DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Variety.
by Friedrich Schiller

Many are good and wise; yet all for one only reckon,
For 'tis conception, alas, rules them, and not a fond heart.
Sad is the sway of conception, from thousandfold varying figures,
Needy and empty but one it is e'er able to bring.
But where creative beauty is ruling, there life and enjoyment
Dwell; to the ne'er-changing One, thousands of new forms she gives.
Vastness
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

I.
Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs
after many a vanish'd face,
Many a planet by many a sun may roll
with the dust of a vanish'd race.
II.
Raving politics, never at rest'as this poor
earth's pale history runs,'
What is it all but a trouble of ants in the
gleam of a million million of suns?
III.
Lies upon this side, lies upon that side,
truthless violence mourn'd by the Wise,
Thousands of voices drowning his own in a
popular torrent of lies upon lies;
IV.
Stately purposes, valour in battle, glorious
annals of army and fleet,
Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause,
trumpets of victory, groans of defeat;
V.
Innocence seethed in her mother's milk,
and Charity setting the martyr aflame;
Thraldom who walks with the banner of Freedom,
and recks not to ruin a realm in her name.
VI.
Faith at her zenith, or all but lost in the
gloom of doubts that darken the schools;
Craft with a bunch of all-heal in her hand,
follow'd up by her vassal legion of fools;
VII.
Trade flying over a thousand seas with her
spice and her vintage, her silk and her corn;
Desolate offing, sailorless harbours, famishing
populace, wharves forlorn;
VIII.
Star of the morning, Hope in the sunrise;
gloom of the evening, Life at a close;
Pleasure who flaunts on her wide downway
with her flying robe and her poison'd rose;
IX.
Pain, that has crawl'd from the corpse of
Pleasure, a worm which writhes all day, and at night
Stirs up again in the heart of the sleeper,
and stings him back to the curse of the light;
X.
Wealth with his wines and his wedded harlots;
honest Poverty, bare to the bone;
Opulent Avarice, lean as Poverty; Flattery
gilding the rift in a throne;
XI.
Fame blowing out from her golden trumpet
a jubilant challenge to Time and to Fate;
Slander, her shadow, sowing the nettle on
all the laurel'd graves of the Great;
XII.
Love for the maiden, crown'd with marriage,
no regrets for aught that has been,
Household happiness, gracious children,
debtless competence, golden mean;
XIII.
National hatreds of whole generations, and
pigmy spites of the village spire;
Vows that will last to the last death-ruckle,
and vows that are snapt in a moment of fire;
XIV.
He that has lived for the lust of the minute,
and died in the doing it, flesh without mind;
He that has nail'd all flesh to the Cross, till
Self died out in the love of his kind;
XV.
Spring and Summer and Autumn and Winter,
and all these old revolutions of earth;
All new-old revolutions of Empire'
change of the tide'what is all of it worth?
XVI.
What the philosophies, all the sciences,
poesy, varying voices of prayer?
All that is noblest, all that is basest, all
that is filthy with all that is fair?
XVII.
What is it all, if we all of us end but in
being our own corpse-coffins at last,
Swallow'd in Vastness, lost in Silence,
drown'd in the deeps of a meaningless Past?
XVIII.
What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom,
or a moment's anger of bees in their hive?'
------------
Peace, let it be! for I loved him, and love
him for ever: the dead are not dead but alive.
The Spring Running
by Rudyard Kipling

Man goes to Man! Cry the challenge through the Jungle!
He that was our Brother goes away.
Hear, now, and judge, O ye People of the Jungle,
Answer, who can turn him, who shall stay?
Man goes to Man! He is weeping in the Jungle:
He that was our Brother sorrows sore!
Man goes to Man! (Oh, we loved him in the Jungle!)
To the Man-Trail where we may not follow more.
The Ransom
by Charles Baudelaire

Man, with which to pay his ransom,
has two fields of deep rich earth,
which he must dig and bring to birth,
with the iron blade of reason.
To obtain the smallest rose,
to garner a few ears of wheat,
he must wet them without cease,
with briny tears from his grey brow.
One is Art: Love is the other.
To render his propitiation,
on the day of conflagration,
when the last strict reckoning's here,
full of crops' and flowers' displays
he will have to show his barns,
with those colours and those forms
that gain the Angels' praise.
Bad May Be Better.
by Robert Herrick

Man may at first transgress, but next do well:
Vice doth in some but lodge a while, not dwell.
Earth's Eternity
by John Clare

Man, Earth's poor shadow! talks of Earth's decay:
But hath it nothing of eternal kin?
No majesty that shall not pass away?
No soul of greatness springing up within?
Thought marks without hoar shadows of sublime,
Pictures of power, which if not doomed to win
Eternity, stand laughing at old Time
For ages: in the grand ancestral line
Of things eternal, mounting to divine,
I read Magnificence where ages pay
Worship like conquered foes to the Apennine,
Because they could not conquer. There sits Day
Too high for Night to come at--mountains shine,
Outpeering Time, too lofty for decay.
Exultate Deo.
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Many a flower hath perfume for its dower,
And many a bird a song,
And harmless lambs milkwhite beside their dams
Frolic along, -
Perfume and song and whiteness offering praise
In humble, peaceful ways.
Man's high degree hath will and memory,
Affection and desire;
By loftier ways he mounts of prayer and praise,
Fire unto fire,
Deep unto deep responsive, height to height,
Until he walk in white.
Man I Am And Man Would Be, Love
by Robert Browning

Man I am and man would be, Love, merest man and nothing more.
Bid me seem no other! Eagles boast of pinions, let them soar!
I may put forth angel's plumage, once unmanned, but not before.
Now on earth to stand suffices, nay, if kneeling serves, to kneel:
Here you front me, here I find the all of heaven that earth can feel:
Sense looks straight, not over,under, perfect sees beyond appeal.
Good you are and wise, full circle: what to me were more outside?
Wiser wisdom, better goodness? Ah, such want the angel's wide
Sense to take and hold and keep them! Mine at least has never tried.
Open Table.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Many a guest I'd see to-day,
Met to taste my dishes!
Food in plenty is prepar'd,
Birds, and game, and fishes.
Invitations all have had,
All proposed attending.
Johnny, go and look around!
Are they hither wending?
Pretty girls I hope to see,
Dear and guileless misses,
Ignorant how sweet it is
Giving tender kisses.
Invitations all have had,
All proposed attending.
Johnny, go and look around!
Are they hither wending?
Women also I expect,
Loving tow'rd their spouses,
Whose rude grumbling in their breasts
Greater love but rouses.
Invitations they've had too,
All proposed attending!
Johnny, go and look around!
Are they hither wending?
I've too ask'd young gentlemen,
Who are far from haughty,
And whose purses are well-stock'd,
Well-behaved, not haughty.
These especially I ask'd,
All proposed attending.
Johnny, go and look around!
Are they hither wending?
Men I summon'd with respect,
Who their own wives treasure;
Who in ogling other Fair
Never take a pleasure.
To my greetings they replied,
All proposed attending.
Johnny, go and look around!
Are they hither wending?
Then to make our joy complete,
Poets I invited,
Who love other's songs far more
Than what they've indited.
All acceded to my wish,
All proposed attending.
Johnny, go and look around!
Are they hither wending?
Not a single one appears,
None seem this way posting.
All the soup boils fast away,
Joints are over-roasting.
Ah, I fear that we have been
Rather too unbending!
Johnny, tell me what you think!
None are hither wending.
Johnny, run and quickly bring
Other guests to me now!
Each arriving as he is 
That's the plan, I see now.
In the town at once 'tis known,
Every one's commending.
Johnny, open all the doors:
All are hither wending!
Pis-Aller
by Matthew Arnold

'Man is blind because of sin;
'Revelation makes him sure.
'Without that, who looks within,
'Looks in vain, for all's obscure.'
Nay, look closer into man!
Tell me, can you find indeed
Nothing sure, no moral plan
Clear prescribed, without your creed?
'No, I nothing can perceive;
'Without that, all's dark for men.
'That, or nothing, I believe.'
For God's sake, believe it then!
Man's Dying-place Uncertain
by Robert Herrick

Man knows where first he ships himself; but he
Never can tell where shall his landing be.
Problems
by Madison Julius Cawein

Man's are the learnings of his books
What is all knowledge that he knows
Beside the wit of winding brooks,
The wisdom of the summer rose!
How soil distills the scent in flowers
Baffles his science: heaven-dyed,
How, from the palette of His hours,
God gives them colors, hath defied.
What dream of heaven begets the light?
Or, ere the stars beat burning tunes,
Stains all the hollow edge of night
With glory as of molten moons?
Who is it answers what is birth
Or death, that nothing may retard?
Or what is love, that seems of Earth,
Yet wears God's own divine regard?
The Moral Poet.
by Friedrich Schiller

Man is in truth a poor creature, I know it, and fain would forget it;
Therefore (how sorry I am!) came I, alas, unto thee!
The Weavers
by James Stephens

Many a time your father gave me aid
When I was down, and now I'm down again:
You mustn't take it bad or be dismayed
Because I say, young folk should help old men
And 'tis their duty to do that: Amen!
I have no cows, no sheep, no cloak, no hat,
For those who used to give me things are dead
And my luck died with them: because of that
I won't pay you a farthing, but, instead,
I'll owe you till the dead rise from the dead.
A farthing! that's not much, but, all the same,
I haven't half a farthing, for that grand
Big idiot called Fortune rigged the game
And gave me nothing, while she filled the hand
Of every stingy devil in the land.
You weave, and I: you shirts: I weave instead
My careful verse, but you get paid at times!
The only rap I get is on my head:
But should it come again that men like rhymes
And pay for them, I'll pay you for your shirt.
The Undiscovered Country
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Man has explored all countries and all lands,
And made his own the secrets of each clime.
Now, ere the world has fully reached its prime,
The oval earth lies compassed with steel bands;
The seas are slaves to ships that touch all strands,
And even the haughty elements sublime
And bold, yield him their secrets for all time,
And speed like lackeys forth at his commands.
Still, though he search from shore to distant shore,
And no strange realms, no unlocated plains
Are left for his attainment and control,
Yet is there one more kingdom to explore.
Go, know thyself, O man! there yet remains
The undiscovered country of thy soul!
The Undiscovered Country
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Man has explored all countries and all lands,
And made his own the secrets of each clime.
Now, ere the world has fully reached its prime,
The oval earth lies compassed with steel bands,
The seas are slaves to ships that touch all strands,
And even the haughty elements, sublime
And bold, yield him their secrets for all time,
And speed like lackeys forth at his commands.
Still, though he search from shore to distant shore,
And no strange realms, no unlocated plains
Are left for his attainment and control,
Yet is there one more kingdom to explore.
Go, know thyself, O man! there yet remains
The undiscovered country of thy soul!
In An East End Hovel. To A Workman, A Would-Be Suicide.
by Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Man of despair and death,
Bought and slaved in the gangs,
Starved and stripped and left
To the pitiful pitiless night,
Away with your selfish thoughts!
Touch not your ignorant life!
Are there no masters of slaves,
Jeering, cynical, strong - 
Are there no brigands (say),
With the words of Christ on their lips
And the daggers under their cloaks - 
Is there not one of these
That you can steal on and kill?
O as the Swiss mountaineer
Dogged on the perilous heights
His disciplined conqueror foes: {39a}
Caught up one in his arms
And, laughing exultantly,
Plunged with him to the abyss:
So let it be with you!
An eye for an eye, and a tooth
For a tooth, and a life for a life!
Tell it, this hateful strong
Contemptuous hypocrite world,
Tell it that, if we must live
As dogs and as worse than dogs,
At least we can die like men!
Tell it there is a woe
Not for the conquered alone! {39b}
An eye for an eye, and a tooth
For a tooth, and a life for a life!
A Suffering God
by Joseph Horatio Chant

Man is like God in miniature,
When he is at his best;
His motives and impulses pure,
His heart and will at rest;
No conflict in himself is felt,
His light no earthly beam,
While love encircles like a belt,
And conscience is supreme.
As thus endowed a creature may
The keenest sufferings feel;
Not such as rack the frame of clay,
Which art of man may heal;
But pain untold at others' woes,
And deadly blight of sin,
Which right and virtue overthrows,
And blackens all within.
And may not God have suffered much
Ere reached the gory cross?
Did not our woe the God-heart touch?
Did He not feel our loss?
The "Man of Sorrows" we adore,
And own His sufferings real;
But suffered He as God before;
For God can sorrow feel.
Upon Man
by Robert Herrick

Man is composed here of a twofold part;
The first of nature, and the next of art;
Art presupposes nature; nature, she
Prepares the way for man's docility.
Problems
by Madison Julius Cawein

Man's are the learnings of his books - 
What is all knowledge that he knows
Beside the wit of winding brooks,
The wisdom of the summer rose!
How soil distills the scent in flowers
Baffles his science: heaven-dyed,
How, from the palette of His hours,
God gives them colors, hath defied.
What dream of heaven begets the light?
Or, ere the stars beat burning tunes,
Stains all the hollow edge of night
With glory as of molten moons?
Who is it answers what is birth
Or death, that nothing may retard?
Or what is love, that seems of Earth,
Yet wears God's own divine regard?
Revenge.
by Robert Herrick

Man's disposition is for to requite
An injury, before a benefit:
Thanksgiving is a burden and a pain;
Revenge is pleasing to us, as our gain.
Behold A Shaking.
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

1.
Man rising to the doom that shall not err, -
Which hath most dread: the arouse of all or each;
All kindreds of all nations of all speech,
Or one by one of him and him and her?
While dust reanimate begins to stir
Here, there, beyond, beyond, reach beyond reach;
While every wave refashions on the beach
Alive or dead-in-life some seafarer.
Now meeting doth not join or parting part;
True meeting and true parting wait till then,
When whoso meet are joined for evermore,
Face answering face and heart at rest in heart: -
God bring us all rejoicing to the shore
Of happy Heaven, His sheep home to the pen.
2.
Bless'd that flock safe penned in Paradise;
Bless'd this flock which tramps in weary ways;
All form one flock, God's flock; all yield Him praise
By joy or pain, still tending toward the prize.
Joy speaks in praises there, and sings and flies
Where no night is, exulting all its days;
Here, pain finds solace, for, behold, it prays;
In both love lives the life that never dies.
Here life is the beginning of our death,
And death the starting-point whence life ensues;
Surely our life is death, our death is life:
Nor need we lay to heart our peace or strife,
But calm in faith and patience breathe the breath
God gave, to take again when He shall choose.
Burial
by Robert Herrick

Man may want land to live in; but for all
Nature finds out some place for burial.
The Watch
by Robert Herrick

Man is a watch, wound up at first, but never
Wound up again; Once down, he's down for ever.
The watch once down, all motions then do cease;
The man's pulse stopt, all passions sleep in peace.
The Sea-Voyage.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Many a day and night my bark stood ready laden;
Waiting fav'ring winds, I sat with true friends round me,
Pledging me to patience and to courage,
In the haven.
And they spoke thus with impatience twofold:
"Gladly pray we for thy rapid passage,
Gladly for thy happy voyage; fortune
In the distant world is waiting for thee,
In our arms thoult find thy prize, and love too,
When returning."
And when morning came, arose an uproar,
And the sailors' joyous shouts awoke us;
All was stirring, all was living, moving,
Bent on sailing with the first kind zephyr.
And the sails soon in the breeze are swelling,
And the sun with fiery love invites us;
Fill'd the sails are, clouds on high are floating,
On the shore each friend exulting raises
Songs of hope, in giddy joy expecting
Joy the voyage through, as on the morn of sailing,
And the earliest starry nights so radiant.
But by God-sent changing winds ere long he's driven
Sideways from the course he had intended,
And he feigns as though he would surrender,
While he gently striveth to outwit them,
To his goal, e'en when thus press'd, still faithful.
But from out the damp grey distance rising,
Softly now the storm proclaims its advent,
Presseth down each bird upon the waters,
Presseth down the throbbing hearts of mortals.
And it cometh. At its stubborn fury,
Wisely ev'ry sail the seaman striketh;
With the anguish-laden ball are sporting
Wind and water.
And on yonder shore are gather'd standing,
Friends and lovers, trembling for the bold one:
"Why, alas, remain'd he here not with us!
Ah, the tempest! Cast away by fortune!
Must the good one perish in this fashion?
Might not he perchance.... Ye great immortals!"
Yet he, like a man, stands by his rudder;
With the bark are sporting wind and water,
Wind and water sport not with his bosom:
On the fierce deep looks he, as a master, 
In his gods, or shipwreck'd, or safe landed,
Trusting ever.
A Rondelay
by Peter Anthony Motteux

Man is for woman made,
And woman made for man:
As the spur is for the jade,
As the scabbard for the blade,
As for liquor is the can,
So man's for woman made,
And woman made for man.
As the sceptre to be sway'd,
As to night the serenade,
As for pudding is the pan,
As to cool us is the fan,
So man's for woman made,
And woman made for man.
Be she widow, wife, or maid,
Be she wanton, be she staid,
Be she well or ill array'd,
So man's for woman made,
And woman made for man.
Peter A. Motteux.
The Bird-Man
by William Henry Davies

Man is a bird:
He rises on fine wings
Into the Heaven's clear light;
He flies away and sings, 
There's music in his flight.
Man is a bird:
In swiftest speed he burns,
With twist and dive and leap;
A bird whose sudden turns
Can drive the frightened sheep.
Man is a bird:
Over the mountain high,
Whose head is in the skies,
Cut from its shoulder by
A cloud, the bird-man flies.
Man is a bird:
Eagles from mountain crag
Swooped down to prove his worth;
But now they rise to drag
Him down from Heaven to earth!
Fear.
by Robert Herrick

Man must do well out of a good intent;
Not for the servile fear of punishment.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part I. - XVI - Persuasion
by William Wordsworth

"Man's life is like a Sparrow, mighty King!
"That, while at banquet with your Chiefs you sit
"Housed near a blazing fire, is seen to flit
"Safe from the wintry tempest. Fluttering,
"Here did it enter; there, on hasty wing,
"Flies out, and passes on from cold to cold;
"But whence it came we know not, nor behold
"Whither it goes. Even such, that transient Thing,
"The human Soul; not utterly unknown
"While in the Body lodged, her warm abode;
"But from what world She came, what woe or weal
"On her departure waits, no tongue hath shown;
"This mystery if the Stranger can reveal,
"His be a welcome cordially bestowed!"
Punctuality
by Lewis Carroll

Man Naturally loves delay,
And to procrastinate;
Business put off from day to day
Is always done too late.
Let every hour be in its place
Firm fixed, nor loosely shift,
And well enjoy the vacant space,
As though a birthday gift.
And when the hour arrives, be there,
Where'er that "there" may be;
Uncleanly hands or ruffled hair
Let no one ever see.
If dinner at "half-past" be placed,
At "half-past" then be dressed.
If at a "quarter-past" make haste
To be down with the rest
Better to be before your time,
Than e're to be behind;
To open the door while strikes the chime,
That shows a punctual mind.
Moral:
Let punctuality and care
Seize every flitting hour,
So shalt thou cull a floweret fair,
E'en from a fading flower
Envoy
by James Whitcomb Riley

Many pleasures of youth have been buoyantly sung -
And, borne on the winds of delight, may they beat
With their palpitant wings at the hearts of the Young,
And in bosoms of Age find as warm a retreat! -
Yet sweetest of all of the musical throng,
Though least of the numbers that upward aspire,
Is the one rising now into wavering song,
As I sit in the silence and gaze in the fire.
'Tis a Winter long dead that beleaguers my door
And muffles his steps in the snows of the past:
And I see, in the embers I'm dreaming before,
Lost faces of love as they looked on me last: -
The round, laughing eyes of the desk-mate of old
Gleam out for a moment with truant desire -
Then fade and are lost in a City of Gold,
As I sit in the silence and gaze in the fire.
And then comes the face, peering back in my own,
Of a shy little girl, with her lids drooping low,
As she faltering tells, in a far-away tone,
The ghost of a story of long, long ago. -
Then her dewy blue eyes they are lifted again;
But I see their glad light slowly fail and expire,
As I reach and cry to her in vain, all in vain! -
As I sit in the silence and gaze in the fire.
Then the face of a Mother looks back, through the mist
Of tears that are welling; and, lucent with light,
I see the dear smile of the lips I have kissed
As she knelt by my cradle at morning and night;
And my arms are outheld, with a yearning too wild
For any but God in His love to inspire,
As she pleads at the foot of His throne for her child, -
As I sit in the silence and gaze in the fire.
O pathos of rapture! O glorious pain!
My heart is a blossom of joy over-run
With a shower of tears, as a lily with rain
That weeps in the shadow and laughs in the sun.
The blight of the frost may descend on the tree,
And the leaf and the flower may fall and expire,
But ever and ever love blossoms for me,
As I sit in the silence and gaze in the fire.
Dissolute
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

Many years have I still to burn, detained
Like a candle flame on this body; but I enshrine
A darkness within me, a presence which sleeps contained
In my flame of living, her soul enfolded in mine.
And through these years, while I burn on the fuel of life,
What matter the stuff I lick up in my living flame,
Seeing I keep in the fire-core, inviolate,
A night where she dreams my dreams for me, ever the same.
The Human Tree
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Many have Earth's lovers been,
Tried in seas and wars, I ween;
Yet the mightiest have I seen:
Yea, the best saw I.
One that in a field alone
Stood up stiller than a stone
Lest a moth should fly.
Birds had nested in his hair,
On his shoon were mosses rare.
Insect empires flourished there,
Worms in ancient wars;
But his eyes burn like a glass,
Hearing a great sea of grass
Roar towards the stars.
From, them to the human tree
Rose a cry continually,
'Thou art still, our Father, we
Fain would have thee nod.
Make the skies as blood below thee,
Though thou slay us, we shall know thee.
Answer us, O God!
'Show thine ancient flame and thunder,
Split the stillness once asunder,
Lest we whisper, lest we wonder
Art thou there at all?'
But I saw him there alone,
Standing stiller than a stone
Lest a moth should fall.