DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
A Visit From Abroad (The Adventures Of Seumas Beg)
by James Stephens

A speck went blowing up against the sky
As little as a leaf: then it drew near
And broadened. "It's a bird," said I,
And fetched my bow and arrows. It was queer!
It grew up from a speck into a blot,
And squattered past a cloud; then it flew down
All crumply, and waggled such a lot
I thought the thing would fall., It was a brown
Old carpet where a man was sitting snug
Who, when he reached the ground, began to sew
A big hole in the middle of the rug,
And kept on peeping everywhere to know
Who might be coming, then he gave a twist
And flew away....    I fired at him but missed.
The Pageant
by John Greenleaf Whittier

A sound as if from bells of silver,
Or elfin cymbals smitten clear,
Through the frost-pictured panes I hear.
A brightness which outshines the morning,
A splendor brooking no delay,
Beckons and tempts my feet away.
I leave the trodden village highway
For virgin snow-paths glimmering through
A jewelled elm-tree avenue;
Where, keen against the walls of sapphire,
The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-embossed,
Hold up their chandeliers of frost.
I tread in Orient halls enchanted,
I dream the Saga's dream of caves
Gem-lit beneath the North Sea waves!
I walk the land of Eldorado,
I touch its mimic garden bowers,
Its silver leaves and diamond flowers!
The flora of the mystic mine-world
Around me lifts on crystal stems
The petals of its clustered gems!
What miracle of weird transforming
In this wild work of frost and light,
This glimpse of glory infinite!
This foregleam of the Holy City
Like that to him of Patmos given,
The white bride coming down from heaven!
How flash the ranked and mail-clad alders,
Through what sharp-glancing spears of reeds
The brook its muffled water leads!
Yon maple, like the bush of Horeb,
Burns unconsumed: a white, cold fire
Rays out from every grassy spire.
Each slender rush and spike of mullein,
Low laurel shrub and drooping fern,
Transfigured, blaze where'er I turn.
How yonder Ethiopian hemlock
Crowned with his glistening circlet stands!
What jewels light his swarthy hands!
Here, where the forest opens southward,
Between its hospitable pines,
As through a door, the warm sun shines.
The jewels loosen on the branches,
And lightly, as the soft winds blow,
Fall, tinkling, on the ice below.
And through the clashing of their cymbals
I hear the old familiar fall
Of water down the rocky wall,
Where, from its wintry prison breaking,
In dark and silence hidden long,
The brook repeats its summer song.
One instant flashing in the sunshine,
Keen as a sabre from its sheath,
Then lost again the ice beneath.
I hear the rabbit lightly leaping,
The foolish screaming of the jay,
The chopper's axe-stroke far away;
The clamor of some neighboring barn-yard,
The lazy cock's belated crow,
Or cattle-tramp in crispy snow.
And, as in some enchanted forest
The lost knight hears his comrades sing,
And, near at hand, their bridles ring,
So welcome I these sounds and voices,
These airs from far-off summer blown,
This life that leaves me not alone.
For the white glory overawes me;
The crystal terror of the seer
Of Chebar's vision blinds me here.
Rebuke me not, O sapphire heaven!
Thou stainless earth, lay not on me,
Thy keen reproach of purity,
If, in this August presence-chamber,
I sigh for summer's leaf-green gloom
And warm airs thick with odorous bloom!
Let the strange frost-work sink and crumble,
And let the loosened tree-boughs swing,
Till all their bells of silver ring.
Shine warmly down, thou sun of noontime,
On this chill pageant, melt and move
The winter's frozen heart with love.
And, soft and low, thou wind south-blowing,
Breathe through a veil of tenderest haze
Thy prophecy of summer days.
Come with thy green relief of promise,
And to this dead, cold splendor bring
The living jewels of the spring!
Epistle To James Craggs, Esq., Secretary Of State.
by Alexander Pope

A soul as full of worth, as void of pride,
Which nothing seeks to show, or needs to hide,
Which nor to guilt nor fear its caution owes,
And boasts a warmth that from no passion flows.
A face untaught to feign; a judging eye,
That darts severe upon a rising lie,
And strikes a blush through frontless flattery.
All this thou wert; and being this before,
Know, kings and fortune cannot make thee more.
Then scorn to gain a friend by servile ways,
Nor wish to lose a foe these virtues raise;
But candid, free, sincere, as you began,
Proceed--a minister, but still a man.
Be not (exalted to whate'er degree)
Ashamed of any friend, not even of me:
The patriot's plain, but untrod path pursue;
If not, 'tis I must be ashamed of you.
My Shadow And I.
by Freeman Edwin Miller

A something, not of earth or sky,
Beside me walks the ways I go,
And I--I never truly know,
If I am it or it is I.
It soothes me with its tender speech,
It guides me with its gentle hand,
But I--I can not understand
The links that bind us each to each.
I hear the songs of golden days
Fall softly on the saddened years,
But know not whose the hungry ears
First feasted on the roundelays.
I feel the hopes, the yearnings brave,
Within my bosom surge and roll,
But know not whose the Master Soul
That called their glories from the grave.
I see the great world's greater curse,
Dark struggles on through darker days,
But know not whose the eyes that gaze
Through all the sobbing universe.
O, Shadow mine! Beneath my brow
I feel thy thoughts, and in my heart
Thy fondest longings madly start!
Thou art myself and I am thou!
To Mandalay - Greeting
by John Kendall (Dum-Dum)

(BY WALTYARD WHIPMING)
I
A song of Mandalay!
Allons, Camerados, Desperadoes, Amontillados!
Hear my Recitative, my Romanza, my Spring Onion!
II
You three-striped sergeants, you corporals, non-commissioned officers,
and men with one or more good-conduct badges,
You indifferent and bad characters, am I not also one with you?
And will you not then hear my song?
This for prelude.
III
You, O Mandalay, I sing!
For I see the pagoda, the Moulmein and essentially wotto pagoda,
And the pagoda is above the trees,
But the trees are below the pagoda.
IV
I see the flying-fish sitting on the branches, I hear them sing,
and they fly and mate and build their nests in the branches;
I see a dun-coloured aboriginal she-female, mongolian'e, petite, squat-faced,
And she has a cast in her sinister optic and a snub nose but her heart is true;
And I gaze into her heart (which is true), and I find that she is musing (as indeed I often muse) on ME,
Me Prononc', Me Imperturbe, Me Inconscionabilamente.
V
I see [a page or so unavoidably omitted for lack of space, - refer to guide-book] and ... the wind, and the palm-trees idly swaying to and fro in the wind (now to, now fro), and I hear the bells of a temple, and I know that they are singing, and what it is that they would say.
VI
What is it that they would say do you ask Me?
VII
How shall I tell you, how shall I make you understand?
For I know that you do not love Me, you do not comprehend Me, you say that this sort of thing does you harm;
But I will even now do my darndest (as indeed I always do more or less), and if you do not like it,
Waal, Soldados?
VIII
Behold, I will write it as a song and put it in italics, so that even you will know that it is a song;
So listen, listen, Camerados! for I am about to spout and my song shall be masculine and virile. A bas your metre, ' la lanterne your rhyme, conspuez your punctuation,
I say pooh-pooh!
Buxom Joan
by William Congreve

A soldier and a sailor,
A tinker and a tailor,
Had once a doubtful strife, sir,
To make a maid a wife, sir,
Whose name was Buxom Joan.
For now the time was ended,
When she no more intended
To lick her lips at men, sir,
And gnaw the sheets in vain, sir,
And lie o' nights alone.
The soldier swore like thunder,
He loved her more than plunder;
And showed her many a scar, sir,
That he had brought from far, sir,
With fighting for her sake.
The tailor thought to please her,
With offering her his measure.
The tinker too with mettle,
Said he could mend her kettle,
And stop up every leak.
But while these three were prating,
The sailor slily waiting,
Thought if it came about, sir,
That they should all fall out, sir,
He then might play his part.
And just e'en as he meant, sir,
To loggerheads they went, sir,
And then he let fly at her
A shot 'twixt wind and water,
That won this fair maid's heart.
A Song Of Long Ago.
by James Whitcomb Riley

A song of Long Ago:
Sing it lightly - sing it low - 
Sing it softly - like the lisping of the lips we used to know
When our baby-laughter spilled
From the glad hearts ever filled
With music blithe as robin ever trilled!
Let the fragrant summer-breeze,
And the leaves of locust-trees,
And the apple-buds and blossoms, and the wings of honey-bees,
All palpitate with glee,
Till the happy harmony
Brings back each childish joy to you and me.
Let the eyes of fancy turn
Where the tumbled pippins burn
Like embers in the orchard's lap of tangled grass and fern, - 
There let the old path wind
In and out and on behind
The cider-press that chuckles as we grind.
Blend in the song the moan
Of the dove that grieves alone,
And the wild whir of the locust, and the bumble's drowsy drone;
And the low of cows that call
Through the pasture-bars when all
The landscape fades away at evenfall.
Then, far away and clear,
Through the dusky atmosphere,
Let the wailing of the kildee be the only sound we hear:
O sad and sweet and low
As the memory may know
Is the glad-pathetic song of Long Ago!
A Nameless Grave
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"A soldier of the Union mustered out,"
Is the inscription on an unknown grave
At Newport News, beside the salt-sea wave,
Nameless and dateless; sentinel or scout
Shot down in skirmish, or disastrous rout
Of battle, when the loud artillery drave
Its iron wedges through the ranks of brave
And doomed battalions, storming the redoubt.
Thou unknown hero sleeping by the sea
In thy forgotten grave! with secret shame
I feel my pulses beat, my forehead burn,
When I remember thou hast given for me
All that thou hadst, thy life, thy very name,
And I can give thee nothing in return.
The Willow.
by Freeman Edwin Miller

A song for the willow, the wild weeping willow,
That murmurs a dirge to the rapturous days,
And moans when the kiss of the breeze laden billow
Entangles and dangles among the sad sprays!
A musical ditty to scatter the sadness,
A warble of wildness to banish its tears,
Till tremulous measures of bountiful gladness
Be sounding and bounding through all of the years.
The beautiful brooks, as they waken from slumbers,
Pause under the shadows that fall from the boughs,
And weave their caresses in passionate numbers,
While soothing and smoothing the frowns from its brows;
But chained in the desolate sorrows of weeping
Its heart never warms to the raptures of mirth,
And over its bosom no pleasures are creeping
While wending and blending their joys with the earth.
Then sing for the willow, the wild weeping willow,
That droops in the smiles of the summer-born times,
And mourns in the kiss of the sweet-scented billow,
When beaming and gleaming are dripping with chimes!
While melodies move where their happiness lingers,
They surely will gladden the tear-laden sprays,
And music that flutters from fairy-like fingers
Will lighten and brighten the burdensome days.
Psalm Of The Day.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

A something in a summer's day,
As sIow her flambeaux burn away,
Which solemnizes me.
A something in a summer's noon, --
An azure depth, a wordless tune,
Transcending ecstasy.
And still within a summer's night
A something so transporting bright,
I clap my hands to see;
Then veil my too inspecting face,
Lest such a subtle, shimmering grace
Flutter too far for me.
The wizard-fingers never rest,
The purple brook within the breast
Still chafes its narrow bed;
Still rears the East her amber flag,
Guides still the sun along the crag
His caravan of red,
Like flowers that heard the tale of dews,
But never deemed the dripping prize
Awaited their low brows;
Or bees, that thought the summer's name
Some rumor of delirium
No summer could for them;
Or Arctic creature, dimly stirred
By tropic hint, -- some travelled bird
Imported to the wood;
Or wind's bright signal to the ear,
Making that homely and severe,
Contented, known, before
The heaven unexpected came,
To lives that thought their worshipping
A too presumptuous psalm.
Lausanne
by Thomas Hardy

- In Gibbon's Old Garden: 11-12 P.M. June 27, 1897
(The 110th anniversary of the completion of the "Decline and Fall" at the same hour and place)
A spirit seems to pass,
Formal in pose, but grave and grand withal:
He contemplates a volume stout and tall,
And far lamps fleck him through the thin acacias.
Anon the book is closed,
With "It is finished!" And at the alley's end
He turns, and soon on me his glances bend;
And, as from earth, comes speech - small, muted, yet composed.
"How fares the Truth now? - Ill?
- Do pens but slily further her advance?
May one not speed her but in phrase askance?
Do scribes aver the Comic to be Reverend still?
"Still rule those minds on earth
At whom sage Milton's wormwood words were hurled:
'Truth like a bastard comes into the world
Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth'?"
A Green Cornfield.
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

"And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest."
The earth was green, the sky was blue:
I saw and heard one sunny morn
A skylark hang between the two,
A singing speck above the corn;
A stage below, in gay accord,
White butterflies danced on the wing,
And still the singing skylark soared
And silent sank, and soared to sing.
The cornfield stretched a tender green
To right and left beside my walks;
I knew he had a nest unseen
Somewhere among the million stalks:
And as I paused to hear his song
While swift the sunny moments slid,
Perhaps his mate sat listening long,
And listened longer than I did.
The Dying Stockman
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

(Air: 'The Old Stable Jacket.')
A strapping young stockman lay dying,
His saddle supporting his head;
His two mates around him were crying,
As he rose on his pillow and said:
Chorus
'Wrap me up with my stockwhip and blanket,
And bury me deep down below,
Where the dingoes and crows can't molest me,
In the shade where the coolibahs grow.
'Oh! had I the flight of the bronzewing,
Far o'er the plains would I fly,
Straight to the land of my childhood,
And there would I lay down and die.
Chorus: Wrap me up, &c.
'Then cut down a couple of saplings,
Place one at my head and my toe,
Carve on them cross, stockwhip, and saddle,
To show there's a stockman below.
Chorus: Wrap me up, &c.
'Hark! there's the wail of a dingo,
Watchful and weird'I must go,
For it tolls the death-knell of the stockman
From the gloom of the scrub down below.
Chorus: Wrap me up, &c.
'There's tea in the battered old billy;
Place the pannikins out in a row,
And we'll drink to the next merry meeting,
In the place where all good fellows go.
Chorus: Wrap me up, &c.
'And oft in the shades of the twilight,
When the soft winds are whispering low,
And the dark'ning shadows are falling,
Sometimes think of the stockman below.'
Chorus: Wrap me up, &c.
The Woman I Met
by Thomas Hardy

A stranger, I threaded sunken-hearted
A lamp-lit crowd;
And anon there passed me a soul departed,
Who mutely bowed.
In my far-off youthful years I had met her,
Full-pulsed; but now, no more life's debtor,
Onward she slid
In a shroud that furs half-hid.
"Why do you trouble me, dead woman,
Trouble me;
You whom I knew when warm and human?
How it be
That you quitted earth and are yet upon it
Is, to any who ponder on it,
Past being read!"
"Still, it is so," she said.
"These were my haunts in my olden sprightly
Hours of breath;
Here I went tempting frail youth nightly
To their death;
But you deemed me chaste me, a tinselled sinner!
How thought you one with pureness in her
Could pace this street
Eyeing some man to greet?
"Well; your very simplicity made me love you
Mid such town dross,
Till I set not Heaven itself above you,
Who grew my Cross;
For you'd only nod, despite how I sighed for you;
So you tortured me, who fain would have died for you!
What I suffered then
Would have paid for the sins of ten!
"Thus went the days. I feared you despised me
To fling me a nod
Each time, no more: till love chastised me
As with a rod
That a fresh bland boy of no assurance
Should fire me with passion beyond endurance,
While others all
I hated, and loathed their call.
"I said: 'It is his mother's spirit
Hovering around
To shield him, maybe!' I used to fear it,
As still I found
My beauty left no least impression,
And remnants of pride withheld confession
Of my true trade
By speaking; so I delayed.
"I said: 'Perhaps with a costly flower
He'll be beguiled.'
I held it, in passing you one late hour,
To your face: you smiled,
Keeping step with the throng; though you did not see there
A single one that rivalled me there! . . .
Well: it's all past.
I died in the Lock at last."
So walked the dead and I together
The quick among,
Elbowing our kind of every feather
Slowly and long;
Yea, long and slowly. That a phantom should stalk there
With me seemed nothing strange, and talk there
That winter night
By flaming jets of light.
She showed me Juans who feared their call-time,
Guessing their lot;
She showed me her sort that cursed their fall-time,
And that did not.
Till suddenly murmured she: "Now, tell me,
Why asked you never, ere death befell me,
To have my love,
Much as I dreamt thereof?"
I could not answer. And she, well weeting
All in my heart,
Said: "God your guardian kept our fleeting
Forms apart!"
Sighing and drawing her furs around her
Over the shroud that tightly bound her,
With wafts as from clay
She turned and thinned away.
LONDON, 1918.
Self.
by Madison Julius Cawein

A Sufi debauchee of dreams
Spake this: From Sodomite to Peri
Earth tablets us; we live and are
Man's own long commentary.
Is one begat in Bassora,
One lies in Damietta dying
The plausibilities of God
All possibles o'erlying.
But burns the lust within the flesh?
Hell's but a homily to Heaven,
Put then the individual first,
And of thyself be shriven.
Neither in adamant nor brass
The scrutinizing eye records it;
The arm is rooted in the heart,
The heart that rules and lords it.
Be that it is and thou art all;
And what thou art so thou hast written
Thee of the lutanists of Love,
Or of the torture-smitten.
John Walsh
by James Whitcomb Riley

A strange life - strangely passed!
We may not read the soul
When God has folded up the scroll
In death at last.
We may not - dare not say of one
Whose task of life as well was done
As he could do it, - "This is lost,
And prayers may never pay the cost."
Who listens to the song
That sings within the breast,
Should ever hear the good expressed
Above the wrong.
And he who leans an eager ear
To catch the discord, he will hear
The echoes of his own weak heart
Beat out the most discordant part.
Whose tender heart could build
Affection's bower above
A heart where baby nests of love
Were ever filled, -
With upward growth may reach and twine
About the children, grown divine,
That once were his a time so brief
His very joy was more than grief.
O Sorrow - "Peace, be still!"
God reads the riddle right;
And we who grope in constant night
But serve His will;
And when sometime the doubt is gone,
And darkness blossoms into dawn, -
"God keeps the good," we then will say:
" 'Tis but the dross He throws away."
An Evening
by William Allingham

A sunset's mounded cloud; 
A diamond evening-star; 
Sad blue hills afar; 
Love in his shroud. 
Scarcely a tear to shed; 
Hardly a word to say; 
The end of a summer day; 
Sweet Love dead.
Leda And The Swan
by William Butler Yeats

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
Symbols
by William Butler Yeats

A storm beaten old watch-tower,
A blind hermit rings the hour.
All-destroying sword-blade still
Carried by the wandering fool.
Gold-sewn silk on the sword-blade,
Beauty and fool together laid.
Owen Aherne And His Dancers
by William Butler Yeats

A strange thing surely that my Heart, when love had come unsought
Upon the Norman upland or in that poplar shade,
Should find no burden but itself and yet should be worn out.
It could not bear that burden and therefore it went mad.
The Old Stone Cross
by William Butler Yeats

A statesman is an easy man,
He tells his lies by rote;
A journalist makes up his lies
And takes you by the throat;
So stay at home' and drink your beer
And let the neighbours' vote,
i(Said the man in the golden breastplate)
i(Under the old stone Cross.)
Because this age and the next age
Engender in the ditch,
No man can know a happy man
From any passing wretch;
If Folly link with Elegance
No man knows which is which,
But actors lacking music
Do most excite my spleen,
They say it is more human
To shuffle, grunt and groan,
Not knowing what unearthly stuff
Rounds a mighty scene,
The Eye Of The Master.
by Jean de La Fontaine

[1]
A stag took refuge from the chase
Among the oxen of a stable,
Who counsel'd him, as saith the fable,
To seek at once some safer place.
'My brothers,' said the fugitive,
'Betray me not, and, as I live,
The richest pasture I will show,
That e'er was grazed on, high or low;
Your kindness you will not regret,
For well some day I'll pay the debt.'
The oxen promised secrecy.
Down crouch'd the stag, and breathed more free.
At eventide they brought fresh hay,
As was their custom day by day;
And often came the servants near,
As did indeed the overseer,
But with so little thought or care,
That neither horns, nor hide, nor hair
Reveal'd to them the stag was there.
Already thank'd the wild-wood stranger
The oxen for their treatment kind,
And there to wait made up his mind,
Till he might issue free from danger.
Replied an ox that chew'd the cud,
'Your case looks fairly in the bud;
But then I fear the reason why
Is, that the man of sharpest eye
Hath not yet come his look to take.
I dread his coming, for your sake;
Your boasting may be premature:
Till then, poor stag, you're not secure.'
'Twas but a little while before
The careful master oped the door.
'How's this, my boys?' said he;
'These empty racks will never do.
Go, change this dirty litter too.
More care than this I want to see
Of oxen that belong to me.
Well, Jim, my boy, you're young and stout;
What would it cost to clear these cobwebs out?
And put these yokes, and hames, and traces,
All as they should be, in their places?'
Thus looking round, he came to see
One head he did not usually.
The stag is found; his foes
Deal heavily their blows.
Down sinks he in the strife;
No tears can save his life.
They slay, and dress, and salt the beast,
And cook his flesh in many a feast,
And many a neighbour gets a taste.
As Phaedrus says it, pithily,
The master's is the eye to see: - 
I add the lover's, as for me.
To The Lady E. B. And The Hon. Miss P.
by William Wordsworth

A stream, to mingle with your favourite Dee,
Along the vale of meditation flows;
So styled by those fierce Britons, pleased to see
In Nature's face the expression of repose;
Or haply there some pious hermit chose
To live and die, the peace of heaven his aim;
To whom the wild sequestered region owes
At this late day, its sanctifying name.
Glyn Cafaillgaroch, in the Cambrian tongue,
In ours, the vale OF friendship, let 'this' spot
Be named; where, faithful to a low-roofed Cot,
On Deva's banks, ye have abode so long;
Sisters in love, a love allowed to climb,
Even on this earth, above the reach of Time!