DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Despairing Shepherd
by Matthew Prior

Alexis shun'd his Fellow Swains,
Their rural Sports, and jocund Strains:
(Heav'n guard us all from Cupid's Bow!)
He lost his Crook, He left his Flocks;
And wand'ring thro' the lonely Rocks,
He nourish'd endless Woe.
The Nymphs and Shepherds round Him came:
His Grief Some pity, Others blame:
The fatal Cause All kindly seek.
He mingled his Concern with Their's:
He gave 'em back their friendly Tears:
He sigh'd, but would not speak.
Clorinda came among the rest:
And She too kind Concern exprest,
And ask'd the Reason of his Woe:
She ask'd, but with an Air and Mein,
That made it easily foreseen,
She fear'd too much to know.
The Shepherd rais'd his mournful Head:
And will You pardon Me, He said,
While I the cruel Truth reveal?
Which nothing from my Breast should tear;
Which never should offend Your Ear;
But that You bid Me tell.
'Tis thus I rove, 'tis thus complain;
Since You appear'd upon the Plain:
You are the Cause of all my Care:
Your Eyes ten thousand Dangers dart:
Ten thousand Torments vex My Heart:
I love, and I despair.
Too much, Alexis, I have heard:
'Tis what I thought; 'tis what I fear'd:
And yet I pardon You, She cry'd:
But You shall promise ne'er again
To breath your Vows, or speak your Pain:
He bow'd, obey'd, and dy'd.
The Builders
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.
Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.
For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.
Truly shape and fashion these;
Leave no yawning gaps between;
Think not, because no man sees,
Such things will remain unseen.
In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the Gods see everywhere.
Let us do our work as well,
Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where Gods may dwell,
Beautiful, entire, and clean.
Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.
Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
Shall to-morrow find its place.
Thus alone can we attain
To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,
And one boundless reach of sky.
The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - Conscience.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Seco ogni coif a ' doglia.
All crime is its own torment, bearing woe
To mind or body or decrease of fame;
If not at once, still step by step our name
Or blood or friends or fortune it brings low.
But if our will do not resent the blow,
We have not sinned. That penance hath no blame
Which Magdalen found sweet: purging our shame,
Self-punishment is virtue, all men know.
The consciousness of goodness pure and whole
Makes a man fully blest; but misery
Springs from false conscience, blinded in its pride.
This Simon Peter meant when he replied
To Simon Magus, that the prescient soul
Hath her own proof of immortality.
Albert Down Under
by Marriott Edgar

Albert were what you'd call "thwarted".
He had long had an ambition, which...
Were to save up and go to Australia,
The saving up that were the hitch.
He'd a red money box on the pot shelf,
A post office thing made of tin,
But with him and his Dad and the bread knife,
It never had anything in.
He were properly held up for bobbins,
As the folk in the mill used to say,
Till he hit on a simple solution -
He'd go as a young stowaway.
He studied the sailing lists daily,
And at last found a ship as would do.
"S.S. Tosser:, a freighter from Fleetwood,
Via Cape Horn to Wooloomooloo.
He went off next evening to Fleetwood,
And found her there loaded and coaled,
Slipped over the side in the darkness,
And downstairs and into the hold.
The hold it were choked up with cargo,
He groped with his hands in the gloom,
Squeezed through bars of what felt like a grating,
And found he had plenty of room.
Some straw had been spilled in one corner,
He thankfully threw himself flat,
He thought he could hear someone breathing,
But he were too tired to fret about that.
When he woke they were out in mid-ocean,
He turned and in light which were dim,
Looked straight in the eyes of a lion,
That were lying there looking at him.
His heart came right up in his tonsils,
As he gazed at that big yellow face.
Then it smiled and they both said together,
"Well, isn't the world a small place?"
The lion were none other than Wallace,
He were going to Sydney, too.
To fulfil a short starring engagement
In a cage at Taronga Park Zoo.
As they talked they heard footsteps approaching,
"Someone comes" whispered Wallace, "Quick, hide".
He opened his mouth to the fullest,
And Albert sprang nimbly inside.
'Twere Captain on morning inspection,
When he saw Wallace shamming to doze,
He picked up a straw from his bedding,
And started to tickle his nose.
Now Wallace could never stand tickling,
He let out a mumbling roar,
And before he could do owt about it,
He'd sneezed Albert out on the floor.
The Captain went white to the wattles,
He said, "I'm a son of a gun".
He had heard of beasts bringing up children,
But were first time as he'd seen it done.
He soon had the radio crackling,
And flashing the tale far and wide,
Of the lad who'd set out for Australia,
Stowed away in a lion's inside.
The quay it were jammed with reporters,
When they docked on Australian soil.
They didn't pretend to believe it,
But 'twere too good a story to spoil.
And Albert soon picked up the language,
When he first saw the size of the fruit,
There was no more "by gum" now or "Champion",
It were "Whacko!", "Too right!" and "You beaut!".
They gave him a wonderful fortnight,
Then from a subscription they made,
Sent him back as a "Parcel for Britain",
Carriage forward, and all ex's paid!
Flowers By A Grave
by Pamela S. Vining, (J. C. Yule)

Alien blossoms! tell me why
Seek ye such a lonely place,
Thus to bloom, and droop, and die
Far away from all your race?
Wherefore, from the sunny bowers
Where your beauteous kindred bloom,
Have ye come, O banished flowers!
Thus to decorate a tomb?
"Mortal, dost thou question why
Thus beside the grave we bloom?
Why we hither come to die,
Aliens from our garden-home?
"'Twas Affection's gentle hand
Placed us thus her dead so near; - 
Tis at weeping Love's command
That we breathe our fragrance here.
"Ask not why we wither here,
Thou who ne'er hast tasted woe,
Who hast never felt the tear
Of bereaved affection flow, - 
"Ask not, till thy household band
By death's cruel stroke is riven,
Till some bright bird'scapes thy hand - 
Then thy answer will be given!"
The Pasha And The Dervish.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Un jour Ali passait.")
[XIII, Nov. 8, 1828.]
Ali came riding by - the highest head
Bent to the dust, o'ercharged with dread,
Whilst "God be praised!" all cried;
But through the throng one dervish pressed,
Aged and bent, who dared arrest
The pasha in his pride.
"Ali Tepelini, light of all light,
Who hold'st the Divan's upper seat by right,
Whose fame Fame's trump hath burst - 
Thou art the master of unnumbered hosts,
Shade of the Sultan - yet he only boasts
In thee a dog accurst!
"An unseen tomb-torch flickers on thy path,
Whilst, as from vial full, thy spare-naught wrath
Splashes this trembling race:
These are thy grass as thou their trenchant scythes
Cleaving their neck as 'twere a willow withe - 
Their blood none can efface.
"But ends thy tether! for Janina makes
A grave for thee where every turret quakes,
And thou shalt drop below
To where the spirits, to a tree enchained,
Will clutch thee, there to be 'mid them retained
For all to-come in woe!
"Or if, by happy chance, thy soul might flee
Thy victims, after, thou shouldst surely see
And hear thy crimes relate;
Streaked with the guileless gore drained from their veins,
Greater in number than the reigns on reigns
Thou hopedst for thy state.
"This so will be! and neither fleet nor fort
Can stay or aid thee as the deathly port
Receives thy harried frame!
Though, like the cunning Hebrew knave of old,
To cheat the angel black, thou didst enfold
In altered guise thy name."
Ali deemed anchorite or saint a pawn - 
The crater of his blunderbuss did yawn,
Sword, dagger hung at ease:
But he had let the holy man revile,
Though clouds o'erswept his brow; then, with a smile,
He tossed him his pelisse.
Camped by the Creek
by Henry Kendall

'All day a strong sun has been drinking
The ponds in the Wattletree Glen;
And now as they're puddles, I'm thinking
We were wise to head hitherwards, men!
The country is heavy to nor'ard,
But Lord, how you rattled along!
Jack's chestnut's best leg was put for'ard,
And the bay from the start galloped strong;
But for bottom, I'd stake my existence,
There's none of the lot like the mare;
For look! she has come the whole distance
With never the 'turn of a hair'.
'But now let us stop, for the 'super'
Will want us to-morrow by noon;
And as he can swear like a trooper,
We can't be a minute too soon.
Here, Dick, you can hobble the filly
And chestnut, but don't take a week;
And, Jack, hurry off with the billy
And fill it. We'll camp by the creek.'
So spoke the old stockman, and quickly
We made ourselves snug for the night;
The smoke-wreaths above us curled thickly,
For our pipes were the first thing a-light!
As we sat round a fire that only
A well-seasoned bushman can make,
Far forests grew silent and lonely,
Though the paw was astir in the brake,
But not till our supper was ended,
And not till old Bill was asleep,
Did wild things by wonder attended
In shot of our camping-ground creep.
Scared eyes from thick tuft and tree-hollow
Gleamed out thro' the forest-boles stark;
And ever a hurry would follow
Of fugitive feet in the dark.
While Dick and I yarned and talked over
Old times that had gone like the sun,
The wail of the desolate plover
Came up from the swamps in the run.
And sniffing our supper, elated,
From his den the red dingo crawled out;
But skulked in the darkness, and waited,
Like a cunning but cowardly scout.
Thereafter came sleep that soon falls on
A man who has ridden all day;
And when midnight had deepened the palls on
The hills, we were snoring away.
But ere we dozed off, the wild noises
Of forest, of fen, and of stream,
Grew strange, and were one with the voices
That died with a sweet semi-dream.
And the tones of the waterfall, blended
With the song of the wind on the shore,
Became a soft psalm that ascended,
Grew far, and we heard it no more.
A Double Ballad Of August
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

All Afric, winged with death and fire,
Pants in our pleasant English air.
Each blade of grass is tense as wire,
And all the wood's loose trembling hair
Stark in the broad and breathless glare
Of hours whose touch wastes herb and tree.
This bright sharp death shines everywhere;
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.
Earth seems a corpse upon the pyre;
The sun, a scourge for slaves to bear.
All power to fear, all keen desire,
Lies dead as dreams of days that were
Before the new-born world lay bare
In heaven's wide eye, whereunder we
Lie breathless till the season spare:
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.
Fierce hours, with ravening fangs that tire
On spirit and sense, divide and share
The throbs of thoughts that scarce respire,
The throes of dreams that scarce forbear
One mute immitigable prayer
For cold perpetual sleep to be
Shed snowlike on the sense of care.
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.
The dust of ways where men suspire
Seems even the dust of death's dim lair.
But though the feverish days be dire
The sea-wind rears and cheers its fair
Blithe broods of babes that here and there
Make the sands laugh and glow for glee
With gladder flowers than gardens wear.
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.
The music dies not off the lyre
That lets no soul alive despair.
Sleep strikes not dumb the breathless choir
Of waves whose note bids sorrow spare.
As glad they sound, as fast they fare,
As when fate's word first set them free
And gave them light and night to wear.
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.
For there, though night and day conspire
To compass round with toil and snare
And changeless whirl of change, whose gyre
Draws all things deathwards unaware,
The spirit of life they scourge and scare,
Wild waves that follow on waves that flee
Laugh, knowing that yet, though earth despair,
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.
Plots Not Still Prosperous.
by Robert Herrick

All are not ill plots that do sometimes fail;
Nor those false vows which ofttimes don't prevail.
John S. Crow.
by Clara Doty Bates

All alone in the field
Stands John S. Crow;
And a curious sight is he,
With his head of tow,
And a hat pulled low
On a face that you never see.
His clothes are ragged
And horrid and old,
The worst that ever were worn;
They're covered with mold,
And in each fold
A terrible rent is torn.
They once were new
And spick and span,
As nice as clothes could be;
For though John hardly can
Be called a man,
They were made for men you see.
That old blue coat,
With a double breast
And a brass button here and there,
Was grandfather's best,
And matches the vest--
The one Uncle Phil used to wear.
The trousers are short;
They belonged to Bob
Before he had got his growth;
But John's no snob,
And, unlike Bob,
Cuts his legs to the length of his cloth.
The boots are a mystery:
How and where
John got such a shabby lot,
Such a shocking pair,
I do declare
Though he may know, I do not.
But the hat that he wears
Is the worst of all;
I wonder that John keeps it on.
It once was tall,
But now it is small--
Like a closed accordeon.
But a steady old chap
Is John S. Crow,
And for months has stood at his post;
For corn you know
Takes time to grow,
And 'tis long between seed and roast.
And it had to be watched
And guarded with care
From the time it was put in the ground,
For over there,
And everywhere,
Sad thieves were waiting around.
Sad thieves in black,
A cowardly set,
Who waited for John to be gone,
That they might get
A chance to upset
The plans of the planter of corn.
They were no kin to John,
Though they bore his name
And belonged to the family Crow;
He'd scorn to claim
Any part of the fame
That is theirs wherever you go.
So he has stuck to the field
And watched the corn,
And been watched by the crows from the hill;
Till at length they're gone,
And so is the corn--
They away, and it to the mill.
Now the work is done,
And it's time for play,
For which John is glad I know;
For though made of hay,
If he could he would say,
"It's stupid to be a scarecrow."
But though it is stupid,
And though it is slow,
To fill such an humble position;
To be a good scarecrow
Is better I know
Than to scorn a lowly condition.
The Old Clock
by John Charles McNeill

All day low clouds and slanting rain
Have swept the woods and dimmed the plain.
Wet winds have swayed the birch and oak,
And caught and swirled away the smoke,
But, all day long, the wooden clock
Went on, Nic-noc, nic-noc.
When deep at night I wake with fear,
And shudder in the dark to hear
The roaring storm's unguided strength,
Peace steals into my heart at length,
When, calm amid the shout and shock,
I hear, Nic-noc, nic-noc.
And all the winter long 't is I
Who bless its sheer monotony--
Its scorn of days, which cares no whit
For time, except to measure it:
The prosy, dozy, cosy clock,
Nic-noc, nic-noc, nic-noc!
The Water Lady.[1]
by Thomas Hood

Alas, the moon should ever beam
To show what man should never see! - 
I saw a maiden on a stream,
And fair was she!
I staid awhile, to see her throw
Her tresses black, that all beset
The fair horizon of her brow
With clouds of jet.
I staid a little while to view
Her cheek, that wore in place of red
The bloom of water, tender blue,
Daintily spread.
I staid to watch, a little space,
Her parted lips if she would sing;
The waters closed above her face
With many a ring.
And still I staid a little more,
Alas! she never comes again!
I throw my flowers from the shore,
And watch in vain.
I know my life will fade away,
I know that I must vainly pine,
For I am made of mortal clay,
But she's divine!
Mid-Winter
by Madison Julius Cawein

All day the clouds hung ashen with the cold;
And through the snow the muffled waters fell;
The day seemed drowned in grief too deep to tell,
Like some old hermit whose last bead is told.
At eve the wind woke, and the snow clouds rolled
Aside to leave the fierce sky visible;
Harsh as an iron landscape of wan hell
The dark hills hung framed in with gloomy gold.
And then, towards night, the wind seemed some one at
My window wailing: now a little child
Crying outside my door; and now the long
Howl of some starved beast down the flue. I sat
And knew 'twas Winter with his madman song
Of miseries on which he stared and smiled.
In The Trenches
by Thomas O'Hagan

All day the guns belched fire and death
And filled the hours with gloom;
The fateful music smote the sky
In tremulous bars of doom;
But as the evening stars came forth
A truce to death and strife,
There rose from hearts of patriot love
A tender song of life.
A song of home and fireside
Swelled on the evening air,
And men forgot their battle line,
Its carnage and dark care;
The soldier dropp'd his rifle
And joined the choral song,
As high above the tide of war
It swept and pulsed along.
That night while sleeping where the stars
Look down upon the Meuse,
Where Teuton valor coped with Frank,
Where rained most deadly dews,
A soldier youth, in khaki clad,
Rock'd where the maples grow,
Smiled in his dream and saw again
The blue St. Lawrence flow.
For Miss Julia O'Sullivan.
Plays
by Walter Savage Landor

Alas, how soon the hours are over
Counted us out to play the lover!
And how much narrower is the stage
Allotted us to play the sage!
But when we play the fool, how wide                
The theatre expands! beside,
How long the audience sits before us!
How many prompters! what a chorus!
Winter-Break
by Archibald Lampman

All day between high-curded clouds the sun
Shone down like summer on the steaming planks.
The long, bright icicles in dwindling ranks
Dripped from the murmuring eaves till one by one
They fell. As if the spring had now begun,
The quilted snow, sun-softened to the core,
Loosened and shunted with a sudden roar
From downward roofs. Not even with day done
Had ceased the sound of waters, but all night
I heard it. In my dreams forgetfully bright
Methought I wandered in the April woods,
Where many a silver-piping sparrow was,
By gurgling brooks and spouting solitudes,
And stooped, and laughed, and plucked hepaticas.
Spring Bereaved III
by William Henry Drummond

Alexis, here she stay'd; among these pines,
Sweet hermitress, she did alone repair;
Here did she spread the treasure of her hair,
More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines.
She set her by these musk'd eglantines,
The happy place the print seems yet to bear:
Her voice did sweeten here thy sugar'd lines,
To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend their ear.
Me here she first perceived, and here a morn
Of bright carnations did o'erspread her face;
Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born,
And I first got a pledge of promised grace:
But ah! what served it to be happy so?
Sith pass'd pleasures double but new woe?
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet LXXXVI
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

Alas, whence came this change of lookes? If I
Haue chang'd desert, let mine owne conscience be
A still-felt plague to selfe-condemning mee;
Let woe gripe on my heart, shame loade mine eye:
But if all faith, like spotlesse Ermine, ly
Safe in my soule, which only doth to thee,
As his sole obiect of felicitie,
With wings of loue in aire of wonder flie,
O ease your hand, treate not so hard your slaue;
In iustice paines come not till faults do call:
Or if I needs, sweet Iudge, must torments haue,
Vse something else to chasten me withall
Then those blest eyes, where all my hopes do dwell:
No doome should make ones Heau'n become his Hell.
Spring Greeting.
by Sidney Lanier

From the German of Herder.
All faintly through my soul to-day,
As from a bell that far away
Is tinkled by some frolic fay,
Floateth a lovely chiming.
Thou magic bell, to many a fell
And many a winter-saddened dell
Thy tongue a tale of Spring doth tell,
Too passionate-sweet for rhyming.
Chime out, thou little song of Spring,
Float in the blue skies ravishing.
Thy song-of-life a joy doth bring
That's sweet, albeit fleeting.
Float on the Spring-winds e'en to my home:
And when thou to a rose shalt come
That hath begun to show her bloom,
Say, I send her greeting!
Point Lookout Prison, 1864.
His Loss
by Robert Herrick

All has been plunder'd from me but my wit:
Fortune herself can lay no claim to it.
Long Meter.
by Eugene Field

All human joys are swift of wing
For heaven doth so allot it
That when you get an easy thing
You find you haven't got it.
Man never yet has loved a maid,
But they were sure to part, sir;
Nor never lacked a paltry spade
But that he drew a heart, sir!
Go, Chauncey! it is plain as day
You much prefer a dinner
To walking straight in wisdom's way--
Go to, thou babbling sinner.
The froward part that you have played
To me this lesson teaches:
To trust no man whose stock in trade
Is after-dinner speeches.
Summer's Farewell
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

All in the time when Earth did most deplore
The cold, ungracious aspect of young May,
Sweet Summer came, and bade him smile once more;
She wove bright garlands, and in winsome play
She bound him willing captive.    Day by day
She found new wiles wherewith his heart to please;
Or bright the sun, or if the skies were gray,
They laughed together, under spreading trees,
By running brooks, or on the sandy shores of seas.
They were but comrades.    To that radiant maid
No serious word he spake; no lovers' plea.
Like careless children, glad and unafraid,
They sported in their opulence of glee.
Her shining tresses floated wild and free;
In simple lines her emerald garments hung;
She was both good to hear, and fair to see;
And when she laughed, then Earth laughed too, and flung
His cares behind him, and grew radiant and young.
One golden day, as he reclined beneath
The arching azure of enchanting skies,
Fair Summer came, engirdled with a wreath
Of gorgeous leaves all scintillant with dyes.
Effulgent was she; yet within her eyes,
There hung a quivering mist of tears unshed.
Her crimson-mantled bosom shook with sighs;
Above him bent the glory of her head;
And on his mouth she pressed a splendid kiss, and fled.
The Fount Of Tears
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

All hot and grimy from the road,
Dust gray from arduous years,
I sat me down and eased my load
Beside the Fount of Tears.
The waters sparkled to my eye,
Calm, crystal-like, and cool,
And breathing there a restful sigh,
I bent me to the pool.
When, lo! a voice cried: "Pilgrim, rise,
Harsh tho' the sentence be,
And on to other lands and skies--
This fount is not for thee.
"Pass on, but calm thy needless fears,
Some may not love or sin,
An angel guards the Fount of Tears;
All may not bathe therein."
Then with my burden on my back
I turned to gaze awhile,
First at the uninviting track,
Then at the water's smile.
And so I go upon my way,
Thro'out the sultry years,
But pause no more, by night, by day,
Beside the Fount of Tears.
The Tuft Of Kelp
by Herman Melville

All dripping in tangles green,
Cast up by a lonely sea
If purer for that, O Weed,
Bitterer, too, are ye?