DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Solvitur Acris Hiemps.
by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

My Juggins, see: the pasture green,
Obeying Nature's kindly law,
Renews its mantle; there has been
A thaw.
The frost-bound earth is free at last,
That lay 'neath Winter's sullen yoke
'Till people felt it getting past
A joke.
Now forth again the Freshers fare,
And get them tasty summer suits
Wherein they flaunt afield and scare
The brutes.
Again the stream suspects the keel;
Again the shrieking captain drops
Upon his crew; again the meal
Of chops
Divides the too-laborious day;
Again the Student sighs o'er Mods,
And prompts his enemies to lay
Long odds.
Again the shopman spreads his wiles;
Again the organ-pipes, unbound,
Distract the populace for miles
Around.
Then, Juggins, ere December's touch
Once more the wealth of Spring reclaim,
Since each successive year is much
The same;
Since too the monarch on his throne
In purple lapped and frankincense,
Who from his infancy has blown
Expense,
No less than he who barely gets
The boon of out-of-door relief,
Must see desuetude,--come let's
Be brief.
At those resolves last New Year's Day
The easy gods indulgent wink.
Then downward, ho!--the shortest way
Is drink.
A Voyage To Cythera - (Twelve Translations From Charles Baudelaire)
by John Collings Squire, Sir

My heart was like a bird and took to flight,
Around the rigging circling joyously;
The ship rolled on beneath a cloudless sky
Like a great angel drunken with the light.
"What is yon isle, sad and funereal?"
"Cythera famed in deathless song," said they,
"The gay old bachelors' Eldorado-Nay,
Look! 'tis a poor bare country after all!"
Isle of sweet secrets and heart banquetings!
The queenly shade of antique Venus thrills
Scentlike above thy level seas and fills
Our souls with languor and all amorous things.
Fair isle and of green myrtles and blown flowers
Held holy by all men for evermore,
Where the faint sighs of spirits that adore
Float like rose-incense through the quiet hours,
And dovelike sounds each murmured orison:, 
Cythera lay there barren 'neath bright skies,
A rocky waste rent by discordant cries:
Natheless I saw a curious thing thereon.
No shady temple was it, close enshrined
I' the trees; no flower-crowned priestess hither came
With her young body burnt by secret flame,
Baring her breast to the caressing wind;
But when so close to the land's edge we drew
Our canvas scared the sea-fowl, gradually
We knew it for a three-branched gallows tree
Like a black cypress stark against the blue.
A rotten carcase hung, whereon did sit
A swarm of foul black birds; with writhe and shriek
Each sought to pierce and plunge his knife-like beak
Deep in the bleeding trunk and limbs of it.
The eyes were holes; the belly opened wide
Streaming its heavy entrails on the thighs;
The grim birds, gorged with dreadful delicacies,
Had dug and furrowed it on every side.
Beneath the blackened feet there strove and pressed
A herd of jealous beasts with upward snout,
And in the midst of these there turned about
One, the chief hangman, larger than the rest....
Lone Cytherean! now all silently
Thou sufferest these insults to atone
For those old infamous sins that thou hast known,
The sins that locked the gate o' the grave to thee.
Mine are thy sorrows, ludicrous corse; yea, all
Are mine! I stood thy swaying limbs beneath,
And, like a bitter vomit, to my teeth
There rose old shadows in a stream of gall.
O thou unhappy devil, I felt afresh,
Gazing at thee, the beaks and jaws of those
Black savage panthers and those ruthless crows,
Who loved of old to macerate my flesh.
The sea was calm, the sky without a cloud;
Henceforth for me all things that came to pass
Were blood and darkness,, round my heart, alas!
There clung that allegory, like a shroud.
Naught save mine image on a gibbet thrust
Found I on Venus island desolate....
Ah, God! the courage and strength to contemplate
My body and my heart without disgust.
Too Low.
by Marietta Holley

"My house is thatched with violet leaves
And paved with daisies fine,
Scarlet berries droop over its eaves,
Tall grasses round it shine;
With softest down I have lined my nest,
Securely now will I sit and rest.
"When their wings break from their silvery shell,
Touched by my tender care,
Here shall my little ones safely dwell,
Little ones soft and fair;
Some summer morn they shall try their wings
While their father sits by my side and sings."
Hard by, just over the streamlet's edge
A great rock towered in might,
High up, half hidden in moss and sedge,
Were safe little nooks and bright;
Ah well for the bird with her tender breast,
Had she flown to the rock to build her nest!
Poor bird, she built her nest too low;
Alas! for the bird, alas!
That she chose that spot to her woe
In the low dewy grass;
For the reaper came with his gleaming blade.
Alas for love in the violet shade!
Livingstone's Soliloquy
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

"My heart to-day
Is strangely full of home!
How is it
With the dear ones over there?
Five years!
Five long-drawn years!
And one short moment is enough
To alter life's complexion for eternity!
Home! Home! Home!
*             *             *             *             *
How is it with you all
At Home?
*             *             *             *             *
And you, my dearest one,
Are ever nearer to me than the rest!
Your body lies
Beneath the baobab
In far Shapanga;
But your soul is ever nearest
When I need you most.
Where a man's treasure is
His heart is.
And half my heart is buried there with you,
And half works on for Africa.
Home! Home! Home!
*             *             *             *             *
Why should such thought of home
Drag at my heart to-day?
Why should I longer roam?
Why should I not go home?
Five years of toilsome wanderings
May claim a rest!
*             *             *             *             *
Nay! God knows best!
When He sees well
He'll take me home and give me well-earned rest.
The work is not yet done.
This land of Night
Is not yet fully opened to the Son
And His fair Light.
But--when the work is done--
Ah--then!--how gladly will I go--
Home!--Home--Home!--
To rest!"
False Love And True Logic
by Samuel Laman Blanchard

THE DISCONSOLATE
My heart will break, I'm sure it will:
My lover, yes, my favorite, he
Who seemed my own through good and ill,
Has basely turned his back on me.
THE COMFORTER
Ah! silly sorrower, weep no more;
Your lover's turned his back, we see;
But you had turned his head before,
And now he's as he ought to be.
A Voyage To Cythera
by Charles Baudelaire

My heart was like a bird that fluttered joyously
And glided free among the tackle and the lines!
The vessel rolled along under a cloudless sky
An angel, tipsy, gay, full of the radiant sun.
What is that sad black isle? I asked as we approached
They call it Cythera, land to write songs about,
Banal Utopia of veterans of love;
But look, it seems to be a poor land after all.
Island of sweet intrigues, and feastings of the heart!
The ghost of ancient Venus the magnificent
Glides like a haunting scent above your swelling seas,
Enrapturing the soul in languishing and love.
Sweet isle of greenery, myrtle and blooming flowers,
Perpetual delight of those in every land,
Where sighs of adoration from the hearts of lovers
Roll as incense does over a rosy bower,
Or like the constant crooning of a turtle-dove!
Cythera was an island barren in terrain,
A mere deserted rock, disturbed by piercing cries.
But on it I could glimpse a curious device!
No temple was this thing, among the woodland shades,
Where the young worshipper, the flowers' devotee,
Would tarry, body burning, hot with secret lusts,
Her robe half-open to the fleeting wisps of breeze;
But as we skimmed the shore, fairly near enough
To agitate the birds with swelling of our sails,
What we saw was a gibbet, made of three great stakes.
It reared against the sky, black, as a cypress stands.
Ferocious birds were gathered, snatching at their food,
Raging around a hanging shape already ripe;
Each creature worked his tool, his dripping filthy beak,
Into the bleeding corners of this rottenness.
The eyes were two blank gaps, and from the hollow paunch
Its tangled guts let loose, spilling over the thighs,
And those tormentors, gorged with hideous delights,
Had castrated the corpse with snapping of their beaks.
Under the feet, a troupe of jealous quadrupeds,
The muzzle lifted high, eddied and prowled about;
One larger, bolder beast was restless all the more,
The leader of the pack, surrounded by his aides.
Dweller in Cythera, child of a sky so clear,
In silence you endure these desecrations
In expiation for your infamous beliefs
And crimes which have denied you proper burial.
Hanged man, ridiculous, your sorrows are my own!
I feel, in blinding view of your loose-hanging limbs,
A rising to the teeth, a building in my throat
Of a choking spew of gall, and all my ancient griefs;
Along with you, poor devil, dear to memory,
I suffered all the stabs of all the killer crows
And felt the grinding jaws of panthers, cruel and black,
Who once took such delight in feasting on my flesh.
The sky was ravishing, the sea a very glass;
For me the world was black, and bloody would it be.
Alas! And as within a heavy shroud, I have
Entombed my heart in this perverse allegory!
Venus, in your black isle not one thing was erect
But the symbolic tree whereon my image hung.
Ah, Lord! I beg of you the courage and the strength
To take without disgust my body and my heart!
Ghazal Of Sayyid Ahmad
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

My heart is torn by the tyranny of women very quietly;
Day and night my tears are wearing away my cheeks very quietly.
Life is a red thing like the sun setting very quietly;
Setting quickly and heavily and very quietly.
If you are to buy heaven by a good deed, to-day the market is open;
To-morrow is a day when no man buys,
And the caravan is broken up very quietly.
The kings are laughing and the slaves are laughing; but for your sake
Sayyid Ahmad is walking and mourning very quietly.
From the Pus'hto (Afghans, nineteenth century).
My Heart Was Ance.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "To the weavers gin ye go."
I.
My heart was ance as blythe and free
As simmer days were lang,
But a bonnie, westlin weaver lad
Has gart me change my sang.
To the weavers gin ye go, fair maids,
To the weavers gin ye go;
I rede you right gang ne'er at night,
To the weavers gin ye go.
II.
My mither sent me to the town,
To warp a plaiden wab;
But the weary, weary warpin o't
Has gart me sigh and sab.
III.
A bonnie westlin weaver lad,
Sat working at his loom;
He took my heart as wi' a net,
In every knot and thrum.
IV.
I sat beside my warpin-wheel,
And ay I ca'd it roun';
But every shot and every knock,
My heart it gae a stoun.
V.
The moon was sinking in the west
Wi' visage pale and wan,
As my bonnie westlin weaver lad
Convoy'd me thro' the glen.
VI.
But what was said, or what was done,
Shame fa' me gin I tell;
But, oh! I fear the kintra soon
Will ken as weel's mysel.
To the weavers gin ye go, fair maids,
To the weavers gin ye go;
I rede you right gang ne'er at night,
To the weavers gin ye go.
The Heart's House
by Sara Teasdale

My heart is but a little house
With room for only three or four,
And it was filled before you knocked
Upon the door.
I longed to bid you come within,
I knew that I should love you well,
But if you came the rest must go
Elsewhere to dwell.
For you would never be content
With just a corner in my room,
Yea, if you came the rest must go
Into the gloom.
And so, farewell, O friend, my friend!
Nay, I could weep a little too,
But I shall only smile and say
Farewell to you.
A Woman's Heart.
by Marietta Holley

My heart sings like a bird to-night
That flies to its nest in the soft twilight,
And sings in its brooding bliss;
Ah! I so low, and he so high,
What could he find to love?    I cry,
Did ever love stoop so low as this?
As a miser jealously counts his gold,
I sit and dream of my wealth untold,
From the curious world apart;
Too sacred my joy for another eye,
I treasure it tenderly, silently,
And hide it away in my heart.
Dearer to me than the costliest crown
That ever on queenly forehead shone
Is the kiss he left on my brow;
Would I change his smile for a royal gem?
His love for a monarch's diadem?
Change it?    Ah, no, ah, no!
My heart sings like a bird to-night
That flies away to its nest of light
To brood o'er its living bliss;
Ah! I so low, and he so high,
What could he find to love?    I cry,
Did ever love stoop so low as this?
The Ghost Of The Murderer's Hut
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

My horse had been lamed in the foot
In the rocks at the back of the run,
So I camped at the Murderer's Hut,
At the place where the murder was done.
The walls were all spattered with gore,
A terrible symbol of guilt;
And the bloodstains were fresh on the floor
Where the blood of the victim was spilt.
The wind hurried past with a shout,
The thunderstorm doubled its din
As I shrank from the danger without,
And recoiled from the horror within.
When lo! at the window a shape,
A creature of infinite dread;
A thing with the face of an ape,
And with eyes like the eyes of the dead.
With the horns of a fiend, and a skin
That was hairy as satyr or elf,
And a long, pointed beard on its chin,
My God! 'twas the Devil himself.
In anguish I sank on the floor,
With terror my features were stiff,
Till the thing gave a kind of a roar,
Ending up with a resonant "Biff!"
Then a cheer burst aloud from my throat,
For the thing that my spirit did vex
Was naught but an elderly goat,
Just a goat of the masculine sex.
When his master was killed he had fled,
And now, by the dingoes bereft,
The nannies were all of them dead,
And only the billy was left.
So we had him brought in on a stage
To the house where, in style, he can strut,
And he lives to a fragrant old age
As the Ghost of the Murderer's Hut.
My Heart's On The Rhine
by Hanford Lennox Gordon

My heart's on the Rhine in the old Father-land;
Where my cradle was rocked by a dear mother's hand,
My youth and my friends they are there yet, I know,
And my love dreams of me with her cheeks all aglow;
O there where I reveled in song and in wine!
Wherever I wander my heart's on the Rhine.
I hail thee, thou broad-breasted, golden-green stream;
Ye cities and churches and castles that gleam;
Ye grain-fields of gold in the valley so blue;
Ye vineyards that glow in the sun-shimmered dew;
Ye forests and caverns and cliffs that were mine!
Wherever I wander my heart's on the Rhine.
I hail thee, O life of the soul-stirring song,
Of waltz and of wine, with a yearning so strong,
Hail, ye stout race of heroes, so brave and so true.
Ye blue-eyed, gay maidens, a greeting to you!
Your life and your aims and your efforts be mine;
Wherever I wander my heart's on the Rhine.
My heart's on the Rhine in the old Father-land,
Where my cradle was rocked by a dear mother's hand;
My youth and my friends they are there yet, I know,
And my love dreams of me with her cheeks all aglow:
Be thou ever the same to me, Land of the Vine!
Wherever I wander my heart's on the Rhine.
Poem On Life, Addressed To Colonel De Peyster. Dumfries, 1796.
by Robert Burns

My honoured colonel, deep I feel
Your interest in the Poet's weal;
Ah! now sma' heart hae I to speel
The steep Parnassus,
Surrounded thus by bolus, pill,
And potion glasses.
O what a canty warld were it,
Would pain and care and sickness spare it;
And fortune favour worth and merit,
As they deserve!
(And aye a rowth, roast beef and claret;
Syne, wha wad starve?)
Dame Life, tho' fiction out may trick her,
And in paste gems and frippery deck her;
Oh! flickering, feeble, and unsicker
I've found her still,
Ay wavering like the willow-wicker,
'Tween good and ill.
Then that curst carmagnole, auld Satan,
Watches, like baudrons by a rattan,
Our sinfu' saul to get a claut on
Wi' felon ire;
Syne, whip! his tail ye'll ne'er cast saut on-,
He's aff like fire.
Ah Nick! ah Nick! it is na fair,
First shewing us the tempting ware,
Bright wines and bonnie lasses rare,
To put us daft;
Syne, weave, unseen, thy spider snare
O' hell's damn'd waft.
Poor man, the flie, aft bizzes bye,
And aft as chance he comes thee nigh,
Thy auld danm'd elbow yeuks wi' joy,
And hellish pleasure;
Already in thy fancy's eye,
Thy sicker treasure!
Soon heels-o'er gowdie! in he gangs,
And like a sheep head on a tangs,
Thy girning laugh enjoys his pangs
And murd'ring wrestle,
As, dangling in the wind, he hangs
A gibbet's tassel.
But lest you think I am uncivil,
To plague you with this draunting drivel,
Abjuring a' intentions evil,
I quat my pen:
The Lord preserve us frae the devil,
Amen! amen!
Nationality In Drinks
by Robert Browning

I.
My heart sank with our Claret-flask,
Just now, beneath the heavy sedges
That serve this Pond's black face for mask
And still at yonder broken edges
Of the hole, where up the bubbles glisten,
After my heart I look and listen.
II.
Our laughing little flask, compelled
Thro' depth to depth more bleak and shady;
As when, both arms beside her held,
Feet straightened out, some gay French lady
Is caught up from Life's light and motion,
And dropped into Death's silent ocean!
Up jumped Tokay on our table,
Like a pygmy castle-warder,
Dwarfish to see, but stout and able,
Arms and accoutrements all in order;
And fierce he looked North, then, wheeling South,
Blew with his bugle a challenge to Drouth,
Cocked his flap-hat with the tosspot-feather,
Twisted his thumb in his red moustache,
Jingled his huge brass spurs together,
Tightened his waist with its Buda sash,
And then, with an impudence nought could abash,
Shrugged his hump-shoulder,
To tell the beholder,
For twenty such knaves he should laugh but the bolder:
And so, with his sword-hilt gallantly jutting,
And dexter-hand on his haunch abutting,
Went the little man, Sir Ausbruch, strutting!
Here's to Nelson's memory!
'Tis the second time that I, at sea,
Right off Cape Trafalgar here,
Have drunk it deep in British beer:
Nelson for ever, any time
Am I his to command in prose or rhyme!
Give me of Nelson only a touch,
And I guard it, be it little or much;
Here's one the Captain gives, and so
Down at the word, by George, shall it go!
He says that at Greenwich they show the beholder
Nelson's coat, 'still with tar on the shoulder,
'For he used to lean with one shoulder digging,
'Jigging, as it were, and zig-zag-zigging,
'Up against the mizen rigging!'
Clann Cartie
by James Stephens

My heart is withered and my health is gone,
For they who were not easy put upon,
Masters of mirth and of fair clemency,
Masters of wealth and gentle charity,
They are all gone.    Mac Caura Mor is dead,
Mac Caura of the Lee is finished,
Mac Caura of Kanturk joined clay to clay
And gat him gone, and bides as deep as they.
Their years, their gentle deeds, their flags are furled,
And deeply down, under the stiffened world,
In chests of oaken wood are princes thrust,
To crumble day by day into the dust
A mouth might puff at; nor is left a trace
Of those who did of grace all that was grace.
O Wave of Cliona, cease thy bellowing!
And let mine ears forget a while to ring
At thy long, lamentable misery:
The great are dead indeed, the great are dead;
And I, in little time, will stoop my head
And put it under, and will be forgot
With them, and be with them, and thus be not:
Ease thee, cease thy long keening, cry no more:
End is, and here is end, and end is sore,
And to all lamentation be there end:
If I might come on thee, O howling friend!
Knowing that sails were drumming on the sea
Westward to Eir', and that help would be
Trampling for her upon a Spanish deck,
I'd ram thy lamentation down thy neck.
Margaret At Her Spinning-Wheel.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

My heart is sad,
My peace is o'er;
I find it never
And nevermore.
When gone is he,
The grave I see;
The world's wide all
Is turned to gall.
Alas, my head
Is well-nigh crazed;
My feeble mind
Is sore amazed.
My heart is sad,
My peace is o'er;
I find it never
And nevermore.
For him from the window
Alone I spy;
For him alone
From home go I.
His lofty step,
His noble form,
His mouth's sweet smile,
His glances warm,
His voice so fraught
With magic bliss,
His hand's soft pressure,
And, ah, his kiss!
My heart is sad,
My peace is o'er;
I find it never
And nevermore.
My bosom yearns
For his form so fair;
Ah, could I clasp him
And hold him there!
My kisses sweet
Should stop his breath,
And 'neath his kisses
I'd sink in death!
A Chord Of Colour
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

My Lady clad herself in grey,
That caught and clung about her throat;
Then all the long grey winter day
On me a living splendour smote;
And why grey palmers holy are,
And why grey minsters great in story,
And grey skies ring the morning star,
And grey hairs are a crown of glory.
My Lady clad herself in green,
Like meadows where the wind-waves pass;
Then round my spirit spread, I ween,
A splendour of forgotten grass.
Then all that dropped of stem or sod,
Hoarded as emeralds might be,
I bowed to every bush, and trod
Amid the live grass fearfully.
My Lady clad herself in blue,
Then on me, like the seer long gone,
The likeness of a sapphire grew,
The throne of him that sat thereon.
Then knew I why the Fashioner
Splashed reckless blue on sky and sea;
And ere 'twas good enough for her,
He tried it on Eternity.
Beneath the gnarled old Knowledge-tree
Sat, like an owl, the evil sage:
'The World's a bubble,' solemnly
He read, and turned a second page.
'A bubble, then, old crow,' I cried,
'God keep you in your weary wit!
'A bubble--have you ever spied
'The colours I have seen on it?'
Somebody.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "For the sake of somebody."
I.
My heart is sair, I dare na tell
My heart is sair for somebody;
I could wake a winter night
For the sake o' somebody.
Oh-hon! for somebody!
Oh-hey! for somebody!
I could range the world around,
For the sake o' somebody!
II.
Ye powers that smile on virtuous love,
O, sweetly smile on somebody!
Frae ilka danger keep him free,
And send me safe my somebody.
Oh-hon! for somebody!
Oh-hey! for somebody!
I wad do, what wad I not?
For the sake o' somebody!
L'Envoi
by Robert William Service

My job is done; my rhymes are ranked and ready,
My word-battalions marching verse by verse;
Here stanza-companies are none too steady;
There print-platoons are weak, but might be worse.
And as in marshalled order I review them,
My type-brigades, unfearful of the fray,
My eyes that seek their faults are seeing through them
Immortal visions of an epic day.
It seems I'm in a giant bowling-alley;
The hidden heavies round me crash and thud;
A spire snaps like a pipe-stem in the valley;
The rising sun is like a ball of blood.
Along the road the "fantassins" are pouring,
And some are gay as fire, and some steel-stern. . . .
Then back again I see the red tide pouring,
Along the reeking road from Hebuterne.
And once again I seek Hill Sixty-Seven,
The Hun lines grey and peaceful in my sight;
When suddenly the rosy air is riven - 
A "coal-box" blots the "boyou" on my right.
Or else to evil Carnoy I am stealing,
Past sentinels who hail with bated breath;
Where not a cigarette spark's dim revealing
May hint our mission in that zone of death.
I see across the shrapnel-seeded meadows
The jagged rubble-heap of La Boiselle;
Blood-guilty Fricourt brooding in the shadows,
And Thiepval's chateau empty as a shell.
Down Albert's riven streets the moon is leering;
The Hanging Virgin takes its bitter ray;
And all the road from Hamel I am hearing
The silver rage of bugles over Bray.
Once more within the sky's deep sapphire hollow
I sight a swimming Taube, a fairy thing;
I watch the angry shell flame flash and follow
In feather puffs that flick a tilted wing;
And then it fades, with shrapnel mirror's flashing;
The flashes bloom to blossoms lily gold;
The batteries are rancorously crashing,
And life is just as full as it can hold.
Oh spacious days of glory and of grieving!
Oh sounding hours of lustre and of loss!
Let us be glad we lived you, still believing
The God who gave the cannon gave the Cross.
Let us be sure amid these seething passions,
The lusts of blood and hate our souls abhor:
The Power that Order out of Chaos fashions
Smites fiercest in the wrath-red forge of War. . . .
Have faith! Fight on! Amid the battle-hell
Love triumphs, Freedom beacons, all is well.