DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Death Of Norman Dewar
by Nora Pembroke (Margaret Moran Dixon McDougall)

(Mr Norman Dewar, commission merchant, a native of Glengarry, Canada who had been assisting Captain McCabe as commissary of the Memphis Relief Committee, died of yellow fever after three days illness A brave and gentle nature, he was loved by a host of friends and will long be remembered as among the noblest of the band of gallant men who during this fearful epidemic died at the post of duty)
Far away from stricken Memphis
Came the tidings sad and sure
That among the many fallen,
Fell the clansman Norman Dewar
There are eyes unused to weeping
With the tears of sorrow dim,
Hearts with nature's anguish heaving,
Yet 'tis wrong to weep for him
None who fell in glorious battle,
In the shock of meeting steel,
Fell more bravely, died more nobly
More like son of true Lochiel
When the cry arose in Memphis
That the yellow death had come,
When the rich in fear were fleeing,
And the poor with terror dumb,
Famine following the fever,
Want of all things awful death,
When forsaken by their kindred,
Human souls gave up their breath,
There were men who felt God's pity,
Strong to do and to endure,
And among these brave and noble,
At his post stood Norman Dewar
Firm and gentle, true and tender,
Knowing all the danger well,
This true son of old Glengarry
Stood on duty till he fell
Highland hearts have breasted battle,
Highland veterans show their scars,
Highland blood has flowed like water
In our Gracious Sovereign's wars.
We have praised in song and story,
Those who bravely fought and fell,
For Old England's might and glory,
For the Queen they love so well.
And shall we this time be silent
O thou clansman firm and true,
Shall not loyal brave Glengarry,
Through her tears feel proud of you
Thou hast fought the sternest battle,
Thou hast met the grimmest foe;
Christ-like stood by the forsaken
Stood till death has laid thee low.
Praise thy sons, dear old Glengarry,
Prompt to do, calm to endure;
And among your very noblest,
Set God's hero Norman Dewar.
Sea Rest
by Abram Joseph Ryan

Far from "where the roses rest",
Round the altar and the aisle,
Which I loved, of all, the best --
I have come to rest awhile
By the ever-restless sea --
Will its waves give rest to me?
But it is so hard to part
With my roses. Do they know
(Who knows but each has a heart?)
How it grieves my heart to go?
Roses! will the restless sea
Bring, as ye, a rest for me?
Ye were sweet and still and calm,
Roses red and roses white;
And ye sang a soundless psalm
For me in the day and night.
Roses! will the restless sea
Sing as sweet as ye for me?
Just a hundred feet away,
Seaward, flows and ebbs the tide;
And the wavelets, blue and gray,
Moan, and white sails windward glide
O'er the ever restless sea
From me, far and peacefully.
And as many feet away,
Landward, rise the moss-veiled trees;
And they wail, the while they sway
In the sad November breeze,
Echoes in the sighing sea
To me, near and mournfully.
And beside me sleep the dead,
In the consecrated ground;
Blessed crosses o'er each head.
O'er them all the Requiem sound,
Chanted by the moaning sea,
Echoed by each moss-veiled tree.
Roses! will you miss my face?
Do you know that I have gone
From your fair and restful place,
Far away where moveth on
Night and day the restless sea?
But I saw eternity
In your faces. Roses sweet!
Ye were but the virgin veils,
Hiding Him whose holy feet
Walked the waves, whose very wails
Bring to me from Galilee
Rest across the restless sea.
And who knows? mayhap some wave,
From His footstep long ago,
With the blessing which He gave
After ages ebb and flow,
Cometh in from yonder sea,
With a blessing sweet for me.
Just last night I watched the deep,
And it shone as shines a shrine,
(Vigils such I often keep)
And the stars did sweetly shine
O'er the altar of the sea;
So they shone in Galilee.
Roses! round the shrine and aisle!
Which of all I loved the best,
I have gone to rest awhile
Where the wavelets never rest --
Ye are dearer far to me
Than the ever restless sea.
I will come to you in dreams,
In the day and in the night,
When the sun's or starlight's gleams
Robe you in your red or white;
Roses! will you dream of me
By the ever restless sea?
____
Biloxi, Miss.
A Gravestone
by William Allingham

Far from the churchyard dig his grave, 
On some green mound beside the wave; 
To westward, sea and sky alone, 
And sunsets. Put a mossy stone, 
With mortal name and date, a harp 
And bunch of wild flowers, carven sharp; 
Then leave it free to winds that blow, 
And patient mosses creeping; slow, 
And wandering wings, and footsteps rare 
Of human creature pausing there.
The Dunes
by Madison Julius Cawein

Far as the eye can see, in domes and spires,
Buttress and curve, ruins of shifting sand,
In whose wild making wind and sea took hand,
The white dunes stretch. The wind, that never tires,
Striving for strange effects that he admires,
Changes their form from time to time; the land
Forever passive to his mad demand,
And to the sea's, who with the wind conspires.
Here, as on towers of desolate cities, bay
And wire-grass grow, wherein no insect cries,
Only a bird, the swallow of the sea,
That homes in sand. I hear it far away
Crying or is it some lost soul that flies,
Above the land, ailing unceasingly?
Electra
by Paul Cameron Brown

Fantasy, Capri. The edge of a pillow.
Certain words - murmur, seashells.
A face beckoning thru time, lacy windows with
purple shades simultaneously drawn.
Tears of gold. Love signs,
glass of champagne.
A tree of hemlock nearby. A delightful print
tablecloth that signals the breeze. The courtier
in fancy dress. Twin bottles of vintage wine abreast
rider and horse.
Potables. A blue eggshell. The sun stirring Virginia Creeper
that moves in unison with the wind.
Electra and electricity, the current that prods the mind.
Song Of The Old Bullock-Driver
by Henry Lawson

Far back in the days when the blacks used to ramble
In long single file 'neath the evergreen tree,
The wool-teams in season came down from Coonamble,
And journeyed for weeks on their way to the sea,
'Twas then that our hearts and our sinews were stronger,
For those were the days when the bushman was bred.
We journeyed on roads that were rougher and longer
Than roads where the feet of our grandchildren tread.
With mates who have gone to the great Never-Never,
And mates whom I've not seen for many a day,
I camped on the banks of the Cudgegong River
And yarned at the fire by the old bullock-dray.
I would summon them back from the far Riverina,
From days that shall be from all others distinct,
And sing to the sound of an old concertina
Their rugged old songs where strange fancies were linked.
We never were lonely, for, camping together,
We yarned and we smoked the long evenings away,
And little I cared for the signs of the weather
When snug in my hammock slung under the dray.
We rose with the dawn, were it ever so chilly,
When yokes and tarpaulins were covered with frost,
And toasted the bacon and boiled the black billy,
Where high on the camp-fire the branches were tossed.
On flats where the air was suggestive of 'possums,
And homesteads and fences were hinting of change,
We saw the faint glimmer of appletree blossoms
And far in the distance the blue of the range;
And here in the rain, there was small use in flogging
The poor, tortured bullocks that tugged at the load,
When down to the axles the waggons were bogging
And traffic was making a marsh of the road.
'Twas hard on the beasts on the terrible pinches,
Where two teams of bullocks were yoked to a load,
And tugging and slipping, and moving by inches,
Half-way to the summit they clung to the road.
And then, when the last of the pinches was bested,
(You'll surely not say that a glass was a sin?)
The bullocks lay down 'neath the gum trees and rested, 
The bullockies steered for the bar of the inn.
Then slowly we crawled by the trees that kept tally
Of miles that were passed on the long journey down.
We saw the wild beauty of Capertee Valley,
As slowly we rounded the base of the Crown.
But, ah! the poor bullocks were cruelly goaded
While climbing the hills from the flats and the vales;
'Twas here that the teams were so often unloaded
That all knew the meaning of 'counting your bales.'
And, oh! but the best-paying load that I carried
Was one to the run where my sweetheart was nurse.
We courted awhile, and agreed to get married,
And couple our futures for better or worse.
And as my old feet grew too weary to drag on
The miles of rough metal they met by the way,
My eldest grew up and I gave him the waggon, 
He's plodding along by the bullocks to-day.
False
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

False!    Good God, I am dreaming!
No, no, it never can be - 
You who are so true in seeming,
You, false to your vows and me?
My wife and my fair boy's mother
The star of my life - my queen - 
To yield herself to another
Like some light Magdalene!
Proofs! what are proofs - I defy them!
They never can shake my trust;
If you look in my face and deny them
I will trample them into the dust.
For whenever I read of the glory
Of the realms of Paradise,
I sought for the truth of the story
And found it in your sweet eyes.
Why, you are the shy young creature
I wooed in her maiden grace;
There was purity in each feature,
And my heaven I found in your face.
And, "not only married but mated,"
I would say in my pride and joy;
And our hopes were all consummated
When the angels gave us our boy.
Now you could not blot that beginning
So beautiful, pure and true,
With a record of wicked sinning
As a common woman might do.
Look up in your old frank fashion,
With your smile so free from art;
And say that no guilty passion
Has ever crept into your heart.
How pallid you are, and you tremble!
You are hiding your face from view!
"Tho' a sinner, you cannot dissemble" - 
My God! then the tale is true?
True, and the sun above us
Shines on in the summer skies?
And men say the angels love us,
And that God is good and wise.
Yet he lets a wanton thing like you
Ruin my home and my name!
Get out of my sight or I strike you
Dead in your shameless shame!
No, no, I was wild, I was brutal;
I would not take your life,
For the efforts of death would be futile
To wipe out the sin of a wife.
Wife - why, that word has seemed sainted
I uttered it like a prayer;
And now to think it is tainted - 
Christ! how much we can bear!
"Slay you!" my boy's stained mother - 
Nay, that would not punish, or save;
A soul that has outraged another
Finds no sudden peace in the grave.
I will leave you here to remember
The Eden that was your own,
While on toward my life's December
I walk in the dark alone.
To My Spaniel Fanny.
by Thomas Gent

Fanny! were all the world like thee,
How cheerly then this life would glide,
Dear emblem of Fidelity!
Long may'st thou grace thy master's side.
Long cheer his hours of solitude,
With watchful eye each wish to learn,
And anxious speechless gratitude
Hail with delight each short sojourn.
When sick at heart, thy welcome home
A weary load of grief dispels,
Gladdens with hope the hours to come,
And yet a mournful lesson tells!
To find thee ever faithful, kind,
My guard by night, my friend by day,
While those in friendship more refined
Have with my fortunes flown away.
Why bounteous nature hast thou given
To this poor Brute--a boon so kind
As constancy--bless'd gift of Heaven!
And MAN--to waver like the wind?
Morning On The Li'vres.
by Archibald Lampman

Far above us where a jay
Screams his matins to the day,
Capped with gold and amethyst,
Like a vapour from the forge
Of a giant somewhere hid,
Out of hearing of the clang
Of his hammer, skirts of mist
Slowly up the woody gorge
Lift and hang.
Softly as a cloud we go,
Sky above and sky below,
Down the river, and the dip
Of the paddles scarcely breaks,
With the little silvery drip
Of the water as it shakes
From the blades, the crystal deep
Of the silence of the morn,
Of the forest yet asleep,
And the river reaches borne
In a mirror, purple grey,
Sheer away
To the misty line of light,
Where the forest and the stream
In the shadow meet and plight,
Like a dream.
From amid a stretch of reeds,
Where the lazy river sucks
All the water as it bleeds
From a little curling creek,
And the muskrats peer and sneak
In around the sunken wrecks
Of a tree that swept the skies
Long ago,
On a sudden seven ducks
With a splashy rustle rise,
Stretching out their seven necks,
One before, and two behind,
And the others all arow,
And as steady as the wind
With a swivelling whistle go,
Through the purple shadow led,
Till we only hear their whir
In behind a rocky spur,
Just ahead.
The Three Strangers
by Walter De La Mare

Far are those tranquil hills,
Dyed with fair evening's rose;
On urgent, secret errand bent,
A traveller goes.
Approach him strangers three,
Barefooted, cowled; their eyes
Scan the lone, hastening solitary
With dumb surmise.
One instant in close speech
With them he doth confer:
God-sped, he hasteneth on,
That anxious traveller ...
I was that man - in a dream:
And each world's night in vain
I patient wait on sleep to unveil
Those vivid hills again.
Would that they three could know
How yet burns on in me
Love - from one lost in Paradise - 
For their grave courtesy.
Ode For An Agricultural Celebration.
by William Cullen Bryant

Far back in the ages,
The plough with wreaths was crowned;
The hands of kings and sages
Entwined the chaplet round;
Till men of spoil disdained the toil
By which the world was nourished,
And dews of blood enriched the soil
Where green their laurels flourished:
Now the world her fault repairs,
The guilt that stains her story;
And weeps her crimes amid the cares
That formed her earliest glory.
The proud throne shall crumble,
The diadem shall wane,
The tribes of earth shall humble
The pride of those who reign;
And War shall lay his pomp away;
The fame that heroes cherish,
The glory earned in deadly fray
Shall fade, decay, and perish.
Honour waits, o'er all the Earth,
Through endless generations,
The art that calls her harvests forth,
And feeds the expectant nations.
June 1820
by William Wordsworth

Fame tells of groves, from England far away,
Groves that inspire the Nightingale to trill
And modulate, with subtle reach of skill
Elsewhere unmatched, her ever-varying lay;
Such bold report I venture to gainsay:
For I have heard the quire of Richmond hill
Chanting, with indefatigable bill,
Strains that recalled to mind a distant day;
When, haply under shade of that same wood,
And scarcely conscious of the dashing oars
Plied steadily between those willowy shores,
The sweet-souled Poet of the Seasons stood
Listening, and listening long, in rapturous mood,
Ye heavenly Birds! to your Progenitors.
To Emma.
by Friedrich Schiller

Far away, where darkness reigneth,
All my dreams of bliss are flown;
Yet with love my gaze remaineth
Fixed on one fair star alone.
But, alas! that star so bright
Sheds no lustre save by night.
If in slumbers ending never,
Gloomy death had sealed thine eyes,
Thou hadst lived in memory ever 
Thou hadst lived still in my sighs;
But, alas! in light thou livest 
To my love no answer givest!
Can the sweet hopes love once cherished
Emma, can they transient prove?
What has passed away and perished 
Emma, say, can that be love?
That bright flame of heavenly birth 
Can it die like things of earth?
To The World
by Ben Jonson

A farewell for a Gentlewoman, vertuous and noble
False world, good-night, since thou hast brought
That houre upon my morne of age,
Hence-forth I quit thee from my thought,
My part is ended on thy stage.
Doe not once hope, that thou canst tempt
A spirit so resolv'd to tread
Upon thy throat, and live exempt
From all the nets that thou canst spread.
I know thy formes are studied arts,
Thy subtill wayes, be narrow straits;
Thy curtesie but sudden starts,
And what thou call'st thy gifts are baits.
I know too, though thou strut, and paint,
Yet art thou both shrunke up, and old;
That onely fooles make thee a saint,
And all thy good is to be sold.
I know thou whole art but a shop
Of toyes, and trifles, traps, and snares,
To take the weake, or make them stop:
Yet art thou falser than thy wares.
And, knowing this should I yet stay,
Like such as blow away their lives,
And never will redeeme a day,
Enamor'd of their golden gyves?
Or having scap'd, shall I returne,
And thrust my neck into the noose,
From whence, so lately, I did burne,
With all my powers, my selfe to loose?
What bird, or beast is knowne so dull,
That fled his cage, or broke his chaine,
And tasting aire, and freedome, wull
Render his head in there againe?
If these, who have but sense, can shun
The engines, that have them annoy'd;
Little, for mee, had reason done,
If I could not thy ginnes avoid.
Yes, threaten, doe. Alas I feare
As little, as I hope from thee:
I know thou canst nor shew, nor beare
More hatred, than thou hast to mee.
My tender, first, and simple yeares
Thou did'st abuse, and then betray;
Since stird'st up jealousies and feares,
When all the causes were away.
Then, in a soile hast planted me,
Where breathe the basest of thy fooles;
Where envious arts professed be,
And pride, and ignorance the schooles,
Where nothing is examin'd, weigh'd,
But, as 'tis rumor'd, so beleev'd:
Where every freedome is betray'd,
And every goodnesse tax'd, or griev'd.
But, what we'are borne for, wee must beare:
Our fraile condition it is such,
That, what to all may happen here,
If't chance to mee, I must not grutch.
Else, I my state should much mistake,
To harbour a divided thought
From all my kinde: that, for my sake,
There should a miracle be wrought.
No, I doe know, that I was borne
To age, misfortune, sicknesse, griefe:
But I will beare these, with that scorne,
As shall not need thy false reliefe.
Nor for my peace will I goe farre,
As wandrers doe, that still doe rome;
But make my strengths, such as they are,
Here in my bosome, and at home.
Ever And Everywhere.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Far explore the mountain hollow,
High in air the clouds then follow!
To each brook and vale the Muse
Thousand times her call renews.
Soon as a flow'ret blooms in spring,
It wakens many a strain;
And when Time spreads his fleeting wing,
The seasons come again.
Old Man Platypus
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

Far from the trouble and toil of town,
Where the reed beds sweep and shiver,
Look at a fragment of velvet brown,
Old Man Platypus drifting down,
Drifting along the river.
And he plays and dives in the river bends
In a style that is most elusive;
With few relations and fewer friends,
For Old Man Platypus descends
From a family most exclusive.
He shares his burrow beneath the bank
With his wife and his son and daughter
At the roots of the reeds and the grasses rank;
And the bubbles show where our hero sank
To its entrance under water.
Safe in their burrow below the falls
They live in a world of wonder,
Where no one visits and no one calls,
They sleep like little brown billiard balls
With their beaks tucked neatly under.
And he talks in a deep unfriendly growl
As he goes on his journey lonely;
For he's no relation to fish nor fowl,
Nor to bird nor beast, nor to horned owl;
In fact, he's the one and only!
Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - LII
by Alfred Edward Housman

Far in a western brookland
That bred me long ago
The poplars stand and tremble
By pools I used to know.
There, in the windless night-time,
The wanderer, marvelling why,
Halts on the bridge to hearken
How soft the poplars sigh.
He hears: long since forgotten
In fields where I was known,
Here I lie down in London
And turn to rest alone.
There, by the starlit fences,
The wanderer halts and hears
My soul that lingers sighing
About the glimmering weirs.
Home Again.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Far down the lane
A window pane
Gleams 'mid the trees through night and rain.
The weeds are dense
Through which a fence
Of pickets rambles, none sees whence,
Before a porch, all indistinct of line,
O'er-grown and matted with wistaria-vine.
No thing is heard,
No beast or bird,
Only the rain by which are stirred
The draining leaves,
And trickling eaves
Of crib and barn one scarce perceives;
And garden-beds where old-time flow'rs hang wet
The phlox, the candytuft, and mignonette.
The hour is late
At any rate
She has not heard him at the gate:
Upon the roof
The rain was proof
Against his horse's galloping hoof:
And when the old gate with its weight and chain
Creaked, she imagined 't was the wind and rain.
Along he steals
With cautious heels,
And by the lamplit window kneels:
And there she sits,
And rocks and knits
Within the shadowy light that flits
On face and hair, so sweetly sad and gray,
Dreaming of him she thinks is far away.
Upon his cheeks
Is it the streaks
Of rain, as now the old porch creaks
Beneath his stride?
Then, warm and wide,
The door flings and she's at his side
"Mother!" and he, back from the war, her boy,
Kisses her face all streaming wet with joy.
The Pillar Of Fame.
by Robert Herrick

Fame's pillar here, at last, we set,
Outduring    marble,    brass,    or    jet.
Charm'd     and     enchanted    so
As    to     withstand    the    blow
Of o v e r t h r o w;
Nor shall    the    seas,
Or    o u t r a g e s
Of    storms    o'erbear
What    we    uprear.
Tho'    kingdoms    fall,
This    pillar    never    shall
Decline    or    waste    at    all;
But    stand    for    ever    by    his    own
Firm    and    well-fix'd    foundation.
The Call
by Robert William Service

(France, August first, 1914)
Far and near, high and clear,
Hark to the call of War!
Over the gorse and the golden dells,
Ringing and swinging of clamorous bells,
Praying and saying of wild farewells:
War! War! War!
High and low, all must go:
Hark to the shout of War!
Leave to the women the harvest yield;
Gird ye, men, for the sinister field;
A sabre instead of a scythe to wield:
War! Red War!
Rich and poor, lord and boor,
Hark to the blast of War!
Tinker and tailor and millionaire,
Actor in triumph and priest in prayer,
Comrades now in the hell out there,
Sweep to the fire of War!
Prince and page, sot and sage,
Hark to the roar of War!
Poet, professor and circus clown,
Chimney-sweeper and fop o' the town,
Into the pot and be melted down:
Into the pot of War!
Women all, hear the call,
The pitiless call of War!
Look your last on your dearest ones,
Brothers and husbands, fathers, sons:
Swift they go to the ravenous guns,
The gluttonous guns of War.
Everywhere thrill the air
The maniac bells of War.
There will be little of sleeping to-night;
There will be wailing and weeping to-night;
Death's red sickle is reaping to-night:
War! War! War!
Far From Love The Heavenly Father
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Far from love the Heavenly Father
Leads the chosen child;
Oftener through realm of briar
Than the meadow mild,
Oftener by the claw of dragon
Than the hand of friend,
Guides the little one predestined
To the native land.
Arabia
by Walter De La Mare

Far are the shades of Arabia,
Where the Princes ride at noon,
'Mid the verdurous vales and thickets,
Under the ghost of the moon;
And so dark is that vaulted purple
Flowers in the forest rise
And toss into blossom 'gainst the phantom stars
Pale in the noonday skies.
Sweet is the music of Arabia
In my heart, when out of dreams
I still in the thin clear mirk of dawn
Descry her gliding streams;
Hear her strange lutes on the green banks
Ring loud with the grief and delight
Of the dim-silked, dark-haired Musicians
In the brooding silence of night.
They haunt me - her lutes and her forests;
No beauty on earth I see
But shadowed with that dream recalls
Her loveliness to me:
Still eyes look coldly upon me,
Cold voices whisper and say - 
'He is crazed with the spell of far Arabia,
They have stolen his wits away.'
To Alfred Tennyson--1883
by Robert Fuller Murray

Familiar with thy melody,
We go debating of its power,
As churls, who hear it hour by hour,
Contemn the skylark's minstrelsy--
As shepherds on a Highland lea
Think lightly of the heather flower
Which makes the moorland's purple dower,
As far away as eye can see.
Let churl or shepherd change his sky,
And labour in the city dark,
Where there is neither air nor room--
How often will the exile sigh
To hear again the unwearied lark,
And see the heather's lavish bloom!