DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Bulletin Hotel
by Henry Lawson

I was drifting in the drizzle past the Cecil in the Strand,
Which, I'm told, is very tony, and its front looks very grand;
And I somehow fell a-thinking of a pub I know so well,
Of a palace in Australia called The Bulletin Hotel.
Just a little six-room'd shanty built of corrugated tin,
And all round a blazing desert, land of camels, thirst and sin;
And the landlord is 'the Spider', Western diggers know him well,
Charlie Webb!, Ah, there you have it!, of the Bulletin Hotel.
'Tis a big soft-hearted spider in a land where life is grim,
And a web of great good-nature that brings worn-out flies to him:
'Tis the club of many lost souls in the wide Westralian hell,
And the stage of many Mitchells is the Bulletin Hotel.
But the swagman, on his uppers, pulls an undertaker's mug,
And he leans across the counter and he breathes in Charlie's lug,
Tale of thirst and of misfortune. Charlie knows it, and, ah, well!
But it's very bad for business at the Bulletin Hotel.
'What's a drink or two?' says Charlie, 'and you can't refuse a feed;'
But there's many a drink unpaid for, many sticks of 'borrowed' weed;
And the poor old spineless bummer and the broken-hearted swell
Know that they are sure of tucker at the Bulletin Hotel.
There's the liquor and the license and the 'carriage' and the rent,
And the sea or grave 'twixt Charlie and the fivers he has lent;
And I'm forced to think in sorrow, for I know the country well,
That the end will be the bailiff in the Bulletin Hotel.
But he'll pack up in a hurry and he'll seek a cooler clime,
If I make a rise in England and I get out there in time.
For a mate o' mine is Charlie and I stayed there for a spell,
And I owe more than a jingle to the Bulletin Hotel.
But there's lots of graft between us, there are many miles of sea,
So, if you should drop on Charlie, just shake hands with him for me;
Say I think the Bush less lonely than the great town where I dwell,
And, a grander than the Cecil is the Bulletin Hotel.
A Scrawl
by James Whitcomb Riley

I want to sing something - but this is all -
I try and I try, but the rhymes are dull
As though they were damp, and the echoes fall
Limp and unlovable.
Words will not say what I yearn to say -
They will not walk as I want them to,
But they stumble and fall in the path of the way
Of my telling my love for you.
Simply take what the scrawl is worth -
Knowing I love you as sun the sod
On the ripening side of the great round earth
That swings in the smile of God.
The Secret (The Adventures Of Seumas Beg)
by James Stephens

I was frightened, for a wind
Crept along the grass to say
Something that was in my mind
Yesterday, 
Something that I did not know
Could be found out by the wind,
I had buried it so low
In my mind.
A Deposition From Love
by Thomas Carew

I was foretold, your rebell sex,
Nor love, nor pitty knew;
And with what scorn you use to vex
Poor hearts that humbly sue;
Yet I believ'd, to crown our pain,
Could we the fortress win,
The happy Lover sure should gain
A Paradise within:
I thought Loves plagues, like Dragons sate,
Only to fright us at the gate.
But I did enter, and enjoy
What happy Lovers prove;
For I could kiss, and sport, and toy,
And taste those sweets of love;
Which had they but a lasting state,
Or if in Celia's brest
The force of love might not abate,
Jove were too mean a guest.
But now her breach of faith, farre more
Afflicts, than did her scorn before.
Hard fate! to have been once possest,
As victor, of a heart
Atchiev'd with labour, and unrest,
And then forc'd to depart.
If the stout Foe will not resigne
When I besiege a Town,
I lose, but what was never mine;
But he that is cast down
From enjoy'd beauty, feels a woe,
Only deposed Kings can know.
The Mystery
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

I was not; now I am--a few days hence
I shall not be; I fain would look before
And after, but can neither do; some Power
Or lack of power says "no" to all I would.
I stand upon a wide and sunless plain,
Nor chart nor steel to guide my steps aright.
Whene'er, o'ercoming fear, I dare to move,
I grope without direction and by chance.
Some feign to hear a voice and feel a hand
That draws them ever upward thro' the gloom.
But I--I hear no voice and touch no hand,
Tho' oft thro' silence infinite I list,
And strain my hearing to supernal sounds;
Tho' oft thro' fateful darkness do I reach,
And stretch my hand to find that other hand.
I question of th' eternal bending skies
That seem to neighbor with the novice earth;
But they roll on, and daily shut their eyes
On me, as I one day shall do on them,
And tell me not the secret that I ask.
A Poison Tree
by William Blake

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
and he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
Harry Wilmans
by Edgar Lee Masters

I was just turned twenty-one,
And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-school superintendent,
Made a speech in Bindle's Opera House.
"The honor of the flag must be upheld," he said,
"Whether it be assailed by a barbarous tribe of Tagalogs
Or the greatest power in Europe."
And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag he waved
As he spoke.
And I went to the war in spite of my father,
And followed the flag till I saw it raised
By our camp in a rice field near Manila,
And all of us cheered and cheered it.
But there were flies and poisonous things;
And there was the deadly water,
And the cruel heat,
And the sickening, putrid food;
And the smell of the trench just back of the tents
Where the soldiers went to empty themselves;
And there were the whores who followed us, full of syphilis;
And beastly acts between ourselves or alone,
With bullying, hatred, degradation among us,
And days of loathing and nights of fear
To the hour of the charge through the steaming swamp,
Following the flag,
Till I fell with a scream, shot through the guts.
Now there's a flag over me in
Spoon River. A flag!
A flag!
Ippolit Konovaloff
by Edgar Lee Masters

I was a gun-smith in Odessa.
One night the police broke in the room
Where a group of us were reading Spencer.
And seized our books and arrested us.
But I escaped and came to New York
And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River,
Where I could study my Kant in peace
And eke out a living repairing guns
Look at my moulds! My architectonics
One for a barrel, one for a hammer
And others for other parts of a gun!
Well, now suppose no gun - smith living
Had anything else but duplicate moulds
Of these I show you - well, all guns
Would be just alike, with a hammer to hit
The cap and a barrel to carry the shot
All acting alike for themselves, and all
Acting against each other alike.
And there would be your world of guns!
Which nothing could ever free from itself
Except a Moulder with different moulds
To mould the metal over.
Boy-Dreams
by M. Forrest

I was a Pirate once,
A blustering fellow with scarlet sash,
A ready cutlass and language rash;
From a ship with a rum-filled water-tank
I made the enemy walk the plank;
I marooned a man on an island bare,
And seized his wife by her long, dark hair;
Took treasure, such heaps of it! wealth untold,
Bright bars of silver and chunks of gold!
Till my ship was choked to the decks with pelf,
And no one dare touch it except myself
And my black flag waved to the tearing breeze,
And I was the terror of all the seas!
I was a Fairy once.
I swung in the bows of the silky oak,
And the harebells rang to the words I spoke,
And my wings were fashioned of silver gauze,
And I knew no grief and no human laws.
And I lived where the laces of green leaves sway.
And my life was one long, long holiday.
No tasks to learn, and no bothering rules,
No hectoring grown-ups, and no more schools;
But a dance each eve, 'neath the moon's cold light,
To sit up as late as I liked at night. . . .
For a lance I carried a grass-blade green,
And my shield was cut from an olivine;1
I sipped cool dews from the cups of flowers,
My days were threaded of happy hours!
I was a Merman once.
In the gloom of the amber-tinted seas,
With the brown tang2 clinging about my knees,
With a coral house, and a crab to ride,
Who pranced, and who ambled from side to side;
I wooed a Mermaid with emerald hair,
Dragged the fierce sea-serpent from out his lair,
With his flaming tongue and his awful might,
And I slew him, easy, in open fight!
I had strings of pearls, white as frozen milk,
That were strung for me on sea-spider's silk;
And I never pined for the upper skies,
Whose blue came down in the dead men's eyes,
Drowned men with the salt on their blackened lips,
Who slid, drifting in, from the wrecks of ships;
But I took the gold from the belts of all,
To pave the road to my coral hall.
I was a Hunter once,
And I trapped and stalked in a pathless wood,
And the talk of the wild things understood.
With my leather leggings and hat of brown.
I tracked the elk and the redskin down;
Slew a grizzly bear in a mountain cave,
And tweaked the nose of an Indian brave.
Ere I shot the rapids in birch canoe,
For there was nothing I could not do.
There was naught I did not dare or enjoy,
In the magic world of a dreaming boy!
I Was Looking A Long While
by Walt Whitman

I was looking a long while for a clue to the history of the past for myself, and for these chants - and now I have found it;
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject;)
It is no more in the legends than in all else;
It is in the present - it is this earth to-day;
It is in Democracy - (the purport and aim of all the past;)
It is the life of one man or one woman to-day - the average man of to-day;
It is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts;
It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations,
All for the average man of to-day.
Green Food For A Queen
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

I was gathering
Leaves of the Wakana
In springtime.
Why did the snow fall
On my dress?
From the Japanese of the Mikado Ko-ko Ten-no, (ninth century).
On The Sea
by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

I was going from Hamburg to London in a small steamer. We were two passengers; I and a little female monkey, whom a Hamburg merchant was sending as a present to his English partner.
She was fastened by a light chain to one of the seats on deck, and was moving restlessly and whining in a little plaintive pipe like a bird's.
Every time I passed by her she stretched out her little, black, cold hand, and peeped up at me out of her little mournful, almost human eyes. I took her hand, and she ceased whining and moving restlessly about.
There was a dead calm. The sea stretched on all sides like a motionless sheet of leaden colour. It seemed narrowed and small; a thick fog overhung it, hiding the very mast-tops in cloud, and dazing and wearying the eyes with its soft obscurity. The sun hung, a dull red blur in this obscurity; but before evening it glowed with strange, mysterious, lurid light.
Long, straight folds, like the folds in some heavy silken stuff, passed one after another over the sea from the ship's prow, and broadening as they passed, and wrinkling and widening, were smoothed out again with a shake, and vanished. The foam flew up, churned by the tediously thudding wheels; white as milk, with a faint hiss it broke up into serpentine eddies, and then melted together again and vanished too, swallowed up by the mist.
Persistent and plaintive as the monkey's whine rang the small bell at the stern.
From time to time a porpoise swam up, and with a sudden roll disappeared below the scarcely ruffled surface.
And the captain, a silent man with a gloomy, sunburnt face, smoked a short pipe and angrily spat into the dull, stagnant sea.
To all my inquiries he responded by a disconnected grumble. I was obliged to turn to my sole companion, the monkey.
I sat down beside her; she ceased whining, and again held out her hand to me.
The clinging fog oppressed us both with its drowsy dampness; and buried in the same unconscious dreaminess, we sat side by side like brother and sister.
I smile now ... but then I had another feeling.
We are all children of one mother, and I was glad that the poor little beast was soothed and nestled so confidingly up to me, as to a brother.
November 1879.
Nine from Eight
by Sidney Lanier

I was drivin' my two-mule waggin,
With a lot o' truck for sale,
Towards Macon, to git some baggin'
(Which my cotton was ready to bale),
And I come to a place on the side o' the pike
Whar a peert little winter branch jest had throw'd
The sand in a kind of a sand-bar like,
And I seed, a leetle ways up the road,
A man squattin' down, like a big bull-toad,
On the ground, a-figgerin' thar in the sand
With his finger, and motionin' with his hand,
And he looked like Ellick Garry.
And as I driv up, I heerd him bleat
To hisself, like a lamb: "Hauh? nine from eight
Leaves nuthin' - and none to carry?"
And Ellick's bull-cart was standin'
A cross-wise of the way,
And the little bull was a-expandin',
Hisself on a wisp of hay.
But Ellick he sat with his head bent down,
A-studyin' and musin' powerfully,
And his forrud was creased with a turrible frown,
And he was a-wurken' appearently
A 'rethmetic sum that wouldn't gee,
Fur he kep' on figgerin' away in the sand
With his finger, and motionin' with his hand,
And I seed it WAS Ellick Garry.
And agin I heard him softly bleat
To hisself, like a lamb: "Hauh? nine from eight
Leaves nuthin' - and none to carry!"
I woa'd my mules mighty easy
(Ellick's back was towards the road
And the wind hit was sorter breezy)
And I got down off'n my load,
And I crep' up close to Ellick's back,
And I heerd him a-talkin' softly, thus:
"Them figgers is got me under the hack.
I caint see how to git out'n the muss,
Except to jest nat'ally fail and bus'!
My crap-leen calls for nine hundred and more.
My counts o' sales is eight hundred and four,
Of cotton for Ellick Garry.
Thar's eight, ought, four, jest like on a slate:
Here's nine and two oughts -    Hauh? nine from eight
Leaves nuthin' - and none to carry.
"Them crap-leens, oh, them crap-leens!
I giv one to Pardman and Sharks.
Hit gobbled me up like snap-beans
In a patch full o' old fiel'-larks.
But I thought I could fool the crap-leen nice,
And I hauled my cotton to Jammel and Cones.
But shuh! 'fore I even had settled my price
They tuck affidavy without no bones
And levelled upon me fur all ther loans
To the 'mount of sum nine hundred dollars or more,
And sold me out clean for eight hundred and four,
As sure as I'm Ellick Garry!
And thar it is down all squar and straight,
But I can't make it gee, fur nine from eight
Leaves nuthin' - and none to carry."
Then I says "Hello, here, Garry!
However you star' and frown
Thare's somethin' fur YOU to carry,
Fur you've worked it upside down!"
Then he riz and walked to his little bull-cart,
And made like he neither had seen nor heerd
Nor knowed that I knowed of his raskilly part,
And he tried to look as if HE wa'nt feared,
And gathered his lines like he never keered,
And he driv down the road 'bout a quarter or so,
And then looked around, and I hollered "Hello,
Look here, Mister Ellick Garry!
You may git up soon and lie down late,
But you'll always find that nine from eight
Leaves nuthin' - and none to carry."
Macon, Georgia, 1870.
John M. Church
by Edgar Lee Masters

I was attorney for the "Q"
And the Indemnity Company which insured
The owners of the mine.
I pulled the wires with judge and jury,
And the upper courts, to beat the claims
Of the crippled, the widow and orphan,
And made a fortune thereat.
The bar association sang my praises
In a high-flown resolution.
And the floral tributes were many - 
But the rats devoured my heart
And a snake made a nest in my skull
The Spell Of The Yukon
by Robert William Service

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy - I fought it,
I hurled my youth into the grave.
I wanted the gold and I got it -
Came out with a fortune last fall, -
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn't all.
No! There's the land. (Have you seen it?)
It's the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it,
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it's a fine land to shun;
Maybe: but there's some as would trade it
For no land on earth - and I'm one.
You come to get rich (damned good reason),
You feel like an exile at first;
You hate it like hell for a season,
And then you are worse than the worst.
It grips you like some kinds of sinning;
It twists you from foe to a friend;
It seems it's been since the beginning;
It seems it will be to the end.
I've stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow
That's plumb-full of hush to the brim;
I've watched the big, husky sun wallow
In crimson and gold, and grow dim,
Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,
And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;
And I've thought that I surely was dreaming,
With the peace o' the world piled on top.
The summer - no sweeter was ever;
The sunshiny woods all athrill;
The grayling aleap in the river,
The bighorn asleep on the hill.
The strong life that never knows harness;
The wilds where the caribou call;
The freshness, the freedom, the farness -
O God! how I'm stuck on it all.
The winter! the brightness that blinds you,
The white land locked tight as a drum,
The cold fear that follows and finds you,
The silence that bludgeons you dumb.
The snows that are older than history,
The woods where the weird shadows slant;
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,
I've bade 'em good-bye - but I can't.
There's a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There's a land - oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back - and I will.
They're making my money diminish;
I'm sick of the taste of champagne.
Thank God! when I'm skinned to a finish
I'll pike to the Yukon again.
I'll fight - and you bet it's no sham-fight;
It's hell! - but I've been there before;
And it's better than this by a damsite -
So me for the Yukon once more.
There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting;
It's luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting,
So much as just finding the gold.
It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,
It's the forests where silence has lease;
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It's the stillness that fills me with peace.
Elijah Browning
by Edgar Lee Masters

I was among multitudes of children
Dancing at the foot of a mountain.
A breeze blew out of the east and swept them as leaves,
Driving some up the slopes. . . .
All was changed.
Here were flying lights, and mystic moons, and dream-music.
A cloud fell upon us.
When it lifted all was changed.
I was now amid multitudes who were wrangling.
Then a figure in shimmering gold, and one with a trumpet,
And one with a sceptre stood before me.
They mocked me and danced a rigadoon and vanished. . . .
All was changed again.
Out of a bower of poppies
A woman bared her breasts and lifted her open mouth to mine.
I kissed her.
The taste of her lips was like salt.
She left blood on my lips.
I fell exhausted.
I arose and ascended higher, but a mist as from an iceberg
Clouded my steps.
I was cold and in pain.
Then the sun streamed on me again,
And I saw the mists below me hiding all below them.
And I, bent over my staff, knew myself
Silhouetted against the snow.
And above me
Was the soundless air, pierced by a cone of ice,
Over which hung a solitary star!
A shudder of ecstasy, a shudder of fear
Ran through me.
But I could not return to the slopes - 
Nay, I wished not to return.
For the spent waves of the symphony of freedom
Lapped the ethereal cliffs about me.
Therefore I climbed to the pinnacle.
I flung away my staff.
I touched that star
With my outstretched hand.
I vanished utterly.
For the mountain delivers to
Infinite Truth
Whosoever touches the star.
The Voice Of The Void
by George Parsons Lathrop

I warn, like the one drop of rain
On your face, ere the storm;
Or tremble in whispered refrain
With your blood, beating warm.
I am the presence that ever
Baffles your touch's endeavor, - 
Gone like the glimmer of dust
Dispersed by a gust.
I am the absence that taunts you,
The fancy that haunts you;
The ever unsatisfied guess
That, questioning emptiness,
Wins a sigh for reply.
Nay; nothing am I,
But the flight of a breath - 
For I am Death!
Growth
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

I watched the glory of her childhood change,
Half-sorrowful to find the child I knew,
(Loved long ago in lily-time)
Become a maid, mysterious and strange,
With fair, pure eyes--dear eyes, but not the eyes I knew
Of old, in the olden time!
Till on my doubting soul the ancient good
Of her dear childhood in the new disguise
Dawned, and I hastened to adore
The glory of her waking maidenhood,
And found the old tenderness within her deepening eyes,
But kinder than before.
Back-View - To D. F.
by William Ernest Henley

I watched you saunter down the sand:
Serene and large, the golden weather
Flowed radiant round your peacock feather,
And glistered from your jewelled hand.
Your tawny hair, turned strand on strand
And bound with blue ribands together,
Streaked the rough tartan, green like heather,
That round your lissome shoulder spanned.
Your grace was quick my sense to seize:
The quaint looped hat, the twisted tresses,
The close-drawn scarf, and under these
The flowing, flapping draperies -
My thought an outline still caresses,
Enchanting, comic, Japanese!
Sly Boy.
by Jean Blewett

I was the slyest boy at home,
The slyest boy at school,
I wanted all the world to know
That I was no one's fool.
I kept my childish hopes and schemes
Locked closely in my breast,
No single secret shared with Bob,
The chum I liked the best.
I never showed my squirrel's nest,
Nor beaver dam, nor cave,
Nor fortress where I used to go
To be a soldier brave.
Oh, I was sly, just awful sly,
In winter, summer, spring,
While Bob would tell me all he knew,
I never told a thing.
And yet Bob always got ahead;
I'd find the careless knave
Asleep within my fortress walls,
And fishing in my cave.
"What, yours!" he said, in great surprise,
"You should have told me so.
You never said a word, old chum,
And how was I to know?"
My slyness hurt more than it helped;
If Bob had known, you see,
He was too kind to do his best
To get ahead of me.
I still was sly when I grew up.
I fell in love with Nan,
But scorned to own it to myself
Or any other man.
So sly was I, Nan never guessed - 
No more did handsome Bob - 
That every time she looked my way
My heart, it stirred and throbbed.
The same old story! Ere I knew,
My chum had loved and won.
When I explained I'd picked her out
To be my very own,
"What, yours!" he said in great surprise,
"You should have told me so.
You never said a word, old chum,
And how was I to know?"
I've learned my lesson, lost my girl;
You'll own 'tis rather rough.
Henceforward I'll not be too sly - 
I'll be just sly enough.
Lovelocks
by Walter De La Mare

I watched the Lady Caroline
Bind up her dark and beauteous hair;
Her face was rosy in the glass,
And 'twixt the coils her hands would pass,
White in the candleshine.
Her bottles on the table lay,
Stoppered yet sweet of violet;
Her image in the mirror stooped
To view those locks as lightly looped
As cherry-boughs in May.
The snowy night lay dim without,
I heard the Waits their sweet song sing;
The window smouldered keen with frost;
Yet still she twisted, sleeked and tossed
Her beauteous hair about.