DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Song Of The Federation
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

As the nations sat together, grimly waiting,
The fierce and ancient nations battle-scarred,
Grown grey in their lusting and their hating,
Ever armed and ever ready keeping guard,
Through the tumult of their warlike preparation
And the half-stilled clamour of the drums
Came a voice crying, "Lo, a new-made Nation,
To her place in the sisterhood she comes!"
And she came. She was beautiful as morning,
With the bloom of the roses on her mouth,
Like a young queen lavishly adorning
Her claims with the splendours of the South.
And the fierce old nations, looking on her,
Said, "Nay, surely she were quickly overthrown;
Hath she strength for the burden laid upon her,
Hath she power to protect and guard her own?"
Then she spoke, and her voice was clear and ringing
In the ears of the nations old and grey,
Saying, "Hark, and ye shall hear my children singing
Their war-song in countries far away.
They are strangers to the tumult of the battle,
They are few, but their hearts are very strong,
'Twas but yesterday they called unto the cattle,
But they now sing Australia's marching song."
SONG OF THE AUSTRALIANS IN ACTION
For the honour of Australia, our Mother,
Side by side with our kin from over sea,
We have fought and we have tested one another,
And enrolled among the brotherhood are we.
There was never post of danger but we sought it
In the fighting through the fire, and through the flood
There was never prize so costly but we bought it,
Though we paid for its purchase with our blood.
Was there any road too rough for us to travel?
Was there any path too far for us to tread?
You can track us by the blood drops on the gravel
On the roads that we milestoned with our dead!
And for you. O our young and anxious mother,
O'er your great gains keeping watch and ward,
Neither fearing nor despising any other,
We will hold your possessions with the sword.
*             *             *             *             *             *             *
Then they passed to the place of world-long sleeping,
The grey-clad figures with their dead,
To the sound of their women softly weeping
And the Dead March moaning at their head:
And the Nations, as the grim procession ended,
Whispered, "Child, thou has seen the price we pay;
From War may we ever be defended,
Kneel thee down, new-made Sister, Let us Pray!"
The Moon To The Sun
by Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell

As the full moon shining there
To the sun that lighteth her
Am I unto thee for ever,
O my secret glory-giver!
O my light, I am dark but fair,
Black but fair.
Shine, Earth loves thee!    And then shine
And be loved through thoughts of mine.
All thy secrets that I treasure
I translate them at my pleasure.
I am crowned with glory of thine.
Thine, not thine.
I make pensive thy delight,
And thy strong gold silver-white.
Though all beauty of nine thou makest,
Yet to earth which thou forsakest
I have made thee fair all night,
Day all night.
Captivity--Mary Queen Of Scots
by William Wordsworth

"As the cold aspect of a sunless way
Strikes through the Traveller's frame with deadlier chill,
Oft as appears a grove, or obvious hill,
Glistening with unparticipated ray,
Or shining slope where he must never stray;
So joys, remembered without wish or will
Sharpen the keenest edge of present ill,
On the crushed heart a heavier burthen lay.
Just Heaven, contract the compass of my mind
To fit proportion with my altered state!
Quench those felicities whose light I find
Reflected in my bosom all too late!
O be my spirit, like my thraldom, strait;
And, like mine eyes that stream with sorrow, blind!"
Another. (Virgin Mary)
by Robert Herrick

As sunbeams pierce the glass, and streaming in,
No crack or schism leave i' th' subtle skin:
So the Divine Hand worked and brake no thread,
But, in a mother, kept a maidenhead.
The Turkey, Peacock, And Goose.
by John Gay

As specks appear on fields of snow,
So blemishes on beauty show.
A peacock fed in a farm-yard
Where all the poultry eyed him hard - 
They looked on him with evil eye,
And mocked his sumptuous pageantry:
Proud of the glories he inherited,
He sought the praises they well merited.
Then, to surprise their dazzled sight,
He spread his glories to the light.
His glories spread, no sooner seen
Than rose their malice and their spleen.
"Behold his insolence and pride - 
His haughtiness!" the turkey cried.
"He trusts in feathers; but within
They serve to hide his negro skin."
"What hideous legs!" exclaimed the goose;
"The tail to hide them were of use.
And hearken to his voice: it howls
Enough to frighten midnight owls."
"Yes, they are blemishes, I own,"
Replied the peacock; "harsh the tone
Is of my voice - no symmetry
In my poor legs; yet had your eye
Been pleased to mark my radiant train,
You might have spared detraction's vein.
For if these shanks which you traduce
Belonged to turkey or to goose,
Or had the voice still harsher been,
They had not been remarked or seen;
But Envy, unto beauties blind,
Seeks blemishes to soothe her mind."
So have we, in the midnight scene,
Seen purity with face serene
Awake the clamour of detraction
From jaundiced Envy's yellow faction.
Hunting-Song Of The Seeonee Pack
by Rudyard Kipling

As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled,
Once, twice and again!
And a doe leaped up, and a doe leaped up
From the pond in the wood where the wild deer sup.
This I, scouting alone, beheld,
Once, twice, and again!
As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled,
Once, twice and again!
And a wolf stole back, and a wolf stole back
To carry the word to the waiting Pack,
And we sought and we found and we bayed on his track
Once, twice and again!
As the dawn was breaking the Wolf-Pack yelled
Once, twice and again!
Feet in the jungle that leave no mark!
Eyes that can see in the dark, the dark!
Tongue, give tongue to it! Hark! O Hark!
Once, twice and again!
His spots are the joy of the Leopard: his horns are the Buffalo's pride,
Be clean, for the strength of the hunter is known by the gloss of his hide.
If ye find that the bullock can toss you, or the heavy-browed Sambhur can gore;
Ye need not stop work to inform us; we knew it ten seasons before.
Oppress not the cubs of the stranger, but hail them as Sister and Brother,
For though they are little and fubsy, it may be the Bear is their mother.
"There is none like to me!" says the Cub in the pride of his earliest kill;
But the Jungle is large and the Cub he is small. Let him think and be still.
The Chameleon
by Matthew Prior

As the Chameleon, who is known
To have no colours of his own,
But borrows from his neighbour's hue
His white or black, his green or blue,
And struts as much in ready light,
Which credit gives him upon sight,
As if the rainbow were entail
Settled on him and his heirs-male;
So the young 'squire, when first he comes
From country school to Will's or Tom's,
And equally in truth is fit
To be a statesman or a wit,
Without one notion of his own,
He saunters wildly up and down,
Till some acquaintance good or bad,
Takes notice of a staring lad,
Admits him in among the gang;
They jest, reply, dispute, harangue;
He acts and talks as they befriend him,
Smear'd with the colours which they lend him.
Thus merely as his fortune chances
His merit or his vice advances.
If haply the sect pursues
That read and comment upon news,
He takes up their mysterious face;
He drinks his coffee without lace:
This week his mimic tongue runs o'er
What they had said the week before;
His wisdom sets all Europe right,
And teaches Marlborough when to fight.
Or if it be his fate to meet
With folks who have more wealth than wit,
He loves cheap Port and double bub,
And settles in the Humdrum club:
He learns how stocks will fall or rise;
Holds poverty the greatest vice;
Thinks wit the bane of conversation,
And says that learning spoils a nation.
But if at first he minds his hits,
And drinks Champaigne among the wits,
Five deep he toasts the towering lasses,
Repeats yon verse wrote on glasses:
Is in the chair, prescribes the law,
And lies with those he never saw.
Sleep's Treachery
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

As the grey twilight, tiptoed down the deep
And shadowy valley, to the day's dark end,
She whom I thought my ever-faithful friend,
Fair-browed, calm-eyed and mother-bosomed Sleep,
Met me with smiles.    'Poor longing heart, I keep
Sweet joy for you,' she murmured.    'I will send
One whom you love, with your own soul to blend
In visions, as the night hours onward creep.'
I trusted her; and watched by starry beams,
I slumbered soundly, free from all alarms.
Then not my love, but one long banished came,
Led by false Sleep, down secret stairs of dreams
And clasped me, unresisting in fond arms.
Oh, treacherous sleep - to sell me to such shame!
Constantinople - Yanghin Var*
by Victoria Mary Sackville-West

As the baying of wolves from afar,
Borne on the wind from the Golden Horn
A cry in the distance, long-drawn,
"Yanghin var! yanghin var!"
Suddenly waking the silent night,
Suddenly breaking the sleeping calm,
The long, far, wailing alarm,
And the watch-tower startles a warning light.
As a torch passed from hand to hand,
As a beacon springing from hill to hill,
The cry draws nearer though distant still,
And the watch throws it on from stand to stand,
And the voices rise as a tempest far,
As the swell of waves on a rocky shore,
Each rumbles louder than before,
"Yanghin var! yanghin var!"
And as the angel's unpausing feet,
The angel bearing the wrath of the Lord,
The angel bearing the flaming sword,
The voice passes onward below in the street.
Faintly it travels again from afar,
And as an echo of terror past
The wind from the Bosphorus bears the last
Yanghin var. ...
* Fire!
Nursery Rhyme. XCIX. Proverbs.
by Unknown

As the days grow longer,
The storms grow stronger.
The Gladiolas.
by Madison Julius Cawein

As tall as the lily, as tall as the rose,
And almost as tall as the hollyhocks,
Ranked breast to breast in sentinel rows
Stand the gladiola stocks.
And some are red as the humming-bird's blood
And some are pied as the butterfly race,
And each is shaped like a velvet hood
Gold-lined with delicate lace.
For you know the goblins that come like musk
To tumble and romp in the flowers' laps,
When you see big fire-fly eyes in the dusk,
Hang there their goblin caps.
They'll None Of 'Em Be Missed.
by William Schwenck Gilbert

As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list I've got a little list
Of social offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed who never would be missed!
There's the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs 
All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs 
All children who are up in dates, and floor you with 'em flat 
All persons who in shaking hands, shake hands with you like that 
And all third persons who on spoiling tete-a-tetes insist 
They'd none of 'em be missed they'd none of 'em be missed!
There's the nigger serenader, and the others of his race,
And the piano organist I've got him on the list!
And the people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face,
They never would be missed they never would be missed!
Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,
All centuries but this, and every country but his own;
And the lady from the provinces, who dresses like a guy,
And who doesn't think she waltzes, but would rather like to try;
And that singular anomaly, the lady novelist 
I don't think she'd be missed I'm sure she'd not be missed!
And that Nisi Prius nuisance, who just now is rather rife,
The Judicial humorist I've got him on the list!
All funny fellows, comic men, and clowns of private life 
They'd none of 'em be missed they'd none of them be missed.
And apologetic statesmen of the compromising kind,
Such as What-d'ye-call-him Thing'em-Bob, and likewise Never-mind,
And 'St 'st 'st and What's-his-name, and also You-know-who 
(The task of filling up the blanks I'd rather leave to you!)
But it really doesn't matter whom you put upon the list,
For they'd none of 'em be missed they'd none of 'em be missed!
Sonnet XII.
by Fernando Ant'nio Nogueira Pessoa

As the lone, frighted user of a night-road
Suddenly turns round, nothing to detect,
Yet on his fear's sense keepeth still the load
Of that brink-nothing he doth but suspect;
And the cold terror moves to him more near
Of something that from nothing casts a spell,
That, when he moves, to fright more is not there,
And's only visible when invisible
So I upon the world turn round in thought,
And nothing viewing do no courage take,
But my more terror, from no seen cause got,
To that felt corporate emptiness forsake,
And draw my sense of mystery's horror from
Seeing no mystery's mystery alone.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - XVII - Places Of Worship
by William Wordsworth

As star that shines dependent upon star
Is to the sky while we look up and love;
As to the deep fair ships which though they move
Seem fixed, to eyes that watch them from afar;
As to the sandy desert fountains are,
With palm-groves shaded at wide intervals,
Whose fruit around the sun-burnt Native falls
Of roving tired or desultory war
Such to this British Isle her Christian Fanes,
Each linked to each for kindred services;
Her Spires, her Steeple-towers with glittering vanes
Far-kenned, her Chapels lurking among trees,
Where a few villagers on bended knees
Find solace which a busy world disdains.
Arms And The Man. - The Beginning Of The End.
by James Barron Hope

As some spent gladiator, struck by Death,
Whose reeling vision scarce a foe defines,
For one last effort gathers all his breath,
England draws in her lines.
Her blood-red flag floats out full fair, but flows
O'er crumbling bastions, in fictitious state:
Who stands a siege Cornwallis full well knows,
Plays at a game with Fate.
Siege means surrender at the bitter end,
From Ilium downward such the sword-made rule,
With few exceptions, few indeed amend
This law in any school!
The student who for these has ever sought
'Mid his exceptions C'sar counts as one,
Besieger and besieged he, victor, fought
Under a Gallic sun.
For Vircinget'rex failed, but at the wall:
He strove and failed gilded by Glory's rays
So that true soldiership describes that Gaul
In terms of honest praise.
But there was not a Julius in the lines
Round which our Chief the fatal leaguer drew,
The noble Earl, though valiant, never shines
'Mid War's majestic few.
By hopes and fears in agonies long tossed - 
[Clinton hard fixed in method's rigid groove]
The British Leader saw the game was lost;
But, still, it had one move!
Could he attain yon spreading Gloucester shore;
Could he and his cross York's majestic tide;
He, then, might laugh to hear the cannon roar
And far for safety ride.
Bold was the plan! and generous Light Horse Lee
Gives it full measure of unstinted praise;
But PROVIDENCE declared this should not be
In its own wondrous ways.
Loud roared the storm! The rattling thunders rang!
Against the blast his rowers could not row!
White waves like hoary-headed Homers sang
Hexameters of woe.
Then came the time to end the mighty Play,
To drop the curtain and to quench the lamps,
And soon the story took its jocund way
Through all the Allied camps.
"Measure for measure" then was righteous law,
The cup of Lincoln, bowed Cornwallis pressed,
And as he drank the wondering Nations saw
A sunrise - in the West!
Death fell upon the Royal cause that day,
The King stood like Swift's oak with blighted crest,
Headpiece and Crown both cleft he drooped away:
Hic jacet - tells the rest!
And patriots stood where traitors late were jeered,
Transformed from rebels into freemen bold,
What seemed Membrino's helmet now appeared
A real casque of gold!
St. Jerome On Earth.
by Thomas Moore

FIRST VISIT.
1832.
As St. Jerome who died some ages ago,
Was sitting one day in the shades below,
"I've heard much of English bishops," quoth he,
"And shall now take a trip to earth to see
"How far they agree in their lives and ways
"With our good old bishops of ancient days."
He had learned--but learned without misgivings--
Their love for good living and eke good livings;
Not knowing (as ne'er having taken degrees)
That good living means claret and fricassees,
While its plural means simply--pluralities.
"From all I hear," said the innocent man,
"They are quite on the good old primitive plan.
"For wealth and pomp they little can care,
"As they all say 'No' to the Episcopal chair;
"And their vestal virtue it well denotes
"That they all, good men, wear petticoats."
Thus saying, post-haste to earth he hurries,
And knocks at the Archbishop of Canterbury's.
The door was oped by a lackey in lace,
Saying, "What's your business with his Grace?"
"His Grace!" quoth Jerome--for posed was he,
Not knowing what sort this Grace could be;
Whether Grace preventing, Grace particular,
Grace of that breed called Quinquarticular--[1]
In short he rummaged his holy mind
The exact description of Grace to find,
Which thus could represented be
By a footman in full livery.
At last, out loud in a laugh he broke,
(For dearly the good saint loved his joke)[2]
And said--surveying, as sly he spoke,
The costly palace from roof to base--
"Well, it isn't, at least, a saving Grace!"
"Umph!" said the lackey, a man of few words,
"The Archbishop is gone to the House of Lords."
"To the House of the Lord, you mean, my son,
"For in my time at least there was but one;
Unless such many-fold priests as these
"Seek, even in their LORD, pluralities!"[3]
"No time for gab," quoth the man in lace:
Then slamming the door in St. Jerome's face
With a curse to the single knockers all
Went to finish his port in the servants' hall,
And propose a toast (humanely meant
To include even Curates in its extent)
"To all as serves the Establishment."
The Marksman
by Charles Baudelaire

As the carriage traversed the wood he bade the driver draw up in the neighbourhood of a shooting gallery, saying that he would like to have a few shots to kill time. Is not the slaying of the monster Time the most ordinary and legitimate occupation of man?
So he gallantly offered his hand to his dear, adorable, and execrable wife; the mysterious woman to whom he owed so many pleasures, so many pains, and perhaps also a great part of his genius.
Several bullets went wide of the proposed mark, one of them flew far into the heavens, and as the charming creature laughed deliriously, mocking the clumsiness of her husband, he turned to her brusquely and said: "Observe that doll yonder, to the right, with its nose in the air, and with so haughty an appearance. Very well, dear angel, I will imagine to myself that it is you!"
He closed both eyes and pulled the trigger. The doll was neatly decapitated.
Then, bending towards his dear, adorable, and execrable wife, his inevitable and pitiless muse, he kissed her respectfully upon the hand, and added,
"Ah, dear angel, how I thank you for my skill!"
Song
by Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell

As the inhastening tide doth roll,
Dear and desired, along the whole
Wide shining strand, and floods the caves,
Your love comes filling with happy waves
The open sea-shore of my soul.
But inland from the seaward spaces,
None knows, not even you, the places
Brimmed, at your coming, out of sight,
-The little solitudes of delight
This tide constrains in dim embraces.
You see the happy shore, wave-rimmed,
But know not of the quiet dimmed
Rivers your coming floods and fills,
The little pools 'mid happier hills,
My silent rivulets, over-brimmed.
What, I have secrets from you? Yes.
But, visiting Sea, your love doth press
And reach in further than you know,
And fills all these; and when you go,
There's loneliness in loneliness.
As the Shifting Sands of the Desert.
by Alfred Castner King

As the shifting sands of the desert
Are born by the simoon's wrath,
And in wanton and fleet confusion,
Are strewn on its trackless path;
So our lives with resistless fury,
Insensibly and unknown,
With a restless vacillation
By the winds of fate are blown;
But an All-Wise Hand
May have changed the sand,
For a purpose of His own.
As the troubled and turbulent waters,
As the waves of the angry main,
Respond with their undulations
To the breath of the hurricane;
So our lives on Time's boundless ocean
Unwittingly toss and roll,
And unconsciously drift with the current
Which evades our assumed control;
But a Hand of love,
From the skies above,
May have guided us past a shoal.
Ephemeral, mobile, and fleeting,
Our delible paths we tread;
And fade as the crimson sunset,
When the heavens are tinged with red;
As the gorgeously tinted rainbow
Retains not its varied dyes,
We change, with the constant mutation,
Of desert, of sea, and skies;
But the Hand which made,
Knows each transient shade,
Which passes before the eyes.
Five Fancies.
by Madison Julius Cawein

I
THE GLADIOLAS.
As tall as the lily, as tall as the rose,
And almost as tall as the hollyhocks,
Ranked breast to breast in sentinel rows
Stand the gladiola stocks.
And some are red as the humming-bird's blood
And some are pied as the butterfly race,
And each is shaped like a velvet hood
Gold-lined with delicate lace.
For you know the goblins that come like musk
To tumble and romp in the flowers' laps,
When you see big fire-fly eyes in the dusk,
Hang there their goblin caps.
II
THE MORNING-GLORIES.
They bloom up the fresh, green trellis
In airy, vigorous ease,
And their fragrant, sensuous honey
Is best beloved of the bees.
Oh! the rose knows the dainty secret
How the morning-glory blows,
For the rose told me the secret,
And the jessamine told the rose.
And the jessamine said at midnight,
Ere the red cock woke and crew,
That the fays of queen Titania
Came there to bathe in the dew.
And the merry moonlight glistened
On wet, long, yellow hair,
And their feet on the flowers drowsy
Trod softer than any air.
And their petticoats, gay as bubbles,
They hung up every one
On the morning-glories' tendrils
Till their moonlight bath were done.
But the red cock crew too early,
And the fays left hurriedly,
And this is why in the morning
Their petticoats there you see.
III
THE TIGER-LILY.
A sultan proud and tawny
At elegant ease he stands,
With his bare throat brown and scrawny,
And his indolent, leaf-like hands.
And the eunuch tulips that listen
In their gaudy turbans so,
With their scimetar leaves that glisten,
Are guards of his seraglio;
Where sultana roses musky,
Voluptuous in houri charms,
With their bold breasts deep and dusky,
Impatiently wait his arms.
Tall, beautiful, sad, and slender,
His Greek-girl dancing slaves,
For the white-limbed lilies tender
His royal hand he waves.
While he watches them, softly smiling,
His favorite rose that hour
With a butterfly gallant is wiling
In her attar-scented bower.
IV
VENGEANCE.
I
Let it sink, let it sink
On the pungent-petaled pink
By those poppy puffs;
Fairy-fashioned downiness,
Light, weak moth in furry dress
Of white fluffy stuffs.
II
Where the thin light slipping sweet
Dimples prints of Fairy feet
On the white-rose blooms,
One dim blossom delicate
Droops a face all pale with hate,
Dead with sick perfumes.
III
And I read the riddle wove
In this rose's course of love
For the fickle pink: - 
Thou the rose's phantom art
Stealing to the pink's false heart
Vampire-like to drink.
V
A DEAD LILY.
I
The South had saluted her mouth
Till her mouth was sweet with the South.
II
And the North with his breathings low
Made the blood in her veins like his snow.
III
And the West with his smiles and his art
Poured his honey of life in her heart.
IV
And the East had in whisperings told
His secrets more precious than gold.
V
So she grew to a beautiful thought
Which a godhead of love had wrought.
VI
As strange how the power begot it
As why - but to kill it and rot it.
The Exile to his Sister.
by George Pope Morris

As streams at morn, from seas that glide,
Rejoicing on their sparkling way,
Will turn again at eventide,
To mingle with their kindred spray--
Even so the currents of the soul,
Dear sister, wheresoe'er we rove,
Will backward to our country roll,
The boundless ocean of our love.
You northern star, now burning bright,
The guide by which the wave-tossed steer,
Beams not with a more constant light
Than does thy love, my sister dear.
From stars above the streams below
Receive the glory they impart;
So, sister, do thy virtues glow
Within the mirror of my heart.