DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
A Voice On The Wind
by Madison Julius Cawein

I
She walks with the wind on the windy height
When the rocks are loud and the waves are white,
And all night long she calls through the night,
"O my children, come home!"
Her bleak gown, torn as a tattered cloud,
Tosses around her like a shroud,
While over the deep her voice rings loud, - 
"O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!"
II
Who is she who wanders alone,
When the wind drives sheer and the rain is blown?
Who walks all night and makes her moan,
"O my children, come home!"
Whose face is raised to the blinding gale;
Whose hair blows black and whose eyes are pale,
While over the world goes by her wail, - 
"O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!"
III
She walks with the wind in the windy wood;
The dark rain drips from her hair and hood,
And her cry sobs by, like a ghost pursued,
"O my children, come home!"
Where the trees loom gaunt and the rocks stretch drear,
The owl and the fox crouch back with fear,
As wild through the wood her voice they hear, - 
"O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!"
IV
Who is she who shudders by
When the boughs blow bare and the dead leaves fly?
Who walks all night with her wailing cry,
"O my children, come home!"
Who, strange of look, and wild of tongue,
With wan feet wounded and hands wild-wrung,
Sweeps on and on with her cry, far-flung, - 
"O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!"
V
'Tis the Spirit of Autumn, no man sees,
The mother of Death and of Mysteries,
Who cries on the wind all night to these,
"O my children, come home!"
The Spirit of Autumn, pierced with pain,
Calling her children home again,
Death and Dreams, through ruin and rain, - 
"O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!"
The Mameluke
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
She was a queen. 'Midst mutes and slaves,
A mameluke, he loved her. Waves
Dashed not more hopelessly the paves
Of her high marble palace-stair
Than lashed his love his heart's despair.
As souls in Hell dream Paradise,
He suffered yet forgot it there
Beneath Rommaneh's houri eyes.
II.
With passion eating at his heart
He served her beauty, but dared dart
No amorous glance, nor word impart.
Ta'fi leather's perfumed tan
Beneath her, on a low divan
She lay 'mid cushions stuffed with down:
A slave-girl with an ostrich fan
Sat by her in a golden gown.
III.
She bade him sing. Fair lutanist,
She loved his voice. With one white wrist,
Hooped with a blaze of amethyst,
She raised her ruby-crusted lute:
Gold-welted stuff, like some rich fruit,
Her raiment, diamond-showered, rolled
Folds pigeon-purple, whence one foot
Drooped in an anklet-twist of gold.
IV.
He stood and sang with all the fire
That boiled within his blood's desire,
That made him all her slave yet higher:
And at the end his passion durst
Quench with one burning kiss its thirst.
O eunuchs, did her face show scorn
When through his heart your daggers burst?
And dare ye say he died forlorn?
She Sung Of Love.
by Thomas Moore

She sung of Love, while o'er her lyre
The rosy rays of evening fell,
As if to feed with their soft fire
The soul within that trembling shell.
The same rich light hung o'er her cheek,
And played around those lips that sung
And spoke, as flowers would sing and speak,
If Love could lend their leaves a tongue.
But soon the West no longer burned,
Each rosy ray from heaven withdrew;
And, when to gaze again I turned,
The minstrel's form seemed fading too.
As if her light and heaven's were one,
The glory all had left that frame;
And from her glimmering lips the tone,
As from a parting spirit, came.
Who ever loved, but had the thought
That he and all he loved must part?
Filled with this fear, I flew and caught
The fading image to my heart--
And cried, "Oh Love! is this thy doom?
"Oh light of youth's resplendent day!
"Must ye then lose your golden bloom,
"And thus, like sunshine, die away?"
She Told Her Beads
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

She told her beads with down-cast eyes,
Within the ancient chapel dim;
And ever as her fingers slim
Slipt o'er th' insensate ivories,
My rapt soul followed, spaniel-wise.
Ah, many were the beads she wore;
But as she told them o'er and o'er,
They did not number all my sighs.
My heart was filled with unvoiced cries
And prayers and pleadings unexpressed;
But while I burned with Love's unrest,
She told her beads with down-cast eyes.
A Voice On The Wind
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
She walks with the wind on the windy height
When the rocks are loud and the waves are white,
And all night long she calls through the night,
"O my children, come home!"
Her bleak gown, torn as a tattered cloud,
Tosses around her like a shroud,
While over the deep her voice rings loud,
"O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!"
II.
Who is she who wanders alone,
When the wind drives sheer and the rain is blown?
Who walks all night and makes her moan,
"O my children, come home!"
Whose face is raised to the blinding gale;
Whose hair blows black and whose eyes are pale,
While over the world goes by her wail,
"O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!"
III.
She walks with the wind in the windy wood;
The dark rain drips from her hair and hood,
And her cry sobs by, like a ghost pursued,
"O my children, come home!"
Where the trees loom gaunt and the rocks stretch drear,
The owl and the fox crouch back with fear,
As wild through the wood her voice they hear,
"O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!"
IV.
Who is she who shudders by
When the boughs blow bare and the dead leaves fly?
Who walks all night with her wailing cry,
O my children, come home!"
Who, strange of look, and wild of tongue,
With wan feet wounded and hands wild-wrung,
Sweeps on and on with her cry, far-flung,
"O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!"
V.
'Tis the Spirit of Autumn, no man sees,
The mother of Death and of Mysteries,
Who cries on the wind all night to these,
"O my children, come home!"
The Spirit of Autumn, pierced with pain,
Calling her children home again,
Death and Dreams, through ruin and rain,
"O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!"
In Memoriam. - Madam Williams,
by Lydia Howard Sigourney

Widow of the late EZEKIEL WILLIAMS, Esq., and Daughter of Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth, died at Hartford, February 28th, 1860, aged 87.
She was a link that bound us to the past,--
To the great days of Washington, when men
Loving their country better than themselves
Show'd to the world what patriot virtue meant.
She on the knee of her majestic sire
Drew to her listening heart when life was new
Those principles that made his honored name
Synonymous with wisdom, and the might
Of holy truth.
So when in woman's sphere
She took her post of duty, still in all
The delicate proprieties of life,
The inner sanctities of household weal,
In social elegance, and in the deeds
That christian pity to the poor extends,
She was our model; and we saw in her
The perfect lady of the olden time.
Thus on the pleasant hill-top where she dwelt
In her green-terraced home, o'ercanopied
By graceful elm, mid evergreens and flowers,
The years stole over her, and slowly wrote
Their more than fourscore on her faded scroll,
While the kind care of unexhausted love
Guarded her long decline.
And now she sleeps
Where thro' the riven snows, the quickening turf
Gives emblem of the never-ending Spring,
That wraps the accepted soul in robes of joy.
The Sea Faery
by Madison Julius Cawein

She was strange as the orchids that blossom
And glimmer and shower their balm
And bloom on the tropical ocean,
That crystals round islands of palm:
And she sang to and beckoned and bound me
With beauty immortal and calm.
She was wild as the spirits that banner,
Auroral, the ends of the Earth,
With polar processions, that battle
With Darkness; or, breathing, give birth
To Silence; and herd from the mountains
The icebergs, gigantic of girth.
She was silver as sylphids who blend with
The morning the pearl of their cheeks:
And rosy as spirits whose tresses
Trail golden the sunset with streaks:
An opaline presence that beckoned
And spake as the sea-rapture speaks:
"Come with me! come down in the ocean!
Yea, leave this dark region with me!
Come! leave it! forget it in thunder
And roll of the infinite sea!
Come with me! No mortal bliss equals
The bliss I shall give unto thee." . . .
And so it was then that she bound me
With witchcraft no mortal divines,
While softly with kisses she drew me,
As the moon draws a dream from the pines,
Down, down to her cavern of coral,
Where ever the sea-serpent twines.
And ever the creatures, whose shadows
Bulk huge as an isle on the sight,
Swim cloud-like and vast, without number,
Around her who leans, like a light,
And smiles at me sleeping, pale-sleeping,
Wrapped deep in her mermaiden might.
To Laura In Death. Sonnet XXVI.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Soleasi nel mio cor star bella e viva.
SINCE HER DEATH, NOTHING IS LEFT TO HIM BUT GRIEF.
She stood within my heart, warm, young, alone,
As in a humble home a lady bright;
By her last flight not merely am I grown
Mortal, but dead, and she an angel quite.
A soul whence every bliss and hope is flown,
Love shorn and naked of its own glad light,
Might melt with pity e'en a heart of stone:
But none there is to tell their grief or write;
These plead within, where deaf is every ear
Except mine own, whose power its griefs so mar
That nought is left me save to suffer here.
Verily we but dust and shadows are!
Verily blind and evil is our will!
Verily human hopes deceive us still!
MACGREGOR.
'Mid life's bright glow she dwelt within my soul,
The sovereign tenant of a humble cell,
But when for heaven she bade the world farewell,
Death seem'd to grasp me in his fierce control:
My wither'd love torn from its brightening goal--
My soul without its treasure doom'd to dwell--
Could I but trace their grief, their sorrow tell,
A stone might wake, and fain with them condole.
They inly mourn, where none can hear their woe
Save I alone, who too with grief oppress'd,
Can only soothe my anguish by my sighs:
Life is indeed a shadowy dream below;
Our blind desires by Reason's chain unbless'd,
Whilst Hope in treacherous wither'd fragments lies.
WOLLASTON.
Stone Guide
by Paul Cameron Brown

She was fading -
into the stone
into rifled shadows heavy
with fallen light,
rippled boughs
of splitting fruit &
droopy leaves
to a sallow body under clumsy years
that ripped the tunic of her coat
while bleating the dismal age
with each petal fall
of a stockinged foot.
The Tollman's Daughter
by Madison Julius Cawein

She stood waist-deep among the briers:
Above in twisted lengths were rolled
The sunset's tangled whorls of gold,
Blown from the west's cloud-pillared fires.
And in the hush no sound did mar,
You almost heard o'er hill and dell,
Deep, bubbling over, star on star,
The night's blue cisterns slowly well.
A crane, like some dark crescent, crossed
The sunset, winging towards the west;
While up the east her silver breast
Of light the moon brought, white as frost.
So have I painted her, you see,
The tollman's daughter. What an arm
And throat was hers! and what a form!
Art dreams of such divinity.
What braids of night to hold and kiss!
There is no pigment anywhere
A man might use to picture this
The splendour of her raven hair.
A face as beautiful and bright,
As rosy fair as twilight skies,
Lit with the stars of hazel eyes
And eyebrowed black with pencilled night.
For her, I know, where'er she trod
Each dewdrop raised a looking-glass
To flash her beauty from the grass;
That wild-flowers bloomed along the sod,
And whispered perfume when she smiled;
The wood-bird hushed to hear her song,
Or, all enamoured, tame, not wild,
Before her feet flew fluttering long.
The brook went mad with melody,
Eddied in laughter when she kissed
With naked feet its amethyst
And I I fell in love; ah me!
On The Death Of Smet-Smet, The Hippopotamus-Goddess - Song Of A Tribe Of The Ancient Egyptians
by Rupert Brooke

(The Priests within the Temple)
She was wrinkled and huge and hideous? She was our Mother.
She was lustful and lewd? but a God; we had none other.
In the day She was hidden and dumb, but at nightfall moaned in the shade;
We shuddered and gave Her Her will in the darkness; we were afraid.
(The People without)
She sent us pain,
And we bowed before Her;
She smiled again
And bade us adore Her.
She solaced our woe
And soothed our sighing;
And what shall we do
Now God is dying?
(The Priests within)
She was hungry and ate our children; how should we stay Her?
She took our young men and our maidens; ours to obey Her.
We were loathed and mocked and reviled of all nations; that was our pride.
She fed us, protected us, loved us, and killed us; now She has died.
(The People without)
She was so strong;
But death is stronger.
She ruled us long;
But Time is longer.
She solaced our woe
And soothed our sighing;
And what shall we do
Now God is dying?
A Church Romance
by Thomas Hardy

(MELLSTOCK circa 1835)
She turned in the high pew, until her sight
Swept the west gallery, and caught its row
Of music-men with viol, book, and bow
Against the sinking sad tower-window light.
She turned again; and in her pride's despite
One strenuous viol's inspirer seemed to throw
A message from his string to her below,
Which said: "I claim thee as my own forthright!"
Thus their hearts' bond began, in due time signed.
And long years thence, when Age had scared Romance,
At some old attitude of his or glance
That gallery-scene would break upon her mind,
With him as minstrel, ardent, young, and trim,
Bowing "New Sabbath" or "Mount Ephraim."
The Old Maid
by Dora Sigerson Shorter

She walks in a lonely garden
On the path her feet have made,
With high-heeled shoes, gold-buckled,
And gown of a flowered brocade;
The hair that falls on her shoulders,
Half-held with a ribbon tie,
Once glowed like the wheat in autumn,
Now grey as a winter sky.
Time on her brow with rough fingers
Writes his record of smiles and tears;
And her mind, like a golden timepiece,
He stopped in the long past years.
At the foot of the lonely garden,
When she comes to the trysting place
She knew of old, there she lingers,
With a blush on her withered face.
The children out on the common:
They climb to the garden wall;
And laugh: 'He will come to-morrow!'
Who never will come at all.
And often over our sewing,
As I and my neighbour sit
To gossip over this story
That has never an end to it,
'He is dead,' I would say, 'that lover,
Who left her so long ago,'
But my neighbour would rest her needle
To answer, 'He's false I know.'
'For could it be he were sleeping.
With a love that was such as this
He'd have burst through the gates of silence,
And flown to meet her kiss.'
Is she best with tears or laughter,
This dame in her old brocade?
My neighbour says she is holy,
With a faith that will not fade.
* * * * *
But the children out on the common
They answer her dreary call,
And say: 'He will come to-morrow!'
Who never will come at all.
Virtue and Vice
by James Thomson -  (Bysshe Vanolis)

She was so good, and he was so bad
A very pretty time they had!
A pretty time, and it lasted long:
Which of the two was more in the wrong?
He befouled in the slough of sin;
Or she whose piety pushed him in?
He found her yet more cold and staid
As wedded wife than courted maid:
She filled their home with freezing gloom;
He felt it dismal as a tomb:
Her steadfast mind disdained his toys
Of worldly pleasures, carnal joys;
Her heart firm-set on things above
Was frigid to his earthly love.
So he came staggering home at night;
Where she sat chilling, chaste, and white:
She smiled a scornful virtuous smile,
He flung good books with curses vile.
Fresh with the early morn she rose,
While he yet lay in a feverish doze:
She prayed for blessings from the Throne,
He called for 'a hair of the dog' with a groan:
She blessed God for her strength to bear
The heavy load,'he 'gan to swear:
She sighed, would Heaven, ere yet too late,
Bring him to see his awful state!
The charity thus sweetly pressed
Made him rage like one possessed.
So she grew holier day by day,
While he grew all the other way.
She left him: she had done her part
To wean from sin his sinful heart,
But all in vain; her presence might
Make him a murderer some mad night.
Her family took her back, pure saint,
Serene in soul, above complaint:
The narrow path she strictly trod,
And went in triumph home to God:
While he into the Union fell,
Our halfway house on the road to Hell.
With which would you rather pass your life
The wicked husband or saintly wife?
The Mameluke
by Madison Julius Cawein

I
She was a queen. 'Midst mutes and slaves,
A mameluke, he loved her. -    - Waves
Dashed not more hopelessly the paves
Of her high marble palace-stair
Than lashed his love his heart's despair. - 
As souls in Hell dream Paradise,
He suffered yet forgot it there
Beneath Rommaneh's houri eyes.
II
With passion eating at his heart
He served her beauty, but dared dart
No amorous glance, nor word impart. - 
Ta'fi leather's perfumed tan
Beneath her, on a low divan
She lay 'mid cushions stuffed with down:
A slave-girl with an ostrich fan
Sat by her in a golden gown.
III
She bade him sing.    Fair lutanist,
She loved his voice.    With one white wrist,
Hooped with a blaze of amethyst,
She raised her ruby-crusted lute:
Gold-welted stuff, like some rich fruit,
Her raiment, diamond-showered, rolled
Folds pigeon-purple, whence one foot
Drooped in an anklet-twist of gold.
IV
He stood and sang with all the fire
That boiled within his blood's desire,
That made him all her slave yet higher:
And at the end his passion durst
Quench with one burning kiss its thirst. - 
O eunuchs, did her face show scorn
When through his heart your daggers burst?
And dare ye say he died forlorn?
The Infanticide
by Madison Julius Cawein

She took her babe, the child of shame and sin,
And wrapped it warmly in her shawl and went
From house to house for work. Propriety bent
A look of wonder on her; raised a din
Of Christian outrage. None would take her in.
All that she had was gone; had long been spent.
Penniless and hungry by the road she leant,
No friend to go to and no one of kin.
The babe at last began to cry for food.
Her breasts were dry; she had no milk to give.
She was so tired and cold. What could she do?
... The next day in a pool within a wood
They found the babe.... 'Twas hard enough to live,
She found, for one; impossible for two.
The Trap
by Vachel Lindsay

She was taught desire in the street,
Not at the angels' feet.
By the good no word was said
Of the worth of the bridal bed.
The secret was learned from the vile,
Not from her mother's smile.
Home spoke not.    And the girl
Was caught in the public whirl.
Do you say "She gave consent:
Life drunk, she was content
With beasts that her fire could please?"
But she did not choose disease
Of mind and nerves and breath.
She was trapped to a slow, foul death.
The door was watched so well,
That the steep dark stair to hell
Was the only escaping way . . .
"She gave consent," you say?
Some think she was meek and good,
Only lost in the wood
Of youth, and deceived in man
When the hunger of sex began
That ties the husband and wife
To the end in a strong fond life.
Her captor, by chance was one
Of those whose passion was done,
A cold fierce worm of the sea
Enslaving for you and me.
The wages the poor must take
Have forced them to serve this snake.
Yea, half-paid girls must go
For bread to his pit below.
What hangman shall wait his host
Of butchers from coast to coast,
New York to the Golden Gate - 
The merger of death and fate,
Lust-kings with a careful plan
Clean-cut, American?
In liberty's name we cry
For these women about to die.
O mothers who failed to tell
The mazes of heaven and hell,
Who failed to advise, implore
Your daughters at Love's strange door,
What will you do this day?
Your dear ones are hidden away,
As good as chained to the bed,
Hid like the mad, or the dead: - 
The glories of endless years
Drowned in their harlot-tears:
The children they hoped to bear,
Grandchildren strong and fair,
The life for ages to be,
Cut off like a blasted tree,
Murdered in filth in a day,
Somehow, by the merchant gay!
In liberty's name we cry
For these women about to die.
What shall be said of a state
Where traps for the white brides wait?
Of sellers of drink who play
The game for the extra pay?
Of statesmen in league with all
Who hope for the girl-child's fall?
Of banks where hell's money is paid
And Pharisees all afraid
Of pandars that help them sin?
When will our wrath begin?
Comfort In The Night.
by Jean Ingelow

She thought by heaven's high wall that she did stray
Till she beheld the everlasting gate:
And she climbed up to it to long, and wait,
Feel with her hands (for it was night), and lay
Her lips to it with kisses; thus to pray
That it might open to her desolate.
And lo! it trembled, lo! her passionate
Crying prevailed. A little little way
It opened: there fell out a thread of light,
And she saw wing'd wonders move within;
Also she heard sweet talking as they meant
To comfort her. They said, "Who comes to-night
Shall one day certainly an entrance win;"
Then the gate closed and she awoke content.
Fletcher McGee
by Edgar Lee Masters

She took my strength by minutes,
She took my life by hours,
She drained me like a fevered moon
That saps the spinning world.
The days went by like shadows,
The minutes wheeled like stars.
She took the pity from my heart,
And made it into smiles.
She was a hunk of sculptor's clay,
My secret thoughts were fingers:
They flew behind her pensive brow
And lined it deep with pain.
They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks,
And drooped the eye with sorrow.
My soul had entered in the clay,
Fighting like seven devils.
It was not mine, it was not hers;
She held it, but its struggles
Modeled a face she hated,
And a face I feared to see.
I beat the windows, shook the bolts.
I hid me in a corner
And then she died and haunted me,
And hunted me for life.
Cosmopolitan Woman, A
by Unknown

She went round and asked subscriptions
For the heathen black Egyptians
And the Terra del Fuegians,
She did;
For the tribes round Athabasca,
And the men of Madagascar,
And the poor souls of Alaska,
So she did;
She longed, she said, to buy
Jelly, cake, and jam, and pie,
For the Anthropophagi,
So she did.
Her heart ached for the Australians
And the Borriobooli-Ghalians,
And the poor dear Amahagger,
Yes, it did;
And she loved the black Numidian,
And the ebon Abyssinian,
And the charcoal-coloured Guinean,
Oh, she did!
And she said she'd cross the seas
With a ship of bread and cheese
For those starving Chimpanzees,
So she did.
How she loved the cold Norwegian
And the poor half-melted Feejeean,
And the dear Molucca Islander,
She did:
She sent tins of red tomato
To the tribes beyond the Equator,
But her husband ate potato,
So he did;
The poor helpless, homeless thing
(My voice falters as I sing)
Tied his clothes up with a string,
Yes, he did.
A Portrait.
by Nathaniel Parker Willis

She was not very beautiful, if it be beauty's test
To match a classic model when perfectly at rest;
And she did not look bewitchingly, if witchery it be,
To have a forehead and a lip transparent as the sea.
The fashion of her gracefulness was not a follow'd rule,
And her effervescent sprightliness was never learnt at school;
And her words were all peculiar, like the fairy's who 'spoke pearls;'
And her tone was ever sweetest midst the cadences of girls.
Said I she was not beautiful? Her eyes upon your sight
Broke with the lambent purity of planetary light,
And an intellectual beauty, like a light within a vase,
Touched every line with glory of her animated face.
Her mind with sweets was laden, like a morning breath in June,
And her thoughts awoke in harmony, like dreamings of a tune,
And you heard her words like voices that o'er the waters creep,
Or like a serenader's lute that mingles with your sleep.
She had an earnest intellect - a perfect thirst of mind,
And a heart by elevated thoughts and poetry refin'd,
And she saw a subtle tint or shade with every careless look,
And the hidden links of nature were familiar as a book.
She's made of those rare elements that now and then appear,
As if remov'd by accident unto a lesser sphere,
Forever reaching up, and on, to life's sublimer things,
As if they had been used to track the universe with wings.