DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Programme
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Reader - gentle - if so be
Such still live, and live for me,
Will it please you to be told
What my tenscore pages hold?
Here are verses that in spite
Of myself I needs must write,
Like the wine that oozes first
When the unsqueezed grapes have burst.
Here are angry lines, "too hard!"
Says the soldier, battle-scarred.
Could I smile his scars away
I would blot the bitter lay,
Written with a knitted brow,
Read with placid wonder now.
Throbbed such passion in my heart?
Did his wounds once really smart?
Here are varied strains that sing
All the changes life can bring,
Songs when joyous friends have met,
Songs the mourner's tears have wet.
See the banquet's dead bouquet,
Fair and fragrant in its day;
Do they read the selfsame lines, - 
He that fasts and he that dines?
Year by year, like milestones placed,
Mark the record Friendship traced.
Prisoned in the walls of time
Life has notched itself in rhyme.
As its seasons slid along,
Every year a notch of song,
From the June of long ago,
When the rose was full in blow,
Till the scarlet sage has come
And the cold chrysanthemum.
Read, but not to praise or blame;
Are not all our hearts the same?
For the rest, they take their chance, - 
Some may pay a passing glance;
Others,-well, they served a turn, - 
Wherefore written, would you learn?
Not for glory, not for pelf,
Not, be sure, to please myself,
Not for any meaner ends, - 
Always "by request of friends."
Here's the cousin of a king, - 
Would I do the civil thing?
Here 's the first-born of a queen;
Here 's a slant-eyed Mandarin.
Would I polish off Japan?
Would I greet this famous man,
Prince or Prelate, Sheik or Shah? - 
Figaro gi and Figaro la!
Would I just this once comply? - 
So they teased and teased till I
(Be the truth at once confessed)
Wavered - yielded - did my best.
Turn my pages, - never mind
If you like not all you find;
Think not all the grains are gold
Sacramento's sand-banks hold.
Every kernel has its shell,
Every chime its harshest bell,
Every face its weariest look,
Every shelf its emptiest book,
Every field its leanest sheaf,
Every book its dullest leaf,
Every leaf its weakest line, - 
Shall it not be so with mine?
Best for worst shall make amends,
Find us, keep us, leave us friends
Till, perchance, we meet again.
Benedicite. - Amen!
October 7, 1874.
Epigram On The Late Reform And The Whig Administration
by Thomas Oldham

Reform! reform! cries out the longing nation;
The people hail their own-elected House;
On tiptoe stands the general expectation:
What the grand doings of the Administration?
Lo! from the labouring mountain creeps a mouse!
*     *     *     *     *
Metaphysical Sages
Have writ many pages,
To decide if the Mind
Be Spirit or Matter:
How strange! that in the pages
Of these metaphysical sages
We so seldom can find
Mind, Spirit, or Matter!
The Dawn
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Red of the Dawn!
Screams of a babe in the red-hot palms of a Moloch of Tyre,
Man with his brotherless dinner on man in the tropical wood,
Priests in the name of the Lord passing souls through fire to the fire,
Head-hunters and boats of Dahomey that float upon human blood!
Red of the Dawn!
Godless fury of peoples, and Christless frolic of kings,
And the bolt of war dashing down upon cities and blazing farms,
For Babylon was a child newborn, and Rome was a babe in arms,
And London and Paris and all the rest are as yet but in leading strings.
Dawn not Day,
While scandal is mouthing a bloodless name at her cannibal feast,
And rake-ruined bodies and souls go down in a common wreck,
And the Press of a thousand cities is prized for it smells of the beast,
Or easily violates virgin Truth for a coin or a check.
Dawn not Day!
Is it Shame, so few should have climbed from the dens in the level below,
Men, with a heart and a soul, no slaves of a four-footed will?
But if twenty million of summers are stored in the sunlight still,
We are far from the noon of man, there is time for the race to grow.
Red of the Dawn!
Is it turning a fainter red? So be it, but when shall we lay
The Ghost of the Brute that is walking and haunting us yet, and be free?
In a hundred, a thousand winters? Ah, what will our children be?
The men of a hundred thousand, a million summers away?
On A Fart - Let In The House Of Commons
by Matthew Prior

Reader, I was born, and cried;
I crack'd, I smelt, and so I died.
Like Julius Caesar's was my death,
Who in the senate lost his breath.
Much alike entomb'd does lie
The noble Romulus and I:
And when I died, like Flora fair,
I left the commonwealth my heir.
Rejoicings After The Battle Of Inkerman.*
by Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

* Won by the "Allies" during the Crimean war though with great losses in killed and wounded.
Rejoice! the fearful day is o'er
For the victors and the slain;
Our cannon proclaim from shore to shore,
The Allies have won again!
Let our joy bells ring out music clear,
The gayest they've ever pealed;
Let bonfires flames the dark night cheer,
We are masters of the field
But list! dost hear that mournful wail
'Bove the joyous revelry?
Rising from hillside and lowly vale, - 
Say, what can its meaning be?
From Erin's sunny emerald shore
It trembles upon the gale,
And rises with the torrent's roar
From the birth place of the Gael.
Fair Albion, too, in every spot
Of thy land of promise wide
Is heard that dirge for the mournful lot
Of thy soldier sons - thy pride.
Them shall no bugle at dawn of day
Arouse from their quiet sleep,
Them shall no charger with shrill neigh
Bear off to the hillside steep.
'Mid the dead and dying stretched unknown
On Crimea's blood stained earth,
Lie the household gods of many a home,
The lights of many a hearth:
While, vainly woman's weeping voice
Calls on each well loved one - 
The tender wife on her girlhoods choice,
The fond mother on her son.
And not only from the peasant's cot
Comes that mournful, dirge like cry,
'Tis heard - unto all a common lot - 
Where dwell the great and high;
And tears fall fast for the last lost child
Of many a noble race,
Who has perished in that struggle wild,
And left none to fill his place.
Yet if above our laurels bright
Falls many a bitter tear,
Still, still, may we find a gleam of light,
Our stricken hearts to cheer;
They have fallen in the country's cause
That their youth and manhood nursed,
They have fallen true to honor's laws,
In a sacred strife and just.
Rejoice
by George MacDonald

"Rejoice," said the Sun; "I will make thee gay
With glory and gladness and holiday;
I am dumb, O man, and I need thy voice!"
But man would not rejoice.
"Rejoice in thyself," said he, "O Sun,
For thy daily course is a lordly one;
In thy lofty place rejoice if thou can:
For me, I am only a man."
"Rejoice," said the Wind; "I am free and strong,
And will wake in thy heart an ancient song;
Hear the roaring woods, my organ noise!"
But man would not rejoice.
"Rejoice, O Wind, in thy strength," said he,
"For thou fulfillest thy destiny;
Shake the forest, the faint flowers fan;
For me, I am only a man."
"Rejoice," said the Night, "with moon and star,
For the Sun and the Wind are gone afar;
I am here with rest and dreaming choice!"
But man would not rejoice;
For he said--"What is rest to me, I pray,
Whose labour leads to no gladsome day?
He only can dream who has hope behind:
Alas for me and my kind!"
Then a voice that came not from moon or star,
From the sun, or the wind that roved afar,
Said, "Man, I am with thee--hear my voice!"
And man said, "I rejoice."
Patriotic Ode.
by James McIntyre

Written at the time of the last excitement on the Niagara Frontier.
Rejoice, rejoice, we all do stand,
United in one mighty band;
No traitors in our land we find,
All one in heart, all one in mind;
Resolute in their opinion,
None shall conquer our Dominion;
For every man with dauntless mien
Will rally round our flag and Queen.
The Drudge
by John Charles McNeill

Repose upon her soulless face,
Dig the grave and leave her;
But breathe a prayer that, in his grace,
He who so loved this toiling race
To endless rest receive her.
Oh, can it be the gates ajar
Wait not her humble quest,
Whose life was but a patient war
Against the death that stalked from far
With neither haste nor rest;
To whom were sun and moon and cloud,
The streamlet's pebbly coil,
The transient, May-bound, feathered crowd,
The storm's frank fury, thunder-browed,
But witness of her toil;
Whose weary feet knew not the bliss
Of dance by jocund reed;
Who never dallied at a kiss!
If heaven refuses her, life is
A tragedy indeed!
Upon The Late General Fast
by William Wordsworth

Reluctant call it was; the rite delayed;
And in the Senate some there were who doffed
The last of their humanity, and scoffed
At providential judgments, undismayed
By their own daring. But the People prayed
As with one voice; their flinty heart grew soft
With penitential sorrow, and aloft
Their spirit mounted, crying, "God us aid!"
Oh that with aspirations more intense,
Chastised by self-abasement more profound,
This People, once so happy, so renowned
For liberty, would seek from God defense
Against far heavier ill, the pestilence
Of revolution, impiously unbound!
To .......
by Thomas Moore

Remember him thou leavest behind,
Whose heart is warmly bound to thee,
Close as the tenderest links can bind
A heart as warm as heart can be.
Oh! I had long in freedom roved,
Though many seemed my soul to snare;
'Twas passion when I thought I loved,
'Twas fancy when I thought them fair.
Even she, my muse's early theme,
Beguiled me only while she warmed;
Twas young desire that fed the dream,
And reason broke what passion formed.
But thou-ah! better had it been
If I had still in freedom roved,
If I had ne'er thy beauties seen,
For then I never should have loved.
Then all the pain which lovers feel
Had never to this heart been known;
But then, the joys that lovers steal,
Should they have ever been my own?
Oh! trust me, when I swear thee this,
Dearest! the pain of loving thee,
The very pain is sweeter bliss
Than passion's wildest ecstasy.
That little cage I would hot part,
In which my soul is prisoned now,
For the most light and winged heart
That wantons on the passing vow.
Still, my beloved! still keep in mind,
However far removed from me,
That there is one thou leavest behind,
Whose heart respires for only thee!
And though ungenial ties have bound
Thy fate unto another's care,
That arm, which clasps thy bosom round,
Cannot confine the heart that's there.
No, no! that heart is only mine
By ties all other ties above,
For I have wed it at a shrine
Where we have had no priest but Love.
Memory
by Joseph Horatio Chant

Remembrance of the past will joy impart
If in that past the conscience was supreme;
But if the soul be made an auction mart,
And thoughts and deeds be sold for what you deem
The price of virtue, then the called-up past
Will be like hooks of steel to hold thee fast.
Or like the stings those nettles left behind
Which I so fondly handled in my play;
I deemed the friend who warned me true and kind,
And in great haste I threw the weeds away,
But soon the burning flesh reminded me
'Twere safer far from all such weeds to flee.
The cloud that flitted o'er the saintly brow
Which now a crown of life so well adorns,
When you by ways and means you know not now,
Did what your soul with holy horror scorns,
Will stay with you long as you live on earth,
And be like gall to spoil your cup of mirth.
The smiles of those we bless are lasting, too;
We feel their cheering glow each cloudy day.
As falls on wilted flower the healing dew,
So they refresh, and chase our gloom away;
We feel though weak we have not lived in vain,
And know God smiles tho' we cannot explain.
The footprints on the rock time wears away;
The rock itself soon crumbles into dust;
But memories of the past have come to stay,
Nor flood, nor fire, nor the consuming rust,
Can ever from the soul the past erase.
Guard thou thy life, O man, with heavenly grace.
Remember - Sonnet
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
A Democratic Hymn.
by Eugene Field

Republicans of differing views
Are pro or con protection;
If that's the issue they would choose,
Why, we have no objection.
The issue we propose concerns
Our hearts and homes more nearly:
A wife to whom the nation turns
And venerates so dearly.
So, confident of what shall be,
Our gallant host advances,
Giving three cheers for Grover C.
And three times three for Frances!
So gentle is that honored dame,
And fair beyond all telling,
The very mention of her name
Sets every breast to swelling.
She wears no mortal crown of gold--
No courtiers fawn around her--
But with their love young hearts and old
In loyalty have crowned her--
And so with Grover and his bride
We're proud to take our chances,
And it's three times three for the twain give we--
But particularly for Frances!
Remain!
by Walter Savage Landor

Remain, ah not in youth alone!
Tho' youth, where you are, long will stay,
But when my summer days are gone,
And my autumnal haste away.
'Can I be always by your side?'
No; but the hours you can, you must,
Nor rise at Death's approaching stride,
Nor go when dust is gone to dust.
Change
by Sara Teasdale

Remember me as I was then;
Turn from me now, but always see
The laughing shadowy girl who stood
At midnight by the flowering tree,
With eyes that love had made as bright
As the trembling stars of the summer night.
Turn from me now, but always hear
The muted laughter in the dew
Of that one year of youth we had,
The only youth we ever knew,
Turn from me now, or you will see
What other years have done to me.
No Despite To The Dead.
by Robert Herrick

Reproach we may the living, not the dead:
'Tis cowardice to bite the buried.
The Fortune-Tellers (Prose Fable)
by Jean de La Fontaine

Reputations may be made by the merest chances, and yet reputations control the fashions. That is a little prologue that would fit the case of all sorts of people. Everywhere around one sees prejudices, scheming, and obtuseness; but little or no justice. Nothing can be done to stem this torrent of evil. It must run its course. It always has been and always will be.
A woman in Paris once made it her profession to tell fortunes. She became very popular and had great success. Did anybody lose a bit of finery; had any one a sweetheart; had any wife a husband she was tired of; any husband a jealous wife, to the prophetess such would run simply to be told the thing that it was comforting to hear.
The stock-in-trade of this fortune-teller consisted merely of a convincing manner, a few words of scientific jargon, a great deal of impudence, and much good luck. All these things together so impressed the people that as often as not they would cry, "Miraculous!" In short, although the woman's ignorance was quite twenty-three carat she passed for a veritable oracle.
Notwithstanding the fact that this oracle only lived in a garret, she found so many ready to pay her well for her shams that she soon grew rich enough to improve the position of her husband, to rent an office, and buy a house.
The garret being left empty was shortly tenanted by another woman to whom all the town - women, girls, valets, fine gentlemen - everybody in fact swarmed, as before, to consult their destiny. The former tenant had built up such a reputation that the garret was still a sibyl's den, in spite of the fact that quite a different creature dwelt in it. "I tell fortunes? Surely you're joking! Why, gentlemen, I cannot read, and as for writing, I never learnt more than to make my mark." But these disclaimers were useless. People insisted on having their fortunes told, and she had to do it. In consequence, she put by plenty of money, being able to earn, in spite of herself, quite as much as two lawyers could. The poverty of her home was a help rather than a hindrance. Four broken chairs and a broom-handle savoured of a witch's frolic.
If this woman had told the truth in a room well-furnished she would have been scorned. The fashion for a garret had set in, and garret it must be.
In her new chambers the first fortune-teller waited in vain; for it was the outward sign alone that brought customers, and the sign was poverty.
I have seen in a palace a robe worn awry win much distinction and success, such crowds of followers and adherents did it draw. You may well ask me why!
To Mr. Thomas Southern, On His Birth Day
by Alexander Pope

Resign'd to live, prepar'd to die,
With not one sin, but poetry,
This day Tom's fair account has run
(Without a blot) to eighty-one.
Kind Boyle, before his poet, lays
A table, with a cloth of bays;
And Ireland, mother of sweet singers,
Presents her harp still to his fingers.
The feast, his tow'ring genius marks
In yonder wild goose and the larks!
The mushrooms shew his wit was sudden!
And for his judgement, lo a pudden!
Roast beef, tho' old, proclaims him stout,
And grace, altho' a bard, devout.
May Tom, whom heav'n send down to raise
The price of prologues and of plays,
He ev'ry birth-day more a winner,
Digest his thirty thousandth dinner;
Walk to his grave without reproach,
And scorn a rascal and a coach.
A Carcass
by Charles Baudelaire

Remember, my love, the object we saw
That beautiful morning in June:
By a bend in the path a carcass reclined
On a bed sown with pebbles and stones;
Her legs were spread out like a lecherous whore,
Sweating out poisonous fumes,
Who opened in slick invitational style
Her stinking and festering womb.
The sun on this rottenness focused its rays
To cook the cadaver till done,
And render to Nature a hundredfold gift
Of all she'd united in one.
And the sky cast an eye on this marvellous meat
As over the flowers in bloom.
The stench was so wretched that there on the grass
You nearly collapsed in a swoon.
The flies buzzed and droned on these bowels of filth
Where an army of maggots arose,
Which flowed with a liquid and thickening stream
On the animate rags of her clothes.
And it rose and it fell, and pulsed like a wave,
Rushing and bubbling with health.
One could say that this carcass, blown with vague breath,
Lived in increasing itself.
And this whole teeming world made a musical sound
Like babbling brooks and the breeze,
Or the grain that a man with a winnowing-fan
Turns with a rhythmical ease.
The shapes wore away as if only a dream
Like a sketch that is left on the page
Which the artist forgot and can only complete
On the canvas, with memory's aid.
From back in the rocks, a pitiful bitch
Eyed us with angry distaste,
Awaiting the moment to snatch from the bones
The morsel she'd dropped in her haste.
And you, in your turn, will be rotten as this:
Horrible, filthy, undone,
O sun of my nature and star of my eyes,
My passion, my angel in one!
Yes, such will you be, o regent of grace,
After the rites have been read,
Under the weeds, under blossoming grass
As you moulder with bones of the dead.
Ah then, o my beauty, explain to the worms
Who cherish your body so tine,
That I am the keeper for corpses of love
Of the form, and the essence divine!
Remembrance.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Remembrance has a rear and front, --
'T is something like a house;
It has a garret also
For refuse and the mouse,
Besides, the deepest cellar
That ever mason hewed;
Look to it, by its fathoms
Ourselves be not pursued.
November.
by Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow

Remember the poor, in the dark chilly day,
When November's loud winds are fierce blowing;
Remember the poor, at thy plentiful board,
When the fire on thy bright hearth is glowing.
Remember the poor in yon damp dismal shed,
Without food, fire, or clothing to warm them;
And not like the Priest or the Levite pass by,
But Samaritan like stop and cheer them.
Remember the slave, the poor down trodden slave,
And do all in thy power to relieve him;
And when from oppression he strives to be free,
Do thou open thy gate to receive him.
For what saith the Lord is thy duty to such,
"To his master thou shalt not return him,"[3]
But give him a home near thy own if he likes,
And be sure not to vex or oppress him.
When parents or children or brethren you meet,
In our happy New England and free,
Then remember the slave, the heart broken slave,
For thy brother, thy brother is he.
Remember him also when prayer for thyself,
In affliction's dark hour doth ascend;
And when crying to God the father of all,
Let his wants with thine own kindly blend.
And at the last day, when the rich and the poor
Shall alike by the Judge be regarded;
When master and slave shall appear before God,
And a sentence impartial awarded, - 
The cup of cold water He will not forget,
But with other good acts bring to mind;
"When naked ye clothed me, when hungry ye fed,"
Will be uttered in accents most kind.
But when, blessed Saviour, ah when was the time,
That we fed, clothed, or visited thee?
"Such acts," He replies, "to my poor brethren done,
I consider as done unto me."
Nov. 1862.
Remember The Time. (The Castilian Maid.)
by Thomas Moore

Remember the time, in La Mancha's shades,
When our moments so blissfully flew;
When you called me the flower of Castilian maids,
And I blushed to be called so by you;
When I taught you to warble the gay seguadille.
And to dance to the light castanet;
Oh, never, dear youth, let you roam where you will,
The delight of those moments forget.
They tell me, you lovers from Erin's green isle,
Every hour a new passion can feel;
And that soon, in the light of some lovelier smile.
You'll forget the poor maid of Castile.
But they know not how brave in battle you are,
Or they never could think you would rove;
For 'tis always the spirit most gallant in war
That is fondest and truest in Love.
Lines Written On A Window[1] In The Episcopal Palace At Kilmore
by Jonathan Swift

Resolve me this, ye happy dead,
Who've lain some hundred years in bed,
From every persecution free
That in this wretched life we see;
Would ye resume a second birth,
And choose once more to live on earth?
Remorse.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Remorse is memory awake,
Her companies astir, --
A presence of departed acts
At window and at door.
It's past set down before the soul,
And lighted with a match,
Perusal to facilitate
Of its condensed despatch.
Remorse is cureless, -- the disease
Not even God can heal;
For 't is his institution, --
The complement of hell.
Fragment
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Repeat that, repeat,
Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delight- fully sweet,
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound
Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:
The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound.
The Distant Drum
by Henry Lawson

Republicans! the time is coming!
Listen to the distant drumming!
Hearken to the whispers humming
In the troubled atmosphere.
Ye are born to do the toiling;
On and on, and no recoiling!
To the fighting, to the foiling
Of the wrongs that wrong us here.
Let the Loyal laugh and jeer you;
Let them in derision cheer you.
Still the cowards show they fear you
By their deeds and all they say.
Let Britannia rule for ever
O'er the wave; but never, never!
Rule a land great oceans sever
Fifteen thousand miles away.
Stained by persecution's fires
Thinned of homes and thick with spires,
They love the land that bred their sires,
Ye the Land that breeds your sons.
And your sons shall have the reaping,
And your sons shall have the keeping
Of your honour while you're sleeping,
Freedom's vanguard, in your graves.