DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Starlings On The Roof
by Thomas Hardy

"No smoke spreads out of this chimney-pot,
The people who lived here have left the spot,
And others are coming who knew them not.
If you listen anon, with an ear intent,
The voices, you'll find, will be different
From the well-known ones of those who went."
"Why did they go? Their tones so bland
Were quite familiar to our band;
The comers we shall not understand."
"They look for a new life, rich and strange;
They do not know that, let them range
Wherever they may, they will get no change.
"They will drag their house-gear ever so far
In their search for a home no miseries mar;
They will find that as they were they are,
"That every hearth has a ghost, alack,
And can be but the scene of a bivouac
Till they move perforce no time to pack!"
The Cornelian. [1]
by George Gordon Byron

1.
No specious splendour of this stone
Endears it to my memory ever;
With lustre only once it shone,
And blushes modest as the giver. 
2.
Some, who can sneer at friendship's ties,
Have, for my weakness, oft reprov'd me;
Yet still the simple gift I prize,
For I am sure, the giver lov'd me.
3.
He offer'd it with downcast look,
As fearful that I might refuse it;
I told him, when the gift I took,
My only fear should be, to lose it.
4.
This pledge attentively I view'd,
And sparkling as I held it near,
Methought one drop the stone bedew'd,
And, ever since, I've lov'd a tear.
5.
Still, to adorn his humble youth,
Nor wealth nor birth their treasures yield;
But he, who seeks the flowers of truth,
Must quit the garden, for the field.
6.
'Tis not the plant uprear'd in sloth,
Which beauty shews, and sheds perfume;
The flowers, which yield the most of both,
In Nature's wild luxuriance bloom.
7.
Had Fortune aided Nature's care,
For once forgetting to be blind,
His would have been an ample share,
If well proportioned to his mind.
8.
But had the Goddess clearly seen,
His form had fix'd her fickle breast;
Her countless hoards would his have been,
And none remain'd to give the rest.
Pan And Fortune.
by John Gay

(To a Young Heir.)
No sooner was thy father's death
Proclaimed to some, with bated breath,
Than every gambler was agog
To win your rents and gorge your prog.
One counted how much income clear
You had in "ready" - by the year.
Another cast his eyelid dark
Over the mansion and the park.
Some weighed the jewels and the plate,
And all the unentailed estate:
So much in land from mortgage free,
So much in personality.
Would you to highwaymen abroad
Display your treasures on the road?
Would you abet their raid of stealth
By the display of hoarded wealth?
And are you yet with blacklegs fain
With loaded dice to throw a main?
It is not charity - for shame!
The rascals look on you as game.
And you - you feed the rogues with bread - 
By you rascality is fed.
Nay, more, you of the gallows cheat
The scoundrels who would be its meat.
The risks of the highway they shun,
Having your rents to prey upon.
Consider, ere you lose the bet,
That you might pay your duns and debt.
Consider, as the dice-box rattles,
Your honour and unpaid for chattels.
Think of to-morrow and its duns;
Usurious interest, how it runs;
And scoundrel sharpers, how they cheat you.
Think of your honour, I entreat you.
Look round, and see the wreck of play, - 
Estate and honour thrown away:
Their one time owner, unconfined,
Wanders in equal wreck of mind,
Or tries to learn the trade by which
He ruined fell, and so grow rich:
But failing there, for want of cunning,
Subsists on charity by dunning.
Ah! you will find this maxim true: - 
"Fools are the game which knaves pursue."
And now the sylvans groan: the wood
Must make the gamester's losses good.
The antique oaks, the stately elms,
One common ruin overwhelms.
The brawny arms of boor and clown
Cast with the axe their honours down,
With Echo's repetitive sounds
Complaining of the raided bounds.
Pan dropt a tear, he hung his head,
To see such desolation spread.
He said: "To slugs I hatred bear,
To locusts that devour the ear,
To caterpillars, fly, and lice;
But what are they to cursed dice?
Or what to cards? A bet is made,
Which ruin is to mount or glade;
My glory and my realm defaced,
And my best regions run to waste.
It is that hag's - that Fortune's - doing:
She ever meditates my ruin.
False, fickle jade! who more devours
Than frost, in merry May, eats flowers."
But Fortune heard Pan railing thus.
"Old Pan," said Fortune, "what's this fuss?
Am I the patroness of dice?
Is not she our fair cousin, Vice?
Do I cog dice or mark the cards?
Do gamesters offer me regards?
They trust to their own fingers' ends:
On Vice, not me, the game depends.
So would I save the fools, if they
Would not defy my rule by play.
They worship Folly, and the knaves
Own all her votaries for slaves.
They cast their elm and oak trees low:
'Tis Folly, - Folly is thy foe.
Dear Pan, then do not rail on me:
I would have saved him every tree."
On The Same. (On Seeing The Beautiful Seat Of Lord Galloway.)
by Robert Burns

No Stewart art thou, Galloway,
The Stewarts all were brave;
Besides, the Stewarts were but fools,
Not one of them a knave.
On Dante Alighieri.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Quante dirne si de'.
No tongue can tell of him what should be told,
For on blind eyes his splendour shines too strong;
'Twere easier to blame those who wrought him wrong,
Than sound his least praise with a mouth of gold.
He to explore the place of pain was bold,
Then soared to God, to teach our souls by song;
The gates heaven oped to bear his feet along,
Against his just desire his country rolled.
Thankless I call her, and to her own pain
The nurse of fell mischance; for sign take this,
That ever to the best she deals more scorn:
Among a thousand proofs let one remain;
Though ne'er was fortune more unjust than his,
His equal or his better ne'er was born.
To The Same. On Looking Through Her Album.
by Thomas Moore

No wonder bards, both high and low,
From Byron down to ***** and me,
Should seek the fame which all bestow
On him whose task is praising thee.
Let but the theme be Jersey's eyes,
At once all errors are forgiven;
As even old Sternhold still we prize,
Because, tho' dull, he sings of heaven.
The Conflict.
by Friedrich Schiller

No! I this conflict longer will not wage,
The conflict duty claims the giant task; 
Thy spells, O virtue, never can assuage
The heart's wild fire this offering do not ask
True, I have sworn a solemn vow have sworn,
That I myself will curb the self within;
Yet take thy wreath, no more it shall be worn 
Take back thy wreath, and leave me free to sin.
Rent be the contract I with thee once made; 
She loves me, loves me forfeit be the crown!
Blessed he who, lulled in rapture's dreamy shade,
Glides, as I glide, the deep fall gladly down.
She sees the worm that my youth's bloom decays,
She sees my spring-time wasted as it flees;
And, marvelling at the rigor that gainsays
The heart's sweet impulse, my reward decrees.
Distrust this angel purity, fair soul!
It is to guilt thy pity armeth me;
Could being lavish its unmeasured whole,
It ne'er could give a gift to rival thee!
Thee the dear guilt I ever seek to shun,
O tyranny of fate, O wild desires!
My virtue's only crown can but be won
In that last breath when virtue's self expires!
Late Tithe Case.
by Thomas Moore

"sic vos non vobis."
"The Vicar of Birmingham desires me to state that, in consequence of the passing of a recent Act of Parliament, he is compelled to adopt measures which may by some be considered harsh or precipitate; but, in duty to what he owes to his successors, he feels bound to preserve the rights of the vicarage."
--Letter from Mr. S. Powell, August 6.
No, not for yourselves, ye reverend men,
Do you take one pig in every ten,
But for Holy Church's future heirs,
Who've an abstract right to that pig, as theirs;
The law supposing that such heirs male
Are already seized of the pig, in tail.
No, not for himself hath Birmingham's priest
His "well-beloved" of their pennies fleeced:
But it is that, before his prescient eyes,
All future Vicars of Birmingham rise,
With their embryo daughters, nephews, nieces,
And 'tis for them the poor he fleeces.
He heareth their voices, ages hence
Saying, "Take the pig"--"oh take the pence;"
The cries of little Vicarial dears,
The unborn Birminghamites, reach his ears;
And, did he resist that soft appeal,
He would not like a true-born Vicar feel.
Thou, too, Lundy of Lackington!
A rector true, if e'er there was one,
Who, for sake of the Lundies of coming ages,
Gripest the tenths of laborer's wages.[1]
'Tis true, in the pockets of thy small-clothes
The claimed "obvention"[2]of four-pence goes;
But its abstract spirit, unconfined,
Spreads to all future Rector-kind,
Warning them all to their rights to wake,
And rather to face the block, the stake,
Than give up their darling right to take.
One grain of musk, it is said, perfumes
(So subtle its spirit) a thousand rooms,
And a single four-pence, pocketed well,
Thro' a thousand rectors' lives will tell.
Then still continue, ye reverend souls,
And still as your rich Pactolus rolls,
Grasp every penny on every side,
From every wretch, to swell its tide:
Remembering still what the Law lays down,
In that pure poetic style of its own.
"If the parson in esse submits to loss, he
"Inflicts the same on the parson in posse."
To My Dear Brother Eldridge Stanton (Junior)
by Virna Sheard

WHO DIED BRAVELY AT NIAGARA, ON THE AFTERNOON OF SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 4TH, 1912.
No tears for thee, no tears, or sighs,
Or breaking heart - 
But smiles, that thou so well that bitter hour
Didst play thy part!
Sonnet CXVIII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Nom d' atra e tempestosa onda marina.
HE IS LED BY LOVE TO REASON.
No wearied mariner to port e'er fled
From the dark billow, when some tempest's nigh,
As from tumultuous gloomy thoughts I fly--
Thoughts by the force of goading passion bred:
Nor wrathful glance of heaven so surely sped
Destruction to man's sight, as does that eye
Within whose bright black orb Love's Deity
Sharpens each dart, and tips with gold its head.
Enthroned in radiance there he sits, not blind,
Quiver'd, and naked, or by shame just veil'd,
A live, not fabled boy, with changeful wing;
Thence unto me he lends instruction kind,
And arts of verse from meaner bards conceal'd,
Thus am I taught whate'er of love I write or sing.
NOTT.
Ne'er from the black and tempest-troubled brine
The weary mariner fair haven sought,
As shelter I from the dark restless thought
Whereto hot wishes spur me and incline:
Nor mortal vision ever light divine
Dazzled, as mine, in their rare splendour caught
Those matchless orbs, with pride and passion fraught,
Where Love aye haunts his darts to gild and fine.
Him, blind no more, but quiver'd, there I view,
Naked, except so far as shame conceals,
A winged boy--no fable--quick and true.
What few perceive he thence to me reveals;
So read I clearly in her eyes' dear light
Whate'er of love I speak, whate'er I write.
MACGREGOR.
Purpose
by Robert Herrick

No wrath of men, or rage of seas,
Can shake a just man's purposes;
No threats of tyrants, or the grim
Visage of them can alter him;
But what he doth at first intend,
That he holds firmly to the end.
The Sad Man
by Alfred Lichtenstein

No, I have no capacity for life.
I could be considered foolish - 
Today I am not going to the restaurant.
I am after all this time weary of the waiters,
Who scornfully bring us, with their smug grimaces,
Dark beer and make us so confused
That we cannot find our home
And we must
Use the foolish street lights
To prop ourselves up
with weak hands.
Today I have bigger things in mind - 
Ah, I shall find out the meaning of existence.
And in the evening I shall do some roller skating
Or go at some point to Temple.
Kitchener
by George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)

No stone is set to mark his nation's loss,
No stately tomb enshrines his noble breast;
Not e'en the tribute of a wooden cross
Can mark this hero's rest.
He needs them not, his name untarnished stands,
Remindful of the mighty deeds he worked,
Footprints of one, upon time's changeful sands,
Who ne'er his duty shirked.
Who follows in his steps no danger shuns,
Nor stoops to conquer by a shameful deed,
An honest and unselfish race he runs,
From fear and malice freed.
Chaste Florimel
by Matthew Prior

No,    I'll endure ten thousand deaths
Ere any further I'll comply:
Oh! Sir, no man on earth that breathes
Had ever yet his hand so high.
Oh! take your sword and pierce my heart,
Undaunted see me meet the wound
Oh! will you act a Tarquin's part?
A second Lucrece you have found.
Thus to the pressing Corydon
Poor Florimel, unhappy maid,
Fearing by love to be undone,
In broken dying accents said;
Delia who held the conscious door,
Inspired by truth and brandy, smiled,
Knowing that sixteen months before
Our Lucrece had her second child.
And hark ye, Madam, cried the bawd,
None of your flights, your high-rope dodging;
Be civil here, or march abroad;
Oblige the 'squire, or quit the lodging.
Oh! have I, Florimel went on,
Lord what is lost my Delia's aid?
Where shall forsaken virtue run
If by her friend she is betray'd?
Oh! curse on empty friendship's name:
Lord what is all our future view?
Then, dear destroyer of my fame,
Let my last succour be to you.
From Delia's rage and Fortune's frown
A wretched lovesick maid deliver;
Oh! tip me but another crown,
Dear Sir, and make me yours for ever.
The Iron Horse.
by James Whitcomb Riley

No song is mine of Arab steed - 
My courser is of nobler blood,
And cleaner limb and fleeter speed,
And greater strength and hardihood
Than ever cantered wild and free
Across the plains of Araby.
Go search the level desert-land
From Sana on to Samarcand - 
Wherever Persian prince has been
Or Dervish, Sheik or Bedouin,
And I defy you there to point
Me out a steed the half so fine - 
From tip of ear to pastern-joint - 
As this old iron horse of mine.
You do not know what beauty is - 
You do not know what gentleness
His answer is to my caress! - 
Why, look upon this gait of his, - 
A touch upon his iron rein - 
He moves with such a stately grace
The sunlight on his burnished mane
Is barely shaken in its place;
And at touch he changes pace,
And, gliding backward, stops again.
And talk of mettle - Ah! my friend,
Such passion smoulders in his breast
That when awakened it will send
A thrill of rapture wilder than
Ere palpitated heart of man
When flaming at its mightiest.
And there's a fierceness in his ire - 
A maddened majesty that leaps
Along his veins in blood of fire,
Until the path his vision sweeps
Spins out behind him like a thread
Unraveled from the reel of time,
As, wheeling on his course sublime,
The earth revolves beneath his tread.
Then stretch away, my gallant steed!
Thy mission is a noble one:
You bear the father to the son,
And sweet relief to bitter need;
You bear the stranger to his friends;
You bear the pilgrim to the shrine,
And back again the prayer he sends
That God will prosper me and mine, - 
The star that on thy forehead gleams
Has blossomed in our brightest dreams.
Then speed thee on thy glorious race!
The mother waits thy ringing pace;
The father leans an anxious ear
The thunder of thy hoofs to hear;
The lover listens, far away,
To catch thy keen exultant neigh;
And, where thy breathings roll and rise,
The husband strains his eager eyes,
And laugh of wife and baby-glee
Ring out to greet and welcome thee.
Then stretch away! and when at last
The master's hand shall gently check
Thy mighty speed, and hold thee fast,
The world will pat thee on the neck.
An Autumn Landscape
by Archibald Lampman

No wind there is that either pipes or moans;
The fields are cold and still; the sky
Is covered with a blue-gray sheet
Of motionless cloud; and at my feet
The river, curling softly by,
Whispers and dimples round its quiet gray stones.
Along the chill green slope that dips and heaves
The road runs rough and silent, lined
With plum-trees, misty and blue-gray,
And poplars pallid as the day,
In masses spectral, undefined,
Pale greenish stems half hid in dry gray leaves.
And on beside the river's sober edge
A long fresh field lies black. Beyond,
Low thickets gray and reddish stand,
Stroked white with birch; and near at hand,
Over a little steel-smooth pond,
Hang multitudes of thin and withering sedge.
Across a waste and solitary rise
A ploughman urges his dull team,
A stooped gray figure with prone brow
That plunges bending to the plough
With strong, uneven steps. The stream
Rings and re-echoes with his furious cries.
Sometimes the lowing of a cow, long-drawn,
Comes from far off; and crows in strings
Pass on the upper silences.
A flock of small gray goldfinches,
Flown down with silvery twitterings,
Rustle among the birch-cones and are gone.
This day the season seems like one that heeds,
With fix'd ear and lifted hand,
All moods that yet are known on earth,
All motions that have faintest birth,
If haply she may understand
The utmost inward sense of all her deeds.
Sonnets VI
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

No rose that in a garden ever grew,
In Homer's or in Omar's or in mine,
Though buried under centuries of fine
Dead dust of roses, shut from sun and dew
Forever, and forever lost from view,
But must again in fragrance rich as wine
The grey aisles of the air incarnadine
When the old summers surge into a new.
Thus when I swear, "I love with all my heart,"
'Tis with the heart of Lilith that I swear,
'Tis with the love of Lesbia and Lucrece;
And thus as well my love must lose some part
Of what it is, had Helen been less fair,
Or perished young, or stayed at home in Greece.
Lines Upon The Rev. Mr. C ---- 's Impromptu Compositions Of Some Of Bowles's Sonnets.
by John Carr (Sir)

No sweeter verse did e'er inspire
A kindred Muse with all its fire;
Nor sweeter strains could Music lend,
To sooth the sorrows of her friend.
Associate Genius bids them flow
With sounds that give a charm to woe;
We weep as tho' it were our own,
As if our hearts were play'd upon.
On Love, To A Friend
by Mark Akenside

No, foolish youth, To virtuous fame
If now thy early hopes be vow'd,
If true ambition's nobler flame
Command thy footsteps from the croud,
Lean not to love's inchanting snare;
His songs, his words, his looks beware,
Nor join his votaries, the young and fair.
By thought, by dangers, and by toils,
The wreath of just renown is worn;
Nor will ambition's awful spoils
The flowery pomp of ease adorn:
But love unbends the force of thought;
By love unmanly fears are taught;
And love's reward with gaudy sloth is bought.
Yet thou hast read in tuneful lays,
And heard from many a zealous breast,
The pleasing tale of beauty's praise
In wisdom's lofty language dress'd;
Of beauty powerful to impart
Each finer sense, each comelier art,
And sooth and polish man's ungentle heart.
If then, from love's deceit secure,
Thus far alone thy wishes tend,
Go; see the white-wing'd evening hour
On Delia's vernal walk descend:
Go, while the golden light serene,
The grove, the lawn, the soften'd scene
Becomes the presence of the rural queen.
Attend, while that harmonious tongue
Each bosom, each desire commands:
Apollo's lute by Hermes strung
And touch'd by chaste Minerva's hands,
Attend. I feel a force divine,
O Delia, win my thoughts to thine;
That half the color of thy life is mine.
Yet conscious of the dangerous charm,
Soon would I turn my steps away;
Nor oft provoke the lovely harm,
Nor lull my reason's watchful sway.
But thou, my friend, i hear thy sighs:
Alass, I read thy downcast eyes;
And thy tongue falters; and thy color flies.
So soon again to meet the fair?
So pensive all this absent hour?
O yet, unlucky youth, beware,
While yet to think is in thy power.
In vain with friendship's flattering name
Thy passion veils its inward shame;
Friendship, the treacherous fuel of thy flame!
Once, I remember, new to love,
And dreading his tyrannic chain,
I sought a gentle maid to prove
What peaceful joys in friendship reign:
Whence we forsooth might safely stand,
And pitying view the lovesick band,
And mock the winged boy's malicious hand.
Thus frequent pass'd the cloudless day,
To smiles and sweet discourse resign'd;
While I exulted to survey
One generous woman's real mind:
Till friendship soon my languid breast
Each night with unknown cares possess'd,
Dash'd my coy slumbers, or my dreams distress'd.
Fool that I was, And now, even now
While thus I preach the Stoic strain,
Unless I shun Olympia's view,
An hour unsays it all again.
O friend!, when love directs her eyes
To pierce where every passion lies,
Where is the firm, the cautious, or the wise?
On a Natural Monument in a field of Georgia.
by Herman Melville

[21]
No trophy this - a Stone unhewn,
And stands where here the field immures
The nameless brave whose palms are won.
Outcast they sleep; yet fame is nigh - 
Pure fame of deeds, not doers;
Nor deeds of men who bleeding die
In cheer of hymns that round them float:
In happy dreams such close the eye.
But withering famine slowly wore,
And slowly fell disease did gloat.
Even Nature's self did aid deny;
They choked in horror the pensive sigh.
Yea, off from home sad Memory bore
(Though anguished Yearning heaved that way),
Lest wreck of reason might befall.
As men in gales shun the lee shore,
Though there the homestead be, and call,
And thitherward winds and waters sway - 
As such lorn mariners, so fared they.
But naught shall now their peace molest.
Their fame is this: they did endure - 
Endure, when fortitude was vain
To kindle any approving strain
Which they might hear. To these who rest,
This healing sleep alone was sure.
21. Written prior to the founding of the National Cemetery at Andersonville, where 15,000 of the reinterred captives now sleep, each beneath his personal head-board, inscribed from records found in the prison-hospital. Some hundreds rest apart and without name. A glance at the published pamphlet containing the list of the buried at Andersonville conveys a feeling mournfully impressive. Seventy-four large double-columned page in fine print. Looking through them is like getting lost among the old turbaned head-stones and cypresses in the interminable Black Forest of Scutari, over against Constantinople.
Black Harry's Team
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

No soft-skinned Durham steers are they,
No Devons plump and red,
But brindled, black, and iron-grey
That mark the mountain-bred;
For mountain-bred and mountain-broke,
With sullen eyes agleam,
No stranger's hand could pull a yoke
On old Black Harry's team.
Pull out, pull out, at break of morn
The creeks are running white,
And Tiger, Spot, and Snailey-horn
Must bend their bows by night;
And axles, wheels and flooring boards
Are swept with flying spray
As, shoulder-deep, through mountain fords
The leaders feel their way.
He needs no sign of cross or kirn
To guide him as he goes,
For every twist and every turn
That old black leader knows.
Up mountains steep they heave and strain
Where never wheel has rolled,
And what the toiling leaders gain
The body bullocks hold.
Where eaglehawks their eyries make,
On sidelings steep and blind,
He rigs the good old-fashioned brake,
A tree tied on behind.
Up mountains, straining to the full,
Each poler plays his part,
The sullen, stubborn, bullock pull
That breaks a horse's heart.
Beyond the furthest bridle track
His wheels have blazed the way;
The forest giants, burnt and black,
Are earmarked by his dray.
Through belts of scrub where messmates grow
His juggernaut has rolled,
For stumps and saplings have to go
When Harry's team takes hold.
On easy grade and rubber tyre
The tourist car goes through;
They halt a moment and admire
The far-flung mountain view.
The tourist folk would be amazed
If they could get to know
They take the track Black Harry blazed
A hundred years ago.