DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Blue Jay.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

No brigadier throughout the year
So civic as the jay.
A neighbor and a warrior too,
With shrill felicity
Pursuing winds that censure us
A February day,
The brother of the universe
Was never blown away.
The snow and he are intimate;
I 've often seen them play
When heaven looked upon us all
With such severity,
I felt apology were due
To an insulted sky,
Whose pompous frown was nutriment
To their temerity.
The pillow of this daring head
Is pungent evergreens;
His larder -- terse and militant --
Unknown, refreshing things;
His character a tonic,
His future a dispute;
Unfair an immortality
That leaves this neighbor out.
Translations. - Lyrisches Intermezzo. Lxiv. (From Heine.)
by George MacDonald

Night lay upon mine eyelids;
Upon my mouth lay lead;
With rigid brain and bosom,
I lay among the dead.
How long it was I know not
That sleep oblivion gave;
I wakened up, and, listening,
Heard a knocking at my grave.
"Tis time to rise up, Henry!
The eternal day draws on;
The dead are all arisen--
The eternal joy's begun."
"My love, I cannot raise me;
For I have lost my sight;
My eyes with bitter weeping
They are extinguished quite."
"From thy dear eyelids, Henry,
I'll kiss the night away;
Thou shalt behold the angels,
And Heaven's superb display."
"My love, I cannot raise me;
Still bleeds my bosom gored,
Where thou heart-deep didst stab me
With a keen-pointed word."
"Soft I will lay it, Henry,
My hand soft on thy heart;
And that will stop its bleeding
And soothe at once the smart."
"My love, I cannot raise me--
My head is bleeding too;
When thou wast stolen from me
I shot it through and through!"
"I with my tresses, Henry,
Will stop the fountain red;
Press back again the blood-stream,
And heal thy wounded head."
She begged so sweetly, dearly,
I could no more say no;
I tried, I strove to raise me,
And to my darling go.
Then the wounds again burst open;
With torrent force outbrake
From head and breast the blood-stream,
And, lo, I came awake!
A Wet August
by Thomas Hardy

Nine drops of water bead the jessamine,
And nine-and-ninety smear the stones and tiles:
- 'Twas not so in that August full-rayed, fine 
When we lived out-of-doors, sang songs, strode miles.
Or was there then no noted radiancy
Of summer? Were dun clouds, a dribbling bough,
Gilt over by the light I bore in me,
And was the waste world just the same as now?
It can have been so: yea, that threatenings
Of coming down-drip on the sunless gray,
By the then possibilities in things
Were wrought more bright than brightest skies to-day.
On the Death of Richard Burton
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Night or light is it now, wherein
Sleeps, shut out from the wild world's din,
Wakes, alive with a life more clear,
One who found not on earth his kin?
Sleep were sweet for awhile, were dear
Surely to souls that were heartless here,
Souls that faltered and flagged and fell,
Soft of spirit and faint of cheer.
A living soul that had strength to quell
Hope the spectre and fear the spell,
Clear-eyed, content with a scorn sublime
And a faith superb, can it fare not well?
Life, the shadow of wide-winged time,
Cast from the wings that change as they climb,
Life may vanish in death, and seem
Less than the promise of last year's prime.
But not for us is the past a dream
Wherefrom, as light from a clouded stream,
Faith fades and shivers and ebbs away,
Faint as the moon if the sundawn gleam.
Faith, whose eyes in the low last ray
Watch the fire that renews the day,
Faith which lives in the living past,
Rock-rooted, swerves not as weeds that sway.
As trees that stand in the storm-wind fast
She stands, unsmitten of death's keen blast,
With strong remembrance of sunbright spring
Alive at heart to the lifeless last.
Night, she knows, may in no wise cling
To a soul that sinks not and droops not wing,
A sun that sets not in death's false night
Whose kingdom finds him not thrall but king.
Souls there are that for soul's affright
Bow down and cower in the sun's glad sight,
Clothed round with faith that is one with fear,
And dark with doubt of the live world's light.
But him we hailed from afar or near
As boldest born of the bravest here
And loved as brightest of souls that eyed
Life, time, and death with unchangeful cheer,
A wider soul than the world was wide,
Whose praise made love of him one with pride,
What part has death or has time in him,
Who rode life's lists as a god might ride?
While England sees not her old praise dim,
While still her stars through the world's night swim,
A fame outshining her Raleigh's fame,
A light that lightens her loud sea's rim,
Shall shine and sound as her sons proclaim
The pride that kindles at Burton's name.
And joy shall exalt their pride to be
The same in birth if in soul the same.
But we that yearn for a friend's face, we
Who lack the light that on earth was he,
Mourn, though the light be a quenchless flame
That shines as dawn on a tideless sea.
The Watch On The Kerb
by Henry Lawson

Night-Lights are falling;
Girl of the street,
Go to your calling
If you would eat.
Lamplight and starlight
And moonlight superb,
Bright hope is a farlight,
So watch on the kerb.
Watch on the kerb,
Watch on the kerb;
Hope is a farlight;
Then watch on the kerb.
Comes a man: call him,
Gone! he is vext;
Curses befall him,
Wait for the next!
Fair world and bright world,
Life still is sweet,
Girl of the night-world,
Watch on the street.
Dreary the watch is:
Moon sinks from sight,
Gas only blotches
Darkness with light;
Never, Oh, never
Let courage go down;
Keep from the river,
Oh, Girl of the Town!
Another Version Of The Same. (A Bridal Song)
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

BOYS SING:
Night! with all thine eyes look down!
Darkness! weep thy holiest dew!
Never smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true.
Haste, coy hour! and quench all light,
Lest eyes see their own delight!
Haste, swift hour! and thy loved flight
Oft renew!
GIRLS SING:
Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
Holy stars! permit no wrong!
And return, to wake the sleeper,
Dawn, ere it be long!
O joy! O fear! there is not one
Of us can guess what may be done
In the absence of the sun: -
Come along!
BOYS:
Oh! linger long, thou envious eastern lamp
In the damp
Caves of the deep!
GIRLS:
Nay, return, Vesper! urge thy lazy car!
Swift unbar
The gates of Sleep!
CHORUS:
The golden gate of Sleep unbar,
When Strength and Beauty, met together,
Kindle their image, like a star
In a sea of glassy weather.
May the purple mist of love
Round them rise, and with them move,
Nourishing each tender gem
Which, like flowers, will burst from them.
As the fruit is to the tree
May their children ever be!
Night, A Phantasy
by Kate Seymour Maclean

Night! the horrible wizard Night!
The dumb and terrible Night
Hath drawn his circle of magic, round
Over the sky, and over the ground,
Without a sound.
Ah me, what woeful phantoms rise,
With ice-cold hands and pitiless eyes,
As stars grow out of the summer skies,
Tangible things to mortal sight,
Under the hands of the wizard Night!
Night! the mystical prophet, Night!
The haunted and awful Night!
With the trail of his garment's shadowy fall,
Soundless and black as a funeral pall,
Now enters his dread laboratory.
A wan, and faint, and wavering glory
Shines from a veiled lamp somewhere hidden.
Like a lily in a grave:
And things unholy, and things forbidden,--
Hands that have long been the earth-worm's prey,
And shrouded faces out of the clay.
Rise and fill the enchanted cave
With a pale and deathly light,--
The haunted and awful Night!
Night! the abhorred magician Night!
The black astrologer Night!
Night is the world!--I shiver with fright:--
The air is full of evil things,
The coil and glitter of snaky rings,
And, the tremor of vast invisible wings,
That are not heard but felt:
They touch my hair, my hand, my cheek,
They mope and mouth, but they never speak
To utter their awful history.
Oh, when will the darkness break and melt,
Like blocks of ice on a golden reef,
And little by little, as leaf by leaf,
In light and color and form increased,
The rose of morning blooms in the east,--
The old yet ever new mystery!
And I fall on my knees to worship the light
That casts out the evil demon of Night,
And hallows with blossoms, like prayers, the way
Of another new day.
The Exile.
by Thomas Moore

Night waneth fast, the morning star
Saddens with light the glimmering sea,
Whose waves shall soon to realms afar
Waft me from hope, from love, and thee.
Coldly the beam from yonder sky
Looks o'er the waves that onward stray;
But colder still the stranger's eye
To him whose home is far away
Oh, not at hour so chill and bleak,
Let thoughts of me come o'er thy breast;
But of the lost one think and speak,
When summer suns sink calm to rest.
So, as I wander, Fancy's dream
Shall bring me o'er the sunset seas,
Thy look in every melting beam,
Thy whisper in each dying breeze.
Hialmar Speaks To The Raven
by James Elroy Flecker

from Leconte de Lisle
Night on the bloodstained snow: the wind is chill:
And there a thousand tombless warriors lie,
Grasping their swords, wild-featured. All are still.
Above them the black ravens wheel and cry.
A brilliant moon sends her cold light abroad:
Hialmar arises from the reddened slain,
Heavily leaning on his broken sword,
And bleeding from his side the battle-rain.
"Hail to you all: is there one breath still drawn
Among those fierce and fearless lads who played
So merrily, and sang as sweet in the dawn
As thrushes singing in the bramble shade?
"They have no word to say: my helm's unbound,
My breastplate by the axe unriveted:
Blood's on my eyes; I hear a spreading sound,
Like waves or wolves that clamour in my head.
"Eater of men, old raven, come this way,
And with thine iron bill open my breast:
To-morrow find us where we lie to-day,
And bear my heart to her that I love best.
"Through Upsala, where drink the Jarls and sing,
And clash their golden bowls in company,
Bird of the moor, carry on tireless wing
To Ylmer's daughter there the heart of me.
"And thou shalt see her standing straight and pale,
High pedestalled on some rook-haunted tower:
She has two earrings, silver and vermeil,
And eyes like stars that shine in sunset hour.
"Tell her my love, thou dark bird ominous;
Give her my heart, no bloodless heart and vile
But red compact and strong, O raven. Thus
Shall Ylmer's daughter greet thee with a smile.
"Now let my life from twenty deep wounds flow,
And wolves may drink the blood. My time is done.
Young, brave and spotless, I rejoice to go
And sit where all the Gods are, in the sun."
Night Is On The Downland
by John Masefield

Night is on the downland, on the lonely moorland,
On the hills where the wind goes over sheep-bitten turf,
Where the bent grass beats upon the unplowed poorland
And the pine-woods roar like the surf.
Here the Roman lived on the wind-barren lonely,
Dark now and haunted by the moorland fowl;
None comes here now but the peewit only,
And moth-like death in the owl.
Beauty was here in on this beetle-droning downland;
The thought of a Caesar in the purple came
From the palace by the Tiber in the Roman townland
To this wind-swept hill with no name.
Lonely Beauty came here and was here in sadness,
Brave as a thought on the frontier of the mind,
In the camp of the wild upon the march of madness,
The bright-eyed Queen of the Blind.
Now where Beauty was are the wind-withered gorses,
Moaning like old men in the hill-wind's blast;
The flying sky is dark with running horses,
And the night is full of the past.
With The Lark
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Night is for sorrow and dawn is for joy,
Chasing the troubles that fret and annoy;
Darkness for sighing and daylight for song,--
Cheery and chaste the strain, heartfelt and strong.
All the night through, though I moan in the dark,
I wake in the morning to sing with the lark.
Deep in the midnight the rain whips the leaves,
Softly and sadly the wood-spirit grieves.
But when the first hue of dawn tints the sky,
I shall shake out my wings like the birds and be dry;
And though, like the rain-drops, I grieved through the dark,
I shall wake in the morning to sing with the lark.
On the high hills of heaven, some morning to be,
Where the rain shall not grieve thro' the leaves of the tree,
There my heart will be glad for the pain I have known,
For my hand will be clasped in the hand of mine own;
And though life has been hard and death's pathway been dark,
I shall wake in the morning to sing with the lark.
Night, Dim Night
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Night, dim night, and it rains, my love, it rains,
(Art thou dreaming of me, I wonder)
The trees are sad, and the wind complains,
Outside the rolling of the thunder,
And the beat against the panes.
Heart, my heart, thou art mournful in the rain,
(Are thy redolent lips a-quiver?)
My soul seeks thine, doth it seek in vain?
My love goes surging like a river,
Shall its tide bear naught save pain?
The Troubadour Of Trebizend
by Madison Julius Cawein

Night, they say, is no man's friend:
And at night he met his end
In the woods of Trebizend.
Hate crouched near him as he strode
Through the blackness of the road,
Where my Lord seemed some huge toad.
Eyes of murder glared and burned
At each bend of road he turned,
And where wild the torrent churned.
And with Death we stood and stared
From the bush as by he fared,
But he never looked or cared.
He went singing; and a rose
Lay upon his heart's repose
With what thought of her who knows?
He had done no other wrong
Save to sing a simple song,
"I have loved you loved you long."
And my lady smiled and sighed;
Gave a rose and looked moist eyed,
And forgot she was a bride.
My sweet lady, Jehan de Grace,
With the pale Madonna face,
He had brought to his embrace.
And my Lord saw: gave commands:
I was of his bandit bands.
Love should perish at our hands.
Young the Knight was. He should sing
Nevermore of love or spring,
Or of any gentle thing.
When he stole at midnight's hour,
To my Lady's forest bower,
We were hidden near the tower.
In the woods of Trebizend
There he met an evil end.
Night, you know, is no man's friend.
He has fought in fort and field;
Borne for years a stainless shield,
And in strength to none would yield.
But we seized him unaware,
Bound and hung him; stripped him bare,
Left him to the wild boars there.
Never has my Lady known.
But she often sits alone,
Weeping when my Lord is gone....
Night, they say, is no man's friend.
In the woods of Trebizend
There he met an evil end.
Now my old Lord sleeps in peace,
While my Lady each one sees
Waits, and keeps her memories.
Nights Of Music.
by Thomas Moore

Nights of music, nights of loving,
Lost too soon, remembered long.
When we went by moonlight roving,
Hearts all love and lips all song.
When this faithful lute recorded
All my spirit felt to thee;
And that smile the song rewarded--
Worth Whole years of fame to me!
Nights of song, and nights of splendor,
Filled with joys too sweet to last--
Joys that, like the star-light, tender,
While they shore no shadow cast.
Tho' all other happy hours
From my fading memory fly,
Of, that starlight, of those bowers,
Not a beam, a leaf may die!
Night On The Prairies
by Walt Whitman

Night on the prairies;
The supper is over - the fire on the ground burns low;
The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets:
I walk by myself - I stand and look at the stars, which I think now I never realized before.
Now I absorb immortality and peace,
I admire death, and test propositions.
How plenteous! How spiritual! How resum'!
The same Old Man and Soul - the same old aspirations, and the same content.
I was thinking the day most splendid, till I saw what the not-day exhibited,
I was thinking this globe enough, till there sprang out so noiseless around me myriads of other globes.
Now, while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me, I will measure myself by them;
And now, touch'd with the lives of other globes, arrived as far along as those of the earth,
Or waiting to arrive, or pass'd on farther than those of the earth,
I henceforth no more ignore them, than I ignore my own life,
Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to arrive.
O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me - as the day cannot,
I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.
Last Lines
by Emily Bronte

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.
O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life, that in me has rest,
As I, undying Life, have power in Thee!
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as wither'd weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchor'd on
The steadfast rock of immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.
Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes cease to be,
And Thou were left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.
There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou, Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.
The Cure For All Care.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "Prepare, my dear brethren, to the tavern let's fly."
I.
No churchman am I for to rail and to write,
No statesman nor soldier to plot or to fight,
No sly man of business, contriving to snare,
For a big-bellied bottle's the whole of my care.
II.
The peer I don't envy, I give him his bow;
I scorn not the peasant, tho' ever so low;
But a club of good fellows, like those that are here,
And a bottle like this, are my glory and care.
III.
Here passes the squire on his brother, his horse;
There centum per centum, the cit with his purse;
But see you The Crown, how it waves in the air!
There a big-bellied bottle still eases my care.
IV.
The wife of my bosom, alas! she did die;
For sweet consolation to church I did fly;
I found that old Solomon proved it fair,
That a big-bellied bottle's a cure for all care.
V.
I once was persuaded a venture to make;
A letter inform'd me that all was to wreck;
But the pursy old landlord just waddled up stairs,
With a glorious bottle that ended my cares.
VI.
"Life's cares they are comforts,"[1] a maxim laid down
By the bard, what d'ye call him, that wore the black gown;
And faith I agree with th' old prig to a hair;
For a big-bellied bottle's a heav'n of care.
VII.
Added In A Mason Lodge.
Then fill up a bumper and make it o'erflow.
The honours masonic prepare for to throw;
May every true brother of the compass and square
Have a big-bellied bottle when harass'd with care!
Song. - To The Tune Of "Ye Gentlemen Of England." Written During A Period When It Was Confidently Believed That The French Would Invade Our Country.
by John Carr (Sir)

No gentleman of England now sits at home at ease,
But emulates on shore the heroes of the seas;
A common cause unites them, to meet the daring foe,
All they wish, all they ask, is a fav'ring wind to blow.
Oh! let them come along, and may no tempests low'r,
But fairly may we try our valour and our pow'r,
That Hist'ry may not say, should these robbers be laid low,
To the storm 'tis alone the victory we owe.
Soon shall these infidels the dreadful diff'rence prove,
'Twixt slaves impell'd by fear, and freemen bound by love;
Our foes shall never rise again, when once they are laid low,
On the sea, on the shore, for justice strikes the blow.
A Birthday Gift
by Robert Fuller Murray

No gift I bring but worship, and the love
Which all must bear to lovely souls and pure,
Those lights, that, when all else is dark, endure;
Stars in the night, to lift our eyes above;
To lift our eyes and hearts, and make us move
Less doubtful, though our journey be obscure,
Less fearful of its ending, being sure
That they watch over us, where'er we rove.
And though my gift itself have little worth,
Yet worth it gains from her to whom 'tis given,
As a weak flower gets colour from the sun.
Or rather, as when angels walk the earth,
All things they look on take the look of heaven--
For of those blessed angels thou art one.
Two Months
by Rudyard Kipling

June
No hope, no change! The clouds have shut us in,
And through the cloud the sullen Sun strikes down
Full on the bosom of the tortured Town,
Till Night falls heavy as remembered sin
That will not suffer sleep or thought of ease,
And, hour on hour, the dry-eyed Moon in spite
Glares through the haze and mocks with watery light
The torment of the uncomplaining trees.
Far off, the Thunder bellows her despair
To echoing Earth, thrice parched. The lightnings fly
In vain. No help the heaped-up clouds afford,
But wearier weight of burdened, burning air.
What truce with Dawn? Look, from the aching sky,
Day stalks, a tyrant with a flaming sword!
September
At dawn there was a murmur in the trees,
A ripple on the tank, and in the air
Presage of coming coolness everywhere
A voice of prophecy upon the breeze.
Up leapt the Sun and smote the dust to gold,
And strove to parch anew the heedless land,
All impotently, as a King grown old
Wars for the Empire crumbling 'neath his hand.
One after one the lotos-petals fell,
Beneath the onslaught of the rebel year,
In mutiny against a furious sky;
And far-off Winter whispered: "It is well!
"Hot Summer dies. Behold your help is near,
"For when men's need is sorest, then come I."
A Ballade Of Waiting.
by Archibald Lampman

No girdle hath weaver or goldsmith wrought
So rich as the arms of my love can be;
No gems with a lovelier lustre fraught
Than her eyes, when they answer me liquidly.
Dear lady of love, be kind to me
In days when the waters of hope abate,
And doubt like a shimmer on sand shall be,
In the year yet, Lady, to dream and wait.
Sweet mouth, that the wear of the world hath taught
No glitter of wile or traitorie,
More soft than a cloud in the sunset caught,
Or the heart of a crimson peony;
Oh turn not its beauty away from me;
To kiss it and cling to it early and late
Shall make sweet minutes of days that flee,
In the year yet, Lady, to dream and wait.
Rich hair that a painter of old had sought
For the weaving of some soft phantasy,
Most fair when the streams of it run distraught
On the firm sweet shoulders yellowly;
Dear Lady, gather it close to me,
Weaving a nest for the double freight
Of cheeks and lips that are one and free,
For the year yet, Lady, to dream and wait.
Envoi.
So time shall be swift till thou mate with me,
For love is mightiest next to fate,
And none shall be happier, Love, than we,
In the year yet, Lady, to dream and wait.
St. Anthony The Reformer - His Temptation
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

No fear lest praise should make us proud!
We know how cheaply that is won;
The idle homage of the crowd
Is proof of tasks as idly done.
A surface-smile may pay the toil
That follows still the conquering Right,
With soft, white hands to dress the spoil
That sun-browned valor clutched in fight.
Sing the sweet song of other days,
Serenely placid, safely true,
And o'er the present's parching ways
The verse distils like evening dew.
But speak in words of living power, - 
They fall like drops of scalding rain
That plashed before the burning shower
Swept o' er the cities of the plain!
Then scowling Hate turns deadly pale, - 
Then Passion's half-coiled adders spring,
And, smitten through their leprous mail,
Strike right and left in hope to sting.
If thou, unmoved by poisoning wrath,
Thy feet on earth, thy heart above,
Canst walk in peace thy kingly path,
Unchanged in trust, unchilled in love, - 
Too kind for bitter words to grieve,
Too firm for clamor to dismay,
When Faith forbids thee to believe,
And Meekness calls to disobey, - 
Ah, then beware of mortal pride!
The smiling pride that calmly scorns
Those foolish fingers, crimson dyed
In laboring on thy crown of thorns!