DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Another Fall Of Rain
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

(Air: 'Little Low Log Cabin in the Lane.')
The weather had been sultry for a fortnight's time or more,
And the shearers had been driving might and main,
For some had got the century who'd ne'er got it before,
And now all hands were wishing for the rain.
Chorus
For the boss is getting rusty and the ringer's caving in,
For his bandaged wrist is aching with the pain,
And the second man, I fear, will make it hot for him,
Unless we have another fall of rain.
A few had taken quarters and were coiling in their bunks
When we shore the six-tooth wethers from the plain.
And if the sheep get harder, then a few more men will funk,
Unless we get another fall of rain.
But the sky is clouding over, and the thunder's muttering loud,
And the clouds are driving eastward o'er the plain,
And I see the lightning flashing from the edge of yon black cloud,
And I hear the gentle patter of the rain.
So, lads, put on your stoppers, and let us to the hut,
Where we'll gather round and have a friendly game,
While some are playing music and some play ante up,
And some are gazing outwards at the rain.
But now the rain is over, let the pressers spin the screw,
Let the teamsters back the waggons in again,
And we'll block the classer's table by the way we'll put them through,
For everything is merry since the rain.
And the boss he won't be rusty when his sheep they all are shorn,
And the wringer's wrist won't ache much with the pain
Of pocketing his cheque for fifty pounds or more,
And the second man will press him hard again.
The Run Of The Downs
by Rudyard Kipling

The Weald is good, the Downs are best,
I'll give you the run of 'em, East to West.
Beachy Head and Winddoor Hill,
They were once and they are still.
Firle Mount Caburn and Mount Harry
Go back as far as sums '1l carry.
Ditchling Beacon and Chanctonbury Ring
They have looked on many a thing,
And what those two have missed between 'em
I reckon Truleigh Hill has seen 'em.
Highden, Bignor and Duncton Down
Knew Old England before the Crown.
Linch Down, Treyford and Sunwood
Knew Old England before the Flood;
And when you end on the Hampshire side,
Butser's old as Time and Tide.
The Downs are sheep, the Weald is corn,
You be glad you are Sussex born!
Shack Dye
by Edgar Lee Masters

The white men played all sorts of jokes on me.
They took big fish off my hook
And put little ones on, while I was away
Getting a stringer, and made me believe
I hadn't seen aright the fish I had caught.
When Burr Robbins, circus came to town
They got the ring master to let a tame leopard
Into the ring, and made me believe
I was whipping a wild beast like Samson
When I, for an offer of fifty dollars,
Dragged him out to his cage.
One time I entered my blacksmith shop
And shook as I saw some horse-shoes crawling
Across the floor, as if alive - 
Walter Simmons had put a magnet
Under the barrel of water.
Yet everyone of you, you white men,
Was fooled about fish and about leopards too,
And you didn't know any more than the horse-shoes did
What moved you about Spoon River.
Theodore Roosevelt
by Oliver Herford

The ways of Providence are odd.
If THEODORE means "The Gift of God,"
Let us give thanks, at any rate,
The Gift was not a duplicate.
Aside (To T. R)
Dear Theodore, should it give you pain
To read this Rhyme, let me explain.
If we 'exchanged' you, where on Earth
Could we find one of Equal worth?
O. H.
Song In Three Parts.
by Jean Ingelow

I.
The white broom flatt'ring her flowers in calm June weather,
'O most sweet wear;
Forty-eight weeks of my life do none desire me,
Four am I fair,'
Quoth the brown bee
'In thy white wear
Four thou art fair.
A mystery
Of honeyed snow
In scented air
The bee lines flow
Straight unto thee.
Great boon and bliss
All pure I wis,
And sweet to grow
Ay, so to give
That many live.
Now as for me,
I,' quoth the bee,
'Have not to give,
Through long hours sunny
Gathering I live:
Aye debonair
Sailing sweet air
After my fare,
Bee-bread and honey.
In thy deep coombe,
O thou white broom,
Where no leaves shake,
Brake,
Bent nor clover,
I a glad rover,
Thy calms partake,
While winds of might
From height to height
Go bodily over.
Till slanteth light,
And up the rise
Thy shadow lies,
A shadow of white,
A beauty-lender
Pathetic, tender.
Short is thy day?
Answer with 'Nay,'
Longer the hours
That wear thy flowers
Than all dull, cold
Years manifold
That gift withhold.
A long liver,
O honey-giver,
Thou by all showing
Art made, bestowing,
I envy not
Thy greater lot,
Nor thy white wear.
But, as for me,
I,' quoth the bee,
'Never am fair.'
II.
The nightingale lorn of his note in darkness brooding
Deeply and long,
'Two sweet months spake the heart to the heart. Alas! all's over,
O lost my song.'
One in the tree,
'Hush now! Let be:
The song at ending
Left my long tending
Over als'.
Let be, let us go
Across the wan sea.
The little ones care not,
And I fare not
Amiss with thee.
Thou hast sung all,
This hast thou had.
Love, be not sad;
It shall befall
Assuredly,
When the bush buddeth
And the bank studdeth - 
Where grass is sweet
And damps do fleet,
Her delicate beds
With daisy heads
That the Stars Seven
Leaned down from heaven
Shall sparkling mark
In the warm dark
Thy most dear strain
Which ringeth aye true - 
Piercing vale, croft
Lifted aloft
Dropt even as dew
With a sweet quest
To her on the nest
When damps we love
Fall from above.
"Art thou asleep?
Answer me, answer me,
Night is so deep
Thy right fair form
I cannot see;
Answer me, answer me,
Are the eggs warm?
Is't well with thee?"
Ay, this shall be
Assuredly.
Ay, thou full fain
In the soft rain
Shalt sing again.'
III.
A fair wife making her moan, despised, forsaken,
Her good days o'er;
'Seven sweet years of my life did I live belov'd,
Seven - no more.'
Then Echo woke - and spoke
'No more - no more,'
And a wave broke
On the sad shore
When Echo said
'No more,'
Nought else made reply,
Nor land, nor loch, nor sky
Did any comfort try,
But the wave spread
Echo's faint tone
Alone,
All down the desolate shore,
'No more - no more.'
The Way I Read A Letter's This:
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

The way I read a letter's this:
'T is first I lock the door,
And push it with my fingers next,
For transport it be sure.
And then I go the furthest off
To counteract a knock;
Then draw my little letter forth
And softly pick its lock.
Then, glancing narrow at the wall,
And narrow at the floor,
For firm conviction of a mouse
Not exorcised before,
Peruse how infinite I am
To -- no one that you know!
And sigh for lack of heaven, -- but not
The heaven the creeds bestow.
Nursery Rhyme. CL. Songs.
by Unknown

[From W. Wager's play, called 'The longer thou livest, the more foole thou art,' 4to, Lond.]
The white dove sat on the castle wall,
I bend my bow and shoot her I shall;
I put her in my glove both feathers and all;
I laid my bridle upon the shelf,
If you will any more, sing it yourself.
In Deeper Vein.
by Edwin C. Ranck

The Incubus.
The way was dark within the gloomy church-yard,
As I wandered through the woodland near the stream,
With slow and heavy tread
Through a city of the dead,
When suddenly I heard a dreadful scream.
My heart gave frantic leap, as when the roebuck
Is started by the clamor of the chase,
And I halted all atremble
In the vain hope to dissemble,
Or cloak the leaden pallor on my face.
'Twas in the ghostly month of grim December,
The frozen winds were bitter in their cry
And I muttered half aloud
To that white and silent crowd:
"'Tis a somber month to live in or to die."
And then as if in answer to my whisper,
Came a voice of some foul fiend from Hell:
"No longer live say I,
'Tis better far to die
And let the falling snow-flakes sound the knell."
Perched upon a tombstone sat the creature
Grewsome as an unquenched, burning lust.
Sitting livid there
With an open-coffin stare--
A stare that seemed the mocking of the just.
And in my thoughts the dreadful thing is sitting--
Sitting there with eyelids red and blear,
And see it there I will
'Til my restless soul is still
And the earth-clods roll and rumble on my bier.
A Jacobite's Exile
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

1746
The weary day rins down and dies,
The weary night wears through:
And never an hour is fair wi' flower,
And never a flower wi' dew.
I would the day were night for me,
I would the night were day:
For then would I stand in my ain fair land,
As now in dreams I may.
O lordly flow the Loire and Seine,
And loud the dark Durance:
But bonnier shine the braes of Tyne
Than a' the fields of France;
And the waves of Till that speak sae still
Gleam goodlier where they glance.
O weel were they that fell fighting
On dark Drumossie's day:
They keep their hame ayont the faem,
And we die far away.
O sound they sleep, and saft, and deep,
But night and day wake we;
And ever between the sea-banks green
Sounds loud the sundering sea.
And ill we sleep, sae sair we weep,
But sweet and fast sleep they;
And the mool that haps them roun' and laps them
Is e'en their country's clay;
But the land we tread that are not dead
Is strange as night by day.
Strange as night in a strange man's sight,
Though fair as dawn it be:
For what is here that a stranger's cheer
Should yet wax blithe to see?
The hills stand steep, the dells lie deep,
The fields are green and gold:
The hill-streams sing, and the hill-sides ring,
As ours at home of old.
But hills and flowers are nane of ours,
And ours are oversea:
And the kind strange land whereon we stand,
It wotsna what were we
Or ever we came, wi' scathe and shame,
To try what end might be.
Scathe, and shame, and a waefu' name,
And a weary time and strange,
Have they that seeing a weird for dreeing
Can die, and cannot change.
Shame and scorn may we thole that mourn,
Though sair be they to dree:
But ill may we bide the thoughts we hide,
Mair keen than wind and sea.
Ill may we thole the night's watches,
And ill the weary day:
And the dreams that keep the gates of sleep,
A waefu' gift gie they;
For the sangs they sing us, the sights they bring us,
The morn blaws all away.
On Aikenshaw the sun blinks braw,
The burn rins blithe and fain:
There's nought wi' me I wadna gie
To look thereon again.
On Keilder-side the wind blaws wide;
There sounds nae hunting-horn
That rings sae sweet as the winds that beat
Round banks where Tyne is born.
The Wansbeck sings with all her springs,
The bents and braes give ear;
But the wood that rings wi' the sang she sings
I may not see nor hear;
For far and far thae blithe burns are,
And strange is a' thing near.
The light there lightens, the day there brightens,
The loud wind there lives free:
Nae light comes nigh me or wind blaws by me
That I wad hear or see.
But O gin I were there again,
Afar ayont the faem,
Cauld and dead in the sweet saft bed
That haps my sires at hame!
We'll see nae mair the sea-banks fair,
And the sweet grey gleaming sky,
And the lordly strand of Northumberland,
And the goodly towers thereby:
And none shall know but the winds that blow
The graves wherein we lie.
Written On White Frost
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

The white frost covers all the arbute-trees,
Like powder on the faces of women.
Looking from window consider
That a man without women is like a flower
Naked without its leaves.
To drive away my bitterness
I write this thought with my narrowed breath
On the white frost.
From the Chinese of Wang Chi (sixth and seventh centuries).
The Weary Pund O' Tow.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "The weary Pund o' Tow."
I.
The weary pund, the weary pund,
The weary pund o' tow:
I think my wife will end her life
Before she spin her tow.
I bought my wife a stane o' lint
As gude as e'er did grow;
And a' that she has made o' that,
Is ae poor pund o' tow.
II.
There sat a bottle in a bole,
Beyont the ingle low,
And ay she took the tither souk,
To drouk the stowrie tow.
III.
Quoth I, for shame, ye dirty dame,
Gae spin your tap o' tow!
She took the rock, and wi' a knock
She brak it o'er my pow.
IV.
At last her feet--I sang to see't,
Gaed foremost o'er the knowe;
And or I wad anither jad,
I'll wallop in a tow.
The weary pund, the weary pund,
The weary pund o' tow!
I think my wife will end her life
Before she spin her tow.
The Way That Lovers Use
by Rupert Brooke

The way that lovers use is this;
They bow, catch hands, with never a word,
And their lips meet, and they do kiss,
So I have heard.
They queerly find some healing so,
And strange attainment in the touch;
There is a secret lovers know,
I have read as much.
And theirs no longer joy nor smart,
Changing or ending, night or day;
But mouth to mouth, and heart on heart,
So lovers say.
Song
by Rupert Brooke

The way of love was thus.
He was born one winter morn
With hands delicious,
And it was well with us.
Love came our quiet way,
Lit pride in us, and died in us,
All in a winter's day.
There is no more to say.
The Master's Voice
by Abram Joseph Ryan

The waves were weary, and they went to sleep;
The winds were hushed;
The starlight flushed
The furrowed face of all the mighty deep.
The billows yester eve so dark and wild,
Wore strangely now
A calm upon their brow,
Like that which rests upon a cradled child.
The sky was bright, and every single star,
With gleaming face,
Was in its place,
And looked upon the sea -- so fair and far.
And all was still -- still as a temple dim,
When low and faint,
As murmurs plaint,
Dies the last note of the Vesper hymn.
A bark slept on the sea, and in the bark
Slept Mary's Son --
The only One
Whose face is light! where all, all else, is dark.
His brow was heavenward turned, His face was fair
He dreamed of me
On that still sea --
The stars He made were gleaming through His hair.
And lo! a moan moved o'er the mighty deep;
The sky grew dark:
The little bark
Felt all the waves awaking from their sleep.
The winds wailed wild, and wilder billows beat;
The bark was tossed:
Shall all be lost?
But Mary's Son slept on, serene and sweet.
The tempest raged in all its mighty wrath,
The winds howled on,
All hope seemed gone,
And darker waves surged round the bark's lone path.
The sleeper woke! He gazed upon the deep;
He whispered: "Peace!
Winds -- wild waves, cease!
Be still!" The tempest fled -- the ocean fell asleep.
And ah! when human hearts by storms are tossed,
When life's lone bark
Drifts through the dark
And 'mid the wildest waves where all seems lost,
He now, as then, with words of power and peace,
Murmurs: "Stormy deep,
Be still -- still -- and sleep!"
And lo! a great calm comes -- the tempest's perils cease.
The Dead Day
by Madison Julius Cawein

The West builds high a sepulchre
Of cloudy granite and of gold,
Where twilight's priestly hours inter
The day like some great king of old.
A censer, rimmed with silver fire,
The new moon swings above his tomb;
While, organ-stops of God's own choir,
Star after star throbs in the gloom.
And night draws near, the sadly sweet
A nun whose face is calm and fair
And kneeling at the dead day's feet
Her soul goes up in silent prayer.
In prayer, we feel through dewy gleam
And flowery fragrance, and above
All Earth the ecstasy and dream
That haunt the mystic heart of love.
The White Moon Wasteth.
by Jean Ingelow

The white moon wasteth,
And cold morn hasteth
Athwart the snow,
The red east burneth
And the tide turneth,
And thou must go.
Think not, sad rover,
Their story all over
Who come from far - 
Once, in the ages
Won goodly wages
Led by a star.
Once, for all duly
Guidance doth truly
Shine as of old,
Opens for me and thee
Once, opportunity
Her gates of gold.
Enter, thy star is out,
Traverse nor faint nor doubt
Earth's antres wild,
Thou shalt find good and rest
As found the Magi blest
That divine Child.
The Wedding Bells.
by Kate Greenaway

The Wedding Bells were ringing,
And Monday was the day,
And all the little ladies
Were there so fresh and gay.
And up up up the steps they went,
The wedding fine to see;
And the Roses were all for the Bride,
So pretty so pretty was she.
Dust Of Snow
by Robert Lee Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
Going For Water
by Robert Lee Frost

The well was dry beside the door,
And so we went with pail and can
Across the fields behind the house
To seek the brook if still it ran;
Not loth to have excuse to go,
Because the autumn eve was fair
(Though chill), because the fields were ours,
And by the brook our woods were there.
We ran as if to meet the moon
That slowly dawned behind the trees,
The barren boughs without the leaves,
Without the birds, without the breeze.
But once within the wood, we paused
Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,
Ready to run to hiding new
With laughter when she found us soon.
Each laid on other a staying hand
To listen ere we dared to look,
And in the hush we joined to make
We heard, we knew we heard the brook.
A note as from a single place,
A slender tinkling fall that made
Now drops that floated on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver blade.
'Stablished
by Joseph Horatio Chant

The well-built house with walls of brick, or stone,
May tremble some if struck by the cyclone;
The most established saint may trials feel,
As flint may turn the edge of finest steel.
Satanic hosts may rush in like a flood,
Allied with foes of our own flesh and blood,
The elements of earth and hell combine,
Yet tho' he trembles, stands in strength divine;
He rests secure on the unyielding rock.
The top may sway, but base feels not the shock;
His heart is fixed, nor earth nor hell can move;
They wrench not loose, but his allegiance prove.
Christ wept with Mary at her brother's grave;
Laid down His life a rebel world to save;
Tried, like ourselves, and like us too, infirm,
Yet knew no sin in either root or germ;
Let us be like Him while we sojourn here,
Then storms and earthquakes we need never fear.
The West A Glimmering Lake Of Light
by William Ernest Henley

The West a glimmering lake of light,
A dream of pearly weather,
The first of stars is burning white -
The star we watch together.
Is April dead?    The unresting year
Will shape us our September,
And April's work is done, my dear -
Do you not remember?
O gracious eve!    O happy star,
Still-flashing, glowing, sinking! -
Who lives of lovers near or far
So glad as I in thinking?
The gallant world is warm and green,
For May fulfils November.
When lights and leaves and loves have been,
Sweet, will you remember?
O star benignant and serene,
I take the good to-morrow,
That fills from verge to verge my dream,
With all its joy and sorrow!
The old, sweet spell is unforgot
That turns to June December;
And, tho' the world remembered not,
Love, we would remember.
1876
The Whale
by Ellis Parker Butler

The Whale is found in seas and oceans,
Indulging there in fishlike motions,
But Science shows that Whales are mammals,
Like Jersey cows, and goats, and camels.
When undisturbed, the Whale will browse
Like camels, goats, and Jersey cows,
On food that satisfies its tongue,
Thus making milk to feed its young.
Asking no costly hay and oats,
Like camels, Jersey cows, and goats,
The Whale, prolific milk producer,
Should be our cheapest lactic juicer.
Our milk should all come from the sea,
But who, I ask, would want to be,
And here the proposition fails,
The milkmaid to a herd of Whales?
The Fisherman.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The waters rush'd, the waters rose,
A fisherman sat by,
While on his line in calm repose
He cast his patient eye.
And as he sat, and hearken'd there,
The flood was cleft in twain,
And, lo! a dripping mermaid fair
Sprang from the troubled main.
She sang to him, and spake the while:
"Why lurest thou my brood,
With human wit and human guile
From out their native flood?
Oh, couldst thou know how gladly dart
The fish across the sea,
Thou wouldst descend, e'en as thou art,
And truly happy be!
"Do not the sun and moon with grace
Their forms in ocean lave?
Shines not with twofold charms their face,
When rising from the wave?
The deep, deep heavens, then lure thee not, 
The moist yet radiant blue, 
Not thine own form, to tempt thy lot
'Midst this eternal dew?"
The waters rush'd, the waters rose,
Wetting his naked feet;
As if his true love's words were those,
His heart with longing beat.
She sang to him, to him spake she,
His doom was fix'd, I ween;
Half drew she him, and half sank he,
And ne'er again was seen.
The Wind.
by Madison Julius Cawein

The ways of the wind are eerie
And I love them all,
The blithe, the mad, and the dreary,
Spring, Winter, and Fall.
When it tells to the waiting crocus
Its beak to show,
And hangs on the wayside locust
Bloom-bunches of snow.
When it comes like a balmy blessing
From the musky wood,
The half-grown roses caressing
Till their cheeks show blood.
When it roars in the Autumn season,
And whines with rain
Or sleet like a mind without reason,
Or a soul in pain.
When the wood-ways once so spicy
With bud and bloom
Are desolate, sear, and icy
As the icy tomb.
When the wild owl crouched and frowsy
In the rotten tree
Wails dolorous, cold, and drowsy,
His shuddering melody.
Then I love to sit in December
Where the big hearth sings,
And dreaming forget and remember
A host of things.
And the wind - I hear how it strangles
And gasps and sighs
On the roof's sharp, shivering angles
That front the skies.
How it groans and romps and tumbles
In attics o'erhead,
In the great-throated chimney rumbles,
Then all at once falls dead;
Till it comes like footsteps slipping
Of a child on the stair,
Or a quaint old gentleman tripping
With heavily powdered hair.
And my soul grows anxious hearted
For those once dear - 
The long-lost loves departed
In the wind draw near.
And I seem to see their faces,
Not one estranged,
In their old accustomed places
'Round the wide hearth ranged.
And the wind that waits and poises
Where the shadows sway
Makes their visionary voices
Seem calling me far away.
And I wake in tears to listen
Again to the sobbing wind,
Far out on the lands that glisten,
Like the voice of one who sinned.
The Battle Of The Rats And The Weasels.
by Jean de La Fontaine

[1]
The weasels live, no more than cats,
On terms of friendship with the rats;
And, were it not that these
Through doors contrive to squeeze
Too narrow for their foes,
The animals long-snouted
Would long ago have routed,
And from the planet scouted
Their race, as I suppose.
One year it did betide,
When they were multiplied,
An army took the field
Of rats, with spear and shield,
Whose crowded ranks led on
A king named Ratapon.
The weasels, too, their banner
Unfurl'd in warlike manner.
As Fame her trumpet sounds,
The victory balanced well;
Enrich'd were fallow grounds
Where slaughter'd legions fell;
But by said trollop's tattle,
The loss of life in battle
Thinn'd most the rattish race
In almost every place;
And finally their rout
Was total, spite of stout
Artarpax and Psicarpax,
And valiant Meridarpax,[2]
Who, cover'd o'er with dust,
Long time sustain'd their host
Down sinking on the plain.
Their efforts were in vain;
Fate ruled that final hour,
(Inexorable power!)
And so the captains fled
As well as those they led;
The princes perish'd all.
The undistinguish'd small
In certain holes found shelter,
In crowding, helter-skelter;
But the nobility
Could not go in so free,
Who proudly had assumed
Each one a helmet plumed;
We know not, truly, whether
For honour's sake the feather,
Or foes to strike with terror;
But, truly, 'twas their error.
Nor hole, nor crack, nor crevice
Will let their head-gear in;
While meaner rats in bevies
An easy passage win; - 
So that the shafts of fate
Do chiefly hit the great.
A feather in the cap
Is oft a great mishap.
An equipage too grand
Comes often to a stand
Within a narrow place.
The small, whate'er the case,
With ease slip through a strait,
Where larger folks must wait.