DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Microcosmography
by John Le Gay Brereton

He looks beyond the veils of night and day;
He hearkens in the silence, and has heard
The ancient woods by dryad singing stirred,
To mortal ears how thin and far away.
With what gross laughter yet he turns to play
With slaves of vice and virtue and the herd
Of flopping little Calibans, that gird
At muddy boots and call them feet of clay.
Here you may loaf the valley or breast the hill,
Dive deep for pearl or sink your shaft for gold,
Or watch Love, laughing, flit in the summer nights.
Sit by the mud and sniff it as you will,
If you but lift your eyes an inch, behold
The moving tide and broken glimmer of lights.
A Living Poet
by Henry Kendall

He knows the sweet vexation in the strife
Of Love with Time, this bard who fain would stray
To fairer place beyond the storms of life,
With astral faces near him day by day.
In deep-mossed dells the mellow waters flow
Which best he loves; for there the echoes, rife
With rich suggestions of his long ago,
Astarte, pass with thee! And, far away,
Dear southern seasons haunt the dreamy eye:
Spring, flower-zoned, and Summer, warbling low
In tasselled corn, alternate come and go,
While gypsy Autumn, splashed from heel to thigh
With vine-blood, treads the leaves; and, halting nigh,
Wild Winter bends across a beard of snow.
Dedication: Riley Child-Rhymes
by James Whitcomb Riley

With Hale Affection And Abiding Faith These Rhymes And Pictures Are Inscribed To The Children Everywhere
He owns the bird-songs of the hills -
The laughter of the April rills;
And his are all the diamonds set
In Morning's dewy coronet, -
And his the Dusk's first minted stars
That twinkle through the pasture-bars
And litter all the skies at night
With glittering scraps of silver light; -
The rainbow's bar, from rim to rim,
In beaten gold, belongs to him.
The Lonely Dreamer
by William Henry Davies

He lives his lonely life, and when he dies
A thousand hearts maybe will utter sighs;
Because they liked his songs, and now their bird
Sleeps with his head beneath his wing, unheard.
But what kind hand will tend his grave, and bring
Those blossoms there, of which he used to sing?
Who'll kiss his mound, and wish the time would come
To lie with him inside that silent tomb?
And who'll forget the dreamer's skill, and shed
A tear because a loving heart is dead?
Heigh ho for gossip then, and common sighs, 
And let his death bring tears in no one's eyes.
Dante.
by Eric Mackay

Dante.
He liv'd and lov'd; he suffer'd; he was poor;
But he was gifted with the gifts of Heaven,
And those of all the week-days that are seven,
And those of all the centuries that endure.
He bow'd to none; he kept his honour sure.
He follow'd in the wake of those Eleven
Who walk'd with Christ, and lifted up his steven[A]
To keep the bulwarks of his faith secure.
He knew the secrets of the singing-time;
He track'd the sun; he ate the luscious fruit
Of grief and joy; and with his wonder-lute
He made himself a name in every clime.
The minds of men were madly stricken mute
And all the world lay subject to his rhyme!
[A] Steven, a voice; old word revived.
Then And Now
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

THEN
He loved her, and through many years,
Had paid his fair devoted court,
Until she wearied, and with sneers
Turned all his ardent love to sport.
That night within his chamber lone,
He long sat writing by his bed
A note in which his heart made moan
For love; the morning found him dead.
NOW
Like him, a man of later day
Was jilted by the maid he sought,
And from her presence turned away,
Consumed by burning, bitter thought.
He sought his room to write--a curse
Like him before and die, I ween.
Ah no, he put his woes in verse,
And sold them to a magazine.
Portrait Of A Baby
by Stephen Vincent Benet

He lay within a warm, soft world
Of motion. Colors bloomed and fled,
Maroon and turquoise, saffron, red,
Wave upon wave that broke and whirled
To vanish in the grey-green gloom,
Perspectiveless and shadowy.
A bulging world that had no walls,
A flowing world, most like the sea,
Compassing all infinity
Within a shapeless, ebbing room,
An endless tide that swells and falls...
He slept and woke and slept again.
As a veil drops Time dropped away;
Space grew a toy for children's play,
Sleep bolted fast the gates of Sense --
He lay in naked impotence;
Like a drenched moth that creeps and crawls
Heavily up brown, light-baked walls,
To fall in wreck, her task undone,
Yet somehow striving toward the sun.
So, as he slept, his hands clenched tighter,
Shut in the old way of the fighter,
His feet curled up to grip the ground,
His muscles tautened for a bound;
And though he felt, and felt alone,
Strange brightness stirred him to the bone,
Cravings to rise -- till deeper sleep
Buried the hope, the call, the leap;
A wind puffed out his mind's faint spark.
He was absorbed into the dark.
He woke again and felt a surge
Within him, a mysterious urge
That grew one hungry flame of passion;
The whole world altered shape and fashion.
Deceived, befooled, bereft and torn,
He scourged the heavens with his scorn,
Lifting a bitter voice to cry
Against the eternal treachery --
Till, suddenly, he found the breast,
And ceased, and all things were at rest,
The earth grew one warm languid sea
And he a wave. Joy, tingling, crept
Throughout him. He was quenched and slept.
So, while the moon made broad her ring,
He slept and cried and was a king.
So, worthily, he acted o'er
The endless miracle once more.
Facing immense adventures daily,
He strove still onward, weeping, gaily,
Conquered or fled from them, but grew
As soil-starved, rough pine-saplings do.
Till, one day, crawling seemed suspect.
He gripped the air and stood erect
And splendid. With immortal rage
He entered on man's heritage!
The Poet
by Theodosia Garrison

He made him a love o' dreams--
He raised for his heart's delight--
(As the heart of June a crescent moon)
A frail, fair spirit of light.
He gave her the gift of joy--
The gift of the dancing feet--
He made her a thing of very Spring--
Virginal--wild and sweet.
But when he would draw her near
To his eager heart's content,
As a sunbeam slips from the finger-tips
She slipped from his hold and went.
Virginal--wild--and sweet--
So she eludes him still--
The love that he made of dawn and shade
Of dominant want and will.
For ever the dream of man
Is more than the dreamer is;
Though he form it whole of his inmost soul,
Yet never 'tis wholly his.
Only is given to him
The right to follow and yearn
The loveliness he may not possess,
The vision that may not turn.
Never to hold or to bind--
Only to know how fleet
The dream that is and yet is not his,--
Virginal--wild--and sweet.
Tambaroora Jim
by Henry Lawson

He never drew a sword to fight a dozen foes alone,
Nor gave a life to save a life no better than his own.
He lived because he had been born, the hero of my song,
And fought the battle with his fist whene'er he fought a wrong.
Yet there are many men who would do anything for him,
A simple chap as went by name of 'Tambaroora Jim.'
He used to keep a shanty in the 'Come-and-find-it Scrub,'
And there were few but knew the name of Tambaroora's pub.
He wasn't great in lambing down, as many landlords are,
And never was a man less fit to stand behind a bar,
Off-hand, as most bush natives are, and freckled, tall, and slim,
A careless native of the land was 'Tambaroora Jim.'
When people said that loafers took the profit from his pub,
He'd ask them how they thought a chap could do without his grub;
He'd say, 'I've gone for days myself without a bite or sup,
'Oh! I've been through the mill and know what 'tis to be hard-up.'
He might have made his fortune, but he wasn't in the swim,
For no one had a softer heart than 'Tambaroora Jim.'
One dismal day I tramped across the Come-and-find-it Flats,
With 'Ballarat Adolphus' and a mate of 'Ballarat's';
'Twas nearly night and raining fast, and all our things were damp,
We'd no tobacco, and our legs were aching with the cramp;
We couldn't raise a cent, and so our lamp of hope was dim;
And thus we struck the shanty kept by 'Tambaroora Jim.'
We dropped our swags beneath a tree, and squatted in despair,
But Jim came out to watch the rain, and saw us sitting there;
He came and muttered, 'I suppose you haven't half -a-crown,
'But come and get some tucker, and a drink to wash it down.'
And so we took our blueys up and went along with him,
And then we knew why bushmen swore by 'Tambaroora Jim.'
We sat beside his kitchen fire and nursed our tired knees,
And blessed him when we heard the rain go rushing through the trees.
He made us stay, although he knew we couldn't raise a bob,
And tuckered us until we made some money on a job.
And many times since then we've filled our glasses to the brim,
And drunk in many pubs the health of 'Tambaroora Jim.'
A man need never want a meal while Jim had 'junk' to carve,
For 'Tambaroora' always said a fellow couldn't starve.
And this went on until he got a bailiff in his pub,
Through helping chaps as couldn't raise the money for their grub.
And so, one rainy evening, as the distant range grew dim,
He humped his bluey from the Flats, did 'Tambaroora Jim.'
I miss the fun in Jim's old bar, the laughter and the noise,
The jolly hours I used to spend on pay-nights with the boys.
But that's all past, and vain regrets are useless, I'll allow;
They say the Come-and-find-it Flats are all deserted now.
Poor 'Tambaroora's' dead, perhaps, but that's all right with him,
Saint Peter cottons on to chaps like 'Tambaroora Jim.'
I trust that he and I may meet where starry fields are grand,
And liquor up together in the pubs in spirit-land.
But if you chance to drop on Jim while in the West, my lad,
You won't forget to tell him that I want to see him bad.
I want to shake his hand again, I want to shout for him,
I want to have a glass or two with 'Tambaroora Jim.'
The Martyr Of Alabama.
by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

"Tim Thompson, a little negro boy, was asked to dance for the amusement of some white toughs. He refused, saying he was a church member. One of the men knocked him down with a club and then danced upon his prostrate form. He then shot the boy in the hip. The boy is dead; his murderer is still at large."
- News Item.
He lifted up his pleading eyes,
And scanned each cruel face,
Where cold and brutal cowardice
Had left its evil trace.
It was when tender memories
Round Beth'lem's manger lay,
And mothers told their little ones
Of Jesu's natal day.
And of the Magi from the East
Who came their gifts to bring,
And bow in rev'rence at the feet
Of Salem's new-born King.
And how the herald angels sang
The choral song of peace,
That war should close his wrathful lips,
And strife and carnage cease.
At such an hour men well may hush
Their discord and their strife,
And o'er that manger clasp their hands
With gifts to brighten life.
Alas! that in our favored land,
That cruelty and crime
Should cast their shadows o'er a day.
The fairest pearl of time.
A dark-browed boy had drawn anear
A band of savage men,
Just as a hapless lamb might stray
Into a tiger's den.
Cruel and dull, they saw in him
For sport an evil chance,
And then demanded of the child
To give to them a dance.
"Come dance for us," the rough men said;
"I can't," the child replied,
"I cannot for the dear Lord's sake,
Who for my sins once died."
Tho' they were strong and he was weak,
He wouldn't his Lord deny.
His life lay in their cruel hands,
But he for Christ could die.
Heard they aright? Did that brave child
Their mandates dare resist?
Did he against their stern commands
Have courage to insist?
Then recklessly a man (?) arose,
And dealt a fearful blow.
He crushed the portals of that life,
And laid the brave child low.
And trampled on his prostrate form,
As on a broken toy;
Then danced with careless, brutal feet,
Upon the murdered boy.
Christians! behold that martyred child!
His blood cries from the ground;
Before the sleepless eye of God,
He shows each gaping wound.
Oh! Church of Christ arise! arise!
Lest crimson stain thy hand,
When God shall inquisition make
For blood shed in the land.
Take sackcloth of the darkest hue,
And shroud the pulpits round;
Servants of him who cannot lie
Sit mourning on the ground.
Let holy horror blanch each brow,
Pale every cheek with fears,
And rocks and stones, if ye could speak,
Ye well might melt to tears.
Through every fane send forth a cry,
Of sorrow and regret,
Nor in an hour of careless ease
Thy brother's wrongs forget.
Veil not thine eyes, nor close thy lips,
Nor speak with bated breath;
This evil shall not always last,
The end of it is death.
Avert the doom that crime must bring
Upon a guilty land;
Strong in the strength that God supplies,
For truth and justice stand.
For Christless men, with reckless hands,
Are sowing round thy path
The tempests wild that yet shall break
In whirlwinds of God's wrath.
Alas.
by Edwin C. Ranck

He led her out across the sand,
And by her side did sit:
He asked to hold her little hand,
She sweetly answered, "Nit."
The Mountain-Still
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
The Moonshiner
He leans far out and watches: Down below
The road seems but a ribbon through the trees:
The bluff, from which he gazes, whence he sees
Some ox-team or some horseman come and go,
Is briered with brush. A man comes riding slow
Around a bend of road. Against his knees
The branches whip. He sits at careless ease.
It is the sheriff, armed for any foe.
A detonation tears the echoes from
Each pine-hung crag; upon the rider's brow
A smear of red springs out: he shades it now,
His grey eyes on the bluff. The crags are dumb.
Smoke wreathes one spot. The sheriff, with a cough,
Marks well that place, and then rides slowly off.
II.
The Sheriff
Night and the mountain road: a crag where burns
What seems a star, low down: three men that glide
From tree and rock towards it: one a guide
For him who never from his purpose turns,
Who stands for law among these mountain kerns.
At last the torchlit cave, along whose side
The still is seen, and men who have defied
The law so long law, who the threshold spurns
With levelled weapons now.... Wolves in a den
Fight not more fiercely than these fought; wild fear
In every face, and rage and pale surprise.
The smoke thins off, and in the cave four men
Lie dead or dying: one that mountaineer,
And one the sheriff with the fearless eyes.
True Love
by Joseph Horatio Chant

He loves not much who loves not honor more;
If men lack this then love must lack as well;
If this possessed no tongue love's depths can tell;
The heart an ocean filled from shore to shore.
Seeing in him the possibility
Of likeness to the great and Blessed One;
It may be even now in him begun.
I love him much for what I hope to be,
And show my love by yielding him his due;
For sentimental love is ever vain,
It cannot peace, much less heaven's favor gain;
But those who love in deed are blessed and true.
The Chipmunk
by Madison Julius Cawein

I
He makes a roadway of the crumbling fence,
Or on the fallen tree, - brown as a leaf
Fall stripes with russet, - gambols down the dense
Green twilight of the woods. We see not whence
He comes, nor whither (in a time so brief)
He vanishes - swift carrier of some Fay,
Some pixy steed that haunts our child-belief - 
A goblin glimpse upon some wildwood way.
II
What harlequin mood of nature qualified
Him so with happiness? and limbed him with
Such young activity as winds, that ride
The ripples, have, dancing on every side?
As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith
Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight,
Gnome-like, in darkness, - like a moonlight myth, - 
Lairing in labyrinths of the under night.
III
Here, by a rock, beneath the moss, a hole
Leads to his home, the den wherein he sleeps;
Lulled by near noises of the laboring mole
Tunneling its mine - like some ungainly Troll - 
Or by the tireless cricket there that keeps
Picking its rusty and monotonous lute;
Or slower sounds of grass that creeps and creeps,
And trees unrolling mighty root on root.
IV
Such is the music of his sleeping hours.
Day hath another - 'tis a melody
He trips to, made by the assembled flowers,
And light and fragrance laughing 'mid the bowers,
And ripeness busy with the acorn-tree.
Such strains, perhaps, as filled with mute amaze
(The silent music of Earth's ecstasy)
The Satyr's soul, the Faun of classic days.
Debris
by Walt Whitman

He is wisest who has the most caution,
He only wins who goes far enough.
Any thing is as good as established, when that is established that will produce it and continue it.
Perfect Character.
by Hattie Howard

He lives but half who never stood
By the grave of one held dear,
And out of the deep, dark loneliness
Of a heart bereaved and comfortless,
From sorrow's crystal plentitude,
Feeling his loss severe,
Dropped a regretful tear.
Oh, life's divinest draught doth not
In the wells of joy abound!
For the purest streams are those that flow
Out of the depths of crushing woe,
As from the springs of love and thought
Hid in some narrow mound,
Making it holy ground.
He hath been blessed who sometimes knelt
Owning that God is just,
And in the stillness of cypress shade
Rosemary's tender symbol laid
Upon a cherished shrine, and felt
Strengthened in faith and trust
Over the precious dust.
So perfect character is wrought,
Rounded and beautified,
By the alchemy of that strange alloy,
The intermingling of grief and joy;
So nearer Heaven the spirit, brought
Bleeding, so sorely tried,
Finds its diviner side.
On A Similar Occasion. For The Year 1793.
by William Cowper

De sacris autem h'c sit una sententia, ut conserventur.
- Cic. de Leg.
But let us all concur in this one sentiment, that things sacred be inviolate.
He lives who lives to God alone,
And all are dead beside;
For other source than God is none
Whence life can be supplied.
To live to God is to requite
His love as best we may:
To make his precepts our delight,
His promises our stay.
But life, within a narrow ring
Of giddy joys comprised,
Is falsely named, and no such thing,
But rather death disguised.
Can life in them deserve the name,
Who only live to prove
For what poor toys they can disclaim
An endless life above?
Who, much diseased, yet nothing feel;
Much menaced, nothing dread;
Have wounds, which only God can heal,
Yet never ask his aid?
Who deem his house a useless place,
Faith, want of common sense;
And ardour in the Christian race,
A hypocrite's pretence?
Who trample order; and the day
Which God asserts his own
Dishonour with unhallow'd play,
And worship chance alone?
If scorn of God's commands, impress'd
On word and deed, imply
The better part of man unbless'd
With life that cannot die;
Such want it, and that want uncured
Till man resigns his breath,
Speaks him a criminal, assured
Of everlasting death.
Sad period to a pleasant course!
Yet so will God repay
Sabbaths profaned without remorse,
And mercy cast away.
Character Of Charles Brown
by John Keats

I.
He is to weet a melancholy carle:
Thin in the waist, with bushy head of hair
As hath the seeded thistle when in parle
It holds the Zephyr, ere it sendeth fair
Its light balloons into the summer air;
Therto his beard had not begun to bloom,
No brush had touch'd his chin or razor sheer;
No care had touch'd his cheek with mortal doom,
But new he was and bright as scarf from Persian loom.
II.
Ne cared he for wine, or half-and-half;
Ne cared he for fish or flesh or fowl,
And sauces held he worthless as the chaff,
He 'sdeigned the swine-head at the wassail-bowl;
Ne with lewd ribbalds sat he cheek by jowl,
Ne with sly Lemans in the scorner's chair;
But after water-brooks this Pilgrim's soul
Panted, and all his food was woodland air
Though he would oft-times feast on gilliflowers rare.
III.
The slang of cities in no wise he knew,
Tipping the wink to him was heathen Greek;
He sipp'd no olden Tom or ruin blue,
Or nantz or cherry-brandy drank full meek
By many a damsel hoarse and rouge of cheek;
Nor did he know each aged watchman's beat,
Nor in obscured purlieus would he seek
For curled Jewesses with ankles neat,
Who as they walk abroad make tinkling with their feet.
A Dreamer Of Dreams
by Madison Julius Cawein

He lived beyond men, and so stood
Admitted to the brotherhood
Of beauty: - dreams, with which he trod
Companioned like some sylvan god.
And oft men wondered, when his thought
Made all their knowledge seem as naught,
If he, like Uther's mystic son,
Had not been born for Avalon.
When wandering mid the whispering trees,
His soul communed with every breeze;
Heard voices calling from the glades,
Bloom-words of the Leimoni'ds;
Or Dryads of the ash and oak,
Who syllabled his name and spoke
With him of presences and powers
That glimpsed in sunbeams, gloomed in showers.
By every violet-hallowed brook,
Where every bramble-matted nook
Rippled and laughed with water sounds,
He walked like one on sainted grounds,
Fearing intrusion on the spell
That kept some fountain-spirit's well,
Or woodland genius, sitting where
Red, racy berries kissed his hair.
Once when the wind, far o'er the hill,
Had fall'n and left the wildwood still
For Dawn's dim feet to trail across, - 
Beneath the gnarled boughs, on the moss,
The air around him golden-ripe
With daybreak, - there, with oaten pipe,
His eyes beheld the wood-god, Pan,
Goat-bearded, horned; half brute, half man;
Who, shaggy-haunched, a savage rhyme
Blew in his reed to rudest time;
And swollen-jowled, with rolling eye - 
Beneath the slowly silvering sky,
Whose rose streaked through the forest's roof - 
Danced, while beneath his boisterous hoof
The branch was snapped, and, interfused
Between gnarled roots, the moss was bruised.
And often when he wandered through
Old forests at the fall of dew - 
A new Endymion, who sought
A beauty higher than all thought - 
Some night, men said, most surely he
Would favored be of deity:
That in the holy solitude
Her sudden presence, long-pursued,
Unto his gaze would stand confessed:
The awful moonlight of her breast
Come, high with majesty, and hold
His heart's blood till his heart grew cold,
Unpulsed, unsinewed, all undone,
And snatch his soul to Avalon.
In Memoriam Thomas Edward Brown
by William Ernest Henley

(Ob. October 30, 1897)
He looked half-parson and half-skipper: a quaint,
Beautiful blend, with blue eyes good to see,
And old-world whiskers.    You found him cynic, saint,
Salt, humourist, Christian, poet; with a free,
Far-glancing, luminous utterance; and a heart
Large as ST. FRANCIS'S: withal a brain
Stored with experience, letters, fancy, art,
And scored with runes of human joy and pain.
Till six-and-sixty years he used his gift,
His gift unparalleled, of laughter and tears,
And left the world a high-piled, golden drift
Of verse: to grow more golden with the years,
Till the Great Silence fallen upon his ways
Break into song, and he that had Love have Praise.
Spenserian Stanzas On Charles Armitage Brown
by John Keats

I
He is to weet a melancholy carle:
Thin in the waist, with bushy head of hair,
As hath the seeded thistle when in parle
It holds the Zephyr, ere it sendeth fair
Its light balloons into the summer air;
Therto his beard had not begun to bloom,
No brush had touch'd his chin or razor sheer;
No care had touch'd his cheek with mortal doom,
But new he was, and bright, as scarf from Persian loom.
II
Ne cared he for wine, or half-and-half;
Ne cared he for fish or flesh, or fowl;
And sauces held he worthless as the chaff;
He 'sdeigned the swine-head at the wassail-bowl;
Ne with lewd ribbalds sat he cheek by jowl;
Ne with sly Lemans in the scorner's chair;
But after water-brooks this Pilgrim's soul
Panted, and all his food was woodland air;
Though he would oft-times feast on gilliflowers rare.
III
The slang of cities in no wise he knew,
Tipping the wink to him was heathen Greek;
He sipp'd no "olden Tom," or "ruin blue,"
Or Nantz, or cherry-brandy, drank full meek
By many a damsel brave, and rouge of cheek;
Nor did he know each aged watchman's beat,
Nor in obscured purlieus would he seek
For curled Jewesses, with ankles neat,
Who as they walk abroad, make tinkling with their feet.