DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Bachelor's Song
by Edward Smyth Jones

While I keep my lonely hall,
You are welcome one and all,
As I sing my little song;
Stay, I'll cheer you all day long - 
And sow my bachelor-buttons,
And sow my bachelor-buttons.
While this world is wild with glee,
Chime I now my song to thee;
In my bosom lurks no care,
I can loiter everywhere - 
And sow my bachelor-buttons,
And sow my bachelor-buttons.
Oh dear, what a happy life
For the man who has no wife,
To bind with sore distresses,
And silk and satin dresses - 
While he sows his bachelor-buttons,
While he sows his bachelor-buttons.
His heart is ever merry,
His way is bright and cheery;
No peevish baby crying,
No jealous wife a-sighing - 
While he sows his bachelor-buttons,
While he sows his bachelor-buttons.
Ah! praise the God who hath given
A life so much like heaven;
Quit it? Oh no, I'll never,
But live happy forever - 
And sow my bachelor-buttons,
And sow my bachelor-buttons.
While History's Muse.
by Thomas Moore

While History's Muse the memorial was keeping
Of all that the dark hand of Destiny weaves,
Beside her the Genius of Erin stood weeping,
For hers was the story that blotted the leaves.
But oh! how the tear in her eyelids grew bright,
When, after whole pages of sorrow and shame,
She saw History write,
With a pencil of light
That illumed the whole volume, her Wellington's name.
"Hail, Star of my Isle!" said the Spirit, all sparkling
With beams, such as break from her own dewy skies--
"Thro' ages of sorrow, deserted and darkling,
"I've watched for some glory like thine to arise.
"For, tho' heroes I've numbered, unblest was their lot,
"And unhallowed they sleep in the crossways of Fame;--
"But oh! there is not
"One dishonoring blot
"On the wreath that encircles my Wellington's name.
"Yet still the last crown of thy toils is remaining,
"The grandest, the purest, even thou hast yet known;
"Tho' proud was thy task, other nations unchaining,
"Far prouder to heal the deep wounds of thy own.
"At the foot of that throne, for whose weal thou hast stood,
"Go, plead for the land that first cradled thy fame,
"And, bright o'er the flood
"Of her tears and her blood,
"Let the rainbow of Hope be her Wellington's name!"
The Artilleryman's Vision
by Walt Whitman

While my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long,
And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight passes,
And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the breath of my infant,
There in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision presses upon me:
The engagement opens there and then, in fantasy unreal;
The skirmishers begin they crawl cautiously ahead I hear the irregular snap! snap!
I hear the sounds of the different missiles the short t-h-t! t-h-t! of the rifle balls;
I see the shells exploding, leaving small white clouds I hear the great shells shrieking as they pass;
The grape, like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees, (quick, tumultuous, now the contest rages!)
All the scenes at the batteries themselves rise in detail before me again;
The crashing and smoking the pride of the men in their pieces;
The chief gunner ranges and sights his piece, and selects a fuse of the right time;
After firing, I see him lean aside, and look eagerly off to note the effect;
Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging (the young colonel leads himself this time, with brandish'd sword;)
I see the gaps cut by the enemy's volleys, (quickly fill'd up, no delay;)
I breathe the suffocating smoke then the flat clouds hover low, concealing all;
Now a strange lull comes for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either side;
Then resumed, the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls, and orders of officers;
While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears a shout of applause, (some special success;)
And ever the sound of the cannon, far or near, (rousing, even in dreams, a devilish exultation, and all the old mad joy, in the depths of my soul;)
And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions batteries, cavalry, moving hither and thither;
(The falling, dying, I heed not the wounded, dripping and red, I heed not some to the rear are hobbling;)
Grime, heat, rush aid-de-camps galloping by, or on a full run;
With the patter of small arms, the warning s-s-t of the rifles, (these in my vision I hear or see,)
And bombs busting in air, and at night the vari-color'd rockets.
An Ode : While From Our Looks, Fair Nymph, You Guess
by Matthew Prior

While from our looks, fair nymph, you guess
The secret passions of our mind;
My heavy eyes, you say, confess
A heart to love and grief inclined.
There needs, alas! but little art
To have this fatal secret found;
With the same ease you threw the dart,
'Tis certain you can show the wound.
How can I see you, and not love,
While you as opening cast are fair?
While cold as northern blasts you prove,
How can I love, and not despair?
The wretch in double fetters bound
Your potent mercy may release;
Soon, if my love but once were crown'd,
Fair prophetess, my grief would cease.
While Gazing On The Moon's Light.
by Thomas Moore

While gazing on the moon's light,
A moment from her smile I turned,
To look at orbs, that, more bright,
In lone and distant glory burned.
But too far
Each proud star,
For me to feel its warming flame;
Much more dear
That mild sphere.
Which near our planet smiling came;
Thus, Mary, be but thou my own;
While brighter eyes unheeded play,
I'll love those moonlight looks alone,
That bless my home and guide my way.
The day had sunk in dim showers,
But midnight now, with lustre meet.
Illumined all the pale flowers,
Like hope upon a mourner's cheek.
I said (while
The moon's smile
Played o'er a stream, in dimpling bliss,)
"The moon looks
"On many brooks,
"The brook can see no moon but this;"[1]
And thus, I thought, our fortunes run,
For many a lover looks to thee,
While oh! I feel there is but one,
One Mary in the world for me.
To Enjoy The Time
by Robert Herrick

While fates permit us, let's be merry;
Pass all we must the fatal ferry;
And this our life, too, whirls away,
With the rotation of the day.
The Rights Of Woman. An Occasional Address Spoken By Miss Fontenelle On Her Benefit Night, Nov. 26, 1792.
by Robert Burns

While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
While quacks of state must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.
First on the sexes' intermix'd connexion,
One sacred Right of Woman is protection.
The tender flower that lifts its head, elate,
Helpless, must fall before the blasts of fate,
Sunk on the earth, defac'd its lovely form,
Unless your shelter ward th' impending storm.
Our second Right, but needless here is caution,
To keep that right inviolate's the fashion,
Each man of sense has it so full before him,
He'd die before he'd wrong it, 'tis decorum.
There was, indeed, in far less polish'd days,
A time, when rough, rude man had haughty ways;
Would swagger, swear, get drunk, kick up a riot,
Nay, even thus invade a lady's quiet.
Now, thank our stars! these Gothic times are fled;
Now, well-bred men, and you are all well-bred,
Most justly think (and we are much the gainers)
Such conduct neither spirit, wit, nor manners.
For Right the third, our last, our best, our dearest,
That right to fluttering female hearts the nearest,
Which even the Rights of Kings in low prostration
Most humbly own, 'tis dear, dear admiration!
In that blest sphere alone we live and move;
There taste that life of life, immortal love.
Smiles, glances, sighs, tears, fits, flirtations, airs,
'Gainst such an host what flinty savage dares,
When awful Beauty joins with all her charms,
Who is so rash as rise in rebel arms?
But truce with kings and truce with constitutions,
With bloody armaments and revolutions,
Let majesty your first attention summon,
Ah! 'a ira! the majesty of woman!
The Life Theoretic
by Aldous Leonard Huxley

While I have been fumbling over books
And thinking about God and the Devil and all,
Other young men have been battling with the days
And others have been kissing the beautiful women.
They have brazen faces like battering-rams.
But I who think about books and such - 
I crumble to impotent dust before the struggling,
And the women palsy me with fear.
But when it comes to fumbling over books
And thinking about God and the Devil and all,
Why, there I am.
But perhaps the battering-rams are in the right of it,
Perhaps, perhaps ... God knows.
The Reminder
by Thomas Hardy

While I watch the Christmas blaze
Paint the room with ruddy rays,
Something makes my vision glide
To the frosty scene outside.
There, to reach a rotting berry,
Toils a thrush, - constrained to very
Dregs of food by sharp distress,
Taking such with thankfulness.
Why, O starving bird, when I
One day's joy would justify,
And put misery out of view,
Do you make me notice you!
Closing Rhymes
by William Butler Yeats

While I, from that reed-throated whisperer
Who comes at need, although not now as once
A clear articulation in the air
But inwardly, surmise companions
Beyond the fling of the dull ass's hoof,
Ben Jonson's phrase, and find when June is come
At Kyle-na-no under that ancient roof
A sterner conscience and a friendlier home,
I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs,
Those undreamt accidents that have made me
Seeing that Fame has perished this long while
Being but a part of ancient ceremony,
Notorious, till all my priceless things
Are but a post the passing dogs defile.
On The Lady Manchester
by Joseph Addison

While haughty Gallia's dames, that pread
O'er their pale cheeks, an artful red,
Beheld this beauteous stranger there
In native charms, divinely fair;
Confusion in their looks they show'd;
And with unborrow'd blushes glow'd.
On A Picture Of Seneca Dying In A Bath, By Jordain
by Matthew Prior

While cruel Nero only drains
The moral Spaniard's ebbing veins,
By study worn, and slack with age,
How dull, how thoughtless is his rage!
Heighten'd revenge he should have took,
He should have burnt his tutor's book;
And long have reign's supreme in vice;
One noble wretch can only rise;
'Tis he whose fury shall deface
The Stoic's Image in this piece,
For, while unhurt, divine Jordain,
Thy work and Seneca's remain,
He still has body, still has soul,
And lives and speaks restored and whole.
Written Upon A Blank Leaf In "The Complete Angler."
by William Wordsworth

While flowing rivers yield a blameless sport,
Shall live the name of Walton: Sage benign!
Whose pen, the mysteries of the rod and line
Unfolding, did not fruitlessly exhort
To reverend watching of each still report
That Nature utters from her rural shrine.
Meek, nobly versed in simple discipline,
He found the longest summer day too short,
To his loved pastime given by sedgy Lee,
Or down the tempting maze of Shawford brook,
Fairer than life itself, in this sweet Book,
The cowslip-bank and shady willow-tree;
And the fresh meads where flowed, from every nook
Of his full bosom, gladsome Piety!
Eve
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

'While I sit at the door
Sick to gaze within
Mine eye weepeth sore
For sorrow and sin:
As a tree my sin stands
To darken all lands;
Death is the fruit it bore.
'How have Eden bowers grown
Without Adam to bend them!
How have Eden flowers blown
Squandering their sweet breath
Without me to tend them!
The Tree of Life was ours,
Tree twelvefold-fruited,
Most lofty tree that flowers,
Most deeply rooted:
I chose the tree of death.
'Hadst thou but said me nay,
Adam, my brother,
I might have pined away;
I, but none other:
God might have let thee stay
Safe in our garden,
By putting me away
Beyond all pardon.
'I, Eve, sad mother
Of all who must live,
I, not another
Plucked bitterest fruit to give
My friend, husband, lover - 
O wanton eyes, run over;
Who but I should grieve? - 
Cain hath slain his brother:
Of all who must die mother,
Miserable Eve!'
Thus she sat weeping,
Thus Eve our mother,
Where one lay sleeping
Slain by his brother.
Greatest and least
Each piteous beast
To hear her voice
Forgot his joys
And set aside his feast.
The mouse paused in his walk
And dropped his wheaten stalk;
Grave cattle wagged their heads
In rumination;
The eagle gave a cry
From his cloud station;
Larks on thyme beds
Forbore to mount or sing;
Bees drooped upon the wing;
The raven perched on high
Forgot his ration;
The conies in their rock,
A feeble nation,
Quaked sympathetical;
The mocking-bird left off to mock;
Huge camels knelt as if
In deprecation;
The kind hart's tears were falling;
Chattered the wistful stork;
Dove-voices with a dying fall
Cooed desolation
Answering grief by grief.
Only the serpent in the dust
Wriggling and crawling,
Grinned an evil grin and thrust
His tongue out with its fork.
Hate.
by Thomas Frederick Young

While love inspires, and friendship warms
All hearts, in ev'ry state,
High over thee, grim hatred storms,
As pitiless as fate.
Remorseless, unrelenting, hard,
It holds its stubborn way,
Which duty's claim cannot retard,
Nor righteous thoughts delay.
With steady look, it keeps its eye
Fixed firmly on its foe;
With panting zeal it hurries by,
To make its deadly throw.
In bosoms white it sits in state,
And often, faces fair
Conceal the rankling fire of hate,
Which looks may not declare.
It is not strange to church or state,
For oft beneath the gown
Of prelate grave, and judge sedate,
It sits with hideous frown.
Disturbing truth and righteous law,
It scorns the bitter tear,
And laughs at all we hold in awe,
And all that causes fear.
O God of love, and not of hate,
Look down where'er we be,
And snatch us, ere 'tis yet too late,
From hate's black, raging sea.
From rolling tides of vengeful thought,
Oh, lift us far above,
And may we thank Thee as we ought,
From pleasant seas of love.
The Villain
by William Henry Davies

While joy gave clouds the light of stars,
That beamed where'er they looked;
And calves and lambs had tottering knees,
Excited, while they sucked;
While every bird enjoyed his song,
Without one thought of harm or wrong, 
I turned my head and saw the wind,
Not far from where I stood,
Dragging the corn by her golden hair,
Into a dark and lonely wood.
The Book-Plate's Petition.
by Henry Austin Dobson

By A Gentleman Of The Temple.
While cynic CHARLES still trimm'd the vane
'Twixt Querouaille and Castlemaine,
In days that shocked JOHN EVELYN,
My First Possessor fixed me in.
In days of Dutchmen, and of frost,
The narrow sea with JAMES I cross'd,
Returning when once more began
The Age of Saturn and of ANNE.
I am a part of all the past;
I knew the GEORGES, first and last;
I have been oft where else was none
Save the great wig of ADDISON;
And seen on shelves beneath me grope
The little eager form of POPE.
I lost the Third that owned me when
French NOAILLES fled at Dettingen;
The year JAMES WOLFE surpris'd Quebec,
The Fourth in hunting broke his neck;
The day that WILLIAM HOGARTH dy'd,
The Fifth one found me in Cheapside.
This was a Scholar, one of those
Whose Greek is sounder than their hose;
He lov'd old Books and nappy ale,
So liv'd at Streatham, next to THRALE.
'Twas there this stain of grease I boast
Was made by Dr. JOHNSON'S toast.
(He did it, as I think, for Spite;
My Master call'd him Jacobite!)
And now that I so long to-day
Have rested post discrimina,
Safe in the brass-wir'd book-case where
I watch'd the Vicar's whit'ning hair,
Must I these travell'd bones inter
In some Collector's sepulchre!
Must I be torn herefrom and thrown
With frontispiece and colophon!
With vagrant E's, and I's, and O's,
The spoil of plunder'd Folios!
With scraps and snippets that to ME
Are naught but kitchen company!
Nay, rather, FRIEND, this favour grant me:
Tear me at once; but don't transplant me.
Cheltenham,
Sept. 31, 1792.
Heaven And Hell
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

While forced to dwell apart from thy dear face,
Love, robed like sorrow, led me by the hand
And taught my doubting heart to understand
That which has puzzled all the human race.
Full many a sage has questioned where in space
Those counter worlds were? where the mystic strand
That separates them?    I have found each land,
And Hell is vast, and Heaven a narrow space.
In the small compass of thy clasping arms,
In reach and sight of thy dear lips and eyes,
There, there for me the joy of Heaven lies.
Outside, lo! chaos, terrors' wild alarms,
And all the desolation fierce and fell
Of void and aching nothingness, makes Hell.
The Age Of The Antonines
by Herman Melville

While faith forecasts millennial years
Spite Europe's embattled lines,
Back to the Past one glance be cast--
The Age of the Antonines!
O summit of fate, O zenith of time
When a pagan gentleman reigned,
And the olive was nailed to the inn of the world
Nor the peace of the just was feigned.
A halcyon Age, afar it shines,
Solstice of Man and the Antonines.
Hymns to the nations' friendly gods
Went up from the fellowly shrines,
No demagogue beat the pulpit-drum
In the Age of the Antonines!
The sting was not dreamed to be taken from death,
No Paradise pledged or sought,
But they reasoned of fate at the flowing feast,
Nor stifled the fluent thought,
We sham, we shuffle while faith declines--
They were frank in the Age of the Antonines.
Orders and ranks they kept degree,
Few felt how the parvenu pines,
No law-maker took the lawless one's fee
In the Age of the Antonines!
Under law made will the world reposed
And the ruler's right confessed,
For the heavens elected the Emperor then,
The foremost of men the best.
Ah, might we read in America's signs
The Age restored of the Antonines.
Ode, Composed On A May Morning
by William Wordsworth

While from the purpling east departs
The star that led the dawn,
Blithe Flora from her couch upstarts,
For May is on the lawn.
A quickening hope, a freshening glee,
Foreran the expected Power,
Whose first-drawn breath, from bush and tree,
Shakes off that pearly shower.
All Nature welcomes Her whose sway
Tempers the year's extremes;
Who scattereth lustres o'er noon-day,
Like morning's dewy gleams;
While mellow warble, sprightly trill,
The tremulous heart excite;
And hums the balmy air to still
The balance of delight.
Time was, blest Power! when youth and maids
At peep of dawn would rise,
And wander forth, in forest glades
Thy birth to solemnize.
Though mute the song, to grace the rite
Untouched the hawthorn bough,
Thy Spirit triumphs o'er the slight;
Man changes, but not Thou!
Thy feathered Lieges bill and wings
In love's disport employ;
Warmed by thy influence, creeping things
Awake to silent joy:
Queen art thou still for each gay plant
Where the slim wild deer roves;
And served in depths where fishes haunt
Their own mysterious groves.
Cloud-piercing peak, and trackless heath,
Instinctive homage pay;
Nor wants the dim-lit cave a wreath
To honor thee, sweet May!
Where cities fanned by thy brisk airs
Behold a smokeless sky,
Their puniest flower-pot-nursling dares
To open a bright eye.
And if, on this thy natal morn,
The pole, from which thy name
Hath not departed, stands forlorn
Of song and dance and game;
Still from the village-green a vow
Aspires to thee addrest,
Wherever peace is on the brow,
Or love within the breast.
Yes! where Love nestles thou canst teach
The soul to love the more;
Hearts also shall thy lessons reach
That never loved before.
Stript is the haughty one of pride,
The bashful freed from fear,
While rising, like the ocean-tide,
In flow the joyous year.
Hush, feeble lyre! weak words refuse
The service to prolong!
To yon exulting thrush the Muse
Entrusts the imperfect song;
His voice shall chant, in accents clear,
Throughout the live-long day,
Till the first silver star appear,
The sovereignty of May.
On One Who Affected An Effeminate Manner
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

While man and woman still are incomplete,
I prize that soul where man and woman meet,
Which types all Nature's male and female plan,
But, friend, man-woman is not woman-man.
Jim Brown
by Edgar Lee Masters

While I was handling Dom Pedro
I got at the thing that divides the race between men who are
For singing "Turkey in the straw" or
"There is a fountain filled with blood" - 
(Like Rile Potter used to sing it over at Concord).
For cards, or for Rev. Peet's lecture on the holy land;
For skipping the light fantastic, or passing the plate;
For Pinafore, or a Sunday school cantata;
For men, or for money;
For the people or against them.
This was it: Rev. Peet and the Social Purity Club,
Headed by Ben Pantier's wife,
Went to the Village trustees,
And asked them to make me take Dom Pedro
From the barn of Wash McNeely, there at the edge of town,
To a barn outside of the corporation,
On the ground that it corrupted public morals.
Well, Ben Pantier and Fiddler Jones saved the day - 
They thought it a slam on colts.
The Casual Acquaintance
by Thomas Hardy

While he was here in breath and bone,
To speak to and to see,
Would I had known more clearly known -
What that man did for me
When the wind scraped a minor lay,
And the spent west from white
To gray turned tiredly, and from gray
To broadest bands of night!
But I saw not, and he saw not
What shining life-tides flowed
To me-ward from his casual jot
Of service on that road.
He would have said: "'Twas nothing new;
We all do what we can;
'Twas only what one man would do
For any other man."
Now that I gauge his goodliness
He's slipped from human eyes;
And when he passed there's none can guess,
Or point out where he lies.
On The Same Person (Who Wrote Ill, And Spake Worse, Against Me)
by Matthew Prior

While faster than his costive brain indites
Philo's quick hand in flowing letters writes;
His case appears to me like honest Teague's,
When he was run away with by his legs.
Phoebus, give Philo o'er himself command;
Quicken his senses, or restrain his hand;
Let him be kept from paper, pen, and ink;
So he may cease to write, and learn to think.
Common Sense And Genius. (French Air.)
by Thomas Moore

While I touch the string,
Wreathe my brows with laurel,
For the tale I sing
Has, for once, a moral.
Common Sense, one night,
Tho' not used to gambols,
Went out by moonlight,
With Genius, on his rambles.
While I touch the string, etc.
Common Sense went on,
Many wise things saying;
While the light that shone
Soon set Genius straying.
One his eye ne'er raised
From the path before him;
T'other idly gazed
On each night-cloud o'er him.
While I touch the string, etc.
So they came, at last,
To a shady river;
Common Sense soon past,
Safe, as he doth ever;
While the boy, whose look
Was in Heaven that minute.
Never saw the brook,
But tumbled headlong in it!
While I touch the string, etc.
How the Wise One smiled,
When safe o'er the torrent,
At that youth, so wild,
Dripping from the current!
Sense went home to bed;
Genius, left to shiver
On the bank, 'tis said,
Died of that cold river!
While I touch the string, etc.
The Reconciliation II
by Eugene Field

HORACE
While favored by thy smiles no other youth in amorous teasing
Around thy snowy neck his folding arms was wont to fling;
As long as I remained your love, acceptable and pleasing,
I lived a life of happiness beyond the Persian king.
LYDIA
While Lydia ranked Chloe in your unreserved opinion,
And for no other cherished thou a brighter, livelier flame,
I, Lydia, distinguished throughout the whole dominion,
Surpassed the Roman Ilia in eminence of fame.
HORACE
'T is now the Thracian Chloe whose accomplishments inthrall me,--
So sweet in modulations, such a mistress of the lyre.
In truth the fates, however terrible, could not appall me;
If they would spare her, sweet my soul, I gladly would expire.
LYDIA
And now the son of Ornytus, young Calais, inflames me
With mutual, restless passion and an all-consuming fire;
And if the fates, however dread, would spare the youth who claims me,
Not only once would I face death, but gladly twice expire.
HORACE
What if our early love returns to prove we were mistaken
And bind with brazen yoke the twain, to part, ah! nevermore?
What if the charming Chloe of the golden locks be shaken
And slighted Lydia again glide through the open door?
LYDIA
Though he is fairer than the star that shines so far above you,
Thou lighter than a cork, more stormy than the Adrian Sea,
Still should I long to live with you, to live for you and love you,
And cheerfully see death's approach if thou wert near to me.