DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
All In The Family Way. A New Pastoral Ballad.
by Thomas Moore

(SUNG IN THE CHARACTER OF BRITANNIA.)
"The Public Debt is due from ourselves to ourselves, and resolves
itself into a Family Account."--Sir Robert Peel's Letter.
Tune--My banks are all furnisht with bees.
My banks are all furnisht with rags,
So thick, even Freddy can't thin 'em;
I've torn up my old money-bags,
Having little or nought to put in 'em.
My tradesmen are smashing by dozens,
But this is all nothing, they say;
For bankrupts since Adam are cousins,--
So, it's all in the family way.
My Debt not a penny takes from me.
As sages the matter explain;--
Bob owes it to Tom, and then Tommy
Just owes it to Bob back again.
Since all have thus taken to owing,
There's nobody left that can pay;
And this is the way to keep going,--
All quite in the family way.
My senators vote away millions,
To put in Prosperity's budget;
And tho' it were billions or trillions,
The generous rogues wouldn't grudge it.
'Tis all but a family hop,
'Twas Pitt began dancing the hay;
Hands round!--why the deuce should we stop?
'Tis all in the family way.
My laborers used to eat mutton,
As any great man of the State does;
And now the poor devils are put on
Small rations of tea and potatoes.
But cheer up, John, Sawney, and Paddy,
The King is your father, they say;
So even if you starve for your Daddy,
'Tis all in the family way.
My rich manufacturers tumble,
My poor ones have nothing to chew;
And even if themselves do not grumble
Their stomachs undoubtedly do.
But coolly to fast en famille,
Is as good for the soul as to pray;
And famine itself is genteel,
When one starves in a family way.
I have found out a secret for Freddy,
A secret for next Budget day;
Tho' perhaps he may know it already,
As he too's a sage in his way.
When next for the Treasury scene he
Announces "the Devil to pay,"
Let him write on the bills, "nota bene,
"'Tis all in the family way."
The Prayer
by Rudyard Kipling

My brother kneels, so saith Kabir,
To stone and brass in heathen wise,
But in my brother's voice I hear
My own unanswered agonies.
His God is as his fates assign,
His prayer is all the world's, and mine.
To - .
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory -
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
My Bark is Out Upon the Sea.
by George Pope Morris

My bark is out upon the sea--
The moon's above;
Her light a presence seems to me
Like woman's love.
My native land I've left behind--
Afar I roam;
In other climes no hearts I'll find
Like those at home.
Of all yon sisterhood of stars,
But one is true:
She paves my path with silver bars,
And beams like you,
Whose purity the waves recall
In music's flow,
As round my bark they rise and fall
In liquid snow.
The fresh'ning breeze now swells our sails!
A storm is on!
The weary moon's dim lustre fails--
The stars are gone!
Not so fades Love's eternal light
When storm-clouds weep;
I know one heart's with me to-night
Upon the deep!
Musing On The Roaring Ocean.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "Druimion dubh."
I.
Musing on the roaring ocean,
Which divides my love and me;
Wearying heaven in warm devotion,
For his weal where'er he be.
II.
Hope and fear's alternate billow
Yielding late to nature's law,
Whisp'ring spirits round my pillow
Talk of him that's far awa.
III.
Ye whom sorrow never wounded,
Ye who never shed a tear,
Care-untroubled, joy-surrounded,
Gaudy day to you is dear.
IV.
Gentle night, do thou befriend me;
Downy sleep, the curtain draw;
Spirits kind, again attend me,
Talk of him that's far awa!
A Victim
by Helen Leah Reed

My Auntie has a camera, and when I'm out at play
And see her coming with it, I try to hide away.
For oh, it is so bothersome to hear her, with a laugh,
Call, "Stand just were you are, dear; I'll take a photograph."
Sometimes, an angry lion, I have just begun to roar,
And all the children run from me to sneak behind the door,
When Auntie to our forest comes - why does she stop our fun?
I'd like to shoot that camera there with my wooden gun.
Perhaps, a fire engine, I am rushing to a fire,
While people loudly call for help as flames rise higher and higher.
I hurry toward the hydrant here, for oh! the flames are hot!
When Auntie with her camera cries, "What a fine snapshot!"
But then it doesn't seem to snap, so I must be polite,
And when she says, "Oh please, stand still, the sun is not just right,"
I have to pull up where I am, and see that house burn down,
For Auntie doesn't understand, even when I twist and frown.
She only says, "Don't squirm, my pet! Oh, what a cunning pose!
Your scowl is better than a smile," - so that's the way it goes - 
A p'liceman or an admiral, no matter what I am,
I have to face that camera as quiet as a lamb.
During A Journey In Sweden
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

(See Note 28)
My boyish heart in thee confided,
For to the great by thee 't was guided.
As man, my waiting is for thee, - 
The Northern cause with thee, with thee!
Rich lands and talents are thy dower,
But fallow lie thy wealth and power.
Thou must the North in concord bind,
Or never shalt thy true self find.
There's longing in thy folk arisen,
Poetic hope - but yet in prison.
Though forces great within thee dwell,
Thou art not wholly sound and well.
Too many things are undertaken,
Too oft the task is soon forsaken.
Though rich in promptings of the heart,
In faith and duty faint thou art.
In danger only hast thou thriven,
When something great to guard was given.
When every breast with warmth shall glow
At Sweden's name, thy strength thou'lt know.
What's thine alone lifts not thy feeling,
Till honor's cause the skies are pealing,
Thou hast no joy but daring deed
In fortune's favor or in need.
For thy fair memories inspiring
Are far too great, much more requiring:
The Northern cause! Lead thou the way!
'T will double glory thee repay!
Of all thou canst, this is the greatest,
Thy duty earliest and latest.
Thy future rests in its embrace
With cure for ills that now abase.
Thou land of heart-born fancies thronging,
Thou land of poetry and longing,
Fill now thy heart, thy spirit free!
The Northern banner waits for thee!
Binsey Poplars felled 1879
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew - 
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being s' slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc 'nselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.
Love And The Muse
by William Henry Davies

My back is turned on Spring and all her flowers,
The birds no longer charm from tree to tree;
The cuckoo had his home in this green world
Ten days before his voice was heard by me.
Had I an answer from a dear one's lips,
My love of life would soon regain its power;
And suckle my sweet dreams, that tug my heart,
And whimper to be nourished every hour.
Give me that answer now, and then my Muse,
That for my sweet life's sake must never die,
Will rise like that great wave that leaps and hangs
The sea-weed on a vessel's mast-top high.
Music I Heard
by Conrad Potter Aiken

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, belov'd,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.
For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.
The Outing
by Oliver Herford

My Bed is like a little Bark,
The hatch is battened down,
And in the basket cabin dark
I sail away from Town.
Now, when they lift the lid, a scene
Of wonder meets my eyes,
Tall waving Feather-Dusters green,
That seem to touch the skies.
And over all the Ground is spread
A Rug of Emerald sweet,
Most deep enough to hide my head
And tickly to my feet.
And here's the Cow, calm-eyed stands she,
The Genie of the Jug,
Beneath the Feather-Duster Tree,
And eats the Emerald Rug.
My Birth-Day.
by Thomas Moore

"My birth-day"--what a different sound
That word had in my youthful ears!
And how, each time the day comes round,
Less and less white its mark appears!
"When first our scanty years are told,
It seems like pastime to grow old;
And as Youth counts the shining links
That Time around him binds so fast,
Pleased with the task, he little thinks
How hard that chain will press at last.
Vain was the man, and false as vain,
Who said--"were he ordained to run
"His long career of life again,
"He would do all that he had done."--
Ah, 'tis not thus the voice that dwells
In sober birth-days speaks to me;
Far otherwise--of time it tells,
Lavished unwisely, carelessly:
Of counsel mockt; of talents made
Haply for high and pure designs,
But oft, like Israel's incense, laid
Upon unholy, earthly shrines;
Of nursing many a wrong desire,
Of wandering after Love too far,
And taking every meteor fire
That crost my pathway, for his star.--
All this it tells, and, could I trace
The imperfect picture o'er again.
With power to add, retouch, efface
The lights and shades, the joy and pain,
How little of the past would stay!
How quickly all should melt away--
All--but that Freedom of the Mind
Which hath been more than wealth to me;
Those friendships, in my boyhood twined,
And kept till now unchangingly,
And that dear home, that saving ark,
Where Love's true light at last I've found,
Cheering within, when all grows dark
And comfortless and stormy round!
True Diffidence.
by William Schwenck Gilbert

My boy, you may take it from me,
That of all the afflictions accurst
With which a man's saddled
And hampered and addled,
A diffident nature's the worst.
Though clever as clever can be 
A Crichton of early romance 
You must stir it and stump it,
And blow your own trumpet,
Or, trust me, you haven't a chance.
Now take, for example, my case:
I've a bright intellectual brain 
In all London city
There's no one so witty 
I've thought so again and again.
I've a highly intelligent face 
My features cannot be denied 
But, whatever I try, sir,
I fail in and why, sir?
I'm modesty personified!
As a poet, I'm tender and quaint 
I've passion and fervor and grace 
From Ovid and Horace
To Swinburne and Morris,
They all of them take a back place,
Then I sing and I play and I paint;
Though none are accomplished as I,
To say so were treason:
You ask me the reason?
I'm diffident, modest and shy!
Satires Of Circumstances In Fifteen Glimpses - IX At The Altar-Rail
by Thomas Hardy

"My bride is not coming, alas!" says the groom,
And the telegram shakes in his hand. "I own
It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room
When I went to the Cattle-Show alone,
And then, next night, where the Fountain leaps,
And the Street of the Quarter-Circle sweeps.
"Ay, she won me to ask her to be my wife -
'Twas foolish perhaps! to forsake the ways
Of the flaring town for a farmer's life.
She agreed. And we fixed it. Now she says:
'It's sweet of you, dear, to prepare me a nest,
But a swift, short, gay life suits me best.
What I really am you have never gleaned;
I had eaten the apple ere you were weaned.'"
Before The Battle
by Siegfried Loraine Sassoon

Music of whispering trees
Hushed by the broad-winged breeze
Where shaken water gleams;
And evening radiance falling
With reedy bird-notes calling.
O bear me safe through dark, you low-voiced streams.
I have no need to pray
That fear may pass away;
I scorn the growl and rumble of the fight
That summons me from cool
Silence of marsh and pool,
And yellow lilies islanded in light.
O river of stars and shadows, lead me through the night.
June 25th, 1916.
Music Of Growth.
by George Parsons Lathrop

Music is in all growing things;
And underneath the silky wings
Of smallest insects there is stirred
A pulse of air that must be heard.
Earth's silence lives, and throbs, and sings.
If poet from the vibrant strings
Of his poor heart a measure flings,
Laugh not, that he no trumpet blows:
It may be that Heaven hears and knows
His language of low listenings.
Discordants
by Conrad Potter Aiken

I (Bread and Music)
Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, belovd,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.
For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.
II
My heart has become as hard as a city street,
The horses trample upon it, it sings like iron,
All day long and all night long they beat,
They ring like the hooves of time.
My heart has become as drab as a city park,
The grass is worn with the feet of shameless lovers,
A match is struck, there is kissing in the dark,
The moon comes, pale with sleep.
My heart is torn with the sound of raucous voices,
They shout from the slums, from the streets, from the crowded places,
And tunes from the hurdy-gurdy that coldly rejoices
Shoot arrows into my heart.
III
Dead Cleopatra lies in a crystal casket,
Wrapped and spiced by the cunningest of hands.
Around her neck they have put a golden necklace,
Her tatbebs, it is said, are worn with sands.
Dead Cleopatra was once revered in Egypt,
Warm-eyed she was, this princess of the South.
Now she is old and dry and faded,
With black bitumen they have sealed up her mouth.
O sweet clean earth, from whom the green blade cometh!
When we are dead, my best belov'd and I,
Close well above us, that we may rest forever,
Sending up grass and blossoms to the sky.
IV
In the noisy street,
Where the sifted sunlight yellows the pallid faces,
Sudden I close my eyes, and on my eyelids
Feel from the far-off sea a cool faint spray,
A breath on my cheek,
From the tumbling breakers and foam, the hard sand shattered,
Gulls in the high wind whistling, flashing waters,
Smoke from the flashing waters blown on rocks;
And I know once more,
O dearly belov'd! that all these seas are between us,
Tumult and madness, desolate save for the sea-gulls,
You on the farther shore, and I in this street.
On An Invitation To The United States
by Thomas Hardy

I
My ardours for emprize nigh lost
Since Life has bared its bones to me,
I shrink to seek a modern coast
Whose riper times have yet to be;
Where the new regions claim them free
From that long drip of human tears
Which peoples old in tragedy
Have left upon the centuried years.
II
For, wonning in these ancient lands,
Enchased and lettered as a tomb,
And scored with prints of perished hands,
And chronicled with dates of doom,
Though my own Being bear no bloom
I trace the lives such scenes enshrine,
Give past exemplars present room,
And their experience count as mine.
The Sonnets VIII - Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
by William Shakespeare

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling sire and child and happy mother,
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee: 'Thou single wilt prove none.'
Her Portrait Immortal
by Richard Le Gallienne

Must I believe this beauty wholly gone
That in her picture here so deathless seems,
And must I henceforth speak of her as one
Tells of some face of legend or of dreams,
Still here and there remembered - scarce believed,
Or held the fancy of a heart bereaved.
So beautiful she - was; ah! "was," say I,
Yet doubt her dead - I did not see her die.
Only by others borne across the sea
Came the incredible wild blasphemy
They called her death - as though it could be true
Of such an immortality as you!
True of these eyes that from her picture gaze,
Serene, star-steadfast, as the heaven's own eyes;
Of that deep bosom, white as hawthorn sprays,
Where my world-weary head forever lies;
True of these quiet hands, so marble-cool,
Still on her lap as lilies on a pool.
Must I believe her dead - that this sweet clay,
That even from her picture breathes perfume,
Was carried on a fiery wind away,
Or foully locked in the worm-whispering tomb;
This casket rifled, ribald fingers thrust
'Mid all her dainty treasure - is this dust!
Once such a dewy marvel of a girl,
Warm as the sun, and ivory as the moon;
All gone of her, all lost - except this curl
Saved from her head one summer afternoon,
Tied with a little ribbon from her breast - 
This only mine, and Death's now all the rest.
Must I believe it true! Bid me not go
Where on her grave the English violets blow;
Nay, leave me - if a dream, indeed, it be - 
Still in my dream that she is somewhere she,
Silent, as was her wont. It is a lie - 
She is not dead - I did not see her die.
They Have Found Each Other (From The Drama The King, Third Interlude)
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

Mute they wander,
Meeting yonder,
In the wondrous Spring new-born,
That though old as Time's first morn,
Brings fresh youth to all the living,
Now held fast, now far retreating,
But through hearts in oneness beating
Ever fullest bloom is giving.
Mute they wander. E'en the eye
Speaks no thought. For from on high
To their souls sweet strains have spoken
From the wide world's harmony,
Born of light, the darkness broken,
In the dawn of things to be.
Power crowned - 
Earth around
Like a sun-song rolled the sound.
Mute they wander. Sweet strains ending - 
Eye nor tongue dares yet the lending
Speech to thought.
But lo! quick blending,
All things speak! They sound and shimmer,
Bloom in fragrance, ring and glimmer,
Tint and tone combining, nearer,
Meet as one-with all their thinking
In one beauty, higher, clearer, - 
Heaven itself to earth is sinking.
But in this great hour of trysting
Life is opened, its course brightened,
Growth eternal calls, enlisting
Every spirit-power heightened.
Farewell
by Nora Pembroke (Margaret Moran Dixon McDougall)

My brother George has gone from me,
Far away o'er the trackless sea.
His gladdening voice I hear not now,
I see not the light of his sunny brow.
My cheeks with lonely tears are wet;
But go where he will he will love me yet.
O Thou whose blessings the heart enlarge,
Keep from all evil my brother George!
1842.
My Beauty's Home.
by Lennox Amott

My beauty lives in a cottage grey by a gentle river's mouth,
A cottage grey by the lone sea-shore away in the sunny south,
Her eye's as fair, oh fairer, than the moonlight o'er the sea,
And I love to look in my darling's face as she sits and sings to me.
I'm as happy as a monarch as she lingers at my side,
As we watch the far horizon of the ever-tossing tide,
While the cool refreshing zephyr bears her tresses in its train,
Now starting into motion and now slumbering again.
She trips beside the waters on the distant yellow sand
While holy vespers steal across the ocean and the land,
And the sea bears the reflection of the worlds that roll above
And every breath of even seems to whisper but of love.
Oh what to me is Glory, what is Power, what is Pride!
I care not for this bauble with my loved one at my side.
I want no other beauty than the beauty of her face,
What brighter vision is there than her comeliness and grace!
To Music: A Song
by Robert Herrick

Music, thou queen of heaven, care-charming spell,
That strik'st a stillness into hell;
Thou that tam'st tigers, and fierce storms, that rise,
With thy soul-melting lullabies;
Fall down, down, down, from those thy chiming spheres
To charm our souls, as thou enchant'st our ears.
Music
by Charles Baudelaire

Music doth uplift me like a sea
Towards my planet pale,
Then through dark fogs or heaven's infinity
I lift my wandering sail.
With breast advanced, drinking the winds that flee,
And through the cordage wail,
I mount the hurrying waves night hides from me
Beneath her sombre veil.
I feel the tremblings of all passions known
To ships before the breeze;
Cradled by gentle winds, or tempest-blown
I pass the abysmal seas
That are, when calm, the mirror level and fair
Of my despair!
Lament X
by Jan Kochanowski

My dear delight, my Ursula, and where
Art thou departed, to what land, what sphere?
High o'er the heavens wert thou borne, to stand
One little cherub midst the cherub band?
Or dost thou laugh in Paradise, or now
Upon the Islands of the Blest art thou?
Or in his ferry o'er the gloomy water
Does Charon bear thee onward, little daughter?
And having drunken of forgetfulness
Art thou unwitting of my sore distress?
Or, casting off thy human, maiden veil,
Art thou enfeathered in some nightingale?
Or in grim Purgatory must thou stay
Until some tiniest stain be washed away?
Or hast returned again to where thou wert
Ere thou wast born to bring me heavy hurt?
Where'er thou art, ah! pity, comfort me;
And if not in thine own entirety,
Yet come before mine eyes a moment's space
In some sweet dream that shadoweth thy grace.
Will Wood's Petition To The People Of Ireland
by Jonathan Swift

BEING AN EXCELLENT NEW SONG, SUPPOSED TO BE MADE, AND SUNG IN THE STREETS OF DUBLIN, BY WILLIAM WOOD, IRONMONGER AND HALFPENNY-MONGER. 1725
My dear Irish folks,
Come leave off your jokes,
And buy up my halfpence so fine;
So fair and so bright
They'll give you delight;
Observe how they glisten and shine!
They'll sell to my grief
As cheap as neck-beef,
For counters at cards to your wife;
And every day
Your children may play
Span-farthing or toss on the knife.
Come hither and try,
I'll teach you to buy
A pot of good ale for a farthing;
Come, threepence a score,
I ask you no more,
And a fig for the Drapier and Harding.[1]
When tradesmen have gold,
The thief will be bold,
By day and by night for to rob him:
My copper is such,
No robber will touch,
And so you may daintily bob him.
The little blackguard
Who gets very hard
His halfpence for cleaning your shoes:
When his pockets are cramm'd
With mine, and be d - d,
He may swear he has nothing to lose.
Here's halfpence in plenty,
For one you'll have twenty,
Though thousands are not worth a pudden.
Your neighbours will think,
When your pocket cries chink.
You are grown plaguy rich on a sudden.
You will be my thankers,
I'll make you my bankers,
As good as Ben Burton or Fade;[2]
For nothing shall pass
But my pretty brass,
And then you'll be all of a trade.
I'm a son of a whore
If I have a word more
To say in this wretched condition.
If my coin will not pass,
I must die like an ass;
And so I conclude my petition.