DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
What Do Poets Want With Gold?
by Archibald Lampman

What do poets want with gold,
Cringing slaves and cushioned ease;
Are not crusts and garments old
Better for their souls than these?
Gold is but the juggling rod
Of a false usurping god,
Graven long ago in hell
With a sombre stony spell,
Working in the world forever.
Hate is not so strong to sever
Beating human heart from heart.
Soul from soul we shrink and part,
And no longer hail each other
With the ancient name of brother
Give the simple poet gold,
And his song will die of cold.
He must walk with men that reel
On the rugged path, and feel
Every sacred soul that is
Beating very near to his.
Simple, human, careless, free,
As God made him, he must be:
For the sweetest song of bird
Is the hidden tenor heard
In the dusk, at even-flush,
From the forest's inner hush,
Of the simple hermit thrush.
What do poets want with love?
Flowers that shiver out of hand,
And the fervid fruits that prove
Only bitter broken sand?
Poets speak of passion best,
When their dreams are undistressed,
And the sweetest songs are sung,
E'er the inner heart is stung.
Let them dream; 'tis better so;
Ever dream, but never know.
If their spirits once have drained
All that goblet crimson-stained,
Finding what they dreamed divine,
Only earthly sluggish wine,
Sooner will the warm lips pale,
And the flawless voices fail,
Sooner come the drooping wing,
And the afterdays that bring,
No such songs as did the spring.
The Acorn And The Pumpkin (Prose Fable)
by Jean de La Fontaine

What God does is done well. Without going round the world to seek a proof of that, I can find one in the pumpkin.
A villager was once struck with the largeness of a pumpkin and the thinness of the stem upon which it grew. "What could the Almighty have been thinking about?" he cried. "He has certainly chosen a bad place for a pumpkin to grow. Eh zounds! Now I would have hung it on one of these oaks. That would have been just as it should be. Like fruit, like tree! What a pity, Hodge," said he, addressing himself, "that you were not on the spot to give advice at the Creation which the parson preaches about. Everything would have been properly done then. For instance; wouldn't this acorn, no bigger than my little finger, be better hanging on this frail stem? The Almighty has blundered there surely! The more I think about these fruits and their situations, the more it seems to me that it is all a mistake."
Becoming worried by so much reflection our Hodge cast himself under an oak saying, "A man can't sleep when he has so much brain." Then he at once dropped off into a nap.
Presently an acorn fell plump upon his nose. Starting from sleep, he put his hand up to see what had happened and found the acorn caught in his beard, whilst his nose began to pain and bleed. "Oh, oh!" he cried, "I am bleeding. How would it have been if a heavier mass than this had fallen from the tree: if this acorn had been a pumpkin? The Almighty did not intend that, I see. Doubtless he was right. I understand the reason why perfectly now."
So praising God for all things Hodge took his way home.
Sonnet 52
by Michael Drayton

What dost thou meane to Cheate me of my Heart,
To take all Mine, and giue me none againe?
Or haue thine Eyes such Magike, or that Art,
That what They get, They euer doe retaine?
Play not the Tyrant, but take some Remorse,
Rebate thy Spleene, if but for Pitties sake;
Or Cruell, if thou can'st not; let vs scorse,
And for one Piece of Thine, my whole heart take.
But what of Pitty doe I speake to Thee,
Whose Brest is proofe against Complaint or Prayer?
Or can I thinke what my Reward shall be
From that proud Beauty, which was my betrayer?
What talke I of a Heart, when thou hast none?
Or if thou hast, it is a flinty one.
A Sound In The Night
by Thomas Hardy

"What do I catch upon the night-wind, husband? -
What is it sounds in this house so eerily?
It seems to be a woman's voice: each little while I hear it,
And it much troubles me!"
"'Tis but the eaves dripping down upon the plinth-slopes:
Letting fancies worry thee! sure 'tis a foolish thing,
When we were on'y coupled half-an-hour before the noontide,
And now it's but evening."
"Yet seems it still a woman's voice outside the castle, husband,
And 'tis cold to-night, and rain beats, and this is a lonely place.
Didst thou fathom much of womankind in travel or adventure
Ere ever thou sawest my face?"
"It may be a tree, bride, that rubs his arms acrosswise,
If it is not the eaves-drip upon the lower slopes,
Or the river at the bend, where it whirls about the hatches
Like a creature that sighs and mopes."
"Yet it still seems to me like the crying of a woman,
And it saddens me much that so piteous a sound
On this my bridal night when I would get agone from sorrow
Should so ghost-like wander round!"
"To satisfy thee, Love, I will strike the flint-and-steel, then,
And set the rush-candle up, and undo the door,
And take the new horn-lantern that we bought upon our journey,
And throw the light over the moor."
He struck a light, and breeched and booted in the further chamber,
And lit the new horn-lantern and went from her sight,
And vanished down the turret; and she heard him pass the postern,
And go out into the night.
She listened as she lay, till she heard his step returning,
And his voice as he unclothed him: "'Twas nothing, as I said,
But the nor'-west wind a-blowing from the moor ath'art the river,
And the tree that taps the gurgoyle-head."
"Nay, husband, you perplex me; for if the noise I heard here,
Awaking me from sleep so, were but as you avow,
The rain-fall, and the wind, and the tree-bough, and the river,
Why is it silent now?
"And why is thy hand and thy clasping arm so shaking,
And thy sleeve and tags of hair so muddy and so wet,
And why feel I thy heart a-thumping every time thou kissest me,
And thy breath as if hard to get?"
He lay there in silence for a while, still quickly breathing,
Then started up and walked about the room resentfully:
"O woman, witch, whom I, in sooth, against my will have wedded,
Why castedst thou thy spells on me?
"There was one I loved once: the cry you heard was her cry:
She came to me to-night, and her plight was passing sore,
As no woman . . . Yea, and it was e'en the cry you heard, wife,
But she will cry no more!
"And now I can't abide thee: this place, it hath a curse on't,
This farmstead once a castle: I'll get me straight away!"
He dressed this time in darkness, unspeaking, as she listened,
And went ere the dawn turned day.
They found a woman's body at a spot called Rocky Shallow,
Where the Froom stream curves amid the moorland, washed aground,
And they searched about for him, the yeoman, who had darkly known her,
But he could not be found.
And the bride left for good-and-all the farmstead once a castle,
And in a county far away lives, mourns, and sleeps alone,
And thinks in windy weather that she hears a woman crying,
And sometimes an infant's moan.
Humility
by Robert Browning

What girl but, having gathered flowers,
Stript the beds and spoilt the bowers,
From the lapful light she carries
Drops a careless bud? nor tarries
To regain the waif and stray:
'Store enough for home' she'll say.
So say I too: give your lover
Heaps of loving, under, over,
Whelm him, make the one the wealthy!
Am I all so poor who, stealthy
Work it was! picked up what fell:
Not the worst bud, who can tell?
The Whispers Of Time.
by Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

What does time whisper, youth gay and light,
While thinning thy locks, silken and bright,
While paling thy soft cheek's roseate dye,
Dimming the light of thy flashing eye,
Stealing thy bloom and freshness away - 
Is he not hinting at death - decay?
Man, in the wane of thy stately prime,
Hear'st thou the silent warnings of Time?
Look at thy brow ploughed by anxious care,
The silver hue of thy once dark hair; - 
What boot thine honors, thy treasures bright,
When Time tells of coming gloom and night?
Sad age, dost thou note thy strength nigh, spent,
How slow thy footstep - thy form how bent?
Yet on looking back how short doth seem
The checkered coarse of thy life's brief dream.
Time, daily weakening each link and tie,
Doth whisper how soon thou art to die.
O! what a weary world were ours
With that thought to cloud our brightest hours,
Did we not know that beyond the skies
A land of beauty and promise ties,
Where peaceful and blessed we will love - adore - 
When Time itself shall be no more!
The White Cascade
by William Henry Davies

What happy mortal sees that mountain now,
The white cascade that's shining on its brow;
The white cascade that's both a bird and star,
That has a ten-mile voice and shines as far?
Though I may never leave this land again,
Yet every spring my mind must cross the main
To hear and see that water-bird and star
That on the mountain sings, and shines so far.
The Minstrel
by Hanford Lennox Gordon

"What hear I at the gateway ringing?
What bard upon the drawbridge singing?
Go bid him to repeat his song
Here, in the hall amid the throng,"
The monarch cried;
The little page hied;
As back he sped,
The monarch said 
"Bring in the gray-haired minstrel."
"I greet you, noble lords and peers;
I greet you, lovely dames.
O heaven begemmed with golden spheres!
Who knows your noble names?
In hall of splendor so sublime,
Close ye, mine eyes 'tis not the time
To gaze in idle wonder."
The gray-haired minstrel closed his eyes;
He struck his wildest air;
Brave faces glowed like sunset skies;
Cast down their eyes the fair.
The king well pleased with the minstrel's song,
Sent the little page through the wondering throng
A chain of gold to bear him.
"O give not me the chain of gold;
Award it to thy braves,
Before whose faces fierce and bold
Quail foes when battle raves;
Or give it thy chancellor of state,
And let him wear its golden weight
With his official burdens.
"I sing, I sing as the wild birds sing
That in the forest dwell;
The songs that from my bosom spring
Alone reward me well:
But may I ask that page of thine
To bring me one good cup of wine
In golden goblet sparkling?"
He took the cup; he drank it all:
"O soothing nectar thine!
Thrice bless'd the highly favored hall
Where flows such glorious wine:
If thou farest well, then think of me,
And thank thy God, as I thank thee
For this inspiring goblet."
The Poet's Portion.
by Thomas Hood

What is a mine - a treasury - a dower - 
A magic talisman of mighty power?
A poet's wide possession of the earth.
He has th' enjoyment of a flower's birth
Before its budding - ere the first red streaks, - 
And Winter cannot rob him of their cheeks.
Look - if his dawn be not as other men's!
Twenty bright flushes - ere another kens
The first of sunlight is abroad - he sees
Its golden 'lection of the topmost trees,
And opes the splendid fissures of the morn.
When do his fruits delay, when doth his corn
Linger for harvesting? Before the leaf
Is commonly abroad, in his piled sheaf
The flagging poppies lose their ancient flame.
No sweet there is, no pleasure I can name,
But he will sip it first - before the lees.
'Tis his to taste rich honey, - ere the bees
Are busy with the brooms. He may forestall
June's rosy advent for his coronal;
Before th' expectant buds upon the bough,
Twining his thoughts to bloom upon his brow.
Oh! blest to see the flower in its seed,
Before its leafy presence; for indeed
Leaves are but wings on which the summer flies,
And each thing perishable fades and dies,
Escap'd in thought; but his rich thinkings be
Like overflows of immortality:
So that what there is steep'd shall perish never,
But live and bloom, and be a joy forever.
From the Flats.
by Sidney Lanier

What heartache - ne'er a hill!
Inexorable, vapid, vague and chill
The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low.
With one poor word they tell me all they know;
Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain,
Do drawl it o'er again and o'er again.
They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name:
Always the same, the same.
Nature hath no surprise,
No ambuscade of beauty 'gainst mine eyes
From brake or lurking dell or deep defile;
No humors, frolic forms - this mile, that mile;
No rich reserves or happy-valley hopes
Beyond the bend of roads, the distant slopes.
Her fancy fails, her wild is all run tame:
Ever the same, the same.
Oh might I through these tears
But glimpse some hill my Georgia high uprears,
Where white the quartz and pink the pebble shine,
The hickory heavenward strives, the muscadine
Swings o'er the slope, the oak's far-falling shade
Darkens the dogwood in the bottom glade,
And down the hollow from a ferny nook
Bright leaps a living brook!
Tampa, Florida, 1877.
What Inn Is This
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

What inn is this
Where for the night
Peculiar traveller comes?
Who is the landlord?
Where the maids?
Behold, what curious rooms!
No ruddy fires on the hearth,
No brimming tankards flow.
Necromancer, landlord,
Who are these below?
The Veil.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Qu'avez-vous, mes fr'res?")
[XI., September, 18288.]
"Have you prayed tonight, Desdemona?"
THE SISTER
What has happened, my brothers? Your spirit to-day
Some secret sorrow damps
There's a cloud on your brow. What has happened? Oh, say,
For your eyeballs glare out with a sinister ray
Like the light of funeral lamps.
And the blades of your poniards are half unsheathed
In your belt - and ye frown on me!
There's a woe untold, there's a pang unbreathed
In your bosom, my brothers three!
ELDEST BROTHER.
Gulnara, make answer! Hast thou, since the dawn,
To the eye of a stranger thy veil withdrawn?
THE SISTER.
As I came, oh, my brother! at noon - from the bath - 
As I came - it was noon, my lords - 
And your sister had then, as she constantly hath,
Drawn her veil close around her, aware that the path
Is beset by these foreign hordes.
But the weight of the noonday's sultry hour
Near the mosque was so oppressive
That - forgetting a moment the eye of the Giaour - 
I yielded to th' heat excessive.
SECOND BROTHER.
Gulnara, make answer! Whom, then, hast thou seen,
In a turban of white and a caftan of green?
THE SISTER.
Nay, he might have been there; but I muflled me so,
He could scarcely have seen my figure. - 
But why to your sister thus dark do you grow?
What words to yourselves do you mutter thus low,
Of "blood" and "an intriguer"?
Oh! ye cannot of murder bring down the red guilt
On your souls, my brothers, surely!
Though I fear - from the hands that are chafing the hilt,
And the hints you give obscurely.
THIRD BROTHER.
Gulnara, this evening when sank the red sun,
Didst thou mark how like blood in descending it shone?
THE SISTER.
Mercy! Allah! have pity! oh, spare!
See! I cling to your knees repenting!
Kind brothers, forgive me! for mercy, forbear!
Be appeased at the cry of a sister's despair,
For our mother's sake relenting.
O God! must I die? They are deaf to my cries!
Their sister's life-blood shedding;
They have stabbed me each one - I faint - o'er my eyes
A veil of Death is spreading!
THE BROTHERS.
Gulnara, farewell! take that veil; 'tis the gift
Of thy brothers - a veil thou wilt never lift!
"FATHER PROUT" (FRANK S. MAHONY).
Seventy-Six.
by William Cullen Bryant

What heroes from the woodland sprung,
When, through the fresh awakened land,
The thrilling cry of freedom rung,
And to the work of warfare strung
The yeoman's iron hand!
Hills flung the cry to hills around,
And ocean-mart replied to mart,
And streams whose springs were yet unfound,
Pealed far away the startling sound
Into the forest's heart.
Then marched the brave from rocky steep,
From mountain river swift and cold;
The borders of the stormy deep,
The vales where gathered waters sleep,
Sent up the strong and bold,
As if the very earth again
Grew quick with God's creating breath,
And, from the sods of grove and glen,
Rose ranks of lion-hearted men
To battle to the death.
The wife, whose babe first smiled that day,
The fair fond bride of yestereve,
And aged sire and matron gray,
Saw the loved warriors haste away,
And deemed it sin to grieve.
Already had the strife begun;
Already blood on Concord's plain
Along the springing grass had run,
And blood had flowed at Lexington,
Like brooks of April rain.
That death-stain on the vernal sward
Hallowed to freedom all the shore;
In fragments fell the yoke abhorred,
The footstep of a foreign lord
Profaned the soil no more.
What Have I Done For You
by William Ernest Henley

What have I done for you,
England, my England?
What is there I would not do,
England, my own?
With your glorious eyes austere,
As the Lord were walking near,
Whispering terrible things and dear
As the Song on your bugles blown,
England -
Round the world on your bugles blown!
Where shall the watchful Sun,
England, my England,
Match the master-work you've done,
England, my own?
When shall he rejoice agen
Such a breed of mighty men
As come forward, one to ten,
To the Song on your bugles blown,
England -
Down the years on your bugles blown?
Ever the faith endures,
England, my England:-
'Take and break us:    we are yours,
'England, my own!
'Life is good, and joy runs high
'Between English earth and sky:
'Death is death; but we shall die
'To the Song on your bugles blown,
'England -
'To the stars on your bugles blown!
They call you proud and hard,
England, my England:
You with worlds to watch and ward,
England, my own!
You whose mailed hand keeps the keys
Of such teeming destinies
You could know nor dread nor ease
Were the Song on your bugles blown,
England,
Round the Pit on your bugles blown!
Mother of Ships whose might,
England, my England,
Is the fierce old Sea's delight,
England, my own,
Chosen daughter of the Lord,
Spouse-in-Chief of the ancient sword,
There's the menace of the Word
In the Song on your bugles blown,
England -
Out of heaven on your bugles blown!
On Drawings Of The Statues Of Apollo, Venus, And Hercules, Made For Pope By Sir Godfrey Kneller.
by Alexander Pope

What god, what genius did the pencil move,
When Kneller painted these?
'Twas friendship, warm as Phoebus, kind as Love,
And strong as Hercules.
What If I Say I Shall Not Wait?
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

What if I say I shall not wait?
What if I burst the fleshly gate
And pass, escaped, to thee?
What if I file this mortal off,
See where it hurt me, -- that 's enough, --
And wade in liberty?
They cannot take us any more, --
Dungeons may call, and guns implore;
Unmeaning now, to me,
As laughter was an hour ago,
Or laces, or a travelling show,
Or who died yesterday!
Robert Burns Wilson.
by James Whitcomb Riley

What intuition named thee? - Through what thrill
Of the awed soul came the command divine
Into the mother-heart, foretelling thine
Should palpitate with his whose raptures will
Sing on while daisies bloom and lavrocks trill
Their undulating ways up through the fine
Fair mists of heavenly reaches?    Thy pure line
Falls as the dew of anthems, quiring still
The sweeter since the Scottish singer raised
His voice therein, and, quit of every stress
Of earthly ache and longing and despair,
Knew certainly each simple thing he praised
Was no less worthy, for its lowliness,
Than any joy of all the glory There.
Those Images
by William Butler Yeats

What if I bade you leave
The cavern of the mind?
There's better exercise
In the sunlight and wind.
I never bade you go
To Moscow or to Rome.
Renounce that drudgery,
Call the Muses home.
Seek those images
That constitute the wild,
The lion and the virgin,
The harlot and the child
Find in middle air
An eagle on the wing,
Recognise the five
That make the Muses sing.
The Mad Wind
by Clark Ashton Smith

What hast thou seen, O wind,
Of beauty or of terror
Surpassing, denied to us,
That with precipitate wings,
Mad and ecstatical,
Thou spurnest the hollows and trees
That offer thee refuge of peace,
And findest within the sky
No safety nor respite
From the memory of thy vision?
Prologue To The University Of Oxford, Spoken By Mr Hart, At The Acting Of "The Silent Woman."
by John Dryden

What Greece, when learning flourish'd, only knew,
Athenian judges, you this day renew;
Here too are annual rites to Pallas done,
And here poetic prizes lost or won.
Methinks I see you, crown'd with olives, sit,
And strike a sacred horror from the pit.
A day of doom is this of your decree,
Where even the best are but by mercy free:
A day, which none but Jonson durst have wish'd to see.
Here they, who long have known the useful stage,
Come to be taught themselves to teach the age.
As your commissioners our poets go,
To cultivate the virtue which you sow;
In your Lycaeum first themselves refined,
And delegated thence to human-kind.
But as ambassadors, when long from home,
For new instructions to their princes come;
So poets, who your precepts have forgot,
Return, and beg they may be better taught:
Follies and faults elsewhere by them are shown,
But by your manners they correct their own.
The illiterate writer, empiric-like, applies
To minds diseased unsafe, chance remedies:
The learn'd in schools, where knowledge first began,
Studies with care the anatomy of man;
Sees virtue, vice, and passions in their cause,
And fame from science, not from fortune, draws.
So Poetry, which is in Oxford made
An art, in London only is a trade.
There haughty dunces, whose unlearned pen
Could ne'er spell grammar, would be reading men.
Such build their poems the Lucretian way;
So many huddled atoms make a play;
And if they hit in order, by some chance,
They call that nature, which is ignorance.
To such a fame let mere town wits aspire,
And their gay nonsense their own cits admire.
Our poet, could he find forgiveness here,
Would wish it rather than a plaudit there.
He owns no crown from those Pr'torian bands,
But knows that right is in the senate's hands;
Not impudent enough to hope your praise,
Low at the Muses' feet his wreath he lays,
And, where he took it up, resigns his bays.
Kings make their poets whom themselves think fit,
But 'tis your suffrage makes authentic wit.
To The Muse.
by Friedrich Schiller

What I had been without thee, I know not yet, to my sorrow
See I what, without thee, hundreds and thousands now are.
A Hollow Elm
by Edward Shanks

What hast thou not withstood,
Tempest-despising tree,
Whose bloat and riven wood
Gapes now so hollowly,
What rains have beaten thee through many years,
What snows from off thy branches dripped like tears?
Calmly thou standest now
Upon thy sunny mound;
The first spring breezes flow
Past with sweet dizzy sound;
Yet on thy pollard top the branches few
Stand stiffly out, disdain to murmur too.
The children at thy foot
Open new-lighted eyes,
Where, on gnarled bark and root,
The soft warm sunshine lies -
Dost thou, upon thine ancient sides, resent
The touch of youth, quick and impermanent?
These at the beck of spring
Live in the moment still:
Thy boughs unquivering,
Remembering winter's chill,
And many other winters past and gone,
Are mocked, not cheated, by the transient sun.
Hast thou so much withstood,
Tempest-despising tree,
That now thy hollow wood
Stiffens disdainfully
Against the soft spring airs and soft spring rain,
Knowing too well that winter comes again?