DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
To The Sons Of Labour.
by Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Grave this deep in your hearts,
Forget not the tale of the past!
Never, never believe
That any will help you, or can,
Saving only yourselves!
What have the gentlemen done,
Peerless haters of wrong,
Byrons and Shelleys, what?
They stand great famous names,
Demi-gods to their own,
Shadows far off, alien
To us and ours for ever.
Those who love them and hate
The crime, the injustice they hated,
What can they do but shout,
Win a name from our woes,
And leave us just as we were?
No, but resolutely turned,
Our wants, our desires made clear,
And clear the means that shall win them,
Drill and drill and drill!
Then when the day is come,
When the royal battle-flag's up,
When blood has been spilled in vain
In timid half-hearted war,
Then let the Cromwell rise,
The simple, the true-souled man;
Then let Grant come forth,
The calm, the determined comrade,
But deep in their hearts one hate,
Deep in their souls one thought,
To bring the iniquity low,
To make the People free!
Ah, for such as these
We with the same heart-hate,
We with the same soul-thought,
Will fall to our destined places
In the ranks of the great New Model, {49}
In the Army that sees ahead
Marston, Naseby, Whitehall,
The Wilderness, Petersburg, - yes,
But beyond the blood and the smoke,
Beyond the struggle and death,
The Union victorious safe,
The Commonwealth glorious free!
My Lady Of Castle Grand
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Gray is the palace where she dwells,
Grimly the poplars stand
There by the window where she sits,
My Lady of Castle Grand.
There does she bide the livelong day,
Grim as the poplars are,
Ever her gaze goes reaching out,
Steady, but vague and far.
Bright burn the fires in the castle hall,
Brightly the fire-dogs stand;
But cold is the body and cold the heart
Of my Lady of Castle Grand.
Blue are the veins in her lily-white hands,
Blue are the veins in her brow;
Thin is the line of her blue drawn lips,
Who would be haughty now?
Pale is the face at the window-pane,
Pale as the pearl on her breast,
"Roderick, love, wilt come again?
Fares he to east or west?"
The shepherd pipes to the shepherdess,
The bird to his mate in the tree,
And ever she sighs as she hears their song,
"Nobody sings for me."
The scullery maids have swains enow
Who lead them the way of love,
But lonely and loveless their mistress sits
At her window up above.
Loveless and lonely she waits and waits,
The saddest in all the land;
Ah, cruel and lasting is love-blind pride,
My Lady of Castle Grand.
God; Not Gift
by George MacDonald

Gray clouds my heaven have covered o'er;
My sea ebbs fast, no more to flow;
Ghastly and dry, my desert shore
Parched, bare, unsightly things doth show.
'Tis thou, Lord, cloudest up my sky;
Stillest the heart-throb of my sea;
Tellest the sad wind not to sigh,
Yea, life itself to wait for thee!
Lord, here I am, empty enough!
My music but a soundless moan!
Blind hope, of all my household stuff,
Leaves me, blind hope, not quite alone!
Shall hope too go, that I may trust
Purely in thee, and spite of all?
Then turn my very heart to dust--
On thee, on thee, I yet will call.
List! list! his wind among the pines
Hark! hark! that rushing is his sea's!
O Father, these are but thy signs!--
For thee I hunger, not for these!
Not joy itself, though pure and high--
No gift will do instead of thee!
Let but my spirit know thee nigh,
And all the world may sleep for me!
The Twins
by Robert Browning

'Give' and 'It-shall-be-given-unto-you.'
I.
Grand rough old Martin Luther
Bloomed fables, flowers on furze,
The better the uncouther:
Do roses stick like burrs?
II.
A beggar asked an alms
One day at an abbey-door,
Said Luther; but, seized with qualms,
The abbot replied, 'We're poor!
III.
'Poor, who had plenty once,
'When gifts fell thick as rain:
'But they give us nought, for the nonce,
'And how should we give again?'
IV.
Then the beggar, 'See your sins!
'Of old, unless I err,
'Ye had brothers for inmates, twins,
'Date and Dabitur.
V.
'While Date was in good case
'Dabitur flourished too:
'For Dabitur's lenten face
'No wonder if Date rue.
VI.
'Would ye retrieve the one?
'Try and make plump the other!
'When Date's penance is done,
'Dabitur helps his brother.
VII.
'Only, beware relapse!'
The Abbot hung his head.
This beggar might be perhaps
An angel, Luther said.
The Garden Patch
by Paul Cameron Brown

Gourd was taken to task when she understood the limitations the garden patch had placed upon her people.
It was early fall and the dancers of the vegetable kingdom paraded their charms in bright, full regalia. Across the earth in splotches of colour, the tomatoes scented a good fall. So, too, the kingly husks of corn and the melons, spinach and cucumber in turn eyed the approaching season in growing faith. Each had a succulent function and dangled their inviting flesh to the beholder.
But, alas, what did gourd promise? She was deeply conscious of lacking the forward brightness of tomato and pumpkin. She lacked leafy greens so evidently prized and when her fellow vegetables covered the brown soil in preparation for the fine day they would bask across a kitchen table, it was almost too much for the sensitive gourd to stomach. Why even squash, which she felt closest to, had more of a function than she. So versatile did the big neighbour seem in comparison to herself, the ugly dwarf.
She was on the verge of casting herself in despair across the rickety fence or joining the long, black embers of a dead fire young boys had prepared months back. Surely, she was the outcast of the plant world. How grotesque her features were, so hard and unpliable seemed her flesh. Even her skin tones were half-caste. No recipes called for her presence. A mood of growing helplessness seemed to envelop her.
A boy, the earlier fire setter, is describing an odd vegetable, tubular and often misshapen, that was excellent for all sorts of childhood pursuits - making paperweights, building scarecrows and decorating mantles.
"If only people knew," he bubbles.
"Still more success stories," the little gourd cries on hearing the child's comment.
"At least I won't have to be humbled in her presence," the gourd thought, her self confidence shattered.
And with that the little gourd approached the Vegetable King and asked to use her remaining wish. For in those days all living things were handed one means for improving themselves.
"I resolve to be a new edible," she sighed, "something other than a gnomish gourd. Make, O King, a glorious . . . pumpkin." But the Vegetable King decided not to abandon his earlier invention and so gourds live on. Distant relatives of the bright, new pumpkin, but their inspiration nonetheless.
The Artemus Of Michigan.
by James Whitcomb Riley

Grand Haven is in Michigan, and in possession, too,
Of as many rare attractions as our party ever knew: - 
The fine hotel, the landlord, and the lordly bill of fare,
And the dainty-neat completeness of the pretty waiters there;
The touch on the piano in the parlor, and the trill
Of the exquisite soprano, in our fancy singing still;
Our cozy room, its comfort, and our thousand grateful tho'ts,
And at our door the gentle face
Of
H.
Y.
Potts!
His artless observations, and his drollery of style,
Bewildered with that sorrowful serenity of smile - 
The eye's elusive twinkle, and the twitching of the lid,
Like he didn't go to say it and was sorry that he did.
O Artemus of Michigan! so worthy of the name,
Our manager indorses it, and Bill Nye does the same - 
You tickled our affection in so many tender spots
That even Recollection laughs
At
H.
Y.
Potts!
And hark ye!    O Grand Haven! count your rare attractions o'er - 
The commerce of your ships at sea, and ships along the shore;
Your railroads, and your industries, and interests untold,
Your Opera House - our lecture, and the gate-receipts in gold! - 
Ay, Banner Town of Michigan! count all your treasures through - 
Your crowds of summer tourists, and your Sanitarium, too;
Your lake, your beach, your drives, your breezy groves and grassy plots,
But head the list of all of these
With
H.
Y.
Potts!
Manners
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Grace, Beauty and Caprice
Build this golden portal;
Graceful women, chosen men,
Dazzle every mortal.
Their sweet and lofty countenance
His enchanted food;
He need not go to them, their forms
Beset his solitude.
He looketh seldom in their face,
His eyes explore the ground,--
The green grass is a looking-glass
Whereon their traits are found.
Little and less he says to them,
So dances his heart in his breast;
Their tranquil mien bereaveth him
Of wit, of words, of rest.
Too weak to win, too fond to shun
The tyrants of his doom,
The much deceived Endymion
Slips behind a tomb.
Black Samson Of Brandywine
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

"In the fight at Brandywine, Black Samson, a giant negro armed with a scythe, sweeps his way through the red ranks...." C. M. Skinner's "Myths and Legends of Our Own Land."
Gray are the pages of record,
Dim are the volumes of eld;
Else had old Delaware told us
More that her history held.
Told us with pride in the story,
Honest and noble and fine,
More of the tale of my hero,
Black Samson of Brandywine.
Sing of your chiefs and your nobles,
Saxon and Celt and Gaul,
Breath of mine ever shall join you,
Highly I honor them all.
Give to them all of their glory,
But for this noble of mine,
Lend him a tithe of your tribute,
Black Samson of Brandywine.
There in the heat of the battle,
There in the stir of the fight,
Loomed he, an ebony giant,
Black as the pinions of night.
Swinging his scythe like a mower
Over a field of grain,
Needless the care of the gleaners,
Where he had passed amain.
Straight through the human harvest,
Cutting a bloody swath,
Woe to you, soldier of Briton!
Death is abroad in his path.
Flee from the scythe of the reaper,
Flee while the moment is thine,
None may with safety withstand him,
Black Samson of Brandywine.
Was he a freeman or bondman?
Was he a man or a thing?
What does it matter? His brav'ry
Renders him royal--a king.
If he was only a chattel,
Honor the ransom may pay
Of the royal, the loyal black giant
Who fought for his country that day.
Noble and bright is the story,
Worthy the touch of the lyre,
Sculptor or poet should find it
Full of the stuff to inspire.
Beat it in brass and in copper,
Tell it in storied line,
So that the world may remember
Black Samson of Brandywine.
Soliloquy Of The Spanish Cloister
by Robert Browning

I.
GR-R-R there go, my heart's abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God's blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!
II.
At the meal we sit together:
Salve tibi! I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
Sort of season, time of year:
Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:
What's the Latin name for 'parsley'?
What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?
III.
Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,
Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,
And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial
Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps
Marked with L. for our initial!
(He-he! There his lily snaps!)
IV.
Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
Can't I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?
(That is, if he'd let it show!)
V.
When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As do I, in Jesu's praise.
I the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
fWhile he drains his at one gulp.
VI.
Oh, those melons? If he's able
We're to have a feast! so nice!
One goes to the Abbot's table,
All of us get each a slice.
How go on your flowers? None double
Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange! And I, too, at such trouble,
Keep them close-nipped on the sly!
VII.
There's a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails:
If I trip him just a-dying,
Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to Hell, a Manichee?
VIII.
Or, my scrofulous French novel
On grey paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and foot in Belial's gripe:
If I double down its pages
At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
Ope a sieve and slip it in't?
IX.
Or, there's Satan! one might venture
Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he'd miss till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
We're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine . . .
'St, there's Vespers! Plena grati'
Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r you swine!
Eine Kleine Predigt
by George MacDonald

Graut Euch nicht, Ihr lieben Leute,
Vor dem ungeheuren Morgen;
Wenn es kommt, es ist das Heute,
Und der liebe Gott zu sorgen.
Nursery Rhyme. CCCX. Games.
by Unknown

[This is acted by two or more girls, who walk or dance up and down, turning, when they say, "turn, cheeses, turn." The "green cheeses," as I am informed, are made with sage and potatoe-tops. Two girls are said to be "cheese and cheese."]
Green cheese, yellow laces,
Up and down the market-places,
Turn, cheeses, turn!
Oblivion
by John Charles McNeill

Green moss will creep
Along the shady graves where we shall sleep.
Each year will bring
Another brood of birds to nest and sing.
At dawn will go
New ploughmen to the fields we used to know.
Night will call home
The hunter from the hills we loved to roam.
She will not ask,
The milkmaid, singing softly at her task,
Nor will she care
To know if I were brave or you were fair.
No one will think
What chalice life had offered us to drink,
When from our clay
The sun comes back to kiss the snow away.
Ode To The Sublime Porte.
by Thomas Moore

Great Sultan, how wise are thy state compositions!
And oh! above all I admire that Decree,
In which thou command'st that all she politicians
Shall forthwith be strangled and cast in the sea.
'Tis my fortune to know a lean Benthamite spinster--
A maid who her faith in old Jeremy puts,
Who talks with a lisp of "the last new Westminster,"
And hopes you're delighted with "Mill upon Gluts;"
Who tells you how clever one Mr. Funblank is,
How charming his Articles 'gainst the Nobility;--
And assures you that even a gentleman's rank is
In Jeremy's school, of no sort of utility.
To see her, ye Gods, a new Number perusing--
ART. 1.--"On the Needle's variations," by Pl--ce;[1]
ART. 2.--By her Favorite Funblank[2]--"so amusing!
"Dear man! he makes Poetry quite a Law case."
ART. 3.--"Upon Fallacies," Jeremy's own--
(Chief Fallacy being his hope to find readers);-
ART. 4.--"Upon Honesty," author unknown;--
ART. 5.--(by the young Mr. Mill) "Hints to Breeders."
Oh, Sultan, oh, Sultan, tho' oft for the bag
And the bowstring, like thee, I am tempted to call--
Tho' drowning's too good for each blue-stocking hag,
I would bag this she Benthamite first of them all!
And lest she should ever again lift her head
From the watery bottom, her clack to renew--
As a clog, as a sinker, far better than lead,
I would hang around her neck her own darling Review.
Christmas, 1880.
by George MacDonald

Great-hearted child, thy very being The Son,
Who know'st the hearts of all us prodigals;--
For who is prodigal but he who has gone
Far from the true to heart it with the false?--
Who, who but thou, that, from the animals',
Know'st all the hearts, up to the Father's own,
Can tell what it would be to be alone!
Alone! No father!--At the very thought
Thou, the eternal light, wast once aghast;
A death in death for thee it almost wrought!
But thou didst haste, about to breathe thy last,
And call'dst out Father ere thy spirit passed,
Exhausted in fulfilling not any vow,
But doing his will who greater is than thou.
That we might know him, thou didst come and live;
That we might find him, thou didst come and die;
The son-heart, brother, thy son-being give--
We too would love the father perfectly,
And to his bosom go back with the cry,
Father, into thy hands I give the heart
Which left thee but to learn how good thou art!
There are but two in all the universe--
The father and his children--not a third;
Nor, all the weary time, fell any curse!
Not once dropped from its nest an unfledged bird
But thou wast with it! Never sorrow stirred
But a love-pull it was upon the chain
That draws the children to the father again!
O Jesus Christ, babe, man, eternal son,
Take pity! we are poor where thou art rich:
Our hearts are small; and yet there is not one
In all thy father's noisy nursery which,
Merry, or mourning in its narrow niche,
Needs not thy father's heart, this very now,
With all his being's being, even as thou!
Fragment: 'Great Spirit'.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Great Spirit whom the sea of boundless thought
Nurtures within its unimagined caves,
In which thou sittest sole, as in my mind,
Giving a voice to its mysterious waves -
An Old Fish Pond.
by Henry Austin Dobson

Green growths of mosses drop and bead
Around the granite brink;
And 'twixt the isles of water-weed
The wood-birds dip and drink.
Slow efts about the edges sleep;
Swift-darting water-flies
Shoot on the surface; down the deep
Fast-following bubbles rise.
Look down. What groves that scarcely sway!
What "wood obscure," profound!
What jungle!--where some beast of prey
Might choose his vantage-ground!
* * * * *
Who knows what lurks beneath the tide?--
Who knows what tale? Belike,
Those "antres vast" and shadows hide
Some patriarchal Pike;--
Some tough old tyrant, wrinkle-jawed,
To whom the sky, the earth,
Have but for aim to look on awed
And see him wax in girth;--
Hard ruler there by right of might;
An ageless Autocrat,
Whose "good old rule" is "Appetite,
And subjects fresh and fat;"--
While they--poor souls!--in wan despair
Still watch for signs in him;
And dying, hand from heir to heir
The day undawned and dim,
When the pond's terror too must go;
Or creeping in by stealth,
Some bolder brood, with common blow,
Shall found a Commonwealth.
* * * * *
Or say,--perchance the liker this!--
That these themselves are gone;
That Amurath in minimis,--
Still hungry,--lingers on,
With dwindling trunk and wolfish jaw
Revolving sullen things,
But most the blind unequal law
That rules the food of Kings;--
The blot that makes the cosmic All
A mere time-honoured cheat;--
That bids the Great to eat the Small,
Yet lack the Small to eat!
* * * * *
Who knows! Meanwhile the mosses bead
Around the granite brink;
And 'twixt the isles of water-weed
The wood-birds dip and drink.
Copy Of An Intercepted Despatch.
by Thomas Moore

FROM HIS EXCELLENCY DON STREPITOSO DIABOLO, ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY TO HIS SATANIC MAJESTY.
St. James's Street, July 1, 1826.
Great Sir, having just had the good luck to catch
An official young demon, preparing to go,
Ready booted and spurred, with a black-leg despatch
From the Hell here at Crockford's, to our Hell below--
I write these few lines to your Highness Satanic,
To say that first having obeyed your directions
And done all the mischief I could in "the Panic,"
My next special care was to help the Elections.
Well knowing how dear were those times to thy soul,
When every good Christian tormented his brother,
And caused, in thy realm, such a saving of coal,
From all coming down, ready grilled by each other;
Remembering besides how it pained thee to part
With the old Penal Code--that chef-d'oeuvre of Law,
In which (tho' to own it too modest thou art)
We could plainly perceive the fine touch of thy claw;
I thought, as we ne'er can those good times revive,
(Tho' Eldon, with help from your Highness would try,)
'Twould still keep a taste for Hell's music alive,
Could we get up a thundering No-Popery cry;--
That yell which when chorused by laics and clerics,
So like is to ours, in its spirit and tone.
That I often nigh laugh myself into hysterics,
To think that Religion should make it her own.
So, having sent down for the original notes
Of the chorus as sung by your Majesty's choir
With a few pints of lava to gargle the throats
Of myself and some others who sing it "with fire,"[1]
Thought I, "if the Marseillais Hymn could command
"Such audience, tho' yelled by a Sans-culotte crew
"What wonders shall we do, who've men in our band,
"That not only wear breeches but petticoats too."
Such then were my hopes, but with sorrow, your Highness,
I'm forced to confess--be the cause what it will,
Whether fewness of voices or hoarseness or shyness,--
Our Beelzebub Chorus has gone off but ill.
The truth is no placeman now knows his right key,
The Treasury pitch-pipe of late is so various;
And certain base voices, that lookt for a fee
At the York music-meeting now think it precarious.
Even some of our Reverends might have been warmer,--
Tho' one or two capital roarers we've had;
Doctor Wise[2]is for instance a charming performer,
And Huntingdon Maberley's yell was not bad!
Altogether however the thing was not hearty;--
Even Eldon allows we got on but so so;
And when next we attempt a No-Popery party,
We must, please your Highness, recruit from below.
But hark! the young Black-leg is cracking his whip--
Excuse me, Great Sir-there's no time to be civil;--
The next opportunity shan't be let slip,
But, till then,
I'm, in haste, your most dutiful
DEVIL.
July, 1826
Dainty Dora
by Edward Smyth Jones

TO D. M. M.
Greeks once sang a lovely song
To their maiden Cora;
But my lay floats soft along
To my Dainty Dora.
Frenchmen sing of Anne Belle,
Romans sang of Flora;
But I sing my song to tell
Of my Dainty Dora.
Scotchmen sing their songs to move
Mary or Debora;
But I sing my song of love - 
Love for Dainty Dora.
Poets now a song may give
Psyche or Lenora;
But I'll sing long as I live
Just for Dainty Dora!
Greatness Lives Apart.
by Freeman Edwin Miller

Great natures live apart; the mountain gray
May call no comrade to his lonely side;
The giant ocean, wrapped in storm and spray,
Has no companion for her endless tide;
The forest monarch, where his parents died,
Can find no brother in his lofty sway,
And mighty rivers chafe their margins wide
Where infant rills and childish fountains play.
So heroes live; no raptured blossoms start
Where rugged heights of human glory end;
No tender songs of loving beauty blend
Their chorus in the great man's peerless heart;
Fate fills their souls with magnitude, and art
Supplies their lives with no congenial friend.
England, 1802 (III)
by William Wordsworth

Great men have been among us; hands that penn'd
And tongues that utter'd wisdom'better none:
The later Sidney, Marvel, Harrington,
Young Vane, and others who call'd Milton friend.
These moralists could act and comprehend:
They knew how genuine glory was put on;
Taught us how rightfully a nation shone
In splendour: what strength was, that would not bend
But in magnanimous meekness. France, 'tis strange,
Hath brought forth no such souls as we had then.
Perpetual emptiness! unceasing change!
No single volume paramount, no code,
No master spirit, no determined road;
But equally a want of books and men!
Peace Not Permanence
by Robert Herrick

Great cities seldom rest; if there be none
T' invade from far, they'll find worse foes at home.
Epigram
by Jonathan Swift

Great folks are of a finer mould;
Lord! how politely they can scold!
While a coarse English tongue will itch,
For whore and rogue, and dog and bitch.
The Reawakening
by Walter De La Mare

Green in light are the hills, and a calm wind flowing
Filleth the void with a flood of the fragrance of Spring;
Wings in this mansion of life are coming and going,
Voices of unseen loveliness carol and sing.
Coloured with buds of delight the boughs are swaying,
Beauty walks in the woods, and wherever she rove
Flowers from wintry sleep, her enchantment obeying,
Stir in the deep of her dream, reawaken to love.
Oh, now begone sullen care - this light is my seeing;
I am the palace, and mine are its windows and walls;
Daybreak is come, and life from the darkness of being
Springs, like a child from the womb, when the lonely one calls.