DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Hay And Hell And Booligal
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

"You come and see me, boys," he said;
"You'll find a welcome and a bed
And whiskey any time you call;
Although our township hasn't got
The name of quite a lively spot,
You see, I live in Booligal.
"And people have an awful down
Upon the district and the town,
Which worse than hell itself the call;
In fact, the saying far and wide
Along the Riverina side
Is 'Hay and Hell and Booligal'.
"No doubt it suits 'em very well
To say its worse than Hay or Hell,
But don't you heed their talk at all;
Of course, there's heat, no one denies,
And sand and dust and stacks of flies,
And rabbits, too, at Booligal.
"But such a pleasant, quiet place,
You never see a stranger's face;
They hardly ever care to call;
The drovers mostly pass it by,
They reckon that they'd rather die
Than spend the night in Booligal.
"The big mosquitoes frighten some,
You'll lie awake to hear 'em hum,
And snakes about the township crawl;
But shearers, when they get their cheque,
They never come along and wreck
The blessed town of Booligal.
"But down to Hay the shearers come
And fill themselves with fighting-rum,
And chase blue devils up the wall,
And fight the snaggers every day,
Until there is the deuce to pay,
There's none of that in Booligal.
"Of course, there isn't much to see,
The billiard-table used to be
The great attraction for us all,
Until some careless, drunken curs
Got sleeping on it in their spurs,
And ruined it, in Booligal.
"Just now there is a howling drought
That pretty near has starved us out,
It never seems to rain at all;
But, if there should come any rain,
You couldn't cross the black-soil plain,
You'd have to stop in Booligal."
*             *             *             *             *             *
"We'd have to stop!" With bated breath
We prayed that both in life and death
Our fate in other lines might fall;
"Oh, send us to our just reward
In Hay or Hell, but, gracious Lord,
Deliver us from Booligal!"
An Afterthought
by Robert Fuller Murray

You found my life, a poor lame bird
That had no heart to sing,
You would not speak the magic word
To give it voice and wing.
Yet sometimes, dreaming of that hour,
I think, if you had known
How much my life was in your power,
It might have sung and flown.
To A Wealthy Man
by William Butler Yeats

You gave but will not give again
Until enough of Paudeen's pence
By Biddy's halfpennies have lain
To be 'some sort of evidence,'
Before you'll put your guineas down,
That things it were a pride to give
Are what the blind and ignorant town
Imagines best to make it thrive.
What cared Duke Ercole, that bid
His mummers to the market place,
What th' onion-sellers thought or did
So that his Plautus set the pace
For the Italian comedies?
And Guidobaldo, when he made
That grammar school of courtesies
Where wit and beauty learned their trade
Upon Urbino's windy hill,
Had sent no runners to and fro
That he might learn the shepherds' will.
And when they drove out Cosimo,
Indifferent how the rancour ran,
He gave the hours they had set free
To Michelozzo's latest plan
For the San Marco Library,
Whence turbulent Italy should draw
Delight in Art whose end is peace,
In logic and in natural law
By sucking at the dugs of Greece.
Your open hand but shows our loss,
For he knew better how to live.
Let Paudeens play at pitch and toss,
Look up in the sun's eye and give
What the exultant heart calls good
That some new day may breed the best
Because you gave, not what they would
But the right twigs for an eagle's nest!
The Fox & The Crane
by Walter Crane

You have heard how Sir Fox treated Crane:
With soup in a plate. When again
They dined, a long bottle
Just suited Crane's throttle;
And Sir Fox licked the outside in vain.
There Are Games That Two Can Play At
You Do Not Want Me?
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

You do not want me, Zohrah.
Is it because I am maimed?
Yet Tamour-leng was maimed,
Going on crippled feet,
And he conquered the vast of the world.
You do not want me, Zohrah.
Is it because I am maimed?
Yet I have one arm to fight for you,
One arm to crush you to my rough breast,
One arm to break men for you.
It was to shield you from the Khargis
That I drag this stump in the long days.
It has been so with my women;
They would have made you a toy for heat.
After their chief with his axe once swinging
Cut my left arm, that, severed, bloody, and dead,
Yet struggled on the ground trying to guard you,
I have had pain for long in my arm that's lost.
Since the silk nets of your grape-lustrous eyes
Ensnared this heart that did not try to guard,
Ever I have a great pain in my heart that's lost.
You do not want me, Zohrah.
Kazack poem of the Chief Gahuan-Beyg (1850-1885).
Sonet 21
by Michael Drayton

You cannot loue my pretty hart, and why?
There was a time, you told me that you would,
But now againe you will the same deny,
If it might please you, would to God you could;
What will you hate? nay, that you will not neither,
Nor loue, nor hate, how then? what will you do,
What will you keepe a meane then betwixt eyther?
Or will you loue me, and yet hate me to?
Yet serues not this, what next, what other shift?
You will, and will not, what a coyle is heere,
I see your craft, now I perceaue your drift,
And all this while, I was mistaken there.
Your loue and hate is this, I now doe proue you,
You loue in hate, by hate to make me loue you.
Power.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

You cannot put a fire out;
A thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a fan
Upon the slowest night.
You cannot fold a flood
And put it in a drawer, --
Because the winds would find it out,
And tell your cedar floor.
You Felons On Trial In Courts
by Walt Whitman

You felons on trial in courts; 
You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins, chain'd and hand-cuff'd with iron; 
Who am I, too, that I am not on trial, or in prison? 
Me, ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain'd with iron, or my ankles with iron? 
You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs, or obscene in your rooms,
Who am I, that I should call you more obscene than myself? 
O culpable! 
I acknowledge, I expos'! 
(O admirers! praise not me! compliment not me! you make me wince, 
I see what you do not, I know what you do not.)
Inside these breast-bones I lie smutch'd and choked; 
Beneath this face that appears so impassive, hell's tides continually run; 
Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me; 
I walk with delinquents with passionate love; 
I feel I am of them, I belong to those convicts and prostitutes myself,
And henceforth I will not deny them, for how can I deny myself?
To The Countess Of Blessington.
by George Gordon Byron

1.
You have asked for a verse: - the request
In a rhymer 'twere strange to deny;
But my Hippocrene was but my breast,
And my feelings (its fountain) are dry.
2.
Were I now as I was, I had sung
What Lawrence has painted so well;[607]
But the strain would expire on my tongue,
And the theme is too soft for my shell.
3.
I am ashes where once I was fire,
And the bard in my bosom is dead;
What I loved I now merely admire,
And my heart is as grey as my head.
4.
My Life is not dated by years -
There are moments which act as a plough,
And there is not a furrow appears
But is deep in my soul as my brow.
5.
Let the young and the brilliant aspire
To sing what I gaze on in vain;
For Sorrow has torn from my lyre
The string which was worthy the strain.
[First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 635, 636.]
The Other Woman.
by Madison Julius Cawein

You have shut me out from your tears and grief
Over the man laid low and hoary.
Listen to me now: I am no thief!
You have shut me out from your tears and grief,
Listen to me, I will tell my story.
The love of a man is transitory.
What do you know of his past? the years
He gave to another his manhood's glory?
The love of a man is transitory.
Listen to me now: open your ears.
Over the dead have done with tears!
Over the man who loved to madness
Me the woman you met with sneers,
Over the dead have done with tears!
Me the woman so sunk in badness.
He loved me ever, and that is gladness!
There by the dead now tell her so;
There by the dead where she bows in sadness.
He loved me ever, and that is gladness!
Mine the gladness and hers the woe.
The best of his life was mine. Now go,
Tell her this that her pride may perish,
Her with his name, his wife, you know!
The best of his life was mine. Now go,
Tell her this so she cease to cherish.
Bury him then with pomp and flourish!
Bury him now without my kiss!
Here is a thing for your hearts to nourish,
Bury him then with pomp and flourish!
Bury him now I have told you this.
Lines On A Typewriter.
by James McIntyre

Having received a letter from a gentleman glorying in his typewriter we replied as follows:
You glory in your typewriter,
And its virtues you rehearse,
But we prefer the old inditer,
For to write either prose or verse.
And let each man work his will,
But never never do abuse
The ancient and glorious quill
From the wing of a fine old goose.
Whistler, The
by Unknown

"You have heard," said a youth to his sweetheart, who stood
While he sat on a corn-sheaf, at daylight's decline,
"You have heard of the Danish boy's whistle of wood;
I wish that the Danish boy's whistle were mine!"
"And what would you do with it? tell me," she said,
While an arch smile play'd over her beautiful face.
"I would blow it," he answered, "and then my fair maid
Would fly to my side, and would there take her place."
"Is that all you wish for? Why, that may be yours
Without any magic," the fair maiden cried;
"A favour so slight one's good-nature secures;"
And she playfully seated herself by his side.
"I would blow it again," said the youth; "and the charm
Would work so, that not even modesty's check
Would be able to keep from my neck your white arm."
She smiled, and she laid her white arm round his neck.
"Yet once more I would blow, and the music divine
Would bring me a third time an exquisite bliss
You would lay your fair cheek to this brown one of mine
And your lips, stealing past it, would give me a kiss."
The maiden laughed out in her innocent glee,
"What a fool of yourself with the whistle you'd make!
For only consider how silly 'twould be
To sit there and whistle for what you might take."
Wincing
by Paul Cameron Brown

You can't go back,
to Love, a home.
memories of Pearl Bailey
even a scatterbrained job
curled like a Morning Glory
about the ribs of day.
Everyone repeats not going back.
A sly ripple on the cape of wind,
peaking with
absentminded glee,
into that bulge from within
your past, beyond your left arm,
called "before".
Dismissing angels, refusing to
court hardship, not to mention
wincing that comes from attaching
the mouth too fiercely on privale parts
and all flasks with firm memory;
wheeling drunkenly on her thought.
her sayings, sculling backwaters of your mind
with little fingers each repeating
sane warnings.
O Glorious France
by Edgar Lee Masters

You have become a forge of snow white fire,
A crucible of molten steel, O France!
Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn
And fade in light for you, O glorious France!
They pass through meteor changes with a song
Which to all islands and all continents
Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,
Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child
Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power,
Nor many days spent in a chosen work,
Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme
Of daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths
Or seventy years.
These are not all of life,
O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunder
Of cannon stand in trenches where the dead
Clog the ensanguin'd ice. But life to these
Prophetic and enraptured souls is vision,
And the keen ecstasy of fated strife,
And divination of the loss as gain,
And reading mysteries with brightened eyes
In fiery shock and dazzling pain before
The orient splendor of the face of Death,
As a great light beside a shadowy sea;
And in a high will's strenuous exercise,
Where the warmed spirit finds its fullest strength
And is no more afraid. And in the stroke
Of azure lightning when the hidden essence
And shifting meaning of man's spiritual worth
And mystical significance in time
Are instantly distilled to one clear drop
Which mirrors earth and heaven.
This is life
Flaming to heaven in a minute's span
When the breath of battle blows the smoldering spark.
And across these seas
We who cry Peace and treasure life and cling
To cities, happiness, or daily toil
For daily bread, or trail the long routine
Of seventy years, taste not the terrible wine
Whereof you drink, who drain and toss the cup
Empty and ringing by the finished feast;
Or have it shaken from your hand by sight
Of God against the olive woods.
As Joan of Arc amid the apple trees
With sacred joy first heard the voices, then
Obeying plunged at Orleans in a field
Of spears and lived her dream and died in fire,
Thou, France, hast heard the voices and hast lived
The dream and known the meaning of the dream,
And read its riddle: How the soul of man
May to one greatest purpose make itself
A lens of clearness, how it loves the cup
Of deepest truth, and how its bitterest gall
Turns sweet to soul's surrender.
And you say:
Take days for repetition, stretch your hands
For mocked renewal of familiar things:
The beaten path, the chair beside the window,
The crowded street, the task, the accustomed sleep,
And waking to the task, or many springs
Of lifted cloud, blue water, flowering fields - 
The prison house grows close no less, the feast
A place of memory sick for senses dulled
Down to the dusty end where pitiful Time
Grown weary cries Enough!
Letter V. From An Earwig, Deploring The Loss Of All Her Children. (The Bird And Insects' Post-Office.)
by Robert Bloomfield

DEAR AUNT,
You cannot think how distressed I have been, and still am; for, under the bark of a large elm, which, I dare say, has stood there a great while, I had placed my whole family, where they were dry, comfortable, and, as I foolishly thought, secure. But only mark what calamities may fall upon earwigs before they are aware of them! I had just got my family about me, all white, clean, and promising children, when pounce came down that bird they call a woodpecker; when, thrusting his huge beak under the bark where we lay, down went our whole sheltering roof! and my children, poor things, running, as they thought, from danger, were devoured as fast as the destroyer could open his beak and shut it. For my own part, I crept into a crack in the solid tree, where I have thus far escaped; but as this bird can make large holes into solid timber, I am by no means safe.
This calamity is the more heavy, as it carries with it a great disappointment; for very near our habitation was a high wall, the sunny side of which was covered with the most delicious fruits - peaches, apricots, nectarines, & c. - all just then ripening; and I thought of having such a feast with my children as I had never enjoyed in my life.
I am surrounded by woodpeckers, jackdaws, magpies, and other devouring creatures, and think myself very unfortunate. Yet, perhaps, if I could know the situation of some larger creatures - I mean particularly such as would tread me to death if I crossed their path - they may have complaints to make as well as I.
Take care of yourself, my good old aunt, and I shall keep in my hiding-place as long as starvation will permit, And, after all, perhaps the fruit was not so delicious as it looked - I am resolved to think so, just to comfort myself.
Yours, with compliments, as usual.
To Henry Halloran
by Henry Kendall

You know I left my forest home full loth,
And those weird ways I knew so well and long,
Dishevelled with their sloping sidelong growth
Of twisted thorn and kurrajong.
It seems to me, my friend (and this wild thought
Of all wild thoughts, doth chiefly make me bleed),
That in those hills and valleys wonder-fraught,
I loved and lost a noble creed.
A splendid creed! But let me even turn
And hide myself from what I've seen, and try
To fathom certain truths you know, and learn
The Beauty shining in your sky:
Remembering you in ardent autumn nights,
And Stenhouse near you, like a fine stray guest
Of other days, with all his lore of lights
So manifold and manifest!
Then hold me firm. I cannot choose but long
For that which lies and burns beyond my reach,
Suggested in your steadfast, subtle song
And his most marvellous speech!
For now my soul goes drifting back again,
Ay, drifting, drifting, like the silent snow
While scattered sheddings, in a fall of rain,
Revive the dear lost Long Ago!
The time I, loitering by untrodden fens,
Intent upon low-hanging lustrous skies,
Heard mellowed psalms from sounding southern glens
Euroma, dear to dreaming eyes!
And caught seductive tokens of a voice
Half maddened with the dim, delirious themes
Of perfect Love, and the immortal choice
Of starry faces Astral dreams!
That last was yours! And if you sometimes find
An alien darkness on the front of things,
Sing none the less for Life, nor fall behind,
Like me, with trailing, tired wings!
Yea, though the heavy Earth wears sackcloth now
Because she hath the great prophetic grief
Which makes me set my face one way, and bow
And falter for a far belief,
Be faithful yet for all, my brave bright peer,
In that rare light you hold so true and good;
And find me something clearer than the clear
White spaces of Infinitude.
To Poe.
by Edwin C. Ranck

You lived in a land horror-haunted,
And wrote with a pen half-divine;
You drank bitter sorrow, undaunted
And cast precious pearls before swine.
Upon Carthy's Threatening To Translate Pindar (Epigram Against Carthy)
by Jonathan Swift

You have undone Horace, - what should hinder
Thy Muse from falling upon Pindar?
But ere you mount his fiery steed,
Beware, O Bard, how you proceed: - 
For should you give him once the reins,
High up in air he'll turn your brains;
And if you should his fury check,
'Tis ten to one he breaks your neck.
The Tulip Bed At Greeley Square
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

You know that oasis, fresh and fair
In the city desert, as Greeley square?
That bright triangle of scented bloom
That lies surrounded by grime and gloom?
Right in the breast of the seething town
Like a gleaming gem or a wanton's gown?
Ah, wonderful things that tulip bed
Unto my listening soul has said.
Over the rattle and roar of the street
I hear a chorus of voices sweet,
Day and night, when I pass that way,
And these are the things the voices say:
"Here, in the heart of the foolish strife,
We live a simple and natural life.
"Here, in the midst of the clash and din,
We know what it is to be calm within.
"Here, environed by sin and shame,
We do what we can with our pure white flame.
"We do what we can with our bloom and grace,
To make the city a fairer place.
"It is well to be good though the world is vile,
And so through the dust and the smoke we smile,
"We are but atoms in chaos tossed,
Yet never a purpose for truth was lost."
Ah, many a sermon is uttered there
By the bed of blossoms in Greeley square.
And he who listens and hears aright,
Is better equipped for the world's hard fight.
Trouble On The Selection
by Henry Lawson

You lazy boy, you're here at last,
You must be wooden-legged;
Now, are you sure the gate is fast
And all the sliprails pegged
And all the milkers at the yard,
The calves all in the pen?
We don't want Poley's calf to suck
His mother dry again.
And did you mend the broken rail
And make it firm and neat?
I s'pose you want that brindle steer
All night among the wheat.
And if he finds the lucerne patch,
He'll stuff his belly full;
He'll eat till he gets 'blown' on that
And busts like Ryan's bull.
Old Spot is lost? You'll drive me mad,
You will, upon my soul!
She might be in the boggy swamps
Or down a digger's hole.
You needn't talk, you never looked
You'd find her if you'd choose,
Instead of poking 'possum logs
And hunting kangaroos.
How came your boots as wet as muck?
You tried to drown the ants!
Why don't you take your bluchers off,
Good Lord, he's tore his pants!
Your father's coming home to-night;
You'll catch it hot, you'll see.
Now go and wash your filthy face
And come and get your tea.
Gunga Din
by Rudyard Kipling

You may talk o' gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Now in Injia's sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.
He was "Din! Din! Din!
You limpin' lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din!
Hi! Slippy hitherao!
Water, get it! Panee lao!     [Bring water swiftly.]
You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din."
The uniform 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind,
For a piece o' twisty rag
An' a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment 'e could find.
When the sweatin' troop-train lay
In a sidin' through the day,
Where the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows crawl,
We shouted "Harry By!"    [Mr. Atkins's equivalent for "O brother."]
Till our throats were bricky-dry,
Then we wopped 'im 'cause 'e couldn't serve us all.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
You 'eathen, where the mischief 'ave you been?
You put some juldee in it        [Be quick.]
Or I'll marrow you this minute        [Hit you.]
If you don't fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!"
'E would dot an' carry one
Till the longest day was done;
An' 'e didn't seem to know the use o' fear.
If we charged or broke or cut,
You could bet your bloomin' nut,
'E'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear.
With 'is mussick on 'is back,        [Water-skin.]
'E would skip with our attack,
An' watch us till the bugles made "Retire",
An' for all 'is dirty 'ide
'E was white, clear white, inside
When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire!
It was "Din! Din! Din!"
With the bullets kickin' dust-spots on the green.
When the cartridges ran out,
You could hear the front-ranks shout,
"Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!"
I shan't forgit the night
When I dropped be'ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should 'a' been.
I was chokin' mad with thirst,
An' the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din.
'E lifted up my 'ead,
An' he plugged me where I bled,
An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water-green:
It was crawlin' and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I've drunk,
I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen;
'E's chawin' up the ground,
An' 'e's kickin' all around:
For Gawd's sake git the water, Gunga Din!"
'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.
'E put me safe inside,
An' just before 'e died,
"I 'ope you liked your drink", sez Gunga Din.
So I'll meet 'im later on
At the place where 'e is gone,
Where it's always double drill and no canteen.
'E'll be squattin' on the coals
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
Lyman King
by Edgar Lee Masters

You may think, passer-by, that Fate
Is a pit-fall outside of yourself,
Around which you may walk by the use of foresight
And wisdom.
Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men,
As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill,
Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided.
But pass on into life:
In time you shall see Fate approach you
In the shape of your own image in the mirror;
Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth,
And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest,
And you shall know that guest
And read the authentic message of his eyes.
The Imp.
by Richard Hunter

You may call him an imp,
Or a gnome or a sprite;
And whate'er you call him
You are sure to be right.
He is here, he is there,
He will never stay long;
If you think he is caught,
You are sure to be wrong.