DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
In Memoriam - Nicol Drysdale Stenhouse
by Henry Kendall

Shall he, on whom the fair lord, Delphicus,
Turned gracious eyes and countenance of shine,
Be left to lie without a wreath from us,
To sleep without a flower upon his shrine?
Shall he, the son of that resplendent Muse,
Who gleams, high priestess of sweet scholarship,
Still slumber on, and every bard refuse
To touch a harp or move a tuneful lip?
No! let us speak, though feeble be our speech,
And let us sing, though faltering be our strain,
And haply echoes of the song may reach
And please the soul we cannot see again.
We sing the beautiful, the radiant life
That shone amongst us like the quiet moon,
A fine exception in this sphere of strife,
Whose time went by us like a hallowed tune.
Yon tomb, whereon the moonlit grasses sigh,
Hides from our view the shell of one whose days
Were set throughout to that grand harmony
Which fills all minor spirits with amaze.
This was the man whose dear, lost face appears
To rise betimes like some sweet evening dream,
And holy memories of faultless years,
And touching hours of quietness supreme.
He, having learned in full the golden rule,
Which guides great lives, stood fairly by the same,
Unruffled as the Oriental pool,
Before the bright, disturbing angel came.
In Learning's halls he walked a leading lord,
He trod the sacred temple's inner floors;
But kindness beamed in every look and word
He gave the humblest Levite at the doors.
When scholars poor and bowed beneath the ban,
Which clings as fire, were like to faint and fall,
This was the gentle, good Samaritan,
Who stopped and held a helping hand to all.
No term that savoured of unfriendliness,
No censure through those pure lips ever passed;
He saw the erring spirit's keen distress,
And hoped for it, long-suffering to the last.
Moreover, in these days when Faith grows faint,
And Heaven seems blurred by speculation wild,
He, blameless as a mediaeval saint,
Had all the trust which sanctifies a child.
But now he sleeps, and as the years go by,
We'll often pause above his sacred dust,
And think how grand a thing it is to die
The noble death which deifies the just.
Shall Our Memories Live When the Sod Rolls Above Us?
by Alfred Castner King

Shall our memories live, when the sod rolls above us
And marks our last home with a mouldering heap?
Shall the voices of those who profess that they love us
E'er mention our names, as we dreamlessly sleep?
Will their eyes ever dim at some fond recollection,
Or their hands ever plant a small flower o'er the breast,
Or will they gaze with a sad circumspection
At the tablets, which tell of our last solemn rest?
Ah! soon shall the hearts which our memories cherish
Forget, as they strive with the cares of their own;
And even the last dim remembrance shall perish
As we peacefully slumber, unwept and unknown.
But if our lives, though of transient duration,
Are filled with some work in humanity's name,
Some uplifting effort, or self-immolation,
Our memories shall live in the temples of Fame.
Magnanimity Baffled.
by Herman Melville

"Sharp words we had before the fight;
But - now the fight is done - 
Look, here's my hand," said the Victor bold,
"Take it - an honest one!
What, holding back? I mean you well;
Though worsted, you strove stoutly, man;
The odds were great; I honor you;
Man honors man.
"Still silent, friend? can grudges be?
Yet am I held a foe? - 
Turned to the wall, on his cot he lies - 
Never I'll leave him so!
Brave one! I here implore your hand;
Dumb still? all fellowship fled?
Nay, then, I'll have this stubborn hand"
He snatched it - it was dead.
Shades
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

Shall I tell you, then, how it is? - 
There came a cloven gleam
Like a tongue of darkened flame
To flicker in me.
And so I seem
To have you still the same
In one world with me.
In the flicker of a flower,
In a worm that is blind, yet strives,
In a mouse that pauses to listen
Glimmers our
Shadow; yet it deprives
Them none of their glisten.
In every shaken morsel
I see our shadow tremble
As if it rippled from out of us hand in hand.
As if it were part and parcel,
One shadow, and we need not dissemble
Our darkness: do you understand?
For I have told you plainly how it is.
Verses Sent To The Dean With An Eagle Quill, On Hearing Of The Presents By The Earl Of Orrery And Dr. Delany. By Mrs. Pilkington
by Jonathan Swift

Shall then my kindred all my glory claim,
And boldly rob me of eternal fame?
To every art my gen'rous aid I lend,
To music, painting, poetry, a friend.
'Tis I celestial harmony inspire,
When fix'd to strike the sweetly warbling wire.[1]
I to the faithful canvas have consign'd
Each bright idea of the painter's mind;
Behold from Raphael's sky-dipt pencils rise
Such heavenly scenes as charm the gazer's eyes.
O let me now aspire to higher praise!
Ambitious to transcribe your deathless lays:
Nor thou, immortal bard, my aid refuse,
Accept me as the servant of your Muse;
Then shall the world my wondrous worth declare,
And all mankind your matchless pen revere.
In The "Old South"
by John Greenleaf Whittier

She came and stood in the Old South Church,
A wonder and a sign,
With a look the old-time sibyls wore,
Half-crazed and half-divine.
Save the mournful sackcloth about her wound,
Unclothed as the primal mother,
With limbs that trembled and eyes that blazed
With a fire she dare not smother.
Loose on her shoulders fell her hair,
With sprinkled ashes gray;
She stood in the broad aisle strange and weird
As a soul at the judgment day.
And the minister paused in his sermon's midst,
And the people held their breath,
For these were the words the maiden spoke
Through lips as the lips of death:
"Thus saith the Lord, with equal feet
All men my courts shall tread,
And priest and ruler no more shall eat
My people up like bread!
"Repent! repent! ere the Lord shall speak
In thunder and breaking seals
Let all souls worship Him in the way
His light within reveals."
She shook the dust from her naked feet,
And her sackcloth closer drew,
And into the porch of the awe-hushed church
She passed like a ghost from view.
They whipped her away at the tail o' the cart
Through half the streets of the town,
But the words she uttered that day nor fire
Could burn nor water drown.
And now the aisles of the ancient church
By equal feet are trod,
And the bell that swings in its belfry rings
Freedom to worship God!
And now whenever a wrong is done
It thrills the conscious walls;
The stone from the basement cries aloud
And the beam from the timber calls.
There are steeple-houses on every hand,
And pulpits that bless and ban,
And the Lord will not grudge the single church
That is set apart for man.
For in two commandments are all the law
And the prophets under the sun,
And the first is last and the last is first,
And the twain are verily one.
So, long as Boston shall Boston be,
And her bay-tides rise and fall,
Shall freedom stand in the Old South Church
And plead for the rights of all
Shame No Statist.
by Robert Herrick

Shame is a bad attendant to a state:
He rents his crown that fears the people's hate.
Another Upon Her Weeping.
by Robert Herrick

She by the river sat, and sitting there,
She wept, and made it deeper by a tear.
She Charged Me
by Thomas Hardy

She charged me with having said this and that
To another woman long years before,
In the very parlour where we sat, -
Sat on a night when the endless pour
Of rain on the roof and the road below
Bent the spring of the spirit more and more . . .
- So charged she me; and the Cupid's bow
Of her mouth was hard, and her eyes, and her face,
And her white forefinger lifted slow.
Had she done it gently, or shown a trace
That not too curiously would she view
A folly passed ere her reign had place,
A kiss might have ended it. But I knew
From the fall of each word, and the pause between,
That the curtain would drop upon us two
Ere long, in our play of slave and queen.
To S. McK.
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
Shall we forget how, in our day,
The Sabine fields about us lay
In amaranth and asphodel,
And bubbling, cold Bandusian well,
Fair Pyrrhas haunting every way?
In dells of forest faun and fay,
Moss-lounged within the fountain's spray,
How drained we wines too rare to tell,
Shall we forget?
The fine Falernian or the ray
Of fiery C'cuban, while gay
We heard Bacchantes shout and yell,
Filled full of Bacchus, and so fell
To dreaming of some Lydia;
Shall we forget?
II.
If we forget in after years,
My comrade, all the hopes and fears
That hovered all our walks around
When ent'ring on that mystic ground
Of ghostly legends, where one hears
By bandit towers the chase that nears
Thro' cracking woods, the oaths and cheers
Of demon huntsman, horn and hound;
If we forget.
Lenora's lover and her tears,
Fierce Wallenstein, satanic sneers
Of the red devil Goethe bound, - 
Why then, forsooth, they soon are found
In burly stoops of German beers,
If we forget!
The Pilgrim
by Walter De La Mare

'Shall we carry now your bundle,
You old grey man?
Over hill and over meadow,
Lighter than an owlet's shadow,
We will whirl it through the air,
Through blue regions shrill and bare;
Shall we carry now your bundle,
You old grey man?'
The Pilgrim lifted up his eyes
And saw three fiends, in the skies,
Stooping o'er that lonely place
Evil in form and face.
'O leave me, leave me, leave me,
Ye three wild fiends!
Far it is my feet must wander,
And my city lieth yonder;
I must bear my bundle alone,
Help nor solace suffer none:
O leave me, leave me, leave me,
Ye three wild fiends!'
The fiends stared down with greedy eye,
Fanning the chill air duskily,
'Twixt their hoods they stoop and cry: - 
'Shall we smooth the path before you,
You old grey man?
Sprinkle it green with gilded showers,
Strew it o'er with painted flowers?
Shall we blow sweet airs on it,
Lure the magpie there to flit?
Shall we smooth the path before you,
You old grey man?'
'O silence, silence, silence!
Ye three wild fiends!
Over bog, and fen, and boulder,
I must bear it on my shoulder,
Beaten of wind, torn of briar,
Smitten of rain, parched of fire:
O silence, silence, silence!
Ye three wild fiends!'
It seemed a smoke obscured the air,
Bright lightning quivered in the gloom,
And a faint voice of thunder spake
Far in the lone hill-hollows - 'Come!'
Then half in fury, half in dread,
The fiends drew closer down and said: - 
'Grey old man but sleep awhile;
Sad old man!
Thorn, and dust, and ice, and heat;
Tarry now, sit down and eat;
Heat, and ice, and dust, and thorn;
Stricken, footsore, parched, forlorn, - 
Juice of purple grape shall be
Youth and solace unto thee.
With sweet wire and reed we'll haunt you;
Songs of the valley shall enchant you;
Rest now, lest this night you die:
Sweet be now our lullaby:
'Grey old man, come sleep awhile,
Stubborn old man!'
The pilgrim crouches terrified
At stooping hood, and glassy face,
Gloating, evil, side by side;
Terror and hate brood o'er the place;
He flings his withered hands on high
With a bitter, breaking cry: - 
'Leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me,
Ye three wild fiends:
If I lay me down in slumber,
Then I lay me down in wrath;
If I stir not in sweet dreaming,
Then I wither in my path;
If I hear sweet voices singing,
'Tis a demon's lullaby,
And in "hideous storm and terror"
Wake but to die!'
And even while he spake, the sun
From the sweet hills pierced the gloom,
Kindling th' affrighted fiends upon.
Wild flapped their wings, as if in doom,
He heard a dismal hooting laughter: - 
Nought but a little rain fell after,
And from the cloud whither they flew
A storm-sweet lark rose in the blue:
And his bundle seemed of flowers
In his solitary hours.
The Sonnets XVIII - Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Love's Coming.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

She had looked for his coming as warriors come,
With the clash of arms and the bugle's call:
But he came instead with a stealthy tread,
Which she did not hear at all.
She had thought how his armor would blaze in the sun,
As he rode like a prince to claim his bride:
In the sweet dim light of the falling night
She found him at her side.
She had dreamed how the gaze of his strange, bold eye
Would wake her heart to a sudden glow:
She found in his face the familiar grace
Of a friend she used to know.
She had dreamed how his coming would stir her soul,
As the ocean is stirred by the wild storm's strife:
He brought her the balm of a heavenly calm,
And a peace which crowned her life.
The Good Part That Shall Not Be Taken Away
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

She dwells by Great Kenhawa's side,
In valleys green and cool;
And all her hope and all her pride
Are in the village school.
Her soul, like the transparent air
That robes the hills above,
Though not of earth, encircles there
All things with arms of love.
And thus she walks among her girls
With praise and mild rebukes;
Subduing e'en rude village churls
By her angelic looks.
She reads to them at eventide
Of One who came to save;
To cast the captive's chains aside
And liberate the slave.
And oft the blessed time foretells
When all men shall be free;
And musical, as silver bells,
Their falling chains shall be.
And following her beloved Lord,
In decent poverty,
She makes her life one sweet record
And deed of charity.
For she was rich, and gave up all
To break the iron bands
Of those who waited in her hall,
And labored in her lands.
Long since beyond the Southern Sea
Their outbound sails have sped,
While she, in meek humility,
Now earns her daily bread.
It is their prayers, which never cease,
That clothe her with such grace;
Their blessing is the light of peace
That shines upon her face.
Father And Child
by William Butler Yeats

She hears me strike the board and say
That she is under ban
Of all good men and women,
Being mentioned with a man
That has the worst of all bad names;
And thereupon replies
That his hair is beautiful,
Cold as the March wind his eyes.
Treachery
by Walter De La Mare

She had amid her ringlets bound
Green leaves to rival their dark hue;
How could such locks with beauty bound
Dry up their dew,
Wither them through and through?
She had within her dark eyes lit
Sweet fires to burn all doubt away;
Yet did those fires, in darkness lit,
Burn but a day,
Not even till twilight stay.
She had within a dusk of words
A vow in simple splendour set;
How, in the memory of such words,
Could she forget
That vow - the soul of it?
A Portrait
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

I
She gave up beauty in her tender youth,
Gave all her hope and joy and pleasant ways;
She covered up her eyes lest they should gaze
On vanity, and chose the bitter truth.
Harsh towards herself, towards others full of ruth,
Servant of servants, little known to praise,
Long prayers and fasts trenched on her nights and days:
She schooled herself to sights and sounds uncouth
That with the poor and stricken she might make
A home, until the least of all sufficed
Her wants; her own self learned she to forsake,
Counting all earthly gain but hurt and loss.
So with calm will she chose and bore the cross
And hated all for love of Jesus Christ.
II
They knelt in silent anguish by her bed,
And could not weep; but calmly there she lay.
All pain had left her; and the sun's last ray
Shone through upon her, warming into red
The shady curtains. In her heart she said:
'Heaven opens; I leave these and go away;
The Bridegroom calls, - shall the Bride seek to stay?'
Then low upon her breast she bowed her head.
O lily flower, O gem of priceless worth,
O dove with patient voice and patient eyes,
O fruitful vine amid a land of dearth,
O maid replete with loving purities,
Thou bowedst down thy head with friends on earth
To raise it with the saints in Paradise.
Within The Veil
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

(Lyra Eucharistica, second edition, 1865.)
She holds a lily in her hand,
Where long ranks of Angels stand,
A silver lily for her wand.
All her hair falls sweeping down;
Her hair that is a golden brown,
A crown beneath her golden crown.
Blooms a rose-bush at her knee,
Good to smell and good to see:
It bears a rose for her, for me;
Her rose a blossom richly grown,
My rose a bud not fully blown,
But sure one day to be mine own.
Our Sister Of The Streets.
by Charles Hamilton Musgrove

She comes not with the conscious grace
Of gentle, winsome womanhood,
Nor yet, withal, the flaunting face
Of men and women understood,
But rather as a thing apart,
A wind-blown petal of a rose,
A specter with a specter's heart
That cometh once--and goes.
Her eyes some trace of cold, white light
Within their haunted depths still hold,
Though hunger's fever made them bright,
And lack of pity made them cold.
We know her when she passes by,
Whom no one loves or chides or greets--
The woman with the cold, bright eye--
Our sister of the streets.
We know the tawdry arts she tries,
The tint of cheek, the gold of hair,
To mimic nature for the eyes
Of those who scorn her paltry care,
And spurn those charms--if aught abide
Within her beauty's narrowed scope--
Now touched with less a wanton's pride
Than with an outcast's hope.
We know her in the blatant crowd,
And feel her, as we feel, in fine,
The eyes' remembrance of a cloud,
The lips' faint bitterness of brine;
We know her when she passes by,
Whom no one loves or chides or greets--
The woman with the cold, bright eye--
Our sister of the streets.
Quite By Chance
by Frederick Langbridge

She flung the parlour window wide
One eve of mid-July,
And he, as fate would have it tide,
That moment sauntered by.
His eyes were blue and hers were brown,
With drooping fringe of jet;
And he looked up as she looked down,
And so their glances met.
Things as strange, I dare to say,
Happen somewhere every day.
A mile beyond the straggling street,
A quiet pathway goes;
And lovers here are wont to meet,
As all the country knows.
Now she one night at half-past eight
Had sought that lonely lane,
When he came up, by will of fate,
And so they met again.
Things as strange, I dare to say,
Happen somewhere every day.
The parish church, so old and gray,
Is quite a sight to see;
And he was there at ten one day,
And so, it chanced, was she.
And while they stood, with cheeks aflame,
And neighbours liked the fun,
In stole and hood the parson came,
And made the couple one.
Things as strange, I dare to say,
Happen somewhere every day.
The Watcher
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

She gave her soul and body for a carriage,
And livened lackey with a vacant grin,
And all the rest -house, lands -and called it marriage:
The bargain made, a husband was thrown in.
And now, despite her luxury, she's faded,
Gone is the bloom that was so fresh and bright;
She has the dark-rimmed eye, the countenance jaded,
Of one who watches with the sick at night.
Ah, heaven, she does! her sick heart, sick and dying,
Beyond the aid of human skill to save,
In that cold room her breast is hourly lying,
And her grim thoughts crowd near to dig its grave.
And yet it lingers, suffering and wailing,
As sick hearts will that feed upon despair,
And that lone watcher, unrelieved, is paling
With vigils that no pitying soul can share.
Ah, lady! it is hardly what you thought it,
This life of luxury and social power;
You gave yourself as principal, and bought it,
But God extracts the interest hour by hour.
Morning In Constantinople
by Victoria Mary Sackville-West

She has an early morning of her own,
A blending of the mist and sea and sun
Into an undistinguishable one,
And Saint Sophia, from her lordly throne
Rises above the opalescent cloud,
A shadowy dome and soaring minaret
Visable though the base be hidden yet
Beneath the veiling wreaths of milky shroud,
As some dark Turkish beauty haughtily
Glances above the yashmak's snowy fold.
Beyond Stamboul's long stretch, a bar of gold
Falls from the sun across the distant sea.
A Year.
by Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey)

She has been just a year in Heaven.
Unmarked by white moon or gold sun,
By stroke of clock or clang of bell,
Or shadow lengthening on the way,
In the full noon and perfect day,
In Safety's very citadel,
The happy hours have sped, have run;
And, rapt in peace, all pain forgot,
She whom we love, her white soul shriven,
Smiles at the thought and wonders not.
We have been just a year alone,--
A year whose calendar is sighs,
And dull, perpetual wishfulness,
And smiles, each covert for a tear,
And wandering thoughts, half there, half here,
And weariful attempts to guess
The secret of the hiding skies,
The soft, inexorable blue,
With gleaming hints of glory sown,
And Heaven behind, just shining through.
So sweet, so sad, so swift, so slow,
So full of eager growth and light,
So full of pain which blindly grows,
So full of thoughts which either way
Have passed and crossed and touched each day,
To us a thorn, to her a rose;
The year so black, the year so white,
Like rivers twain their course have run;
The earthly stream we trace and know,
But who shall paint the heavenly one?
A year! We gather up our powers,
Our lamps we consecrate and trim;
Open all windows to the day,
And welcome every heavenly air.
We will press forward and will bear,
Having this word to cheer the way:
She, storm-tossed once, is safe with Him,
Healed, comforted, content, forgiven;
And while we count these heavy hours
Has been a year,--a year in Heaven.
The Only Son
by Rudyard Kipling

She dropped the bar, she shot the bolt, she fed the fire anew
For she heard a whimper under the sill and a great grey paw came through.
The fresh flame comforted the hut and shone on the roof-beam,
And the Only Son lay down again and dreamed that he dreamed a dream.
The last ash fell from the withered log with the click of a falling spark,
And the Only Son woke up again, and called across the dark:
"Now was I born of womankind and laid in a mother's breast?
For I have dreamed of a shaggy hide whereon I went to rest.
And was I born of womankind and laid on a father's arm?
For I have dreamed of clashing teeth that guarded me from harm.
And was I born an Only Son and did I play alone?
For I have dreamed of comrades twain that bit me to the bone.
And did I break the barley-cake and steep it in the tyre?
For I have dreamed of a youngling kid new-riven from the byre:
For I have dreamed of a midnight sky and a midnight call to blood 
And red-mouthed shadows racing by, that thrust me from my food.
'Tis an hour yet and an hour yet to the rising of the moon,
But I can see the black roof-tree as plain as it were noon.
'Tis a league and a league to the Lena Falls where the trooping blackbuck go;
But I can hear the little fawn that bleats behind the doe.
'Tis a league and a league to the Lena Falls where the crop and the upland meet,
But I Can smell the wet dawn-wind that wakes the sprouting wheat.
Unbar the door. I may not bide, but I must out and see 
If those are wolves that wait outside or my own kin to me!"
. . . . . 
She loosed the bar, she slid the bolt, she opened the door anon,
And a grey bitch-wolf came out of the dark and fawned on the Only Son!