DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Faithless Boy.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There was a wooer blithe and gay,
A son of France was he, 
Who in his arms for many a day,
As though his bride were she,
A poor young maiden had caress'd,
And fondly kiss'd, and fondly press'd,
And then at length deserted.
When this was told the nut-brown maid,
Her senses straightway fled;
She laugh'd and wept, and vow'd and pray'd,
And presently was dead.
The hour her soul its farewell took,
The boy was sad, with terror shook,
Then sprang upon his charger.
He drove his spurs into his side,
And scour'd the country round;
But wheresoever he might ride,
No rest for him was found.
For seven long days and nights he rode,
It storm'd, the waters overflow'd,
It bluster'd, lighten'd, thunder'd.
On rode he through the tempest's din,
Till he a building spied;
In search of shelter crept he in,
When he his steed had tied.
And as he groped his doubtful way,
The ground began to rock and sway, 
He fell a hundred fathoms.
When he recover'd from the blow,
He saw three lights pass by;
He sought in their pursuit to go,
The lights appear'd to fly.
They led his footsteps all astray,
Up, down, through many a narrow way
Through ruin'd desert cellars.
When lo! he stood within a hall,
With hollow eyes. and grinning all;
They bade him taste the fare.
A hundred guests sat there.
He saw his sweetheart 'midst the throng,
Wrapp'd up in grave-clothes white and long;
She turn'd, and *
Near Lanivet, 1872
by Thomas Hardy

There was a stunted handpost just on the crest,
Only a few feet high:
She was tired, and we stopped in the twilight-time for her rest,
At the crossways close thereby.
She leant back, being so weary, against its stem,
And laid her arms on its own,
Each open palm stretched out to each end of them,
Her sad face sideways thrown.
Her white-clothed form at this dim-lit cease of day
Made her look as one crucified
In my gaze at her from the midst of the dusty way,
And hurriedly "Don't," I cried.
I do not think she heard. Loosing thence she said,
As she stepped forth ready to go,
"I am rested now. - Something strange came into my head;
I wish I had not leant so!"
And wordless we moved onward down from the hill
In the west cloud's murked obscure,
And looking back we could see the handpost still
In the solitude of the moor.
"It struck her too," I thought, for as if afraid
She heavily breathed as we trailed;
Till she said, "I did not think how 'twould look in the shade,
When I leant there like one nailed."
I, lightly: "There's nothing in it. For YOU, anyhow!"
- "O I know there is not," said she . . .
"Yet I wonder . . . If no one is bodily crucified now,
In spirit one may be!"
And we dragged on and on, while we seemed to see
In the running of Time's far glass
Her crucified, as she had wondered if she might be
Some day. - Alas, alas!
Nursery Rhyme. DXXXIX. Natural History.
by Unknown

There was a piper, he'd a cow,
And he'd no hay to give her
He took his pipes and played a tune,
Consider, old cow, consider!
The cow considered very well,
For she gave the piper a penny,
That he might play the tune again,
Of corn rigs are bonnie!
The Mysterious Visitor
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

There was a sound of hurrying feet,
A tramp on echoing stairs,
There was a rush along the aisles, - 
It was the hour of prayers.
And on, like Ocean's midnight wave,
The current rolled along,
When, suddenly, a stranger form
Was seen amidst the throng.
He was a dark and swarthy man,
That uninvited guest;
A faded coat of bottle-green
Was buttoned round his breast.
There was not one among them all
Could say from whence he came;
Nor beardless boy, nor ancient man,
Could tell that stranger's name.
All silent as the sheeted dead,
In spite of sneer and frown,
Fast by a gray-haired senior's side
He sat him boldly down.
There was a look of horror flashed
From out the tutor's eyes;
When all around him rose to pray,
The stranger did not rise!
A murmur broke along the crowd,
The prayer was at an end;
With ringing heels and measured tread,
A hundred forms descend.
Through sounding aisle, o'er grating stair,
The long procession poured,
Till all were gathered on the seats
Around the Commons board.
That fearful stranger! down he sat,
Unasked, yet undismayed;
And on his lip a rising smile
Of scorn or pleasure played.
He took his hat and hung it up,
With slow but earnest air;
He stripped his coat from off his back,
And placed it on a chair.
Then from his nearest neighbor's side
A knife and plate he drew;
And, reaching out his hand again,
He took his teacup too.
How fled the sugar from the bowl
How sunk the azure cream!
They vanished like the shapes that float
Upon a summer's dream.
A long, long draught, - an outstretched hand, - 
And crackers, toast, and tea,
They faded from the stranger's touch,
Like dew upon the sea.
Then clouds were dark on many a brow,
Fear sat upon their souls,
And, in a bitter agony,
They clasped their buttered rolls.
A whisper trembled through the crowd,
Who could the stranger be?
And some were silent, for they thought
A cannibal was he.
What if the creature should arise, - 
For he was stout and tall, - 
And swallow down a sophomore,
Coat, crow's-foot, cap, and all!
All sullenly the stranger rose;
They sat in mute despair;
He took his hat from off the peg,
His coat from off the chair.
Four freshmen fainted on the seat,
Six swooned upon the floor;
Yet on the fearful being passed,
And shut the chapel door.
There is full many a starving man,
That walks in bottle green,
But never more that hungry one
In Commons hall was seen.
Yet often at the sunset hour,
When tolls the evening bell,
The freshman lingers on the steps,
That frightful tale to tell.
Lionel Johnson
by Alfred Joyce Kilmer (Joyce)

(For the Rev. John J. Burke, C. S. P.)
There was a murkier tinge in London's air
As if the honest fog blushed black for shame.
Fools sang of sin, for other fools' acclaim,
And Milton's wreath was tossed to Baudelaire.
The flowers of evil blossomed everywhere,
But in their midst a radiant lily came
Candescent, pure, a cup of living flame,
Bloomed for a day, and left the earth more fair.
And was it Charles, thy "fair and fatal King",
Who bade thee welcome to the lovely land?
Or did Lord David cease to harp and sing
To take in his thine emulative hand?
Or did Our Lady's smile shine forth, to bring
Her lyric Knight within her choir to stand?
She Hears The Storm
by Thomas Hardy

There was a time in former years -
While my roof-tree was his -
When I should have been distressed by fears
At such a night as this!
I should have murmured anxiously,
"The pricking rain strikes cold;
His road is bare of hedge or tree,
And he is getting old."
But now the fitful chimney-roar,
The drone of Thorncombe trees,
The Froom in flood upon the moor,
The mud of Mellstock Leaze,
The candle slanting sooty wick'd,
The thuds upon the thatch,
The eaves-drops on the window flicked,
The clacking garden-hatch,
And what they mean to wayfarers,
I scarcely heed or mind;
He has won that storm-tight roof of hers
Which Earth grants all her kind.
Her Apotheosis
by Thomas Hardy

"Secretum meum mihi"
(FADED WOMAN'S SONG)
There was a spell of leisure,
No record vouches when;
With honours, praises, pleasure
To womankind from men.
But no such lures bewitched me,
No hand was stretched to raise,
No gracious gifts enriched me,
No voices sang my praise.
Yet an iris at that season
Amid the accustomed slight
From denseness, dull unreason,
Ringed me with living light.
Seasons
by Unknown

There was a young fellow named Hall,
Who fell in the spring in the fall;
'Twould have been a sad thing
If he'd died in the spring,
But he didn't - he died in the fall.
The Ship Of Rio
by Walter De La Mare

There was a ship of Rio
Sailed out into the blue,
And nine and ninety monkeys
Were all her jovial crew.
From bo'sun to the cabin boy,
From quarter to caboose,
There weren't a stitch of calico
To breech 'em - tight or loose;
From spar to deck, from deck to keel,
From barnacle to shroud,
There weren't one pair of reach-me-downs
To all that jabbering crowd.
But wasn't it a gladsome sight,
When roared the deep sea gales,
To see them reef her fore and aft
A-swinging by their tails!
Oh, wasn't it a gladsome sight,
When glassy calm did come,
To see them squatting tailor-wise
Around a keg of rum!
Oh, wasn't it a gladsome sight,
When in she sailed to land,
To see them all a-scampering skip
For nuts across the sand!
Falling Leaves.
by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick

There was a sound of music low--
An undertone of laughter;
The song was done, and can't you guess
The words that followed after?
Like autumn leaves sometimes they fall--
The words that burn and falter;
And is it true they too must fade
Upon Love's sacred alter?
From memory each one of us
Can cull some sweetest treasure;
Yet golden days, like golden leaves,
Give pain as well as pleasure.
There was a sound of music low--
An undertone of laughter:
The sun was gone--yet heaven knew
The stars that followed after.
Our Lady Of The Sackcloth
by Rudyard Kipling

There was a Priest at Phil',
Tongue-tied, feeble, and old;
And the daily prayer to the Virgin
Was all the Office he could.
The others were ill-remembered,
Mumbled and hard to hear;
But to Mary, the two-fold Virgin,
Always his voice rang clear.
And the congregation mocked him,
And the weight of the years he bore,
And they sent word to the Bishop
That he should not serve them more.
(Never again at the Offering
When the Bread and the Body are one
Oh, never the picture of Mary
Watching him serve her Son!)
Kindly and wise was the Bishop.
Unto the Priest said he:,
'Patience till thou art stronger,
And keep meantime with me.
'Patience a little; it may be
The Lord shall loosen thy tongue
And then thou shalt serve at the Offering
As it was when we were young.'
And the Priest obeyed and was silent,
And the Bishop gave him leave
To walk alone in the desert
Where none should see him grieve.
(Never again at the Offering
When the Wine and the Blood are one!
Oh, never the picture of Mary
Watching him honour her Son!)
Saintly and clean was the Bishop,
Ruling himself aright
With prayer and fast in the daytime
And scourge and vigil at night.
Out of his zeal he was minded
To add one penance the more,
A garment of harshest sackcloth
Under the robes he wore.
He gathered the cloth in secret
Lest any should know and praise,
The shears, the palm and the packthread,
And laboured it many ways.
But he had no skill in the making,
And failed and fretted the while;
Till there stood a Woman before him,
Smiling as Mothers smile.
Her feet were burned by the desert,
Like a desert-dweller she trod,
Even the two-fold Virgin,
Spouse and Bearer of God!
She took the shears and the sacking,
The needle and stubborn thread,
She cut, she shaped, and she sewed them,
And, 'This shall be blessed,' she said.
She passed in the white hot noontide,
On a wave of the quivering air;
And the Bishop's eyes were opened,
And he fell on his face in prayer.
But, far from the smouldering censers,
Far from the chanted praise,
Oh, far from the pictures of Mary
That had watched him all his days,
Far in the desert by Phil',
The old Priest walked forlorn,
Till he saw at the head of her Riders
A Queen of the Desert-born.
High she swayed on her camel,
Beautiful to behold:
And her beast was belled with silver,
And her veils were spotted with gold!
Low she leaned from her litter,
Soft she spoke in his ear:,
'Nay, I have watched thy sorrow!
Nay, but the end is near!
'For again thou shalt serve at the Offering
And thy tongue shall be loosed in praise,
And again thou shalt sing unto Mary
Who has watched thee all thy days.
'Go in peace to the Bishop,
Carry him word from me,
That the Woman who sewed the sackcloth
Would have him set thee free!'
Song. "There Was A Time, When Love's Young Flowers"
by John Clare

There was a time, when love's young flowers
With many a joy my bosom prest:
Sweet hours of bliss!--but short are hours,
Those hours are fled--and I'm distrest.
I would not wish, in reason's spite;
I would not wish new joy to gain;
I only wish for one delight,--
To see those hours of bliss again.
There was a day, when love was young,
And nought but bliss did there belong;
When blackbirds nestling o'er us sung,
Ah me! what sweetness wak'd his song.
I wish not springs for ever fled;
I wish not birds' forgotten strain;
I only wish for feelings dead
To warm, and wake, and feel again.
But ah! what once was joy is past:
The time's gone by; the day and hour
Are whirring fled on trouble's blast,
As winter nips the summer flower.
A shadow is but left the mind,
Of joys that once were real to view;
An echo only fills the wind,
With mocking sounds that once were true.
Jenny Lind
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There was a something in your song, men say
No later singer voices: some strange power
Like to the essence in a rare June day,
Or like the subtle perfume of a flower.
Awed and inspired, your listeners turned away,
Baptized in your sweet music's holy shower.
For through that music shone the glorious dower
Of your great soul: here all the secret lay.
Not for the honours of this earth you sang -
Not for its gold or glory, not for art,
Not for the fortunes at your fair feet hurled.
The love of God through all your measures rang,
And each pure note bespoke a noble heart.
When worth weds genius, lo! they rule the world.
There Was a Rose
by Madison Julius Cawein

There was a rose in Eden once: it grows
On Earth now, sweeter for its rare perfume:
And Paradise is poorer by one bloom,
And Earth is richer. In this blossom glows
More loveliness than old seraglios
Or courts of kings did ever yet illume:
More purity, than ever yet had room
In soul of nun or saint. O human rose,
Who art initial and sweet period of
My heart's divinest sentence, where I read
Love, first and last, and in the pauses love;
Who art the dear ideal of each deed
My life aspires by to some high goal,
Set in the haunted garden of my soul!
Love Recalled In Sleep
by Robert Fuller Murray

There was a time when in your face
There dwelt such power, and in your smile
I know not what of magic grace;
They held me captive for a while.
Ah, then I listened for your voice!
Like music every word did fall,
Making the hearts of men rejoice,
And mine rejoiced the most of all.
At sight of you, my soul took flame.
But now, alas! the spell is fled.
Is it that you are not the same,
Or only that my love is dead?
I know not--but last night I dreamed
That you were walking by my side,
And sweet, as once you were, you seemed,
And all my heart was glorified.
Your head against my shoulder lay,
And round your waist my arm was pressed,
And as we walked a well-known way,
Love was between us both confessed.
But when with dawn I woke from sleep,
And slow came back the unlovely truth,
I wept, as an old man might weep
For the lost paradise of youth.
The Black Tracker or, Why He Lost The Track
by Henry Lawson

There was a tracker in the force
Of wondrous sight (the story ran):,
He never failed to track a horse,
He never failed to find his man.
They brought him from a distant town
Once more to gain reward and praise,
Nor dreamed the man he hunted down
Had saved his life in bygone days.
Away across the farthest run,
And far across the stony plain,
The outlaw's horse's tracks, each one,
Unto the black man's eyes were plain.
Those tracks across the ranges wide
Right well he knew that he could trace,
And oft he turned aside to hide
The tears upon his dusky face.
Now was his time, for he could claim
Reward and praise if he prevailed!
Now was the time to win him fame,
When all the other blacks had failed.
He struggled well to play his part,
For in the art he took a pride.
But, ah! there beat a white man's heart
Beneath his old, black wrinkled hide.
Against that heart he struggled well,
But gratitude was in the black,
He failed, and only he could tell
The reason why he lost the track.
The Singing Woman
by Thomas Hardy

There was a singing woman
Came riding across the mead
At the time of the mild May weather,
Tameless, tireless;
This song she sung: "I am fair, I am young!"
And many turned to heed.
And the same singing woman
Sat crooning in her need
At the time of the winter weather;
Friendless, fireless,
She sang this song: "Life, thou'rt too long!"
And there was none to heed.
To England.
by Francis William Lauderdale Adams

I.
There was a time when all thy sons were proud
To speak thy name,
England, when Europe echoed back aloud
Thy fearless fame:
When Spain reeled shattered helpless from thy guns
And splendid ire,
When from Canadian snows to Indian suns
Pitt's soul was fire.
O that in days like these were, fair and free
From shame and scorn,
Fate had allowed, benignly, pityingly
That I was born!
O that, if struck, then struck with glorious wounds,
I bore apart
(Not torn with fangs of leprous coward hounds)
My bleeding heart!
II.
We hate you - not because of cruel deeds
Staining a glorious effort. They who live
Learn in this earth to give and to forgive,
Where heart and soul are noble and fate's needs
Imperious: No, nor yet that cruel seeds
Of power and wrong you've sown alternative,
We hate you, we your sons who yet believe
That truth and justice are not empty creeds!
No, but because of greed and golden pay,
Wages of sin and death: because you smother
Your conscience, making cursed all the day.
Bible in one hand, bludgeon in the other,
Cain-like you come upon and slay your brother,
And, kneeling down, thank God for it, and pray!
III.
I whom you fed with shame and starved with woe,
I wheel above you,
Your fatal vulture, for I hate you so,
I almost love you!
I smell your ruin out. I light and croak
My sombre lore,
As swaggering you go by, O heart of oak
Rotten to the core!
Look westward! Ireland's vengeful eyes are cast
On freedom won.
Look eastward! India stirs from sleep at last.
You are undone!
Look southward, where Australia hears your voice,
And turns away!
O brutal hypocrite, she makes her choice
With the rising day!
Foul Esau, you who sold your high birthright
For gilded mud,
Who did the wrong and, priestlike, called it right,
And swindled God!
The hour is gone of insult, pain and patience;
The hour is come
When they arise, the faithful mightier nations,
To drag you down!
IV.
England, the land I loved
With passionate pride,
For hate of whom I live
Who for love had died,
Can I, while shines the sun,
That hour regain
When I again may come to thee
And love again?
No, not while that flag
Of greed and lust
Flaunts in the air, untaught
To drag the dust! - 
Never, till expiant,
I see you kneel,
And, brandished, gleams aloft
The foeman's steel!
Ah, then to speed, and laugh,
As my heart caught the knife:
"Mother, I love you! Here,
Here is my life!"
Sonnet: - XVII.
by Charles Sangster

THERE WAS A TIME - and that is all we know!
No record lives of their ensanguined deeds:
The past seems palsied with some giant blow,
And grows the more obscure on what it feeds.
A rotted fragment of a human leaf;
A few stray skulls; a heap of human bones!
These are the records - the traditions brief - 
'Twere easier far to read the speechless stones.
The fierce Ojibwas, with tornado force,
Striking white terror to the hearts of braves!
The mighty Hurons, rolling on their course,
Compact and steady as the ocean waves!
The stately Chippewas, a warrior host!
Who were they? - Whence? - And why? no human tongue can boast!
There Was A Man
by Leonard Leslie Brooke

There Was A Man.
There was a man, and he had nought,
And robbers came to rob him;
He crept up to the chimney-pot,
And then they could not find him;
He ran fourteen miles in fifteen days,
And never looked behind him.
Nursery Rhyme. CCCL. Games.
by Unknown

There was a man, and his name was Dob,
And he had a wife, and her name was Mob,
And he had a dog, and he called it Cob,
And she had a cat, called Chitterabob.
Cob, says Dob,
Chitterabob, says Mob,
Cob was Dob's dog,
Chitterabob Mob's cat.
The Harpy
by Robert William Service

There was a woman, and she was wise; woefully wise was she;
She was old, so old, yet her years all told were but a score and three;
And she knew by heart, from finish to start, the Book of Iniquity.
There is no hope for such as I, on earth nor yet in Heaven;
Unloved I live, unloved I die, unpitied, unforgiven;
A loath'd jade I ply my trade, unhallowed and unshriven.
I paint my cheeks, for they are white, and cheeks of chalk men hate;
Mine eyes with wine I make to shine, that men may seek and sate;
With overhead a lamp of red I sit me down and wait.
Until they come, the nightly scum, with drunken eyes aflame;
Your sweethearts, sons, ye scornful ones - 'tis I who know their shame;
The gods ye see are brutes to me - and so I play my game.
For life is not the thing we thought, and not the thing we plan;
And woman in a bitter world must do the best she can;
Must yield the stroke, and bear the yoke, and serve the will of man;
Must serve his need and ever feed the flame of his desire;
Though be she loved for love alone, or be she loved for hire;
For every man since life began is tainted with the mire.
And though you know he love you so, and set you on love's throne,
Yet let your eyes but mock his sighs, and let your heart be stone,
Lest you be left (as I was left) attainted and alone.
From love's close kiss to hell's abyss is one sheer flight, I trow;
And wedding-ring and bridal bell are will-o'-wisps of woe;
And 'tis not wise to love too well, and this all women know.
Wherefore, the wolf-pack having gorged upon the lamb, their prey,
With siren smile and serpent guile I make the wolf-pack pay;
With velvet paws and flensing claws, a tigress roused to slay.
One who in youth sought truest truth, and found a devil's lies;
A symbol of the sin of man, a human sacrifice:
Yet shall I blame on man the shame? Could it be otherwise?
Was I not born to walk in scorn where others walk in pride?
The Maker marred, and evil-starred I drift upon His tide;
And He alone shall judge His own, so I His judgment bide.
Fate has written a tragedy; its name is "The Human Heart."
The theatre is the House of Life, Woman the mummer's part:
The Devil enters the prompter's box and the play is ready to start.
Fairy Sketch - Scene - Netley Abbey
by William Lisle Bowles

There was a morrice on the moonlight plain,
And music echoed in the woody glade,
For fay-like forms, as of Titania's train,
Upon a summer eve, beneath the shade
Of Netley's ivied ruins, to the sound
Of sprightly minstrelsy did beat the ground: 
Come, take hands! and lightly move,
While our boat, in yonder cove,
Rests upon the darkening sea;
Come, take hands, and follow me!
Netley! thy dim and desolated fane
Hath heard, perhaps, the spirits of the night
Shrieking, at times, amid the wind and rain;
Or haply, when the full-orbed moon shone bright,
Thy glimmering aisles have echoed to the song
Of fairy Mab, who led her shadowy masque along.
Now, as to the sprightly sound
Of moonlight minstrelsy we beat the ground;
From the pale nooks, in accent clear,
Now, methinks, her voice I hear,
Sounding o'er the darksome sea;
Come, take hands, and follow me!
Here, beneath the solemn wood,
When faintly-blue is all the sky,
And the moon is still on high,
To the murmurs of the flood,
To the glimpses of the night,
We perform our airy rite; 
Care and pain to us unknown,
To the darkening seas are flown.
Hear no more life's fretful noise,
Heed not here pale Envy's sting,
Far from life's distempered joys;
To the waters murmuring,
To the shadows of the sky,
To the moon that rides on high,
To the glimpses of the night,
We perform our airy rite,
While care and pain, to us unknown,
To the darkening seas are flown.
His Mansion
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There was a thought he hid from all men's eyes,
And by his prudent life and deeds of worth
He left a goodly record upon earth
As one both pure and wise.
But when he reached a dark unsightly door
Beyond the grave, there stood his secret thought.
It was the mansion he had built and brought
To dwell in, on that shore.