DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Trees
by Madison Julius Cawein

"Trees," so he said and laid him lovingly
At a great beech-tree's root, "are my best friends.
Upon their love it seems my life depends.
No dog or woman for me! Give me a tree!
In winter saying, ' Courage! hold to me!'
In spring, ' Look up! hope's here, and winter ends!'
In summer, 'Come! here's peace that naught transcends
In autumn, ' See! the dreams I bring to thee!'
Why, I have loved a tree until for me
It had a soul. And as the Greeks believed
So I believe: that in each dwells a life,
Lovely, ecstatic, that some man may see
Take on material form, and, so perceived,
Hold him for aye.... That's why I have no wife."
Sonnet CCXVII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

La sera desiar, odiar l' aurora.
CONTRARY TO THE WONT OF LOVERS, HE PREFERS MORN TO EVE.
Tranquil and happy loves in this agree,
The evening to desire and morning hate:
On me at eve redoubled sorrows wait--
Morning is still the happier hour for me.
For then my sun and Nature's oft I see
Opening at once the orient's rosy gate,
So match'd in beauty and in lustre great,
Heaven seems enamour'd of our earth to be!
As when in verdant leaf the dear boughs burst
Whose roots have since so centred in my core,
Another than myself is cherish'd more.
Thus the two hours contrast, day's last and first:
Reason it is who calms me to desire,
And fear and hate who fiercer feed my fire.
MACGREGOR.
Songs Set To Music: 21. Set By Mr. De Fesch
by Matthew Prior

Touch the lyre, touch every string;
Touch it, Orpheus; I will sing
A song which shall immortal be,
Since she I sing's a deity;
A Leonora, whose bless'd birth
Has no relation to this earth.
To Stella
by Jonathan Swift

WRITTEN ON THE DAY OF HER BIRTH, MARCH 13, 1723-4, BUT NOT ON THE SUBJECT, WHEN I WAS SICK IN BED
Tormented with incessant pains,
Can I devise poetic strains?
Time was, when I could yearly pay
My verse to Stella's native day:
But now unable grown to write,
I grieve she ever saw the light.
Ungrateful! since to her I owe
That I these pains can undergo.
She tends me like an humble slave;
And, when indecently I rave,
When out my brutish passions break,
With gall in every word I speak,
She with soft speech my anguish cheers,
Or melts my passions down with tears;
Although 'tis easy to descry
She wants assistance more than I;
Yet seems to feel my pains alone,
And is a stoic in her own.
When, among scholars, can we find
So soft and yet so firm a mind?
All accidents of life conspire
To raise up Stella's virtue higher;
Or else to introduce the rest
Which had been latent in her breast.
Her firmness who could e'er have known,
Had she not evils of her own?
Her kindness who could ever guess,
Had not her friends been in distress?
Whatever base returns you find
From me, dear Stella, still be kind.
In your own heart you'll reap the fruit,
Though I continue still a brute.
But, when I once am out of pain,
I promise to be good again;
Meantime, your other juster friends
Shall for my follies make amends;
So may we long continue thus,
Admiring you, you pitying us.
Under the Cedarcroft Chestnut.
by Sidney Lanier

Trim set in ancient sward, his manful bole
Upbore his frontage largely toward the sky.
We could not dream but that he had a soul:
What virtue breathed from out his bravery!
We gazed o'erhead: far down our deepening eyes
Rained glamours from his green midsummer mass.
The worth and sum of all his centuries
Suffused his mighty shadow on the grass.
A Presence large, a grave and steadfast Form
Amid the leaves' light play and fantasy,
A calmness conquered out of many a storm,
A Manhood mastered by a chestnut-tree!
Then, while his monarch fingers downward held
The rugged burrs wherewith his state was rife,
A voice of large authoritative Eld
Seemed uttering quickly parables of life:
`How Life in truth was sharply set with ills;
A kernel cased in quarrels; yea, a sphere
Of stings, and hedge-hog-round of mortal quills:
How most men itched to eat too soon i' the year,
`And took but wounds and worries for their pains,
Whereas the wise withheld their patient hands,
Nor plucked green pleasures till the sun and rains
And seasonable ripenings burst all bands
`And opened wide the liberal burrs of life.'
There, O my Friend, beneath the chestnut bough,
Gazing on thee immerged in modern strife,
I framed a prayer of fervency - that thou,
In soul and stature larger than thy kind,
Still more to this strong Form might'st liken thee,
Till thy whole Self in every fibre find
The tranquil lordship of thy chestnut tree.
Tampa, Florida, February, 1877.
Nursery Rhyme. CXLV. Songs.
by Unknown

Trip upon trenchers, and dance upon dishes,
My mother sent me for some barm, some barm;
She bid me tread lightly, and come again quickly,
For fear the young men should do me some harm.
Yet didn't you see, yet didn't you see,
What naughty tricks they put upon me:
They broke my pitcher,
And spilt the water,
And huff'd my mother,
And chid her daughter,
And kiss'd my sister instead of me.
Homer's Head As A Seal.
by Friedrich Schiller

Trusty old Homer! to thee I confide the secret so tender;
For the raptures of love none but the bard should e'er know.
Fragments
by John Masefield

Troy Town is covered up with weeds,
The rabbits and the pismires brood
On broken gold, and shards, and beads
Where Priam's ancient palace stood.
The floors of many a gallant house
Are matted with the roots of grass;
The glow-worm and the nimble mouse
Among her ruins flit and pass.
And there, in orts of blackened bone,
The widowed Trojan beauties lie,
And Simois babbles over stone
And waps and gurgles to the sky.
Once there were merry days in Troy,
Her chimneys smoked with cooking meals,
The passing chariots did annoy
The sunning housewives at their wheels.
And many a lovely Trojan maid
Set Trojan lads to lovely things;
The game of life was nobly played,
They played the game like Queens and Kings.
So that, when Troy had greatly passed
In one red roaring fiery coal,
The courts the Grecians overcast
Became a city in the soul.
In some green island of the sea,
Where now the shadowy coral grows
In pride and pomp and empery
The courts of old Atlantis rose.
In many a glittering house of glass
The Atlanteans wandered there;
The paleness of their faces was
Like ivory, so pale they were.
And hushed they were, no noise of words
In those bright cities ever rang;
Only their thoughts, like golden birds,
About their chambers thrilled and sang.
They knew all wisdom, for they knew
The souls of those Egyptian Kings
Who learned, in ancient Babilu,
The beauty of immortal things.
They knew all beauty, when they thought
The air chimed like a stricken lyre,
The elemental birds were wrought,
The golden birds became a fire.
And straight to busy camps and marts
The singing flames were swiftly gone;
The trembling leaves of human hearts
Hid boughs for them to perch upon.
And men in desert places, men
Abandoned, broken, sick with fears,
Rose singing, swung their swords agen,
And laughed and died among the spears.
The green and greedy seas have drowned
That city's glittering walls and towers,
Her sunken minarets are crowned
With red and russet water-flowers.
In towers and rooms and golden courts
The shadowy coral lifts her sprays;
The scrawl hath gorged her broken orts,
The shark doth haunt her hidden ways.
But, at the falling of the tide,
The golden birds still sing and gleam,
The Atlanteans have not died,
Immortal things still give us dream.
The dream that fires man's heart to make,
To build, to do, to sing or say
A beauty Death can never take,
An Adam from the crumbled clay.
To The Ladies.
by Robert Herrick

Trust me, ladies, I will do
Nothing to distemper you;
If I any fret or vex,
Men they shall be, not your sex.
Sonnets: Idea LXIII
by Michael Drayton

Truce, gentle Love, a parley now I crave,
Methinks 'tis long since first these wars begun;
Nor thou, nor I, the better yet can have;
Bad is the match where neither party won.
I offer free conditions of fair peace,
My heart for hostage that it shall remain.
Discharge our forces, here let malice cease,
So for my pledge thou give me pledge again.
Or if no thing but death will serve thy turn,
Still thirsting for subversion of my state,
Do what thou canst, raze, massacre, and burn;
Let the world see the utmost of thy hate;
I send defiance, since if overthrown,
Thou vanquishing, the conquest is mine own.
Reverence.
by Robert Herrick

True rev'rence is, as Cassiodore doth prove,
The fear of God commix'd with cleanly love.
Love and Law
by Vachel Lindsay

True Love is founded in rocks of Remembrance
In stones of Forbearance and mortar of Pain.
The workman lays wearily granite on granite,
And bleeds for his castle 'mid sunshine and rain.
Love is not velvet, not all of it velvet,
Not all of it banners, not gold-leaf alone.
'Tis stern as the ages and old as Religion.
With Patience its watchword, and Law for its throne.
To Mr. Rudyard Kipling[1]
by Joseph Horatio Chant

True laureate of the Anglo-Saxon race,
Whose words have won the hearts of young and old;
So free from cant, and yet replete with grace,
Or prose or verse it glows like burnished gold;
Thy muse is ever loyal to the truth,
And those who know thee best forget thy youth.
Unbend thy bow and rest with us awhile;
Thy active mind requires a healthy brain;
Death's shadow has gone back upon the dial,
And thou art left a higher goal to gain;
The future will eclipse the brilliant past;
Fear not; thy ideal will be reached at last.
To do the grandest work one must needs be
Endowed by Nature for the master task;
Yea more, he must possess the light to see
Those mysteries which nature seems to mask,
And this can gain but in the royal way--
'Tis dread experience leads from gloom to-day.
The Master saw a struggling youth, and smiled,
Pleased with his work in main; but, knowing too
His latent power, if it could be beguiled
From hiding-place, much greater work would do,
He took His servant's hand and led the way
Through vale of sorrow up to brighter day.
By other path this height is ne'er attained,
Nor books nor schools its hidden wealth unveil.
Philosophy and art have treasures gained,
But in this quest they must forever fail--
Experience only can the gift impart,
Bring needed light and regulate the heart.
To solace those who grieve one must have felt
In his own heart the rending pangs of pain;
The heart that suffers not will never melt
At others' woes, though free from selfish stain;
What we have felt and seen we truly know,
And thus endowed, our tears for others flow.
So leave thy much-loved lyre awhile unstrung
Till health again invigorate thy frame;
With brain renewed, with vigorous heart and lung
Take up thy work once more, and greater fame--
A richer man by far than e'er before,
For thou hast treasure on the other shore.
Nursery Rhyme. CCCXXXII. Games.
by Unknown

[A stands with a row of girls (her daughters) behind her; B, a suitor, advances.]
B.    Trip trap over the grass: If you please will you let one of
your [eldest] daughters come,
Come and dance with me?
I will give you pots and pans, I will give you brass,
I will give you anything for a pretty lass.
A.    says, "No."
B.    I will give you gold and silver, I will give you pearl,
I will give you anything for a pretty girl.
A.    Take one, take one, the fairest you may see.
B.    The fairest one that I can see
Is pretty Nancy, - come to me.
[B carries one off, and says:]
You shall have a duck, my dear,
And you shall have a drake,
And you shall have a young man
apprentice for your sake.
[Children say:]
If this young man should happen to die,
And leave this poor woman a widow,
The bells shall all ring, and the birds shall all sing,
And we'll all clap hands together.
[So it is repeated until the whole are taken.]
Nursery Rhyme. CCCXLVIII. Games.
by Unknown

[A game-rhyme.]
Trip and go, heave and hoe,
Up and down, to and fro;
From the town to the grove
Two and two let us rove,
A-maying, a-playing;
Love hath no gainsaying;
So merrily trip and go,
So merrily trip and go!
To Our Mocking-Bird.
by Sidney Lanier

Died of a cat, May, 1878.
I.
Trillets of humor, - shrewdest whistle-wit, -
Contralto cadences of grave desire
Such as from off the passionate Indian pyre
Drift down through sandal-odored flames that split
About the slim young widow who doth sit
And sing above, - midnights of tone entire, -
Tissues of moonlight shot with songs of fire; -
Bright drops of tune, from oceans infinite
Of melody, sipped off the thin-edged wave
And trickling down the beak, - discourses brave
Of serious matter that no man may guess, -
Good-fellow greetings, cries of light distress -
All these but now within the house we heard:
O Death, wast thou too deaf to hear the bird?
II.
Ah me, though never an ear for song, thou hast
A tireless tooth for songsters: thus of late
Thou camest, Death, thou Cat! and leap'st my gate,
And, long ere Love could follow, thou hadst passed
Within and snatched away, how fast, how fast,
My bird - wit, songs, and all - thy richest freight
Since that fell time when in some wink of fate
Thy yellow claws unsheathed and stretched, and cast
Sharp hold on Keats, and dragged him slow away,
And harried him with hope and horrid play -
Ay, him, the world's best wood-bird, wise with song -
Till thou hadst wrought thine own last mortal wrong.
'Twas wrong! 'twas wrong! I care not, WRONG's the word -
To munch our Keats and crunch our mocking-bird.
III.
Nay, Bird; my grief gainsays the Lord's best right.
The Lord was fain, at some late festal time,
That Keats should set all Heaven's woods in rhyme,
And thou in bird-notes. Lo, this tearful night,
Methinks I see thee, fresh from death's despite,
Perched in a palm-grove, wild with pantomime,
O'er blissful companies couched in shady thyme,
- Methinks I hear thy silver whistlings bright
Mix with the mighty discourse of the wise,
Till broad Beethoven, deaf no more, and Keats,
'Midst of much talk, uplift their smiling eyes,
And mark the music of thy wood-conceits,
And halfway pause on some large, courteous word,
And call thee "Brother", O thou heavenly Bird!
Baltimore, 1878.
To A Gentlewoman On Just Dealing.
by Robert Herrick

True to yourself and sheets, you'll have me swear;
You shall, if righteous dealing I find there.
Do not you fall through frailty; I'll be sure
To keep my bond still free from forfeiture.
To The Accuser Who Is The God Of This World
by William Blake

Truly My Satan thou art but a Dunce
And dost not know the Garment from the Man
Every Harlot was a Virgin once
Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan
Tho thou art Worship'd by the Names Divine
Of Jesus & Jehovah thou art still
The Son of Morn in weary Nights decline
The lost Travellers Dream under the Hill
Sound And Sense
by Alexander Pope

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar;
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!
England's Answer
by Rudyard Kipling

Truly ye come of The Blood; slower to bless than to ban;
Little used to lie down at the bidding of any man.
Flesh of the flesh that I bred, bone of the bone that I bare;
Stark as your sons shall be, stern as your fathers were.
Deeper than speech our love, stronger than life our tether,
But we do not fall on the neck nor kiss when we come together.
My arm is nothing weak, my strength is not gone by;
Sons, I have borne many sons, but my dugs are not dry.
Look, I have made ye a place and opened wide the doors,
That ye may talk together, your Barons and Councillors,
Wards of the Outer March, Lords of the Lower Seas,
Ay, talk to your gray mother that bore you on her knees!
That ye may talk together, brother to brother's face,
Thus for the good of your peoples, thus for the Pride of the Race.
Also, we will make promise. So long as The Blood endures,
I shall know that your good is mine: ye shall feel that my strength is yours:
In the day of Armageddon, at the last great fight of all,
That Our House stand together and the pillars do not fall.
Draw now the threefold knot firm on the ninefold bands,
And the Law that ye make shall be law after the rule of your lands.
This for the waxen Heath, and that for the Wattle-bloom,
This for the Maple-leaf, and that for the southern Broom.
The Law that ye make shall be law and I do not press my will,
Because ye are Sons of The Blood and call me Mother still.
Now must ye speak to your kinsmen and they must speak to you,
After the use of the English, in straight-flung words and few.
Go to your work and be strong, halting not in your ways,
Balking the end half-won for an instant dole of praise.
Stand to your work and be wise, certain of sword and pen,
Who are neither children nor Gods, but men in a world of men!
The Rivers.
by Friedrich Schiller

RHINE.
True, as becometh a Switzer, I watch over Germany's borders;
But the light-footed Gaul jumps o'er the suffering stream.
RHINE AND MOSELLE.
Many a year have I clasped in my arms the Lorrainian maiden;
But our union as yet ne'er has been blest with a son.
DANUBE IN    
Round me are dwelling the falcon-eyed race, the Phaeacian people;
Sunday with them never ends; ceaselessly moves round the spit.
MAIN.
Ay, it is true that my castles are crumbling; yet, to my comfort,
Have I for centuries past seen my old race still endure.
SAALE.
Short is my course, during which I salute many princes and nations;
Yet the princes are good ay! and the nations are free.
ILM.
Poor are my banks, it is true; but yet my soft-flowing waters
Many immortal lays here, borne by the current along.
PLEISSE.
Flat is my shore and shallow my current; alas, all my writers,
Both in prose and in verse, drink far too deep of its stream!
ELBE.
All ye others speak only a jargon; 'mongst Germany's rivers
None speak German but me; I but in Misnia alone.
SPREE.
Ramler once gave me language, my Caesar a subject; and therefore
I had my mouth then stuffed full; but I've been silent since that.
WESER.
Nothing, alas, can be said about me; I really can't furnish
Matter enough to the Muse e'en for an epigram, small.
MINERAL WATERS AT    .
Singular country! what excellent taste in its fountains and rivers
In its people alone none have I ever yet found!
PEGNTTZ.
I for a long time have been a hypochondriacal subject;
I but flow on because it has my habit been long.
THE    RIVERS.
We would gladly remain in the lands that own as their masters;
Soft their yoke ever is, and all their burdens are light.
SALZACH.
I, to salt the archbishopric, come from Juvavia's mountains;
Then to Bavaria turn, where they have great need of salt!
THE ANONYMOUS RIVER.
Lenten food for the pious bishop's table to furnish,
By my Creator I'm poured over the famishing land.
LES FLEUVES INDISCRETS.
Pray be silent, ye rivers! One sees ye have no more discretion
Than, in a case we could name, Diderot's favorites had.
Troopin'
by Rudyard Kipling

Troopin', troopin', troopin' to the sea:
'Ere's September come again, the six-year men are free.
O leave the dead be'ind us, for they cannot come away
To where the ship's a-coalin' up that takes us 'ome to-day.
We're goin' 'ome, we're goin' 'ome,
Our ship is at the shore,
An' you must pack your 'aversack,
For we won't come back no more.
Ho, don't you grieve for me,
My lovely Mary-Ann,
For I'll marry you yit on a fourp'ny bit
As a time-expired man.
The Malabar's in 'arbour with the ~Jumner~ at 'er tail,
An' the time-expired's waitin' of 'is orders for to sail.
Ho! the weary waitin' when on Khyber 'ills we lay,
But the time-expired's waitin' of 'is orders 'ome to-day.
They'll turn us out at Portsmouth wharf in cold an' wet an' rain,
All wearin' Injian cotton kit, but we will not complain;
They'll kill us of pneumonia, for that's their little way,
But damn the chills and fever, men, we're goin' 'ome to-day!
Troopin', troopin', winter's round again!
See the new draf's pourin' in for the old campaign;
Ho, you poor recruities, but you've got to earn your pay,
What's the last from Lunnon, lads? We're goin' there to-day.
Troopin', troopin', give another cheer,
'Ere's to English women an' a quart of English beer.
The Colonel an' the regiment an' all who've got to stay,
Gawd's mercy strike 'em gentle, Whoop! we're goin' 'ome to-day.
We're goin' 'ome, we're goin' 'ome,
Our ship is at the shore,
An' you must pack your 'aversack,
For we won't come back no more.
Ho, don't you grieve for me,
My lovely Mary-Ann,
For I'll marry you yit on a fourp'ny bit
As a time-expired man.
Prologue To "Limberham."
by John Dryden

True wit has seen its best days long ago;
It ne'er look'd up, since we were dipp'd in show:
When sense in doggerel rhymes and clouds was lost,
And dulness flourish'd at the actors' cost.
Nor stopp'd it here; when tragedy was done,
Satire and humour the same fate have run,
And comedy is sunk to trick and pun.
Now our machining lumber will not sell,
And you no longer care for heaven or hell;
What stuff can please you next, the Lord can tell.
Let them, who the rebellion first began
To wit restore the monarch, if they can;
Our author dares not be the first bold man.
He, like the prudent citizen, takes care
To keep for better marts his staple ware;
His toys are good enough for Sturbridge fair.
Tricks were the fashion; if it now be spent,
'Tis time enough at Easter to invent;
No man will make up a new suit for Lent.
If now and then he takes a small pretence,
To forage for a little wit and sense,
Pray pardon him, he meant you no offence.
Next summer, Nostradamus tells, they say,
That all the critics shall be shipp'd away,
And not enow be left to damn a play.
To every sail beside, good heaven, be kind:
But drive away that swarm with such a wind,
That not one locust may be left behind!
Translations. - Knight Toggenburg. (From Schiller.)
by George MacDonald

True love, knight, as to a brother,
Yield I you again;
Ask me not for any other,
For it gives me pain.
Calmly I behold you come in,
Calm behold you go;
Your sad eyes the weeping dumb in
I nor read nor know.
And he hears her uncomplaining,
Tears him free by force;
To his heart but once her straining,
Flings him on his horse;
Sends to all his vassals merry
In old Switzerland;
To the holy grave they hurry,
White-crossed pilgrim band.
Mighty deeds, the foe outbraving,
Works their hero-arm;
From their helms the plumes float waving
Mid the heathen swarm;
Still his "Toggenburg" upwaking
Frays the Mussulman;
But his heart its grievous aching
Quiet never can.
One whole year he did endure it,
Then his patience lost;
Peace, he never could secure it,
And forsakes the host;
Sees a ship by Joppa's entry
At her cable saw;
Sails him home to that dear country
Where she breath doth draw.
At the gate, her castle under,
Pilgrim sad, he knocked;
Straight, as with a word of thunder
Was the gate unlocked:
"She you seek, with rites most solemn
Is betrothed to heaven;
Yesterday, beneath that column,
She to Christ was given."
Then the halls he leaves for ever
Of his ancestors;
Shield or sword sets eyes on never,
Or his faithful horse.
Down from Toggenburg he fareth,
None to see or care;
On his noble limbs he weareth
Sackcloth made of hair:
And himself a hovel buildeth
That same cloister nigh,
Where the lime-tree thicket yieldeth
Cover whence to spy.
There, from morning's earliest traces
Till red evening shone,
Thither turned his hoping face is,
There he sits alone.
On the walls so high above him,
His eyes waiting hang,
Waiting, though she would not love him,
For her lattice-clang--
Waiting till the loved should send her
Glance into the vale,
And, unthinking, toward it bend her
Visage, angel-pale.
Then he laid him, sadness scorning,
Comforted to sleep;
Quietly joyous till the morning
Out again should peep.
And so sat he, years a many,
Years without a pang,
Waiting without murmur any
Till her window rang--
For the lovely one to send her
Glance into the vale,
And, unseeing, toward him bend her
Angel visage pale.
And thus sat he, staring wanly,
His last morning there:
Toward her window still the manly
Silent face did stare.