DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Last Lap
by Rudyard Kipling

How do we know, by the bank-high river,
Where the mired and sulky oxen wait,
And it looks as though we might wait for ever,
How do we know that the floods abate?
There is no change in the current's brawling,
Louder and harsher the freshet scolds;
Yet we can feel she is falling, falling
And the more she threatens the less she holds,
Down to the drift, with no word spoken,
The wheel-chained wagons slither and slue....
Achtung! The back of the worst is broken!
And lash your leaders! we're through, we're through!
How do we know, when the port-fog holds us
Moored and helpless, a mile from the pier,
And the week-long summer smother enfolds us,
How do we know it is going to clear?
There is no break in the blindfold weather,
But, one and another, about the bay,
The unseen capstans clink together,
Getting ready to up and away.
A pennon whimpers, the breeze has found us,
A headsail jumps through the thinning haze.
The whole hull follows, till--broad around us,
The clean-swept ocean says: "Go your ways!"
How do we know, when the long fight rages,
On the old, stale front that we cannot shake,
And it looks as though we were locked for ages,
How do we know they are going to break?
There is no lull in the level firing,
Nothing has shifted except the sun.
Yet we can feel they are tiring, tiring,
Yet we can tell they are ripe to run.
Something wavers, and, while we wonder,
Their centre-trenches are emptying out,
And, before their useless flanks go under,
Our guns have pounded retreat to rout!
Geniality.
by Friedrich Schiller

How does the genius make itself known? In the way that in nature
Shows the Creator himself, e'en in the infinite whole.
Clear is the ether, and yet of depth that ne'er can be fathomed;
Seen by the eye, it remains evermore closed to the sense.
Judge Somers
by Edgar Lee Masters

How does it happen, tell me,
That I who was most erudite of lawyers,
Who knew Blackstone and Coke
Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech
The court-house ever heard, and wrote
A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese
How does it happen, tell me,
That I lie here unmarked, forgotten,
While Chase Henry, the town drunkard,
Has a marble block, topped by an urn
Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical,
Has sown a flowering weed?
How Doth The Little Crocodile
by Lewis Carroll

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!
Epigram, On Winning A Young Lady's Money At Cards.
by John Carr (Sir)

How fairly Fortune all her gifts imparts;
We win your money, Ann, and you our hearts.
Before The End
by Madison Julius Cawein

How does the Autumn in her mind conclude
The tragic masque her frosty pencil writes,
Broad on the pages of the days and nights,
In burning lines of orchard, wold, and wood?
What lonelier forms, that at the year's door stood
At spectral wait, with wildly wasted lights
Shall enter? and with melancholy rites
Inaugurate their sadder sisterhood?
Sorrow, who lifts a signal hand, and slow
The green leaf fevers, falling ere it dies;
Regret, whose pale lips summon, and gaunt Woe
Wakes the wild-wind harps with sonorous sighs;
And Sleep, who sits with poppied eyes and sees
The earth and sky grow dream-accessories.
I Am Happy When I Do Right.
by H. P. Nichols

How glad it makes me feel at night,
When sitting on my mother's knee,
To hear her whisper "You've done right,
And tried my gentle child to be."
But then I feel ashamed and sad
If I've been cross and disobeyed,
Or if my selfish way I've had
When I with other children played.
So if at night I'd call to mind
A day of undisturbed delight,
The only way that I can find
Is to be loving and do right.
A St. Helena Lullaby
by Rudyard Kipling

"A Priest in Spite of Himself"
"How far is St. Helena from a little child at play!"
What makes you want to wander there with all the world between.
Oh, Mother, call your son again or else he'll run away.
(No one thinks of winter when the grass is green!)
"How far is St. Helena from a fight in Paris street?"
I haven't time to answer now, the men are falling fast.
The guns begin to thunder, and the drums begin to beat.
(If you take the first step, you will take the last!)
"How far is St. Helena from the field of Austerlitz?"
You couldn't hear me if I told, so loud the cannons roar.
But not so far for people who are living by their wits.
("Gay go up" means "Gay go down" the wide world o'er!)
"How far is St. Helena from the Emperor of France."
I cannot see, I cannot tell, the Crowns they dazzle so.
The Kings sit down to dinner, and the Queens stand up to dance.
(After open whether you may look for snow!)
"How far is St. Helena from the Capes of Trafalgar?"
A longish way, longish way,with ten more to run.
It's South across the water underneath a falling star.
(What you cannot finish you must leave undone!)
"How fair is St. Helena from the Beresina ice?"
An ill way,a chill way, the ice begins to crack.
But not so far for gentlemen who never took advice.
(When you can't go forward you must e'en come back!)
"How far is St. Helena from the field of Waterloo?"
A near way,a clear way,the ship will take you soon.
A pleasant place for gentlemen with little left to do.
(Morning never tries you till the afternoon!)
"How far from St. Helena to the Gate of Heaven's Grace?"
That no one knows, that no one knows, and no one ever will.
But fold your hands across your heart and cover up your face,
And after all your trapesings, child, lie still!
Translations. - The Metaphysician. (From Schiller.)
by George MacDonald

"How far the world lies under me!
Scarce can I see the men below there crawling!
How high it bears me up, my lofty calling!
How near the heavenly canopy!"
Thus, from tower-roof where he doth clamber,
Calls out the slater; and with him the small big man,
Jack Metaphysicus, down in his writing-chamber!
Tell me, thou little great big man,--
The tower, whence thou so grandly all things hast inspected,
Of what is it?--Whereon is it erected?
How cam'st thou up thyself? Its heights so smooth and bare--
How serve they thee but thence into the vale to stare?
Mangroves
by Paul Cameron Brown

How do you survive
in the mangrove swamps - 
amid the twitchings of fetid water
& water lice thick as baby tears?
How, with all the wallow of thick muck
making suction noises and the teams in relays
searching nightly with baited hounds, do you pull free?
Your bamboo pole knows every ploy
but is a slender craft ill-equipped
to sparring blows from every quarter,
the undergrowth necessitates.
The closeness of the clammy night
heaved about like so much rotting fruit will draw
the ants . . . devouring like that abundance of cold, yellow eyes - 
the firefly swarms that mock your heavy steel machete arm.
Across the drift of darkness
and the insect life
you bat in swarms,
the ultimate danger is not in the cayman giant
or his reptilian cousin named of copper wire,
the Anaconda; or even mindless holes, thick black
ooze that throttles a victim . . . but the two legged form coming,
searching . . . a spectre on hind quarters with a bolo knife stepping
free of that beaded circle, the inner camp.
The Connecting Medium.
by Friedrich Schiller

How does nature proceed to unite the high and the lowly
In mankind? She commands vanity 'tween them to stand!
A Paraphrase III
by Eugene Field

How happens it, my cruel miss,
You're always giving me the mitten?
You seem to have forgotten this:
That you no longer are a kitten!
A woman that has reached the years
Of that which people call discretion
Should put aside all childish fears
And see in courtship no transgression.
A mother's solace may be sweet,
But Hymen's tenderness is sweeter;
And though all virile love be meet,
You'll find the poet's love is metre.
Ebb And Flow.
by Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey)

How easily He turns the tides!
Just now the yellow beach was dry,
Just now the gaunt rocks all were bare,
The sun beat hot, and thirstily
Each sea-weed waved its long brown hair,
And bent and languished as in pain;
Then, in a flashing moment's space,
The white foam-feet which spurned the sand
Paused in their joyous outward race,
Wheeled, wavered, turned them to the land,
And, a swift legionary band,
Poured oil the waiting shores again.
How easily He turns the tides!
The fulness of my yesterday
Has vanished like a rapid dream,
And pitiless and far away
The cool, refreshing waters gleam:
Grim rocks of dread and doubt and pain
Rear their dark fronts where once was sea;
But I can smile and wait for Him
Who turns the tides so easily,
Fills the spent rock-pool to its brim,
And up from the horizon dim
Leads His bright morning waves again.
How Does Love Speak?
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

How does Love speak?
In the faint flush upon the tell-tale cheek,
And in the pallor that succeeds it; by
The quivering lid of an averted eye - 
The smile that proves the parent of a sigh:
Thus doth Love speak.
How does Love speak?
By the uneven heart-throbs, and the freak
Of bounding pulses that stand still and ache
While new emotions, like strange barges, make
Along vein-channels their disturbing course,
Still as the dawn, and with the dawn's swift force:
Thus doth Love speak.
How does Love speak?
In the avoidance of that which we seek
The sudden silence and reserve when near;
The eye that glistens with an unshed tear;
The joy that seems the counterpart of fear,
As the alarmed heart leads in the breast,
And knows, and names, and greets its godlike guest:
Thus doth Love speak.
How does Love speak?
In the proud spirit suddenly grown meek,
The haughty heart grown humble; in the tender
And unnamed light that floods the world with splendour;
In the resemblance which the fond eyes trace
In all fair things to one beloved face;
In the shy touch of hands that thrill and tremble;
In looks and lips that can no more dissemble:
Thus doth Love speak.
How does Love speak?
In wild words that uttered seem so weak
They shrink ashamed to silence; in the fire
Glance strikes with glance, swift flashing high and higher,
Like lightnings that precede the mighty storm
In the deep, soulful stillness; in the warm,
Impassioned tide that sweeps thro' throbbing veins,
Between the shores of keen delights and pains;
In the embrace where madness melts in bliss,
And in the convulsive rapture of a kiss:
Thus doth Love speak.
Nursery Rhyme. DCLIX. Relics.
by Unknown

How do you do, neighbour?
Neighbour, how do you do?
I am pretty well,
And how does Cousin Sue do?
She's pretty well,
And sends her duty to you,
So does bonnie Nell.
Good lack, how does she do?
To-Morrow! To-Morrow!
by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

How empty, dull, and useless is almost every day when it is spent! How few the traces it leaves behind it! How meaningless, how foolish those hours as they coursed by one after another!
And yet it is man's wish to exist; he prizes life, he rests hopes on it, on himself, on the future.... Oh, what blessings he looks for from the future!
But why does he imagine that other coming days will not be like this day he has just lived through?
Nay, he does not even imagine it. He likes not to think at all, and he does well.
'Ah, to-morrow, to-morrow!' he comforts himself, till 'to-morrow' pitches him into the grave.
Well, and once in the grave, thou hast no choice, thou doest no more thinking.
May 1879.
Love's Language.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

How does Love speak?
In the faint flush upon the tell-tale cheek,
And in the pallor that succeeds it; by
The quivering lid of an averted eye - 
The smile that proves the patent to a sigh - 
Thus doth Love speak.
How does Love speak?
By the uneven heart-throbs, and the freak
Of bounding pulses that stand still and ache,
While new emotions, like strange barges, make
Along vein-channels their disturbing course;
Still as the dawn, and with the dawn's swift force - 
Thus doth Love speak.
How does Love speak?
In the avoidance of that which we seek - 
The sudden silence and reserve when near - 
The eye that glistens with an unshed tear - 
The joy that seems the counterpart of fear,
As the alarmed heart leaps in the breast,
And knows and names and greets its godlike guest - 
Thus doth Love speak.
How does Love speak?
In the proud spirit suddenly grown meek - 
The haughty heart grown humble; in the tender
And unnamed light that floods the world with splendor;
In the resemblance which the fond eyes trace
In all fair things to one beloved face;
In the shy touch of hands that thrill and tremble;
In looks and lips that can no more dissemble - 
Thus doth Love speak.
How does Love speak?
In the wild words that uttered seem so weak
They shrink ashamed to silence; in the fire
Glance strikes with glance, swift flashing high and higher
Like lightnings that precede the mighty storm;
In the deep, soulful stillness; in the warm,
Impassioned tide that sweeps through throbbing veins
Between the shores of keen delight and pains;
In the embrace where madness melts in bliss,
And in the convulsive rapture of a kiss - 
Thus doth Love speak.
May Song.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

How fair doth Nature
Appear again!
How bright the sunbeams!
How smiles the plain!
The flow'rs are bursting
From ev'ry bough,
And thousand voices
Each bush yields now.
And joy and gladness
Fill ev'ry breast!
Oh earth! oh sunlight!
Oh rapture blest!
Oh love! oh loved one!
As golden bright,
As clouds of morning
On yonder height!
Thou blessest gladly
The smiling field, 
The world in fragrant
Vapour conceal'd.
Oh maiden, maiden,
How love I thee!
Thine eye, how gleams it!
How lov'st thou me!
The blithe lark loveth
Sweet song and air,
The morning flow'ret
Heav'n's incense fair,
As I now love thee
With fond desire,
For thou dost give me
Youth, joy, and fire,
For new-born dances
And minstrelsy.
Be ever happy,
As thou lov'st me!
My Lady's Garden
by Walter Crane

How does my lady's garden grow?
How does my lady's garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row!
The Year's Awakening
by Thomas Hardy

How do you know that the pilgrim track
Along the belting zodiac
Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds
Is traced by now to the Fishes' bounds
And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud
Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud,
And never as yet a tinct of spring
Has shown in the Earth's apparelling;
O vespering bird, how do you know,
How do you know?
How do you know, deep underground,
Hid in your bed from sight and sound,
Without a turn in temperature,
With weather life can scarce endure,
That light has won a fraction's strength,
And day put on some moments' length,
Whereof in merest rote will come,
Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb;
O crocus root, how do you know,
How do you know?
February 1910.
Sonnet. To Hope.
by Thomas Gent

How droops the wretch whom adverse fates pursue,
While sad experience, from his aching sight
Sweeps the fair prospects of unproved delight,
Which flattering friends and flattering fancies drew.
When want assails his solitary shed,
When dire distraction's horrent eye-ball glares,
Seen 'midst the myriad of tumultuous cares,
That shower their shafts on his devoted head.
Then, ere despair usurp his vanquish'd heart,
Is there a power, whose influence benign
Can bid his head in pillow'd peace recline,
And from his breast withdraw the barbed dart?
There is--sweet Hope! misfortune rests on thee--
Unswerving anchor of humanity!
The Contented Man
by Robert William Service

"How good God is to me," he said;
"For have I not a mansion tall,
With trees and lawns of velvet tread,
And happy helpers at my call?
With beauty is my life abrim,
With tranquil hours and dreams apart;
You wonder that I yield to Him
That best of prayers, a grateful heart?"
"How good God is to me," he said;
"For look! though gone is all my wealth,
How sweet it is to earn one's bread
With brawny arms and brimming health.
Oh, now I know the joy of strife!
To sleep so sound, to wake so fit.
Ah yes, how glorious is life!
I thank Him for each day of it."
"How good God is to me," he said;
"Though health and wealth are gone, it's true;
Things might be worse, I might be dead,
And here I'm living, laughing too.
Serene beneath the evening sky
I wait, and every man's my friend;
God's most contented man am I . . .
He keeps me smiling to the End."
A Fleeting Glimpse Of A Village.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Tout vit! et se pose avec gr'ce.")
How graceful the picture! the life, the repose!
The sunbeam that plays on the porchstone wide;
And the shadow that fleets o'er the stream that flows,
And the soft blue sky with the hill's green side.
Fraser's Magazine.
Eyes: A Fragment.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

How eloquent are eyes!
Not the rapt poet's frenzied lay
When the soul's wildest feelings stray
Can speak so well as they.
How eloquent are eyes!
Not music's most impassioned note
On which Love's warmest fervours float
Like them bids rapture rise.
Love, look thus again, -
That your look may light a waste of years,
Darting the beam that conquers cares
Through the cold shower of tears.
Love, look thus again!
Loveliness
by Madison Julius Cawein

How good it is, when overwrought,
To seek the woods and find a thought,
That to the soul's attentive sense
Delivers much in evidence
Of truths for which man long has sought
Truths, which no vulture years contrive
To rob the heart of, holding it
To all the glory infinite
Of beauty that shall aye survive.
Still shall it lure us. Year by year
Addressing now the spirit ear
With thoughts, and now the spirit eye
With visions that like gods go by,
Filling the mind with bliss and fear
In spite of modern man who mocks
The Loveliness of old, nor minds
The ancient myths, gone with the winds,
And dreams that people woods and rocks.
Upon Julia Washing Herself In The River.
by Robert Herrick

How fierce was I, when I did see
My Julia wash herself in thee!
So lilies thorough crystal look:
So purest pebbles in the brook:
As in the river Julia did,
Half with a lawn of water hid.
Into thy streams myself I threw,
And struggling there, I kiss'd thee too;
And more had done, it is confess'd,
Had not thy waves forbade the rest.
The Flight
by Walter De La Mare

How do the days press on, and lay
Their fallen locks at evening down,
Whileas the stars in darkness play
And moonbeams weave a crown - 
A crown of flower-like light in heaven,
Where in the hollow arch of space
Morn's mistress dreams, and the Pleiads seven
Stand watch about her place.
Stand watch - O days no number keep
Of hours when this dark clay is blind.
When the world's clocks are dumb in sleep
'Tis then I seek my kind.
Spirit Love.
by Eric Mackay

How great my joy! How grand my recompense!
I bow to thee; I keep thee in my sight.
I call thee mine, in love though not in sense
I share with thee the hermitage immense
Of holy dreams which come to us at night,
When, through the medium of the spirit-lens
We see the soul, in its primeval light,
And Reason spares the hopes it cannot blight.
It is the soul of thee, and not the form,
And not the face, I yearn-to in my sleep.
It is thyself. The body is the storm,
The soul the star beyond it in the deep
Of Nature's calm. And yonder on the steep
The Sun of Faith, quiescent, round, and warm!
Two-Fold
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

How gorgeous that shock of red lilies, and larkspur cleaving
All with a flash of blue! - when will she be leaving
Her room, where the night still hangs like a half- folded bat,
And passion unbearable seethes in the darkness, like must in a vat.
Comfort In Tears.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

How happens it that thou art sad,
While happy all appear?
Thine eye proclaims too well that thou
Hast wept full many a tear.
"If I have wept in solitude,
None other shares my grief,
And tears to me sweet balsam are,
And give my heart relief."
Thy happy friends invite thee now, 
Oh come, then, to our breast!
And let the loss thou hast sustain'd
Be there to us confess'd!
"Ye shout, torment me, knowing not
What 'tis afflicteth me;
Ah no! I have sustained no loss,
Whate'er may wanting be."
If so it is, arise in haste!
Thou'rt young and full of life.
At years like thine, man's blest with strength.
And courage for the strife.
"Ah no! in vain 'twould be to strive,
The thing I seek is far;
It dwells as high, it gleams as fair
As yonder glitt'ring star."
The stars we never long to clasp,
We revel in their light,
And with enchantment upward gaze,
Each clear and radiant night.
"And I with rapture upward gaze,
On many a blissful day;
Then let me pass the night in tears,
Till tears are wip'd away!
Solitude: An Ode
by Alexander Pope

I.
How happy he, who free from care
The rage of courts, and noise of towns;
Contented breaths his native air,
In his own grounds.
II.
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.
III.
Blest! who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide swift away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,
IV.
Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix'd; sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.
V.
Thus let me live, unheard, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me dye;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lye.
The Companions
by Alfred Noyes

How few are they that voyage through the night
On that eternal quest,
For that strange light beyond our light,
That rest beyond our rest.
And they who, seeking beauty, once descry
Her face, to most unknown;
Thenceforth like changelings from the sky
Must walk their road alone.
So once I dreamed. So idle was my mood;
But now, before these eyes,
From those foul trenches, black with blood,
What radiant legions rise!
And loveliness over the wounded earth awakes
Like wild-flowers in the Spring.
Out of the mortal chrysalis breaks
Immortal wing on wing.
They rise like flowers, they wander on wings of light,
Through realms beyond our ken.
The loneliest soul is companied tonight
By hosts of unknown men.
To The Right Honourable Philip, Earl Of Pembroke And Montgomery.
by Robert Herrick

How dull and dead are books that cannot show
A prince of Pembroke, and that Pembroke you!
You who are high born, and a lord no less
Free by your fate than fortune's mightiness,
Who hug our poems, honour'd sir, and then
The paper gild and laureate the pen.
Nor suffer you the poets to sit cold,
But warm their wits and turn their lines to gold.
Others there be who righteously will swear
Those smooth-paced numbers amble everywhere,
And these brave measures go a stately trot;
Love those, like these, regard, reward them not.
But you, my lord, are one whose hand along
Goes with your mouth or does outrun your tongue;
Paying before you praise, and, cockering wit,
Give both the gold and garland unto it.
The Maiden Speaks.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

How grave thou loookest, loved one! wherefore so?
Thy marble image seems a type of thee;
Like it, no sign of life thou giv'st to me;
Compared with thee, the stone appears to glow.
Behind his shield in ambush lurks the foe,
The friend's brow all-unruffled we should see.
I seek thee, but thou seek'st away to flee;
Fix'd as this sculptured figure, learn to grow!
Tell me, to which should I the preference pay?
Must I from both with coldness meet alone?
The one is lifeless, thou with life art blest.
In short, no longer to throw words away,
I'll fondy kiss and kiss and kiss this stone,
Till thou dost tear me hence with envious breast.
How Fast The Year Is Going By
by Richard Le Gallienne

How fast the year is going by!
Love, it will be September soon;
O let us make the best of June.
Already, love, it is July;
The rose and honeysuckle go,
And all too soon will come the snow.
Dark berries take the place of flowers,
Of summer August still remains,
Then sad September with her rains.
O love, how short a year is ours - 
So swiftly does the summer fly,
Scarce time is left to say goodbye.
How Great My Grief - (Triolet)
by Thomas Hardy

How great my grief, my joys how few,
Since first it was my fate to know thee!
- Have the slow years not brought to view
How great my grief, my joys how few,
Nor memory shaped old times anew,
Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee
How great my grief, my joys how few,
Since first it was my fate to know thee?