DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
A Pict Song
by Rudyard Kipling

Rome never looks where she treads.
Always her heavy hooves fall
On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads;
And Rome never heeds when we bawl.
Her sentries pass on, that is all,
And we gather behind them in hordes,
And plot to reconquer the Wall,
With only our tongues for our swords.
We are the Little Folk, we!
Too little to love or to hate.
Leave us alone and you'll see
How we can drag down the State!
We are the worm in the wood!
We are the rot at the root!
We are the taint in the blood!
We are the thorn in the foot!
Mistletoe killing an oak,
Rats gnawing cables in two,
Moths making holes in a cloak,
How they must love what they do!
Yes, and we Little Folk too,
We are busy as they,
Working our works out of view,
Watch, and you'll see it some day!
No indeed! We are not strong,
But we know Peoples that are.
Yes, and we'll guide them along
To smash and destroy you in War!
We shall be slaves just the same?
Yes, we have always been slaves,
But you, you will die of the shame,
And then we shall dance on your graves!
We are the Little Folk, we, etc.
The Evening Sky
by John Frederick Freeman

Rose-bosom'd and rose-limb'd
With eyes of dazzling bright
Shakes Venus mid the twin'd boughs of the night;
Rose-limb'd, soft-stepping
From low bough to bough
Shaking the wide-hung starry fruitage--dimmed
Its bloom of snow
By that sole planetary glow.
Venus, avers the astronomer,
Not thus idly dancing goes
Flushing the eternal orchard with wild rose.
She through ether burns
Outpacing planetary earth,
And ere two years triumphantly returns,
And again wave-like swelling flows,
And again her flashing apparition comes and goes.
This we have not seen,
No heavenly courses set,
No flight unpausing through a void serene:
But when eve clears,
Arises Venus as she first uprose
Stepping the shaken boughs among,
And in her bosom glows
The warm light hidden in sunny snows.
She shakes the clustered stars
Lightly, as she goes
Amid the unseen branches of the night,
Rose-limb'd, rose-bosom'd bright.
She leaps: they shake and pale; she glows--
And who but knows
How the rejoiced heart aches
When Venus all his starry vision shakes;
When through his mind
Tossing with random airs of an unearthly wind,
Rose-bosom'd, rose-limb'd,
The mistress of his starry vision arises,
And the boughs glittering sway
And the stars pale away,
And the enlarging heaven glows
As Venus light-foot mid the twin'd branches goes.
The Woodland Waterfall
by Madison Julius Cawein

Rock and root and fern and flower
They had led him for an hour
To the inmost forest, where,
In a hollow, green with moss,
That the deep ferns trailed across,
Fell a fall, a presence fair,
Syllabling to the air,
Charming with cool sounds the bower.
It was she he used to know
In some land of Long Ago,
Some far land of Yesterday,
Where he listened to her words,
And she lured him, like the birds,
To her lips; and in his way
Danced a bubble or rainbow-ray,
Or a minnow's silvery bow.
Round him now her arms she flung,
And, as dripping there she clung,
In her gaze of green and gold
He beheld a beauty gleam,
And the shadow of a dream,
That to no man hath been told,
Like a Faery tale of old,
Rise up glimmering, ever young.
As his form to hers she drew
In his soul, it seemed, he knew
She was daughter of a king,
Hate-transformed into a fall
By a witch; long-held in thrall,
And condemned to sigh and sing
Till some mortal find the ring,
Charm, that would the spell undo.
In a pool of spray and foam,
With a crystal-bubble dome,
Suddenly he saw the charm:
Newt-like, coiling, there it lay
Could he seize it he would stay,
Master all! and, white and warm,
Clasp the princess in his arm,
Lead her to her palace home!
He would free her; share her crown.
So he thought; and, bare and brown,
Clove the water at a blow.
But, behold, a mottled form,
Like a newt's, stretched out an arm,
Crimson-freckled, from below;
And before his heart could know,
With wild laughter drew him down.
Nursery Rhyme. LXVI. Tales.
by Unknown

[The following two stanzas, although they belong to the same piece, are often found separated from each other.]
Robin and Richard were two pretty men;
They laid in bed till the clock struck ten;
Then up starts Robin, and looks at the sky,
Oh! brother Richard, the sun's very high:
The bull's in the barn threshing the corn,
The cock's on the dunghill blowing his horn,
The cat's at the fire frying of fish,
The dog's in the pantry breading his dish.
Rose Of The Desert
by Thomas Moore

Rose of the Desert! thou, whose blushing ray,
Lonely and lovely, fleets unseen away;
No hand to cull thee, none to woo thy sigh,--
In vestal silence left to live and die.--
Rose of the Desert! thus should woman be,
Shining uncourted, lone and safe, like thee.
Rose of the Garden, how, unlike thy doom!
Destined for others, not thyself, to bloom;
Culled ere thy beauty lives thro' half its day;
A moment cherished, and then cast away;
Rose of the Garden! such is woman's lot,--
Worshipt while blooming--when she fades, forgot.
To Lady Jane
by Vachel Lindsay

Romance was always young.
You come today
Just eight years old
With marvellous dark hair.
Younger than Dante found you
When you turned
His heart into the way
That found the heavenly stair.
Perhaps we must be strangers.
I confess
My soul this hour is Dante's,
And your care
Should be for dolls
Whose painted hands caress
Your marvellous dark hair.
Romance, with moonflower face
And morning eyes,
And lips whose thread of scarlet prophesies
The canticles of a coming king unknown,
Remember, when you join him
On his throne,
Even me, your far off troubadour,
And wear
For me some trifling rose
Beneath your veil,
Dying a royal death,
Happy and pale,
Choked by the passion,
The wonder and the snare,
The glory and despair
That still will haunt and own
Your marvellous dark hair.
Nursery Rhyme. CCCCIII. Lullabies.
by Unknown

Rock well my cradle,
And "bee baa," my son;
You shall have a new gown,
When ye lord comes home.
Oh! still my child, Orange,
Still him with a bell;
I can't still him, ladie,
Till you come down yoursell!
Roots And Leaves Themselves Alone
by Walt Whitman

Roots and leaves themselves alone are these;
Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods, and from the pond-side,
Breast-sorrel and pinks of love--fingers that wind around tighter than vines,
Gushes from the throats of birds, hid in the foliage of trees, as the sun is risen;
Breezes of land and love--breezes set from living shores out to you on the living sea--to you, O sailors!
Frost-mellow'd berries, and Third-month twigs, offer'd fresh to young persons wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up,
Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are,
Buds to be unfolded on the old terms;
If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring form, color, perfume, to you;
If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits, tall blanches and trees.
Hunting Song (From Maria Stuart)
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

Round us rolls the heather's sheen,
Heather's sheen,
'Neath the falcon of our queen,
Of our queen.
Birch and cherry balm exhale,
Balm exhale,
Loud our horns the cliffs assail,
Cliffs assail.
Light the air and clear the sky,
Clear the sky, - 
Hurrah! onward, she is nigh,
She is nigh.
Hunt ye joy with every breath,
Every breath,
Hunt it to the stream of death,
Stream of death!
The Shepherd And His Dog Rover.
by Robert Bloomfield

ROVER, awake! the grey Cock crows!
Come, shake your coat and go with me!
High in the East the green Hill glows;
And glory crowns our shelt'ring Tree.
The Sheep expect us at the fold:
My faithful Dog, let's haste away,
And in his earliest beams behold,
And hail, the source of cheerful day.
Half his broad orb o'erlooks the Hill,
And darting down the Valley flies:
At every casement welcome still;
The golden summons of the skies.
Go, fetch my Staff; and o'er the dews
Let Echo waft thy gladsome voice.
Shall we a cheerful note refuse
When rising Morn proclaims 'Rejoice!'
Now then we'll start; and thus I'll sling
Our store, a trivial load to bear:
Yet, ere night comes, should hunger sting,
I'll not encroach on Rover's share.
The fresh breeze bears its sweets along;
The Lark but chides us while we stay:
Soon shall the Vale repeat my song;
Go brush before, away, away.
Mating
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

Round clouds roll in the arms of the wind,
The round earth rolls in a clasp of blue sky,
And see, where the budding hazels are thinned,
The wild anemones lie
In undulating shivers beneath the wind.
Over the blue of the waters ply
White ducks, a living flotilla of cloud;
And, look you, floating just thereby,
The blue-gleamed drake stems proud
Like Abraham, whose seed should multiply.
In the lustrous gleam of the water, there
Scramble seven toads across the silk, obscure leaves,
Seven toads that meet in the dusk to share
The darkness that interweaves
The sky and earth and water and live things everywhere.
Look now, through the woods where the beech-green spurts
Like a storm of emerald snow, look, see
A great bay stallion dances, skirts
The bushes sumptuously,
Going outward now in the spring to his brief deserts.
Ah love, with your rich, warm face aglow,
What sudden expectation opens you
So wide as you watch the catkins blow
Their dust from the birch on the blue
Lift of the pulsing wind - ah, tell me you know!
Ah, surely! Ah, sure from the golden sun
A quickening, masculine gleam floats in to all
Us creatures, people and flowers undone,
Lying open under his thrall,
As he begets the year in us. What, then, would you shun?
Why, I should think that from the earth there fly
Fine thrills to the neighbour stars, fine yellow beams
Thrown lustily off from our full-blown, high
Bursting globe of dreams,
To quicken the spheres that are virgin still in the sky.
Do you not hear each morsel thrill
With joy at travelling to plant itself within
The expectant one, therein to instil
New rapture, new shape to win,
From the thick of life wake up another will?
Surely, and if that I would spill
The vivid, ah, the fiery surplus of life,
From off my brimming measure, to fill
You, and flush you rife
With increase, do you call it evil, and always evil?
Una
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Roving, roving, as it seems,
Una lights my clouded dreams;
Still for journeys she is dressed;
We wander far by east and west.
In the homestead, homely thought,
At my work I ramble not;
If from home chance draw me wide,
Half-seen Una sits beside.
In my house and garden-plot,
Though beloved, I miss her not;
But one I seek in foreign places,
One face explore in foreign faces.
At home a deeper thought may light
The inward sky with chrysolite,
And I greet from far the ray,
Aurora of a dearer day.
But if upon the seas I sail,
Or trundle on the glowing rail,
I am but a thought of hers,
Loveliest of travellers.
So the gentle poet's name
To foreign parts is blown by fame,
Seek him in his native town,
He is hidden and unknown.
A Bunch Of Roses
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

Roses ruddy and roses white,
What are the joys that my heart discloses?
Sitting alone in the fading light
Memories come to me here tonight
With the wonderful scent of the big red roses.
Memories come as the daylight fades
Down on the hearth where the firelight dozes;
Flicker and flutter the lights and shades,
And I see the face of a queen of maids
Whose memory comes with the scent of roses.
Visions arise of a scent of mirth,
And a ball-room belle who superbly poses,
A queenly woman of queenly worth,
And I am the happiest man on earth
With a single flower from a bunch of roses.
Only her memory lives tonight,
God in his wisdom her young life closes;
Over her grave may the turf be light,
Cover her coffin with roses white
She was always fond of the big white roses.
*             *             *             *             *
Such are the visions that fade away,
Man proposes and God disposes;
Look in the glass and I see today
Only an old man, worn and grey,
Bending his head to a bunch of roses.
Upon Rump.
by Robert Herrick

Rump is a turn-broach, yet he seldom can
Steal a swoln sop out of a dripping-pan.
The Fox And The Grapes.
by Jean de La Fontaine

Rosy and ripe, and ready to box,
The grapes hang high o'er the hungry Fox. - 
He pricks up his ears, and his eye he cocks.
Ripe and rosy, yet so high! - 
He gazes at them with a greedy eye,
And knows he must eat and drink - or die.
When the jump proves to be beyond his power - 
"Pooh!" says the Fox. "Let the pigs devour
Fruit of that sort. Those grapes are sour!"
Upon Rush.
by Robert Herrick

Rush saves his shoes in wet and snowy weather;
And fears in summer to wear out the leather;
This is strong thrift that wary Rush doth use
Summer and winter still to save his shoes.
The Black Troops In Cuba
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Round the wide earth, from the red field your valour has won,
Blown with the breath of the far-speaking gun,
Goes the word.
Bravely you spoke through the battle cloud heavy and dun.
Tossed though the speech toward the mist-hidden sun,
The world heard.
Hell would have shrunk from you seeking it fresh from the fray,
Grim with the dust of the battle, and gray
From the fight.
Heaven would have crowned you, with crowns not of gold but of bay,
Owning you fit for the light of her day,
Men of night.
Far through the cycle of years and of lives that shall come,
There shall speak voices long muffled and dumb,
Out of fear.
And through the noises of trade and the turbulent hum,
Truth shall rise over the militant drum,
Loud and clear.
Then on the cheek of the honester nation that grows,
All for their love of you, not for your woes,
There shall lie
Tears that shall be to your souls as the dew to the rose;
Afterward thanks, that the present yet knows
Not to ply!
Blue Roses
by Rudyard Kipling

Roses red and roses white
Plucked I for my love's delight.
She would none of all my posies,
Bade me gather her blue roses.
Half the world I wandered through,
Seeking where such flowers grew.
Half the world unto my quest
Answered me with laugh and jest.
Home I came at wintertide,
But my silly love had died
Seeking with her latest breath
Roses from the arms of Death.
It may be beyond the grave
She shall find what she would have.
Mine was but an idle quest,
Roses white and red are best!
The Roses
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

Roses are a wandering scent from heaven.
Rose-seller, why do you sell your roses?
For silver? But with the silver from your roses
What can you buy so precious as your roses?
From the Persian of Abu-Yshac (middle of the tenth century).
On The Promotion Of Edward Thurlow, Esq. To The Lord High Chancellorship Of England.
by William Cowper

Round Thurlow's head in early youth,
And in his sportive days,
Fair Science pour'd the light of truth,
And Genius shed his rays.
See! with united wonder cried
The experienced and the sage,
Ambition in a boy supplied
With all the skill of age!
Discernment, eloquence, and grace,
Proclaim him born to sway
The balance in the highest place,
And bear the palm away.
The praise bestow'd was just and wise;
He sprang impetuous forth,
Secure of conquest, where the prize
Attends superior worth.
So the best courser on the plain
Ere yet he starts is known,
And does but at the goal obtain
What all had deem'd his own.
Sonnet To Lake Leman.
by George Gordon Byron

Rousseau - Voltaire - our Gibbon - and De Sta'l -
Leman![75] these names are worthy of thy shore,
Thy shore of names like these! wert thou no more,
Their memory thy remembrance would recall:
To them thy banks were lovely as to all,
But they have made them lovelier, for the lore
Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core
Of human hearts the ruin of a wall
Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by thee
How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we feel,
In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea,[76]
The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal,
Which of the Heirs of Immortality
Is proud, and makes the breath of Glory real!
Diodati, July, 1816.
[First published, Prisoner of Chillon, etc., 1816.]
To Rotha Q......
by William Wordsworth

Rotha, my Spiritual Child! this head was grey
When at the sacred font for thee I stood;
Pledged till thou reach the verge of womanhood,
And shalt become thy own sufficient stay:
Too late, I feel, sweet Orphan! was the day
For stedfast hope the contract to fulfil;
Yet shall my blessing hover o'er thee still,
Embodied in the music of this Lay,
Breathed forth beside the peaceful mountain Stream
Whose murmur soothed thy languid Mother's ear
After her throes, this Stream of name more dear
Since thou dost bear it, a memorial theme
For others; for thy future self, a spell
To summon fancies out of Time's dark cell.
Nursery Rhyme. CCCCLXXXVIII. Love And Matrimony.
by Unknown

Rowley Powley, pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry;
When the girls begin to cry,
Rowley Powley runs away.
Twenty Years Ago
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

Round the house were lilacs and strawberries
And foal-foots spangling the paths,
And far away on the sand-hills, dewberries
Caught dust from the sea's long swaths.
Up the wolds the woods were walking,
And nuts fell out of their hair.
At the gate the nets hung, balking
The star-lit rush of a hare.
In the autumn fields, the stubble
Tinkled the music of gleaning.
At a mother's knees, the trouble
Lost all its meaning.
Yea, what good beginnings
To this sad end!
Have we had our innings?
God forfend!
The House Of Dust: Part 02: 05: Retrospect
by Conrad Potter Aiken

Round white clouds roll slowly above the housetops,
Over the clear red roofs they flow and pass.
A flock of pigeons rises with blue wings flashing,
Rises with whistle of wings, hovers an instant,
And settles slowly again on the tarnished grass.
And one old man looks down from a dusty window
And sees the pigeons circling about the fountain
And desires once more to walk among those trees.
Lovers walk in the noontime by that fountain.
Pigeons dip their beaks to drink from the water.
And soon the pond must freeze.
The light wind blows to his ears a sound of laughter,
Young men shuffle their feet, loaf in the sunlight;
A girl's laugh rings like a silver bell.
But clearer than all these sounds is a sound he hears
More in his secret heart than in his ears,
A hammer's steady crescendo, like a knell.
He hears the snarl of pineboards under the plane,
The rhythmic saw, and then the hammer again,
Playing with delicate strokes that sombre scale . . .
And the fountain dwindles, the sunlight seems to pale.
Time is a dream, he thinks, a destroying dream;
It lays great cities in dust, it fills the seas;
It covers the face of beauty, and tumbles walls.
Where was the woman he loved? Where was his youth?
Where was the dream that burned his brain like fire?
Even a dream grows grey at last and falls.
He opened his book once more, beside the window,
And read the printed words upon that page.
The sunlight touched his hand; his eyes moved slowly,
The quiet words enchanted time and age.
'Death is never an ending, death is a change;
Death is beautiful, for death is strange;
Death is one dream out of another flowing;
Death is a chorded music, softly going
By sweet transition from key to richer key.
Death is a meeting place of sea and sea.'
Inscriptions Written With A Pencil Upon A Stone In The Wall Of The House (An Outhouse), On The Island At Grasmere.
by William Wordsworth

Rude is this Edifice, and Thou hast seen
Buildings, albeit rude, that have maintained
Proportions more harmonious, and approached
To closer fellowship with ideal grace.
But take it in good part:, alas! the poor
Vitruvius of our village had no help
From the great City; never, upon leaves
Of red Morocco folio, saw displayed,
In long succession, pre-existing ghosts
Of Beauties yet unborn, the rustic Lodge
Antique, and Cottage with verandah graced,
Nor lacking, for fit company, alcove,
Green-house, shell-grot, and moss-lined hermitage.
Thou see'st a homely Pile, yet to these walls
The heifer comes in the snow-storm, and here
The new-dropped lamb finds shelter from the wind.
And hither does one Poet sometimes row
His pinnace, a small vagrant barge, up-piled
With plenteous store of heath and withered fern,
(A lading which he with his sickle cuts,
Among the mountains) and beneath this roof
He makes his summer couch, and here at noon
Spreads out his limbs, while, yet unshorn, the Sheep,
Panting beneath the burthen of their wool,
Lie round him, even as if they were a part
Of his own Household: nor, while from his bed
He looks, through the open door-place, toward the lake
And to the stirring breezes, does he want
Creations lovely as the work of sleep,
Fair sights, and visions of romantic joy!
Sonnet LXXXVII. To A Young Lady, Addressed By A Gentleman Celebrated For His Poetic Talents.
by Anna Seward

Round Cleon's brow the Delphic laurels twine,
And lo! the laurel decks Amanda's breast!
Charm'd shall he mark its glossy branches shine
On that contrasting snow; shall see express'd
Love's better omens, in the green hues dress'd
Of this selected foliage. - Nymph, 't is thine
The warning story on its leaves to find,
Proud Daphne's fate, imprison'd in its rind,
And with its umbrage veil'd, great Phoebus' power
Scorning, and bent, with feet of wind, to foil
His swift pursuit, till on Thessalian shore
Shot into boughs, and rooted to the soil. - 
Thus warn'd, fair Maid, Apollo's ire to shun,
Soon may his Spray's and VOTARY's lot be one.
Killed In Action
by R. C. Lehmann

RUPERT is dead, and RUPERT was my friend;
"Only surviving son of" - so it ran - 
"Beloved husband" and the rest of it.
But six months back I saw him full of life,
Ardent for fighting; now he lies at ease
In some obscure but splendid field of France,
His strivings over and his conflicts done.
He was a fellow of most joyous moods
And quaint contrivings, ever on the point
Of shaking fame and fortune by the hand
But always baulked of meeting them at last.
He could not brook - and always so declared - 
The weak pomposities of little men,
Scorned all the tin-gods of our petty world,
And plunged headlong into imprudences,
And smashed conventions with a reckless zeal,
Holding his luck and not himself to blame
For aught that might betide when reckoning came.
But he was true as steel and staunch as oak.
And if he pledged his word he bore it out
Unswerving to the finish, and he gave
Whate'er he had of strength to help a friend.
When the great summons came he rushed to arms,
Counting no cost and all intent to serve
His country and to prove himself a man.
Yet he could laugh at all his ardour too
And find some fun in glory, as a child
Laughs at a bauble but will guard it well.
Now he is fall'n, and on his shining brow
Glory has set her everlasting seal.
I like to think how cheerily he talked
Amid the ceaseless tumult of the guns,
How, when the word was given, he stood erect,
Sprang from the trench and, shouting to his men,
Led them forthright to where the sullen foe
Waited their coming; and his brain took fire,
And all was exultation and a high
Heroic ardour and a pulse of joy.
"Forward!" his cry rang out, and all his men
Thundered behind him with their eyes ablaze,
"Forward for England! Clear the beggars out!
Remember - " and death found him, and he fell
Fronting the Germans, and the rush swept on.
Thrice bless'd fate! We linger here and droop
Beneath the heavy burden of our years,
And may not, though we envy, give our lives
For England and for honour and for right;
But still must wear our weary hours away,
While he, that happy fighter, in one leap,
From imperfection to perfection borne,
Breaks through the bonds that bound him to the earth.
Now of his failures is a triumph made;
His very faults are into virtues turned;
And, reft for ever from the haunts of men,
He wears immortal honour and is joined
With those who fought for England and are dead.
Frater Ave Atque Vale
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

'Frater Ave atque Vale'
Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row!
So they row'd, and there we landed''O venusta Sirmio!'
There to me thro' all the groves of olive in the summer glow,
There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,
Came that 'Ave atque Vale' of the Poet's hopeless woe,
Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen-hundred years ago,
'Frater Ave atque Vale''as we wander'd to and fro
Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below
Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive-silvery Sirmio!