DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
To The States
by Walt Whitman

Why reclining, interrogating? Why myself and all drowsing?
What deepening twilight! scum floating atop of the waters!
Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the Capitol?
What a filthy Presidentiad! (O south, your torrid suns! O north, your arctic freezings!)
Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that the President?
Then I will sleep awhile yet for I see that These States sleep, for reasons;
(With gathering murk with muttering thunder and lambent shoots, we all duly awake,
South, north, east, west, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.)
Quid Non Supremus, Amantes?
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

Why is there in the least touch of her hands
More grace than other women's lips bestow,
If love is but a slave in fleshly bands
Of flesh to flesh, wherever love may go?
Why choose vain grief and heavy-hearted hours
For her lost voice, and dear remembered hair,
If love may cull his honey from all flowers,
And girls grow thick as violets, everywhere?
Nay! She is gone, and all things fall apart;
Or she is cold, and vainly have we prayed;
And broken is the summer's splendid heart,
And hope within a deep, dark grave is laid.
As man aspires and falls, yet a soul springs
Out of his agony of flesh at last,
So love that flesh enthralls, shall rise on wings
Soul-centred, when the rule of flesh is past.
Then, most High Love, or wreathed with myrtle sprays,
Or crownless and forlorn, nor less a star,
Thee may I serve and follow, all my days,
Whose thorns are sweet as never roses are!
By Henstridge Cross At The Year's End
by Thomas Hardy

Why go the east road now? . . .
That way a youth went on a morrow
After mirth, and he brought back sorrow
Painted upon his brow
Why go the east road now?
Why go the north road now?
Torn, leaf-strewn, as if scoured by foemen,
Once edging fiefs of my forefolk yeomen,
Fallows fat to the plough:
Why go the north road now?
Why go the west road now?
Thence to us came she, bosom-burning,
Welcome with joyousness returning . . .
She sleeps under the bough:
Why go the west road now?
Why go the south road now?
That way marched they some are forgetting,
Stark to the moon left, past regretting
Loves who have falsed their vow . . .
Why go the south road now?
Why go any road now?
White stands the handpost for brisk on-bearers,
"Halt!" is the word for wan-cheeked farers
Musing on Whither, and How . . .
Why go any road now?
"Yea: we want new feet now"
Answer the stones. "Want chit-chat, laughter:
Plenty of such to go hereafter
By our tracks, we trow!
We are for new feet now.
During the War.
The Bracelet To Julia
by Robert Herrick

Why I tie about thy wrist,
Julia, this silken twist;
For what other reason 'tis
But to show thee how, in part,
Thou my pretty captive art?
But thy bond slave is my heart:
'tis but silk that bindeth thee,
Knap the thread and thou art free;
But 'tis otherwise with me:
I am bound and fast bound, so
That from thee I cannot go;
If I could, I would not so.
Lollius
by Rudyard Kipling

Why gird at Lollius if he care
To purchase in the city's sight,
With nard and roses for his hair,
The name of Knight?
Son of unmitigated sires
Enriched by trade in Afric corn,
His wealth allows, his wife requires,
Him to be born.
Him slaves shall serve with zeal renewed
At lesser wage for longer whiles,
And school- and station-masters rude
Receive with smiles.
His bowels shall be sought in charge
By learned doctors; all his sons
And nubile daughters shall enlarge
Their horizons.
For fierce she-Britons, apt to smite
Their upward-climbing sisters down,
Shall smooth their plumes and oft invite
The brood to town.
For these delights will he disgorge
The State enormous benefice,
But, by the head of either George,
He pays not twice!
Whom neither lust for public pelf,
Nor itch to make orations, vex,
Content to honour his own self
With his own cheques,
That man is clean. At least, his house
Springs cleanly from untainted gold,
Not from a conscience or a spouse
Sold and resold.
Time was, you say, before men knew
Such arts, and rose by Virtue guided?
The tables rock with laughter, you
Not least derided.
Alfred Moir
by Edgar Lee Masters

Why was I not devoured by self-contempt,
And rotted down by indifference
And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones?
Why, with all of my errant steps
Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke?
And why, though I stood at Burchard's bar,
As a sort of decoy for the house to the boys
To buy the drinks, did the curse of drink
Fall on me like rain that runs off,
Leaving the soul of me dry and clean?
And why did I never kill a man Like Jack McGuire?
But instead I mounted a little in life,
And I owe it all to a book I read.
But why did I go to Mason City,
Where I chanced to see the book in a window,
With its garish cover luring my eye?
And why did my soul respond to the book,
As I read it over and over?
A Baby
by Madison Julius Cawein

Why speak of Rajah rubies,
And roses of the South?
I know a sweeter crimson
A baby's mouth.
Why speak of Sultan sapphires
And violet seas and skies?
I know a lovelier azure
A baby's eyes.
Go seek the wide world over!
Search every land and mart!
You 'll never find a pearl like this
A baby's heart.
Sonnet LX.[1]
by Anna Seward

Why view'st thou, Edwy, with disdainful mien
The little Naiad of the Downton Wave?
High 'mid the rocks, where her clear waters lave
The circling, gloomy basin. - In such scene,
Silent, sequester'd, few demand, I ween,
That last perfection Phidian chisels gave.
Dimly the soft and musing Form is seen
In the hush'd, shelly, shadowy, lone concave. - 
As sleeps her pure, tho' darkling fountain there,
I love to recollect her, stretch'd supine
Upon its mossy brink, with pendent hair,
As dripping o'er the flood. - Ah! well combine
Such gentle graces, modest, pensive, fair,
To aid the magic of her watry shrine.
1: The above Sonnet was addressed to a Friend, who had fastidiously despised, because he did not think it exquisite sculpture, the Statue of a Water-Nymph in Mr. Knight's singular, and beautiful Cold Bath at Downton Castle near Ludlow. It rises amidst a Rotunda, formed by Rocks, and covered with shells, and fossils, in the highest elevation of that mountainous and romantic Scene.
Why Should We Sigh
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Why should we sigh o'er a summer that's dead -
Let us think of the summer to be.
It always better to look ahead,
For the rose will come again just as red
And just as fair to see.
Why should we weep o'er a pleasure past -
Let us look for the pleasure to be.
New shells on the shore by new waves are cast;
Let us prize each new joy more than the last,
And laugh if the old joy flee.
What folly to die for a love that was -
Let us live for the one to be.
For time is passing, and will not pause;
How foolish the shore were it sad because
One wave ebbed out to sea.
Then let us not sing of a year that is fled -
Though dear its memory be:
For though summer and pleasure and love seem dead,
Love will be sweet, and the rose will be red
When they blossom for you and me.
The Poet's Theme
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Why should the poet of these pregnant times
Be asked to sing of war's unholy crimes?
To laud and eulogise the trade which thrives
On horrid holocausts of human lives?
Man was a fighting beast when earth was young,
And war the only theme when Homer sung.
'Twixt might and might the equal contest lay:
Not so the battles of our modern day.
Too often now the conquering hero struts,
A Gulliver among the Lilliputs.
Success no longer rests on skill or fate,
But on the movements of a syndicate.
Of old, men fought and deemed it right and just,
To-day the warrior fights because he must;
And in his secret soul feels shame because
He desecrates the higher manhood's laws.
Oh, there are worthier themes for poet's pen
In this great hour than bloody deeds of men:
The rights of many - not the worth of one - 
The coming issues, not the battle done;
The awful opulence and awful need - 
The rise of brotherhood - the fall of greed;
The soul of man replete with God's own force,
The call 'to heights,' and not the cry 'to horse.'
Are there not better themes in this great age
For pen of poet, or for voice of sage,
Than those old tales of killing?    Song is dumb
Only that greater song in time may come.
When comes the bard, he whom the world waits for,
He will not sing of War.
Song: To Sicknesse
by Ben Jonson

Why, Disease, dost thou molest
Ladies? and of them the best?
Do not men, ynow of rites
To thy altars, by their nights
Spent in surfets: and their dayes,
And nights too, in worser wayes?
Take heed, Sicknesse, what you do,
I shall feare, you'll surfet too.
Live not we, as, all thy stals,
Spittles, pest-house, hospitals,
Scarce will take our present store?
And this age will build no more:
'Pray thee, feed contented, then,
Sicknesse; only on us men.
Or if needs thy lust will taste
Woman-kind; devoure the waste
Livers, round about the town.
But forgive me, with thy crown
They maintaine the truest trade,
And have more diseases made.
What should, yet, thy pallat please?
Daintinesse, and softer ease,
Sleeked lims, and finest blood?
If thy leannesse love such food,
There are those, that, for thy sake,
Do enough; and who would take
Any paines; yea, think it price,
To become thy sacrifice.
That distill their husbands land
In decoctions; and are mann'd
With ten Emp'ricks, in their chamber,
Lying for the spirit of amber.
That for the oyle of Talck, dare spend
More than citizens dare lend
Them, and all their officers.
That to make all pleasure theirs,
Will by coach, and water go,
Every stew in towne to know;
Date entayle their loves on any,
Bald, or blind, or nere so many:
And, for thee at common game,
Play away, health, wealth, and fame.
These, disease, will thee deserve:
And will, long ere thou should'st starve,
On their bed most prostitute,
Move it, as their humblest sute,
In thy justice to molest
None but them, and leave the rest.
The Delaying Bride.
by Robert Herrick

Why so slowly do you move
To the centre of your love?
On your niceness though we wait,
Yet the hours say 'tis late:
Coyness takes us, to a measure;
But o'eracted deads the pleasure.
Go to bed, and care not when
Cheerful day shall spring again.
One brave captain did command,
By his word, the sun to stand:
One short charm, if you but say,
Will enforce the moon to stay,
Till you warn her hence, away,
T' have your blushes seen by day.
Upon Flimsey. Epig.
by Robert Herrick

Why walks Nick Flimsey like a malcontent!
Is it because his money all is spent?
No, but because the dingthrift now is poor,
And knows not where i' th' world to borrow more.
Cupid
by William Blake

Why was Cupid a boy,
And why a boy was he?
He should have been a girl,
For aught that I can see.
For he shoots with his bow,
And the girl shoots with her eye;
And they both are merry and glad,
And laugh when we do cry.
Then to make Cupid a boy
Was surely a woman's plan,
For a boy never learns so much
Till he has become a man.
And then he's so pierced with cares,
And wounded with arrowy smarts,
That the whole business of his life
Is to pick out the heads of the darts.
William Blake.
Chanson. - And Imitation
by Matthew Prior

Que fais tu bergere dans ce beau verger
Tu ne songe gueres a me soulager?
Tu connois ma flamme, tu vois ma langueur,
Prens belle inhumaine pitie de mon coeur.
Dequoy te plains tu malheureux berger?
Que n'ay je point fait pour te soulager!
J'ay quitte la plaine, mon troupeau, mon chien,
Prend on tat de peine quand on n'aime rien.
Imitation
Why thus from the plain does my sheperdess rove,
Forsaking her swain and neglecting his love?
You have heard all my grief, you see how I die,
Oh! give some relief to the swain whom you fly.
How can you complain, or what am I to say,
Since my dog lies unfed, and my sheep run astray?
Need I tell what I mean that I languish alone!
When I leave all the plain you may guess 'tis for one.
A Cameo.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Why speak of Giamschid rubies
Whence rosy starlight drips?
I know a richer crimson,
The ruby of her lips.
Why speak of pearls of Oman
That shells of ocean sheathe?
I know a purer nacre,
The white pearls of her teeth.
Why tell me of the sapphires
That Kings and Khalifs prize?
I know a lovelier azure,
The sapphires of her eyes.
Go search the far Earth over,
Go search the farthest sea,
You will not find a cameo
Like her God carved for me.
Why Was Cupid A Boy
by William Blake

Why was Cupid a boy,
And why a boy was he?
He should have been a girl,
For aught that I can see.
For he shoots with his bow,
And the girl shoots with her eye,
And they both are merry and glad,
And laugh when we do cry.
And to make Cupid a boy
Was the Cupid girl's mocking plan;
For a boy can't interpret the thing
Till he is become a man.
And then he's so pierc'd with cares,
And wounded with arrowy smarts,
That the whole business of his life
Is to pick out the heads of the darts.
'Twas the Greeks' love of war
Turn'd Love into a boy,
And woman into a statue of stone
And away fled every joy.
Not To Covet Much Where Little Is The Charge.
by Robert Herrick

Why should we covet much, whenas we know
W'ave more to bear our charge than way to go?
The Voices
by John Greenleaf Whittier

"Why urge the long, unequal fight,
Since Truth has fallen in the street,
Or lift anew the trampled light,
Quenched by the heedless million's feet?
"Give o'er the thankless task; forsake
The fools who know not ill from good:
Eat, drink, enjoy thy own, and take
Thine ease among the multitude.
"Live out thyself; with others share
Thy proper life no more; assume
The unconcern of sun and air,
For life or death, or blight or bloom.
"The mountain pine looks calmly on
The fires that scourge the plains below,
Nor heeds the eagle in the sun
The small birds piping in the snow!
"The world is God's, not thine; let Him
Work out a change, if change must be:
The hand that planted best can trim
And nurse the old unfruitful tree."
So spake the Tempter, when the light
Of sun and stars had left the sky;
I listened, through the cloud and night,
And heard, methought, a voice reply:
"Thy task may well seem over-hard,
Who scatterest in a thankless soil
Thy life as seed, with no reward
Save that which Duty gives to Toil.
"Not wholly is thy heart resigned
To Heaven's benign and just decree,
Which, linking thee with all thy kind,
Transmits their joys and griefs to thee.
"Break off that sacred chain, and turn
Back on thyself thy love and care;
Be thou thine own mean idol, burn
Faith, Hope, and Trust, thy children, there.
"Released from that fraternal law
Which shares the common bale and bliss,
No sadder lot could Folly draw,
Or Sin provoke from Fate, than this.
"The meal unshared is food unblest:
Thou hoard'st in vain what love should spend;
Self-ease is pain; thy only rest
Is labor for a worthy end;
"A toil that gains with what it yields,
And scatters to its own increase,
And hears, while sowing outward fields,
The harvest-song of inward peace.
"Free-lipped the liberal streamlets run,
Free shines for all the healthful ray;.
The still pool stagnates in the sun,
The lurid earth-fire haunts decay!
"What is it that the crowd requite
Thy love with hate, thy truth with lies?
And but to faith, and not to sight,
The walls of Freedom's temple rise?
"Yet do thy work; it shall succeed
In thine or in another's day;
And, if denied the victor's meed,
Thou shalt not lack the toiler's pay.
"Faith shares the future's promise; Love's
Self-offering is a triumph won;
And each good thought or action moves
The dark world nearer to the sun.
"Then faint not, falter not, nor plead
Thy weakness; truth itself is strong;
The lion's strength, the eagle's speed,
Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong.
"Thy nature, which, through fire and flood,
To place or gain finds out its way,
Hath power to seek the highest good,
And duty's holiest call obey!
"Strivest thou in darkness? Foes without
In league with traitor thoughts within;
Thy night-watch kept with trembling Doubt
And pale Remorse the ghost of Sin?
"Hast thou not, on some week of storm,
Seen the sweet Sabbath breaking fair,
And cloud and shadow, sunlit, form
The curtains of its tent of prayer?
"So, haply, when thy task shall end,
The wrong shall lose itself in right,
And all thy week-day darkness blend
With the long Sabbath of the light!
Jock Of Hazeldean
by Walter Scott (Sir)

"Why weep ye by the tide, ladie?
Why weep ye by the tide?
I'll wed ye to my youngest son,
And ye sall be his bride:
And ye sall be his bride, ladie,
Sae comely to be seen"
But aye she loot the tears down fa'
For Jock of Hazeldean.
"Now let this wilful grief be done,
And dry that cheek so pale;
Young Frank is chief of Errington,
And lord of Langley-dale;
His step is first in peaceful ha',
His sword in battle keen"
But aye she loot the tears down fa'
For Jock of Hazeldean.
"A chain of gold ye sall not lack,
Nor braid to bind your hair;
Nor mettled hound, nor managed hawk,
Nor palfrey fresh and fair;
And you, the foremost o' them a',
Shall ride our forest queen"
But aye she loot the tears down fa'
For Jock of Hazeldean.
The kirk was deck'd at morning-tide,
The tapers glimmer'd fair;
The priest and bridegroom wait the bride,
And dame and knight are there.
They sought her baith by bower and ha';
The ladie was not seen!
She's o'er the Border and awa'
Wi' Jock of Hazeldean
The Quebec Exodus.
by W. M. MacKeracher

Why should we leave the soil our fathers cleared,
And lifelong tilled with patient, loving hands?
Why should we leave the homes our fathers reared,
And seek strange dwellings in unhallowed lands?
Why should we leave the shrines where they revered
Their guardian God, and break the golden bands
That bind us to the ashes of our sires,
Their haunts, their hearthstones and their altar-fires?
Is it that now no longer from our doors
The forest stretches with its gloom profound?
That they who first set foot upon these shores
Increase and multiply and hedge us round,
Co-heritors of the exhaustless stores
Of natural wealth that more and more abound? - 
Because of brethren of a differing speech,
From whom we learn, and whom perhaps we teach?
It was not thus our conquering race arose;
It was not thus our copious language grew:
The Saxon mingled with his Celtic foes,
The Norman brought to both a spirit new.
Not thus we read th' heroic tale of those
Who built the younger Britains o'er the blue:
'Twas here and there a handful in the earth,
Prevailing, not by numbers, but by worth.
The Child's Music Lesson.
by Archibald Lampman

Why weep ye in your innocent toil at all?
Sweet little hands, why halt and tremble so?
Full many a wrong note falls, but let it fall!
Each note to me is like a golden glow;
Each broken cadence like a morning call;
Nay, clear and smooth I would not have you go,
Soft little hands, upon the curtained threshold set
Of this long life of labour, and unrestful fret.
Soft sunlight flickers on the checkered green:
Warm winds are stirring round my dreaming seat:
Among the yellow pumpkin blooms, that lean
Their crumpled rims beneath the heavy heat,
The strip'd bees in lazy labour glean
From bell to bell with golden-feathered feet;
Yet even here the voices of hard life go by;
Outside, the city strains with its eternal cry.
Here, as I sit - the sunlight on my face,
And shadows of green leaves upon mine eyes - 
My heart, a garden in a hidden place,
Is full of folded buds of memories.
Stray hither then with all your old time grace,
Child-voices, trembling from the uncertain keys;
Play on, ye little fingers, touch the settled gloom,
And quickly, one by one, my waiting buds will bloom.
Ah me, I may not set my feet again
In any part of that old garden dear,
Or pluck one widening blossom, for my pain;
But only at the wicket gaze I here:
Old scents creep into mine inactive brain,
Smooth scents of things, I may not come anear;
I see, far off, old beaten pathways they adorn;
I cannot feel with hands the blossom or the thorn.
Toil on, sweet hands; once more I see the child;
The little child, that was myself, appears,
And all the old-time beauties, undefined,
Shine back to me across the opening years,
Quick griefs, that made the tender bosom wild,
Short blinding gusts, that died in passionate tears,
Sweet life, with all its change, that now so happy seems,
With all its child-heart glories, and untutored dreams.
Play on into the golden sunshine so,
Sweeter than all great artists' labouring:
I too was like you once, an age ago:
God keep you, dimpled fingers, for you bring
Quiet gliding ghosts to me of joy and woe,
No certain things at all that thrill or sting,
But only sounds and scents and savours of things bright,
No joy or aching pain; but only dim delight.
The Ghost that Jim Saw
by Bret Harte (Francis)

Why, as to that, said the engineer,
Ghosts ain't things we are apt to fear;
Spirits don't fool with levers much,
And throttle-valves don't take to such;
And as for Jim,
What happened to him
Was one half fact, and t'other half whim!
Running one night on the line, he saw
A house as plain as the moral law
Just by the moonlit bank, and thence
Came a drunken man with no more sense
Than to drop on the rail
Flat as a flail,
As Jim drove by with the midnight mail.
Down went the patents steam reversed.
Too late! for there came a 'thud.' Jim cursed
As the fireman, there in the cab with him,
Kinder stared in the face of Jim,
And says, 'What now?'
Says Jim, 'What now!
I've just run over a man, that's how!'
The fireman stared at Jim. They ran
Back, but they never found house nor man,
Nary a shadow within a mile.
Jim turned pale, but he tried to smile,
Then on he tore
Ten mile or more,
In quicker time than he'd made afore.
Would you believe it! the very next night
Up rose that house in the moonlight white,
Out comes the chap and drops as before,
Down goes the brake and the rest encore;
And so, in fact,
Each night that act
Occurred, till folks swore Jim was cracked.
Humph! let me see; it's a year now, 'most,
That I met Jim, East, and says, 'How's your ghost?'
'Gone,' says Jim; 'and more, it's plain
That ghost don't trouble me again.
I thought I shook
That ghost when I took
A place on an Eastern line, but look!
'What should I meet, the first trip out,
But the very house we talked about,
And the selfsame man! 'Well,' says I, 'I guess
It's time to stop this 'yer foolishness.'
So I crammed on steam,
When there came a scream
From my fireman, that jest broke my dream:
''You've killed somebody!' Says I, 'Not much!
I've been thar often, and thar ain't no such,
And now I'll prove it!' Back we ran,
And darn my skin! but thar was a man
On the rail, dead,
Smashed in the head!
Now I call that meanness!' That's all Jim said.
To Julia. In Allusion To Some Illiberal Criticisms.
by Thomas Moore

Why, let the stingless critic chide
With all that fume of vacant pride
Which mantles o'er the pendant fool,
Like vapor on a stagnant pool.
Oh! if the song, to feeling true,
Can please the elect, the sacred few,
Whose souls, by Taste and Nature taught,
Thrill with the genuine pulse of thought--
If some fond feeling maid like thee,
The warm-eyed child of Sympathy,
Shall say, while o'er my simple theme
She languishes in Passion's dream,
"He was, indeed, a tender soul--
No critic law, no chill control,
Should ever freeze, by timid art,
The flowings of so fond a heart!"
Yes, soul of Nature! soul of Love!
That, hovering like a snow-winged dove,
Breathed o'er my cradle warblings wild,
And hailed me Passion's warmest child,--
Grant me the tear from Beauty's eye,
From Feeling's breast the votive sigh;
Oh! let my song, my memory find,
A shrine within the tender mind!
And I will smile when critics chide,
And I will scorn the fume of pride
Which mantles o'er the pendant fool,
Like vapor round some stagnant pool!
Robert Gould Shaw
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Why was it that the thunder voice of Fate
Should call thee, studious, from the classic groves,
Where calm-eyed Pallas with still footstep roves,
And charge thee seek the turmoil of the state?
What bade thee hear the voice and rise elate,
Leave home and kindred and thy spicy loaves,
To lead th' unlettered and despised droves
To manhood's home and thunder at the gate?
Far better the slow blaze of Learning's light,
The cool and quiet of her dearer fane,
Than this hot terror of a hopeless fight,
This cold endurance of the final pain,--
Since thou and those who with thee died for right
Have died, the Present teaches, but in vain!