DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Earth To The Twentieth Century.
by Jean Blewett

You cannot take from out my heart the growing,
The green, sweet growing, and the vivid thrill.
"O Earth," you cry, "you should be old, not glowing
With youth and all youth's strength and beauty still!"
Old, and the new hopes stirring in my bosom!
Old, and my children drawing life from me!
Old, in my womb the tender bud and blossom!
Old, steeped in richness and fertility!
Old, while the growing things call to each other,
In language I alone can understand:
"How she doth nourish us, this wondrous mother
Who is so beautiful and strong and grand!"
Old, while the wild things of the forest hide them
In my gray coverts, which no eye can trace!
Hunted or hurt, 'tis my task to provide them
Healing and soothing and a hiding place.
And then, my human children, could you listen
To secrets whispered in the stillness deep
Of noonday, or when night-dews fall and glisten - 
'Tis on my bosom that men laugh and weep.
Some tell me moving tales of love and passion,
Of gladness all too great to be pent in - 
The sweet, old theme which does not change its fashion - 
Another cries out brokenly of sin.
While others filled with sorrow, fain to share it,
Hide tear-wet faces on my soft brown breast,
Sobbing: "Dear Mother Earth, we cannot bear it,
Grim death has stolen all that we loved best!"
The old familiar cry of loss and sorrow
I hear to-day - I heard it yesterday - 
Ay, and will hear in every glad to-morrow
That ye may bring to me, O Century.
I answer mourner, penitent, and lover,
With quick'ning stir, with bud and leaf and sap:
"Peace, peace," I say, "when life's brief day is over
Ye shall sleep soundly in your mother's lap."
The loss, the longing of mankind I'm sharing,
The hopes, the joys, the laughter and the tears,
And yet you think I should be old, uncaring,
The barren, worn-out plaything of the years!
Past centuries have not trodden out my greenness
With all their marches, as you well can see,
Nor will you bring me withered age or leanness.
March on - what are your hundred years to me
While life and growth within me glow and flourish,
While in the sunshine and the falling rain
I, the great Mother, do bring forth and nourish
The springtime blossom and the harvest grain?
March on, O Century, I am safe holden
In God's right hand, the garner-house of truth - 
The hand that holds the treasure rare and golden
Of life, and sweetness, and eternal youth!
Frohnleichnam
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

You have come your way, I have come my way;
You have stepped across your people, carelessly, hurting them all;
I have stepped across my people, and hurt them in spite of my care.
But steadily, surely, and notwithstanding
We have come our ways and met at last
Here in this upper room.
Here the balcony
Overhangs the street where the bullock-wagons slowly
Go by with their loads of green and silver birch- trees
For the feast of Corpus Christi.
Here from the balcony
We look over the growing wheat, where the jade- green river
Goes between the pine-woods,
Over and beyond to where the many mountains
Stand in their blueness, flashing with snow and the morning.
I have done; a quiver of exultation goes through me, like the first
Breeze of the morning through a narrow white birch.
You glow at last like the mountain tops when they catch
Day and make magic in heaven.
At last I can throw away world without end, and meet you
Unsheathed and naked and narrow and white;
At last you can throw immortality off, and I see you
Glistening with all the moment and all your beauty.
Shameless and callous I love you;
Out of indifference I love you;
Out of mockery we dance together,
Out of the sunshine into the shadow,
Passing across the shadow into the sunlight,
Out of sunlight to shadow.
As we dance
Your eyes take all of me in as a communication;
As we dance
I see you, ah, in full!
Only to dance together in triumph of being together
Two white ones, sharp, vindicated,
Shining and touching,
Is heaven of our own, sheer with repudiation.
The Harebell.
by Muriel Stuart

You give no portent of impermanence
Though before sun goes you are long gone hence,
Your bright, inherited crown
Withered and fallen down.
It seems that your blue immobility
Has been for ever, and must for ever be.
Man seems the unstable thing,
Fevered and hurrying.
So free of joy, so prodigal of tears,
Yet he can hold his fevers seventy years,
Out-wear sun, rain and frost,
By which you are soon lost.
You Don't Believe
by William Blake

You don't believe -- I won't attempt to make ye:
You are asleep -- I won't attempt to wake ye.
Sleep on! sleep on! while in your pleasant dreams
Of Reason you may drink of Life's clear streams.
Reason and Newton, they are quite two things;
For so the swallow and the sparrow sings.
Reason says `Miracle': Newton says `Doubt.'
Aye! that's the way to make all Nature out.
`Doubt, doubt, and don't believe without experiment':
That is the very thing that Jesus meant,
When He said `Only believe! believe and try!
Try, try, and never mind the reason why!'
At A Banquet Given To The Deputation Of The Swedish Riksdag To The Coronation, In Trondhjem, July 17, 1873
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

(See Note 62)
You chosen men we welcome here
From brothers near.
We welcome you to Olaf's town
That Norway's greatest mem'ries crown,
Where ancient prowess looking down
With searching gaze,
The question puts to sea and strand:
Are men now in the Northern land
Like yesterday's?
'T is well, if on the battlefield
Our "Yes" is sealed!
'T is well, if now our strength is steeled
To grasp our fathers' sword and shield
And in life's warfare lift and wield
For God and home!
For us they fought; 't is now our call
To raise for them a temple-hall,
Fair freedom's dome.
List to the Northern spirit o'er
Our sea and shore!
Here once high thoughts in word were freed,
In homely song, in homely deed;
And ever shall the selfsame need
That spirit sing:
Heed not things trivial, foreign, new;
Alone th' eternal, Northern, true
Can harvest bring.
O brother-band, this faith so dear
Has brought us here?
The spirit of the North to free,
Our common toil and prayer shall be,
Those greater days again to see, - 
As once before,
Of home and trust a message strong
To send the warring world we long
Forevermore.
In The Street. Lord - - .
by Francis William Lauderdale Adams

You have done well, we say it. You are dead,
And, of the man that with the right hand takes
Less than the left hand gives, let it be said
He has done something for our wretched sakes.
For those to whom you gave their daily bread
Rancid with God-loathed "charity," their drink
Putrid with man-loathed "sin," we bow our head
Grateful, as the great hearse goes by, and think.
Yes, you have fed the flesh and starved the soul
Of thousands of us; you have taught too well
The rich are little gods beyond control,
Save of your big God of the heaven and hell.
We thank you. This was pretty once, and right.
Now it wears rather thin. My lord, good night!
The Rose
by Madison Julius Cawein

You have forgot: it once was red
With life, this rose, to which you said,--
When, there in happy days gone by,
You plucked it, on my breast to lie,--
"Sleep there, O rose! how sweet a bed
Is thine!--And, heart, be comforted;
For, though we part and roses shed
Their leaves and fade, love cannot die.--"
You have forgot.
So by those words of yours I'm led
To send it you this day you wed.
Look well upon it. You, as I,
Should ask it now, without a sigh,
If love can lie as it lies dead.--
You have forgot.
The Twenty Hoss-Power Shay
by Ellis Parker Butler

You have heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day.
And then, of a sudden, it up and bust,
And all that was left was a mound of dust?
Holmes, O. W. told it well
In a rhyme of his, what there was to tell,
But the one-hoss shay wasn't 'one, two, three'
With a vehicle once belonged to me.
One hoss? No, sir! Not six nor nine,
Twenty there were in this rig of mine!
Twenty hosses as tough as rocks,
All caged up in a sort of box
That stood jist back of the forward wheels!
Right! She was one of those automobiles
With twenty hosses bottled inside,
Hosses that not only pull but ride!
Wonder what Holmes would have had to say
If the mare had rode in his one-hoss shay!
I reckon the shay would have logicked out
Before the century rolled about.
Well, this big touring car, I say,
Was built just like the one-hoss shay,
Some dependable, logical way,
Flipflaps, dujabs, wheels and things,
Levers, thing-gum-bobs and springs,
Hub, and felloe, and hoss-power chest,
One part just as strong as the rest;
So 'logic is logic,' as Holmes would say,
And no one part could first give way.
Wonderful vehicle, you'll admit,
With not one flaw in the whole of it;
As long as I had it, I declare
I hadn't one cent to pay for repair,
It couldn't break down because, you see,
It was such a logical symphony.
Now for my tale. We're not so slow
These days as a hundred years ago,
And it's like enough that the one-hoss shay,
Ambling along in its sleepy way,
Should creep a century 'thout a break,
But nowadays we aim to make
A pace that is something like a pace,
And if that old shay got in our race
It would stand the pressure twenty days
And go to the home of played-out shays.
'Logic is logic.' Just figure this out,
For I know just what I'm talking about:
If a one-hoss vehicle, genus shays,
Will stand our pressure twenty days,
Then, vice versa, a twenty-hoss shay
Should stand the pressure just one day;
Well, mine is a logical automobile,
From rubber tire to steering wheel.
I bought it one morning at just 10.42,
And the very next morning what did it do,
Right on the second, but up and bust!
Talk of the old shay's pile of dust,
That's not logical; my mobile
Vanished completely! Brass and steel,
Iron and wood and rubber tire
Went right up in a gush of fire,
And in half a minute a gassy smell
Was all I had left by which to tell
I ever owned a touring car,
And then that vanished, and there you are!
End of my twenty hoss-power shay.
Logic is logic. That's all I say.
Despondency.
by Wilfred S. Skeats

A Response to "Courage," by Celia Thaxter.
You have said that there is not a fear
Or a doubt that oppresses your soul,
That your faith is so strong
That it bears you along,
Ever holding you in its control.
'Tis a comfort to know there is one
Whose allegiance cannot be denied,
But I fain would enquire,
(For your faith is far high'r
Than is mine): Have you ever been tried?
Have you sought to aspire to a life
Higher far than the one that is past?
Have you laboured through years,
By your hopes crushing fears,
But to meet disappointment at last?
Have the friends who should love you the best,
In your absence forgotten that love,
And refused to impart
To your grief-stricken heart
All the solace their kindness would prove?
Has the world misconstrued your intents,
And endeavoured to sully your fame?
Has the venomous tongue
With its calumny stung
Your proud heart, and dishonoured your name?
I desire not to "chide" you nor "vex,"
But I ask you to answer me now;
Did the torturing pain
Of a love that is vain
Ever furrow your heart like a plough?
Have you loved with so fervent a love
That, when failure and hopelessness came,
All the torments of hell
In your breast seemed to dwell,
Scorching courage and faith in their flame?
One of these may have fall'n to your lot;
What if all were apportioned to me?
Could I then "lift my head,"
Nor a single tear shed?--
Has such faith been allotted to thee?
I have sought to be true to my God,
I have sought to be faithful as you;
But such "tumult and strife"
Have embittered my life
That I am not so faultlessly true.
The Walk
by Thomas Hardy

You did not walk with me
Of late to the hill-top tree
By the gated ways,
As in earlier days;
You were weak and lame,
So you never came,
And I went alone, and I did not mind,
Not thinking of you as left behind.
I walked up there to-day
Just in the former way:
Surveyed around
The familiar ground
By myself again:
What difference, then?
Only that underlying sense
Of the look of a room on returning thence.
Pathos
by Alfred Lichtenstein

You don't love me...    I have never appealed to you...
Was never your type...
And my hard eyes annoy you, my darling...
I'm too dark for you.    And too coarse - 
And my white teeth have such a brutal shine
And my bloody lips are so terribly like sickles.
Ah, what you say - 
Yes you are really right.    I set you... free.
...    And early in the morning I am going to an ocean
That is blue and eternal...
And lie on the beach...
And play with a smile on my face, until a death grabs me,
With sand and sun and with a white
Slender bitch.
The Voice Of The North.
by Charles Hamilton Musgrove

You have builded your ships in the sun-lands,
And launched them with song and wine;
They are boweled with your stanchest engines,
And masted with bravest pine;
You have met in your closet councils,
With your plans and your prayers to God
For a fortunate wind to waft you
Where never a foot has trod.
And now you follow the polar star
To the seat of the old Norse Kings,
Past the death-white halls of Valhalla,
Where the Norn to the tempest sings--
Follow the steady needle
That cleaves to its steady star
To the uttermost realms of Odin
And the warlike thunderer, Thor.
Far through the icy silence,
Where the glacier's teeth hang white,
And even the sun-god Baldur,
Looks down in vague affright,
You flutter like startled spectres,
With a prayer on your lips for the goal--
To stand for one thrilling moment
At the awful, nameless Pole.
But lo! in that hour shall greet you,
At the end of your perilous path,
A mockery far more bitter
Than the sting of the frost king's wrath,
For this is the meed you shall gather
In the lands no man has trod:
The finger that beckoned you onward
Shall lift and point to God!
1903
Replies
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

You have lived long and learned the secret of life, O Seer!
Tell me what are the best three things to seek - 
The best three things for a man to seek on earth?
The best three things for a man to seek, O Son! are these:
Reverence for that great Source from whence he came;
Work for the world wherein he finds himself;
And knowledge of the Realm toward which he goes.
What are the best three things to love on earth, O Seer!
What are the best three things for a man to love?
The best three things for a man to love, O Son! are these:
Labour which keeps his forces all in action;
A home wherein no evil thing may enter;
And a loving woman with God in her heart.
What are the three great sins to shun, O Seer! - 
What are the three great sins for a man to shun?
The three great sins for a man to shun, O Son! are these:
A thought which soils the heart from whence it goes;
An action that can harm a living thing;
And undeveloped energies of mind.
What are the worst three things to fear, O Seer! - 
What are the worst three things for a man to fear?
The worst three things for man to fear, O Son! are these:
Doubt and suspicion in a young child's eyes;
Accusing shame upon a woman's face;
And in himself no consciousness of God.
The Lily In A Crystal
by Robert Herrick

You have beheld a smiling rose
When virgins' hands have drawn
O'er it a cobweb-lawn:
And here, you see, this lily shows,
Tomb'd in a crystal stone,
More fair in this transparent case
Than when it grew alone,
And had but single grace.
You see how cream but naked is,
Nor dances in the eye
Without a strawberry;
Or some fine tincture, like to this,
Which draws the sight thereto,
More by that wantoning with it,
Than when the paler hue
No mixture did admit.
You see how amber through the streams
More gently strokes the sight,
With some conceal'd delight,
Than when he darts his radiant beams
Into the boundless air;
Where either too much light his worth
Doth all at once impair,
Or set it little forth.
Put purple grapes or cherries in-
To glass, and they will send
More beauty to commend
Them, from that clean and subtle skin,
Than if they naked stood,
And had no other pride at all,
But their own flesh and blood,
And tinctures natural.
Thus lily, rose, grape, cherry, cream,
And strawberry do stir
More love, when they transfer
A weak, a soft, a broken beam;
Than if they should discover
At full their proper excellence,
Without some scene cast over,
To juggle with the sense.
Thus let this crystall'd lily be
A rule, how far to teach
Your nakedness must reach;
And that no further than we see
Those glaring colours laid
By art's wise hand, but to this end
They should obey a shade,
Lest they too far extend.
So though you're white as swan or snow,
And have the power to move
A world of men to love;
Yet, when your lawns and silks shall flow,
And that white cloud divide
Into a doubtful twilight; then,
Then will your hidden pride
Raise greater fires in men.
Putting In The Seed
by Robert Lee Frost

You come to fetch me from my work to-night
When supper's on the table, and we'll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree.
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.
An Appeal To My Countrywomen.
by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

You can sigh o'er the sad-eyed Armenian
Who weeps in her desolate home.
You can mourn o'er the exile of Russia
From kindred and friends doomed to roam.
You can pity the men who have woven
From passion and appetite chains
To coil with a terrible tension
Around their heartstrings and brains.
You can sorrow o'er little children
Disinherited from their birth,
The wee waifs and toddlers neglected,
Robbed of sunshine, music and mirth.
For beasts you have gentle compassion;
Your mercy and pity they share.
For the wretched, outcast and fallen
You have tenderness, love and care.
But hark! from our Southland are floating
Sobs of anguish, murmurs of pain,
And women heart-stricken are weeping
Over their tortured and their slain.
On their brows the sun has left traces;
Shrink not from their sorrow in scorn.
When they entered the threshold of being
The children of a King were born.
Each comes as a guest to the table
The hand of our God has outspread,
To fountains that ever leap upward,
To share in the soil we all tread.
When ye plead for the wrecked and fallen,
The exile from far-distant shores,
Remember that men are still wasting
Life's crimson around your own doors.
Have ye not, oh, my favored sisters,
Just a plea, a prayer or a tear,
For mothers who dwell 'neath the shadows
Of agony, hatred and fear?
Men may tread down the poor and lowly,
May crush them in anger and hate,
But surely the mills of God's justice
Will grind out the grist of their fate.
Oh, people sin-laden and guilty,
So lusty and proud in your prime,
The sharp sickles of God's retribution
Will gather your harvest of crime.
Weep not, oh my well-sheltered sisters,
Weep not for the Negro alone,
But weep for your sons who must gather
The crops which their fathers have sown.
Go read on the tombstones of nations
Of chieftains who masterful trod,
The sentence which time has engraven,
That they had forgotten their God.
'Tis the judgment of God that men reap
The tares which in madness they sow,
Sorrow follows the footsteps of crime,
And Sin is the consort of Woe.
To Englishmen
by John Greenleaf Whittier

You flung your taunt across the wave
We bore it as became us,
Well knowing that the fettered slave
Left friendly lips no option save
To pity or to blame us.
You scoffed our plea. 'Mere lack of will,
Not lack of power,' you told us
We showed our free-state records; still
You mocked, confounding good and ill,
Slave-haters and slaveholders.
We struck at Slavery; to the verge
Of power and means we checked it;
Lo!'presto, change! its claims you urge,
Send greetings to it o'er the surge,
And comfort and protect it.
But yesterday you scarce could shake,
In slave-abhorring rigor,
Our Northern palms for conscience' sake
To-day you clasp the hands that ache
With 'walloping the nigger!'*
O Englishmen!'in hope and creed,
In blood and tongue our brothers!
We too are heirs of Runnymede;
And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's deed
Are not alone our mother's.
'Thicker than water,' in one rill
Through centuries of story
Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still
We share with you its good and ill,
The shadow and the glory.
Joint heirs and kinfolk, leagues of wave
Nor length of years can part us
Your right is ours to shrine and grave,
The common freehold of the brave,
The gift of saints and martyrs.
Our very sins and follies teach
Our kindred frail and human
We carp at faults with bitter speech,
The while, for one unshared by each,
We have a score in common.
We bowed the heart, if not the knee,
To England's Queen, God bless her
We praised you when your slaves went free
We seek to unchain ours. Will ye
Join hands with the oppressor?
And is it Christian England cheers
The bruiser, not the bruised?
And must she run, despite the tears
And prayers of eighteen hundred years,
A-muck in Slavery's crusade?
Oh, black disgrace! Oh, shame and loss
Too deep for tongue to phrase on
Tear from your flag its holy cross,
And in your van of battle toss
The pirate's skull-bone blazon!
Two Similes
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

You have taken away my cloak,
My cloak of weariness;
Take my coat also,
My many-coloured coat of life....
On this great nursery floor
I had three toys,
A bright and varnished vow,
A Speckled Monster, best of boys,
True friend to me, and more
Beloved and a thing of cost,
My doll painted like life; and now
One is broken and two are lost.
From the Arabic of John Duncan.
Sonnets: Idea XIX To Humour
by Michael Drayton

You cannot love, my pretty heart, and why?
There was a time you told me that you would,
But how again 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 love, nor hate! How then? What will you do?
What, will you keep a mean then betwixt either?
Or will you love me, and yet hate me too?
Yet serves not this! What next, what other shift?
You will, and will not; what a coil is here!
I see your craft, now I perceive your drift,
And all this while I was mistaken there.
Your love and hate is this, I now do prove you:
You love in hate, by hate to make me love you.
In Memoriam F.O.S.
by Sara Teasdale

You go a long and lovely journey,
For all the stars, like burning dew,
Are luminous and luring footprints
Of souls adventurous as you.
Oh, if you lived on earth elated,
How is it now that you can run
Free of the weight of flesh and faring
Far past the birthplace of the sun?
A Broken Appointment
by Thomas Hardy

You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb. -
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness' sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.
You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
- I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once, you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love not me?
Constancy
by John Boyle O'Reilly

"You gave me the key of your heart, my love;
Then why do you make me knock?"
"Oh, that was yesterday, Saints above!
And last night, I changed the lock!"
White China Plates II
by Paul Cameron Brown

You could have driven
a pick-up truck
thru spokes of that moon, so big and radiant
this upended water chestnut - 
ground mist weeping
in the shadows
flutter of an old woman's shawl,
the clammy smell like
a child's fingers to the face,
a little unsettling
crickets and dew in brigades
running tears on the old
shoe leather.