DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Time To Tinker 'Roun'!
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Summah 's nice, wif sun a-shinin',
Spring is good wif greens and grass,
An' dey 's some t'ings nice 'bout wintah,
Dough hit brings de freezin' blas;
But de time dat is de fines',
Whethah fiel's is green er brown,
Is w'en de rain 's a-po'in'
An' dey 's time to tinker 'roun.
Den you men's de mule's ol' ha'ness,
An' you men's de broken chair.
Hummin' all de time you 's wo'kin'
Some ol' common kind o' air.
Evah now an' then you looks out,
Tryin' mighty ha'd to frown,
But you cain't, you 's glad hit 's rainin',
An' dey 's time to tinker 'roun'.
Oh, you 'ten's lak you so anxious
Evah time it so't o' stops.
W'en hit goes on, den you reckon
Dat de wet 'll he'p de crops.
But hit ain't de crops you 's aftah;
You knows w'en de rain comes down
Dat's hit's too wet out fu' wo'kin',
An' dey 's time to tinker roun'.
Oh, dey 's fun inside de co'n-crib.
An' dey 's laffin' at de ba'n;
An' dey 's allus some one jokin',
Er some one to tell a ya'n.
Dah 's a quiet in yo' cabin,
Only fu' de rain's sof soun';
So you 's mighty blessed happy
W'en dey 's time to tinker 'roun'!
Summer Days Are Over
by Louisa May Alcott

"Summer days are over,
Summer work is done;
Harvests have been gathered
Gayly one by one.
Now the feast is eaten,
Finished is the play;
But one rite remains for
Our Thanksgiving-day.
"Best of all the harvest
In the dear God's sight,
Are the happy children
In the home to-night;
And we come to offer
Thanks where thanks are due,
With grateful hearts and voices,
Father, mother, unto you."
In Late Fall.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Such days as break the wild bird's heart;
Such days as kill it and its songs;
A death which knows a sweeter part
Of days to which such death belongs.
And now old eyes are filled with tears,
As with the rain the frozen flowers;
Time moves so slowly one but fears
The burthen on his wasted powers.
And so he stopped;--and thou art dead!
And that is found which once was feared:--
A farewell to thy gray, gray head,
A goodnight to thy goodly beard!
Poppies.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Summer met Sleep at sunset,
Dreaming within the south,
Drugged with his soul's deep slumber,
Red with her heart's hot drouth,
These are the drowsy kisses
She pressed upon his mouth.
Such As In Ships (Brazilian Verses)
by Rudyard Kipling

Such as in Ships and brittle Barks
Into the Seas descend
Shall learn how wholly on those Arks
Our Victuals do depend.
For, when a Man would bite or sup,
Or buy him Goods or Gear,
He needs must call the Oceans up,
And move an Hemisphere.
Consider, now, that Indian Weed
Which groweth o'er the Main,
With Teas and Cottons for our Need,
And Sugar of the Cane,
Their Comings We no more regard
Than daily Corn or Oil:
Yet, when Men waft Them Englandward,
How infinite the Toil!
Nation and People harvesteth
The tropique Lands among,
And Engines of tumultuous Breath
Do draw the Yield along,
Yea, even as by Hecatombs
Which, presently struck down
Into our Navies' labouring Wombs
Make Pennyworths in Town.
A Guinevere.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Sullen gold down all the sky,
In the roses sultry musk;
Nightingales hid in the dusk
Yonder sob and sigh.
You are here; and I could weep,
Weep for joy and suffering.
"Where is he?" He'd have me sing; - 
There he sits asleep.
Think not of him! he is dead
For the moment to us twain;
He were dead but for this pain
Drumming in my head.
"Am I happy?" Ask the fire
When it bursts its bounds and thrills
Some mad hours as it wills
If those hours tire.
He had gold. As for the rest - 
Well you know how they were set,
Saying that I must forget,
And 'twas for the best.
I forget! but let it go! - 
Kiss me as you did of old.
There! your kisses are not cold!
Can you love me so,
Knowing what I am to him
Sitting in his gouty chair
On the breezy terrace where
Amber fire-flies swim?
"Yes?" - Your cheek a tear-drop wets,
But your kisses on my lip
Fall as warm as bees that sip
Sweets from violets.
See! the moon has risen white
As this bursten lily here
Rocking on the dusky mere
Like a silent light.
Let us walk. We soon must part - 
All too soon! but he may miss!
Give me but another kiss;
It will heat my heart
And the bitter winter there.
So; we part, my Launcelot,
My true knight! and am I not
Your true Guinevere?
Oft they parted thus they tell
In that mystical romance.
Were they placed, think you, perchance,
For such love in hell?
No! it can not, can not be!
Love is God and God is love,
And they live and love above,
Guinevere and he!
I must go now. See! there fell,
Molten into purple light,
One wild star. Kiss me good-night;
And, once more, farewell!
Bitter For Sweet
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Summer is gone with all its roses,
Its sun and perfumes and sweet flowers,
Its warm air and refreshing showers:
And even Autumn closes.
Yea, Autumn's chilly self is going,
And winter comes which is yet colder;
Each day the hoar-frost waxes bolder,
And the last buds cease blowing.
Europe, The 72nd And 73rd Years Of These States
by Walt Whitman

Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
Like lightning it le'pt forth half startled at itself,
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hand tight to the throats of kings.
O hope and faith!
O aching close of exiled patriots' lives!
O many a sicken'd heart!
Turn back unto this day and make yourselves afresh.
And you, paid to defile the People -- you liars, mark!
Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,
For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his simplicity the poor man's wages,
For many a promise sworn by royal lips and broken and laugh'd at in the breaking,
Then in their power not for all these did the blows strike revenge, or the heads of the nobles fall;
The People scorn'd the ferocity of kings.
But the sweetness of mercy brew'd bitter destruction, and the frighten'd monarchs come back,
Each comes in state with his train, hangman, priest, taxgatherer,
Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant.
Yet behind all lowering stealing, lo, a shape,
Vague as the night, draped interminably, head, front and form, in scarlet folds,
Whose face and eyes none may see,
Out of its robes only this, the red robes lifted by the arm,
One finger crook'd pointed high over the top, like the head of a snake appears.
Meanwhile corpses lie in new-made graves, bloody corpses of young men,
The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are flying, the creatures of power laugh aloud,
And all these things bear fruits, and they are good.
Those corpses of young men,
Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets, those hearts pierc'd by the gray lead,
Cold and motionless as they seem live elsewhere with unslaughter'd vitality.
They live in other young men O kings!
They live in brothers again ready to defy you,
They were purified by death, they were taught and exalted.
Not a grave of the murder'd for freedom but grows seed for freedom, in its turn to bear seed,
Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains and the snows nourish.
Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose,
But it stalks invisibly over the earth, whispering, counseling, cautioning.
Liberty, let others despair of you -- I never despair of you.
Is the house shut? is the master away?
Nevertheless, be ready, be not weary of watching,
He will soon return, his messengers come anon.
For A Statue Of Chaucer At Woodstock
by Mark Akenside

Such was old Chaucer. such the placid mien
Of him who first with harmony inform'd
The language of our fathers. Here he dwelt
For many a cheerful day. these ancient walls
Have often heard him, while his legends blithe
He sang; of love, or knighthood, or the wiles
Of homely life: through each estate and age,
The fashions and the follies of the world
With cunning hand portraying. Though perchance
From Blenheim's towers, o stranger, thou art come
Glowing with Churchill's trophies; yet in vain
Dost thou applaud them, if thy breast be cold
To him, this other hero; who, in times
Dark and untaught, began with charming verse
To tame the rudeness of his native land.
The Cold Heaven
by William Butler Yeats

Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting Heaven
That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,
And thereupon imagination and heart were driven
So wild that every casual thought of that and this
Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season
With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago;
And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason,
Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro,
Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,
Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent
Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken
By the injustice of the skies for punishment?
In Response
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Breakfast at the Century Club, New York, May, 1879.
Such kindness! the scowl of a cynic would soften,
His pulse beat its way to some eloquent words,
Alas! my poor accents have echoed too often,
Like that Pinafore music you've some of you heard.
Do you know me, dear strangers - the hundredth time comer
At banquets and feasts since the days of my Spring?
Ah! would I could borrow one rose of my Summer,
But this is a leaf of my Autumn I bring.
I look at your faces, - I'm sure there are some from
The three-breasted mother I count as my own;
You think you remember the place you have come from,
But how it has changed in the years that have flown!
Unaltered, 't is true, is the hall we call "Funnel,"
Still fights the "Old South" in the battle for life,
But we've opened our door to the West through the tunnel,
And we've cut off Fort Hill with our Amazon knife.
You should see the new Westminster Boston has builded, - 
Its mansions, its spires, its museums of arts, - 
You should see the great dome we have gorgeously gilded, - 
'T is the light of our eyes, 't is the joy of our hearts.
When first in his path a young asteroid found it,
As he sailed through the skies with the stars in his wake,
He thought 't was the sun, and kept circling around it
Till Edison signalled, "You've made a mistake."
We are proud of our city, - her fast-growing figure,
The warp and the woof of her brain and her hands, - 
But we're proudest of all that her heart has grown bigger,
And warms with fresh blood as her girdle expands.
One lesson the rubric of conflict has taught her
Though parted awhile by war's earth-rending shock,
The lines that divide us are written in water,
The love that unites us cut deep in the rock.
As well might the Judas of treason endeavor
To write his black name on the disk of the sun
As try the bright star-wreath that binds us to sever
And blot the fair legend of "Many in One."
We love You, tall sister, the stately, the splendid, - 
The banner of empire floats high on your towers,
Yet ever in welcome your arms are extended, - 
We share in your splendors, your glory is ours.
Yes, Queen of the Continent! All of us own thee, - 
The gold-freighted argosies flock at thy call,
The naiads, the sea-nymphs have met to enthrone thee,
But the Broadway of one is the Highway of all!
I thank you. Three words that can hardly be mended,
Though phrases on phrases their eloquence pile,
If you hear the heart's throb with their eloquence blended,
And read all they mean in a sunshiny smile.
Song.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Summer for thee grant I may be
When summer days are flown!
Thy music still when whippoorwill
And oriole are done!
For thee to bloom, I'll skip the tomb
And sow my blossoms o'er!
Pray gather me, Anemone,
Thy flower forevermore!
A Frost Fancy
by Richard Le Gallienne

Summer gone,
Winter here;
Ways are white,
Skies are clear.
And the sun
A ruddy boy
All day sliding,
While at night
The stars appear
Like skaters gliding
On a mere.
The Revealing Angels
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Suddenly and without warning they came - 
The Revealing Angels came.
Suddenly and simultaneously, through city streets,
Through quiet lanes and country roads they walked.
They walked crying:    'God has sent us to find
The vilest sinners of earth.
We are to bring them before Him, before the Lord of Life.'
Their voices were like bugles;
And then all war, all strife,
And all the noises of the world grew still;
And no one talked;
And no one toiled, but many strove to flee away.
Robbers and thieves, and those sunk in drunkenness and crime,
Men and women of evil repute,
And mothers with fatherless children in their arms, all strove to hide.
But the Revealing Angels passed them by,
Saying:    'Not you, not you.
Another day, when we shall come again
Unto the haunts of men,
Then we will call your names;
But God has asked us first to bring to him
Those guilty of greater shames
Than lust, or theft, or drunkenness, or vice - 
Yea, greater than murder done in passion,
Or self-destruction done in dark despair.
Now in His Holy Name we call:
Come one and all
Come forth; reveal your faces.'
Then through the awful silence of the world,
Where noise had ceased, they came - 
The sinful hosts.
They came from lowly and from lofty places,
Some poorly clad, but many clothed like queens;
They came from scenes of revel and from toil;
From haunts of sin, from palaces, from homes,
From boudoirs, and from churches.
They came like ghosts - 
THE VAST BRIGADES OF WOMEN WHO HAD SLAIN
THEIR HELPLESS, UNBORN CHILDREN.    With them trailed
Lovers and husbands who had said, 'Do this,'
And those who helped for hire.
They stood before the Angels - before the Revealing
Angels they stood.
And they heard the Angels say,
And all the listening world heard the Angels say:
'These are the vilest sinners of all;
For the Lord of Life made sex that birth might come;
Made sex and its keen compelling desire
To fashion bodies wherein souls might go
From lower planes to higher,
Until the end is reached (which is Beginning).
They have stolen the costly pleasures of the senses
And refused to pay God's price.
They have come together, these men and these women,
As male and female they have come together
In the great creative act.
They have invited souls, and then flung them out into space;
They have made a jest of God's design.
All other sins look white beside this sinning;
All other sins may be condoned, forgiven;
All other sinners may be cleansed and shriven;
Not these, not these.
Pass on, and meet God's eyes.'
The vast brigade moved forward, and behind then walked the Angels,
Walked the sorrowful Revealing Angels.
Tenants
by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Suddenly, out of dark and leafy ways,
We came upon the little house asleep
In cold blind stillness, shadowless and deep,
In the white magic of the full moon-blaze.
Strangers without the gate, we stood agaze,
Fearful to break that quiet, and to creep
Into the home that had been ours to keep
Through a long year of happy nights and days.
So unfamiliar in the white moon-gleam,
So old and ghostly like a house of dream
It seemed, that over us there stole the dread
That even as we watched it, side by side,
The ghosts of lovers, who had lived and died
Within its walls, were sleeping in our bed.
Nocturne.
by George Augustus Baker, Jr.

Summer is over, and the leaves are falling,
Gold, fire-enamelled in the glowing sun;
The sobbing pinetop, the cicada calling
Chime men to vesper-musing, day is done.
The fresh, green sod, in dead, dry leaves is hidden;
They rustle very sadly in the breeze;
Some breathing from the past comes, all unbidden,
And in my heart stir withered memories.
Day fades away; the stars show in the azure,
Bright with the glow of eyes that know not tears,
Unchanged, unchangeable, like God's good pleasure,
They smile and reck not of the weary years.
Men tell us that the stars it knows are leaving
Our onward rolling globe, and in their place
New constellations rise is death bereaving
The old earth, too, of each familiar face?
Our loved ones leave us; so we all grow fonder
Of their world than of ours; for here we seem
Alone in haunted houses, and we wonder
Which is the waking life, and which the dream.
Bridge-Guard In The Karroo
by Rudyard Kipling

"... and will supply details to guard the Blood River Bridge." - District Orders-Lines of Communication, South African War.
Sudden the desert changes,
The raw glare softens and clings,
Till the aching Oudtshoorn ranges
Stand up like the thrones of Kings,
Ramparts of slaughter and peril,
Blazing, amazing, aglow,
'Twixt the sky-line's belting beryl
And the wine-dark flats below.
Royal the pageant closes,
Lit by the last of the sun,
Opal and ash-of-roses,
Cinnamon, umber, and dun.
The twilight swallows the thicket,
The starlight reveals the ridge.
The whistle shrills to the picket,
We are changing guard on the bridge.
(Few, forgotten and lonely,
Where the empty metals shine,
No, not combatants-only
Details guarding the line.)
We slip through the broken panel
Of fence by the ganger's shed;
We drop to the waterless channel
And the lean track overhead;
We stumble on refuse of rations,
The beef and the biscuit-tins;
We take our appointed stations,
And the endless night begins.
We hear the Hottentot herders
As the sheep click past to the fold,
And the click of the restless girders
As the steel contracts in the cold,
Voices of jackals calling
And, loud in the hush between,
A morsel of dry earth falling
From the flanks of the scarred ravine.
And the solemn firmament marches,
And the hosts of heaven rise
Framed through the iron arches,
Banded and barred by the ties,
Till we feel the far track humming,
And we see her headlight plain,
And we gather and wait her coming,
The wonderful north-bound train.
(Few, forgotten and lonely,
Where the white car-windows shine,
No, not combatants-only
Details guarding the line.)
Quick, ere the gift escape us!
Out of the darkness we reach
For a handful of week-old papers
And a mouthful of human speech.
And the monstrous heaven rejoices,
And the earth allows again,
Meetings, greetings, and voices
Of women talking with men.
So we return to our places,
As out on the bridge she rolls;
And the darkness covers our faces,
And the darkness re-enters our souls.
More than a little lonely	
Where the lessening tail-lights shine.
No, not combatants-only
Details guarding the line!
Fragment: 'Such Hope, As Is The Sick Despair Of Good'.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Such hope, as is the sick despair of good,
Such fear, as is the certainty of ill,
Such doubt, as is pale Expectation's food
Turned while she tastes to poison, when the will
Is powerless, and the spirit...
Epistle To Robert Earl Of Oxford And Earl Mortimer.
by Alexander Pope

Such were the notes thy once-loved Poet sung,
Till Death untimely stopp'd his tuneful tongue.
Oh just beheld and lost! admired and mourn'd!
With softest manners, gentlest arts adorn'd!
Blest in each science, blest in every strain!
Dear to the Muse! to Harley dear--in vain!
For him, thou oft hast bid the world attend,
Fond to forget the statesman in the friend;
For Swift and him, despised the farce of state,
The sober follies of the wise and great;
Dext'rous, the craving, fawning crowd to quit,
And pleased to 'scape from Flattery to Wit.
Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear,
(A sigh the absent claims, the dead a tear,)
Recall those nights that closed thy toilsome days,
Still hear thy Parnell in his living lays,
Who, careless now of interest, fame, or fate,
Perhaps forgets that Oxford e'er was great;
Or deeming meanest what we greatest call,
Behold thee glorious only in thy fall.
And sure, if aught below the seats divine
Can touch immortals, 'tis a soul like thine:
A soul supreme, in each hard instance tried,
Above all pain, all passion, and all pride,
The rage of power, the blast of public breath,
The lust of lucre, and the dread of death.
In vain to deserts thy retreat is made;
The Muse attends thee to thy silent shade:
'Tis hers the brave man's latest steps to trace,
Rejudge his acts, and dignify disgrace.
When interest calls off all her sneaking train,
And all the obliged desert, and all the vain,
She waits, or to the scaffold, or the cell,
When the last lingering friend has bid farewell.
Even now she shades thy evening-walk with bays,
(No hireling she, no prostitute to praise),
Even now, observant of the parting ray,
Eyes the calm sunset of thy various day;
Through Fortune's cloud one truly great can see,
Nor fears to tell that Mortimer is he.
A Ballad Of Sweethearts
by Madison Julius Cawein

Summer may come, in sun-blonde splendor,
To reap the harvest that Springtime sows;
And Fall lead in her old defender,
Winter, all huddled up in snows:
Ever a-south the love-wind blows
Into my heart, like a vane asway
From face to face of the girls it knows--
But who is the fairest it's hard to say.
If Carrie smile or Maud look tender,
Straight in my bosom the gladness glows;
But scarce at their side am I all surrender
When Gertrude sings where the garden grows:
And my heart is a bloom, like the red rose shows
For her hand to gather and toss away,
Or wear on her breast, as her fancy goes--
But who is the fairest it's hard to say.
Let Laura pass, as a sapling slender,
Her cheek a berry, her mouth a rose,--
Or Blanche or Helen,--to each I render
The worship due to the charms she shows:
But Mary's a poem when these are prose;
Here at her feet my life I lay;
All of devotion to her it owes--
But who is the fairest it's hard to say.
How can my heart of my hand dispose?
When Ruth and Clara, and Kate and May,
In form and feature no flaw disclose--
But who is the fairest it's hard to say.
The River Duddon - A Series Of Sonnets, 1820. - XVI - American Tradition
by William Wordsworth

Such fruitless questions may not long beguile
Or plague the fancy 'mid the sculptured shows
Conspicuous yet where Oroonoko flows;
'There' would the Indian answer with a smile
Aimed at the White Man's ignorance, the while,
Of the great waters telling how they rose,
Covered the plains, and, wandering where they chose,
Mounted through every intricate defile,
Triumphant, Inundation wide and deep,
O'er which his Fathers urged, to ridge and steep
Else unapproachable, their buoyant way;
And carved, on mural cliff's undreaded side,
Sun, moon, and stars, and beast of chase or prey;
Whate'er they sought, shunned, loved, or deified!
Upon Sudds, A Laundress.
by Robert Herrick

Sudds launders bands in piss, and starches them
Both with her husband's and her own tough fleam.
Summer met Me
by Fay Inchfawn

Summer met me in the glade,
With a host of fair princesses,
Golden iris, foxgloves staid,
Sunbeams flecked their gorgeous dresses.
Roses followed in her train,
Creamy elder-flowers beset me,
Singing, down the scented lane,
Summer met me!
Summer met me! Harebells rang,
Honeysuckle clustered near,
As the royal pageant sang
Songs enchanting to the ear.
Rainy days may come apace,
Nevermore to grieve or fret me,
Since, in all her radiant grace,
Summer met me!
Katydids And The Moon
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
Summer evenings, when it's warm,
In the yard we sit and swing:
And it's better than a farm,
Watching how the fireflies swarm,
Listening to the crickets sing,
And the katydids that cry,
"Katy did n't! Katy did!"
In the trees and flowers hid.
So I ask my father, "Why?
What's the thing she did n't do?"
For he told me that he knew:
"Katy did n't like to worry;
But she did so like to talk;
Gossip of herself and talk;
Katy did n't like to hurry;
But she did so like to walk;
Saunter by herself and walk.
How is that now for a story?"
II.
And one night when it was fine,
And the moon peeped through the trees;
And the scented jessamine vine
Swung its blossoms in the breeze,
Full of sleeping honeybees:
"That's Old Sister Moon," he said.
"She's a perfect simpleton;
Scared to death of Old Man Sun:
All day long she hides her head."
And I asked my father why,
And he made me this reply:
"Sister Moon's old eyes are weary;
Her old eyes are very weak;
Poor and old and worn and weak:
And the old Sun, with his cheery
Looks, just makes them leak and leak,
Like an old can leak and leak.
That's the reason why, my dearie."
Apparitions - Prologue To "The Two Poets Of Croisic."
by Robert Browning

Such a starved bank of moss
Till, that May-morn,
Blue ran the flash across:
Violets were born!
Sky, what a scowl of cloud
Till, near and far,
Ray on ray split the shroud:
Splendid, a star!
World, how it walled about
Life with disgrace,
Till God's own smile came out:
That was thy face!