DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Out From Behind His Mask
by Walt Whitman

Out from behind this bending, rough-cut Mask,
(All straighter, liker Masks rejected - this preferr'd,)
This common curtain of the face, contain'd in me for me, in you for you, in each for each,
(Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears - O heaven!
The passionate, teeming plays this curtain hid!)
This glaze of God's serenest, purest sky,
This film of Satan's seething pit,
This heart's geography's map - this limitless small continent - this soundless sea;
Out from the convolutions of this globe,
This subtler astronomic orb than sun or moon - than Jupiter, Venus, Mars;
This condensation of the Universe - (nay, here the only Universe,
Here the idea all in this mystic handful wrapt;)
These burin'd eyes, flashing to you, to pass to future time,
To launch and spin through space revolving, sideling - from these to emanate,
To You, whoe'er you are a Look.
A Traveler of thoughts and years - of peace and war,
Of youth long sped, and middle age declining,
(As the first volume of a tale perused and laid away, and this the second,
Songs, ventures, speculations, presently to close,)
Lingering a moment, here and now, to You I opposite turn,
As on the road, or at some crevice door, by chance, or open'd window,
Pausing, inclining, baring my head, You specially I greet,
To draw and clench your Soul, for once, inseparably with mine,
Then travel, travel on.
Find The Favorite
by James Whitcomb Riley

Our three cats is Maltese cats,
An' they's two that's white, - 
An' bofe of 'em's deef - an' that's
'Cause their eyes ain't right. - 
Uncle say that Huxley say
Eyes of white Maltese - 
When they don't match thataway - 
They're deef as you please!
Girls, they like our white cats best,
'Cause they're white as snow,
Yes, an' look the stylishest - 
But they're deef, you know!
They don't know their names, an' don't
Hear us when we call
"Come in, Nick an' Finn!" - they won't
Come fer us at all!
But our other cat, he knows
Mister Nick an' Finn, - 
Mowg's his name, - an' when he goes
Fer 'em, they come in!
Mowgli's all his name - the same
Me an' Muvver took
Like the Wolf-Child's other name,
In "The Jungul Book."
I bet Mowg's the smartest cat
In the world! - He's not
White, but mousy-plush, with that
Smoky gloss he's got!
All's got little bells to ring,
Round their neck; but none
Only Mowg knows anything - 
He's the only one!
I ist 'spect sometimes he hate
White cats' stupid ways: - 
He won't hardly 'sociate
With 'em, lots o' days!
Mowg wants in where we air, - well,
He'll ist take his paw
An' ist ring an' ring his bell
There till me er Ma
Er somebody lets him in
Nen an' shuts the door. - 
An', when he wants out ag'in,
Nen he'll ring some more.
Ort to hear our Katy tell!
She sleeps 'way up-stairs;
An' last night she hear Mowg's bell
Ringin' round somewheres...
Trees grows by her winder. - So,
She lean out an' see
Mowg up there, 'way out, you know,
In the clingstone-tree; - 
An'-sir! he ist hint an' ring, - 
Till she ketch an' plat
Them limbs; - nen he crawl an' spring
In where Katy's at!
June At Woodruff.
by James Whitcomb Riley

Out at Woodruff Place - afar
From the city's glare and jar,
With the leafy trees, instead
Of the awnings, overhead;
With the shadows cool and sweet,
For the fever of the street;
With the silence, like a prayer,
Breathing round us everywhere.
Gracious anchorage, at last,
From the billows of the vast
Tide of life that comes and goes,
Whence and where nobody knows - 
Moving, like a skeptic's thought,
Out of nowhere into naught.
Touch and tame us with thy grace,
Placid calm of Woodruff Place!
Weave a wreath of beechen leaves
For the brow that throbs and grieves
O'er the ledger, bloody-lined,
'Neath the sun-struck window-blind!
Send the breath of woodland bloom
Through the sick man's prison room,
Till his old farm-home shall swim
Sweet in mind to hearten him!
Out at Woodruff Place the Muse
Dips her sandal in the dews,
Sacredly as night and dawn
Baptize lilied grove and lawn:
Woody path, or paven way - 
She doth haunt them night and day, - 
Sun or moonlight through the trees,
To her eyes, are melodies.
Swinging lanterns, twinkling clear
Through night-scenes, are songs to her - 
Tinted lilts and choiring hues,
Blent with children's glad halloos;
Then belated lays that fade
Into midnight's serenade - 
Vine-like words and zithern-strings
Twined through ali her slumberings.
Bless'd be each hearthstone set
Neighboring the violet!
Blessed every rooftree prayed
Over by the beech's shadel
Blessed doorway, opening where
We may look on Nature - there
Hand to hand and face to face - 
Storied realm, or Woodruff Place.
The Thatch
by Robert Lee Frost

Out alone in the winter rain,
Intent on giving and taking pain.
But never was I far out of sight
Of a certain upper-window light.
The light was what it was all about:
I would not go in till the light went out;
It would not go out till I came in.
Well, we should wee which one would win,
We should see which one would be first to yield.
The world was black invisible field.
The rain by rights was snow for cold.
The wind was another layer of mold.
But the strangest thing: in the thick old thatch,
Where summer birds had been given hatch,
had fed in chorus, and lived to fledge,
Some still were living in hermitage.
And as I passed along the eaves,
So low I brushed the straw with my sleeves,
I flushed birds out of hole after hole,
Into the darkness. It grieved my soul,
It started a grief within a grief,
To think their case was beyond relief 
They could not go flying about in search
Of their nest again, nor find a perch.
They must brood where they fell in mulch and mire,
Trusting feathers and inward fire
Till daylight made it safe for a flyer.
My greater grief was by so much reduced
As I though of them without nest or roost.
That was how that grief started to melt.
They tell me the cottage where we dwelt,
Its wind-torn thatch goes now unmended;
Its life of hundred of years has ended
By letting the rain I knew outdoors
In on to the upper chamber floors.
Blindness
by George William Russell

Our true hearts are forever lonely:
A wistfulness is in our thought:
Our lights are like the dawns which only
Seem bright to us and yet are not.
Something you see in me I wis not:
Another heart in you I guess:
A stranger's lips--but thine I kiss not,
Erring in all my tenderness.
I sometimes think a mighty lover
Takes every burning kiss we give:
His lights are those which round us hover:
For him alone our lives we live.
Ah, sigh for us whose hearts unseeing
Point all their passionate love in vain,
And blinded in the joy of being,
Meet only when pain touches pain.
Night On The Convoy
by Siegfried Loraine Sassoon

(ALEXANDRIA-MARSEILLES)
Out in the blustering darkness, on the deck
A gleam of stars looks down. Long blurs of black,
The lean Destroyers, level with our track,
Plunging and stealing, watch the perilous way
Through backward racing seas and caverns of chill spray.
One sentry by the davits, in the gloom
Stands mute; the boat heaves onward through the night.
Shrouded is every chink of cabined light:
And sluiced by floundering waves that hiss and boom
And crash like guns, the troop-ship shudders ... doom.
Now something at my feet stirs with a sigh;
And slowly growing used to groping dark,
I know that the hurricane-deck, down all its length,
Is heaped and spread with lads in sprawling strength, - 
Blanketed soldiers sleeping. In the stark
Danger of life at war, they lie so still,
All prostrate and defenceless, head by head ...
And I remember Arras, and that hill
Where dumb with pain I stumbled among the dead.
*        *        *        *        *
We are going home. The troop-ship, in a thrill
Of fiery-chamber'd anguish, throbs and rolls.
We are going home ... victims ... three thousand souls.
May, 1918.
Bon Voyage
by Arthur Macy

[TO O. R.]
Out from the Land of the Future, into the Land of the Past
A comrade sails to the East, the sport of the wave and the blast.
Oh, billow and breeze, be kind, and temper your strength to your guest,
Kind for the sake of the friend, - for the sake of the hands he pressed.
Oh, tenderest billow and breeze, welcome him even as we
Would welcome if you were the friend and we were the wind and the sea!
Welcome, protect him, and waft him westward and homeward at last
Into the Land of the Future, out from the Land of the Past!
Back To The Land
by Violet Jacob

Out in the upland places,
I see both dale and down,
And the ploughed earth with open scores
Turning the green to brown.
The bare bones of the country
Lie gaunt in winter days,
Grim fastnesses of rock and scaur,
Sure, while the year decays.
And, as the autumn withers,
And the winds strip the tree,
The companies of buried folk
Rise up and speak with me; - 
From homesteads long forgotten,
From graves by church and yew,
They come to walk with noiseless tread
Upon the land they knew; - 
Men who have tilled the pasture
The writhen thorn beside,
Women within grey vanished walls
Who bore and loved and died.
And when the great town closes
Upon me like a sea,
Daylong, above its weary din,
I hear them call to me.
Dead folk, the roofs are round me,
To bar out field and hill,
And yet I hear you on the wind
Calling and calling still;
And while, by street and pavement,
The day runs slowly through,
My soul, across these haunted downs,
Goes forth and walks with you.
Into the Evening
by Alfred Lichtenstein

Out of crooked clouds priceless things grow.
Very tiny things suddenly become important.
The sky is green and opaque
Down there where the blind hills glide.
Tattered trees stagger into the distance.
Drunken meadows spin in a circle,
And all the surfaces become gray and wise...
Only villages crouch glowingly: red stars -
Only A Jockey
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

Out in the grey cheerless chill of the morning light,
Out on the track where the night shades still lurk,
ere the first gleam of the sungod's returning light
Round come the racehorses early at work.
Reefing and pulling and racing so readily,
Close sit the jockey-boys holding them hard,
"Steady the stallion there, canter him steadily,
Don't let him gallop so much as a yard."
Fiercely he fights while the others run wide of him,
Reefs at the bit that would hold him in thrall,
Plunges and bucks till the boy that's astride of him
Goes to the ground with a terrible fall.
"Stop him there! Block him there! Drive him in carefully,
Lead him about till he's quiet and cool.
Sound as a bell! though he's blown himself fearfully,
Now let us pick up this poor little fool.
"Stunned? Oh, by Jove, I'm afraid it's a case with him;
Ride for the doctor! keep bathing his head!
Send for a cart to go down to our place with him",
No use! One long sigh and the little chap's dead.
Only a jockey-boy, foul-mouthed and bad you see,
Ignorant, heathenish, gone to his rest.
Parson or Presbyter, Pharisee, Sadducee,
What did you do for him?, bad was the best.
Negroes and foreigners, all have a claim on you;
Yearly you send your well-advertised hoard,
But the poor jockey-boy, shame on you, shame on you,
"Feed ye My little ones", what said the Lord?
Him ye held less than the outer barbarian,
Left him to die in his ignorant sin;
Have you no principles, humanitarian?
Have you no precept, "Go gather them in?"
Knew he God's name? In his brutal profanity
That name was an oath, out of many but one.
What did he get from our famed Christianity?
Where has his soul, if he had any, gone?
Fourteen years old, and what was he taught of it?
What did he know of God's infinite Grace?
Draw the dark curtain of shame o'er the thought of it
Draw the shroud over the jockey-boy's face.
For Ever
by Henry Kendall

Out of the body for ever,
Wearily sobbing, 'Oh, whither?'
A Soul that hath wasted its chances
Floats on the limitless ether.
Lost in dim, horrible blankness;
Drifting like wind on a sea,
Untraversed and vacant and moaning,
Nor shallow nor shore on the lee!
Helpless, unfriended, forsaken;
Haunted and tracked by the Past,
With fragments of pitiless voices,
And desolate faces aghast!
One saith 'It is well that he goeth
Naked and fainting with cold,
Who worshipped his sweet-smelling garments,
Arrayed with the cunning of old!
'Hark! how he crieth, my brothers,
With pain for the glittering things
He saw on the shoulders of Rulers,
And the might in the mouths of the Kings!
'This Soul hath been one of the idlers
Who wait with still hands, when they lack
For Fortune, like Joseph, to throw them
The cup thrust in Benjamin's sack.
'Now, had he been faithful in striving,
And warring with Wrong to the sword,
He must have passed over these spaces
Caught up in the arms of the Lord.'
A second: 'Lo, Passion was wilful;
And, glad with voluptuous sighs,
He held it luxurious trouble
To ache for luxurious eyes!
'She bound him, the woman resplendent;
She withered his strength with her stare;
And Faith hath been twisted and strangled
With folds of her luminous hair!
'Was it well, O you wandering wailer,
Abandoned in terrible space,
To halt on the highway to Heaven
Because of a glittering face?'
And another: 'Behold, he was careful:
He faltered to think of his Youth,
Dejected and weary and footsore,
Alone on the dim road to Truth.
'If the way had been shorter and greener
And brighter, he might have been brave;
But the goal was too far and he fainted,
Like Peter with Christ on the wave!'
Beyond the wild haunts of the mockers
Far in the distance and gray,
Floateth that sorrowful spirit
Away, and away, and away.
Pale phantoms fly past it, like shadows:
Dim eyes that are blinded with tears;
Old faces all white with affliction
The ghosts of the wasted dead years!
'Soul that hath ruined us, shiver
And moan when you know us,' they cry
'Behold, I was part of thy substance!'
'And I' saith another 'and I!'
Drifting from starless abysses
Into the ether sublime,
Where is no upward nor downward,
Nor region nor record of Time!
Out of the Body for ever
No refuge no succour nor stay
Floated that sorrowful Spirit
Away, and away, and away.
Love And Grief
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Out of my heart, one treach'rous winter's day,
I locked young Love and threw the key away.
Grief, wandering widely, found the key,
And hastened with it, straightway, back to me,
With Love beside him. He unlocked the door
And bade Love enter with him there and stay.
And so the twain abide for evermore.
Seeing The Duke Of Ormond's Picture, At Sir Godfrey Kneller's
by Matthew Prior

Out from the injured canvas, Kneller, strike
These lines too faint; the picture is not like.
Exalt thy thought, and try thy toil again:
Dreadful in arms, on Landen's glorious plain
Place Ormond's Duke: impendent in the air
Let his keen sabre, comet-like, appear,
Where'er it points denouncing death: below
Draw routed squadrons, and the numerous foe
Falling beneath, or flying from his blow;
Till weak with wounds, and cover'd o'er with blood,
Which from the patriot's breast in torrents flow'd,
He faints: he steed no longer hears the rein,
But stumbles o'er the heap his hand had slain.
And now exhausted, bleeding, pale he lies,
Lovely, sad object! in his half-closed eyes
Stern Vengeance yet and hostile Terror stand:
His front yet threatens, and his frowns command.
The Gallic chiefs their troops around him call,
Fear to approach him, though they see him fall.
O Kneller! could thy shades and lights express
The perfect hero in that glorious dress,
Ages to come might Ormond's picture know,
And palms for thee beneath his laurels grow;
In spite of time thy work might ever thine,
Nor Homer's colours last so long as thine.
Sweethearts of the Year
by Vachel Lindsay

Sweetheart Spring
Our Sweetheart, Spring, came softly,
Her gliding hands were fire,
Her lilac breath upon our cheeks
Consumed us with desire.
By her our God began to build,
Began to sow and till.
He laid foundations in our loves
For every good and ill.
We asked Him not for blessing,
We asked Him not for pain - 
Still, to the just and unjust
He sent His fire and rain.
Sweetheart Summer
We prayed not, yet she came to us,
The silken, shining one,
On Jacob's noble ladder
Descended from the sun.
She reached our town of Every Day,
Our dry and dusty sod - 
We prayed not, yet she brought to us
The misty wine of God.
Sweetheart Autumn
The woods were black and crimson,
The frost-bit flowers were dead,
But Sweetheart Indian Summer came
With love-winds round her head.
While fruits God-given and splendid
Belonged to her domain:
Baskets of corn in perfect ear
And grapes with purple stain,
The treacherous winds persuaded her
Spring Love was in the wood
Altho' the end of love was hers - 
Fruition, Motherhood.
Sweetheart Winter
We had done naught of service
To win our Maker's praise.
Yet Sweetheart Winter came to us
To gild our waning days.
Down Jacob's winding ladder
She came from Sunshine Town,
Bearing the sparkling mornings
And clouds of silver-brown;
Bearing the seeds of Springtime.
Upon her snowy seas
Bearing the fairy star-flowers
For baby Christmas trees.
The Creed To Be
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Our thoughts are moulding unmade spheres,
And, like a blessing or a curse,
They thunder down the formless years,
And ring throughout the universe.
We build our futures by the shape
Of our desires, and not by acts.
There is no pathway of escape;
No priest-made creeds can alter facts.
Salvation is not begged or bought;
Too long this selfish hope sufficed;
Too long man reeked with lawless thought,
And leaned upon a tortured Christ.
Like shrivelled leaves, these worn-out creeds
Are dropping from Religion's tree;
The world begins to know its needs,
And souls are crying to be free.
Free from the load of fear and grief,
Man fashioned in an ignorant age;
Free from the ache of unbelief
He fled to in rebellious rage.
No church can bind him to the things
That fed the first crude souls, evolved;
For, mounting up on daring wings,
He questions mysteries all unsolved.
Above the chant of priests, above
The blatant voice of braying doubt,
He hears the still, small voice of Love,
Which sends its simple message out.
And clearer, sweeter, day by day,
Its mandate echoes from the skies,
"Go roll the stone of self away,
And let the Christ within thee rise."
Anne Rutledge
by Edgar Lee Masters

Out of me unworthy and unknown
The vibrations of deathless music;
"With malice toward none, with charity for all.',
Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions,
And the beneficent face of a nation
Shining with justice and truth.
I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,
Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,
Wedded to him, not through union, But through separation.
Bloom forever, O Republic,
From the dust of my bosom!
To Belgium
by Richard Le Gallienne

Our tears, our songs, our laurels - what are these
To thee in thy Gethsemane of loss,
Stretched in thine unimagined agonies
On Hell's last engine of the Iron Cross.
For such a world as this that thou shouldst die
Is price too vast - yet, Belgium, hadst thou sold
Thyself, O then had fled from out the earth
Honour for ever, and left only Gold.
Nor diest thou - for soon shalt thou awake,
And, lifted high on our victorious shields,
Watch the new sunrise driving for your sons
The hated German shadow from your fields.
"British colonists resident in London volunteer, and
not even silk hats are doffed before training begins"
- New York Times
In Memoriam, A. M. W.
by Gordon Bottomley

SEPTEMBER 1910
(For a Solemn Music)
Out of a silence
The voice of music speaks.
When words have no more power,
When tears can tell no more,
The heart of all regret
Is uttered by a falling wave
Of melody.
No more, no more
The voice that gathered us
Shall hush us with deep joy;
But in this hush,
Out of its silence,
In the awaking of music,
It shall return.
For music can renew
Its gladness and communion,
Until we also sink,
Where sinks the voice of music,
Into a silence.
Ashore
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

Out I came from the dancing-place:
The night-wind met me face to face - 
A wind off the harbour, cold and keen,
"I know," it whistled, "where thou hast been."
A faint voice fell from the stars above - 
"Thou? whom we lighted to shrines of Love!"
I found when I reached my lonely room
A faint sweet scent in the unlit gloom.
And this was the worst of all to bear,
For someone had left while lilac there.
The flower you loved, in times that were.
Anthony Considine
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

Out in the wastes of the West countrie,
Out where the white stars shine,
Grim and silent as such men be,
Rideth a man with history,
Anthony Considine.
For the ways of men are manifold
As their differing views in life;
Some sell themselves for the lust of gold,
And some for the lust of strife:
But this man counted the world well lost
For the love of his neighbour's wife.
They fled together, as those must flee
Whom all men hold in blame;
Each to the other must all things be
Who cross the gulf of iniquity
And live in the land of shame.
But a light-o'-love, if she sins with one,
She sinneth with ninety-nine:
The rule holds good since the world begun,
Since ever the streams began to run
And the stars began to shine.
The rule holds still, and he found it true,
Anthony Considine.
A nobler spirit had turned in scorn
From a love that was stained with mire;
A weaker being might mourn and mourn
For the loss of his Heart's Desire:
But the anger of Anthony Considine
Blazed up like a flaming fire.
And she, with her new love, presently
Came past with her eyes ashine;
And God so willed it, and God knows why,
She turned and laughed as they passed him by,
Anthony Considine.
Her laughter stung as a whip might sting;
And mad with his wounded pride
He turned and sprang with a panther's spring
And struck at his rival's side:
And only the woman, shuddering,
Could tell how the dead man died!
She dared not speak, and the misery
Is buried in auld lang syne,
But out on the wastes of the West countrie,
Grim and silent as such men be,
Rideth a man with a history,
Anthony Considine.
Oh, Soon Return.
by Thomas Moore

Our white sail caught the evening ray,
The wave beneath us seemed to burn,
When all the weeping maid could say,
Was, "Oh, soon return!"
Thro' many a clime our ship was driven
O'er many a billow rudely thrown;
Now chilled beneath a northern heaven,
Now sunned in summer's zone:
And still, where'er we bent our way,
When evening bid the west wave burn,
I fancied still I heard her say,
"Oh, soon return!"
If ever yet my bosom found
Its thoughts one moment turned from thee,
'Twas when the combat raged around,
And brave men looked to me.
But tho' the war-field's wild alarm
For gentle love was all unmeet,
He lent to glory's brow the charm,
Which made even danger sweet.
And still, when victory's calm came o'er
The hearts where rage had ceased to burn,
Those parting words I heard once more,
"Oh, soon return!--Oh, soon return!"
Frank Drummer
by Edgar Lee Masters

Out of a cell into this darkened space - 
The end at twenty-five!
My tongue could not speak what stirred within me,
And the village thought me a fool.
Yet at the start there was a clear vision,
A high and urgent purpose in my soul
Which drove me on trying to memorize
The Encyclopedia Britannica!