DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Songs Of The Autumn Days
by George MacDonald

I.
We bore him through the golden land,
One early harvest morn;
The corn stood ripe on either hand--
He knew all about the corn.
How shall the harvest gathered be
Without him standing by?
Without him walking on the lea,
The sky is scarce a sky.
The year's glad work is almost done;
The land is rich in fruit;
Yellow it floats in air and sun--
Earth holds it by the root.
Why should earth hold it for a day
When harvest-time is come?
Death is triumphant o'er decay,
And leads the ripened home.
II.
And though the sun be not so warm,
His shining is not lost;
Both corn and hope, of heart and farm,
Lie hid from coming frost.
The sombre woods are richly sad,
Their leaves are red and gold:
Are thoughts in solemn splendour clad
Signs that we men grow old?
Strange odours haunt the doubtful brain
From fields and days gone by;
And mournful memories again
Are born, are loved, and die.
The mornings clear, the evenings cool
Foretell no wintry wars;
The day of dying leaves is full,
The night of glowing stars.
III.
'Tis late before the sun will rise,
And early he will go;
Gray fringes hang from the gray skies,
And wet the ground below.
Red fruit has followed golden corn;
The leaves are few and sere;
My thoughts are old as soon as born,
And chill with coming fear.
The winds lie sick; no softest breath
Floats through the branches bare;
A silence as of coming death
Is growing in the air.
But what must fade can bear to fade--
Was born to meet the ill:
Creep on, old Winter, deathly shade!
We sorrow, and are still.
IV.
There is no longer any heaven
To glorify our clouds;
The rising vapours downward driven
Come home in palls and shrouds.
The sun himself is ill bested
A heavenly sign to show;
His radiance, dimmed to glowing red,
Can hardly further go.
An earthy damp, a churchyard gloom,
Pervade the moveless air;
The year is sinking to its tomb,
And death is everywhere.
But while sad thoughts together creep,
Like bees too cold to sting,
God's children, in their beds asleep,
Are dreaming of the spring.
Divided
by Nora Pembroke (Margaret Moran Dixon McDougall)

We came to the dividing line,
Then he passed over and I am here,
Sad and sore is this heart of mine
That has no power to shed a tear,
For, like one who rises and walks in sleep,
I am lost in a dream--I cannot weep.
Yet he was good and fair to see
I know in my heart he loved me well,
What separated him from me,
I cannot tell, oh! I cannot tell,
For the blow came sudden, and sharp, and sore,
And I am alone now for evermore.
I thought to walk through all our time
Together, linked to a lofty aim;
With sudden wrench I'm left behind--
My heart is slain! oh, my heart is slain!
And the ghost of my heart within me cries,
Why, alas! was I made a sacrifice?
My royal eagle ordained to soar--
Breast to the storm, and eyes to the sun--
Up be thy flight! and think no more
Of one the life of whose life is done;
While I, stunned and sick with a dumb despair,
Still mourn by the grave of a hope so fair.
The Harlot's House
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

We caught the tread of dancing feet,
We loitered down the moonlit street,
And stopped beneath the harlot's house.
Inside, above the din and fray,
We heard the loud musicians play
The 'Treues Liebes Herz' of Strauss.
Like strange mechanical grotesques,
Making fantastic arabesques,
The shadows raced across the blind.
We watched the ghostly dancers spin
To sound of horn and violin,
Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.
Like wire-pulled automatons,
Slim silhouetted skeletons
Went sidling through the slow quadrille,
Then took each other by the hand,
And danced a stately saraband;
Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.
Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed
A phantom lover to her breast,
Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.
Sometimes a horrible marionette
Came out, and smoked its cigarette
Upon the steps like a live thing.
Then, turning to my love, I said,
'The dead are dancing with the dead,
The dust is whirling with the dust.'
But she she heard the violin,
And left my side, and entered in:
Love passed into the house of lust.
Then suddenly the tune went false,
The dancers wearied of the waltz,
The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.
And down the long and silent street,
The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,
Crept like a frightened girl.
Despair.
by Jean Blewett

We catch a glimpse of it, gaunt and gray,
When the golden sunbeams are all abroad;
We sober a moment, then softly say:
The world still lies in the hand of God.
We watch it stealthily creeping o'er
The threshold leading to somebody's soul;
A shadow, we cry, it cannot be more
When faith is one's portion and Heaven one's goal.
A ghost that comes stealing its way along,
Affrighting the weak with its gruesome air,
But who that is young and glad and strong
Fears for a moment to meet Despair?
To this heart of ours we have thought so bold
All uninvited it comes one day - 
Lo! faith grows wan, and love grows cold,
And the heaven of our dreams lies far away.
Written In Naples
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are what we are made; each following day
Is the Creator of our human mould
Not less than was the first; the all-wise God
Gilds a few points in every several life,
And as each flower upon the fresh hillside,
And every colored petal of each flower,
Is sketched and dyed, each with a new design,
Its spot of purple, and its streak of brown,
So each man's life shall have its proper lights,
And a few joys, a few peculiar charms,
For him round in the melancholy hours
And reconcile him to the common days.
Not many men see beauty in the fogs
Of close low pine-woods in a river town;
Yet unto me not morn's magnificence,
Nor the red rainbow of a summer eve,
Nor Rome, nor joyful Paris, nor the halls
Of rich men blazing hospitable light,
Nor wit, nor eloquence,--no, nor even the song
Of any woman that is now alive,--
Hath such a soul, such divine influence,
Such resurrection of the happy past,
As is to me when I behold the morn
Ope in such law moist roadside, and beneath
Peep the blue violets out of the black loam,
Pathetic silent poets that sing to me
Thine elegy, sweet singer, sainted wife.
March, 1833.
The Secret Sits
by Robert Lee Frost

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
Builders Of Ruins
by Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell

We build with strength the deep tower-wall
That shall be shattered thus and thus.
And fair and great are court and hall,
But how fair--this is not for us,
Who know the lack that lurks in all.
We know, we know how all too bright
The hues are that our painting wears,
And how the marble gleams too white;--
We speak in unknown tongues, the years
Interpret everything aright,
And crown with weeds our pride of towers,
And warm our marble through with sun,
And break our pavements through with flowers,
With an Amen when all is done,
Knowing these perfect things of ours.
O days, we ponder, left alone,
Like children in their lonely hour,
And in our secrets keep your own,
As seeds the colour of the flower.
To-day they are not all unknown,
The stars that 'twixt the rise and fall,
Like relic-seers, shall one by one
Stand musing o'er our empty hall;
And setting moons shall brood upon
The frescoes of our inward wall.
And when some midsummer shall be,
Hither will come some little one
(Dusty with bloom of flowers is he),
Sit on a ruin i' the late long sun,
And think, one foot upon his knee.
And where they wrought, these lives of ours,
So many-worded, many-souled,
A North-west wind will take the towers,
And dark with colour, sunny and cold,
Will range alone among the flowers.
And here or there, at our desire,
The little clamorous owl shall sit
Through her still time; and we aspire
To make a law (and know not it)
Unto the life of a wild briar.
Our purpose is distinct and dear,
Though from our open eyes 'tis hidden.
Thou, Time-to-come, shalt make it clear,
Undoing our work; we are children chidden
With pity and smiles of many a year.
Who shall allot the praise, and guess
What part is yours and what is ours?--
O years that certainly will bless
Our flowers with fruits, our seeds with flowers,
With ruin all our perfectness.
Be patient, Time, of our delays,
Too happy hopes, and wasted fears,
Our faithful ways, our wilful ways,
Solace our labours, O our seers
The seasons, and our bards the days;
And make our pause and silence brim
With the shrill children's play, and sweets
Of those pathetic flowers and dim,
Of those eternal flowers my Keats
Dying felt growing over him.
To A Castillan Song
by Sara Teasdale

We held the book together timidly,
Whose antique music in an alien tongue
Once rose among the dew-drenched vines that hung
Beneath a high Castilian balcony.
I felt the lute strings' ancient ecstasy,
And while he read, my love-filled heart was stung,
And throbbed, as where an ardent bird has clung
The branches tremble on a blossomed tree.
Oh lady for whose sake the song was made,
Laid long ago in some still cypress shade,
Divided from the man who longed for thee,
Here in a land whose name he never heard,
His song brought love as April brings the bird,
And not a breath divides my love from me!
The Aisne (1914-15)
by Alan Seeger

We first saw fire on the tragic slopes
Where the flood-tide of France's early gain,
Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes,
Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne.
The charge her heroes left us, we assumed,
What, dying, they reconquered, we preserved,
In the chill trenches, harried, shelled, entombed,
Winter came down on us, but no man swerved.
Winter came down on us. The low clouds, torn
In the stark branches of the riven pines,
Blurred the white rockets that from dusk till morn
Traced the wide curve of the close-grappling lines.
In rain, and fog that on the withered hill
Froze before dawn, the lurking foe drew down;
Or light snows fell that made forlorner still
The ravaged country and the ruined town;
Or the long clouds would end. Intensely fair,
The winter constellations blazing forth - 
Perseus, the Twins, Orion, the Great Bear - 
Gleamed on our bayonets pointing to the north.
And the lone sentinel would start and soar
On wings of strong emotion as he knew
That kinship with the stars that only War
Is great enough to lift man's spirit to.
And ever down the curving front, aglow
With the pale rockets' intermittent light,
He heard, like distant thunder, growl and grow
The rumble of far battles in the night, - 
Rumors, reverberant, indistinct, remote,
Borne from red fields whose martial names have won
The power to thrill like a far trumpet-note, - 
Vic, Vailly, Soupir, Hurtelise, Craonne . . .
Craonne, before thy cannon-swept plateau,
Where like sere leaves lay strewn September's dead,
I found for all dear things I forfeited
A recompense I would not now forego.
For that high fellowship was ours then
With those who, championing another's good,
More than dull Peace or its poor votaries could,
Taught us the dignity of being men.
There we drained deeper the deep cup of life,
And on sublimer summits came to learn,
After soft things, the terrible and stern,
After sweet Love, the majesty of Strife;
There where we faced under those frowning heights
The blast that maims, the hurricane that kills;
There where the watchlights on the winter hills
Flickered like balefire through inclement nights;
There where, firm links in the unyielding chain,
Where fell the long-planned blow and fell in vain - 
Hearts worthy of the honor and the trial,
We helped to hold the lines along the Aisne.
Canadian Born
by Emily Pauline Johnson

We first saw light in Canada, the land beloved of God;
We are the pulse of Canada, its marrow and its blood:
And we, the men of Canada, can face the world and brag
That we were born in Canada beneath the British flag.
Few of us have the blood of kings, few are of courtly birth,
But few are vagabonds or rogues of doubtful name and worth;
And all have one credential that entitles us to brag - 
That we were born in Canada beneath the British flag.
We've yet to make our money, we've yet to make our fame,
But we have gold and glory in our clean colonial name;
And every man's a millionaire if only he can brag
That he was born in Canada beneath the British flag.
No title and no coronet is half so proudly worn
As that which we inherited as men Canadian born.
We count no man so noble as the one who makes the brag
That he was born in Canada beneath the British flag.
The Dutch may have their Holland, the Spaniard have his Spain,
The Yankee to the south of us must south of us remain;
For not a man dare lift a hand against the men who brag
That they were born in Canada beneath the British flag.
River Rhymes
by John Campbell

1.
We have poled our staunch canoe
Many a boiling torrent through;
Paddling where the eddies drew,
Athwart the roaring flood we flew.
Chorus
Dip your paddles! make them leap,
Where the clear cold waters sweep.
Dip your paddles! steady keep,
Where breaks the rapid down the steep.
2.
Where the wind, like censer, flings
Smoke-spray wider as it swings,
Hark! the aisle of rainbow rings
To falls that hymn the King of kings.
3.
Lifting there our vessel tight,
Climbed we bank and rocky height,
Bore her through thick woods, where light
Fell dappling those green haunts of Night.
4.
O'er the rush of billows hurled,
Where they tossed and leaped and curled,
Past each wave-worn boulder whirled,
How fast we sailed, no sail unfurled!
5.
Laughs from parted lips and teeth
Hailed the quiet reach beneath,
Damascened in ferny sheath,
And girt with pine and maple wreath.
6.
Oh, the lovely river there
Made all Nature yet more fair;
Wooded hills and azure air
Kissed, quivering, in the stream they share.
7.
Plunged the salmon, waging feud
'Gainst the jewelled insect-brood;
From aerial solitude
An eagle's shadow crossed the wood.
8.
Flapped the heron, and the grey
Halcyon talked from cedar's spray,
Drummed the partridge far away;--
Ah! could we choose to live as they!
Ku Klux
by Madison Julius Cawein

We have sent him seeds of the melon's core,
And nailed a warning upon his door:
By the Ku Klux laws we can do no more.
Down in the hollow, 'mid crib and stack,
The roof of his low-porched house looms black;
Not a line of light at the door-sill's crack.
Yet arm and mount! and mask and ride!
The hounds can sense though the fox may hide!
And for a word too much men oft have died.
The clouds blow heavy toward the moon.
The edge of the storm will reach it soon.
The kildee cries and the lonesome loon.
The clouds shall flush with a wilder glare
Than the lightning makes with its angled flare,
When the Ku Klux verdict is given there.
In the pause of the thunder rolling low,
A rifle's answer who shall know
From the wind's fierce hurl and the rain's black blow?
Only the signature, written grim
At the end of the message brought to him
A hempen rope and a twisted limb.
So arm and mount! and mask and ride!
The hounds can sense though the fox may hide!
For a word too much men oft have died.
Ku Klux
by Madison Julius Cawein

We have sent him seeds of the melon's core,
And nailed a warning upon his door:
By the Ku Klux laws we can do no more.
Down in the hollow, 'mid crib and stack,
The roof of his low-porched house looms black;
Not a line of light at the door-sill's crack.
Yet arm and mount! and mask and ride!
The hounds can sense though the fox may hide!
And for a word too much men oft have died.
The clouds blow heavy toward the moon.
The edge of the storm will reach it soon.
The kildee cries and the lonesome loon.
The clouds shall flush with a wilder glare
Than the lightning makes with its angled flare,
When the Ku Klux verdict is given there.
In the pause of the thunder rolling low,
A rifle's answer - who shall know
From the wind's fierce hurl and the rain's black blow?
Only the signature, written grim
At the end of the message brought to him - 
A hempen rope and a twisted limb.
So arm and mount! and mask and ride!
The hounds can sense though the fox may hide! - 
For a word too much men oft have died.
Ode On The Mammoth Cheese.
by James McIntyre

Weight over seven thousand pounds.
We have seen thee, queen of cheese,
Lying quietly at your ease,
Gently fanned by evening breeze,
Thy fair form no flies dare seize.
All gaily dressed soon you'll go
To the great Provincial show,
To be admired by many a beau
In the city of Toronto.
Cows numerous as a swarm of bees,
Or as the leaves upon the trees,
It did require to make thee please,
And stand unrivalled, queen of cheese.
May you not receive a scar as
We have heard that Mr. Harris
Intends to send you off as far as
The great world's show at Paris.
Of the youth beware of these,
For some of them might rudely squeeze
And bite your cheek, then songs or glees
We could not sing, oh! queen of cheese.
We'rt thou suspended from balloon,
You'd cast a shade even at noon,
Folks would think it was the moon
About to fall and crush them soon.
Camp Follower's Song, Gomal River
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

We have left Gul Kach behind us,
Are marching on Apozai, - 
Where pleasure and rest are waiting
To welcome us by and by.
We're falling back from the Gomal,
Across the Gir-dao plain,
The camping ground is deserted,
We'll never come back again.
Along the rocks and the defiles,
The mules and the camels wind.
Good-bye to Rahimut-Ullah,
The man who is left behind.
For some we lost in the skirmish,
And some were killed in the fight,
But he was captured by fever,
In the sentry pit, at night.
A rifle shot had been swifter,
Less trouble a sabre thrust,
But his Fate decided fever,
And each man dies as he must.
Behind us, red in the distance.
The wavering flames rise high,
The flames of our burning grass-huts,
Against the black of the sky.
We hear the sound of the river,
An ever-lessening moan,
The hearts of us all turn backwards
To where he is left alone.
We sing up a little louder,
We know that we feel bereft,
We're leaving the camp together,
And only one of us left.
The only one, out of many,
And each must come to his end,
I wish I could stop this singing,
He happened to be my friend.
We're falling back from the Gomal
We're marching on Apozai,
And pleasure and rest are waiting
To welcome us by and by.
Perhaps the feast will taste bitter,
The lips of the girls less kind, - 
Because of Rahimut-Ullah,
The man who is left behind!
We Flash Across The Level
by William Ernest Henley

We flash across the level.
We thunder thro' the bridges.
We bicker down the cuttings.
We sway along the ridges.
A rush of streaming hedges,
Of jostling lights and shadows,
Of hurtling, hurrying stations,
Of racing woods and meadows.
We charge the tunnels headlong -
The blackness roars and shatters.
We crash between embankments -
The open spins and scatters.
We shake off the miles like water,
We might carry a royal ransom;
And I think of her waiting, waiting,
And long for a common hansom.
1876
A Sonnet.
by Freeman Edwin Miller

We gentler grow by sorrow; not the breast
That never crouches in the nights of tears,
That never bends beneath the loads of years,
Has sympathies that are the kindliest.
There is a strength in agony that best
Can link the careless heart with human fears,
And teach it that fond kindness which endears
The millions that with sadness are oppressed.
Grief softens while it saddens; pleasure smites
The timid soul with harshness, till it knows
Small earnest of the great world's grievous woes
And little of its struggles; sorrow plights
Her troth with sorrow, and in tears unites
Man unto man and hatred overthrows.
Canadian Rivers And Lakes.
by James McIntyre

We have here a sight as fair
As bonnie Doon or banks of Ayr,
Like modest worth meandering slow
The quiet waters gently flow,
Rose, thistle, shamrock, all combine,
Around the maple leaf to twine,
Whose outstretched arms so gigantic
Clasp Pacific and Atlantic,
Embracing lakes like burnished gold,
With joy a Shakespeare might behold,
For either Poet Burns or Moore[B]
Such scenery they would adore.
Delilah
by Rudyard Kipling

We have another viceroy now, those days are dead and done
Of Delilah Aberyswith and depraved Ulysses Gunne.
Delilah Aberyswith was a lady, not too young,
With a perfect taste in dresses and a badly-bitted tongue,
With a thirst for information, and a greater thirst for praise,
And a little house in Simla in the Prehistoric Days.
By reason of her marriage to a gentleman in power,
Delilah was acquainted with the gossip of the hour;
And many little secrets, of the half-official kind,
Were whispered to Delilah, and she bore them all in mind.
She patronized extensively a man, Ulysses Gunne,
Whose mode of earning money was a low and shameful one.
He wrote for certain papers, which, as everybody knows,
Is worse than serving in a shop or scaring off the crows.
He praised her "queenly beauty" first; and, later on, he hinted
At the "vastness of her intellect" with compliment unstinted.
He went with her a-riding, and his love for her was such
That he lent her all his horses and, she galled them very much.
One day, They brewed a secret of a fine financial sort;
It related to Appointments, to a Man and a Report.
'Twas almost worth the keeping, only seven people knew it,
And Gunne rose up to seek the truth and patiently ensue it.
It was a Viceroy's Secret, but, perhaps the wine was red,
Perhaps an Aged Councillor had lost his aged head,
Perhaps Delilah's eyes were bright, Delilah's whispers sweet,
The Aged Member told her what 'twere treason to repeat.
Ulysses went a-riding, and they talked of love and flowers;
Ulysses went a-calling, and he called for several hours;
Ulysses went a-waltzing, and Delilah helped him dance,
Ulysses let the waltzes go, and waited for his chance.
The summer sun was setting, and the summer air was still,
The couple went a-walking in the shade of Summer Hill.
The wasteful sunset faded out in turkis-green and gold,
Ulysses pleaded softly, and... that bad Delilah told!
Next morn, a startled Empire learnt the all-important news;
Next week, the Aged Councillor was shaking in his shoes.
Next month, I met Delilah and she did not show the least
Hesitation in affirming that Ulysses was a "beast."
* * * * *
We have another Viceroy now, those days are dead and done,
Off, Delilah Aberyswith and most mean Ulysses Gunne!
We Fish
by Herman Melville

We fish, we fish, we merrily swim,
We care not for friend nor for foe.
Our fins are stout,
Our tails are out,
As through the seas we go.
Fish, Fish, we are fish with red gills;
Naught disturbs us, our blood is at zero:
We are buoyant because of our bags,
Being many, each fish is a hero.
We care not what is it, this life
That we follow, this phantom unknown;
To swim, it's exceedingly pleasant,--
So swim away, making a foam.
This strange looking thing by our side,
Not for safety, around it we flee:--
Its shadow's so shady, that's all,--
We only swim under its lee.
And as for the eels there above,
And as for the fowls of the air,
We care not for them nor their ways,
As we cheerily glide afar!
We fish, we fish, we merrily swim,
We care not for friend nor for foe:
Our fins are stout,
Our tails are out,
As through the seas we go.
Epilogue
by Madison Julius Cawein

We have worshipped two gods from our earliest youth,
Soul of my soul and heart of me!
Young forever and true as truth
The gods of Beauty and Poesy.
Sweet to us are their tyrannies,
Sweet their chains that have held us long,
For God's own self is a part of these,
Part of our gods of Beauty and Song.
What to us if the world revile!
What to us if its heart rejects!
It may scorn our gods, or curse with a smile,
The gods we worship, that it neglects:
Nothing to us is its blessing or curse;
Less than nothing its hate and wrong:
For Love smiles down through the universe,
Smiles on our gods of Beauty and Song.
We go our ways: and the dreams we dream
People our path and cheer us on;
And ever before is the golden gleam,
The star we follow, the streak of dawn:
Nothing to us is the word men say;
For a wiser word still keeps us strong,
God's word, that makes fine fire of clay,
That shaped our gods of Beauty and Song.