DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Disciple
by Rudyard Kipling

He that hath a Gospel
To loose upon Mankind,
Though he serve it utterly,
Body, soul and mind,
Though he go to Calvary
Daily for its gain,
It is His Disciple
Shall make his labour vain.
He that hath a Gospel
For all earth to own,
Though he etch it on the steel,
Or carve it on the stone,
Not to be misdoubted
Through the after-days,
It is His Disciple
Shall read it many ways.
It is His Disciple
(Ere Those Bones are dust )
Who shall change the Charter,
Who shall split the Trust,
Amplify distinctions,
Rationalize the Claim;
Preaching that the Master
Would have done the same.
It is His Disciple
Who shall tell us how
Much the Master would have scrapped
Had he lived till now,
What he would have modified
Of what he said before.
It is His Disciple
Shall do this and more....
He that hath a Gospel
Whereby Heaven is won
(Carpenter, or cameleer,
Or Maya's dreaming son),
Many swords shall pierce Him,
Mingling blood with gall;
But His Own Disciple
Shall wound Him worst of all!
Not To Love.
by Robert Herrick

He that will not love must be
My scholar, and learn this of me:
There be in love as many fears
As the summer's corn has ears:
Sighs, and sobs, and sorrows more
Than the sand that makes the shore:
Freezing cold and fiery heats,
Fainting swoons and deadly sweats;
Now an ague, then a fever,
Both tormenting lovers ever.
Would'st thou know, besides all these,
How hard a woman 'tis to please,
How cross, how sullen, and how soon
She shifts and changes like the moon.
How false, how hollow she's in heart:
And how she is her own least part:
How high she's priz'd, and worth but small;
Little thou'lt love, or not at all.
Lost Youth.
by Margaret Steele Anderson

(For a friend who mourns its passing.)
He took the earth as earth had been his throne;
And beauty as the red rose for his eye;
"Give me the moon," he said, "for mine alone;
Or I will reach and pluck it from the sky!"
And thou, Life, dost mourn him, for the day
Has darkened since the gallant youngling went;
And smaller seems thy dwelling-place of clay
Since he has left that valley tenement.
But oh, perchance, beyond some utmost gate.
While at the gate thy stranger feet do stand.
He shall approach thee, beautiful, elate.
Crowned with his moon, the red rose in his hand!
The Unfading Beauty
by Thomas Carew

He that loves a rosy cheek,
Or a coral lip admires,
Or from star-like eyes doth seek
Fuel to maintain his fires:
As old Time makes these decay,
So his flames must waste away.
But a smooth and steadfast mind,
Gentle thoughts and calm desires,
Hearts with equal love combined,
Kindle never-dying fires.
Where these are not, I despise
Lovely cheeks or lips or eyes.
Under The Rose
by Madison Julius Cawein

He told a story to her,
A story old yet new
And was it of the Fa'ry Folk
That dance along the dew?
The night was hung with silence
As a room is hung with cloth,
And soundless, through the rose-sweet hush,
Swooned dim the down-white moth.
Along the east a shimmer,
A tenuous breath of flame,
From which, as from a bath of light,
Nymph-like, the girl-moon came.
And pendent in the purple
Of heaven, like fireflies,
Bubbles of gold the great stars blew
From windows of the skies.
He told a story to her,
A story full of dreams
And was it of the Elfin things
That haunt the thin moonbeams?
Upon the hill a thorn-tree,
Crooked and gnarled and gray,
Against the moon seemed some crutch'd hag
Dragging a child away.
And in the vale a runnel,
That dripped from shelf to shelf,
Seemed, in the night, a woodland witch
Who muttered to herself.
Along the land a zephyr,
Whose breath was wild perfume,
That seemed a sorceress who wove
Sweet spells of beam and bloom.
He told a story to her,
A story young yet old
And was it of the mystic things
Men's eyes shall ne'er behold?
They heard the dew drip faintly
From out the green-cupped leaf;
They heard the petals of the rose
Unfolding from their sheaf.
They saw the wind light-footing
The waters into sheen;
They saw the starlight kiss to sleep
The blossoms on the green.
They heard and saw these wonders;
These things they saw and heard;
And other things within the heart
For which there is no word.
He told a story to her,
The story men call Love,
Whose echoes fill the ages past,
And the world ne'er tires of.
Robinson Of Leyden
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

He sleeps not here; in hope and prayer
His wandering flock had gone before,
But he, the shepherd, might not share
Their sorrows on the wintry shore.
Before the Speedwell's anchor swung,
Ere yet the Mayflower's sail was spread,
While round his feet the Pilgrims clung,
The pastor spake, and thus he said: - 
"Men, brethren, sisters, children dear!
God calls you hence from over sea;
Ye may not build by Haerlem Meer,
Nor yet along the Zuyder-Zee.
"Ye go to bear the saving word
To tribes unnamed and shores untrod;
Heed well the lessons ye have heard
From those old teachers taught of God.
"Yet think not unto them was lent
All light for all the coming days,
And Heaven's eternal wisdom spent
In making straight the ancient ways;
"The living fountain overflows
For every flock, for every lamb,
Nor heeds, though angry creeds oppose
With Luther's dike or Calvin's dam."
He spake; with lingering, long embrace,
With tears of love and partings fond,
They floated down the creeping Maas,
Along the isle of Ysselmond.
They passed the frowning towers of Briel,
The "Hook of Holland's" shelf of sand,
And grated soon with lifting keel
The sullen shores of Fatherland.
No home for these! - too well they knew
The mitred king behind the throne; - 
The sails were set, the pennons flew,
And westward ho! for worlds unknown.
And these were they who gave us birth,
The Pilgrims of the sunset wave,
Who won for us this virgin earth,
And freedom with the soil they gave.
The pastor slumbers by the Rhine, - 
In alien earth the exiles lie, - 
Their nameless graves our holiest shrine,
His words our noblest battle-cry!
Still cry them, and the world shall hear,
Ye dwellers by the storm-swept sea!
Ye have not built by Haerlem Meer,
Nor on the land-locked Zuyder-Zee!
More Potent, Less Peccant.
by Robert Herrick

He that may sin, sins least: leave to transgress
Enfeebles much the seeds of wickedness.
Sonnet IV.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Quel ch' infinita providenza ed arte.
HE CELEBRATES THE BIRTHPLACE OF LAURA.
He that with wisdom, goodness, power divine,
Did ample Nature's perfect book design,
Adorn'd this beauteous world, and those above,
Kindled fierce Mars, and soften'd milder Jove:
When seen on earth the shadows to fulfill
Of the less volume which conceal'd his will,
Took John and Peter from their homely care,
And made them pillars of his temple fair.
Nor in imperial Rome would He be born,
Whom servile Judah yet received with scorn:
E'en Bethlehem could her infant King disown,
And the rude manger was his early throne.
Victorious sufferings did his pomp display,
Nor other chariot or triumphal way.
At once by Heaven's example and decree,
Such honour waits on such humility.
BASIL KENNET.
The High Eternal, in whose works supreme
The Master's vast creative power hath spoke:
At whose command each circling sphere awoke,
Jove mildly rose, and Mars with fiercer beam:
To earth He came, to ratify the scheme
Reveal'd to us through prophecy's dark cloak,
To sound redemption, speak man's fallen yoke:
He chose the humblest for that heavenly theme.
But He conferr'd not on imperial Rome
His birth's renown; He chose a lowlier sky,--
To stand, through Him, the proudest spot on earth!
And now doth shine within its humble home
A star, that doth each other so outvie,
That grateful nature hails its lovely birth.
WOLLASTON.
Who show'd such infinite providence and skill
In his eternal government divine,
Who launch'd the spheres, gave sun and moon to shine,
And brightest wonders the dark void to fill;
On earth who came the Scriptures to maintain,
Which for long years the truth had buried yet,
Took John and Peter from the fisher's net
And gave to each his part in the heavenly reign.
He for his birth fair Rome preferr'd not then,
But lowly Bethlehem; thus o'er proudest state
He ever loves humility to raise.
Now rises from small spot like sun again,
Whom Nature hails, the place grows bright and great
Which birth so heavenly to our earth displays.
MACGREGOR.
One Who Loved Nature
by Madison Julius Cawein

I
He was not learned in any art;
But Nature led him by the hand;
And spoke her language to his heart
So he could hear and understand:
He loved her simply as a child;
And in his love forgot the heat
Of conflict, and sat reconciled
In patience of defeat.
II
Before me now I see him rise - 
A face, that seventy years had snowed
With winter, where the kind blue eyes
Like hospitable fires glowed:
A small gray man whose heart was large,
And big with knowledge learned of need;
A heart, the hard world made its targe,
That never ceased to bleed.
III
He knew all Nature. Yea, he knew
What virtue lay within each flower,
What tonic in the dawn and dew,
And in each root what magic power:
What in the wild witch-hazel tree
Reversed its time of blossoming,
And clothed its branches goldenly
In fall instead of spring.
IV
He knew what made the firefly glow
And pulse with crystal gold and flame;
And whence the bloodroot got its snow,
And how the bramble's perfume came:
He understood the water's word
And grasshopper's and cricket's chirr;
And of the music of each bird
He was interpreter.
V
He kept no calendar of days,
But knew the seasons by the flowers;
And he could tell you by the rays
Of sun or stars the very hours.
He probed the inner mysteries
Of light, and knew the chemic change
That colors flowers, and what is
Their fragrance wild and strange.
VI
If some old oak had power of speech,
It could not speak more wildwood lore,
Nor in experience further reach,
Than he who was a tree at core.
Nature was all his heritage,
And seemed to fill his every need;
Her features were his book, whose page
He never tired to read.
VII
He read her secrets that no man
Has ever read and never will,
And put to scorn the charlatan
Who botanizes of her still.
He kept his knowledge sweet and clean,
And questioned not of why and what;
And never drew a line between
What's known and what is not.
VIII
He was most gentle, good, and wise;
A simpler heart earth never saw:
His soul looked softly from his eyes,
And in his speech were love and awe.
Yet Nature in the end denied
The thing he had not asked for - fame!
Unknown, in poverty he died,
And men forget his name.
Battle
by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

I
THE RETURN
He went, and he was gay to go:
And I smiled on him as he went.
My boy! 'Twas well he couldn't know
My darkest dread, or what it meant -
Just what it meant to smile and smile
And let my son go cheerily -
My son ... and wondering all the while
What stranger would come back to me.
II
THE DANCERS
All day beneath the hurtling shells
Before my burning eyes
Hover the dainty demoiselles -
The peacock dragon-flies.
Unceasingly they dart and glance
Above the stagnant stream -
And I am fighting here in France
As in a senseless dream.
A dream of shattering black shells
That hurtle overhead,
And dainty dancing demoiselles
Above the dreamless dead.
III
HIT
Out of the sparkling sea
I drew my tingling body clear, and lay
On a low ledge the livelong summer day,
Basking, and watching lazily
White sails in Falmouth Bay.
My body seemed to burn
Salt in the sun that drenched it through and through
Till every particle glowed clean and new
And slowly seemed to turn
To lucent amber in a world of blue....
I felt a sudden wrench -
A trickle of warm blood -
And found that I was sprawling in the mud
Among the dead men in the trench.
Byron.
by Eric Mackay

He was a god descended from the skies
To fight the fight of Freedom o'er a grave,
And consecrate a hope he could not save;
For he was weak withal, and foolish-wise.
Dark were his thoughts, and strange his destinies,
And oftentimes his life he did deprave.
But all do pity him, though none despise.
He was a prince of song, though sorrow's slave.
He ask'd for tears, - and they were tinged with fire;
He ask'd for love, and love was sold to him.
He look'd for solace at the goblet's brim,
And found it not; then wept upon his lyre.
He sang the songs of all the world's desire, -
He wears the wreath no rivalry can dim!
In Memory of John W. Francis, Jr.
by George Pope Morris

He was the pulse-beat of true hearts,
The love-light of fond eyes:
When such a man from earth departs,
'Tis the survivor dies.
The Bean-Feast
by Robert Browning

He was the man, Pope Sixtus, that Fifth, that swineherd's son:
He knew the right thing, did it, and thanked God when 't was done:
But of all he had to thank for, my fancy somehow leans
To thinking, what most moved him was a certain meal on beans.
For one day, as his wont was, in just enough disguise
As he went exploring wickedness, to see with his own eyes
If law had due observance in the city's entrail dark
As well as where, i' the open, crime stood an obvious mark,
He chanced, in a blind alley, on a tumble-down once house
Now hovel, vilest structure in Rome the ruinous:
And, as his tact impelled him, Sixtus adventured bold,
To learn how lowliest subjects bore hunger, toil, and cold.
There sat they at high-supper man and wife, lad and lass,
Poor as you please, but cleanly all and carefree: pain that was
Forgotten, pain as sure to be let bide aloof its time,
Mightily munched the brave ones, what mattered gloom or grime?
Said Sixtus, 'Feast, my children! who works hard needs eat well.
I'm just a supervisor, would hear what you can tell.
Do any wrongs want righting? The Father tries his best,
But, since he's only mortal, sends such as I to test
The truth of all that's told him, how folk like you may fare:
Come! only don't stop eating, when mouth has words to spare,
'You', smiled he, 'play the spokesman, bell-wether of the flock!
Are times good, masters gentle? Your grievances unlock!
How of your work and wages? pleasures, if such may be,
Pains, as such are for certain.' Thus smiling questioned he.
But somehow, spite of smiling, awe stole upon the group,
An inexpressible surmise: why should a priest thus stoop,
Pry into what concerned folk? Each visage fell. Aware,
Cries Sixtus interposing: 'Nay, children, have no care!
'Fear nothing! Who employs me requires the plain truth. Pelf
Beguiles who should inform me: so, I inform myself.
See!' And he drew his hood back, let the close vesture ope,
Showed face, and where on tippet the cross lay: 't was the Pope.
Imagine the joyful wonder! 'How shall the like of us,
Poor souls, requite such blessing of our rude bean-feast?' 'Thus,
Thus amply!' laughed Pope Sixtus. 'I early rise, sleep late:
Who works may eat: they tempt me, your beans there: spare a plate!'
Down sat he on the door-step: 'twas they this time said grace:
He ate up the last mouthful, wiped lips, and then, with face
Turned, heavenward, broke forth thankful: 'Not now, that earth obeys
Thy word in mine, that through me the peoples know Thy ways.
'But that Thy care extendeth to Nature's homely wants,
And, while man's mind is strengthened, Thy goodness nowise scants
Man's body of its cumlort, that I whom kings and queens
Crouch to, pick crumbs from off my table, reiish beans!
The thunders I but seem to launch, there plain Thy hand all see:
That I have appetite, digest, and thrive, that boon's for me.'
An Idyll
by Madison Julius Cawein

He was a boy, sun-burned and brown,
And she a girl from a neighboring town:
Dark were her eyes and dark her hair,
And her cheeks as red as the ripe peach there:
Dainty and sweet, with a far-away
Look in her eyes like the skies of May.
And it came to pass one afternoon
She walked in the fields; and the month was June:
In the hay-heaped fields and the meadowland
With trees and hills on either hand.
And the lad, who worked on her father's farm,
Had laid him down all tired and warm.
He had been toiling day after day
Mowing and raking and hilling the hay.
And now at last, with his work well done,
He slept by a stack away from the sun.
And she, who came with her young head full
Of thoughts that never are learned in school,
Young dreams and fancies no girl knows of
Unless she is far on the road to love,
When she saw him there, where he lay and slept,
A little nearer she cautiously stept:
Then stood, big-eyed, and looked around,
As if afraid of the one she'd found;
Of him she knew not, who seemed to take
Her heart in a hold she could not break.
He looked so tired and young and hot,
That an impulse swept her, she scarce knew what:
Primitive, wild, that would not wait,
That cried in her blood, "There lies your mate!"
And all was still, save the cricket's shrill,
And the breeze that blew from the wooded hill.
And so she stood with a foot back-drawn,
Like a Nymph that comes on a sleeping Faun:
Then stooped and kissed him, and turned and fled,
Sobbing, her heart of itself adread.
But he who lay in the hay slept on,
And never knew what had come and gone:
The love that had bent to his life and kissed
That something, called fate, which each has missed.
Farmer's Boy
by John Clare

He waits all day beside his little flock
And asks the passing stranger what's o'clock,
But those who often pass his daily tasks
Look at their watch and tell before he asks.
He mutters stories to himself and lies
Where the thick hedge the warmest house supplies,
And when he hears the hunters far and wide
He climbs the highest tree to see them ride--
He climbs till all the fields are blea and bare
And makes the old crow's nest an easy chair.
And soon his sheep are got in other grounds--
He hastens down and fears his master come,
He stops the gap and keeps them all in bounds
And tends them closely till it's time for home.
The Throwback
by Pat O'Cotter

He was born far east of the Rockies
Of a pet in society's van;
A wine-soaked daughter of pleasure
Bred back and threw a man;
A man-child who grew up a stranger,
Who never could learn the way
Of a people who gauge their pleasure
On a line with the price they pay.
Just a shred of an education--
A few years of college life,
A course in the card and wine room,
A year with a chorus-girl wife,
Then disgust with a life unnatural
Spurred on with the curse of the go,
He quitted that life forever
For the land of the gold and snow.
The Lure of the Land had gripped him,
The Land where you die if you fail;
The Land of the fabled fortunes,
The Land of the endless trail.
The Land of the lonely silence,
The Land of the cruel cold,
The Land of the lost ambitions
Alaska, the Land of gold.
There winters of long hungry hardships,
Summers of pest-ridden heat;
Dicing with death for a grub stake,
Risking his life for meat.
Tossing away his young manhood,
Giving the best of his youth
To the holes that he bedrocked on wildcats,
Where gold was scarcer than truth.
Ten years spent in Alaska
Gray haired, with cheeks all atan,
Beaten, but still unconquered.
Flat broke, but still a man,
Digging and sinking and drifting,
Trying to locate the "pay,"
With each hole a fresh disappointment--
Yet hoping to strike it next day.
Scorning the letters recalling,
Forgetting the friends he had known,
Turning his back on the Outside,
Facing the future alone.
A Cabin, a Squaw, and a Fishwheel,
A bend in the river's flow,
A band of half-naked breed kids--
He stayed there, a sourdough.
The Babies Of Walloon
by Henry Lawson

Two little girls aged six and nine, the daughters of a lengthsman on the railway at Walloon, near Ipswich, Queensland, were sent on an errand by their parents and it is supposed they were attracted by some water-lilies in a pool near their home. They were found drowned in six feet of water.
He was lengthsman on the railway, and his station scarce deserved
That 'pre-eminence in sorrow' of the Majesty he served,
But as dear to him and precious were the gifts reclaimed so soon'
Were the workman's little daughters who were buried near Walloon.
Speak their names in tones that linger, just as though you held them dear;
There are eyes to which the mention of those names will bring a tear.
Little Kate and Bridget, straying in an autumn afternoon,
Were attracted by the lilies in the water of Walloon.
All is dark to us. The angels sing perhaps in Paradise
Of the younger sister's danger, and the elder's sacrifice;
But the facts were hidden from us, when the soft light from the moon
Glistened on the water-lilies o'er the Babies at Walloon.
Ah! the children love the lilies, while we elders are inclined
To the flowers that have poison for the body and the mind.
Better for the 'strongly human' to have done with life as soon,
Better perish for a lily like the Babies of Walloon.
For they gather flowers early on the river far away,
Where the everlasting lilies keep their purity for aye,
And while summer brings our lilies to the run and the lagoon
May our children keep the legend of the Babies of Walloon.
In Memory Of Charles Wentworth Upham, Jr.
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

He was all sunshine; in his face
The very soul of sweetness shone;
Fairest and gentlest of his race;
None like him we can call our own.
Something there was of one that died
In her fresh spring-time long ago,
Our first dear Mary, angel-eyed,
Whose smile it was a bliss to know.
Something of her whose love imparts
Such radiance to her day's decline,
We feel its twilight in our hearts
Bright as the earliest morning-shine.
Yet richer strains our eye could trace
That made our plainer mould more fair,
That curved the lip with happier grace,
That waved the soft and silken hair.
Dust unto dust! the lips are still
That only spoke to cheer and bless;
The folded hands lie white and chill
Unclasped from sorrow's last caress.
Leave him in peace; he will not heed
These idle tears we vainly pour,
Give back to earth the fading weed
Of mortal shape his spirit wore.
"Shall I not weep my heartstrings torn,
My flower of love that falls half blown,
My youth uncrowned, my life forlorn,
A thorny path to walk alone?"
O Mary! one who bore thy name,
Whose Friend and Master was divine,
Sat waiting silent till He came,
Bowed down in speechless grief like thine.
"Where have ye laid him?" "Come," they say,
Pointing to where the loved one slept;
Weeping, the sister led the way, - 
And, seeing Mary, "Jesus wept."
He weeps with thee, with all that mourn,
And He shall wipe thy streaming eyes
Who knew all sorrows, woman-born, - 
Trust in his word; thy dead shall rise!
April 15, 1860.
The Slave
by Madison Julius Cawein

He waited till within her tower
Her taper signalled him the hour.
He was a prince both fair and brave.
What hope that he would love her slave!
He of the Persian dynasty;
And she a Queen of Araby!
No Peri singing to a star
Upon the sea were lovelier....
I helped her drop the silken rope.
He clomb, aflame with love and hope.
I drew the dagger from my gown
And cut the ladder, leaning down.
Oh, wild his face, and wild the fall:
Her cry was wilder than them all.
I heard her cry; I heard him moan;
And stood as merciless as stone.
The eunuchs came: fierce scimitars
Stirred in the torch-lit corridors.
She spoke like one who speaks in sleep,
And bade me strike or she would leap.
I bade her leap: the time was short:
And kept the dagger for my heart.
She leapt.... I put their blades aside,
And smiling in their faces died.