DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Under Which King . . . ?
by Richard Le Gallienne

The fight I loved - the good old fight - 
Was clear as day 'twixt Might and Right;
Satrap and slave on either hand,
Tiller and tyrant of the land;
One delved the earth the other trod,
The writhing worm, the thundering god.
Lords of an earth they deemed their own,
The tyrants laughed from throne to throne,
Scattered the gold and spilled the wine,
And deemed their foolish dust divine;
While, 'neath their heel, sublimely strove
The martyred hosts of Human Love.
Such was the fight I dreamed of old
'Twixt Labour and the Lords of Gold;
I deemed all evil in the king,
In Demos every lovely thing.
But now I see the battle set - 
Albeit the same old banners yet - 
With no clear issue to decide,
With Right and Might on either side;
Yet small the rumour is of Right - 
But the bared arms of Might and Might
Brandish across the hate-filled lands,
With blood alike on both their hands.
The Fir & The Bramble
by Walter Crane

The Fir-tree looked down on the Bramble.
"Poor thing, only able to scramble
About on the ground."
Just then an axe' sound
Made the Fir wish himself but a Bramble.
Pride Of Place Has Its Disadvantages
In The Firelight
by Eugene Field

The fire upon the hearth is low,
And there is stillness everywhere,
While like winged spirits, here and there,
The firelight shadows fluttering go.
And as the shadows round me creep,
A childish treble breaks the gloom,
And softly from a further room
Comes, "Now I lay me down to sleep."
And somehow, with that little prayer
And that sweet treble in my ears,
My thoughts go back to distant years
And linger with a loved one there;
And as I hear my child's amen,
My mother's faith comes back to me,--
Crouched at her side I seem to be,
And Mother holds my hands again.
Oh, for an hour in that dear place!
Oh, for the peace of that dear time!
Oh, for that childish trust sublime!
Oh, for a glimpse of Mother's face!
Yet, as the shadows round me creep,
I do not seem to be alone,--
Sweet magic of that treble tone,
And "Now I lay me down to sleep."
Repentance
by William Wordsworth

The fields which with covetous spirit we sold,
Those beautiful fields, the delight of the day,
Would have brought us more good than a burthen of gold,
Could we but have been as contented as they.
When the troublesome Tempter beset us, said I,
"Let him come, with his purse proudly grasped in his hand;
But, Allan, be true to me, Allan, we'll die
Before he shall go with an inch of the land!"
There dwelt we, as happy as birds in their bowers;
Unfettered as bees that in gardens abide;
We could do what we liked with the land, it was ours;
And for us the brook murmured that ran by its side.
But now we are strangers, go early or late;
And often, like one overburthened with sin,
With my hand on the latch of the half-opened gate,
I look at the fields, but I cannot go in!
When I walk by the hedge on a bright summer's day,
Or sit in the shade of my grandfather's tree,
A stern face it puts on, as if ready to say,
"What ails you, that you must come creeping to me!"
With our pastures about us, we could not be sad;
Our comfort was near if we ever were crost;
But the comfort, the blessings, and wealth that we had,
We slighted them all, and our birth-right was lost.
Oh, ill-judging sire of an innocent son
Who must now be a wanderer! but peace to that strain!
Think of evening's repose when our labour was done,
The sabbath's return; and its leisure's soft chain!
And in sickness, if night had been sparing of sleep,
How cheerful, at sunrise, the hill where I stood,
Looking down on the kine, and our treasure of sheep
That besprinkled the field; 'twas like youth in my blood!
Now I cleave to the house, and am dull as a snail;
And, oftentimes, hear the church-bell with a sigh,
That follows the thought, We've no land in the vale,
Save six feet of earth where our forefathers lie!
Last Love
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The first flower of the spring is not so fair
Or bright as one the ripe midsummer brings.
The first faint note the forest warbler sings
Is not as rich with feeling, or so rare
As when, full master of his art, the air
Drowns in the liquid sea of song he flings
Like silver spray from beak, and breast, and wings.
The artist's earliest effort, wrought with care,
The bard's first ballad, written in his tears,
Set by his later toil, seems poor and tame,
And into nothing dwindles at the test.
So with the passions of maturer years.
Let those who will demand the first fond flame,
Give me the heart's LAST LOVE, for that is best.
Welcome Home
by Robert Fuller Murray

The fire burns bright
And the hearth is clean swept,
As she likes it kept,
And the lamp is alight.
She is coming to-night.
The wind's east of late.
When she comes, she'll be cold,
So the big chair is rolled
Close up to the grate,
And I listen and wait.
The shutters are fast,
And the red curtains hide
Every hint of outside.
But hark, how the blast
Whistled then as it passed!
Or was it the train?
How long shall I stand,
With my watch in my hand,
And listen in vain
For the wheels in the lane?
Hark!    A rumble I hear
(Will the wind not be still?),
And it comes down the hill,
And it grows on the ear,
And now it is near.
Quick, a fresh log to burn!
Run and open the door,
Hold a lamp out before
To light up the turn,
And bring in the urn.
You are come, then, at last!
O my dear, is it you?
I can scarce think it true
I am holding you fast,
And sorrow is past.
A Song At Cock-Crow
by Rudyard Kipling

The first time that Peter denied his Lord
He shrank from the cudgel, the scourge and the cord,
But followed far off to see what they would do,
Till the cock crew,till the cock crew,
After Gethsemane, till the cock crew!
The first time that Peter denied his Lord
'Twas only a maid in the palace who heard,
As he sat by the fire and warmed himself through.
Then the cock crew! Then the cock crew!
("Though also art one of them.") Then the cock crew!
The first time that Peter denied his Lord
He had neither the Throne, nor the Keys nor the Sword,
A poor silly fisherman, what could he do,
When the cock crew,when the cock crew,
But weep for his wickedness when the cock crew?
.    .    .    .    .    .
The next time that Peter denied his Lord
He was Fisher of Men, as foretold by the Word,
With the Crown on his brow and the Cross on his shoe,
When the cock crew,when the cock crew,
In Flanders and Picardy when the cock crew!
The next time that Peter denied his Lord
'Twas Mary the Mother in Heaven Who heard,
She grieved for the maidens and wives that they slew
When the cock crew,when the cock crew,
At Tirmonde and Aerschott when the cock crew!
The next time that Peter denied his Lord
The Babe in the Manger awakened and stirred,
And He stretched out His arms for the playmates
He knew,
When the cock crew,when the cock crew,
But the waters had covered them when the cock crew!
The next time that Peter denied his Lord
'Twas Earth in her agony waited his word,
But he sat by the fire and naught would he do,
Though the cock crew,though the cock crew,
Over all Christendom, though the cock crew!
The last time that Peter denied his Lord,
The Father took from him the Keys and the Sword,
And the Mother and Babe brake his Kingdom in two,
When the cock crew,when the cock crew,
(Because of his wickedness) when the cock crew!
Sonnets From The Portuguese XXXII
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The first time that the sun rose on thine oath
To love me, I looked forward to the moon
To slacken all those bonds which seemed too soon
And quickly tied to make a lasting troth.
Quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly loathe;
And, looking on myself, I seemed not one
For such man's love! more like an out-of-tune
Worn viol, a good singer would be wroth
To spoil his song with, and which, snatched in haste,
Is laid down at the first ill-sounding note.
I did not wrong myself so, but I placed
A wrong on thee. For perfect strains may float
'Neath master-hands, from instruments defaced,
And great souls, at one stroke, may do and doat.
Destruction
by Charles Baudelaire

The Fiend is at my side without a rest;
He swirls around me like a subtle breeze;
I swallow him, and burning fills my breast,
And calls me to desire's shameful needs.
Knowing my love of Art, he may select
A woman's form - most perfect, most corrupt
And under sanctimonious pretext
Bring to my lips the potion of her lust.
Thus does he lead me, far from sight of God,
Broken and gasping, out into the broad
And wasted plains of Ennui, deep and still,
Then throws before my staring eyes some gowns
And bloody garments stained by open wounds,
And dripping engines of Destruction's will!
Nursery Rhyme. CCCXLVI. Games.
by Unknown

The first day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
A partridge in a pear tree.
The second day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Two turtle doves and
A partridge in a pear tree.
The third day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.
The fourth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Four colly birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.
The fifth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Five gold rings,
Four colly birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.
The sixth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Six geese a laying,
Five gold rings,
Four colly birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.
The seventh day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Seven swans a swimming,
Six geese a laying,
Five gold rings,
Four colly birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.
The eighth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Eight maids a milking,
Seven swans a swimming,
Six geese a laying,
Five gold rings,
Four colly birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.
The ninth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Nine drummers drumming,
Eight maids a milking,
Seven swans a swimming,
Six geese a laying,
Five gold rings,
Four colly birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.
The tenth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Ten pipers piping,
Nine drummers drumming,
Eight maids a milking,
Seven swans a swimming,
Six geese a laying,
Five gold rings,
Four colly birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.
The eleventh day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Eleven ladies dancing,
Ten pipers piping,
Nine drummers drumming,
Eight maids a milking,
Seven swans a swimming,
Six geese a laying,
Five gold rings,
Four colly birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.
The twelfth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Twelve lords a leaping,
Eleven ladies dancing,
Ten pipers piping,
Nine drummers drumming,
Eight maids a milking,
Seven swans a swimming,
Six geese a laying,
Five gold rings,
Four colly birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.
[Each child in succession repeats the gifts of the day, and forfeits for each mistake. This accumulative process is a favorite with children: in early writers, such as Homer, the repetition of messages, & c. pleases on the same principle.]
Becalmed
by Adam Bernard Mickiewicz

The flag is listless, limp. It dances not.
As deep the sea breathes from a gentle breast
As any bride who dreams at love's behest,
And wakes and sighs, then casts with dreams her lot.
Sails hang upon the masts--useless-forgot--
Like folded standards which the warriors wrest
And bring home broken from the battle's crest.
The sailors rest them in some sheltered spot.
O Sea! within your unknown deeps concealed,
When storms are wild, your monsters dream and sleep,
And all their cruelty for the sunlight keep.
Thus, Soul of Mine, in your sad deeps concealed
The monsters sleep--when wild are storms. They start
From out some blue sky's peace to seize my heart.
Logs On The Hearth
by Thomas Hardy

A Memory Of A Sister
The fire advances along the log
Of the tree we felled,
Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck
Till its last hour of bearing knelled.
The fork that first my hand would reach
And then my foot
In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now
Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.
Where the bark chars is where, one year,
It was pruned, and bled -
Then overgrew the wound. But now, at last,
Its growings all have stagnated.
My fellow-climber rises dim
From her chilly grave -
Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb,
Laughing, her young brown hand awave.
December 1915.
Sonnet CLXIX.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

D' un bel, chiaro, polito e vivo ghiaccio.
THOUGH RACKED BY AGONY, HE DOES NOT COMPLAIN OF HER.
The flames that ever on my bosom prey
From living ice or cold fair marble pour,
And so exhaust my veins and waste my core,
Almost insensibly I melt away.
Death, his stern arm already rear'd to slay,
As thunders angry heaven or lions roar,
Pursues my life that vainly flies before,
While I with terror shake, and mute obey.
And yet, were Love and Pity friends, they might
A double column for my succour throw
Between my worn soul and the mortal blow:
It may not be; such feelings in the sight
Of my loved foe and mistress never stir;
The fault is in my fortune, not in her.
MACGREGOR.
A Word For The Hour
by John Greenleaf Whittier

The firmament breaks up. In black eclipse
Light after light goes out. One evil star,
Luridly glaring through the smoke of war,
As in the dream of the Apocalypse,
Drags others down. Let us not weakly weep
Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to keep
Our faith and patience; wherefore should we leap
On one hand into fratricidal fight,
Or, on the other, yield eternal right,
Frame lies of law, and good and ill confound?
What fear we? Safe on freedom's vantage-ground
Our feet are planted: let us there remain
In unrevengeful calm, no means untried
Which truth can sanction, no just claim denied,
The sad spectators of a suicide!
They break the links of Union: shall we light
The fires of hell to weld anew the chain
On that red anvil where each blow is pain?
Draw we not even now a freer breath,
As from our shoulders falls a load of death
Loathsome as that the Tuscan's victim bore
When keen with life to a dead horror bound?
Why take we up the accursed thing again?
Pity, forgive, but urge them back no more
Who, drunk with passion, flaunt disunion's rag
With its vile reptile-blazon. Let us press
The golden cluster on our brave old flag
In closer union, and, if numbering less,
Brighter shall shine the stars which still remain
Week-Night Service
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

The five old bells
Are hurrying and eagerly calling,
Imploring, protesting
They know, but clamorously falling
Into gabbling incoherence, never resting,
Like spattering showers from a bursten sky-rocket dropping
In splashes of sound, endlessly, never stopping.
The silver moon
That somebody has spun so high
To settle the question, yes or no, has caught
In the net of the night's balloon,
And sits with a smooth bland smile up there in the sky
Smiling at naught,
Unless the winking star that keeps her company
Makes little jests at the bells' insanity,
As if he knew aught!
The patient Night
Sits indifferent, hugged in her rags,
She neither knows nor cares
Why the old church sobs and brags;
The light distresses her eyes, and tears
Her old blue cloak, as she crouches and covers her face,
Smiling, perhaps, if we knew it, at the bells' loud clattering disgrace.
The wise old trees
Drop their leaves with a faint, sharp hiss of contempt,
While a car at the end of the street goes by with a laugh;
As by degrees
The poor bells cease, and the Night is exempt,
And the stars can chaff
The ironic moon at their ease, while the dim old church
Is peopled with shadows and sounds and ghosts that lurch
In its cenotaph.
Firwood
by John Clare

The fir trees taper into twigs and wear
The rich blue green of summer all the year,
Softening the roughest tempest almost calm
And offering shelter ever still and warm
To the small path that towels underneath,
Where loudest winds--almost as summer's breath--
Scarce fan the weed that lingers green below
When others out of doors are lost in frost and snow.
And sweet the music trembles on the ear
As the wind suthers through each tiny spear,
Makeshifts for leaves; and yet, so rich they show,
Winter is almost summer where they grow.
The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - The Year 1603.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Gi' sto mirando.
The first heaven-wandering lights I see ascend
Upon the seventh and ninth centenary,
When in the Archer's realm three years shall be
Added, this aeon and our age to end.
Thou too, Mercurius, like a scribe dost lend
Thine aid to promulgate that dread decree,
Stored in the archives of eternity,
And signed and sealed by powers no prayers can bend.
O'er Europe's full meridian on thy morn
In the tenth house thy court I see thee hold:
The Sun with thee consents in Capricorn.
God grant that I may keep this mortal breath
Until I too that glorious day behold
Which shall at last confound the sons of death!
Improvisations: Light And Snow: 03
by Conrad Potter Aiken

The first bell is silver,
And breathing darkness I think only of the long scythe of time.
The second bell is crimson,
And I think of a holiday night, with rockets
Furrowing the sky with red, and a soft shatter of stars.
The third bell is saffron and slow,
And I behold a long sunset over the sea
With wall on wall of castled cloud and glittering balustrades.
The fourth bell is color of bronze,
I walk by a frozen lake in the dun light of dusk:
Muffled crackings run in the ice,
Trees creak, birds fly.
The fifth bell is cold clear azure,
Delicately tinged with green:
One golden star hangs melting in it,
And towards this, sleepily, I go.
The sixth bell is as if a pebble
Had been dropped into a deep sea far above me . . .
Rings of sound ebb slowly into the silence.
The Mad Philosopher
by Ambrose Bierce

The flabby wine-skin of his brain
Yields to some pathologic strain,
And voids from its unstored abysm
The driblet of an aphorism.
The First Rain
by Yehuda Amichai

The first rain reminds me
Of the rising summer dust.
The rain doesn't remember the rain of yesteryear.
A year is a trained beast with no memories.
Soon you will again wear your harnesses,
Beautiful and embroidered, to hold
Sheer stockings: you
Mare and harnesser in one body.
The white panic of soft flesh
In the panic of a sudden vision
Of ancient saints.
The Photograph
by Thomas Hardy

The flame crept up the portrait line by line
As it lay on the coals in the silence of night's profound,
And over the arm's incline,
And along the marge of the silkwork superfine,
And gnawed at the delicate bosom's defenceless round.
Then I vented a cry of hurt, and averted my eyes;
The spectacle was one that I could not bear,
To my deep and sad surprise;
But, compelled to heed, I again looked furtive-wise
Till the flame had eaten her breasts, and mouth, and hair.
"Thank God, she is out of it now!" I said at last,
In a great relief of heart when the thing was done
That had set my soul aghast,
And nothing was left of the picture unsheathed from the past
But the ashen ghost of the card it had figured on.
She was a woman long hid amid packs of years,
She might have been living or dead; she was lost to my sight,
And the deed that had nigh drawn tears
Was done in a casual clearance of life's arrears;
But I felt as if I had put her to death that night! . . .
* * *
- Well; she knew nothing thereof did she survive,
And suffered nothing if numbered among the dead;
Yet - yet - if on earth alive
Did she feel a smart, and with vague strange anguish strive?
If in heaven, did she smile at me sadly and shake her head?
An Inequitable Impost
by Edward Dyson

The first one with conviction penned:
'This conflict in seven weeks will end.'
Another, later in the war,
Gave Germany just one month more.
Since then I've read predictions free,
They dribble in unceasingly.
All wrong. And still the critics say
When it will finish to the day.
Hughes should get cash in mighty sacks
From his proposed War Prophets Tax.
Hell Fire.
by Robert Herrick

The fire of hell this strange condition hath,
To burn, not shine, as learned Basil saith.
The Fox & The Lion
by Walter Crane

The first time the Fox had a sight
Of the Lion, he 'most died of fright;
When he next met his eye,
Fox felt just a bit shy;
But the next--quite at ease, & polite.
Familiarity Destroys Fear
Old Fires
by John Frederick Freeman

The fire burns low
Where it has burned ages ago,
Sinks and sighs
As it has done to a hundred eyes
Staring, staring
At the last cold smokeless glow.
Here men sat
Lonely and watched the golden grate
Turn at length black;
Heard the cooling iron crack:
Shadows, shadows,
Watching the shadows come and go.
And still the hiss
I hear, the soft fire's sob and kiss,
And still it burns
And the bright gold to crimson turns,
Sinking, sinking,
And the fire shadows larger grow.
O dark-cheeked fire,
Wasting like spent heart's desire,
You that were gold,
And now crimson will soon be cold--
Cold, cold,
Like moon-shadows on new snow.
Shadows all,
They that watched your shadows fall.
But now they come
Rising around me, grave and dumb....
Shadows, shadows,
Come as the fire-shadows go.
And stay, stay,
Though all the fire sink cold as clay,
Whispering still,
Ancestral wise Familiars--till,
Staring, staring,
Dawn's wild fires through the casement glow.
The Flower Boat
by Robert Lee Frost

The Fisherman's swapping a yarn for a yarn
Under the hand of the village barber,
And here in the angle of house and barn
His deep-sea dory has found a harbor.
At anchor she rides the sunny sod
As full to the gunnel with flowers a-growing
As ever she turned her home with cod
From George's Bank when winds were blowing.
And I know from that Elysian freight
She will brave but once more the Atlantic weather,
When dory and fisherman sail by fate
To seek for the Happy Isles together.
The Fizzgiggious Fish,
by Edward Lear

The Fizzgiggious Fish,
who always walked about upon Stilts,
because he had no legs.
The Fire That Filled My Heart of Old
by James Thomson -  (Bysshe Vanolis)

The fire that filled my heart of old
Gave luster while it burned;
Now only ashes gray and cold
Are in its silence urned.
Ah! better was the furious flame,
The splendor with the smart;
I never cared for the singer's fame
But, oh! for the singer's heart
Once more--
The burning fulgent heart!
No love, no hate, no hope, no fear,
No anguish and no mirth;
Thus life extends from year to year,
A flat of sullen dearth.
Ah! life's blood creepeth cold and tame,
Life's thought plays no new part;
I never cared for the singer's fame,
But, oh! for the singer's heart
Once more--
The bleeding passionate heart!
Yellow Warblers
by Katharine Lee Bates

The first faint dawn was flushing up the skies
When, dreamland still bewildering mine eyes,
I looked out to the oak that, winter-long,
a winter wild with war and woe and wrong
Beyond my casement had been void of song.
And lo! with golden buds the twigs were set,
Live buds that warbled like a rivulet
Beneath a veil of willows. Then I knew
Those tiny voices, clear as drops of dew,
Those flying daffodils that fleck the blue,
Those sparkling visitants from myrtle isles,
Wee pilgrims of the sun, that measure miles
Innumerable over land and sea
With wings of shining inches. Flakes of glee,
They filled that dark old oak with jubilee,
Foretelling in delicious roundelays
Their dainty courtships on the dipping sprays,
How they should fashion nests, mate helping mate,
Of milkweed flax and fern-down delicate
To keep sky-tinted eggs inviolate.
Listening to those blithe notes, I slipped once more
From lyric dawn through dreamland's open door,
And there was God, Eternal Life that sings,
Eternal joy, brooding all mortal things,
A nest of stars, beneath untroubled wings.
Fragment: The Lake's Margin.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses
Track not the steps of him who drinks of it;
For the light breezes, which for ever fleet
Around its margin, heap the sand thereon.
Fragment: Rain.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fitful alternations of the rain,
When the chill wind, languid as with pain
Of its own heavy moisture, here and there
Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere.