DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Charles Augustus Fortescue
by Hilaire Belloc

The nicest child I ever knew
Was Charles Augustus Fortescue.
He never lost his cap, or tore
His stockings or his pinafore:
In eating Bread he made no Crumbs,
He was extremely fond of sums,
To which, however, he preferred
The Parsing of a Latin Word
He sought, when it was within his power,
For information twice an hour,
And as for finding Mutton-Fat
Unappatising, far from that!
He often, at his Father's Board,
Would beg them, of his own accord,
To give him, if they did not mind,
The Greasiest Morsels they could find
His Later Years did not belie
The Promise of his Infancy.
In Public Life he always tried
To take a judgement Broad and Wide;
In Private, none was more than he
Renowned for quiet courtesy.
He rose at once in his Career,
And long before hus Fortieth Year
Had wedded Fifi, Only Child
Of Bunyan, First Lord Aberfylde.
He thus became immensely Rich,
And built the Splendid Mansion which
Is called The Cedars, Muswell Hill,
Where he resides in affluence still,
To show what everybody might
Become by simply doing right.
Announcement
by Madison Julius Cawein

The night is loud with reeds of rain
Rejoicing at my window-pane,
And murmuring, "Spring comes again!"
I hear the wind take up their song
And on the sky's vibrating gong
Beat out and roar it all night long.
Then waters, where they pour their might
In foam, halloo it down the night,
From vale to vale and height to height.
And I thank God that down the deep
She comes, her ancient tryst to keep
With Earth again who wakes from sleep:
From death and sleep, that held her fast
So long, pale cerements round her cast,
Her penetential raiment vast.
Now, Lazarus-like, within her grave
She stirs, who hears the words that save,
The Christ-like words of wind and wave.
And, hearing, bids her soul prepare
The germs of blossoms in her there
To make her body sweet and fair;
To meet in manifest audience
The eyes of Spring, and reverence,
With beauty, God in soul and sense.
The Adieu To Eliza.
by Nora Pembroke (Margaret Moran Dixon McDougall)

The night was bright and beautiful,
The dew was on the flower,
The stars were keeping watch, it was
The lover's parting hour.
The night wind rippled o'er the wave,
The moon shone on the two,
The boat was waiting, part they must,
"Eliza, love, adieu!"
"You know how fondly I have loved,
How long, how true, how dear,
And though fate sends me far away
My heart will linger here.
"Bright hope, the lover's comfort, can
Alone my heart console,
Or soothe the pain of parting with
The empress of my soul.
"When other suitors vainly talk
Of fondly loving you,
Remember him who truly loved
As no one else can do.
"I'll think upon the place contains
My dark-eyed source of bliss,
When roaming idly, blindly through
The gay metropolis.
"Weep not, weep not, my dearest girl,
Your tears my bosom pain,
Remember," fondly added he,
"We part to meet again."
He made her pledge him heart to heart
She would not him forget,
Asked her to sigh when at the spot
Where they had often met.
He spoke much of how deep was stamped
Her image on his mind;
One more adieu, the boat was gone.
And she was left behind.
True was the maiden, and she kept
While weeks and months took wing,
His name deep treasured in her heart,
As 'twere a sacred thing.
And he--did he return again
Her long love to repay?
No! in good sooth, as Byron says,
He laughed to flee away.
G HILL, 1839.
The King's Gift.
by Jean Blewett

TO E. S. R.
The new year coming to us with swift feet
Is the King's gift,
And all that in it lies
Will make our lives more rounded and complete.
It may be laughter,
May be tear-filled eyes;
It may be gain of love,
Or loss of love;
It may be thorns, or bloom and breath of flowers,
The full fruition of these hopes that move - 
It may be what will break these hearts of ours,
What matter? 'Tis the great gift of the King - 
We do not need to fear what it may bring.
First Morning
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

The night was a failure but why not - ?
In the darkness with the pale dawn seething at the window through the black frame I could not be free, not free myself from the past, those others -    and our love was a confusion, there was a horror, you recoiled away from me.
Now, in the morning
As we sit in the sunshine on the seat by the little shrine,
And look at the mountain-walls,
Walls of blue shadow,
And see so near at our feet in the meadow
Myriads of dandelion pappus
Bubbles ravelled in the dark green grass
Held still beneath the sunshine - 
It is enough, you are near - 
The mountains are balanced,
The dandelion seeds stay half-submerged in the grass;
You and I together
We hold them proud and blithe
On our love.
They stand upright on our love,
Everything starts from us,
We are the source.
BEUERBERG
The Light Of Stars.
by William Henry Giles Kingston

The night is come, but not too soon;
And sinking silently,
All silently, the little moon
Drops down behind the sky.
There is no light in earth or heaven,
But the cold light of stars;
And the first watch of night is given
To the red planet Mars.
Is it the tender star of love?
The star of love and dreams?
Oh, no! from that blue tent above,
A hero's armour gleams.
And earnest thoughts within me rise,
When I behold afar,
Suspended in the evening skies
The shield of that red star.
O star of strength!    I see thee stand
And smile upon my pain;
Thou beckonest with thy mailed hand,
And I am strong again.
Within my breast there is no light,
But the cold light of stars;
I give the first watch of the night
To the red planet Mars.
The star of the unconquered will,
He rises in my breast,
Serene, and resolute, and still,
And calm, and self-possessed.
And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art,
That readest this brief psalm,
As one by one thy hopes depart,
Be resolute and calm.
Oh, fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know ere long,
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.
The Night Is Darkening Around Me
by Emily Bronte

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow ;
But a tyrant spell has bound me,
And I cannot, cannot go.
The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow;
The storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.
Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me:
I will not, cannot go.
Palais Royale
by Paul Cameron Brown

The night cold as nuggets, dark as acorn,
against your chest; snow falling
like abandoned echoes releasing energy
into the spyglass, umbrella moon.
A solitary figure trapping hapless sparrows
not in a net but with his footprints
doubling as dungeons against the sun    - 
here & there rusting eavestroughs ballooning
into avenging shadows their harpsichord voices
spun on dreams Dick Whittington once used to buy a cat.
And once Tom Thumb Upstaged Peter Pan by appearing
under a petunia but this is not likely to happen soon.
The dawn, forlorn & grey, is a court muffin's handkerchief
waved at a sailor far out at sea.
The Miracle Of Purun Bhagat
by Rudyard Kipling

The night we felt the earth would move
We stole and plucked him by the hand,
Because we loved him with the love
That knows but cannot understand.
And when the roaring hillside broke,
And all our world fell down in rain,
We saved him, we the Little Folk;
But lo! he does not come again!
Mourn now, we saved him for the sake
Of such poor love as wild ones may.
Mourn ye! Our brother will not wake,
And his own kind drive us away!
Gone.
by Walter R. Cassels

The night is dark, and evermore
The thick drops patter on the pane
The wind is weary of the rain,
And round the thatches moaneth sore;
Dark is the night, and cold the air;
And all the trees stand stark and bare,
With leaves spread dank and sere below,
Slow rotting on the plashy clay,
In the God's-acre far away,
Where she, O God! lies cold below--
Cold, cold below!
And many a bitter day and night
Have pour'd their storms upon her breast,
And chill'd her in her long, long rest,
With foul corruption's icy blight;
Earth's dews are freezing round the heart,
Where love alone so late had part;
And evermore the frost and snow
Are burrowing downward through the clay,
In the God's-acre far away,
Where she, O God! lies cold below,--
Cold, cold below!
Those eyes so full of light are dim;
And the clear chalice of her youth,
All sparkling up with love and truth,
Hath Death drain'd keenly from the brim;--
No more can mortal ear rejoice
In the soft music of her voice;
No wistful eye, through tears of woe,
Can pierce down through the heavy clay,
In the God's-acre far away,
Where she, O God! lies cold below,--
Cold, cold below.
A star shines, sudden, from the sky--
God's angel cometh, pure and bright,
Making a radiance through the night,
Unto the place where, mute, I lie,
Gazing up in rapt devotion,
Shaken by a deep emotion;
And my thoughts no longer go
Wandering o'er the plashy clay,
In the God's-acre far away,
Where she, O God! _lay_ cold below--
Cold, cold below!
God's angel! ah I divinely bright!
But still the olden grace is there--
The soft brown eyes--the raven hair--
The gentle smile of calm delight,
That could such peace and joy impart--
The veil is rent from off my heart,
And gazing upward, well I know
The rain may beat upon the clay
In the God's-acre far away;
But she no longer lies below,
Enshrouded by the frost and snow--
Cold, cold below!
To Mrs. Goodchild.
by Charles Stuart Calverley

The night-wind's shriek is pitiless and hollow,
The boding bat flits by on sullen wing,
And I sit desolate, like that "one swallow"
Who found (with horror) that he'd not brought spring:
Lonely as he who erst with venturous thumb
Drew from its pie-y lair the solitary plum.
And to my gaze the phantoms of the Past,
The cherished fictions of my boyhood, rise:
I see Red Ridinghood observe, aghast,
The fixed expression of her grandam's eyes;
I hear the fiendish chattering and chuckling
Which those misguided fowls raised at the Ugly Duckling.
The House that Jack built - and the Malt that lay
Within the House - the Rat that ate the Malt -
The Cat, that in that sanguinary way
Punished the poor thing for its venial fault -
The Worrier-Dog - the Cow with Crumpled horn -
And then - ah yes! and then - the Maiden all forlorn!
O Mrs. Gurton - (may I call thee Gammer?)
Thou more than mother to my infant mind!
I loved thee better than I loved my grammar -
I used to wonder why the Mice were blind,
And who was gardener to Mistress Mary,
And what - I don't know still - was meant by "quite contrary"?
"Tota contraria," an "Arundo Cami"
Has phrased it - which is possibly explicit,
Ingenious certainly - but all the same I
Still ask, when coming on the word, 'What is it?'
There were more things in Mrs. Gurton's eye,
Mayhap, than are dreamed of in our philosophy.
No doubt the Editor of 'Notes and Queries'
Or 'Things not generally known' could tell
That word's real force - my only lurking fear is
That the great Gammer "didna ken hersel":
(I've precedent, yet feel I owe apology
For passing in this way to Scottish phraseology).
Alas, dear Madam, I must ask your pardon
For making this unwarranted digression,
Starting (I think) from Mistress Mary's garden:-
And beg to send, with every expression
Of personal esteem, a Book of Rhymes,
For Master G. to read at miscellaneous times.
There is a youth, who keeps a 'crumpled Horn,'
(Living next me, upon the selfsame story,)
And ever, 'twixt the midnight and the morn,
He solaces his soul with Annie Laurie.
The tune is good; the habit p'raps romantic;
But tending, if pursued, to drive one's neighbours frantic.
And now, - at this unprecedented hour,
When the young Dawn is "trampling out the stars," -
I hear that youth - with more than usual power
And pathos - struggling with the first few bars.
And I do think the amateur cornopean
Should be put down by law - but that's perhaps Utopian.
Who knows what "things unknown" I might have "bodied
Forth," if not checked by that absurd Too-too?
But don't I know that when my friend has plodded
Through the first verse, the second will ensue?
Considering which, dear Madam, I will merely
Send the aforesaid book - and am yours most sincerely.
A Summer's Night
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The night is dewy as a maiden's mouth,
The skies are bright as are a maiden's eyes,
Soft as a maiden's breath the wind that flies
Up from the perfumed bosom of the South.
Like sentinels, the pines stand in the park;
And hither hastening, like rakes that roam,
With lamps to light their wayward footsteps home,
The fireflies come stagg'ring down the dark.
Check (The Adventures Of Seumas Beg)
by James Stephens

The night was creeping on the ground;
She crept and did not make a sound
Until she reached the tree, and then
She covered it, and stole again
Along the grass beside the wall.
I heard the rustle of her shawl
As she threw blackness everywhere
Upon the sky and ground and air,
And in the room where I was hid:
But no matter what she did
To everything that was without,
She could not put my candle out.
So I stared at the night, and she
Stared back solemnly at me.
Thalia And Melpomene.
by Margaret Steele Anderson

The night would sadden us with wind and rain
Let's to sweet Comedy and scorn the night!
Let's read together: how, by silver light,
The fairies went, a most enchanting train.
Amid those clowns and lovers; how the twain,
Celia and Rosalind, as shepherds dight.
Frolicked through Arden; or of that rare sprite,
That Ariel, who could trick the mortal brain
To strange beliefs. What! wilt have nothing glad?
Wilt read, while winds are moaning out regret.
The fate of Desdemona, Juliet?
Lovest the rain to come and make thee sad?
Ah, well!, I know!, How sweet the tragic part!
I am grown old, but once, was what thou art I
Falerina.
by Madison Julius Cawein

The night is hung above us, love,
With heavy stars that love us, love,
With clouds that curl in purple and pearl,
And winds that whisper of us, love:
On burly hills and valleys, that lie dimmer,
The amber foot-falls of the moon-sylphs glimmer.
The moon is still a crescent, love;
And here with thee 'tis pleasant, love,
To sit and dream in its thin gleam,
And list thy sighs liquescent, love:
To see thy eyes and fondle thy dark tresses,
Set on warm lips imperishable kisses.
The sudden-glaring fire-flies
Swim o'er the hollow gyre-wise,
And spurt and shine like jostled wine
At lips on which desire lies:
Or like the out-flashed hair of elf or fairy
In rapid morrice whirling feat and airy.
Up, - all the blue West sundering, - 
A creamy cloud comes blundering
O'er star and steep, and opening deep
Grows gold with silent thundering:
Gold flooding crystal crags immeasurable,
Lost Avalons of old Romance and Fable.
The bee dreams in the cherry bloom
That sways above the berry bloom;
The katydid grates where she's hid
In leafy deeps of dreary gloom:
The forming dew is globing on the grasses,
Like rich spilled gems of some dark queen that passes.
The mere brief gusts are wrinkling;
A thousand ripples twinkling
Have caught the stars on polished spars
Their rustling ridges sprinkling:
And all the shadow lurking in its bosom
Is touched and bursten into golden blossom.
Stoop! and my being flatter, love;
With sudden starlight scatter, love,
From the starry grace of thy rare face,
Whose might can make or shatter, love!
Come, raiment love in love's own radiant garments.
And kindle all my soul to rapturous torments!
Bow all thy beauty to me, love,
Lips, eyes, and hair to woo me, love,
As bows and blows some satin rose
Snow-soft and tame, that knew thee, love.
Unto the common grass, that worshiping cowers,
Dowering its love with all her musk of flowers.
The Light Of Stars.
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The night is come, but not too soon;
And sinking silently,
All silently, the little moon
Drops down behind the sky.
There is no light in earth or heaven
But the cold light of stars;
And the first watch of night is given
To the red planet Mars.
Is it the tender star of love?
The star of love and dreams?
O no! from that blue tent above,
A hero's armor gleams.
And earnest thoughts within me rise,
When I behold afar,
Suspended in the evening skies,
The shield of that red star.
O star of strength! I see thee stand
And smile upon my pain;
Thou beckonest with thy mailed hand,
And I am strong again.
Within my breast there is no light
But the cold light of stars;
I give the first watch of the night
To the red planet Mars.
The star of the unconquered will,
He rises in my breast,
Serene, and resolute, and still,
And calm, and self-possessed.
And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art,
That readest this brief psalm,
As one by one thy hopes depart,
Be resolute and calm.
O fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know erelong,
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.
To A. D. - The Nightingale Has A Lyre Of Gold
by William Ernest Henley

The nightingale has a lyre of gold,
The lark's is a clarion-call,
And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute,
But I love him best of all.
For his song is all of the joy of life,
And we in the mad, spring weather,
We two have listened till he sang
Our hearts and lips together.
1876
The Maranoa Drovers
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

(Air: 'Little Sally Waters.')
The night is dark and stormy, and the sky is clouded o'er;
Our horses we will mount and ride away,
To watch the squatters' cattle through the darkness of the night,
And we'll keep them on the camp till break of day.
Chorus
For we're going, going, going to Gunnedah so far,
And we'll soon be into sunny New South Wales;
We shall bid farewell to Queensland, with its swampy coolibah'
Happy drovers from the sandy Maranoa.
When the fires are burning bright through the darkness of the night,
And the cattle camping quiet, well, I'm sure
That I wish for two o'clock when I call the other watch'
This is droving from the sandy Maranoa.
Our beds made on the ground, we are sleeping all so sound
When we're wakened by the distant thunder's roar,
And the lightning's vivid flash, followed by an awful crash-
It's rough on drovers from the sandy Maranoa.
We are up at break of day, and we're all soon on the way,
For we always have to go ten miles or more;
It don't do to loaf about, or the squatter will come out'
He's strict on drovers from the sandy Maranoa.
We shall soon be on the Moonie, and we'll cross the Barwon, too;
Then we'll be out upon the rolling plains once more;
We'll shout 'Hurrah! for old Queensland, with its swampy coolibah,
And the cattle that come off the Maranoa.'
Shadow Song.
by Sophie M. (Almon) Hensley

The night is long
And there are no stars, - 
Let me but dream
That the long fields gleam
With sunlight and song,
Then I shall not long
For the light of stars.
Let me but dream, - 
For there are no stars, - 
Dream that the ache
And the wild heart-break
Are but things that seem.
Ah! let me dream
For there are no stars.
Going Back
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

The night turns slowly round,
Swift trains go by in a rush of light;
Slow trains steal past.
This train beats anxiously, outward bound.
But I am not here.
I am away, beyond the scope of this turning;
There, where the pivot is, the axis
Of all this gear.
I, who sit in tears,
I, whose heart is torn with parting;
Who cannot bear to think back to the departure platform;
My spirit hears
Voices of men
Sound of artillery, aeroplanes, presences,
And more than all, the dead-sure silence,
The pivot again.
There, at the axis
Pain, or love, or grief
Sleep on speed; in dead certainty;
Pure relief.
There, at the pivot
Time sleeps again.
No has-been, no here-after; only the perfected
Silence of men.
The Culprit
by Alfred Edward Housman

The night my father got me
His mind was not on me;
He did not plague his fancy
To muse if I should be
The son you see.
The day my mother bore me
She was a fool and glad,
For all the pain I cost her,
That she had borne the lad
That borne she had.
My mother and my father
Out of the light they lie;
The warrant would not find them,
And here 'tis only I
Shall hang so high.
Oh let not man remember
The soul that God forgot,
But fetch the county kerchief
And noose me in the knot,
And I will rot.
For so the game is ended
That should not have begun.
My father and my mother
They had a likely son,
And I have none.
Night
by Duncan Campbell Scott

The night is old, and all the world
Is wearied out with strife;
A long gray mist lies heavy and wan
Above the house of life.
Four stars burn up and are unquelled
By the low, shrunken moon;
Her spirit draws her down and down - 
She shall be buried soon.
There is a sound that is no sound,
Yet fine it falls and clear,
The whisper of the spinning earth
To the tranced atmosphere.
An odour lives where once was air,
A strange, unearthly scent,
From the burning of the four great stars
Within the firmament.
The universe, deathless and old,
Breathes, yet is void of breath:
As still as death that seems to move
And yet is still as death.
Version Of A Fragment Of Simonides. (Translations.)
by William Cullen Bryant

The night winds howled, the billows dashed
Against the tossing chest;
And Dana' to her broken heart
Her slumbering infant pressed.
"My little child", in tears she said,
"To wake and weep is mine,
But thou canst sleep, thou dost not know
Thy mother's lot, and thine.
"The moon is up, the moonbeams smile,
They tremble on the main;
But dark, within my floating cell,
To me they smile in vain.
"Thy folded mantle wraps thee warm,
Thy clustering locks are dry,
Thou dost not hear the shrieking gust,
Nor breakers booming high.
"As o'er thy sweet unconscious face
A mournful watch I keep,
I think, didst thou but know thy fate,
How thou wouldst also weep.
"Yet, dear one, sleep, and sleep, ye winds
That vex the restless brine,
When shall these eyes, my babe, be sealed
As peacefully as thine!"
Waking In The Blue
by Robert Lowell

The night attendant, a B.U. sophomore,
rouses from the mare's-nest of his drowsy head
propped on The Meaning of Meaning.
He catwalks down our corridor.
Azure day
makes my agonized blue window bleaker.
Crows maunder on the petrified fairway.
Absence! My hearts grows tense
as though a harpoon were sparring for the kill.
(This is the house for the "mentally ill.")
What use is my sense of humour?
I grin at Stanley, now sunk in his sixties,
once a Harvard all-American fullback,
(if such were possible!)
still hoarding the build of a boy in his twenties,
as he soaks, a ramrod
with a muscle of a seal
in his long tub,
vaguely urinous from the Victorian plumbing.
A kingly granite profile in a crimson gold-cap,
worn all day, all night,
he thinks only of his figure,
of slimming on sherbert and ginger ale
more cut off from words than a seal.
This is the way day breaks in Bowditch Hall at McLean's;
the hooded night lights bring out "Bobbie,"
Porcellian '29,
a replica of Louis XVI
without the wig
redolent and roly-poly as a sperm whale,
as he swashbuckles about in his birthday suit
and horses at chairs.
These victorious figures of bravado ossified young.
In between the limits of day,
hours and hours go by under the crew haircuts
and slightly too little nonsensical bachelor twinkle
of the Roman Catholic attendants.
(There are no Mayflower
screwballs in the Catholic Church.)
After a hearty New England breakfast,
I weigh two hundred pounds
this morning. Cock of the walk,
I strut in my turtle-necked French sailor's jersey
before the metal shaving mirrors,
and see the shaky future grow familiar
in the pinched, indigenous faces
of these thoroughbred mental cases,
twice my age and half my weight.
We are all old-timers,
each of us holds a locked razor.
Pel'e
by Paul Cameron Brown

1
The night before ...
sultry Martinique, a
tortoise shell cat
climbed, lap to pipe,
amid curbs of orange smoke.
2
Mount Pel'e, a
smoking hard hat
with the candle-wax of longing
gutting in paraffin for
30,000 souls sent to the Crematorium
her harbour hissing
lava foam;
even coffee beans fused into
other metal bits, a
danse macabre twittering machine,
(nature au contraire),
tortoise shell improviso with
splotched colours weaving dawn's light
& feline crouching.
3
- the curl of her island's paws
lanced in heat,
brief wisps tugging Pel'e's
synopsis (dark & smouldering), with
cat eyes glowing
up the mountain dark
into vegetative whiskers.
4
Pull of my pipe full leap of centuries
before the bite of the stem
dumped fire again