Italian, loving much,
But more than one can tell;
And England's fair-haired, blue-eyed dame,
Who binds her brow with pearls; - 
Ye who have seen them, can they shame
Our own sweet Yankee girls?
And what if court or castle vaunt
Its children loftier born? - 
Who heeds the silken tassel's flaunt
Beside the golden corn?
They ask not for the dainty toil
Of ribboned knights and earls,
The daughters of the virgin soil,
Our freeborn Yankee girls!
By every hill whose stately pines
Wave their dark arms above
The home where some fair being shines,
To warm the wilds with love,
From barest rock to bleakest shore
Where farthest sail unfurls,
That stars and stripes are streaming o'er, - 
God bless our Yankee girls!
Strength To Support Sovereignty.
by Robert Herrick

Let kings and rulers learn this line from me:
Where power is weak, unsafe is majesty.
Translations. - A Song Of Praise. (Luther's Song-Book.)
by George MacDonald

Let God be blest, be praised, and be thanked,
Who to us himself hath granted
This his own flesh and blood to feed and save us!
May we take right what he gave us:
Lord, be merciful to us.
By thy holy body dead in shame,
Lord, which from thy mother, Mary, came,
And by thy holy blood
Ease us, Lord, from all our load:
Lord, be merciful to us.
The holy body is for us laid lowly
Down in death, that we live holy;
No greater goodness he to us could render
Than make us mind his love tender.
Lord, be merciful to us.
Lord, thy love so great was, it hath driven
Thee to death, and us great gifts hath given
Our old debt it has paid,
And God has gracious made:
Lord, be merciful to us.
God on us all his blessing free bestow now
That we in his ways may go now,
Right-hearted love and brother-truth ensuing,
Never the Lord's supper ruing!
Lord, be merciful to us.
Let thy good Ghost us not forsake,
Let him make us the just way take
That thy poor Christendom
Into peace and union come!
Lord, be merciful to us.
Axiom.
by Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Let him who toils, enjoy
Fruit of his toiling.
Let him whom sweats annoy,
No more be spoiling.
For we would have it be
That, weak or stronger,
Not he who works, but he
Who works not, hunger!
The Power In The People.
by Robert Herrick

Let kings command and do the best they may,
The saucy subjects still will bear the sway.
A Wish.
by Frances Anne Kemble (Fanny)

Let me not die for ever, when I'm gone
To the cold earth! but let my memory
Live like the gorgeous western light that shone
Over the clouds where sank day's majesty.
Let me not be forgotten! though the grave
Has clasped its hideous arms around my brow.
Let me not be forgotten! though the wave
Of time's dark current rolls above me now.
Yet not in tears remembered be my name;
Weep over those ye loved; for me, for me,
Give me the wreath of glory, and let fame
Over my tomb spread immortality!
The Foretelling Of Cathbad The Druid At Deirdre's Birth
by Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory

Let Deirdre be her name: harm will come through her. She will be fair, comely, bright-haired: heroes will fight for her, and kings go seeking for her.
O Deirdre, on whose account many shall weep, on whose account many women shall be envious, there will be trouble on Ulster for your sake, O fair daughter of Fedlimid.
Many will be jealous of your face, O flame of beauty; for your sake heroes shall go to exile. For your sake deeds of anger shall be done in Emain; there is harm in your face, for it will bring banishment and death on the sons of kings.
In your fate, O beautiful child, are wounds and ill-doings and shedding of blood. You will have a little grave apart to yourself; you will be a tale of wonder for ever, Deirdre.
Tipperary.
by Thomas Osborne Davis

I.
Let Britain boast her British hosts,
About them all right little care we;
Not British seas nor British coasts
Can match the Man of Tipperary!
II.
Tall is his form, his heart is warm,
His spirit light as any fairy--
His wrath is fearful as the storm
That sweeps the Hills of Tipperary!
III.
Lead him to fight for native land,
His is no courage cold and wary;
The troops live not on earth would stand
The headlong charge of Tipperary!
IV.
Yet meet him in his cabin rude,
Or dancing with his dark-haired Mary,
You'd swear they knew no other mood
But Mirth and Love in Tipperary!
V.
You're free to share his scanty meal,
His plighted word he'll never vary--
In vain they tried with gold and steel
To shake the Faith of Tipperary!
VI.
Soft is his cailin's sunny eye,
Her mien is mild, her step is airy,
Her heart is fond, her soul is high--
Oh! she's the Pride of Tipperary!
VII.
Let Britain brag her motley rag;
We'll lift the Green more proud and airy--
Be mine the lot to bear that flag,
And head the Men of Tipperary!
VIII.
Though Britain boasts her British hosts,
About them all right little care we--
Give us, to guard our native coasts,
The matchless Men of Tipperary!
A Wish.
by Frances Anne Kemble (Fanny)

Let me not die for ever when I'm laid
In the cold earth! but let my memory
Live still among ye, like the evening shade,
That o'er the sinking day steals placidly.
Let me not be forgotten! though the knell
Has tolled for me its solemn lullaby;
Let me not be forgotten! though I dwell
For ever now in death's obscurity.
Yet oh! upon the emblazoned leaf of fame,
Trace not a record, not a line for me,
But let the lips I loved oft breathe my name,
And in your hearts enshrine my memory!
Nightfall
by Robert Fuller Murray

Let me sleep.    The day is past,
And the folded shadows keep
Weary mortals safe and fast.
Let me sleep.
I am all too tired to weep
For the sunlight of the Past
Sunk within the drowning deep.
Treasured vanities I cast
In an unregarded heap.
Time has given rest at last.
Let me sleep.
Forward
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Let me look always forward.    Never back.
Was I not formed for progress?    Otherwise
With onward pointing feet and searching eyes
Would God have set me squarely on the track
Up which we all must labour with life's pack?
Yonder the goal of all this travel lies.
What matters it, if yesterday the skies
With light were golden, or with clouds were black?
I would not lose to-morrow's glow of dawn
By peering backward after sun's long set.
New hope is fairer than an old regret;
Let me pursue my journey and press on - 
Nor tearful eyed, stand ever in one spot,
A briny statue like the wife of Lot.
Upon Himself Being Buried.
by Robert Herrick

Let me sleep this night away,
Till the dawning of the day;
Then at th' opening of mine eyes
I, and all the world, shall rise.
The Crowded Street.
by William Cullen Bryant

Let me move slowly through the street,
Filled with an ever-shifting train,
Amid the sound of steps that beat
The murmuring walks like autumn rain.
How fast the flitting figures come!
The mild, the fierce, the stony face;
Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some
Where secret tears have left their trace.
They pass, to toil, to strife, to rest;
To halls in which the feast is spread;
To chambers where the funeral guest
In silence sits beside the dead.
And some to happy homes repair,
Where children, pressing cheek to cheek,
With mute caresses shall declare
The tenderness they cannot speak.
And some, who walk in calmness here,
Shall shudder as they reach the door
Where one who made their dwelling dear,
Its flower, its light, is seen no more.
Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame,
And dreams of greatness in thine eye!
Goest thou to build an early name,
Or early in the task to die?
Keen son of trade, with eager brow!
Who is now fluttering in thy snare?
Thy golden fortunes, tower they now,
Or melt the glittering spires in air?
Who of this crowd to-night shall tread
The dance till daylight gleam again?
Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead?
Who writhe in throes of mortal pain?
Some, famine-struck, shall think how long
The cold dark hours, how slow the light,
And some, who flaunt amid the throng,
Shall hide in dens of shame to-night.
Each, where his tasks or pleasures call,
They pass, and heed each other not.
There is who heeds, who holds them all,
In his large love and boundless thought.
These struggling tides of life that seem
In wayward, aimless course to tend,
Are eddies of the mighty stream
That rolls to its appointed end.