DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Witch-Mother
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

"O where will ye gang to and where will ye sleep,
Against the night begins?"
"My bed is made wi' cauld sorrows,
My sheets are lined wi' sins.
"And a sair grief sitting at my foot,
And a sair grief at my head;
And dule to lay me my laigh pillows,
And teen till I be dead.
"And the rain is sair upon my face,
And sair upon my hair;
And the wind upon my weary mouth,
That never may man kiss mair.
"And the snow upon my heavy lips,
That never shall drink nor eat;
And shame to cledding, and woe to wedding,
And pain to drink and meat.
"But woe be to my bairns' father,
And ever ill fare he:
He has tane a braw bride hame to him,
Cast out my bairns and me."
"And what shall they have to their marriage meat
This day they twain are wed?"
"Meat of strong crying, salt of sad sighing,
And God restore the dead."
"And what shall they have to their wedding wine
This day they twain are wed?"
"Wine of weeping, and draughts of sleeping,
And God raise up the dead."
She's tane her to the wild woodside,
Between the flood and fell:
She's sought a rede against her need
Of the fiend that bides in hell.
She's tane her to the wan burnside,
She's wrought wi' sang and spell:
She's plighted her soul for doom and dole
To the fiend that bides in hell.
She's set her young son to her breast,
Her auld son to her knee:
Says, "Weel for you the night, bairnies,
And weel the morn for me."
She looked fu' lang in their een, sighing,
And sair and sair grat she:
She has slain her young son at her breast,
Her auld son at her knee.
She's sodden their flesh wi' saft water,
She's mixed their blood with wine:
She's tane her to the braw bride-house,
Where a' were boun' to dine.
She poured the red wine in his cup,
And his een grew fain to greet:
She set the baked meats at his hand,
And bade him drink and eat.
Says, "Eat your fill of your flesh, my lord,
And drink your fill of your wine;
For a' thing's yours and only yours
That has been yours and mine."
Says, "Drink your fill of your wine, my lord,
And eat your fill of your bread:
I would they were quick in my body again,
Or I that bare them dead."
He struck her head frae her fair body,
And dead for grief he fell:
And there were twae mair sangs in heaven,
And twae mair sauls in hell.
The Red, Red Rose.
by Robert Burns

Air - "Hughie Graham."
I.
O were my love yon lilac fair,
Wi' purple blossoms to the spring;
And I, a bird to shelter there,
When wearied on my little wing!
How I wad mourn, when it was torn
By autumn wild, and winter rude!
But I wad sing on wanton wing,
When youthfu' May its bloom renewed.
II.
O gin my love were yon red rose,
That grows upon the castle wa';
And I mysel' a drap o' dew,
Into her bonnie breast to fa'!
Oh, there beyond expression blest,
I'd feast on beauty a' the night;
Seal'd on her silk-saft faulds to rest,
Till fley'd awa by Phoebus' light.
The Quest Eternal
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

O west of all that a man holds dear, on the edge of the Kingdom Come,
Where carriage is far too high for beer, and the pubs keep only rum,
On the sunburnt ways of the Outer Back, on the plains of the darkening scrub,
I have followed the wandering teamster's track, and it always led to a pub.
There's always in man some gift to show, some power he can command,
And mine is the Gift that I always know when a pub is close at hand;
I can pick them out on the London streets, though most of their pubs are queer,
Such solid-looking and swell retreats, with never a sign of beer.
In the march of the boys through Palestine when the noontide fervour glowed,
Over the desert in thirsty line our sunburnt squadrons rode.
They looked at the desert lone and drear, stone ridges and stunted scrub,
And said, "We should have had Ginger here, I bet he'd have found a pub!"
We started out in the noonday heat on a trip that was fast and far,
We took in one each side of the street to balance the blooming car,
But then we started a long dry run on a road we did not know,
In the blinding gleam of the noonday sun, with the dust as white as snow.
For twenty minutes without a drink we strove with our dreadful thirst,
But the chauffeur pointed and said, "I think,--," I answered, "I saw it first!"
A pub with a good old-fashioned air, with bottles behind the blind,
And a golden tint in the barmaid's hair, I could see it all, in my mind,
Ere ever the motor ceased its roar, ere ever the chauffeur knew,
I made a dash for the open door, and madly darted through.
I looked for the barmaid, golden-crowned as they were in the good old time,
And, shades of Hennessy!, what I found was a wowser selling "lime!"
And the scoundrel said as he stopped to put on his lime-washed boots a rub,
"The Local Option voted it shut, it ain't no longer a pub!"
'Twas then I rose to my greatest heights in dignified retreat
(The greatest men in the world's great fights are those who are great in defeat).
I shall think with pride till the day I die of my confidence sublime,
For I looked the wowser straight in the eye, and asked for a pint of lime.
The Ghost Of Roger Casement
by William Butler Yeats

O what has made that sudden noise?
What on the threshold stands?
It never crossed the sea because
John Bull and the sea are friends;
But this is not the old sea
Nor this the old seashore.
What gave that roar of mockery,
That roar in the sea's roar?
i(The ghost of Roger Casement)
i(Is beating on the door.)
John Bull has stood for Parliament,
A dog must have his day,
The country thinks no end of him,
For he knows how to say,
At a beanfeast or a banquet,
That all must hang their trust
Upon the British Empire,
Upon the Church of Christ.
i(The ghost of Roger Casement)
i(Is beating on the door.)
John Bull has gone to India
And all must pay him heed,
For histories are there to prove
That none of another breed
Has had a like inheritance,
Or sucked such milk as he,
And there's no luck about a house
If it lack honesty.
i(The ghost of Roger Casement)
i(Is beating on the door.)
I poked about a village church
And found his family tomb
And copied out what I could read
In that religious gloom;
Found many a famous man there;
But fame and virtue rot.
Draw round, beloved and bitter men,
Draw round and raise a shout;
i(The ghost of Roger Casement)
i(Is beating on the door.)
Written On A Stormy Night.
by George MacDonald

O wild and dark! a night hath found me now
Wherein I mingle with that element
Sent madly loose through the wide staring rent
In yon tormented branches! I will bow
A while unto the storm, and thenceforth grow
Into a mighty patience strongly bent
Before the unconquering Power which hither sent
These winds to fight their battles on my brow!--
Again the loud boughs thunder! and the din
Licks up my footfall from the hissing earth!
But I have found a mighty peace within,
And I have risen into a home of mirth!
Wildly I climb above the shaking spires,
Above the sobbing clouds, up through the steady fires!
Answer
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

O well have we done the old tasks! in the old, old ways of earth.
We have kept the house in order, we have given the children birth;
And our sons went out with their fathers, and left us alone at the hearth!
We have cooked the meats for their table; we have woven their cloth at the loom;
We have pulled the weeds from their gardens, and kept the flowers in bloom;
And then we have sat and waited, alone in a silent room.
We have borne all the pains of travail in giving life to the race;
We have toiled and saved, for the masters, and helped them to power and place;
And when we asked for a pittance, they gave it with grudging grace.
On the bold, bright face of the dollar all the evils of earth are shown.
We are weary of love that is barter, and of virtue that pines alone;
We are out in the world with the masters:    we are finding and claiming our own!
Hanrahan Laments Because Of His Wanderings
by William Butler Yeats

O Where is our Mother of Peace
Nodding her purple hood?
For the winds that awakened the stars
Are blowing through my blood.
I would that the death-pale deer
Had come through the mountain side,
And trampled the mountain away,
And drunk up the murmuring tide;
For the winds that awakened the stars
Are blowing through my blood,
And our Mother of Peace has forgot me
Under her purple hood.
The Illinois Village
by Vachel Lindsay

O you who lose the art of hope,
Whose temples seem to shrine a lie,
Whose sidewalks are but stones of fear,
Who weep that Liberty must die,
Turn to the little prairie towns,
Your higher hope shall yet begin.
On every side awaits you there
Some gate where glory enters in.
Yet when I see the flocks of girls,
Watching the Sunday train go thro'
(As tho' the whole wide world went by)
With eyes that long to travel too,
I sigh, despite my soul made glad
By cloudy dresses and brown hair,
Sigh for the sweet life wrenched and torn
By thundering commerce, fierce and bare.
Nymphs of the wheat these girls should be:
Kings of the grove, their lovers strong.
Why are they not inspired, aflame?
This beauty calls for valiant song - 
For men to carve these fairy-forms
And faces in a fountain-frieze;
Dancers that own immortal hours;
Painters that work upon their knees;
Maids, lovers, friends, so deep in life,
So deep in love and poet's deeds,
The railroad is a thing disowned,
The city but a field of weeds.
Who can pass a village church
By night in these clean prairie lands
Without a touch of Spirit-power?
So white and fixed and cool it stands - 
A thing from some strange fairy-town,
A pious amaranthine flower,
Unsullied by the winds, as pure
As jade or marble, wrought this hour: - 
Rural in form, foursquare and plain,
And yet our sister, the new moon,
Makes it a praying wizard's dream.
The trees that watch at dusty noon
Breaking its sharpest lines, veil not
The whiteness it reflects from God,
Flashing like Spring on many an eye,
Making clean flesh, that once was clod.
Who can pass a district school
Without the hope that there may wait
Some baby-heart the books shall flame
With zeal to make his playmates great,
To make the whole wide village gleam
A strangely carved celestial gem,
Eternal in its beauty-light,
The Artist's town of Bethlehem!
Her Beautiful Hands
by James Whitcomb Riley

O your hands - they are strangely fair!
Fair - for the jewels that sparkle there, -
Fair - for the witchery of the spell
That ivory keys alone can tell;
But when their delicate touches rest
Here in my own do I love them best,
As I clasp with eager acquisitive spans
My glorious treasure of beautiful hands!
Marvelous - wonderful - beautiful hands!
They can coax roses to bloom in the strands
Of your brown tresses; and ribbons will twine.
Under mysterious touches of thine,
Into such knots as entangle the soul,
And fetter the heart under such a control
As only the strength of my love understands -
My passionate love for your beautiful hands.
As I remember the first fair touch
Of those beautiful hands that I love so much,
I seem to thrill as I then was thrilled,
Kissing the glove that I found unfilled -
When I met your gaze, and the queenly bow,
As you said to me, laughingly, "Keep it now!"
And dazed and alone in a dream I stand
Kissing this ghost of your beautiful hand.
When first I loved, in the long ago,
And held your hand as I told you so -
Pressed and caressed it and gave it a kiss,
And said "I could die for a hand like this!"
Little I dreamed love's fulness yet
Had to ripen when eyes were wet,
And prayers were vain in their wild demands
For one warm touch of your beautiful hands.
Beautiful Hands! O Beautiful Hands!
Could you reach out of the alien lands
Where you are lingering, and give me, to-night,
Only a touch - were it ever so light -
My heart were soothed, and my weary brain
Would lull itself into rest again;
For there is no solace the world commands
Like the caress of your beautiful hands.
To Princess Frederica On Her Marriage
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

O you that were eyes and light to the King till he past away
From the darkness of life'
He saw not his daughter'he blest her: the blind King sees you to-day,
He blesses the wife.
The Sonnets LIV - O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
by William Shakespeare

O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give.
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour, which doth in it live.
The canker blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses.
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.
Ode To Music
by Clark Ashton Smith

O woven fabric and bright web of sound,
Whose threads are magical,
And with swift weaving thrall
And hold the spirit bound!
We may not know whence thy strange sorceries fall -
Whether they be Earth's voices wild and strong,
Her high and perfect song.
Or broken dreams of higher worlds unfound.
For, lo, thou art as dreams.
And to thy realm all hidden things belong -
All fugitive and evanescent gleams
The soul hath vainly sought;
All mystic immanence;
All visions of ungrasped magnificence,
And great ideals pinnacled in thought;
All paths with marvel fraught
That lead to lands obscure:
For, lo, upon thy road of sound we pass,
Seeking thy magic lure,
To vales mist-implicated and unsure,
Where all seems strange as visions in a glass;
And wonder-haunted hills,
Where Beauty is an echo and a dream
In sighing pines, and rills
Clouded and deep with imaged tree and sky;
And where bright rivers gleam
Past cities towering high,
Each wonderful as some cloud-fantasy.
Thou loosenest the bondage of the years,
Making the spirit free
Of all sublunar joys and fears.
Who mounts on thine imperious wings shall see
The ways of life as threads of day and night;
Serene above their change,
His eyes shall know but far transcendent things,
His ears shall hark but voices free and strange;
Vast seas of outer light
Shall beat upon his sight,
Eternal winds shall touch him with their wings;
His heart shall thrill
To larger, purer joy, and grief more deep
Than earth may know;
And e'en as dews of morning fill
The opened flower, into his soul shall flow
High melodies, like tears that angels weep.
Then shall he penetrate
The veils and outer barriers of sound,
And near the soul of melody,
Where, rapt in aural splendors ultimate,
His soul shall see
The marvel and the glory that surround
Eternal Beauty's shrine;
And catch afar the glint divine
Of her moon-colored robe, or haply hear,
With world-oblivious ear,
Some echo of her voice's mystery.
Thou hast Love's power to find
The soul's most secret chords, that else were still,
And stir'st them till they thrill
Disclosed to least, faint movements of thy wind.
Thine aural sorcery
O'erwhelms the heart as sunset storms the sight,
For thou art Beauty bodied forth in sound -
Her colors bright
And diverse forms expressed in harmony:
Within thy bound,
The flare of morning is become a song,
And tree and flower a music sweet and long.
And in thy speech
The power and majesty that swing
Planet and sun, and each
Dim atom of the system manifest,
Become articulate, expressed
Like ocean in the brooklet's whispering.
Beyond the woof of finite things,
Thy threads of wonder deep-entangled lie -
Time's intertexturings
Within Eternity -
With Song, mayhap, to be his memories;
For Beauty borders nigh
The ultimate, eternal Verities.
The Litanies Of Satan
by Charles Baudelaire

O you, the most knowing, and loveliest of Angels,
a god fate betrayed, deprived of praises,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
O, Prince of exile to whom wrong has been done,
who, vanquished, always recovers more strongly,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You who know everything, king of the underworld,
the familiar healer of human distress,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You who teach even lepers, accursed pariahs,
through love itself the taste for Paradise,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
O you who on Death, your ancient true lover,
engendered Hope ' that lunatic charmer!
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You who grant the condemned that calm, proud look
that damns a whole people crowding the scaffold,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You who know in what corners of envious countries
a jealous God hid those stones that are precious,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You whose clear eye knows the deep caches
where, buried, the race of metals slumbers,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You whose huge hands hide the precipice,
from the sleepwalker on the sky-scraper's cliff,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You who make magically supple the bones
of the drunkard, out late, who's trampled by horses,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You who taught us to mix saltpetre with sulphur
to console the frail human being who suffers,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You who set your mark, o subtle accomplice,
on the forehead of Croesus, the vile and pitiless,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You who set in the hearts and eyes of young girls
the cult of the wound, adoration of rags,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
The exile's staff, the light of invention,
confessor to those to be hanged, to conspirators,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
Father, adopting those whom God the Father
drove in dark anger from the earthly paradise,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
Bird Nesting
by Ellis Parker Butler

O wonderful! In sport we climbed the tree,
Eager and laughing, as in all our play,
To see the eggs where, in the nest, they lay,
But silent fell before the mystery.
For, one brief moment there, we understood
By sudden sympathy too fine for words
That we were sisters to the brooding birds
And part, with them, in God's great motherhood.
On The Author's Father.
by Robert Burns

O ye whose cheek the tear of pity stains,
Draw near with pious rev'rence and attend!
Here lie the loving husband's dear remains,
The tender father and the gen'rous friend.
The pitying heart that felt for human woe;
The dauntless heart that feared no human pride;
The friend of man, to vice alone a foe;
"For ev'n his failings lean'd to virtue's side."
Bethlehem
by Michael Earls

O ye who sail Potomac's even tide
To Vernon's shades, our Chieftain's hallowed mound;
Or who at distant shrines high paeans sound
In Alfred's cult, old England's morning pride;
Or seek Versailles, conceited as a bride,
With garish memories of kins strewn round;
Or lay your spirit's cheek on Forum ground,
For here a mighty Caesar lived and died:
To these and other stones, O ye who speed,
Since there, forsooth, a prince was passing great,
More zealous let your heart's adoring heed
The Child most Royal in a crib's estate.
No poor so poor, no king more king than He:
Come, better pilgrims, to this mystery.
Eternity
by Robert Herrick

O years!    and age!    farewell:
Behold I go,
Where I do know
Infinity to dwell.
And these mine eyes shall see
All times, how they
Are lost i' th' sea
Of vast eternity:
Where never moon shall sway
The stars; but she,
And night, shall be
Drown'd in one endless day.
The Lover Speaks To The Hearers Of His Songs In Coming Days
by William Butler Yeats

O women, kneeling by your altar-rails long hence,
When songs I wove for my beloved hide the prayer,
And smoke from this dead heart drifts through the violet air
And covers away the smoke of myrrh and frankincense;
Bend down and pray for all that sin I wove in song,
Till the Attorney for Lost Souls cry her sweet cry,
And.call to my beloved and me: "No longer fly
Amid the hovering, piteouS, penitential throng.
Buddha At Kamakura
by Rudyard Kipling

"And there is a Japanese idol at Kamakura"
O ye who tread the Narrow Way
By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day,
Be gentle when "the heathen" pray
To Buddha at Kamakura!
To him the Way, the Law, apart,
Whom Maya held beneath her heart,
Ananda's Lord, the Bodhisat,
The Buddha of Kamakura.
For though he neither burns nor sees,
Nor hears ye thank your Deities,
Ye have not sinned with such as these,
His children at Kamakura,
Yet spare us still the Western joke
When joss-sticks turn to scented smoke
The little sins of little folk
That worship at Kamakura,
The grey-robed, gay-sashed butterflies
That flit beneath the Master's eyes.
He is beyond the Mysteries
But loves them at Kamakura.
And whoso will, from Pride released,
Contemning neither creed nor priest,
May feel the Soul of all the East
About him at Kamakura.
Yea, every tale Ananda heard,
Of birth as fish or beast or bird,
While yet in lives the Master stirred,
The warm wind brings Kamakura.
Till drowsy eyelids seem to see
A-flower 'neath her golden htee
The Shwe-Dagon flare easterly
From Burmah to Kamakura,
And down the loaded air there comes
The thunder of Thibetan drums,
And droned, "Om mane padme hums",
A world's-width from Kamakura.
Yet Brahmans rule Benares still,
Buddh-Gaya's ruins pit the hill,
And beef-fed zealots threaten ill
To Buddha and Kamakura.
A tourist-show, a legend told,
A rusting bulk of bronze and gold,
So much, and scarce so much, ye hold
The meaning of Kamakura?
But when the morning prayer is prayed,
Think, ere ye pass to strife and trade,
Is God in human image made
No nearer than Kamakura?
In Memoriam. - Miss Frances Wyman Tracy,
by Lydia Howard Sigourney

Adopted daughter of Mrs. WILLIAM TRACY, died at New York, in 1860, aged 17.
O young and beautiful, thy step
Was light with fairy grace,
And well the music of thy voice
Accorded with thy face,
And blent with those attractive charms
How fair it was to see
Thy tenderness for her who fill'd
A Mother's place to thee.
Yet all the pure and holy ties
Thus round thy being wove,
They are not lost, they are not dead,
They have a life above.
What though the sleepless care of love
Might not avail to save,
And sorrow with her dropping tear
Keeps vigil o'er thy grave,
Faith hath a rainbow for the cloud,
A solace for the pain,
A promise from the Book Divine
To rise, nor part again.
The Sonnets CL - O! from what power hast thou this powerful might
by William Shakespeare

O! from what power hast thou this powerful might,
With insufficiency my heart to sway?
To make me give the lie to my true sight,
And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?
Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,
That in the very refuse of thy deeds
There is such strength and warrantise of skill,
That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?
Who taught thee how to make me love thee more,
The more I hear and see just cause of hate?
O! though I love what others do abhor,
With others thou shouldst not abhor my state:
If thy unworthiness rais'd love in me,
More worthy I to be belov'd of thee.