DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Quia Nominor Leo - Sonnets
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

I.
What part is left thee, lion? Ravenous beast,
Which hadst the world for pasture, and for scope
And compass of thine homicidal hope
The kingdom of the spirit of man, the feast
Of souls subdued from west to sunless east,
From blackening north to bloodred south aslope,
All servile; earth for footcloth of the pope,
And heaven for chancel-ceiling of the priest;
Thou that hadst earth by right of rack and rod,
Thou that hadst Rome because thy name was God,
And by thy creed's gift heaven wherein to dwell;
Heaven laughs with all his light and might above
That earth has cast thee out of faith and love;
Thy part is but the hollow dream of hell.
II.
The light of life has faded from thy cause,
High priest of heaven and hell and purgatory:
Thy lips are loud with strains of oldworld story,
But the red prey was rent out of thy paws
Long since and they that dying brake down thy laws
Have with the fires of death-enkindled glory
Put out the flame that faltered on thy hoary
High altars, waning with the world's applause.
This Italy was Dante's Bruno died
Here Campanella, too sublime for pride,
Endured thy God's worst here, and hence went home.
And what art thou, that time's full tide should shrink
For thy sake downward? What art thou, to think
Thy God shall give thee back for birthright Rome?
To Revery.
by Madison Julius Cawein

What ogive gates from gold of Ophir wrought,
What walls of bastioned Parian, lucid rose,
What marts of crystal, for the eyes of Thought
Hast builded on what Islands of Repose!
Vague onyx columns ranked Corinthian,
Or piled Ionic, colonnading heights
That loom above long burst of mythic seas:
Vast gynaeceums of carnelian;
Micaceous temples, far marmorean flights,
Where winds the arabesque and plastique frieze.
Where bulbous domes of coruscating ore
Cloud - like convulsive sunsets - lands that dream,
Myrrh-fragrant, over siren seas and hoar,
Dashed with stiff, breezy foam of ocean's stream.
Tempestuous architecture-revelries;
Built melodies of marble or clear glass;
Effulgent sculptures chiseled out of thought
In misty attitudes, whose majesties
Feed full the pleasure as those beauties pass
To pale extinctions which are beauty fraught.
On rebeck and on rose in plinths of spars,
On glimmering solitudes of flower and stone,
A twilight-glow swoons settled, burned with stars,
Deep violet dusk developing nor done.
Where float fair nacreous shapes like deities, - 
Existences of glory musical, - 
'Round whose warm hair twist fillets' coiling gold,
Their limbs Olympian lovely, and their eyes
Dark oblique fervors; and most languorous tall
In woven white with girdling gold threefold.
There darkling the consummate vintage sleeps, - 
Lethe-nepenthes for Earth-agony, - 
In seal'd amphorae some Sybil keeps,
World-old, forever cellared secretly.
A wine of Xeres or of Syracuse?
A fierce Falernian? - Ah! no vile Sabine! - 
A stol'n ambrosia of what olden god?
Whose bubbled rubies maiden feet did bruise
From crusted vats of vintage rich, I ween,
Vivacious purple of some Samian sod.
Oh, for the cold conclusion of one draught!
Elysian ecstacy of classic earth! - 
Where heroes warred with gods and where gods laughed
In eyes of mortal brown, a lusty mirth
Of deity delirious with desire:
Where danced the sacrifice to horn'd shrines,
And splashed the full libation blue as blood. - 
Oh, to be drunk with dreaming! to inspire
The very soul of beauty whence it shines
Too lost for utterance yet understood!
In cogitation of what verdurous shades,
Dull-droning quietudes where wild-bees lolled
Suck, lulled in pulpy lilies of the glades,
Barbaric-smothered with the kerneled gold:
Teased by some torso of the golden age,
Nude breasts of Cytherea, famous fair,
Uncestus'd, yet suggestive of what loves
Immortal! yearn enamoured; or to rage
With sun-burnt Poesy whose throat breathes bare
O'er leopard skins and flute among her groves.
Futurity.
by Sophie M. (Almon) Hensley

What of our life when this frail flesh lies low
A withered clod, and the free soul has burst
Through the world-fetters? Not of souls accursed
With cherished lusts that mar them, those who sow
Evil and reap the harvest, and who bow
At Mammon's golden shrine, but those who thirst
For Truth, and see not, - spirits deep immersed
In doubt and trouble, - hearts that fain would know?
The soul is satisfied. The spirit trained
For the divine, because the beautiful,
Now with the body gone, free and unstained,
Doubts swept away like clouds of scattering wool
Before a blast, - e'er Heaven's pure paths are trod
Is perfected to understand its God.
Fuel
by Lola Ridge

What of the silence of the keys
And silvery hands? The iron sings...
Though bows lie broken on the strings,
The fly-wheels turn eternally...
Bring fuel - drive the fires high...
Throw all this artist-lumber in
And foolish dreams of making things...
(Ten million men are called to die.)
As for the common men apart,
Who sweat to keep their common breath,
And have no hour for books or art - 
What dreams have these to hide from death!
Wilfred
by John Le Gay Brereton

What of these tender feet
That have never toddled yet?
What dances shall they beat,
With what red vintage wet?
In what wild way will they march or stray, by what sly paynims met?
The toil of it none may share;
By yourself must the way be won
Through fervid or frozen air
Till the overland journey's done;
And I would not take, for your own dear sake, one thorn from your track, my son.
Go forth to your hill and dale,
Yet take in your hand from me
A staff when your footsteps fail,
A weapon if need there be;
'Twill hum in your ear when the foeman's near, athirst for the victory.
In the desert of dusty death
It will point to the hidden spring;
Should you weary and fail for breath,
It will burgeon and branch and swing
Till you sink to sleep in its shadow deep to the sound of its murmuring.
.         .         .         .         .
You must face the general foe
A phantom pale and grim.
If you flinch at his glare, he'll grow
And gather your strength to him;
But your power will rise if you laugh in his eyes and away in a mist he'll swim.
To your freeborn soul be true
Fling parchment in the fire;
Men's laws are null for you,
For a word of Love is higher,
And can you do aught, when He rules your thought, but follow your own desire?
You will dread no pinching dearth
In the home where you love to lie,
For your floor will be good brown earth
And your roof the open sky.
There'll be room for all at your festival when the heart-red wine runs high.
.         .         .         .         .
Joy to you, joy and strife
And a golden East before,
And the sound of the sea of life
In your ears when you reach the shore,
And a hope that still with as good a will you may fight as you fought of yore.
Death Of Sir John.
by W. M. MacKeracher

What news to all alike brings startling sorrow?
And he is dead, the vigorous chieftain dead?
Nor e'en for him would death still brook to-morrow?
No more shall followers vaunt and foemen dread;
No more by him the hot debate be led;
No more the lively tale, the clever jest
Of him the State's most skilful, ablest head,
Albeit not her sternest, not her best,
But such is over now, then let his ashes rest.
When all was anarchy, he seized the reins,
And broke and trained the fiery coursers young,
And from so many wide and fair domains
One great Dominion 'neath his guidance sprung,
Which he made glorious, till the nations rung
With our renown and his immortal name.
But now his day was o'er; his work was done.
'Twas well. - He lived to hear his land's acclaim,
And perished in the pride of his Marengo fame.
Once more I see him - there once more he stands,
Where midst the learned and beautiful he stood:
Scholars and knights, dames, statesmen clapped their hands;
Within the glittering hall a thousand viewed;
And ardent youth drank draughts to him imbrewed
With adulation. Run is glory's race.
And this is Death, - that such a being should,
Who o'er his country soared in "pride of place,"
Be mingled with her dust like brutes and idlers base.
Softly, sweet River, softly by the cliff,
Where in his eyrie the spent eagle sleeps!
Softly, beside where o'er one cold and stiff
A hapless lady her pale vigil keeps!
And come ye mourners - very heaven weeps -
With rue and rosemary from far and near,
From Breton's capes and rude Columbia's steeps
To spread the shroud upon your hero's bier
While he who Laurel is will weave the cypress sere.
Horace To Pyrrha
by Eugene Field

What perfumed, posie-dizened sirrah,
With smiles for diet,
Clasps you, O fair but faithless Pyrrha,
On the quiet?
For whom do you bind up your tresses,
As spun-gold yellow,--
Meshes that go, with your caresses,
To snare a fellow?
How will he rail at fate capricious,
And curse you duly!
Yet now he deems your wiles delicious,
You perfect, truly!
Pyrrha, your love's a treacherous ocean;
He'll soon fall in there!
Then shall I gloat on his commotion,
For I have been there!
The Praise Of Dust
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

'What of vile dust?' the preacher said.
Methought the whole world woke,
The dead stone lived beneath my foot,
And my whole body spoke.
'You, that play tyrant to the dust,
And stamp its wrinkled face,
This patient star that flings you not
Far into homeless space.
'Come down out of your dusty shrine
The living dust to see,
The flowers that at your sermon's end
Stand blazing silently.
'Rich white and blood-red blossom; stones,
Lichens like fire encrust;
A gleam of blue, a glare of gold,
The vision of the dust.
'Pass them all by: till, as you come
Where, at a city's edge,
Under a tree--I know it well--
Under a lattice ledge,
'The sunshine falls on one brown head.
You, too, O cold of clay,
Eater of stones, may haply hear
The trumpets of that day
'When God to all his paladins
By his own splendour swore
To make a fairer face than heaven,
Of dust and nothing more.'
What Place Is Besieged?
by Walt Whitman

What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?
Lo! I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal;
And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery,
And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun.
Epigram.
by Thomas Moore

What news to-day?--"Oh! worse and worse--
"Mac[1] is the Prince's Privy Purse!"--
The Prince's Purse! no, no, you fool,
You mean the Prince's Ridicule.
Tiger - Tiger!
by Rudyard Kipling

What of the hunting, hunter bold?
Brother, the watch was long and cold.
What of the quarry ye went to kill?
Brother, he crops in the jungle still.
Where is the power that made your pride?
Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.
Where is the haste that ye hurry by?
Brother, I go to my lair to die!
Postscript "Men Who March Away" (Song Of The Soldiers)
by Thomas Hardy

What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away
Ere the barn-cocks say
Night is growing gray,
To hazards whence no tears can win us;
What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away?
Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye,
Who watch us stepping by
With doubt and dolorous sigh?
Can much pondering so hoodwink you!
Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye?
Nay. We well see what we are doing,
Though some may not see -
Dalliers as they be -
England's need are we;
Her distress would leave us rueing:
Nay. We well see what we are doing,
Though some may not see!
In our heart of hearts believing
Victory crowns the just,
And that braggarts must
Surely bite the dust,
Press we to the field ungrieving,
In our heart of hearts believing
Victory crowns the just.
Hence the faith and fire within us
Men who march away
Ere the barn-cocks say
Night is growing gray,
To hazards whence no tears can win us:
Hence the faith and fire within us
Men who march away.
September 5, 1914.
Anthem for Doomed Youth
by Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,--
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Comfort To A Youth That Had Lost His Love
by Robert Herrick

What needs complaints,
When she a place
Has with the race
Of saints?
In endless mirth,
She thinks not on
What's said or done
In earth:
She sees no tears,
Or any tone
Of thy deep groan
She hears;
Nor does she mind,
Or think on't now,
That ever thou
Wast kind:
But changed above,
She likes not there,
As she did here,
Thy love.
Forbear, therefore,
And lull asleep
Thy woes, and weep
No more.
Upon His Verses.
by Robert Herrick

What offspring other men have got,
The how, where, when, I question not.
These are the children I have left,
Adopted some, none got by theft;
But all are touch'd, like lawful plate,
And no verse illegitimate.
The Winter Nosegay.
by William Cowper

What Nature, alas! has denied
To the delicate growth of our isle,
Art has in a measure supplied,
And winter is deck'd with a smile.
See, Mary, what beauties I bring
From the shelter of that sunny shed,
Where the flowers have the charms of the spring,
Though abroad they are frozen and dead.
'Tis a bower of Arcadian sweets,
Where Flora is still in her prime,
A fortress to which she retreats
From the cruel assaults of the clime.
While earth wears a mantle of snow,
These pinks are as fresh and as gay
As the fairest and sweetest that blow
On the beautiful bosom of May.
See how they have safely survived
The frowns of a sky so severe;
Such Mary's true love, that has lived
Through many a turbulent year.
The charms of the late-blowing rose
Seem graced with a livelier hue;
And the winter of sorrow best shows
The truth of a friend such as you.
Prologue To "The Prophetess."[1] By Beaumont And Fletcher.
by John Dryden

SPOKEN BY MR BETTERTON. 1690.
What Nostradame, with all his art, can guess
The fate of our approaching Prophetess?
A play which, like a p'rspective set right,
Presents our vast expenses close to sight;
But turn the tube, and there we sadly view
Our distant gains; and those uncertain too:
A sweeping tax, which on ourselves we raise,
And all, like you, in hopes of better days;
When will our losses warn us to be wise?
Our wealth decreases, and our charges rise.
Money, the sweet allurer of our hopes,
Ebbs out in oceans, and comes in by drops;
We raise new objects to provoke delight,
But you grow sated ere the second sight.
False men, e'en so you serve your mistresses:
They rise three storeys in their towering dress;
And, after all, you love not long enough
To pay the rigging, ere you leave them off.
Never content with what you had before,
But true to change, and Englishmen all o'er.
Now honour calls you hence; and all your care
Is to provide the horrid pomp of war.
In plume and scarf, jack-boots, and Bilbo blade,
Your silver goes, that should support our trade.
Go, unkind heroes![2] leave our stage to mourn,
Till rich from vanquished rebels you return;
And the fat spoils of Teague in triumph draw,
His firkin-butter, and his usquebaugh.
Go, conquerors of your male and female foes!
Men without hearts, and women without hose:
Each bring his love a Bogland captive home;
Such proper pages will long trains become;
With copper collars, and with brawny backs,
Quite to put down the fashion of our blacks.
Then shall the pious Muses pay their vows,
And furnish all their laurels for your brows;
Their tuneful voice shall raise for your delights;
We want not poets fit to sing your flights.
But you, bright beauties! for whose only sake
Those doughty knights such dangers undertake,
When they with happy gales are gone away,
With your propitious presence grace our play;
And with a sigh their empty seats survey:
Then think, on that bare bench my servant sat;
I see him ogle still, and hear him chat;
Selling facetious bargains, and propounding
That witty recreation, call'd dumfounding.
Their loss with patience we will try to bear;
And would do more, to see you often here;
That our dead stage, revived by your fair eyes,
Under a female regency may rise.
Chant To Sirius
by Clark Ashton Smith

What nights retard thee, O Sirius!
Thy light is as a spear,
And thou penetratest them
As a warrior that stabbeth his foe
Even to the center of his life.
Thy rays reach farther than the gulfs;
They form a bridge thereover,
That shall endure till the links of the universe
Are unfastened, and drop apart,
And all the gulfs are one,
Dissevered by suns no longer.
How strong art thou in thy place!
Thou stridest thine orbit,
And the darkness shakes beneath thee,
As a road that is trodden by an army.
Thou art a god,
In thy temple that is hollowed with light
In the night of infinitude,
And whose floor is the lower void;
Thy worlds are as priests and ministers therein.
Thou furrowest space,
Even as an husbandman,
And sowest it with alien seed;
It beareth alien fruits,
And these are thy testimony,
Even as the crops of his fields
Are the testimony of an husbandman.
An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet W. Shakespeare
by John Milton

What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones
The labor of an age in piled stones?
Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a livelong monument.
For whilst, to th' shame of slow-endeavoring art,
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving,
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
The Song Of The Bow
by Arthur Conan Doyle

What of the bow?
The bow was made in England:
Of true wood, of yew-wood,
The wood of English bows;
So men who are free
Love the old yew-tree
And the land where the yew-tree grows.
What of the cord?
The cord was made in England:
A rough cord, a tough cord,
A cord that bowmen love;
And so we will sing
Of the hempen string
And the land where the cord was wove.
What of the shaft?
The shaft was cut in England:
A long shaft, a strong shaft,
Barbed and trim and true;
So we'll drink all together
To the grey goose-feather
And the land where the grey goose flew.
What of the mark?
Ah, seek it not in England,
A bold mark, our old mark
Is waiting over-sea.
When the strings harp in chorus,
And the lion flag is o'er us,
It is there that our mark will be.
What of the men?
The men were bred in England:
The bowmen--the yeomen,
The lads of dale and fell.
Here's to you--and to you!
To the hearts that are true
And the land where the true hearts dwell.
Men Who March Away - Song Of The Soldiers
by Thomas Hardy

What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away
Ere the barn-cocks say
Night is growing gray,
Leaving all that here can win us;
What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away?
Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye,
Who watch us stepping by
With doubt and dolorous sigh?
Can much pondering so hoodwink you!
Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye?
Nay. We well see what we are doing,
Though some may not see -
Dalliers as they be -
England's need are we;
Her distress would leave us rueing:
Nay. We well see what we are doing,
Though some may not see!
In our heart of hearts believing
Victory crowns the just,
And that braggarts must
Surely bite the dust,
Press we to the field ungrieving,
In our heart of hearts believing
Victory crowns the just.
Hence the faith and fire within us
Men who march away
Ere the barn-cocks say
Night is growing gray,
Leaving all that here can win us;
Hence the faith and fire within us
Men who march away.
September 5, 1914.
The Question To Lisetta
by Matthew Prior

What nymph should I admire or trust,
But Chloe beauteous, Chloe just?
What nymph should I desire to see,
But her who leaves the plain for me?
To whom should I compose the lay,
But her who listens when I play?
To whom in song repeat my cares,
But her who in my sorrow shares?
For whom should I the garland make,
But her who joys the gift to take,
And boasts she wears it for my sake?
In love am I not fully blest?
Lisetta, prithee tell the rest.
Lisetta's Reply:
Sure Chloe just, and Chloe fair,
Deserves to be your only care;
But, when you and she to-day
Far into the wood did stray,
And I happen'd to pass by,
Which way did you cast your eye?
But, when your cares to her you sing,
You dare not tell her whence they spring:
Does it not more afflict your heart,
That in those cares she bears a part?
When you the flowers for Chloe twine,
Why do you to her garland join
The meanest bud that falls from mine?
Simplest of swains! the world may see
Whom Chloe loves, and who loves me.
A Caution To Poets
by Matthew Arnold

What poets feel not, when they make,
A pleasure in creating,
The world, in its turn, will not take
Pleasure in contemplating
Reverie
by Madison Julius Cawein

What ogive gates from gold of Ophir wrought,
What walls of Pariah, whiter than a rose,
What towers of crystal, for the eyes of thought,
Hast builded on far Islands of Repose?
Thy cloudy columns, vast, Corinthian,
Or huge, Ionic, colonnade the heights
Of dreamland, looming o'er the soul's deep seas;
Built melodies of marble, that no man
Has ever reached, except in fancy's flights,
Templing the presence of perpetual ease.
Oft, where o'er plastic frieze and plinths of spar,
In glimmering solitudes of pillared stone,
The twilight blossoms with one violet star,
With thee, O Reverie, I have stood alone,
And there beheld, from out the Mythic Age,
The rosy breasts of Cytherea fair,
Full-cestused, and suggestive of what loves
Immortal rise; and heard the lyric rage
Of sun-burnt Poesy, whose throat breathes bare
O'er leopard skins, fluting among his groves.
Oft, where thy castled peaks and templed vales
Cloud like convulsive sunsets shores that dream,
Myrrh-fragrant, over siren seas whose sails
Gleam white as lilies on a lilied stream,
My soul has dreamed. Or by thy sapphire sea,
In thy arcaded gardens, in the shade
Of breathing sculpture, oft has walked with thought,
And bent, in shadowy attitude, its knee
Before the shrine of Beauty that must fade
And leave no memory of the mind that wrought.
Who hath beheld thy caverns where, in heaps,
The wines of Lethe and Love's witchery,
In seal'd Amphor' a sibyl keeps,
World-old, for ever guarded secretly?
No wine of Xeres or of Syracuse!
No fine Falernian and no vile Sabine!
The stolen fire of a demigod,
Whose bubbled purple goddess feet did bruise
In crusted vats of vintage, where the green
Flames with wild poppies, on the Samian sod.
Oh, for the deep enchantment of one draught!
The reckless ecstasy of classic earth!
With godlike eyes to laugh as gods have laughed
In eyes of mortal brown, a mighty mirth.
Of deity delirious with desire!
To breathe the dropping roses of the shrines,
The splashing wine-libation and the blood,
And all the young priest's dreaming! To inspire
My eager soul with beauty, 'til it shines
An utt'rance of life's loftier brotherhood!
So would I slumber in the old-world shades,
And Poesy should touch me, as some bold
Wild bee a pulpy lily of the glades,
Barbaric-covered with the kernelled gold;
And feel the glory of the Golden Age
Less godly than my purpose, strong to dare
Death with the pure immortal lips of love:
Less lovely than my soul's ideal rage
To mate itself with Music and declare
Itself part meaning of the stars above.