DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Old Rhythm And Rhyme
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

They tell me new methods now govern the Muses,
The modes of expression have changed with the times;
That low is the rank of the poet who uses
The old-fashioned verse with intentional rhymes.
And quite out of date, too, is rhythmical metre;
The critics declare it an insult to art.
But oh! the sweet swing of it, oh! the clear ring of it,
Oh the great pulse of it, right from the heart,
Art or no art.
I sat by the side of that old poet, Ocean,
And counted the billows that broke on the rocks;
The tide lilted in with a rhythmical motion;
The sea-gulls dipped downward in time-keeping flocks.
I watched while a giant wave gathered its forces,
And then on the gray granite precipice burst;
And I knew as I counted, while other waves mounted,
I knew the tenth billow would rhyme with the first.
Below in the village a church bell was chiming,
And back in the woodland a little bird sang;
And, doubt it who will, yet those two sounds were rhyming,
As out o'er the hill-tops they echoed and rang.
The Wind and the Trees fell to talking together;
And nothing they said was didactic or terse;
But everything spoken was told in unbroken
And beautiful rhyming and rhythmical verse.
So rhythm I hail it, though critics assail it,
And hold melting rhymes as an insult to art,
For oh! the sweet swing of it, oh! the dear ring of it,
Oh! the strong pulse of it, right from the heart,
Art or no art.
Sad Memories.
by Charles Stuart Calverley

They tell me I am beautiful: they praise my silken hair,
My little feet that silently slip on from stair to stair:
They praise my pretty trustful face and innocent grey eye;
Fond hands caress me oftentimes, yet would that I might die!
Why was I born to be abhorr'd of man and bird and beast?
The bulfinch marks me stealing by, and straight his song hath ceased;
The shrewmouse eyes me shudderingly, then flees; and, worse than that,
The housedog he flees after me - why was I born a cat?
Men prize the heartless hound who quits dry-eyed his native land;
Who wags a mercenary tail and licks a tyrant hand.
The leal true cat they prize not, that if e'er compell'd to roam
Still flies, when let out of the bag, precipitately home.
They call me cruel. Do I know if mouse or songbird feels?
I only know they make me light and salutary meals:
And if, as 'tis my nature to, ere I devour I tease 'em,
Why should a low-bred gardener's boy pursue me with a besom?
Should china fall or chandeliers, or anything but stocks -
Nay stocks, when they're in flowerpots - the cat expects hard knocks:
Should ever anything be missed - milk, coals, umbrellas, brandy -
The cat's pitch'd into with a boot or any thing that's handy.
"I remember, I remember," how one night I "fleeted by,"
And gain'd the blessed tiles and gazed into the cold clear sky.
"I remember, I remember, how my little lovers came;"
And there, beneath the crescent moon, play'd many a little game.
They fought - by good St. Catharine, 'twas a fearsome sight to see
The coal-black crest, the glowering orbs, of one gigantic He.
Like bow by some tall bowman bent at Hastings or Poictiers,
His huge back curved, till none observed a vestige of his ears:
He stood, an ebon crescent, flouting that ivory moon;
Then raised the pibroch of his race, the Song without a Tune;
Gleam'd his white teeth, his mammoth tail waved darkly to and fro,
As with one complex yell he burst, all claws, upon the foe.
It thrills me now, that final Miaow - that weird unearthly din:
Lone maidens heard it far away, and leap'd out of their skin.
A potboy from his den o'erhead peep'd with a scared wan face;
Then sent a random brickbat down, which knock'd me into space.
Nine days I fell, or thereabouts: and, had we not nine lives,
I wis I ne'er had seen again thy sausage-shop, St. Ives!
Had I, as some cats have, nine tails, how gladly I would lick
The hand, and person generally, of him who heaved that brick!
For me they fill the milkbowl up, and cull the choice sardine:
But ah! I nevermore shall be the cat I once have been!
The memories of that fatal night they haunt me even now:
In dreams I see that rampant He, and tremble at that Miaow.
A Ballade Of The Unborn Dead
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

They walked the valley of the dead;
Lit by a weird half light;
No sound they made, no word they said;
And they were pale with fright.
Then suddenly from unseen places came
Loud laughter, that was like a whip of flame.
They looked, and saw, beyond, above,
A land where wronged souls wait;
(Those spirits called to earth by love,
And driven back by hate).
And each one stood in anguish dumb and wild,
As she beheld the phantom of her child.
Yea, saw the soul her wish had hurled
Out into night and death;
Before it reached the Mother world,
Or drew its natal breath.
And terrified, each hid her face and fled
Beyond the presence of her unborn dead.
And God's Great Angel, who provides
Souls for our mortal land,
Laughed, with the laughter that derides,
At that fast fleeing band
Of self-made barren women of the earth.
(Hell has no curse that withers like such mirth.)
'O Angel, tell us who were they,
That down below us fared;
Those shapes with faces strained and grey,
And eyes that stared and stared;
Something there was about them, gave us fear;
Yet are we lonely, now they are not here.'
Thus spake the spectral children; thus
The Angel made reply:
'They have no part or share with us;
They were but passers-by.'
'But may we pray for them?' the phantoms plead.
'Yea, for they need your prayers,' the Angel said.
They went upon their lonely way;
(Far, far from Paradise);
Their path was lit with one wan ray
From ghostly children's eyes;
The little children who were never born;
And as they passed, the Angel laughed in scorn.
Tobacco Next
by Richard Le Gallienne

They took away your drink from you,
The kind old humanizing glass;
Soon they will take tobacco too,
And next they'll take our demi-tasse.
Don't say, "The bill will never pass,"
Nor this my warning word disdain;
You said it once, you silly ass - 
Don't make the same mistake again.
We know them now, the bloodless crew,
We know them all too well, alas!
There's nothing that they wouldn't do
To make the world a Bible class;
Though against bottled beer or Bass
I search the sacred text in vain
To find a whisper - by the Mass!
Don't make the same mistake again.
Beware these legislators blue,
Pouring their moral poison-gas
On all the joys our fathers knew;
The very flowers in the grass
Are safe no more, and, lad and lass,
'Ware the old birch-rod and the cane!
Here comes our modern Hudibras! - 
Don't make the same mistake again.
ENVOI
Prince, vanished is the rail of brass,
So mark me well and my refrain - 
Tobacco next! you silly ass,
Don't make the same mistake again.
The Tossing Mountains
by John Frederick Freeman

They were like dreams that in a drowsy hour
A sad old God had dreamed in loneliness of power.
They were like dreams that in his drowsy mind
Rose slowly and then, darkening, made him wise and blind--
So that he saw no more the level sun,
Nor the small solid shadow of unclouded noon.
The dark green heights rose slowly from the green
Of the dark water till the sky was narrowly seen;
Only at night the lifting walls were still,
And stars were bright and calm above each calm dark hill.
... I could not think but that a God grown old
Saw in a dream or waking all this round of bold
And wavelike hills, and knew them but a thought,
Or but a wave uptost and poised awhile then caught
Back to the sea with waves a million more
That rise and pause and break at last upon the shore.
A God, a God saw first those hills that I
Saw now immense upholding the starry crowded sky:
His breath the mist that clung their shoulders round,
His slow unconscious sigh that easeless floating sound.
Ere mine his thought failed under each rough height
And then was brave, seeing the stars climb calm and bright.
Ere they were named he named them in his mood,
Like varying children of one giant warring brood--
Broad-Foot, Cloud-Gatherer, Long-Back, Winter-Head,
Bravery and Bright-Face and that long Home of the Dead;
And their still waters glittering in his glance
Named Buckler, Silver Dish, Two Eyes and Shining Lance,
Names unrecorded, but the circling wind
Remembers and repeats them to the listening mind....
That mind was mine. At Shining Lance I stared
Between Long-Back and Winter-Head as the new sun bared
The Lake and heights of shadow and the wan gold
Deepened and new warmth came into the light's sharp cold.
And the near trees shivered no more but shook
Their music over Shining Lance; and the excited brook
Freshened in the sun's eye and tossed his spray
High and sparkling, and then sprang dancing, dancing away.
But Winter-Head and Long-Back, gravely bright,
Stood firm as if for ever and a day and a night--
As they were more than a wave before 'tis caught
Back to the tossing tide, more than a flying thought,
More than a dream that an old God once dreamed
When visionary not at all visionary seemed.
They Tell Me Thou'rt The Favored Guest.
by Thomas Moore

They tell me thou'rt the favored guest
Of every fair and brilliant throng;
No wit like thine to wake the jest,
No voice like thine to breathe the song;
And none could guess, so gay thou art,
That thou and I are far apart.
Alas! alas! how different flows
With thee and me the time away!
Not that I wish thee sad--heaven knows--
Still if thou canst, be light and gay;
I only know, that without thee
The sun himself is dark to me.
Do I thus haste to hall and bower,
Among the proud and gay to shine?
Or deck my hair with gem and flower,
To flatter other eyes than thine?
Ah, no, with me love's smiles are past
Thou hadst the first, thou hadst the last.
To The Invisible Girl.
by Thomas Moore

They try to persuade me, my dear little sprite,
That you're not a true daughter of ether and light,
Nor have any concern with those fanciful forms
That dance upon rainbows and ride upon storms;
That, in short, you're a woman; your lip and your eye
As mortal as ever drew gods from the sky.
But I will not believe them--no, Science, to you
I have long bid a last and a careless adieu:
Still flying from Nature to study her laws,
And dulling delight by exploring its cause,
You forget how superior, for mortals below,
Is the fiction they dream to the truth that they know.
Oh! who, that has e'er enjoyed rapture complete,
Would ask how we feel it, or why it is sweet;
How rays are confused, or how particles fly
Through the medium refined of a glance or a sigh;
Is there one, who but once would not rather have known it,
Than written, with Harvey, whole volumes upon it?
As for you, my sweet-voiced and invisible love,
You must surely be one of those spirits, that rove
By the bank where, at twilight, the poet reclines,
When the star of the west on his solitude shines,
And the magical fingers of fancy have hung
Every breeze with a sigh, every leaf with a tongue.
Oh! hint to him then, 'tis retirement alone
Can hallow his harp or ennoble its tone;
Like you, with a veil of seclusion between,
His song to the world let him utter unseen,
And like you, a legitimate child of the spheres,
Escape from the eye to enrapture the ears.
Sweet spirit of mystery! how I should love,
In the wearisome ways I am fated to rove,
To have you thus ever invisibly nigh,
Inhaling for ever your song and your sigh!
Mid the crowds of the world and the murmurs of care,
I might sometimes converse with my nymph of the air,
And turn with distaste from the clamorous crew,
To steal in the pauses one whisper from you.
Then, come and be near me, for ever be mine,
We shall hold in the air a communion divine,
As sweet as, of old, was imagined to dwell
In the grotto of Numa, or Socrates' cell.
And oft, at those lingering moments of night,
When the heart's busy thoughts have put slumber to flight,
You shall come to my pillow and tell me of love,
Such as angel to angel might whisper above.
Sweet spirit!--and then, could you borrow the tone
Of that voice, to my ear like some fairy-song known,
The voice of the one upon earth, who has twined
With her being for ever my heart and my mind,
Though lonely and far from the light of her smile,
An exile, and weary and hopeless the while,
Could you shed for a moment her voice on my ear.
I will think, for that moment, that Cara is near;
That she comes with consoling enchantment to speak,
And kisses my eyelid and breathes on my cheek,
And tells me the night shall go rapidly by,
For the dawn of our hope, of our heaven is nigh.
Fair spirit! if such be your magical power,
It will lighten the lapse of full many an hour;
And, let fortune's realities frown as they will,
Hope, fancy, and Cara may smile for me still.
Mutation. - A Sonnet.
by William Cullen Bryant

They talk of short-lived pleasure, be it so,
Pain dies as quickly: stern, hard-featured pain
Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go.
The fiercest agonies have shortest reign;
And after dreams of horror, comes again
The welcome morning with its rays of peace;
Oblivion, softly wiping out the stain,
Makes the strong secret pangs of shame to cease:
Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase
Are fruits of innocence and blessedness:
Thus joy, o'erborne and bound, doth still release
His young limbs from the chains that round him press.
Weep not that the world changes, did it keep
A stable, changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.
For He Was Scotch, And So Was She.
by Jean Blewett

They were a couple well content
With what they earned and what they spent,
Cared not a whit for style's decree - 
For he was Scotch, and so was she.
And oh, they loved to talk of Burns - 
Dear blithesome, tender Bobby Burns!
They never wearied of his song,
He never sang a note too strong.
One little fault could neither see - 
For he was Scotch, and so was she.
They loved to read of men who stood
And gave for country life and blood,
Who held their faith so grand a thing
They scorned to yield it to a king.
Ah, proud of such they well might be - 
For he was Scotch, and so was she.
From neighbors' broils they kept away;
No liking for such things had they,
And oh, each had a canny mind,
And could be deaf, and dumb, and blind.
With words or pence was neither free - 
For he was Scotch, and so was she.
I would not have you think this pair
Went on in weather always fair,
For well you know in married life
Will come, sometimes, the jar and strife;
They couldn't always just agree - 
For he was Scotch, and so was she.
But near of heart they ever kept,
Until at close of life they slept;
Just this to say when all was past,
They loved each other to the last!
They're loving yet, in heaven, maybe - 
For he was Scotch, and so was she.
Warned
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

They stood at the garden gate.
By the lifting of a lid
She might have read her fate
In a little thing he did.
He plucked a beautiful flower;
Tore it away from its place
On the side of the blooming bower;
And held it against his face.
Drank in its beauty and bloom,
In the midst of his idle talk;
Then cast it down to the gloom
And dust of the garden walk.
Ay, trod it under his foot,
As it lay in his pathway there;
Then spurned it away with his boot,
Because it bad ceased to be fair.
Ah! the maiden might have read
The doom of her young life then;
But she looked in his eyes instead,
And thought him the king of men.
She looked in his eyes and blushed,
She hid in his strong arms' fold;
And the tale of the flower, crushed
And spurned, was once more told.
The Return
by Robert William Service

They turned him loose; he bowed his head,
A felon, bent and grey.
His face was even as the Dead,
He had no word to say.
He sought the home of his old love,
To look on her once more;
And where her roses breathed above,
He cowered beside the door.
She sat there in the shining room;
Her hair was silver grey.
He stared and stared from out the gloom;
He turned to go away.
Her roses rustled overhead.
She saw, with sudden start.
"I knew that you would come," she said,
And held him to her heart.
Her face was rapt and angel-sweet;
She touched his hair of grey;
. . . . .
BUT HE, SOB-SHAKEN, AT HER FEET,
COULD ONLY PRAY AND PRAY.
Ballade Of An Anti-Puritan, A
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

They spoke of Progress spiring round,
Of Light and Mrs. Humphry Ward,
It is not true to say I frowned,
Or ran about the room and roared;
I might have simply sat and snored,
I rose politely in the club
And said, "I feel a little bored;
Will someone take me to a pub?"
The new world's wisest did surround
Me; and it pains me to record
I did not think their views profound,
Or their conclusions well assured;
The simple life I can't afford,
Besides, I do not like the grub,
I want a mash and sausage, "scored"
Will someone take me to a pub?
I know where Men can still be found,
Anger and clamorous accord,
And virtues growing from the ground,
And fellowship of beer and board,
And song, that is a sturdy cord,
And hope, that is a hardy shrub,
And goodness, that is God's last word,
Will someone take me to a pub?
ENVOI
Prince, Bayard would have smashed his sword
To see the sort of knights you dub,
Is that the last of them, O Lord!
Will someone take me to a pub?
Rhymes On The Road. Extract X. Mantua.
by Thomas Moore

Verses of Hippolyta to her Husband.
They tell me thou'rt the favored guest
Of every fair and brilliant throng;
No wit like thine to wake the jest,
No voice like thine to breathe the song.
And none could guess, so gay thou art,
That thou and I are far apart.
Alas, alas! how different flows,
With thee and me the time away!
Not that I wish thee sad, heaven knows--
Still if thou canst, be light and gay;
I only know that without thee
The sun himself is dark for me.
Do I put on the jewels rare
Thou'st always loved to see me wear?
Do I perfume the locks that thou
So oft hast braided o'er my brow,
Thus deckt thro' festive crowds to run,
And all the assembled world to see,--
All but the one, the absent one,
Worth more than present worlds to me!
No, nothing cheers this widowed heart--
My only joy from thee apart,
From thee thyself, is sitting hours
And days before thy pictured form--
That dream of thee, which Raphael's powers
Have made with all but life-breath warm!
And as I smile to it, and say
The words I speak to thee in play,
I fancy from their silent frame,
Those eyes and lips give back the same:
And still I gaze, and still they keep
Smiling thus on me--till I weep!
Our little boy too knows it well,
For there I lead him every day
And teach his lisping lips to tell
The name of one that's far away.
Forgive me, love, but thus alone
My time is cheered while thou art gone.
Satires Of Circumstances In Fifteen Glimpses - XIV Over The Coffin
by Thomas Hardy

They stand confronting, the coffin between,
His wife of old, and his wife of late,
And the dead man whose they both had been
Seems listening aloof, as to things past date.
"I have called," says the first. "Do you marvel or not?"
"In truth," says the second, "I do somewhat."
"Well, there was a word to be said by me! . . .
I divorced that man because of you -
It seemed I must do it, boundenly;
But now I am older, and tell you true,
For life is little, and dead lies he;
I would I had let alone you two!
And both of us, scorning parochial ways,
Had lived like the wives in the patriarchs' days."
The Chosen
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

They stood before the Angel at the gate;
The Angel asked:    'Why should you enter in?'
One said:    'On earth my place was high and great;'
And one:    'I warned my fellow-men from sin;'
Another:    'I was teacher of the faith;
I scorned my life and lived in love with death.'
And one stood silent.    'Speak!' the Angel said;
'What earthly deed has sent you here to-day?'
'Alas!    I did but follow where they led,'
He answered sadly:    'I had lost my way - 
So new the country, and so strange my flight;
I only sought for guidance and for light.'
'You have no passport?'    'None,' the answer came.
'I loved the earth, tho' lowly was my lot.
I strove to keep my record free from blame,
And make a heaven about my humble spot.
A narrow life; I see it now, too late;
So, Angel, drive me from the heavenly gate.'
The Angel swung the portal wide and free,
And took the sorrowing stranger by the hand.
'Nay, you alone,' he said, 'shall come with me,
Of all this waiting and insistent band.
Of what God gave, you built your paradise;
Behold your mansion waiting in the skies.'
Smoke
by John Frederick Freeman

They stood like men that hear immortal speech
Moving among their branches, and like trees
We stood and watched them, and in our still branches
Echoes of that immortal music stirred.
October days had touched their breasts with light,
With yellow light and red light and wan green;
And the gray cloud that grew from low to high
Made the warm light more warm, the green more wan.
We stood and watched them and in our still branches
We felt the warm light glow, though now the rain
Was loud upon the leaves.
And standing there
You cried, "O, that sweet smell, where is the fire?
Where is the fire?" For sharp upon the rain
The smell came of a wood fire and clung round
Hanging upon our branches, till we saw
No more those lighted trees nor heard the rain--
Knew only the deep echoes and the smell
Of a wood fire that breathed its smoke across
From some near hearth, or undiscovered world.
Crows.
by Sophie M. (Almon) Hensley

They stream across the fading western sky
A sable cloud, far o'er the lonely leas;
Now parting into scattered companies,
Now closing up the broken ranks, still high
And higher yet they mount, while, carelessly,
Trail slow behind, athwart the moving trees
A lingering few, 'round whom the evening breeze
Plays with sad whispered murmurs as they fly.
A lonely figure, ghostly in the dim
And darkening twilight, lingers in the shade
Of bending willows: "Surely God has laid
His curse on me," he moans, "my strength of limb
And old heart-courage fail me, and I flee
Bowed with fell terror at this augury."