DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Dunolly Eagle
by William Wordsworth

Not to the clouds, not to the cliff, he flew;
But when a storm, on sea or mountain bred,
Came and delivered him, alone he sped
Into the castle-dungeon's darkest mew.
Now, near his master's house in open view
He dwells, and hears indignant tempests howl,
Kenneled and chained. Ye tame domestic fowl,
Beware of him! Thou, saucy cockatoo,
Look to thy plumage and thy life! The roe,
Fleet as the west wind, is for 'him' no quarry;
Balanced in ether he will never tarry,
Eyeing the sea's blue depths. Poor Bird! even so
Doth man of brother man a creature make
That clings to slavery for its own sad sake.
To The West
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

[In an interview with Lawrence Barrett, he said:    "The literature of the New World must look to the West for its poetry."]
Not to the crowded East,
Where, in a well-worn groove,
Like the harnessed wheel of a great machine,
The trammelled mind must move - 
Where Thought must follow the fashion of Thought,
Or be counted vulgar and set at naught.
Not to the languid South,
Where the mariners of the brain
Are lured by the Sirens of the Sense,
And wrecked upon its main - 
Where Thought is rocked, on the sweet wind's breath
To a torpid sleep that ends in death.
But to the mighty West,
That chosen realm of God,
Where Nature reaches her hands to men,
And Freedom walks abroad - 
Where mind is King, and fashion is naught,
There shall the New World look for thought
To the West, the beautiful West,
She shall look, and not in vain - 
For out of its broad and boundless store
Come muscle, and nerve, and brain.
Let the bards of the East and the South be dumb - 
For out of the West shall the Poets come.
They shall come with souls as great
As the cradle where they were rocked;
They shall come with brows that are touched with fire
Like the gods with whom they have walked;
They shall come from the West in royal state,
The Singers and Thinkers for whom we wait.
Credo
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

Not what, but WHOM, I do believe,
That, in my darkest hour of need,
Hath comfort that no mortal creed
To mortal man may give;--
Not what, but WHOM!
For Christ is more than all the creeds,
And His full life of gentle deeds
Shall all the creeds outlive.
Not what I do believe, but WHOM!
WHO walks beside me in the gloom?
WHO shares the burden wearisome?
WHO all the dim way doth illume,
And bids me look beyond the tomb
The larger life to live?--
Not what I do believe,
BUT WHOM!
Not what,
But WHOM!
To Albius Tibullus I
by Eugene Field

Not to lament that rival flame
Wherewith the heartless Glycera scorns you,
Nor waste your time in maudlin rhyme,
How many a modern instance warns you!
Fair-browed Lycoris pines away
Because her Cyrus loves another;
The ruthless churl informs the girl
He loves her only as a brother!
For he, in turn, courts Pholoe,--
A maid unscotched of love's fierce virus;
Why, goats will mate with wolves they hate
Ere Pholoe will mate with Cyrus!
Ah, weak and hapless human hearts,
By cruel Mother Venus fated
To spend this life in hopeless strife,
Because incongruously mated!
Such torture, Albius, is my lot;
For, though a better mistress wooed me,
My Myrtale has captured me,
And with her cruelties subdued me!
Not To The Staring Day
by William Ernest Henley

To A. C.
Not to the staring Day,
For all the importunate questionings he pursues
In his big, violent voice,
Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude,
The Trees - God's sentinels
Over His gift of live, life-giving air,
Yield of their huge, unutterable selves.
Midsummer-manifold, each one
Voluminous, a labyrinth of life,
They keep their greenest musings, and the dim dreams
That haunt their leafier privacies,
Dissembled, baffling the random gapeseed still
With blank full-faces, or the innocent guile
Of laughter flickering back from shine to shade,
And disappearances of homing birds,
And frolicsome freaks
Of little boughs that frisk with little boughs.
But at the word
Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night,
Night of the many secrets, whose effect -
Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread -
Themselves alone may fully apprehend,
They tremble and are changed.
In each, the uncouth individual soul
Looms forth and glooms
Essential, and, their bodily presences
Touched with inordinate significance,
Wearing the darkness like the livery
Of some mysterious and tremendous guild,
They brood - they menace - they appal;
Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wring
Wild hands of warning in the face
Of some inevitable advance of the doom;
Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing
As in some monstrous market-place,
They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime,
In that old speech their forefathers
Learned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heard
The troubled voice of Eve
Naming the wondering folk of Paradise.
Your sense is sealed, or you should hear them tell
The tale of their dim life, with all
Its compost of experience:    how the Sun
Spreads them their daily feast,
Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine;
Of the old Moon's fitful solicitude
And those mild messages the Stars
Descend in silver silences and dews;
Or what the sweet-breathing West,
Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat,
Said, and their leafage laughed;
And how the wet-winged Angel of the Rain
Came whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts of the Year -
The sting of the stirring sap
Under the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring,
Their summer amplitudes of pomp,
Their rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill,
Embittered housewifery
Of the lean Winter:    all such things,
And with them all the goodness of the Master,
Whose right hand blesses with increase and life,
Whose left hand honours with decay and death.
Thus under the constraint of Night
These gross and simple creatures,
Each in his scores of rings, which rings are years,
A servant of the Will!
And God, the Craftsman, as He walks
The floor of His workshop, hearkens, full of cheer
In thus accomplishing
The aims of His miraculous artistry.
Poem: Sonnet To Liberty
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
See nothing save their own unlovely woe,
Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,
But that the roar of thy Democracies,
Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
Mirror my wildest passions like the sea
And give my rage a brother ! Liberty!
For this sake only do thy dissonant cries
Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades
Rob nations of their rights inviolate
And I remain unmoved and yet, and yet,
These Christs that die upon the barricades,
God knows it I am with them, in some things.
To My Brothers.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Not while I live may I forget
That garden which my spirit trod!
Where dreams were flowers, wild and wet,
And beautiful as God.
Not while I breathe, awake adream,
Shall live again for me those hours,
When, in its mystery and gleam,
I met her 'mid the flowers.
Eyes, talismanic heliotrope,
Beneath mesmeric lashes, where
The sorceries of love and hope
Had made a shining lair.
And daydawn brows, whereover hung
The twilight of dark locks; and lips,
Whose beauty spoke the rose's tongue
Of fragrance-voweled drips.
I will not tell of cheeks and chin,
That held me as sweet language holds;
Nor of the eloquence within
Her bosom's moony molds.
Nor of her large limbs' languorous
Wind-grace, that glanced like starlight through
Her ardent robe's diaphanous
Web of the mist and dew.
There is no star so pure and high
As was her look; no fragrance such
At her soft presence; and no sigh
Of music like her touch.
Not while I live may I forget
That garden of dim dreams! where I
And Song within the spirit met,
Sweet Song, who passed me by.
To The West.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

[In an interview with Lawrence Barrett, he said: "The literature of the New World must look to the West for its poetry."]
Not to the crowded East,
Where, in a well-worn groove,
Like the harnessed wheel of a great machine,
The trammeled mind must move - 
Where Thought must follow the fashion of Thought,
Or be counted vulgar and set at naught.
Not to the languid South,
Where the mariners of the brain
Are lured by the Sirens of the Sense,
And wrecked upon its main - 
Where Thought is rocked, on the sweet wind's breath,
To a torpid sleep that ends in death.
But to the mighty West,
That chosen realm of God,
Where Nature reaches her hands to men,
And Freedom walks abroad - 
Where mind is King, and fashion is naught:
There shall the New World look for thought.
To the West, the beautiful West,
She shall look, and not in vain - 
For out of its broad and boundless store
Come muscle, and nerve, and brain.
Let the bards of the East and the South be dumb - 
For out of the West shall the Poets come.
They shall come with souls as great
As the cradle where they were rocked;
They shall come with brows that are touched with fire,
Like the Gods with whom they have walked;
They shall come from the West in royal state,
The Singers and Thinkers for whom we wait.
Brother, You'll Take My Hand
by Henry Lawson

Not to the sober and staid,
Leading a quiet life,
But to men whose paths are laid
Ever through storm and strife,
Here is a song from me,
Sent to the tragic West,
Message of sympathy
To the hearts that can never rest.
This is the song I send
Out to the Western land,
Sinner, and martyr, and friend,
Brother! you'll take my hand.
To you who have loved and lost;
To you whose souls have died
Cursing a fair false face
And the red warm lips that lied;
Loved with a boyish love,
With a love that was pure and true,
That set one woman above
The world that was known to you;
Eating your heart out now
Alone on a waste of sand,
I have been played with too.
Brother! you'll take my hand.
To you who were loved too well,
And who cast that love aside
When your vanity was replete
And your passion was satisfied,
Haunted now day and night;
Haunted in every place
By the eyes of a suicide,
Set in a dead girl's face.
Crouched in your misery
Out where the stars are grand,
O I am haunted too!
Brother! you'll take my hand.
To you who had wealth or name,
Friends, love, and a future fair,
And who sacrificed all for drink
And the nights of Leicester Square:
In by the drunken town,
Out on the barren tramp,
Pacing it up and down
Alone by the listening camp;
Crouched in your agony,
Hiding your eyes with your hand,
I had the ball at my feet,
Brother! I understand.
There is a light for all;
Hold up your head and live!
Forgive the woman who wronged,
And the dead girl will forgive.
Brood not, but work for good;
Work in the world of men,
Strong is the man who fell
And rose from the depths again.
There shall be peace for you,
Sinners, who win the land.
I would fight upward too,
Brother! you'll take my hand.
Acquaintance
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Not we who daily walk the city's
Not those who have been cradled in its heart,
Best understand its architectural art
Or realise its grandeur.    Oft we meet
Some stranger who has staid his passing feet
And lingered with us for a single hour,
And learned more of cathedral, and of tower,
Than we who deem our knowledge quite complete.
Not always those we hold most loved and dear,
Not always those who dwell with us, know best
Our greater selves.    Because they stand so near
They cannot see the lofty mountain crest,
The gleaming sun-kissed height, which fair and clear
Stands forth - revealed unto the some-time guest.
The New Year.
by Emma Lazarus

ROSH-HASHANAH, 5643.
Not while the snow-shroud round dead earth is rolled,
And naked branches point to frozen skies, -
When orchards burn their lamps of fiery gold,
The grape glows like a jewel, and the corn
A sea of beauty and abundance lies,
Then the new year is born.
Look where the mother of the months uplifts
In the green clearness of the unsunned West,
Her ivory horn of plenty, dropping gifts,
Cool, harvest-feeding dews, fine-winnowed light;
Tired labor with fruition, joy and rest
Profusely to requite.
Blow, Israel, the sacred cornet! Call
Back to thy courts whatever faint heart throb
With thine ancestral blood, thy need craves all.
The red, dark year is dead, the year just born
Leads on from anguish wrought by priest and mob,
To what undreamed-of morn?
For never yet, since on the holy height,
The Temple's marble walls of white and green
Carved like the sea-waves, fell, and the world's light
Went out in darkness, - never was the year
Greater with portent and with promise seen,
Than this eve now and here.
Even as the Prophet promised, so your tent
Hath been enlarged unto earth's farthest rim.
To snow-capped Sierras from vast steppes ye went,
Through fire and blood and tempest-tossing wave,
For freedom to proclaim and worship Him,
Mighty to slay and save.
High above flood and fire ye held the scroll,
Out of the depths ye published still the Word.
No bodily pang had power to swerve your soul:
Ye, in a cynic age of crumbling faiths,
Lived to bear witness to the living Lord,
Or died a thousand deaths.
In two divided streams the exiles part,
One rolling homeward to its ancient source,
One rushing sunward with fresh will, new heart.
By each the truth is spread, the law unfurled,
Each separate soul contains the nation's force,
And both embrace the world.
Kindle the silver candle's seven rays,
Offer the first fruits of the clustered bowers,
The garnered spoil of bees. With prayer and praise
Rejoice that once more tried, once more we prove
How strength of supreme suffering still is ours
For Truth and Law and Love.
By Word Of Mouth
by Rudyard Kipling

Not though you die to-night, O Sweet, and wail,
A spectre at my door,
Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail,
I shall but love you more,
Who, from Death's House returning, give me still
One moment's comfort in my matchless ill.
Sonnets Upon The Punishment Of Death - In Series, 1839 ' V - Not To The Object Specially Designed
by William Wordsworth

Not to the object specially designed,
Howe'er momentous in itself it be,
Good to promote or curb depravity,
Is the wise Legislator's view confined.
His Spirit, when most severe, is oft most kind;
As all Authority in earth depends
On Love and Fear, their several powers he blends,
Copying with awe the one Paternal mind.
Uncaught by processes in show humane,
He feels how far the act would derogate
From even the humblest functions of the State;
If she, self-shorn of Majesty, ordain
That never more shall hang upon her breath
The last alternative of Life or Death.
Sonnet II
by Alan Seeger

Not that I always struck the proper mean
Of what mankind must give for what they gain,
But, when I think of those whom dull routine
And the pursuit of cheerless toil enchain,
Who from their desk-chairs seeing a summer cloud
Race through blue heaven on its joyful course
Sigh sometimes for a life less cramped and bowed,
I think I might have done a great deal worse;
For I have ever gone untied and free,
The stars and my high thoughts for company;
Wet with the salt-spray and the mountain showers,
I have had the sense of space and amplitude,
And love in many places, silver-shoed,
Has come and scattered all my path with flowers.
Not With A Club The Heart Is Broken,
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Not with a club the heart is broken,
Nor with a stone;
A whip, so small you could not see it.
I've known
To lash the magic creature
Till it fell,
Yet that whip's name too noble
Then to tell.
Magnanimous of bird
By boy descried,
To sing unto the stone
Of which it died.
On The Dedication Of Dorothy Hall - Tuskegee, Ala., April 22, 1901.
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Not to the midnight of the gloomy past,
Do we revert to-day; we look upon
The golden present and the future vast
Whose vistas show us visions of the dawn.
Nor shall the sorrows of departed years
The sweetness of our tranquil souls annoy,
The sunshine of our hopes dispels the tears,
And clears our eyes to see this later joy.
Not ever in the years that God hath given
Have we gone friendless down the thorny way,
Always the clouds of pregnant black were riven
By flashes from His own eternal day.
The women of a race should be its pride;
We glory in the strength our mothers had,
We glory that this strength was not denied
To labor bravely, nobly, and be glad.
God give to these within this temple here,
Clear vision of the dignity of toil,
That virtue in them may its blossoms rear
Unspotted, fragrant, from the lowly soil.
God bless the givers for their noble deed,
Shine on them with the mercy of Thy face,
Who come with open hearts to help and speed
The striving women of a struggling race.
Outlook.
by Archibald Lampman

Not to be conquered by these headlong days,
But to stand free: to keep the mind at brood
On life's deep meaning, nature's altitude
Of loveliness, and time's mysterious ways;
At every thought and deed to clear the haze
Out of our eyes, considering only this,
What man, what life, what love, what beauty is,
This is to live, and win the final praise.
Though strife, ill fortune and harsh human need
Beat down the soul, at moments blind and dumb
With agony; yet, patience - there shall come
Many great voices from life's outer sea,
Hours of strange triumph, and, when few men heed,
Murmurs and glimpses of eternity.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
by Henry Austin Dobson

"Nec turpem senectam
Degere, nec cithara carentem."
--Hor. i. 31.
"Not to be tuneless in old age!"
Ah! surely blest his pilgrimage,
Who, in his Winter's snow,
Still sings with note as sweet and clear
As in the morning of the year
When the first violets blow!
Blest!--but more blest, whom Summer's heat,
Whom Spring's impulsive stir and beat,
Have taught no feverish lure;
Whose Muse, benignant and serene,
Still keeps his Autumn chaplet green
Because his verse is pure!
Lie calm, O white and laureate head!
Lie calm, O Dead, that art not dead,
Since from the voiceless grave,
Thy voice shall speak to old and young
While song yet speaks an English tongue
By Charles' or Thamis' wave!
Wildpeace
by Yehuda Amichai

Not the peace of a cease-fire
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill, that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds - who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)
Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.
Hesper
by John Le Gay Brereton

Not till the sun, that brings to birth
The myriad marvels of the earth
And bids us look with wandering eyes
On all that here about us lies,
Has gone behind the hill,
Do you, O peaceful evening star,
Gaze on the dusk in which we are
And draw the heart of hope and love
To infinite deep on deep above
And bid our care be still.
All glorious pleasures of the day,
When every sense may have its way
And thought may touch the tiniest fact
And gauge the motive and the act
And measure our delight,
Depart, and leave us to the quest
Of quiet solitude and rest
And knowledge that the plotting brain
With all its science cannot gain
But from the soul of Night.
Not The Pilot
by Walt Whitman

Not the pilot has charged himself to bring his ship into port, though beaten back, and many times baffled;
Not the path-finder, penetrating inland, weary and long,
By deserts parch'd, snows-chill'd, rivers wet, perseveres till he reaches his destination,
More than I have charged myself, heeded or unheeded, to compose a free march for These States,
To be exhilarating music to them - a battle-call, rousing to arms, if need be - years, centuries hence.
The Punished.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Not they who know the awful gibbet's anguish,
Not they who, while sad years go by them, in
The sunless cells of lonely prisons languish,
Do suffer fullest penalty for sin.
'Tis they who walk the highways unsuspected
Yet with grim fear forever at their side,
Who hug the corpse of some sin undetected,
A corpse no grave or coffin-lid can hide - 
'Tis they who are in their own chambers haunted
By thoughts that like unbidden guests intrude,
And sit down, uninvited and unwanted,
And make a nightmare of the solitude.
Hymn For The Celebration Of Emancipation At Newburyport
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Not unto us who did but seek
The word that burned within to speak,
Not unto us this day belong
The triumph and exultant song.
Upon us fell in early youth
The burden of unwelcome truth,
And left us, weak and frail and few,
The censor's painful work to do.
Thenceforth our life a fight became,
The air we breathed was hot with blame;
For not with gauged and softened tone
We made the bondman's cause our own.
We bore, as Freedom's hope forlorn,
The private hate, the public scorn;
Yet held through all the paths we trod
Our faith in man and trust in God.
We prayed and hoped; but still, with awe,
The coming of the sword we saw;
We heard the nearing steps of doom,
We saw the shade of things to come.
In grief which they alone can feel
Who from a mother's wrong appeal,
With blended lines of fear and hope
We cast our country's horoscope.
For still within her house of life
We marked the lurid sign of strife,
And, poisoning and imbittering all,
We saw the star of Wormwood fall.
Deep as our love for her became
Our hate of all that wrought her shame,
And if, thereby, with tongue and pen
We erred, we were but mortal men.
We hoped for peace; our eyes survey
The blood-red dawn of Freedom's day:
We prayed for love to loose the chain;
'T is shorn by battle's axe in twain!
Nor skill nor strength nor zeal of ours
Has mined and heaved the hostile towers;
Not by our hands is turned the key
That sets the sighing captives free.
A redder sea than Egypt's wave
Is piled and parted for the slave;
A darker cloud moves on in light;
A fiercer fire is guide by night!
The praise, O Lord! is Thine alone,
In Thy own way Thy work is done!
Our poor gifts at Thy feet we cast,
To whom be glory, first and last
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part II. - XXVI - Apology
by William Wordsworth

Not utterly unworthy to endure
Was the supremacy of crafty Rome;
Age after age to the arch of Christendom
Aerial keystone haughtily secure;
Supremacy from Heaven transmitted pure,
As many hold; and, therefore, to the tomb
Pass, some through fire and by the scaffold some
Like saintly Fisher, and unbending More.
"Lightly for both the bosom's lord did sit
"Upon his throne;" unsoftened, undismayed
By aught that mingled with the tragic scene
Of pity or fear: and More's gay genius played
With the inoffensive sword of native wit,
Than the bare axe more luminous and keen.
Acquaintance
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Not we who daily walk the City's street;
Not those who have been cradled in its heart,
Best understand its architectural art,
Or realise its grandeur.    Oft we meet
Some stranger who has stayed his passing feet
And lingered with us for a single hour,
And learned more of cathedral, and of tower,
Than we, who deem our knowledge quite complete.
Not always those we hold most loved and dear,
Not always those who dwell with us, know best
Our greater selves.    Because they stand so near
They cannot see the lofty mountain crest,
The gleaming sun-kissed height, which fair and dear
Stands forth - revealed unto the some-time guest.