DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Ad Cimmerios
by Richard Le Gallienne

(A Prefatory Sonnet for SANTA LUCIA, the Misses Hodgkin's Magazine for the Blind)
We, deeming day-light fair, and loving well
Its forms and dyes, and all the motley play
Of lives that win their colour from the day,
Are fain some wonder of it all to tell
To you that in that elder kingdom dwell
Of Ancient Night, and thus we make assay
Day to translate to Darkness, so to say,
To talk Cimmerian for a little spell.
Yet, as we write, may we not doubt lest ye
Should smile on us, as once our fathers smiled,
When we made vaunt of joys they knew no more;
Knowing great dreams young eyes can never see,
Dwelling in peace unguessed of any child -
Will ye smile thus upon our daylight lore?
The Tempted Soul
by Robert Fuller Murray

Weak soul, by sense still led astray,
Why wilt thou parley with the foe?
He seeks to work thine overthrow,
And thou, poor fool! dost point the way.
Hast thou forgotten many a day,
When thou exulting forth didst go,
And ere the noon wert lying low,
A broken and defenceless prey?
If thou wouldst live, avoid his face;
Dwell in the wilderness apart,
And gather force for vanquishing,
Ere thou returnest to his place.
Then arm, and with undaunted heart
Give battle, till he own thee king.
Elegiacs
by Charles Kingsley

Wearily stretches the sand to the surge, and the surge to the cloudland;
Wearily onward I ride, watching the water alone.
Not as of old, like Homeric Achilles, ??de? ya???,
Joyous knight-errant of God, thirsting for labour and strife;
No more on magical steed borne free through the regions of ether,
But, like the hack which I ride, selling my sinew for gold.
Fruit-bearing autumn is gone; let the sad quiet winter hang o'er me - 
What were the spring to a soul laden with sorrow and shame?
Blossoms would fret me with beauty; my heart has no time to bepraise them;
Gray rock, bough, surge, cloud, waken no yearning within.
Sing not, thou sky-lark above! even angels pass hushed by the weeper.
Scream on, ye sea-fowl! my heart echoes your desolate cry.
Sweep the dry sand on, thou wild wind, to drift o'er the shell and the sea- weed;
Sea-weed and shell, like my dreams, swept down the pitiless tide.
Just is the wave which uptore us; 'tis Nature's own law which condemns us;
Woe to the weak who, in pride, build on the faith of the sand!
Joy to the oak of the mountain:    he trusts to the might of the rock-clefts;
Deeply he mines, and in peace feeds on the wealth of the stone.
Morte Sands, Devonshire,
February 1849.
The Baby.
by H. P. Nichols

We've the dearest baby sister!
And so small and sweet is she,
That we love to stand beside her,
All her cunning ways to see.
She can talk in baby language,
She can laugh, and she can crow;
She's the pet and she's the darling,
She's the sweetest one we know.
Mother says that she will always
Be a sweet and gentle child,
If, in all our actions towards her,
We are loving, good, and mild.
Let us, then, be kind and pleasant
Ever to our little pet;
Nor to thank the God who gave her,
Morn and night, let us forget.
In Prison
by William Morris

Wearily, drearily,
Half the day long,
Flap the great banners
High over the stone;
Strangely and eerily
Sounds the wind's song,
Bending the banner-poles.
While, all alone,
Watching the loophole's spark,
Lie I, with life all dark,
Feet tether'd, hands fetter'd
Fast to the stone,
The grim walls, square letter'd
With prison'd men's groan.
Still strain the banner-poles
Through the wind's song,
Westward the banner rolls
Over my wrong.
Cholera Camp
by Rudyard Kipling

We've got the cholerer in camp, it's worse than forty fights;
We're dyin' in the wilderness the same as Isrulites.
It's before us, an' be'ind us, an' we cannot get away,
An' the doctor's just reported we've ten more to-day!
Oh, strike your camp an' go, the Bugle's callin',
The Rains are fallin',
The dead are bushed an' stoned to keep 'em safe below.
The Band's a-doin' all she knows to cheer us;
The Chaplain's gone and prayed to Gawd to 'ear us,
To 'ear us,
O Lord, for it's a-killin' of us so!
Since August, when it started, it's been stickin' to our tail,
Though they've 'ad us out by marches an' they've 'ad us back by rail;
But it runs as fast as troop trains, and we cannot get away;
An' the sick-list to the Colonel makes ten more to-day.
There ain't no fun in women nor there ain't no bite to drink;
It's much too wet for shootin'; we can only march and think;
An' at evenin', down the nullahs, we can 'ear the jackals say,
"Get up, you rotten beggars, you've ten more to-day!"
'Twould make a monkey cough to see our way o' doin' things,
Lieutenants takin' companies an' captains takin' wings,
An' Lances actin' Sergeants, eight file to obey,
For we've lots o' quick promotion on ten deaths a day!
Our Colonel's white an' twitterly, 'e gets no sleep nor food,
But mucks about in 'orspital where nothing does no good.
'E sends us 'eaps o' comforts, all bought from 'is pay,
But there aren't much comfort 'andy on ten deaths a day.
Our Chaplain's got a banjo, an' a skinny mule 'e rides,
An' the stuff 'e says an' sings us, Lord, it makes us split our sides!
With 'is black coat-tails a-bobbin' to Ta-ra-ra Boom-der-ay!
'E's the proper kind o' padre for ten deaths a day.
An' Father Victor 'elps 'im with our Roman Catholicks,
He knows an 'eap of Irish songs an' rummy conjurin' tricks;
An' the two they works together when it comes to play or pray;
So we keep the ball a-rollin' on ten deaths a day.
We've got the cholerer in camp, we've got it 'ot an' sweet.
It ain't no Christmas dinner, but it's 'elped an' we must eat.
We've gone beyond the funkin', 'cause we've found it doesn't pay,
An' we're rockin' round the Districk on ten deaths a day!
Then strike your camp an' go, the Rains are fallin',
The Bugle's callin'!
The dead are bushed an' stoned to keep 'em safe below!
An' them that do not like it they can lump it,
An' them that cannot stand it they can jump it;
We've got to die somewhere, some way, some'ow,
We might as well begin to do it now!
Then, Number One, let down the tent-pole slow,
Knock out the pegs an' 'old the corners, so!
Fold in the flies, furl up the ropes, an' stow!
Oh, strike, oh, strike your camp an' go!
(Gawd 'elp us!)
The Gipsy's Home. A Glee.
by Thomas Gent

Sung by Messrs. PYNE, NELSON, Miss WITHAM, and Master LONGHURST.--Composed by Mr. ROOKE.
We, who the wide world make our home;
The barren heath our cheerful bed;
Careless o'er mount and moor we roam,
And never tears of sorrow shed.
But merrily, O! Merrily, O!
Through this world of care we go.
Love, that a palace left in tears,
Flew to our houseless feast of mirth:
For here, unfetter'd, beauty cheers,
The heaven alone that's found on earth!
Then merrily, O! Merrily, O!
Through this world of care we go.
Weak Is The Will Of Man, His Judgement Blind
by William Wordsworth

'Weak is the will of Man, his judgment blind;
'Remembrance persecutes, and Hope betrays;
'Heavy is woe; and joy, for human-kind,
'A mournful thing, so transient is the blaze!'
Thus might 'he' paint our lot of mortal days
Who wants the glorious faculty assigned
To elevate the more-than-reasoning Mind,
And colour life's dark cloud with orient rays.
Imagination is that sacred power,
Imagination lofty and refined;
'Tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower
Of Faith, and round the Sufferer's temples bind
Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower,
And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.
Nursery Rhyme. DCXXII. Relics.
by Unknown

We're all in the dumps,
For diamonds are trumps;
The kittens are gone to St. Paul's!
The babies are bit,
The moon's in a fit,
And the houses are built without walls.
We'll Go No More A-Roving
by William Ernest Henley

We'll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
November glooms are barren beside the dusk of June.
The summer flowers are faded, the summer thoughts are sere.
We'll go no more a-roving, lest worse befall, my dear.
We'll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
The song we sang rings hollow, and heavy runs the tune.
Glad ways and words remembered would shame the wretched year.
We'll go no more a-roving, nor dream we did, my dear.
We'll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
If yet we walk together, we need not shun the noon.
No sweet thing left to savour, no sad thing left to fear,
We'll go no more a-roving, but weep at home, my dear.
1875
Human Frailty.
by William Cowper

Weak and irresolute is man;
The purpose of to-day,
Woven with pains into his plan,
To-morrow rends away.
The bow well bent, and smart the spring,
Vice seems already slain;
But passion rudely snaps the string,
And it revives again.
Some foe to his upright intent
Finds out his weaker part;
Virtue engages his assent,
But Pleasure wins his heart.
'Tis here the folly of the wise
Through all his art we view;
And, while his tongue the charge denies,
His conscience owns it true.
Bound on a voyage of awful length
And dangers little known,
A stranger to superior strength,
Man vainly trusts his own.
But oars alone can ne'er prevail
To reach the distant coast;
The breath of Heaven must swell the sail,
Or all the toil is lost.
From The Lord Of Potsdam
by Owen Seaman

We, William, Kaiser, planted on Our throne
By heaven's grace, but chiefly by Our own,
Do deign to speak. Then let the earth be dumb,
And other nations cease their senseless hum!
Seldom, if ever, does a chance arise
For Us to pose before Our people's eyes;
But this is one of them, this natal day
Whereon Our Ancient and Imperial sway,
Which to the battle's death-defying trump
Welded the States in one confounded lump,
(As many tasty meats are blent within
The German sausage's encircling skin)
By Our decree is twenty-five precisely,
And, under Us (and God) still doing nicely.
Therefore ye Princelings, Plenipotentates,
And Representatives of various States,
A cool Imperial pint your Kaiser drains,
Both to Our 'more immediate' domains,
And to Our lands, Our isles beyond the sea,
Our World-embracing Greater Germany!
Let loose the breathings of Our Royal Band,
We give a rouse, hoch! hoch!, to HELGOLAND!
[Kaiserliche Kapelle plays: O Helgoland! mein Helgoland! Air, Die Wacht am Rhein.]
WILLIAM, KAISER, continues:,
There are that languish on this festal day
Damned and impounded for lese-majeste;
We, William, in Our plentitude of grace,
Propose to pardon every hundredth case;
And though their sentence was no more than just
We offer each a copy of Our bust,
With option of a fine; but, be it known,
Whoso again shall deem his life his own,
Or find in Ours the faintest flaw or fleck,
God helping, We will hang him by the neck.
Yea, he shall surely curse his impious star
That dares to question Who or where We are!
Worship your Caesar, and (C.V.) your God;
Who spares the child may haply spoil the rod.
Many Our uniforms, but We are one,
And one Our empire over which the sun,
Careering on his cloud-compulsive way,
Sets once, but never more than once, a day.
The seas are Ours: world-wide upon the oceans
Our fleet commands the liveliest emotions;
Go where you will, you find Our German manners
Prevailing under other people's banners;
Go where you will, you cannot but remark
The cheap, but never nasty, German clerk;
Observe Our exports; do you ever see
Things made as they are made in Germany?
Always at home on Earth's remotest shores
E.g., among Our loved, low-German Boers,
Freely Our folk expectorate, and there
Our German bands inflame the balmy air;
Likewise again Our passionate bassoons
Tickle the niggers of the Cameroons;
Or others over whom Our Eagle flaps
In places not at present on the maps.
One more Imperial pint! your Kaiser drinks
To German intercourse with missing links!
Let loose the breathings of Our Royal Band,
We give, hoch! hoch!, Our glorious HINTERLAND!
[Kaiserliche Kapelle plays: O Hinterland! mein Hinterland! (Air as before); during which WILLIAM, KAISER, resumes his throne.]
Igo And Ago
by James Whitcomb Riley

We're The Twins from Aunt Marinn's,
Igo and Ago.
When Dad comes, the show begins! - 
Iram, coram, dago.
Dad he says he named us two
Igo and Ago
For a poem he always knew,
Iram, coram, dago.
Then he was a braw Scotchman - 
Igo and Ago. - 
Now he's Scotch-Amer-i-can.
Iram, coram, dago.
"Hey!" he cries, and pats his knee,
"Igo and Ago,
My twin bairnies, ride wi' me - 
Iram, coram, dago!"
"Here," he laughs, "ye've each a leg,
Igo and Ago,
Gleg as Tam O'Shanter's 'Meg'!
Iram, coram, dago!"
Then we mount, with shrieks of mirth - 
Igo and Ago, - 
The two gladdest twins on earth!
Iram, coram, dago.
Wade and Silas-Walker cry, - 
"Igo and Ago - 
Annie's kissin' 'em 'good-bye'!" - 
Iram, coram, dago.
Aunty waves us fond farewells. - 
"Igo and Ago,"
Granny pipes, "tak care yersels!"
Iram, coram, dago.
The Lay Of The Motor-Car
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

We're away! and the wind whistles shrewd
In our whiskers and teeth;
And the granite-like grey of the road
Seems to slide underneath.
As an eagle might sweep through the sky,
So we sweep through the land;
And the pallid pedestrians fly
When they hear us at hand.
We outpace, we outlast, we outstrip!
Not the fast-fleeing hare,
Nor the racehorses under the whip,
Nor the birds of the air
Can compete with our swiftness sublime,
Our ease and our grace.
We annihilate chickens and time
And policemen and space.
Do you mind that fat grocer who crossed?
How he dropped down to pray
In the road when he saw he was lost;
How he melted away
Underneath, and there rang through the fog
His earsplitting squeal
As he went, Is that he or a dog,
That stuff on the wheel?
Route Marchin'
by Rudyard Kipling

We're marchin' on relief over Injia's sunny plains,
A little front o' Christmas-time an' just be'ind the Rains;
Ho! get away you bullock-man, you've 'eard the bugle blowed,
There's a regiment a-comin' down the Grand Trunk Road;
With its best foot first
And the road a-sliding past,
An' every bloomin' campin'-ground exactly like the last;
While the Big Drum says,
With 'is "rowdy-dowdy-dow!"
"Kiko kissywarsti don't you hamsher argy jow?"*
Why don't you get on?
Oh, there's them Injian temples to admire when you see,
There's the peacock round the corner an' the monkey up the tree,
An' there's that rummy silver grass a-wavin' in the wind,
An' the old Grand Trunk a-trailin' like a rifle-sling be'ind.
While it's best foot first. . .
At half-past five's Revelly, an' our tents they down must come,
Like a lot of button mushrooms when you pick 'em up at 'ome.
But it's over in a minute, an' at six the column starts,
While the women and the kiddies sit an' shiver in the carts.
An' it's best foot first, . . .
Oh, then it's open order, an' we lights our pipes an' sings,
An' we talks about our rations an' a lot of other things,
An' we thinks o' friends in England, an' we wonders what they're at,
An' 'ow they would admire for to hear us sling the bat.*
An' it's best foot first. . .
Language. Thomas's first and firmest conviction is that he is a profound Orientalist and a fluent speaker of Hindustani. As a matter of fact, he depends largely on the sign-language.
It's none so bad o' Sunday, when you're lyin' at your ease,
To watch the kites a-wheelin' round them feather-'eaded trees,
For although there ain't no women, yet there ain't no barrick-yards,
So the orficers goes shootin' an' the men they plays at cards.
Till it's best foot first. . .
So 'ark an' 'eed, you rookies, which is always grumblin' sore,
There's worser things than marchin' from Umballa to Cawnpore;
An' if your 'eels are blistered an' they feels to 'urt like 'ell,
You drop some tallow in your socks an' that will make 'em well.
For it's best foot first. . .
We're marchin' on relief over Injia's coral strand,
Eight 'undred fightin' Englishmen, the Colonel, and the Band;
Ho! get away you bullock-man, you've 'eard the bugle blowed,
There's a regiment a-comin' down the Grand Trunk Road;
With its best foot first
And the road a-sliding past,
An' every bloomin' campin'-ground exactly like the last;
While the Big Drum says,
With 'is "rowdy-dowdy-dow!"
"Kiko kissywarsti don't you amsher argy jow?"
Only A Private Killed
by Hanford Lennox Gordon

"We've had a brush," the Captain said,
"And Rebel blood we've spilled;
We came off victors with the loss
Of only a private killed."
"Ah," said the orderly "it was hot," 
Then he breathed a heavy breath 
"Poor fellow! he was badly shot,
Then bayoneted to death."
And now was hushed the martial din;
The saucy foe had fled;
They brought the private's body in;
I went to see the dead;
For I could not think our Rebel foes 
So valiant in the van 
So boastful of their chivalry 
Could kill a wounded man.
A musket ball had pierced his thigh 
A frightful, crushing wound 
And then with savage bayonets
They pinned him to the ground.
One deadly thrust drove through the heart,
Another through the head;
Three times they stabbed his pulseless breast
When he lay cold and dead.
His hair was matted with his gore,
His hands were clinched with might,
As if he still his musket bore
So firmly in the fight.
He had grasped the foemen's bayonets
Their murderous thrusts to fend:
They raised the coat-cape from his face,
And lo it was my friend!
Think what a shudder chilled my heart!
'Twas but the day before
We laughed together merrily,
As we talked of days of yore.
"How happy we shall be," he said,
"When the war is o'er, and when
With victory's song and victory's tread
We all march home again."
Ah little he dreamed that soldier brave
So near his journey's goal 
How soon a heavenly messenger
Would claim his Christian soul.
But he fell like a hero fighting,
And hearts with grief are filled;
And honor is his, tho' the Captain says
"Only a private killed."
I knew him well, he was my friend;
He loved our land and laws,
And he fell a blessed martyr
To our Country's holy cause;
And I know a cottage in the West
Where eyes with tears are filled
As they read the careless telegram 
"Only a private killed."
Comrades, bury him under the oak,
Wrapped in his army-blue;
He is done with the battle's din and smoke,
With drill and the proud review.
And the time will come ere long, perchance,
When our blood will thus be spilled,
And what care we if the Captain say 
"Only a private killed."
For the glorious Old Flag beckons.
We have pledged her heart and hand,
And we'll brave even death to rescue
Our dear old Fatherland.
We ask not praise nor honors,
Then as each grave is filled 
What care we if the Captain say 
"Only a private killed."
Freedom And The World.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

[Inscription under a Statue of the Virgin and Child, at Guernsey. - The poet sees in the emblem a modern Atlas, i.e., Freedom supporting the World.]
("Le peuple est petit.")
Weak is the People - but will grow beyond all other - 
Within thy holy arms, thou fruitful victor-mother!
O Liberty, whose conquering flag is never furled - 
Thou bearest Him in whom is centred all the World.
Sonnets on Separation VII.
by Edward Shanks

We're at the world's top now.    The hills around
Stand proud in order with the valleys deep,
The hills with pastures drest, with tall trees crowned,
And the low valleys dipt in sunny sleep.
A sound brims all the country up, a noise
Of wheels upon the road and labouring bees
And trodden heather, mixing with the voice
Of small lost winds that die among the trees.
And we are prone beneath the flooding sun,
So drenched, so soaked in the unceasing light,
That colours, sounds and your close presence are one,
A texture woven up of all delight,
Whose shining threads my hands may not undo,
Yet one thread runs the whole bright garment through.
Counter-Attack
by Siegfried Loraine Sassoon

We'd gained our first objective hours before
While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,
Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.
Things seemed all right at first. We held their line,
With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed,
And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench.
The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs
High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps;
And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,
Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;
And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,
Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime.
And then the rain began, - the jolly old rain!
A yawning soldier knelt against the bank,
Staring across the morning blear with fog;
He wondered when the Allemands would get busy;
And then, of course, they started with five-nines
Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud.
Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst
Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,
While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.
He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,
Sick for escape, - loathing the strangled horror
And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.
An officer came blundering down the trench:
"Stand-to and man the fire-step!" On he went ...
Gasping and bawling, "Fire-step ... counter-attack!"
Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right
Down the old sap: machine-guns on the left;
And stumbling figures looming out in front.
"O Christ, they're coming at us!" Bullets spat,
And he remembered his rifle ... rapid fire ...
And started blazing wildly ... then a bang
Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out
To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he choked
And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom,
Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans ...
Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned,
Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed.
Republican Pioneers
by Henry Lawson

We're marching along, we're gath'ring strong'
We place on our right reliance,
We fling in the air, for all who care,
Our first loud notes of defiance!
We fling in the air,
For all who care,
Our first loud notes of defiance!
Laugh long and loud, you toady crowd,
At the men you call benighted,
In spite of your sneers, we are pioneers
Of "Australian States United"!
In spite of your sneers, We are pioneers
Of "Australian States United"!
Not long we'll stand as an outlaw band,
And be in our country lonely,
For soon to the sky shall ring our cry,
Our cry of "Australia only"!
For soon to the sky
Shall mount our cry,
Our cry of "Australia only"!
And we'll sleep sound in Australian ground,
'Neath the blue-cross flag star lighted,
When it freely waves o'er the grass-grown graves
Of the pioneers united!
When it floats and veers
O'er the pioneers
Of "Australian States United"!
A Valediction
by John Masefield

We're bound for blue water where the great winds blow,
It's time to get the tacks aboard, time for us to go;
The crowd's at the capstan and the tune's in the shout,
"A long pull, a strong pull, and warp the hooker out."
The bow-wash is eddying, spreading from the bows,
Aloft and loose the topsails and some one give a rouse;
A salt-Atlantic chanty shall be music to the dead,
"A long pull, a strong pull, and the yard to the masthead."
Shrilly squeal the running sheaves, the weather-gear strains,
Such a clatter of chain-sheets, the devil's in the chains;
Over us the bright stars, under us the drowned,
"A long pull, a strong pull, and we're outward bound."
Yonder, round and ruddy, is the mellow old moon,
The red-funnelled tug has gone, and now, sonny, soon
We'll be clear of the Channel, so watch how you steer,
"Ease her when she pitches, and so-long, my dear."
Fragment: "Amor Aeternus".
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Wealth and dominion fade into the mass
Of the great sea of human right and wrong,
When once from our possession they must pass;
But love, though misdirected, is among
The things which are immortal, and surpass
All that frail stuff which will be - or which was.