DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Revelation
by Robert William Service

The same old sprint in the morning, boys, to the same old din and smut;
Chained all day to the same old desk, down in the same old rut;
Posting the same old greasy books, catching the same old train:
Oh, how will I manage to stick it all, if I ever get back again?
We've bidden good-bye to life in a cage, we're finished with pushing a pen;
They're pumping us full of bellicose rage, they're showing us how to be men.
We're only beginning to find ourselves; we're wonders of brawn and thew;
But when we go back to our Sissy jobs, - oh, what are we going to do?
For shoulders curved with the counter stoop will be carried erect and square;
And faces white from the office light will be bronzed by the open air;
And we'll walk with the stride of a new-born pride, with a new-found joy in our eyes,
Scornful men who have diced with death under the naked skies.
And when we get back to the dreary grind, and the bald-headed boss's call,
Don't you think that the dingy window-blind, and the dingier office wall,
Will suddenly melt to a vision of space, of violent, flame-scarred night?
Then . . . oh, the joy of the danger-thrill, and oh, the roar of the fight!
Don't you think as we peddle a card of pins the counter will fade away,
And again we'll be seeing the sand-bag rims, and the barb-wire's misty grey?
As a flat voice asks for a pound of tea, don't you fancy we'll hear instead
The night-wind moan and the soothing drone of the packet that's overhead?
Don't you guess that the things we're seeing now will haunt us through all the years;
Heaven and hell rolled into one, glory and blood and tears;
Life's pattern picked with a scarlet thread, where once we wove with a grey
To remind us all how we played our part in the shock of an epic day?
Oh, we're booked for the Great Adventure now, we're pledged to the Real Romance;
We'll find ourselves or we'll lose ourselves somewhere in giddy old France;
We'll know the zest of the fighter's life; the best that we have we'll give;
We'll hunger and thirst; we'll die . . . but first -    we'll live; by the gods, we'll live!
We'll breathe free air and we'll bivouac under the starry sky;
We'll march with men and we'll fight with men, and we'll see men laugh and die;
We'll know such joy as we never dreamed; we'll fathom the deeps of pain:
But the hardest bit of it all will be - when we come back home again.
For some of us smirk in a chiffon shop, and some of us teach in a school;
Some of us help with the seat of our pants to polish an office stool;
The merits of somebody's soap or jam some of us seek to explain,
But all of us wonder what we'll do when we have to go back again.
A Midsummer Holiday:- I. The Seaboard
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

The sea is at ebb, and the sound of her utmost word
Is soft as the least wave's lapse in a still small reach.
From bay into bay, on quest of a goal deferred,
From headland ever to headland and breach to breach
Where earth gives ear to the message that all days preach
With changes of gladness and sadness that cheer and chide,
The lone way lures me along by a chance untried
That haply, if hope dissolve not and faith be whole,
Not all for nought shall I seek, with a dream for guide.
The goal that is not, and ever again the goal.
The trackless ways are untravelled of sail or bird;
The hoar wave hardly recedes from the soundless beach.
The silence of instant noon goes nigh to be heard,
The viewless void to be visible: all and each,
A closure of calm no clamour of storm can breach
Concludes and confines and absorbs them on either side,
All forces of light and of life and the live world's pride.
Sands hardly ruffled of ripples that hardly roll
Seem ever to show as in reach of a swift brief stride
The goal that is not, and ever again the goal.
The waves are a joy to the seamew, the meads to the herd,
And a joy to the heart is a goal that it may not reach.
No sense that for ever the limits of sense engird,
No hearing or sight that is vassal to form or speech,
Learns ever the secret that shadow and silence teach,
Hears ever the notes that or ever they swell subside,
Sees ever the light that lights not the loud world's tide,
Clasps ever the cause of the lifelong scheme's control
Wherethrough we pursue, till the waters of life be dried,
The goal that is not, and ever again the goal.
Friend, what have we sought or seek we, whate'er betide,
Though the seaboard shift its mark from afar descried,
But aims whence ever anew shall arise the soul?
Love, thought, song, life, but show for a glimpse and hide
The goal that is not, and ever again the goal.
An Epigram
by Jonathan Swift

The scriptures affirm (as I heard in my youth,
For indeed I ne'er read them, to speak for once truth)
That death is the wages of sin, but the just
Shall die not, although they be laid in the dust.
They say so; so be it, I care not a straw,
Although I be dead both in gospel and law;
In verse I shall live, and be read in each climate;
What more can be said of prime sergeant or primate?
While Carter and Prendergast both may be rotten,
And damn'd to the bargain, and yet be forgotten.
The Same Old Story
by James Whitcomb Riley

The same old story told again -
The maiden droops her head,
The ripening glow of her crimson cheek
Is answering in her stead.
The pleading tone of a trembling voice
Is telling her the way
He loved her when his heart was young
In Youth's sunshiny day:
The trembling tongue, the longing tone,
Imploringly ask why
They can not be as happy now
As in the days gone by.
And two more hearts, tumultuous
With overflowing joy,
Are dancing to the music
Which that dear, provoking boy
Is twanging on his bowstring,
As, fluttering his wings,
He sends his love-charged arrows
While merrily be sings:
"Ho! ho! my dainty maiden,
It surely can not be
You are thinking you are master
Of your heart, when it is me."
And another gleaming arrow
Does the little god's behest,
And the dainty little maiden
Falls upon her lover's breast.
"The same old story told again,"
And listened o'er and o'er,
Will still be new, and pleasing, too,
Till "Time shall be no more."
Her Love. (Excerpt From "Maurine")
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The sands upon the ocean side
That change about with every tide,
And never true to one abide,
A woman's love I liken to.
The summer zephyrs, light and vain,
That sing the same alluring strain
To every grass blade on the plain - 
A woman's love is nothing more.
The sunshine of an April day
That comes to warm you with its ray,
But while you smile has flown away - 
A woman's love is like to this.
God made poor woman with no heart,
But gave her skill, and tact, and art,
And so she lives, and plays her part.
We must not blame, but pity her.
She leans to man - but just to hear
The praise he whispers in her ear,
Herself, not him, she holdeth dear - 
O fool! to be deceived by her.
To sate her selfish thirst she quaffs
The love of strong hearts in sweet draughts
Then throws them lightly by and laughs,
Too weak to understand their pain.
As changeful as the winds that blow
From every region, to and fro,
Devoid of heart, she cannot know
The suffering of a human heart.
The Dove And The Ant.
by Jean de La Fontaine

[1]
The same instruction we may get
From another couple, smaller yet.
A dove came to a brook to drink,
When, leaning o'er its crumbling brink,
An ant fell in, and vainly tried,
In this, to her, an ocean tide,
To reach the land; whereat the dove,
With every living thing in love,
Was prompt a spire of grass to throw her,
By which the ant regain'd the shore.
A barefoot scamp, both mean and sly,
Soon after chanced this dove to spy;
And, being arm'd with bow and arrow,
The hungry codger doubted not
The bird of Venus, in his pot,
Would make a soup before the morrow.
Just as his deadly bow he drew,
Our ant just bit his heel.
Roused by the villain's squeal,
The dove took timely hint, and flew
Far from the rascal's coop; - 
And with her flew his soup.
he Scorpion
by Hilaire Belloc

The Scorpion is as black as soot,
He dearly loves to bite;
He is a most unpleasant brute
To find in bed at night.
To Julia.
by Robert Herrick

The saints'-bell calls, and, Julia, I must read
The proper lessons for the saints now dead:
To grace which service, Julia, there shall be
One holy collect said or sung for thee.
Dead when thou art, dear Julia, thou shalt have
A trentall sung by virgins o'er thy grave:
Meantime we two will sing the dirge of these,
Who dead, deserve our best remembrances.
Sand
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

The sand is like acres of wet milk
Poured out under the moonlight;
It crawls up about your brown feet
Like wine trodden from white stars.
From the Arabic of John Duncan.
Trust
by John Greenleaf Whittier

The same old baffling questions! O my friend,
I cannot answer them. In vain I send
My soul into the dark, where never burn
The lamps of science, nor the natural light
Of Reason's sun and stars! I cannot learn
Their great and solemn meanings, nor discern
The awful secrets of the eyes which turn
Evermore on us through the day and night
With silent challenge and a dumb demand,
Proffering the riddles of the dread unknown,
Like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes of stone,
Questioning the centuries from their veils of sand!
I have no answer for myself or thee,
Save that I learned beside my mother's knee;
"All is of God that is, and is to be;
And God is good." Let this suffice us still,
Resting in childlike trust upon His will
Who moves to His great ends unthwarted by the ill.
The Two Monkeys.
by John Gay

The scholar, of his learning vain,
Beholds the fop with deep disdain:
The fop, with spirit as discerning,
Looks down upon the man of learning.
The Spanish Don - a solemn strutter - 
Despises Gallic airs and flutter:
Whilst the Gaul ridicules the Don,
And John Bull looks with like disdain
On manners both of France and Spain:
They hold, indeed, a deed tripartite
To see each other in a tart light.
'Tis thus the bard is scorned by those
Who only deal in learned prose:
Whilst bards of quick imagination
Are hipped by the dull prose oration.
Men scoff at apes: apes scoff at them;
And all - except themselves - contemn.
Two monkeys visited the fair,
Like critics, with Parnassian sneer;
They forced a way through draggled folk,
Laughed at Jack Pudding and his joke,
Then bought their tickets for the show,
And squatted in the foremost row;
Their cut-of-jib was there so stunning,
It set the idle rabble funning.
"Brother," one Pug to other said,
"The mob is certainly ill-bred."
A sentiment which found no favour,
And the retorts were of ill-savour.
The clown with entrance stopped the jar - 
Head over heels - with "Here we are!"
The tumblers made their somersets,
The vaulters made tremendous jets;
The dancer on the rope did wonders,
And drew down the applauses - thunders,
As Numa once elicited
From Jove Elicius, so they did.
"Behold the imitative crew!"
Said Pug: "they copy me and you,
And clumsily. I'd like to see
Them jump from forest-tree to tree;
I'd like to see them, on a twig,
Perform a slip-slap or a rig;
And yet it pleasant is to know
The boobies estimate us so."
"Brother!" the other Pug replied,
"They do their best - with us their guide;
We must allow praise is their due,
Whilst they example good pursue;
But when I see them take a flight,
Or walk, like they walk - bolt upright,
Because we sometimes walk on two - 
I hate the imitative crew!"
Mourning And Longing.
by William Cowper

The Saviour hides his face!
My spirit thirsts to prove
Renew'd supplies of pardoning grace,
And never-fading love.
The favour'd souls who know
What glories shine in him,
Pant for his presence as the roe
Pants for the living stream!
What trifles tease me now!
They swarm like summer flies,
They cleave to everything I do,
And swim before my eyes.
How dull the Sabbath-day,
Without the Sabbath's Lord!
How toilsome then to sing and pray,
And wait upon the word!
Of all the truths I hear,
How few delight my taste!
I glean a berry here and there,
But mourn the vintage past.
Yet let me (as I ought)
Still hope to be supplied;
No pleasure else is worth a thought,
Nor shall I be denied.
Though I am but a worm,
Unworthy of his care,
The Lord will my desire perform,
And grant me all my prayer.
Johnny Speaks
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The sand-man he's a jolly old fellow,
His face is kind and his voice is mellow,
But he makes your eyelids as heavy as lead,
And then you got to go off to bed;
I don't think I like the sand-man.
But I've been playing this livelong day;
It does make a fellow so tired to play!
Oh, my, I'm a-yawning right here before ma,
I'm the sleepiest fellow that ever you saw.
I think I do like the sand-man.
The Scorpion
by Hilaire Belloc

The Scorpion is as black as soot,
He dearly loves to bite;
He is a most unpleasant brute
To find in bed at night.
Jehovah-Jireh. The Lord Will Provide. - Genesis xxii.14.
by William Cowper

The saints should never be dismay'd,
Nor sink in hopeless fear;
For when they least expect his aid,
The Saviour will appear.
This Abraham found: he raised the knife;
God saw, and said, 'Forbear!
Yon ram shall yield his meaner life;
Behold the victim there.'
Once David seem'd Saul's certain prey;
But hark! the foe's at hand;[1]
Saul turns his arms another way,
To save the invaded land.
When Jonah sunk beneath the wave,
He thought to rise no more;[2]
But God prepared a fish to save,
And bear him to the shore.
Blest proofs of power and grace divine,
That meet us in his word!
May every deep-felt care of mine
Be trusted with the Lord.
Wait for his seasonable aid,
And though it tarry, wait:
The promise may be long delay'd,
But cannot come too late.
Victory
by Henry Lawson

The schools marched in procession in happiness and pride,
The city bands before them, the soldiers marched beside;
Oh, starched white frocks and sashes and suits that high schools wear,
The boy scout and the boy lout and all the rest were there,
And all flags save Australia's flag waved high in sun and air!
The Girls' High School, and Grammar School and colleges of stone
Flew all flags from their walls and towers, all flags except our own!
And down here in the alleys where Premiers never come,
Nor candidate, nor delegate, nor sound of fife and drum,
They packed them on the lorries, seared children of the slum.
Each face seemed soiled and faded, though scrubbed with household soap,
And older than a mother-face, but with less sign of hope:
The knowledge of things evil, of drunken wreck and hag,
Of sordid sounds and voices, the everlasting "nag",
Oh, men without a battle-song! Oh, men without a flag!
They breed a nation's strength behind each shabby little door,
Where rent-collectors knock for aye, and Christ shall knock no more;
The sounds that hurt the mother's heart affright the children there,
Alarm-clocks on an empty tin, the tin tray on a chair;
For weary folk are hard to wake in hot and heavy air.
They sang in Pride's Procession that Mammon might endure,
Oh, wistful singing faces, the children of the poor!
Oh, hideous fiends of commerce! Oh, ghouls of business strife!
I wait the coming of the things to wake the land to life;
The flag without a cross or bar, the drum without a fife!
Saints
by Virna Sheard

The Saints of Thy great Church, 0 Christ,
How vast their numbers be - 
On holy page and ancient scroll
Their blessed names we see,
And from the painted window panes
They smile eternally.
Rope-girdled monk, and pallid maid,
And men who for Thy cross
Fought with the Saracen of old,
Counting their lives no loss - 
Martyrs who rose through golden flames,
Free of the body's dross.
Yet there be Saints uncanonised,
Unrecognised, unknown - 
Here on the common roads of earth,
Oft times they walk alone;
Saints whom no soul hath ever praised,
Saints whom no Church doth own.
Men who against their souls' grim foes
Wage an unyielding fight;
Men of new creeds, and men of old,
Men of dark hue, and white,
Each pressing hard towards some far gleam
Of Thy celestial light.
Dwellers in places waste and lone,
Toilers upon the seas - 
Mayhap they seldom pray high heaven.
Softly - on bended knees - 
Yet in the roll-call of Thy Saints,
Dear Christ - remember these.
Sailor's Song.
by George Parsons Lathrop

The sea goes up; the sky comes down.
Oh, can you spy the ancient town, - 
The granite hills so hard and gray,
That rib the land behind the bay?
O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings!
Fair winds, boys: send her home!
O ye ho!
Three years? Is it so long that we
Have lived upon the lonely sea?
Oh, often I thought we'd see the town,
When the sea went up, and the sky came down.
O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings!
Fair winds, boys: send her home!
O ye ho!
Even the winter winds would rouse
A memory of my father's house;
For round his windows and his door
They made the same deep, mouthless roar.
O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings!
Fair winds, boys: send her home!
O ye ho!
And when the summer's breezes beat,
Methought I saw the sunny street
Where stood my Kate. Beneath her hand
She gazed far out, far out from land.
O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings!
Fair winds, boys: send her home!
O ye ho!
Farthest away, I oftenest dreamed
That I was with her. Then, it seemed
A single stride the ocean wide
Had bridged, and brought me to her side.
O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings!
Fair winds, boys: send her home.
O ye ho!
But though so near we're drawing, now,
'T is farther off -    - I know not how.
We sail and sail: we see no home.
Would we into the port were come!
O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings!
Fair winds, boys: send her home!
O ye ho!
At night, the same stars o'er the mast:
The mast sways round - however fast
We fly - still sways and swings around
One scanty circle's starry bound.
O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings!
Fair winds, boys: send her home!
O ye ho!
Ah, many a month those stars have shone,
And many a golden morn has flown,
Since that so solemn, happy morn,
When, I away, my babe was born.
O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings!
Fair winds, boys: send her home!
O ye ho!
And, though so near we're drawing, now,
'T is farther off - I know not how - 
I would not aught amiss had come
To babe or mother there, at home!
O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings!
Fair winds, boys: send her home!
O ye ho!
'T is but a seeming: swiftly rush
The seas, beneath. I hear the crush
Of foamy ridges 'gainst the prow.
Longing outspeeds the breeze, I know.
O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings!
Fair winds, boys: send her home!
O ye ho!
Patience, my mates! Though not this eve
We cast our anchor, yet believe,
If but the wind holds, short the run:
We 'll sail in with to-morrow's sun.
O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings!
Fair winds, boys: send her home!
O ye ho!
A Midsummer Holiday:- VII. In The Water
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

The sea is awake, and the sound of the song of the joy of her waking is rolled
From afar to the star that recedes, from anear to the wastes of the wild wide shore.
Her call is a trumpet compelling us homeward: if dawn in her east be acold,
From the sea shall we crave not her grace to rekindle the life that it kindled before,
Her breath to requicken, her bosom to rock us, her kisses to bless as of yore?
For the wind, with his wings half open, at pause in the sky, neither fettered nor free,
Leans waveward and flutters the ripple to laughter and fain would the twain of us be
Where lightly the wave yearns forward from under the curve of the deep dawn's dome,
And, full of the morning and fired with the pride of the glory thereof and the glee,
Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids and beseeches, athirst for the foam.
Life holds not an hour that is better to live in: the past is a tale that is told,
The future a sun-flecked shadow, alive and asleep, with a blessing in store.
As we give us again to the waters, the rapture of limbs that the waters enfold
Is less than the rapture of spirit whereby, though the burden it quits were sore,
Our souls and the bodies they wield at their will are absorbed in the life they adore
In the life that endures no burden, and bows not the forehead, and bends not the knee
In the life everlasting of earth and of heaven, in the laws that atone and agree,
In the measureless music of things, in the fervour of forces that rest or that roam,
That cross and return and reissue, as I after you and as you after me
Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids and beseeches, athirst for the foam.
For, albeit he were less than the least of them, haply the heart of a man may be bold
To rejoice in the word of the sea as a mother's that saith to the son she bore,
Child, was not the life in thee mine, and my spirit the breath in thy lips from of old?
Have I let not thy weakness exult in my strength, and thy foolishness learn of my lore?
Have I helped not or healed not thine anguish, or made not the might of thy gladness more?
And surely his heart should answer, The light of the love of my life is in thee.
She is fairer than earth, and the sun is not fairer, the wind is not blither than she:
From my youth hath she shown me the joy of her bays that I crossed, of her cliffs that I clomb,
Till now that the twain of us here, in desire of the dawn and in trust of the sea,
Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids and beseeches, athirst for the foam.
Friend, earth is a harbour of refuge for winter, a covert whereunder to flee
When day is the vassal of night, and the strength of the hosts of her mightier than he;
But here is the presence adored of me, here my desire is at rest and at home.
There are cliffs to be climbed upon land, there are ways to be trodden and ridden, but we
Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids and beseeches, athirst for the foam.
The Confirmers
by A. R. Ammons

The saints are gathering at the real
places, trying tough skin on sharp
conscience,
endurance in the hot spots-
searching out to define, come up
against, mouth
the bitterest bit:
you can hear them yelping
down in the dark greeny groves of
condemnation:
their lips slice back
with jittery suctions, cold
insweeps of conjured grief:
if they, footloose, wham up the
precise damnation,
consolation
may be more than us trudging
down from paunchy dinners,
swatting hallelujah arms at
dusk bugs and telling them pure
terror has obviously made them
earnest of mind and of motion lithe.
The Sound Of The Sea
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.