DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Canadian-Born.
by W. M. MacKeracher

Although I'm not unduly proud,
Inordinately vain,
But humble, as will be allowed,
And modest in the main;
I must confess to pride of birth,
And all detractors warn
To let alone one land on earth:
I am Canadian-born.
In one respect I fill the bill
As well as any man
Between Vancouver and Brazil,
Morocco and Japan.
From Hobart Town to Hammerfest,
From Greenland to the Horn,
My native land is much the best:
I am Canadian-born.
The Greeks beside their Hellespont
Thought all but they were scum;
The Latins loved the classic vaunt,
"Civis Romanus sum."
I'm not so impudent as they
To hold the world in scorn,
But have a better boast to-day,
"I am Canadian-born."
My land is beauty's flag unfurled,
A garden of increase,
The crowning wonder of the world,
Creation's masterpiece;
And deathless deed and kingly name
Her chronicles adorn;
I'm pardonably proud to claim
I am Canadian-born.
I love her cities old and new,
Her crested mountain-chains,
Her lakes and rivers fair to view,
Her meadows and her plains,
Her tented fields of yellow sheaves,
Her spears of towering corn,
Her forests with their maple leaves:
I am Canadian-born.
I love her verdant springtime sweet,
Her autumn red and gold;
I love her summer's tropic heat,
Her winter's arctic cold,
The splendor of her evening glow,
The glory of her morn;
And day and night I love to know
I am Canadian-born.
All honor to her pioneers,
The gallant sons of France;
All honor to their British peers,
Who aided her advance;
To workers like the great Champlain,
And Dufferin and Lorne,
And those who could take up the strain,
"I am Canadian-born."
Here my allotted time I'd live
And play my little part,
My service here to Nature give,
To Industry and Art;
Here pluck life's roses when I may,
And when I feel the thorn
Look up with fortitude and say,
"I am Canadian-born."
And should unfriendly circumstance
(Which Providence forbid!)
Decree that from my latest glance
My country should be hid,
Ah, then 'twill ease my parting sigh
And cheer my heart forlorn,
To think, wherever I may die,
I am Canadian-born.
Translations. - The Fourteenth Psalm. (Luther's Song-Book.)
by George MacDonald

Although the fools say with their mouth:
Great God, we magnify him;
Their heart cares nothing for the truth,
In action they deny him.
Their being is corrupted quite;
To God it is a horrid sight;
Not one of them works goodness.
From heaven God downward cast his eye
Upon men's sons so many;
He set himself to look and spy
If he could find out any
Who their own reason up had stirred
Earnestly to obey God's word,
After his will enquiring.
Upon the right path there was none;
From it they all were straying;
Each followed fancies of his own,
Them to ill deeds bewraying.
Not one of them did good even once,
Though many, fooled by arrogance,
Thought God with them well pleased.
How long by lies will they be led
Who vain attempts redouble!
They eat my people up as bread,
And live upon their trouble!
In God stands not their confidence;
From ill they ask not his defence:
They would themselves look after.
Therefore their heart is never still
But always full of fearing.
Dwell with the good the Father will,
Those who have ears for hearing.
But ye despise the poor man's ways,
And scorn at everything he says
Concerning God his comfort.
Who will to Israel, poor flock--
To Zion send salvation?
God will take pity on his folk,
And free his captive nation;
That will he do through Christ his Son--
And then is Jacob's weeping done,
And Isr'el filled with gladness. Amen.
Quotations IV
by Walter Savage Landor

"Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked."
"Great men lose somewhat of their greatness by being near us; ordinary men gain much."
"People, like nails, lose their effectiveness when they lose direction and begin to bend."
"Great men always pay deference to greater."
"Study is the bane of childhood, the oil of youth, the indulgence of adulthood, and a restorative in old age."
A Will To Be Working.
by Robert Herrick

Although we cannot turn the fervent fit
Of sin, we must strive 'gainst the stream of it;
And howsoe'er we have the conquest miss'd,
'Tis for our glory that we did resist.
Picture Of Daniel In The Lions' Den, At Hamilton Palace
by William Wordsworth

Amid a fertile region green with wood
And fresh with rivers, well did it become
The ducal Owner, in his palace-home
To naturalise this tawny Lion brood;
Children of Art, that claim strange brotherhood
(Couched in their den) with those that roam at large
Over the burning wilderness, and charge
The wind with terror while they roar for food.
Satiate are 'these'; and stilled to eye and ear;
Hence, while we gaze, a more enduring fear!
Yet is the Prophet calm, nor would the cave
Daunt him, if his Companions, now bedrowsed
Outstretched and listless, were by hunger roused:
Man placed him here, and God, he knows, can save.
America Will Not Turn Back' Woodrow Wilson
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

America will not turn back;
She did not idly start,
But weighed full carefully and well
Her grave, important part.
She chose the part of Freedom's friend,
And will pursue it, to the end.
Great Liberty, who guards her gates,
Will shine upon her course,
And light the long, adventurous path
With radiance from God's Source.
And though blood dye that ocean track,
America will not turn back.
She will not turn until that hour
When thunders through the world
The crash of tyrant monarchies
By Freedom's hand down-hurled.
While Labour's voice from sea to sea
Sings loud, 'My country, 'tis of thee.'
Then will our fair Columbia turn,
While all wars' clamours cease,
And with our banner lifted high
Proclaim, 'Let there be Peace.'
But till that glorious day shall dawn
She will march on, she will march on.
The Onset
by Robert Lee Frost

Always the same, when on a fated night
At last the gathered snow lets down as white
As may be in dark woods, and with a song
It shall not make again all winter long
Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground,
I almost stumble looking up and round,
As one who overtaken by the end
Gives up his errand, and lets death descend
Upon him where he is, with nothing done
To evil, no important triumph won,
More than if life had never been begun.
Yet all the precedent is on my side:
I know that winter death has never tried
The earth but it has failed: the snow may heap
In long storms an undrifted four feet deep
As measured again maple, birch, and oak,
It cannot check the peeper's silver croak;
And I shall see the snow all go down hill
In water of a slender April rill
That flashes tail through last year's withered brake
And dead weeds, like a disappearing snake.
Nothing will be left white but here a birch,
And there a clump of houses with a church.
So Soon Tired!
by Richard Le Gallienne

Am I so soon grown tired? - yet this old sky
Can open still each morn so blue an eye,
This great old river still through nights and days
Run like a happy boy to holidays,
This sun be still a bridegroom, though long wed,
And still those stars go singing up the night,
Glad as yon lark there splashing in the light:
Are these old things indeed unwearied,
Yet I, so soon grown tired, would creep away to bed!
Under The Round Tower
by William Butler Yeats

'Although I'd lie lapped up in linen
A deal I'd sweat and little earn
If I should live as live the neighbours,'
Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne;
'Stretch bones till the daylight come
On great-grandfather's battered tomb.'
Upon a grey old battered tombstone
In Glendalough beside the stream,
Where the O'Byrnes and Byrnes are buried,
He stretched his bones and fell in a dream
Of sun and moon that a good hour
Bellowed and pranced in the round tower;
Of golden king and silver lady,
Bellowing up and bellowing round,
Till toes mastered a sweet measure,
Mouth mastered a sweet sound,
Prancing round and prancing up
Until they pranced upon the top.
That golden king and that wild lady
Sang till stars began to fade,
Hands gripped in hands, toes close together,
Hair spread on the wind they made;
That lady and that golden king
Could like a brace of blackbirds sing.
'It's certain that my luck is broken,'
That rambling jailbird Billy said;
'Before nightfall I'll pick a pocket
And snug it in a feather-bed,
I cannot find the peace of home
On great-grandfather's battered tomb.'
The Dead Master
by John Alexander McCrae

Amid earth's vagrant noises, he caught the note sublime:
To-day around him surges from the silences of Time
A flood of nobler music, like a river deep and broad,
Fit song for heroes gathered in the banquet-hall of God.
The Tower Of Famine.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Amid the desolation of a city,
Which was the cradle, and is now the grave
Of an extinguished people, - so that Pity
Weeps o'er the shipwrecks of Oblivion's wave,
There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built
Upon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave
For bread, and gold, and blood: Pain, linked to Guilt,
Agitates the light flame of their hours,
Until its vital oil is spent or spilt.
There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers
And sacred domes; each marble-ribbed roof,
The brazen-gated temples, and the bowers
Of solitary wealth, - the tempest-proof
Pavilions of the dark Italian air, -
Are by its presence dimmed - they stand aloof,
And are withdrawn - so that the world is bare;
As if a spectre wrapped in shapeless terror
Amid a company of ladies fair
Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror
Of all their beauty, and their hair and hue,
The life of their sweet eyes, with all its error,
Should be absorbed, till they to marble grew.
The Emancipation Group
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Amidst thy sacred effigies
Of old renown give place,
O city, Freedom-loved! to his
Whose hand unchained a race.
Take the worn frame, that rested not
Save in a martyr's grave;
The care-lined face, that none forgot,
Bent to the kneeling slave.
Let man be free! The mighty word
He spake was not his own;
An impulse from the Highest stirred
These chiselled lips alone.
The cloudy sign, the fiery guide,
Along his pathway ran,
And Nature, through his voice, denied
The ownership of man.
We rest in peace where these sad eyes
Saw peril, strife, and pain;
His was the nation's sacrifice,
And ours the priceless gain.
O symbol of God's will on earth
As it is done above!
Bear witness to the cost and worth
Of justice and of love.
Stand in thy place and testify
To coming ages long,
That truth is stronger than a lie,
And righteousness than wrong
The Non-Combatant
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

Among a race high-handed, strong of heart,
Sea-rovers, conquerors, builders in the waste,
He had his birth; a nature too complete,
Eager and doubtful, no man's soldier sworn
And no man's chosen captain; born to fail,
A name without an echo: yet he too
Within the cloister of his narrow days
Fulfilled the ancestral rites, and kept alive
The eternal fire; it may be, not in vain;
For out of those who dropped a downward glance
Upon the weakling huddled at his prayers,
Perchance some looked beyond him, and then first
Beheld the glory, and what shrine it filled,
And to what Spirit sacred: or perchance
Some heard him chanting, though but to himself,
The old heroic names: and went their way:
And hummed his music on the march to death.
Among All Lovely Things My Love Had Been
by William Wordsworth

Among all lovely things my Love had been;
Had noted well the stars, all flowers that grew
About her home; but she had never seen
A glow-worm, never one, and this I knew.
While riding near her home one stormy night
A single glow-worm did I chance to espy;
I gave a fervent welcome to the sight,
And from my horse I leapt; great joy had I.
Upon a leaf the glow-worm did I lay,
To bear it with me through the stormy night:
And, as before, it shone without dismay;
Albeit putting forth a fainter light.
When to the dwelling of my Love I came,
I went into the orchard quietly;
And left the glow-worm, blessing it by name,
Laid safely by itself, beneath a tree.
The whole next day, I hoped, and hoped with fear;
At night the glow-worm shone beneath the tree;
I led my Lucy to the spot, "Look here,"
Oh! joy it was for her, and joy for me!
The Forest River.
by Harriet Annie Wilkins

Amid the forest verdant shade,
A peaceful river flowed:
Wild flowers their home on its banks had made,
The sunbeam's rays on its breast were laid,
When the light of morning glowed.
By its marge the wolf had found a lair,
He roamed through each lonely spot;
That deep designer, the beaver, there
Built his palace; the shaggy bear
In the tall tree had his cot.
And voices sweet were heard on the bank
Of the river's gentle flow;
The whip-poor-will sang when the sun had sank,
And the hum-drum bee to his home had shrank,
When the wind of eve did blow.
The tree-frog joined with his sonorous call,
The grasshopper chirped along,
The dormice came out of their underground hole,
The squirrels peeped over their pine-tree wall,
To list to the revel song.
Nothing disturbed the murmur deep
Of the river broad and fair;
No one awoke it from peaceful sleep,
Save when floating mice o'er its breast would creep,
Or the rusty-coated bear.
One morn the sound of an axe was heard
In the forest, dark and lone;
Then started with fear the beasts disturbed,
Their reign was broke at the woodman's word,
And they scowled with anger on.
On the river's brink the emigrant's child
Passed all his lonely hours,
He laughed when he ruffled the bosom mild
Of the flowing streamlet so bright and wild,
As it bore his boon of flowers.
Soon the throng of the forest heard the horn
Of the boat, the commerce boat;
Then they started up from the brake and thorn,
And hastening away by the light of the morn,
They fled from cavern and moat.
And the bird peeped out of a pine tree tower,
And shrank away at the sight,
The humming-bird fled to his rose-hung bower,
The bright bee curled himself snug in a flower,
O'ertaken by fear and fright.
And the river which rolled for ages, still
In a gentle flow unriven,
Now bears on its bosom by man's proud will,
By the arts of industry and skill,
The blessings to mortals given.
Over its billows the steamboats tread,
With their waters rushing high,
Or the snowy sail to the wind is spread,
As the noble bark on her way is sped
To the crowded city nigh.
Oh river bright, we sail over thy breast,
Once bearing wood runners wild;
But the birds who built on the bank their nest,
Have fled long ago to the boundless west,
From thee and from man exiled.
The Sword
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Amidst applauding cheers I won a prize.
A cynic watched me, with ironic eyes;
An open foe, in open hatred, sneered;
I cared for neither.    Then my friend appeared.
Eager, I listened for his glad 'Well done.'
But sudden shadow seemed to shroud my sun.
He praised me:    yet each slow, unwilling word
Forced from its sheath base Envy's hidden sword,
Two-edged, it wounded me; but, worst of all,
It thrust my friend down from his pedestal,
And showed him as he was - so small, so small.
Hymn For The Opening Of Thomas Starr King's House Of Worship, 1864
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Amidst these glorious works of Thine,
The solemn minarets of the pine,
And awful Shasta's icy shrine,
Where swell Thy hymns from wave and gale,
And organ-thunders never fail,
Behind the cataract's silver veil,
Our puny walls to Thee we raise,
Our poor reed-music sounds Thy praise:
Forgive, O Lord, our childish ways!
For, kneeling on these altar-stairs,
We urge Thee not with selfish prayers,
Nor murmur at our daily cares.
Before Thee, in an evil day,
Our country's bleeding heart we lay,
And dare not ask Thy hand to stay;
But, through the war-cloud, pray to Thee
For union, but a union free,
With peace that comes of purity!
That Thou wilt bare Thy arm to, save
And, smiting through this Red Sea wave,
Make broad a pathway for the slave!
For us, confessing all our need,
We trust nor rite nor word nor deed,
Nor yet the broken staff of creed.
Assured alone that Thou art good
To each, as to the multitude,
Eternal Love and Fatherhood,
Weak, sinful, blind, to Thee we kneel,
Stretch dumbly forth our hands, and feel
Our weakness is our strong appeal.
So, by these Western gates of Even
We wait to see with Thy forgiven
The opening Golden Gate of Heaven!
Suffice it now. In time to be
Shall holier altars rise to Thee,
Thy Church our broad humanity
White flowers of love its walls shall climb,
Soft bells of peace shall ring its chime,
Its days shall all be holy time.
A sweeter song shall then be heard,
The music of the world's accord
Confessing Christ, the Inward Word!
That song shall swell from shore to shore,
One hope, one faith, one love, restore
The seamless robe that Jesus wore
The Wishing Bridge
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Among the legends sung or said
Along our rocky shore,
The Wishing Bridge of Marblehead
May well be sung once more.
An hundred years ago (so ran
The old-time story) all
Good wishes said above its span
Would, soon or late, befall.
If pure and earnest, never failed
The prayers of man or maid
For him who on the deep sea sailed,
For her at home who stayed.
Once thither came two girls from school,
And wished in childish glee
And one would be a queen and rule,
And one the world would see.
Time passed; with change of hopes and fears,
And in the self-same place,
Two women, gray with middle years,
Stood, wondering, face to face.
With wakened memories, as they met,
They queried what had been
"A poor man's wife am I, and yet,"
Said one, "I am a queen.
"My realm a little homestead is,
Where, lacking crown and throne,
I rule by loving services
And patient toil alone."
The other said: "The great world lies
Beyond me as it lay;
O'er love's and duty's boundaries
My feet may never stray.
"I see but common sights of home,
Its common sounds I hear,
My widowed mother's sick-bed room
Sufficeth for my sphere.
"I read to her some pleasant page
Of travel far and wide,
And in a dreamy pilgrimage
We wander side by side.
"And when, at last, she falls asleep,
My book becomes to me
A magic glass: my watch I keep,
But all the world I see.
"A farm-wife queen your place you fill,
While fancy's privilege
Is mine to walk the earth at will,
Thanks to the Wishing Bridge."
"Nay, leave the legend for the truth,"
The other cried, "and say
God gives the wishes of our youth,
But in His own best way!
Among The Multitude
by Walt Whitman

Among the men and women, the multitude,
I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,
Acknowledging none else--not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am;
Some are baffled--But that one is not--that one knows me.
Ah, lover and perfect equal!
I meant that you should discover me so, by my faint indirections;
And I, when I meet you, mean to discover you by the like in you.
Cornelia's Jewels.
by Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

Among the haughtiest of her sex, in noble, quiet pride,
Cornelia stood, with mien that seemed their folly vain to chide:
No jewels sparkled on her brow, so high, so purely fair,
No gems were mingled 'mid her waves of dark and glossy hair;
And yet was she, amidst them all, despite their dazzling mien,
A woman in her gentle grace - in majesty a queen.
While some now showed their flashing gems with vain, exulting air,
And others boasted of their toys, their trinkets rich and rare,
And challenged her to treasures bring that shone with equal light,
Proudly she glanced her dark eye o'er the store of jewels bright.
"Rich as these are," she answered then, "and dazzling as they shine,
They cannot for one hour compete in beauty rare with mine!
"You all seem doubtful, and a smile of scorn your features wear,
Look on my gems, and say if yours are but one half as fair?"
The Roman matron proudly placed her children in their sight
Whose brows already bore the seal of intellectual might;
She pressed them to her, whilst each trait with radiance seemed to shine,
And murmur'd, "Tell me, dare you say, your jewels outshine mine?"
Content. A Quatrain.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Among the meadows of Life's sad unease
In labor still renewing her soul's youth
With trust, for patience, and with love, for peace,
Singing she goes with the calm face of Ruth.
To Delille
by Thomas Oldham

Amid the jingle of the rhyming throng
I mark with transport some diviner song;
Sweet to their native heaven the strains aspire,
Commanding silence to the vulgar quire;
Apollo smiles, and all the tongues of Fame
Through the poetic realm Delille proclaim.
O let a British Bard, admiring, greet
Thy glorious triumph, and thy praise repeat!
When merit claims the panegyric lay,
Envy he scorns, and joys the debt to pay.
Painter of Nature hail! to thee belong
Unrivall'd talents for descriptive song:
While others, fired with more ambitious views,
Invoke the Epic, or the Tragic Muse,
And, throned in Glory's temple, shine sublime,
Proud of their laurel-wreaths that fear not Time,
Thy Genius fondly stoops to softer themes,
The landscape's beauties flowers, and groves, and streams,
And round his brows in modest triumph wears
A simple garden-wreath, but ever green, as theirs.
What though, some critics, in their taste severe,
Turn from thy subject a disdainful ear,
Demanding still, their duller minds to strike,
War, passion, plot, surprises and the like?
Yet will true Taste, that ranges unconfined,
And feels the charms of every various kind,
Oft quit Voltaire, or Corneille, to peruse,
Delille! the milder beauties of thy Muse;
Oft love, with thee, through rural scenes to stray,
And sweetly study Nature in thy lay.
But, ah! what boldness does thy breast inspire?
Say, wilt thou dare to touch the Mantuan lyre?
Long has thy country wish'd that classic spoil,
Yet, of her tongue distrustful, shunn'd the toil;
O cease then! but thy hand essays the strings,
Amazement! Fancy cries, 'tis Virgil sings!
The same thy numbers, so correctly free,
So full of sweetness, full of majesty!
Now, France, exult! nor view with envy more
Surrounding nations rich in Roman lore;
Delille has sung; then glory in his name,
Engraved, immortal, on the rolls of Fame.
The Blind
by Edgar Lee Masters

Amid the din of cars and automobiles,
At the corner of a towering pile of granite,
Under the city's soaring brick and stone,
Where multitudes go hurrying by, you stand
With eyeless sockets playing on a flute.
And an old woman holds the cup for you,
Wherein a curious passer by at times
Casts a poor coin.
You are so blind you cannot see us men
As walking trees!
I fancy from the tune
You play upon the flute, you have a vision
Of leafy trees along a country road-side,
Where wheat is growing and the meadow-larks
Rise singing in the sun-shine!
In your darkness
You may see such things playing on your flute
Here in the granite ways of mad Chicago!
And here's another on a farther corner,
With head thrown back as if he searched the skies,
He's selling evening papers, what's to him
The flaring headlines? Yet he calls the news.
That is his flute, perhaps, for one can call,
Or play the flute in blindness.
Yet I think
It's neither news nor music with these blind ones - 
Rather the hope of re-created eyes,
And a light out of death!
"How can it be," I hear them over and over,
"There never shall be eyes for me again?"
The Window On The Hill
by Madison Julius Cawein

Among the fields the camomile
Seems blown mist in the lightning's glare:
Cool, rainy odors drench the air;
Night speaks above; the angry smile
Of storm within her stare.
The way that I shall take to-night
Is through the wood whose branches fill
The road with double darkness, till,
Between the boughs, a window's light
Shines out upon the hill.
The fence; and then the path that goes
Around a trailer-tangled rock,
Through puckered pink and hollyhock,
Unto a latch-gate's unkempt rose,
And door whereat I knock.
Bright on the oldtime flower place
The lamp streams through the foggy pane;
The door is opened to the rain:
And in the door - her happy face
And outstretched arms again.