DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Hour Of The Angel
by Rudyard Kipling

Sooner or late, in earnest or in jest,
(But the stakes are no jest) Ithuriel's Hour
Will spring on us, for the first time, the test
Of our sole unbacked competence and power
Up to the limit of our years and dower
Of judgment, or beyond. But here we have
Prepared long since our garland or our grave.
For, at that hour, the sum of all our past,
Act, habit, thought, and passion, shall be cast
In one addition, be it more or less,
And as that reading runs so shall we do; 
Meeting, astounded, victory at the last,
Or, first and last, our own unworthiness.
And none can change us though they die to save!
Lines, Written On Seeing The Children Of The Naval Asylum.[1]
by Thomas Gent

Sons of Renown! ye heirs of matchless fame,
Whose Sires in Glory's path victorious fell;
Adding new honors to the British name,
That future ages shall with transport tell.
Yet not unpity'd nor forgot they die,
For gen'rous Britons to their mem'ry raise;
A tribute will their children's wants supply,
A living monument of grateful praise.
To the sad mother, who, in speechless grief,
Mourn'd o'er her infant's unprotected state,
Benignant charity affords relief,
And bids her bosom glow, with joy elate.
Great your reward who thus impassion'd move,
By nature taught the heart's persuasive play;
Such deeds your God with pleasure shall approve,
And endless blessings cheer your parting day.
What better boon can feeling hearts bestow,
What nobler ornament can deck our isle;
Than one that robs the wretched of their woe,
And makes the widow and the orphan smile?
Sore In Need Was I Of A Faithful Friend
by Richard Le Gallienne

Sore in need was I of a faithful friend,
And it seemed to me that life
Had come to its much desired end - 
Just then God gave me a wife.
I had seen the beauty of fairy things,
And seen the women walk;
I had heard the voice of the seven sins
And all the wonderful talk.
Ah, the promising earth that seems so kind,
And the comrades with outstretched hand - 
But did you ever stand alone
In a black, forsaken land?
Then the wonderful things that God can do
One comes to understand:
How He turns the desert dust to a dream,
And the lonely wind to a friend,
And makes a bright beginning
Of what had seemed the end:
'Twas in such an hour God placed in mine
The moonbeam hand of a friend.
Grief.
by Robert Herrick

Sorrows divided amongst many, less
Discruciate a man in deep distress.
The Huguenot Lovers
by Helen Leah Reed

Sorrowful pleading on her face is written
With love commingled, and my heart throbs fast,
Flooded with currents of a deep emotion
Stirred by the memory of that awful past.
Note the sad gaze of him who bends above her,
What say his eyes in answer to her own?
What did he think as tenderly he kissed her?
What was the meaning of his whispered tone?
Spoke he of honor's claim poor love's outweighing,
Or did her circling arms so well enfold
That the white kerchief wearing-badge of safety - 
He passed the lurking foe with spirit bold.
Ah, they are vanished now - the maid and lover,
Their history the wisest cannot tell.
Mayhap upon that night of cruel slaughter,
Eager to meet the zealot's hate he fell.
Mayhap in some fair corner of the Kingdom,
Under the gentler rule of brave Navarre,
They showed the kerchief to their children's children,
And told the story of the unholy war.
Written For The O'Connel Centenary.
by Nora Pembroke (Margaret Moran Dixon McDougall)

Sons of the bright, green island,
Gathered by the pine-fringed lake,
In honour of his memory,
Who battled for your sake,
Listen, we too pay our tribute
To a fame that well endures;
He, who ventured much for liberty,
Is ours as well as yours.
Men fought in vain for freedom,
And lay down in felon graves;
"Your noblest then were exiles,
Your proudest then were slaves"
When the people, blind and furious,
Maddened by oppression's scorn,
Struggled, seethed in wild upheaval,
Was the Liberator born.
Who took the sword fell by the sword,
This man was born to show,
How thoughts would win where steel had failed
One hundred years ago
By force the patriot tried in vain
To stem oppression's might,
This man arose and won the cause,
By pleading for the right.
He stood to plead for liberty
On Dunedin's Calton-hill;
No man had ever greater power
To move men's hearts at will
Erin, without name, senate, flag,
This, her advocate and son,
Pleaded for those who tried and lost,
With those who tried and won
He stood to ask for justice,
For ruth and mercy's grace,
For a people of another faith,
And of another race
He stood on ground made holy
By resistance unto wrong,
And Scotia's freemen gathered round,
Full twenty thousand strong
And rock and distant city,
The broad Forth gliding clear,
Yea, every heath-clad hill-top
Had hushed itself to hear,
From the shades of hero martyrs
Of patriotic fame,
From the land they thought worth fighting for,
High inspiration came
He won the cause he strove for,
With bold undaunted brow,
And his name and fame roll brightening on
Along the years till now,
All honour to his memory,
May his words, where'er they fall,
Bring forth the love of liberty,
And equal rights to all
Song.
by William Cullen Bryant

Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow
Reflects the day-dawn cold and clear,
The hunter of the west must go
In depth of woods to seek the deer.
His rifle on his shoulder placed,
His stores of death arranged with skill,
His moccasins and snow-shoes laced,
Why lingers he beside the hill?
Far, in the dim and doubtful light,
Where woody slopes a valley leave,
He sees what none but lover might,
The dwelling of his Genevieve.
And oft he turns his truant eye,
And pauses oft, and lingers near;
But when he marks the reddening sky,
He bounds away to hunt the deer.
To Laura In Death. Sonnet LXXIV.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Spinse amor e dolor ove ir non debbe.
REFLECTING THAT LAURA IS IN HEAVEN, HE REPENTS HIS EXCESSIVE GRIEF, AND IS CONSOLED.
Sorrow and Love encouraged my poor tongue,
Discreet in sadness, where it should not go,
To speak of her for whom I burn'd and sung,
What, even were it true, 'twere wrong to show.
That bless'd saint my miserable state
Might surely soothe, and ease my spirit's strife,
Since she in heaven is now domesticate
With Him who ever ruled her heart in life.
Wherefore I am contented and consoled,
Nor would again in life her form behold;
Nay, I prefer to die, and live alone.
Fairer than ever to my mental eye,
I see her soaring with the angels high,
Before our Lord, her maker and my own.
MACGREGOR.
My love and grief compell'd me to proclaim
My heart's lament, and urged me to convey
That, were it true, of her I should not say
Who woke alike my song and bosom's flame.
For I should comfort find, 'mid this world's shame,
To mark her soul's beatified array,
To think that He who here had own'd its sway,
Doth now within his home its presence claim.
And true I comfort find--myself resign'd,
I would not woo her back to earthly gloom;
Oh! rather let me die, or live still lone!
My mental eye, that holds her there enshrined,
Now paints her wing'd, bright with celestial bloom,
Prostrate beneath our mutual Heaven's throne.
WOLLASTON.
Song Is Not Dead
by Robert Fuller Murray

Song is not dead, although to-day
Men tell us everything is said.
There yet is something left to say,
Song is not dead.
While still the evening sky is red,
While still the morning gold and grey,
While still the autumn leaves are shed,
While still the heart of youth is gay,
And honour crowns the hoary head,
While men and women love and pray
Song is not dead.
To a Critic
by Madison Julius Cawein

Song hath a catalogue of lovely things
Thy kind hath oft defiled, whose spite misleads
The world too often! where the poet reads,
As in a fable, of old envyings,
Crows, such as thou, which hush the bird that sings,
Or kill it with their cawings; thorns and weeds,
Such as thyself, 'midst which the wind sows seeds
Of flow'rs, these crush before one blossom swings.
But here and there the wisdom of a School
Unknown to these hath often written down
"Fame" in white ink the future hath turned brown;
When every beauty, heaped with ridicule,
In their ignoble prose, proved their renown,
Making each famous, as an ass or fool.
Plus Intra
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

I.
Soul within sense, immeasurable, obscure,
Insepulchred and deathless, through the dense
Deep elements may scarce be felt as pure
Soul within sense.
From depth and height by measurers left immense,
Through sound and shape and colour, comes the unsure
Vague utterance, fitful with supreme suspense.
All that may pass, and all that must endure,
Song speaks not, painting shews not:    more intense
And keen than these, art wakes with music's lure
Soul within sense.
A Song Of The Republic
by Henry Lawson

Sons of the South, awake! arise!
Sons of the South, and do.
Banish from under your bonny skies
Those old-world errors and wrongs and lies.
Making a hell in a Paradise
That belongs to your sons and you.
Sons of the South, make choice between
(Sons of the South, choose true),
The Land of Morn and the Land of E'en,
The Old Dead Tree and the Young Tree Green,
The Land that belongs to the lord and the Queen,
And the Land that belongs to you.
Sons of the South, your time will come,
Sons of the South, 'tis near,
The 'Signs of the Times', in their language dumb,
Foretell it, and ominous whispers hum
Like sullen sounds of a distant drum,
In the ominous atmosphere.
Sons of the South, aroused at last!
Sons of the South are few!
But your ranks grow longer and deeper fast,
And ye shall swell to an army vast,
And free from the wrongs of the North and Past
The land that belongs to you.
Song
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

Song brings us light with the power of lending
Glory to brighten the work that we find;
Song brings us warmth with the power of rending
Rigor and frost in the swift-melting mind.
Song is eternal with power of blending
Time that is gone and to come in the soul,
Fills it with yearnings that flow without ending,
Seeking that sea where the light-surges roll.
Song brings us union, while gently beguiling
Discord and doubt on its radiant way;
Song brings us union and leads, reconciling
Battle-glad passions by harmony's sway,
Unto the beautiful, valiant, and holy
- Some can pass over its long bridge of light
Higher and higher to visions that solely
Faith can reveal to the spirit's pure sight.
Songs from the past of the past's longings telling,
Pensive and sad cast a sunset's red glow;
Present time's longings in sweet music dwelling,
Grateful the soul of the future shall know.
Youth of all ages in song here are meeting,
Sounding in tone and in word their desire;
- More than we think, from the dead bringing greeting,
Gather to-night in our festival choir.
Upon Perusing The Forgoing Epistle Thirty Years After Its Composition
by William Wordsworth

Soon did he Almighty Giver of all rest
Take those dear young Ones to a fearless nest;
And in Death's arms has long reposed the Friend
For whom this simple Register was penned.
Thanks to the moth that spared it for our eyes;
And Strangers even the slighted Scroll may prize,
Moved by the touch of kindred sympathies.
For save the calm, repentance sheds o'er strife
Raised by remembrances of misused life,
The light from past endeavours purely willed
And by Heaven's favour happily fulfilled;
Save hope that we, yet bound to Earth, may share
The joys of the Departed, what so fair
As blameless pleasure, not without some tears,
Reviewed through Love's transparent veil of years?
Flag Of The Southern Cross
by Henry Lawson

Sons of Australia, be loyal and true to her,
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
Sing a loud song to be joyous and new to her,
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
Stain'd with the blood of the diggers who died by it,
Fling out the flag to the front, and abide by it,
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
See how the toadies of Austral throw dust o'er her,
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
We who are holding her honour in trust for her,
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
See how the yellow-men next to her lust for her,
Sooner or later to battle we must for her,
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross.
Beg not of England the right to preserve ourselves,
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross,
We are the servants best able to serve ourselves,
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross.
What are our hearts for, and what are our hands for?
What are we nourished in these southern lands for?
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross.
Shall we in fear of the Dragon or Bruin now
Keep back the flag of the Southern Cross?
Better to die on a field of red ruin now,
Under the flag of the Southern Cross.
Let us stand out like the gallant Eureka men,
Give not our country the sorrow to seek her men,
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
See how the loyal are storing up shame for us
Under the light of the Southern Cross.
Never! Oh! never be coward a name for us,
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
England's red flag will bring hatred and worse to it,
Murder and rapine hath brought a black curse to it;
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
Have we not breasts for the bullets of thunderers?
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
Have we not steel for the bosoms of plunderers?
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
Prove ourselves worthy the land we inherit now,
Feed till it blazes the National spirit now!
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
Let us be bold, be it daylight or night for us,
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
Let us be firm, with our God and our right for us,
Under the flag of the Southern Cross!
Austral is fair, and the idlers in strife for her
Plunder her, sneer at her, suck the young life from her!
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
Fling out the flag to the front, and abide by it,
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
Stand by the blood of the diggers who died by it,
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
Fling out the flag to the front, and be brave for it.
Liberty! Light! or a battle-field grave for it!
Bonny bright flag of the Southern Cross!
Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650): The Tribe of Benjamin
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Sons born of many a loyal Muse to Ben,
All true-begotten, warm with wine or ale,
Bright from the broad light of his presence, hail!
Prince Randolph, nighest his throne of all his men,
Being highest in spirit and heart who hailed him then
King, nor might other spread so blithe a sail:
Cartwright, a soul pent in with narrower pale,
Praised of thy sire for manful might of pen:
Marmion, whose verse keeps alway keen and fine
The perfume of their Apollonian wine
Who shared with that stout sire of all and thee
The exuberant chalice of his echoing shrine:
Is not your praise writ broad in gold which he
Inscribed, that all who praise his name should see?
A Pageant And Other Poems.
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome
Has many sonnets: so here now shall be
One sonnet more, a love sonnet, from me
To her whose heart is my heart's quiet home,
To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee
I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;
Whose service is my special dignity,
And she my loadstar while I go and come.
And so because you love me, and because
I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath
Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honored name:
In you not fourscore years can dim the flame
Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws
Of time and change and mortal life and death.
The Guides at Cabul
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

(1879)
Sons of the Island race, wherever ye dwell,
Who speak of your fathers' battles with lips that burn,
The deed of an alien legion hear me tell,
And think not shame from the hearts ye tamed to learn,
When succour shall fail and the tide for a season turn,
To fight with joyful courage, a passionate pride,
To die at last as the Guides of Cabul died.
For a handful of seventy men in a barrack of mud,
Foodless, waterless, dwindling one by one,
Answered a thousand yelling for English blood
With stormy volleys that swept them gunner from gun,
And charge on charge in the glare of the Afghan sun,
Till the walls were shattered wherein they couched at bay,
And dead or dying half of the seventy lay.
Twice they had taken the cannon that wrecked their hold,
Twice toiled in vain to drag it back,
Thrice they toiled, and alone, wary and bold,
Whirling a hurricane sword to scatter the rack,
Hamilton, last of the English, covered their track.
"Never give in!" he cried, and he heard them shout,
And grappled with death as a man that knows not doubt.
And the Guides looked down from their smouldering barrack again,
And behold, a banner of truce, and a voice that spoke:
"Come, for we know that the English all are slain,
We keep no feud with men of a kindred folk;
Rejoice with us to be free of the conqueror's yolk."
Silence fell for a moment, then was heard
A sound of laughter and scorn, and an answering word.
"Is it we or the lords we serve who have earned this wrong,
That ye call us to flinch from the battle they bade us fight?
We that live--do ye doubt that our hands are strong?
They that are fallen--ye know that their blood was bright!
Think ye the Guides will barter for lust of the light
The pride of an ancient people in warfare bred,
Honour of comrades living, and faith to the dead?"
Then the joy that spurs the warrior's heart
To the last thundering gallop and sheer leap
Came on the men of the Guides: they flung apart
The doors not all their valour could longer keep;
They dressed their slender line; they breathed deep,
And with never a foot lagging or head bent
To the clash and clamour and dust of death they went.
Undesired Revenge
by Robert Fuller Murray

Sorrow and sin have worked their will
For years upon your sovereign face,
And yet it keeps a faded trace
Of its unequalled beauty still,
As ruined sanctuaries hold
A crumbled trace of perfect mould
In shrines which saints no longer fill.
I knew you in your splendid morn,
Oh, how imperiously sweet!
I bowed and worshipped at your feet,
And you received my love with scorn.
Now I scorn you.    It is a change,
When I consider it, how strange
That you, not I, should be forlorn.
Do you suppose I have no pain
To see you play this sorry part,
With faded face and broken heart,
And life lived utterly in vain?
Oh would to God that you once more
Might scorn me as you did of yore,
And I might worship you again!
In Memoriam. - Colonel H. L. Miller,
by Lydia Howard Sigourney

Died at Hartford, December 30th, 1861.
Sorrow and Joy collude. One mansion hears
The children shouting o'er their Christmas Tree,
While in the next resound the widow's wail
And weeping of the fatherless. So walk
Sickness and health. One rounds the cheek at morn,
The other with a ghost-like movement glides
Unto the nightly couch, and lo! the wheels
Of life drive heavily, and all its springs
Revolving in mysterious mechanism
Are troubled.
And how slight the instrument
That sometimes sends the strong man to his tomb,
Revealing that the glory of his prime,
Is as the flower of grass.
Of this we thought
When looking on the face that lay so calm
And comely in its narrow coffin-bed,
Remembering how the months of pain that sank
His manly vigor to an infant's sigh
Were met unmurmuringly.
Dense was the throng
That gather'd to his obsequies,--and well
The Pastor's prayer of faith essayed to gird
The smitten hearts that whelm'd in sorrow mourn'd
Husband and sire, whose ever-watchful love
Guarded their happiness.
Slowly moved on
The long procession, led by martial men
Who deeply in their patriot minds deplored
Their fallen compeer, and bade music lay
With plaintive voice, her chaplet down beside
His open grave.
Then, the first setting sun
Of our New-Year, cast off his wintry frown,
And seemed to write in clear, long lines of gold
Upon the whiten'd earth, the glorious words,
So shall the dead arise, at the last trump,
Sown here in weakness, to be raised in power,
Sown in corruption, to put on the robes
Of immortality.
Praise be to Him
Who gives through Christ our Lord, to dying flesh
Such victory.
Sorry Her Lot.
by William Schwenck Gilbert

Sorry her lot who loves too well,
Heavy the heart that hopes but vainly,
Had are the sighs that own the spell
Uttered by eyes that speak too plainly;
Heavy the sorrow that bows the head
When Love is alive and Hope is dead!
Sad is the hour when sets the Sun 
Dark is the night to Earth's poor daughters
When to the ark the wearied one
Flies from the empty waste of waters!
Heavy the sorrow that bows the head
When Love is alive and Hope is dead!
The Name Of Washington
by George Parsons Lathrop

[Read before the Sons of the Revolution, New-York, February 22, 1887]
Sons of the youth and the truth of the nation,
Ye that are met to remember the man
Whose valor gave birth to a people's salvation,
Honor him now; set his name in the van.
A nobleness to try for,
A name to live and die for - 
The name of Washington.
Calmly his face shall look down through the ages - 
Sweet yet severe with a spirit of warning;
Charged with the wisdom of saints and of sages;
Quick with the light of a life-giving morning.
A majesty to try for,
A name to live and die for - 
The name of Washington!
Though faction may rack us, or party divide us,
And bitterness break the gold links of our story,
Our father and leader is ever beside us.
Live, and forgive! But forget not the glory
Of him whose height we try for,
A name to live and die for - 
The name of Washington!
Still in his eyes shall be mirrored our fleeting
Days, with the image of days long ended;
Still shall those eyes give, immortally, greeting
Unto the souls from his spirit descended.
His grandeur we will try for,
His name we 'll live and die for - 
The name of Washington!
Soon, O Lanthe! Life Is O'er
by Walter Savage Landor

Soon, O Ianthe! life is o'er,
And sooner beauty's heavenly smile:
Grant only (and I ask no more),
Let love remain that little while.
A Stormy Sunset.
by Madison Julius Cawein

1
Soul of my body! what a death
For such a day of envious gloom,
Unbroken passion of the sky!
As if the pure, kind-hearted breath
Of some soft power, ever nigh,
Had, cleaving in the bitter sheath,
Burst from its grave a gorgeous bloom.
2
The majesty of clouds that swarm.
Expanding in a furious length
Of molten-metal petals, flows
Unutterable, and where the warm,
Full fire is centered, swims and glows
The evening star fresh-faced with strength,
A shimmering rain-drop of the storm.