DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Outward Bound
by Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey)

A grievous day of wrathful winds,
Of low-hung clouds, which scud and fly,
And drop cold rains, then lift and show
A sullen realm of upper sky.
The sea is black as night; it roars
From lips afoam with cruel spray,
Like some fierce, many-throated pack
Of wolves, which scents and chases prey.
Crouched in my little wind-swept nook,
I hear the menacing voices call,
And shudder, as above the deck
Topples and swings the weltering wall.
It seems a vast and restless grave,
Insatiate, hungry, beckoning
With dreadful gesture of command
To every free and living thing.
"O Lord," I cry, "Thou makest life
And hope and all sweet things to be;
Rebuke this hovering, following Death,--
This horror never born of Thee."
A sudden gleam, the waves light up
With radiant momentary hues,--
Amber and shadowy pearl and gold,
Opal and green and unknown blues,--
And, rising on the tossing walls,
Within the foaming valleys swung,
Soft shapes of sea-birds, dimly seen,
Flutter and float and call their young,
A moment; then the lowering clouds
Settle anew above the main,
The colors die, the waves rise higher,
And night and terror rule again.
No more I see the small, dim shapes,
So unafraid of wind and wave,
Nestling beneath the tempest's roar,
Cradled in what I deemed a grave.
But all night long I lay and smiled
At thought of those soft folded wings,
And trusting, with the trustful birds,
In Him who cares for smallest things.
In Fisherrow
by William Ernest Henley

A hard north-easter fifty winters long
Has bronzed and shrivelled sere her face and neck;
Her locks are wild and grey, her teeth a wreck;
Her foot is vast, her bowed leg spare and strong.
A wide blue cloak, a squat and sturdy throng
Of curt blue coats, a mutch without a speck,
A white vest broidered black, her person deck,
Nor seems their picked, stern, old-world quaintness wrong.
Her great creel forehead-slung, she wanders nigh,
Easing the heavy strap with gnarled, brown fingers,
The spirit of traffic watchful in her eye,
Ever and anon imploring you to buy,
As looking down the street she onward lingers,
Reproachful, with a strange and doleful cry.
Song. A Gurly Breeze in Scotland.
by Thomas Runciman

A gurly breeze swept from the pool
The Autumn peace so blue and cool,
Which all day long had dreamed thereon
Of men and things aforetime gone,
Their vanished joy, their ended dule:
So glooms the sea, so sounds her brool,
As from the East at eve comes on
A gurly breeze.
Sense yields to Fancy 'neath whose rule
This inland scene is quickly full
Of ocean moods wherein I con
As in a picture; quickly gone.
To what sweet use the mind may school
A gurly breeze!
The Statue
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A granite rock in the mountain side
Gazed on the world and was satisfied.
It watched the centuries come and go,
It welcomed the sunlight yet loved the snow,
It grieved when the forest was forced to fall,
Yet joyed when steeples rose white and tall
In the valley below it, and thrilled to hear
The voice of the great town roaring near.
When the mountain stream from its idle play
Was caught by the mill-wheel and borne away
And trained to labour, the gray rock mused,
'Tree and verdure and stream are used
By man the master, but I remain
Friend of the mountain and star and plain,
Unchanged forever by God's decree
While passing centuries bow to me.'
Then all unwarned, with a mighty shock
Out of the mountain was wrenched the rock;
Bruised and battered, and broken in heart
It was carried away to the common mart.
Wrenched, and ruined in peace and pride,
'Oh, God is cruel,' the granite cried,
'Comrade of mountain, of star the friend,
By all deserted - how sad my end.'
A dreaming sculptor in passing by
Gazed on the granite with thoughtful eye;
Then stirred with a purpose supremely grand
He bade his dream in the rock expand.
And lo! from the broken and shapeless mass
That grieved and doubted, it came to pass
That a glorious statue of priceless worth
And infinite beauty adorned the earth.
Arithmetic On The Frontier
by Rudyard Kipling

A great and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe,
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."
Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in "villanous saltpetre!"
And after, ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our 'ologies.
A scrimmage in a Border Station,
A canter down some dark defile,
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail,
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!
No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow
Strike hard who cares, shoot straight who can,
The odds are on the cheaper man.
One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.
With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troopships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap, alas! as we are dear.
To G. A. G.
by Charles Kingsley

A hasty jest I once let fall - 
As jests are wont to be, untrue - 
As if the sum of joy to you
Were hunt and picnic, rout and ball.
Your eyes met mine:    I did not blame;
You saw it:    but I touched too near
Some noble nerve; a silent tear
Spoke soft reproach, and lofty shame.
I do not wish those words unsaid.
Unspoilt by praise and pleasure, you
In that one look to woman grew,
While with a child, I thought, I played.
Next to mine own beloved so long!
I have not spent my heart in vain.
I watched the blade; I see the grain;
A woman's soul, most soft, yet strong.
Eversley, 1856.
Fighting For Home.
by James McIntyre

A hawk while soaring on the wing,
O'er a tiny sparkling spring,
Beheld a sleek and beauteous mink,
Was enjoying a bath and drink.
And though the hawk was bent on slaughter
The mink was more at home on water,
And it is strange this curious quarrel
All occurred in a sunk barrel.
In the Township of Nissouri,
There the hawk it came to sorrow,
But it strove often for to sink,
In vain it strove to drown the mink,
But mink it did successful balk,
All the attacks were made by hawk,
The bird was drenched, it could not fly,
And ne'er again it soared on high.
The Grasshopper And The Ant.[1]
by Jean de La Fontaine

A Grasshopper gay
Sang the summer away,
And found herself poor
By the winter's first roar.
Of meat or of bread,
Not a morsel she had!
So a begging she went,
To her neighbour the ant,
For the loan of some wheat,
Which would serve her to eat,
Till the season came round.
'I will pay you,' she saith,
'On an animal's faith,
Double weight in the pound
Ere the harvest be bound.'
The ant is a friend
(And here she might mend)
Little given to lend.
'How spent you the summer?'
Quoth she, looking shame
At the borrowing dame.
'Night and day to each comer
I sang, if you please.'
'You sang! I'm at ease;
For 'tis plain at a glance,
Now, ma'am, you must dance.'
The Golden Wedding.
by Kate Seymour Maclean

Inscribed to OUR FATHER AND MOTHER, and read on that Anniversary,
FEBRUARY 15TH, 1876.
A half a century of time,
The mingled pain and bliss
That make the history of life
Between that day and this;
Two lives that in that morning light,
Together were made one,
Now standing where the shadows fall
Athwart the setting sun.
How long it seems!--the devious way.
And full of toil and pain,--
Yet love and peace kept house with them,
And love and peace remain.
Though youth and strength and youthful friends
Were left upon the road
Long since, an honest man is still
The noblest work of God.
No famous deeds, no acts achieved
In battle or in state
Make memorable this festal day,
The day we celebrate:
Divided from the common lot
By neither tame nor pelf,
Our hearts revere the man who loves
His neighbour as himself.
The fragrance of the Christian's life,
Though humble and unknown,
Is a more precious heritage
Than heirship to a throne.
That lowly roof--what memories
Of blessings cluster there,
Around the hearthstone consecrate
By fifty years of prayer!
The shaded lamp, the cheerful fire,
Our Mother's patient look,
The firelight on her silver hair,
And on the Holy Book;--
Where e'er our erring feet may stray,
The welcome waits the same,--
That light, that look will follow still,
And soften and reclaim.
Type of the Fatherhood of God,
Whose love has kept us still,
In all the changeful scenes of life
Secure from every ill,
And brought our long-divided band,
Not one of us astray,
Around our Father's board to keep
This Golden Wedding Day.
Oh ye beloved and revered!
Our hearts make thankful prayer,
That still around our household hearth
There is no vacant chair.
God grant that we may be of those
Who sing the heavenly psalm,
And sit together at the feast,
The marriage of the Lamb!
The Heremite Toad.
by Madison Julius Cawein

A human skull in a church-yard lay;
For the church was a wreck, and the tombstones old
On the graves of their dead were rotting away
To the like of their long-watched mould.
And an heremite toad in this desolate seat
Had made him an hermitage long agone,
Where the ivy frail with its delicate feet
Could creep o'er his cell of bone.
And the ground was dark, and the springing dawn,
When it struck from the tottering stones of each grave
A glimmering silver, the dawn drops wan
This skull and its ivy would lave.
*    *    *    *    *    *    *
The night her crescent had thinly hung
From a single star o'er the shattered wall,
And its feeble light on the stone was flung
Where I sat to hear him call.
And I heard this heremite toad as he sate
In the gloom of his ghastly hermitage,
To himself and the gloom all hollowly prate,
Like a misanthropic sage:
"O, beauty is well and is wealth to all,
But wealth without beauty makes fair;
And beauty with wealth brings wooers tall
Whom she snares in her golden hair.
"Tho' beauty be well and be wealth to all,
And wealth without beauty draw men,
Beauty must come to the vaulted wall,
And what is wealth to her then?...
"This skeleton face was beautiful erst;
These sockets could mammonites sway;
So she barter'd her beauty for gold accurs'd - 
But both have vanished away.
"But beauty is well when the mind it reveals
More beautiful is than the head;
For beauty and wealth the tomb congeals,
But the mind grows lovelier dead."
And he blinked at the moon from his grinning cell,
And the darnels and burdocks around
Bowed down in the night, and I murmured "Well!"
For I deemed his judgment sound.
The Castle Ruins
by William Barnes

A happy day at Whitsuntide,
As soon 's the zun begun to vall,
We all stroll'd up the steep hill-zide
To Meldon, gret an' small;
Out where the Castle wall stood high
A-mwoldren to the zunny sky.
An' there wi' Jenny took a stroll
Her youngest sister, Poll, so gay,
Bezide John Hind, ah! merry soul,
An' mid her wedlock fay;
An' at our zides did play an' run
My little maid an' smaller son.
Above the baten mwold upsprung
The driven doust, a-spreaden light,
An' on the new-leav'd thorn, a-hung,
Wer wool a-quiv'ren white;
An' corn, a-sheenen bright, did bow,
On slopen Meldon's zunny brow.
There, down the roofless wall did glow
The zun upon the grassy vloor,
An' weakly-wandren winds did blow,
Unhinder'd by a door;
An' smokeless now avore the zun
Did stan' the ivy-girded tun.
My bwoy did watch the daws' bright wings
A-flappen vrom their ivy bow'rs;
My wife did watch my maid's light springs,
Out here an' there vor flow'rs;
And John did zee noo tow'rs, the place
Vor him had only Polly's face.
An' there, of all that pried about
The walls, I overlook'd em best,
An' what o' that? Why, I made out
Noo mwore than all the rest:
That there wer woonce the nest of zome
That wer a-gone avore we come.
When woonce above the tun the smoke
Did wreathy blue among the trees,
An' down below, the liven vo'k
Did tweil as brisk as bees:
Or zit wi' weary knees, the while
The sky wer lightless to their tweil.
Two Roses
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A humble wild-rose, pink and slender,
Was plucked and placed in a bright bouquet,
Beside a Jacqueminot's royal splendour,
And both in my lady's boudoir lay.
Said the haughty bud, in a tone of scorning,
"I wonder why you are called a rose?
Your leaves will fade in a single morning;
No blood of mine in your pale cheek glows.
"Your coarse green stalk shows dust of the highway,
You have no depths of fragrant bloom;
And what could you learn in a rustic byway
To fit you to lie in my lady's room?
"If called to adorn her warm, white bosom,
What have you to offer for such a place,
Beside my fragrant and splendid blossom,
Ripe with colour and rich with grace?"
Said the sweet wild-rose, "Despite your dower
Of finer breeding and deeper hue,
Despite your beauty, fair, high-bred flower,
It is I who should lie on her breast, not you.
"For small account is your hot-house glory
Beside the knowledge that came to me
When I heard by the wayside love's old story
And felt the kiss of the amorous bee."
The Herb-Gatherer
by Madison Julius Cawein

A grey, bald hillside, bristling here and there
With leprous-looking grass, that, knobbed with stones,
Slopes to a valley where a wild stream moans,
And every bush seems tortured to despair
And shows its teeth of thorns as if to tear
All things to pieces: where the skull and bones
Of some dead beast protrude, like visible groans,
From one bleak place the winter rains washed bare.
Amid the desolation, in decay,
Like some half-rotted fungus, grey as slag,
A hut of lichened logs; and near it, old,
Unspeakably old, a man, the colour of clay,
Sorting damp roots and herbs into a bag
With trembling hands purple and stiff with cold.
Last Hours
by John Frederick Freeman

A gray day and quiet,
With slow clouds of gray,
And in dull air a cloud that falls, falls
All day.
The naked and stiff branches
Of oak, elm, thorn,
In the cold light are like men aged and
Forlorn.
Only a gray sky,
Grass, trees, grass again,
And all the air a cloud that drips, drips,
All day.
Lovely the lonely
Bare trees and green grass--
Lovelier now the last hours of slow winter
Slowly pass.
The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - The Soul.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Dentro un pugno di cervel.
A handful of brain holds me: I consume
So much that all the books the world contains,
Cannot allay my furious famine-pains:--
What feasts were mine! Yet hunger is my doom.
With one world Aristarchus fed my greed;
This finished, others Metrodorus gave;
Yet, stirred by restless yearning, still I crave:
The more I know, the more to learn I need.
Thus I'm an image of that Sire in whom
All beings are, like fishes in the sea;
That one true object of the loving mind.
Reasoning may reach Him, like a shaft shot home;
The Church may guide; but only blest is he
Who loses self in God, God's self to find.
The Hart & The Vine
by Walter Crane

A Hart by the hunters pursued,
Safely hid in a Vine, till he chewed
The sweet tender green,
And, through shaking leaves seen,
He was slain by his ingratitude.
Spare Your Benefactors
The Moralizer Corrected. A Tale.
by William Cowper

A hermit (or if 'chance you hold
That title now too trite and old),
A man, once young, who lived retired
As hermit could have well desired,
His hours of study closed at last,
And finish'd his concise repast,
Stoppled his cruise, replaced his book
Within its customary nook,
And, staff in hand, set forth to share
The sober cordial of sweet air,
Like Isaac, with a mind applied
To serious thought at evening-tide.
Autumnal rains had made it chill,
And from the trees, that fringed his hill,
Shades slanting at the close of day,
Chill'd more his else delightful way.
Distant a little mile he spied
A western bank's still sunny side,
And right toward the favour'd place
Proceeding with his nimblest pace,
In hope to bask a little yet,
Just reach'd it when the sun was set.
Your hermit, young and jovial sirs!
Learns something from whate'er occurs'
And hence, he said, my mind computes
The real worth of man's pursuits.
His object chosen, wealth or fame,
Or other sublunary game,
Imagination to his view
Presents it deck'd with every hue,
That can seduce him not to spare
His powers of best exertion there,
But youth, health, vigour to expend
On so desirable an end.
Ere long approach life's evening shades,
The glow that fancy gave it fades;
And, earn'd too late, it wants the grace
That first engaged him in the chase.
True, answer'd an angelic guide,
Attendant at the senior's side'
But whether all the time it cost
To urge the fruitless chase be lost,
Must be decided by the worth
Of that which call'd his ardour forth.
Trifles pursued, whate'er the event,
Must cause him shame or discontent;
A vicious object still is worse,
Successful there, he wins a curse;
But he, whom e'en in life's last stage
Endeavours laudable engage,
Is paid at least in peace of mind,
And sense of having well design'd;
And if, ere he attain his end,
His sun precipitate descend,
A brighter prize than that he meant
Shall recompense his mere intent.
No virtuous wish can bear a date
Either too early or too late.
The Independent Bee
by William Schwenck Gilbert

A hive of bees, as I've heard say,
Said to their Queen one sultry day,
"Please your Majesty's high position,
The hive is full and the weather is warm,
We rather think, with a due submission,
The time has come when we ought to swarm."
Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.
Up spake their Queen and thus spake she -
"This is a matter that rests with me,
Who dares opinions thus to form?
I'LL tell you when it is time to swarm!"
Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.
Her Majesty wore an angry frown,
In fact, her Majesty's foot was down -
Her Majesty sulked - declined to sup -
In short, her Majesty's back was up.
Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.
Her foot was down and her back was up!
That hive contained one obstinate bee
(His name was Peter), and thus spake he -
"Though every bee has shown white feather,
To bow to tyranny I'm not prone -
Why should a hive swarm all together?
Surely a bee can swarm alone?"
Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.
Upside down and inside out,
Backwards, forwards, round about,
Twirling here and twisting there,
Topsy turvily everywhere -
Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.
Pitiful sight it was to see
Respectable elderly high-class bee,
Who kicked the beam at sixteen stone,
Trying his best to swarm alone!
Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.
Trying his best to swarm alone!
The hive were shocked to see their chum
(A strict teetotaller) teetotum -
The Queen exclaimed, "How terrible, very!
It's perfectly clear to all the throng
Peter's been at the old brown sherry.
Old brown sherry is much too strong -
Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.
Of all who thus themselves degrade,
A stern example must be made,
To Coventry go, you tipsy bee!"
So off to Coventry town went he.
Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.
There, classed with all who misbehave,
Both plausible rogue and noisome knave,
In dismal dumps he lived to own
The folly of trying to swarm alone!
Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.
All came of trying to swarm alone.
Asking for Roses
by Robert Lee Frost

A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,
With doors that none but the wind ever closes,
Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;
It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.
I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary;
'I wonder,' I say, 'who the owner of those is.'
'Oh, no one you know,' she answers me airy,
'But one we must ask if we want any roses.'
So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly
There in the hush of the wood that reposes,
And turn and go up to the open door boldly,
And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses.
'Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?'
'Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses.
'Pray, are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you!
'Tis summer again; there's two come for roses.
'A word with you, that of the singer recalling 
Old Herrick: a saying that every maid knows is
A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,
And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.'
We do not loosen our hands' intertwining
(Not caring so very much what she supposes),
There when she comes on us mistily shining
And grants us by silence the boon of her roses.
The Disciples
by Theodosia Garrison

A great king made a feast for Love,
And golden was the board and gold
The hundred, wondrous gauds thereof;
Soft lights like roses fell above
Rare dishes exquisite and fine;
In jeweled goblets shone the wine--
A great king made a feast for Love.
Yet Love as gladly and full-fed hath fared
Upon a broken crust that two have shared;
And from scant wine as glorious dreams drawn up
Seeing two lovers kissed above the cup.
A great king made for Love's delight
A temple wonderful wherein
Served jeweled priest and acolyte;
There fell no darkness day or night
Since there his highest altar shone
With flaming gems as some white sun,
A temple made for Love's delight.
Yet Love hath found a temple as complete
In some bare attic where two lovers meet;
And made his altar by one candle's flame
Seeing two lovers burned it in his name.
Song For A Temperance Dinner To Which Ladies Were Invited
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

(New York Mercantile Library Association, November, 1842)
A health to dear woman! She bids us untwine,
From the cup it encircles, the fast-clinging vine;
But her cheek in its crystal with pleasure will glow,
And mirror its bloom in the bright wave below.
A health to sweet woman! The days are no more
When she watched for her lord till the revel was o'er,
And smoothed the white pillow, and blushed when he came,
As she pressed her cold lips on his forehead of flame.
Alas for the loved one! too spotless and fair
The joys of his banquet to chasten and share;
Her eye lost its light that his goblet might shine,
And the rose of her cheek was dissolved in his wine.
Joy smiles in the fountain, health flows in the rills,
As their ribbons of silver unwind from the hills;
They breathe not the mist of the bacchanal's dream,
But the lilies of innocence float on their stream.
Then a health and a welcome to woman once more!
She brings us a passport that laughs at our door;
It is written on crimson, - its letters are pearls, - 
It is countersigned Nature. - So, room for the Girls!
A Vision of Youth
by Victor James Daley

A horseman on a hilltop green
Drew rein, and wound his horn;
So bright he looked he might have been
The Herald of the Morn.
His steed was of the sovran strain
In Fancy's meadows bred,
And pride was in his tossing mane,
And triumph in his tread.
The rider's eyes like jewels glowed,
The World was in his hand,
As down the woodland way he rode
When Spring was in the land.
From golden hour to golden hour
For him the woodland sang.
And from the heart of every flower
A singing fairy sprang.
He rode along with rein so free,
And, as he rode, the Blue
Mysterious Bird of Fantasy
Ever before him flew.
He rode by cot and castle dim
Through all the greenland gay;
Bright eyes through casements glanced at him:
He laughed, and rode away.
The world with sunshine was aflood,
And glad were maid and man,
And through his throbbing veins the blood
In keen, sweet shudders ran.
.     .     .     .     .
His steed tossed head with fiery scorn,
And stamped, and snuffed the air,
As though he heard a sudden horn
Of far-off battle blare.
Erect the rider sat awhile
With flashing eyes, and then
Turned slowly, sighing, with a smile,
'0 weary world of men!'
For aye the Bird of Fantasy
Sang magic songs to him,
And deeper and deeper still rode he
Into the Forest Dim.
.     .     .     .     .
That rider with his face aglow
With joy of life I see
In dreams. Ah, years and years ago
He parted ways with me!
Yet, sometimes, when the days are drear
And all the world forlorn,
From out the dim wood's heart I hear
The echo of his horn.