DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet LXXV
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

Of all the Kings that euer here did raigne,
Edward, nam'd fourth, as first in praise I name:
Not for his faire outside, nor well-lin'd braine,
Although lesse gifts impe feathers oft on fame.
Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame
His sires reuenge, ioyn'd with a kingdomes gaine;
And gain'd by Mars, could yet mad Mars so tame,
That balance weigh'd, what sword did late obtaine.
Nor that he made the floure-de-luce so 'fraid,
(Though strongly hedg'd) of bloudy lyons pawes,
That wittie Lewes to him a tribute paid:
Nor this, nor that, nor any such small cause;
But only for this worthy King durst proue
To lose his crowne, rather than faile his loue.
How Jack Made The Giants Uncommonly Sore
by Guy Wetmore Carryl

Of all the ill-fated
Boys ever created
Young Jack was the wretchedest lad:
An emphatic, erratic,
Dogmatic fanatic
Was foisted upon him as dad!
From the time he could walk,
And before he could talk,
His wearisome training began,
On a highly barbarian,
Disciplinarian,
Nearly Tartarean
Plan!
He taught him some Raleigh,
And some of Macaulay,
Till all of "Horatius" he knew,
And the drastic, sarcastic,
Fantastic, scholastic
Philippics of "Junius," too.
He made him learn lots
Of the poems of Watts,
And frequently said he ignored,
On principle, any son's
Title to benisons
Till he'd learned Tennyson's
"Maud."
"For these are the giants
Of thought and of science,"
He said in his positive way:
"So weigh them, obey them,
Display them, and lay them
To heart in your infancy's day!"
Jack made no reply,
But he said on the sly
An eloquent word, that had come
From a quite indefensible,
Most reprehensible,
But indispensable
Chum.
By the time he was twenty
Jack had such a plenty
Of books and paternal advice,
Though seedy and needy,
Indeed he was greedy
For vengeance, whatever the price!
In the editor's seat
Of a critical sheet
He found the revenge that he sought;
And, with sterling appliance of
Mind, wrote defiance of
All of the giants of
Thought.
He'd thunder and grumble
At high and at humble
Until he became, in a while,
Mordacious, pugnacious,
Rapacious. Good gracious!
They called him the Yankee Carlyle!
But he never took rest
On his quarrelsome quest
Of the giants, both mighty and small.
He slated, distorted them,
Hanged them and quartered them,
Till he had slaughtered them
All.
And this is The Moral that lies in the verse:
If you have a go farther, you're apt to fare worse.
(When you turn it around it is different rather:--
You're not apt to go worse if you have a fair father!)
Grain Of Salt, A
by Wallace Irwin

Of all the wimming doubly blest
The sailor's wife's the happiest,
For all she does is stay to home
And knit and darn, and let 'im roam.
Of all the husbands on the earth
The sailor has the finest berth,
For in 'is cabin he can sit
And sail and sail, and let 'er knit.
The Fisherman's Feast.
by Eugene Field

Of all the gracious gifts of Spring,
Is there another can safely surpass
This delicate, voluptuous thing--
This dapple-green, plump-shouldered bass?
Upon a damask napkin laid,
What exhalations superfine
Our gustatory nerves pervade,
Provoking quenchless thirsts for wine.
The ancients loved this noble fish,
And, coming from the kitchen fire
All piping hot upon a dish,
What raptures did he not inspire!
"Fish should swim twice," they used to say--
Once in their native vapid brine,
And then a better way--
You understand? Fetch on the wine!
Ah, dainty monarch of the flood,
How often have I cast for you--
How often sadly seen you scud
Where weeds and pussy willows grew!
How often have you filched my bait!
How often have you snapped my treacherous line!--
Yet here I have you on this plate.
You _shall_ swim twice, and _now_ in _wine_!
And, harkee, garcon! let the blood
Of cobwebbed years be spilt for him--
Aye, in a rich Burgundy flood
This piscatorial pride should swim;
So, were he living, he should say
He gladly died for me and mine,
And, as it was his native spray,
He'd lash the sauce--What, ho! the wine!
I would it were ordained for me
To share your fate, oh finny friend!
I surely were not loath to be
Reserved for such a noble end;
For when old Chronos, gaunt and grim,
At last reels in his ruthless line,
What were my ecstacy to swim
In wine, in wine, in glorious wine!
Well, here's a health to you, sweet Spring!
And, prithee, whilst I stick to earth,
Come hither every year and bring
The boons provocative of mirth;
And should your stock of bass run low,
However much I might repine,
I think I might survive the blow
If plied with wine, and still more wine!
To The Right Gracious Prince, Lodowick, Duke Of Richmond And Lennox.
by Robert Herrick

Of all those three brave brothers fall'n i' th' war
(Not without glory), noble sir, you are,
Despite of all concussions, left the stem
To shoot forth generations like to them.
Which may be done, if, sir, you can beget
Men in their substance, not in counterfeit,
Such essences as those three brothers; known
Eternal by their own production.
Of whom, from fame's white trumpet, this I'll tell,
Worthy their everlasting chronicle:
Never since first Bellona us'd a shield,
Such three brave brothers fell in Mars his field.
These were those three Horatii Rome did boast,
Rome's were these three Horatii we have lost.
One C[oe]ur-de-Lion had that age long since;
This, three; which three, you make up four, brave prince.
To Marie Louise (Shew)
by Edgar Allan Poe

Of all who hail thy presence as the morning, 
Of all to whom thine absence is the night, 
The blotting utterly from out high heaven
The sacred sun, of all who, weeping, bless thee
Hourly for hope, for life, ah, above all,
For the resurrection of deep buried faith
In truth, in virtue, in humanity, 
Of all who, on despair's unhallowed bed
Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen
At thy soft-murmured words, "Let there be light!"
At thy soft-murmured words that were fulfilled
In thy seraphic glancing of thine eyes, 
Of all who owe thee most, whose gratitude
Nearest resembles worship,, oh, remember
The truest, the most fervently devoted,
And think that these weak lines are written by him, 
By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think
His spirit is communing with an angel's.
1847.
TO MARIE LOUISE (SHEW).
Not long ago, the writer of these lines,
In the mad pride of intellectuality,
Maintained "the power of words", denied that ever
A thought arose within the human brain
Beyond the utterance of the human tongue:
And now, as if in mockery of that boast,
Two words, two foreign soft dissyllables, 
Italian tones, made only to be murmured
By angels dreaming in the moonlit "dew
That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,", 
Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart,
Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought,
Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions
Than even the seraph harper, Israfel,
(Who has "the sweetest voice of all God's creatures,")
Could hope to utter. And I! my spells are broken.
The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand.
With thy dear name as text, though hidden by thee,
I cannot write, I cannot speak or think, 
Alas, I cannot feel; for 'tis not feeling,
This standing motionless upon the golden
Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams,
Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista,
And thrilling as I see, upon the right,
Upon the left, and all the way along,
Amid empurpled vapors, far away
To where the prospect terminates, thee only!
Borrow'd Plumes
by Adam Lindsay Gordon

A Preface and a Piracy
Prologue
Of borrow'd plumes I take the sin,
My extracts will apply
To some few silly songs which in
These pages scatter'd lie.
The words are Edgar Allan Poe's,
As any man may see,
But what a Poet wrote in prose,
Shall make blank verse for me.
These trifles are collected and republished chiefly with a view
to their redemption from the many improvements to which
they have been subjected while going at random the rounds of the Press.
I am naturally anxious that what I have written should circulate
as I wrote it, if it circulate at all. * * * * * * In defence
of my own taste, nevertheless, it is incumbent upon me to say that I think
nothing in this volume of much value to the public, or very creditable
to myself.
E. A. P.
(See Preface to Poe's Poetical Works.)
Epilogue
And now that my theft stands detected,
The first of my extracts may call
To some of the rhymes here collected
Your notice, the second to all.
Ah! friend, you may shake your head sadly,
Yet this much you'll say for my verse,
I've written of old something badly,
But written anew something worse.
The Wind.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Of all the sounds despatched abroad,
There's not a charge to me
Like that old measure in the boughs,
That phraseless melody
The wind does, working like a hand
Whose fingers brush the sky,
Then quiver down, with tufts of tune
Permitted gods and me.
When winds go round and round in bands,
And thrum upon the door,
And birds take places overhead,
To bear them orchestra,
I crave him grace, of summer boughs,
If such an outcast be,
He never heard that fleshless chant
Rise solemn in the tree,
As if some caravan of sound
On deserts, in the sky,
Had broken rank,
Then knit, and passed
In seamless company.
Artist's Life
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Of all the waltzes the great Strauss wrote,
Mad with melody, rhythm - rife
From the very first to the final note.
Give me his "Artist's Life!"
It stirs my blood to my finger-ends,
Thrills me and fills me with vague unrest,
And all that is sweetest and saddest blends
Together within my breast.
It brings back that night in the dim arcade,
In love's sweet morning and life's best prime,
When the great brass orchestra played and played,
And set our thoughts to rhyme.
It brings back that Winter of mad delights,
Of leaping pulses and tripping feet,
And those languid moon-washed Summer nights
When we heard the band in the street.
It brings back rapture and glee and glow,
It brings back passion and pain and strife,
And so of all the waltzes I know,
Give me the "Artist's Life."
For it is so full of the dear old time - 
So full of the dear old friends I knew.
And under its rhythm, and lilt, and rhyme,
I am always finding - YOU.
Aurora.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Of bronze and blaze
The north, to-night!
So adequate its forms,
So preconcerted with itself,
So distant to alarms, --
An unconcern so sovereign
To universe, or me,
It paints my simple spirit
With tints of majesty,
Till I take vaster attitudes,
And strut upon my stem,
Disdaining men and oxygen,
For arrogance of them.
My splendors are menagerie;
But their competeless show
Will entertain the centuries
When I am, long ago,
An island in dishonored grass,
Whom none but daisies know.
Be not Anxious.
by Hattie Howard

"Be careful for nothing," Phil. iv. 6. Revised version, "Be not anxious."
Of all the precepts in the Book
By word of inspiration given,
That bear the import, tone, and look
Of messages direct from heaven,
From Revelation back to Genesis
Is nothing needed half so much as this.
Ah, well the great apostle spake
In admonition wise and kind,
Who bade humanity forsake
The petty weaknesses that bind
The spirit like a bird with pinioned wings,
That to a broken bough despairing clings.
Were all undue anxiety
Eliminated from desire,
Could feverish fears and fancies be
Consum'd on some funeral pyre,
Like holy hecatomb or sacrifice,
'Twould be accepted up in Paradise.
Could this machinery go on
Without the friction caused by fret,
What greater loads were lightly drawn,
More easily were trials met;
Then might existence be with blessings rife,
And lengthened out like Hezekiah's life.
Oh, be not anxious; trouble grows
When cherished like a secret grief;
It is the worm within the rose
That eats the heart out leaf by leaf;
And though the outer covering be fair,
The weevil of decay is busy there.
In deep despondency to pine,
Or vain solicitude,
Is to deny this truth divine
That God is great and good;
That he is Ruler over earth and Heaven,
And so disposes and makes all things even.
Simples
by James Joyce

O bella bionda,
Sei come l'onda!
Of cool sweet dew and radiance mild
The moon a web of silence weaves
In the still garden where a child
Gathers the simple salad leaves.
A moondew stars her hanging hair
And moonlight kisses her young brow
And, gathering, she sings an air:
Fair as the wave is, fair, art thou!
Be mine, I pray, a waxen ear
To shield me from her childish croon
And mine a shielded heart for her
Who gathers simples of the moon.
Praise For Faith.
by William Cowper

Of all the gifts thine hand bestows,
Thou Giver of all good!
Not heaven itself a richer knows
Than my Redeemer's blood.
Faith too, the blood-receiving grace,
From the same hand we gain;
Else, sweetly as it suits our case,
That gift had been in vain.
Till thou thy teaching power apply,
Our hearts refuse to see,
And weak, as a distemper'd eye,
Shut out the view of thee.
Blind to the merits of thy Son,
What misery we endure!
Yet fly that hand from which alone
We could expect a cure.
We praise thee, and would praise thee more,
To thee our all we owe;
The precious Saviour, and the power
That makes him precious too.
Cassandra
by Helen Leah Reed

Of all the luckless women ever born,
Or ever to be born here on our earth,
Most pitied be Cassandra, from her birth
Condemned to woes unearned by her. Forlorn,
She early read great Ilium's doom, and tried,
Clear-eyed, clear-voiced, her countrymen to warn.
But - she Apollo's passion in high scorn
Had once repelled, and of his injured pride
The God for her had bred this punishment, - 
That good, or bad, all things she prophesied
Though true as truth, should ever be decried
And flouted by the people. As she went
Far from old Priam's gates among the crowd,
To save her country was her heart intent.
Pure, fearless, on an holy errand bent,
They called her "mad," who was a Princess proud.
"Alas, the City falls! Beware the horse!
Woe, woe, the Greeks!" Ah! why was she endowed
With this sad gift? Able to pierce the cloud
That veils the future, - in its wasting course
She could not stop the storm. Bitter the pain
When those she loved and trusted - weak resource - 
Her prophecies believed not; when the force
Of all her pleading spent itself in vain.
Poor Maid! She knew no greater agony
When dragged a slave in Agamemnon's train.
And though she fell - by Clytemnestra slain - 
She smiled on Death who eased her misery.
For oh - what grief to one of faithful heart
It is - to know the evils that must be.
Helpless their doom to make the imperilled see,
Unskilled to shield them from the fatal dart!
Trees
by Walter De La Mare

Of all the trees in England,
Her sweet three corners in,
Only the Ash, the bonnie Ash
Burns fierce while it is green.
Of all the trees in England,
From sea to sea again,
The Willow loveliest stoops her boughs
Beneath the driving rain.
Of all the trees in England,
Past frankincense and myrrh,
There's none for smell, of bloom and smoke,
Like Lime and Juniper.
Of all the trees in England,
Oak, Elder, Elm and Thorn,
The Yew alone burns lamps of peace
For them that lie forlorn.
The Maiden's Welcome
by John Clare

Of all the swains that meet at eve
Upon the green to play,
The shepherd is the lad for me,
And I'll ne'er say him nay.
Though father glowers beneath his hat,
And mother talks of bed,
I'll take my cloak up, late or soon,
To meet my shepherd lad.
Aunt Kitty loved a soldier lad,
Who left her love for war;
A sailor loved my sister Sue,
Whose jacket smelt of tar;
But my love's sweet as land new ploughed;
He is my heart's delight,
And he ne'er leaves his love so far
But he can come at night.
So father he may glower and frown,
And mother scold about it;
The shepherd has my heart to keep,
And can I live without it?
I'm sure he will not part with it,
In spite of what they say,
And if he would as sure I am
It would not come away.
So friends may frown, while I can smile
To know I'm loved by one
Who has my heart, and him to seek
What better can be done?
And be it Spring or Summer both,
Or be it Winter cold,
If pots should freeze upon the fire
I'd meet him at the fold.
I'm fain to make my wedding gown,
Which he has bought for me,
But it will wake my mother's thoughts,
And evil they will be,
Although he has but stole my heart,
Which gives me nought of pain,
For bye and bye he'll buy the ring,
And bring my heart again.
Baines Carew, Gentleman
by William Schwenck Gilbert

Of all the good attorneys who
Have placed their names upon the roll,
But few could equal BAINES CAREW
For tender-heartedness and soul.
Whene'er he heard a tale of woe
From client A or client B,
His grief would overcome him so
He'd scarce have strength to take his fee.
It laid him up for many days,
When duty led him to distrain,
And serving writs, although it pays,
Gave him excruciating pain.
He made out costs, distrained for rent,
Foreclosed and sued, with moistened eye
No bill of costs could represent
The value of such sympathy.
No charges can approximate
The worth of sympathy with woe;
Although I think I ought to state
He did his best to make them so.
Of all the many clients who
Had mustered round his legal flag,
No single client of the crew
Was half so dear as CAPTAIN BAGG.
Now, CAPTAIN BAGG had bowed him to
A heavy matrimonial yoke
His wifey had of faults a few
She never could resist a joke.
Her chaff at first he meekly bore,
Till unendurable it grew.
"To stop this persecution sore
I will consult my friend CAREW.
"And when CAREW'S advice I've got,
Divorce a mensa I shall try."
(A legal separation not
A vinculo conjugii.)
"Oh, BAINES CAREW, my woe I've kept
A secret hitherto, you know;"
(And BAINES CAREW, ESQUIRE, he wept
To hear that BAGG HAD any woe.)
"My case, indeed, is passing sad.
My wife whom I considered true
With brutal conduct drives me mad."
"I am appalled," said BAINES CAREW.
"What! sound the matrimonial knell
Of worthy people such as these!
Why was I an attorney? Well
Go on to the saevitia, please."
"Domestic bliss has proved my bane,
A harder case you never heard,
My wife (in other matters sane)
Pretends that I'm a Dicky bird!
"She makes me sing, 'Too-whit, too-wee!'
And stand upon a rounded stick,
And always introduces me
To every one as 'Pretty Dick'!"
"Oh, dear," said weeping BAINES CAREW,
"This is the direst case I know."
"I'm grieved," said BAGG, "at paining you
"To COBB and POLTHERTHWAITE I'll go
"To COBB'S cold, calculating ear,
My gruesome sorrows I'll impart"
"No; stop," said BAINES, "I'll dry my tear,
And steel my sympathetic heart."
"She makes me perch upon a tree,
Rewarding me with 'Sweety nice!'
And threatens to exhibit me
With four or five performing mice."
"Restrain my tears I wish I could"
(Said BAINES), "I don't know what to do."
Said CAPTAIN BAGG, "You're very good."
"Oh, not at all," said BAINES CAREW.
"She makes me fire a gun," said BAGG;
"And, at a preconcerted word,
Climb up a ladder with a flag,
Like any street performing bird.
"She places sugar in my way
In public places calls me 'Sweet!'
She gives me groundsel every day,
And hard canary-seed to eat."
"Oh, woe! oh, sad! oh, dire to tell!"
(Said BAINES). "Be good enough to stop."
And senseless on the floor he fell,
With unpremeditated flop!
Said CAPTAIN BAGG, "Well, really I
Am grieved to think it pains you so.
I thank you for your sympathy;
But, hang it! come I say, you know!"
But BAINES lay flat upon the floor,
Convulsed with sympathetic sob;
The Captain toddled off next door,
And gave the case to MR. COBB.
Notions On Reform. By A Modern Reformer.
by Thomas Moore

Of all the misfortunes as yet brought to pass
By this comet-like Bill, with its long tail of speeches,
The saddest and worst is the schism which, alas!
It has caused between Wetherel's waistcoat and breeches.
Some symptoms of this Anti-Union propensity
Had oft broken out in that quarter before;
But the breach, since the Bill, has attained such immensity,
Daniel himself could have scarce wisht it more.
Oh! haste to repair it, ye friends of good order,
Ye Atwoods and Wynns, ere the moment is past;
Who can doubt that we tread upon Anarchy's border,
When the ties that should hold men are loosening so fast?
Make Wetherel yield to "some sort of Reform"
(As we all must, God help us! with very wry faces;)
And loud as he likes let him bluster and storm
About Corporate Rights, so he'll only wear braces.
Should those he now sports have been long in possession,
And, like his own borough, the worse for the wear,
Advise him at least as a prudent concession
To Intellect's progress, to buy a new pair.
Oh! who that e'er saw him when vocal he stands,
With a look something midway 'twixt Filch's and Lockit's,
While still, to inspire him, his deeply-thrust hands
Keep jingling the rhino in both breeches-pockets--
Who that ever has listened thro' groan and thro' cough,
To the speeches inspired by this music of pence,--
But must grieve that there's any thing like falling off
In that great nether source of his wit and his sense?
Who that knows how he lookt when, with grace debonair,
He began first to court--rather late in the season--
Or when, less fastidious, he sat in the chair
Of his old friend, the Nottingham Goddess of Reason;[1]
That Goddess whose borough-like virtue attracted
All mongers in both wares to proffer their love;
Whose chair like the stool of the Pythoness acted,
As Wetherel's rants ever since go to prove;
Who in short would not grieve if a man of his graces
Should go on rejecting, unwarned by the past,
The "moderate Reform" of a pair of new braces,
Till, some day,--he'll all fall to pieces at last.
Slander.
by Thomas Frederick Young

Of all the poison plants that grow,
And flourish in the human breast,
No other plant, perhaps, hath so
Deep clench'd a root, or peaceful rest.
No other plant has such a fruit,
At once so sweet, and deadly too,
As that which loads each branch and shoot,
And falls for me to eat, and you.
Fell jealousy, the monster wild,
Whose green eyes roll in frenzy round,
His ravages are small, and mild,
To thine, and narrow'r far his ground.
His pow'r is felt around his home,
But who can gauge the sway of thine,
Which reaches high to heaven's dome,
And acts within the darksome mine?
Thy poison drops distil each hour,
To blight, to ruin and destroy,
And find with dark, insidious pow'r,
The heart of woman, man and boy.
What antidote can neutralize
Thy baneful force, thy potent spell?
For deepest danger ever lies
Within this poison draught of hell.
And men will drink with eager lip,
The cup thou holdest forth to them,
Not knowing that the draught they sip
May their, and other souls, condemn.
On The Little God
by Hilaire Belloc

Of all the gods that gave me all their glories
To-day there deigns to walk with me but one.
I lead him by the hand and tell him stories.
It is the Queen of Cyprus' little son.
Sydney Cup, 1899 - An Outside Trip
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

Of course they say if this Bobadil starts
He'll settle 'em all in a flash:
For the pace he can go will be breaking their hearts,
And he ends with the "Bobadil dash".
But there's one in the race is a fance of mine
Whenever the distance is far,
Crosslake! He's inbred to the Yattendon line,
And we know what the Yattendons are.
His feet are his trouble: they're tender as gum!
If only his feet are got straight,
If the field were all Bobadils,let 'em all come
So long as they carry the weight.
For a three-year-old colt with nine-three on his back,
Well, he needs to be rather a star!
And with seven stone ten we will trust the old black,
For we know what the Yattendons are.
He is sired by Lochiel, which ensures that his pace
Is enough, and a little to spare.
But the blood that will tell at the end of the race
Is the blood of the Yattendon mare.
And this "Bobby" will find, when the whips are about,
It's a very fast journey and far.
And there's just the least doubt, will he battle it out?
Nut we know what the Yattendons are.
In the rest of the field there are some that can stay,
And a few that can fly, while they last.
But the old black outsider will go all the way,
And finish uncommonly fast.
If his feet last him out to the end of the trip,
Bare-footed or shod with a bar,
If he once gets this Bobadil under the whip,
Then he'll show what the Yattendons are.