DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
I'm Scared of it All
by Robert William Service

I'm scared of it all, God's truth! so I am;
It's too big and brutal for me.
My nerve's on the raw and I don't give a damn
For all the "hoorah" that I see.
I'm pinned between subway and overhead train,
Where automobillies swoop down:
Oh, I want to go back to the timber again -
I'm scared of the terrible town.
I want to go back to my lean, ashen plains;
My rivers that flash into foam;
My ultimate valleys where solitude reigns;
My trail from Fort Churchill to Nome.
My forests packed full of mysterious gloom,
My ice-fields agrind and aglare:
The city is deadfalled with danger and doom -
I know that I'm safer up there.
I watch the wan faces that flash in the street;
All kinds and all classes I see.
Yet never a one in the million I meet,
Has the smile of a comrade for me.
Just jaded and panting like dogs in a pack;
Just tensed and intent on the goal:
O God! but I'm lonesome - I wish I was back,
Up there in the land of the Pole.
I wish I was back on the Hunger Plateaus,
And seeking the lost caribou;
I wish I was up where the Coppermine flows
To the kick of my little canoe.
I'd like to be far on some weariful shore,
In the Land of the Blizzard and Bear;
Oh, I wish I was snug in the Arctic once more,
For I know I am safer up there!
I prowl in the canyons of dismal unrest;
I cringe - I'm so weak and so small.
I can't get my bearings, I'm crushed and oppressed
With the haste and the waste of it all.
The slaves and the madman, the lust and the sweat,
The fear in the faces I see;
The getting, the spending, the fever, the fret -
It's too bleeding cruel for me.
I feel it's all wrong, but I can't tell you why -
The palace, the hovel next door;
The insolent towers that sprawl to the sky,
The crush and the rush and the roar.
I'm trapped like a fox and I fear for my pelt;
I cower in the crash and the glare;
Oh, I want to be back in the avalanche belt,
For I know that it's safer up there!
I'm scared of it all: Oh, afar I can hear
The voice of my solitudes call!
We're nothing but brute with a little veneer,
And nature is best after all.
There's tumult and terror abroad in the street;
There's menace and doom in the air;
I've got to get back to my thousand-mile beat;
The trail where the cougar and silver-tip meet;
The snows and the camp-fire, with wolves at my feet;
Good-bye, for it's safer up there.
To be forming good habits up there;
To be starving on rabbits up there;
In your hunger and woe,
Though it's sixty below,
Oh, I know that it's safer up there!
The Bookworm
by Walter De La Mare

'I'm tired - Oh, tired of books,' said Jack,
'I long for meadows green,
And woods, where shadowy violets
Nod their cool leaves between;
I long to see the ploughman stride
His darkening acres o'er,
To hear the hoarse sea-waters drive
Their billows 'gainst the shore;
I long to watch the sea-mew wheel
Back to her rock-perched mate;
Or, where the breathing cows are housed,
Lean dreaming o'er the gate.
Something has gone, and ink and print
Will never bring it back;
I long for the green fields again,
I'm tired of books,' said Jack.
On A Circle
by Jonathan Swift

I'm up and down, and round about,
Yet all the world can't find me out;
Though hundreds have employ'd their leisure,
They never yet could find my measure.
I'm found almost in every garden,
Nay, in the compass of a farthing.
There's neither chariot, coach, nor mill,
Can move an inch except I will.
Not Married Yet!
by George Pope Morris

I'm single yet--I'm single yet!
And years have flown since I came out!
In vain I sigh--in vain I fret--
Ye gods! what are the men about?
I vow I'm twenty!--O ye powers!
A spinster's lot is hard to bear--
On earth alone to pass her hours,
And afterward lead apes--DOWN THERE!
No offer yet--no offer yet!
I'm puzzled quite to make it out:
For every beau my cap I set--
What, what, what ARE the men about?
They don't propose--they WON'T propose,
For fear, perhaps, I'd not say, "Yes!"
Just let them try--for Heaven knows
I'm tired of single-blessedness.
Not married yet--not married yet--
The deuce is in the men, I fear!
I'm like a--something to be let,
And to be LET ALONE--that's clear.
They say, "She's pretty--but no chink--
And love without it runs in debt!"
It agitates my nerves to think
That I have had no offer yet.
Knocked Up
by Henry Lawson

I'm lyin' on the barren ground that's baked and cracked with drought,
And dunno if my legs or back or heart is most wore out;
I've got no spirits left to rise and smooth me achin' brow,
I'm too knocked up to light a fire and bile the billy now.
Oh it's trampin', trampin', tra-a-mpin', in flies an' dust an' heat,
Or it's trampin' trampin' tra-a-a-mpin'
through mud and slush 'n sleet;
It's tramp an' tramp for tucker, one everlastin' strife,
An' wearin' out yer boots an' heart in the wastin' of yer life.
They whine o' lost an' wasted lives in idleness and crime,
I've wasted mine for twenty years, and grafted all the time
And never drunk the stuff I earned, nor gambled when I shore,
But somehow when yer on the track yer life seems wasted more.
A long dry stretch of thirty miles I've tramped this broilin' day,
All for the off-chance of a job a hundred miles away;
There's twenty hungry beggars wild for any job this year,
An' fifty might be at the shed while I am lyin' here.
The sinews in my legs seem drawn, red-hot, 'n that's the truth;
I seem to weigh a ton, and ache like one tremendous tooth;
I'm stung between my shoulder-blades, my blessed back seems broke;
I'm too knocked out to eat a bite, I'm too knocked up to smoke.
The blessed rain is comin' too, there's oceans in the sky,
An' I suppose I must get up and rig the blessed fly;
The heat is bad, the water's bad, the flies a crimson curse,
The grub is bad, mosquitoes damned, but rheumatism's worse.
I wonder why poor blokes like me will stick so fast ter breath,
Though Shakespeare says it is the fear of somethin' after death;
But though Eternity be cursed with God's almighty curse,
What ever that same somethin' is I swear it can't be worse.
For it's trampin', trampin', tra-a-mpin' thro' hell across the plain,
And it's trampin' trampin' tra-a-mpin' thro' slush 'n mud 'n rain,
A livin' worse than any dog, without a home 'n wife,
A-wearin' out yer heart 'n soul in the wastin' of yer life.
Two Roses.
by Hattie Howard

I've a friend beyond the ocean
So regardful, so sincere,
And he sends me in a letter
Such a pretty souvenir.
It is crushed to death and withered,
Out of shape and very flat,
But its pure, delicious odor
Is the richer for all that.
'Tis a rose from Honolulu,
And it bears the tropic brand,
Sandwiched in this friendly missive
From that far-off flower-land.
It shall mingle pot-'-pourri
With the scents I love and keep;
Some of them so very precious
That remembrance makes me weep.
While I dream I hear the music
That of happiness foretells,
Like the flourishing of trumpets
And the sound of marriage bells.
There's a rose upon the prairie,
Chosen his by happy fate,
He shall gather when he cometh
Sailing through the Golden Gate.
Mine, a public posy, growing
Somewhere by the garden wall,
Might have gone to any stranger,
May have been admired by all.
But the rose in beauty blushing,
Tenderly and sweetly grown
In the home and its affections,
Blooms for him, and him alone.
Speed the voyager returning;
His shall be a welcome warm,
With the Rose of Minnesota
Gently resting on his arm.
Love embraces in his kingdom
Earth and sea and sky and air.
Hail, Columbia! hail, Hawaii!
It is Heaven everywhere.
The Lily Of The Valley
by Alan L. Strang

I've a lily of the Valley
That I'm keeping here for you;
I care for and protect it,
And water it with dew.
It is a living emblem
Of the wonderful domain,
Where all is pure and love-like,
And where we feel no pain.
Yes, the Lily of the Valley
Is a tie twixt you and me;
For every time you see one
Think how happy I must be.
I'm an atom of the infinite,
How wonderful it seems;
Yet from your sphere the finite
But a thin veil intervenes.
Chain Letter
by Paul Cameron Brown

I'm sitting in a "sixties bar." No put-on.
All around old Rolling Stones music is playing.
I can tell it's a sixties bar by the spiffy waiter recycling sheets for
tablecloths. The sixties was "into," environment.
It's the eighties now as Heineken was unobtainable in 1969.
Someone reminds me in order to run a tab a credit card is needed.
This seems logical but very out of sorts with the people power complex I'm nurturing.
Even the jokes above the bar are old hat.
This confirms with certainty that Madcaps is Nostalgia.
It's too built up for Sha-Na-Na, fintails or Nancy Sinatra's,
These Boots Are Made For Walking.
In my sensible decade that tune is considered sadistic. Obviously,
the effect is too sophisticated to imagine I'm even a temporary
time traveller. Still, poetry is a communicable disease
invented in the 1920's by a snooty degenerate named Pound.
I bide my time. It's an oasis for waiting. Old time experiences seem strangely current in this campy pub.
Occasionally, someone in a zoot suit comes in but realizes he's missed the last act of Grease.
Old Blue Eyes might make it here if he looked like Bogart in drag.
Like them, Presley was by-passed by the theme of this decade.
There's a fleshy table and chairs with a knock out chick that looks like my Bridge Over Troubled Waters.
The waiter scowls like vintage Ben Casey.
Beehive hairdos mingle casually with early "Mod."
Rockers wishing Cherry Reds are served drinks instead.
Comfortable sleaze.
The window is up on the future now and New Wave is out to spray paint graffiti artists all the way.
"Either you are part of the solution or you are part of the problem." Now there's a sixties homily that still delivers.
Nice to think the social history of three decades is indistinguishable and that silence comes as its own reward.
The Twa Weelums
by Violet Jacob

I'm Sairgeant Weelum Henderson frae Pairth,
That's wha I am!
There's jist ae bluidy regiment on airth
That's worth a damn;
An' gin the bonniest fechter o' the lot
Ye seek to see,
Him that's the best - whaur ilka man's a Scot - 
Speir you at me!
Gin there's a hash o' Gairmans pitten oot
By aichts an' tens,
That Wully Henderson's been thereaboot
A'body kens.
Fegs-aye! Yon Weelum that's in Gairmanie,
He hadna reckoned
Wi' Sairgeant Weelum Henderson, an' wi'
The Forty-Second!
Yon day we lichtit on the shores o' France,
The lassies standin'
Trod ilk on ither's taes to get the chance
To see us landin';
The besoms! O they smiled to me - an' yet
They couldna' help it,
(Mysel', I just was thinkin' foo we'd get
The Gairmans skelpit.)
I'm wearied wi' them, for it's aye the same
Whaure'er we gang,
Oor Captain thinks we've got his een to blame,
But, man! he's wrang;
I winna say he's no as smairt a lad
As ye micht see
Atween twa Sawbaths - aye, he's no sae bad,
But he's no me!
Weel, let the limmers bide; their bonnie lips
Are fine an' reid;
But me an' Weelum's got to get to grips
Afore we're deid;
An' gin he thinks he hasn't met his match
He'll sune be wiser.
Here's to mysel'! Here's to the auld Black Watch!
An' damn the Kaiser!
What Can It Mean?
by George Pope Morris

(Written for Miss Poole, and sung by her in the character of cowslip.)
I'm much too young to marry,
For I am only seventeen;
Why think I, then, of Harry?
What can it mean--what can it mean?
Wherever Harry meets me,
Beside the brook or on the green,
How tenderly he greets me!
What can it mean--what can it mean?
Whene'er my name he utters,
A blush upon my cheek is seen!--
His voice my bosom flutters!--
What can it mean--what can it mean?
If he but mentions Cupid,
Or, smiling, calls me "fairy queen,"
I sigh, and looks so stupid!--
What can it mean--what can it mean?
Oh, mercy! what can ail me?
I'm growing wan and very lean;
My spirits often fail me!
What can it mean--what can it mean?
I'm not in love!--No!--Smother
Such a thought at seventeen!
I'll go and ask my mother--
"What can it mean--what can it mean?"
L'Envoi.
by Edwin C. Ranck

I'm the ghost of that poor gobbler
Who used to be so great,
They took my poor, neglected bones
And piled them on a plate.
Reader, shed a kindly tear
For my unhappy fate.
This is the common lot of all
Upon the world's great chart;
We've got to leave a pile of bones--
The stupid and the smart.
Even when Napoleon died
He left a Bonaparte.
We are merely puppets
Moving on a string,
And when we think that we are IT,
The axe will fall--"Gezing!"
O, Grave, where is thy victory?
O, Death, where is thy sting?
Not Sour Grapes
by Richard Le Gallienne

I'm not sorry I am older, love - are you?
Over all youth's fuss and flurry,
All its everlasting hurry,
All its solemn self-importance and to-do.
Perhaps we missed the highest reaches of high art;
Love we missed not, and the laughter,
Seeing both before and after - 
Life was such a serious business at the start!
We've lost nothing worth the keeping - do you think?
You are just as slim and elfish,
And I've grown a world less selfish;
We look back on life together - and we wink.
Over all those old misgivings of the heart,
Growing pains of love and lover;
Life's fun begins, its fevers over - 
Life was such a serious business at the start!
Garners full, life's grain and chaff we have sifted;
Youth went by in idle tasting,
Now we drink the cup, unhasting,
Spill not a drop, brimful and high uplifted;
And we watch now, calm and fearless, the years depart,
Knowing nothing can now sever
Two that life made one forever - 
Life was such a serious business at the start!
The First Lie
by Helen Leah Reed

I'm sure I did not break this cup;
It just fell down, - I know it did - 
For I was only climbing up,
Why do they keep the cake-box hid? - 
I wanted such a little bit!
And then I heard that creaking door,
I can't tell what it was I hit,
Nor how that cup got on the floor.
The shelf it stood on was too high,
That cup my mother loved the most!
Oh dear! I never told a lie,
And mother whispered, "Do not boast,"
The day I said I never could.
(But there's that broken cup!) - and then
I promised that I never would - 
So - I'll not tell a lie -again.
Pardoned Out
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I'm pardoned out.    Again the stars
Shine on me with their myriad eyes.
So long I've peered 'twixt iron bars,
I'm awed by this expanse of skies.
The world is wider than I thought,
And yet 'tis not so wide, I know,
But into its remotest spot
My tale of shame can go.
I'm pardoned out.    Old Father Time
Who seemed to halt in horror, when
I stained my manhood by a crime,
With steady step moves on again,
And through the black appalling night,
That walled me in a gloom accurst,
The wonder of the morning light
In sudden glory burst.
I'm pardoned out.    I shall be known
No more by number, but by name.
And yet each whispering wind has blown
Abroad the story of my shame.
I dread to see men shrink away
With startled looks of scorn or fear,
When in life's crowded marts some day,
That name falls on their ear.
I'm pardoned out, ah God! to roam
Like some whipped dog among my kind.
I have no friends, I have no home,
Save these bleak walls I leave behind.
How can I face the world of men,
My comrades in the days of yore?
Oh! hide me in my cell again,
And, warden, lock the door.
On The Same (On The Upright Judge, Who Condemned The Drapier's Printer) The Judge Speaks
by Jonathan Swift

I'm not the grandson of that ass Quin;[1]
Nor can you prove it, Mr. Pasquin.
My grandame had gallants by twenties,
And bore my mother by a 'prentice.
This when my grandsire knew, they tell us he
In Christ-Church cut his throat for jealousy.
And, since the alderman was mad you say,
Then I must be so too, ex traduce.
Old Spanish Song
by Eugene Field

I'm thinking of the wooing
That won my maiden heart
When he--he came pursuing
A love unused to art.
Into the drowsy river
The moon transported flung
Her soul that seemed to quiver
With the songs my lover sung.
And the stars in rapture twinkled
On the slumbrous world below--
You see that, old and wrinkled,
I'm not forgetful--no!
He still should be repeating
The vows he uttered then--
Alas! the years, though fleeting,
Are truer yet than men!
The summer moonlight glistens
In the favorite trysting spot
Where the river ever listens
For a song it heareth not.
And I, whose head is sprinkled
With time's benumbing snow,
I languish, old and wrinkled,
But not forgetful--no!
What though he elsewhere turneth
To beauty strangely bold?
Still in my bosom burneth
The tender fire of old;
And the words of love he told me
And the songs he sung me then
Come crowding to uphold me,
And I live my youth again!
For when love's feet have tinkled
On the pathway women go,
Though one be old and wrinkled,
She's not forgetful--no!
Second Epistle To Davie, - A Brother Poet.
by Robert Burns

AULD NIBOR,
I'm three times doubly o'er your debtor,
For your auld-farrent, frien'ly letter;
Tho' I maun say't, I doubt ye flatter,
Ye speak sae fair.
For my puir, silly, rhymin clatter
Some less maun sair.
Hale be your heart, hale be your fiddle;
Lang may your elbuck jink and diddle,
To cheer you thro' the weary widdle
O' war'ly cares,
Till bairn's bairns kindly cuddle
Your auld, gray hairs.
But Davie, lad, I'm red ye're glaikit;
I'm tauld the Muse ye hae negleckit;
An' gif it's sae, ye sud be licket
Until yo fyke;
Sic hauns as you sud ne'er be faiket,
Be hain't who like.
For me, I'm on Parnassus' brink,
Rivin' the words to gar them clink;
Whyles daez't wi' love, whyles daez't wi' drink,
Wi' jads or masons;
An' whyles, but ay owre late, I think
Braw sober lessons.
Of a' the thoughtless sons o' man,
Commen' me to the Bardie clan;
Except it be some idle plan
O' rhymin' clink,
The devil-haet, that I sud ban,
They ever think.
Nae thought, nae view, nae scheme o' livin',
Nae cares to gie us joy or grievin';
But just the pouchie put the nieve in,
An' while ought's there,
Then hiltie skiltie, we gae scrievin',
An' fash nae mair.
Leeze me on rhyme! it's aye a treasure,
My chief, amaist my only pleasure,
At hame, a-fiel', at work, or leisure,
The Muse, poor hizzie!
Tho' rough an' raploch be her measure,
She's seldom lazy.
Haud to the Muse, my dainty Davie:
The warl' may play you monie a shavie;
But for the Muse she'll never leave ye,
Tho' e'er so puir,
Na, even tho' limpin' wi' the spavie
Frae door to door.
A Riddle
by Jonathan Swift

I'm wealthy and poor,
I'm empty and full,
I'm humble and proud,
I'm witty and dull.
I'm foul and yet fair:
I'm old, and yet young;
I lie with Moll Kerr,
And toast Mrs. Long.
ANSWER, BY MR. F -    - R
In rigging he's rich, though in pocket he's poor,
He cringes to courtiers, and cocks to the cits;
Like twenty he dresses, but looks like threescore;
He's a wit to the fools, and a fool to the wits.
Of wisdom he's empty, but full of conceit;
He paints and perfumes while he rots with the scab;
'Tis a beau you may swear by his sense and his gait;
He boasts of a beauty and lies with a drab.
The Fact Of The Matter
by Edward Dyson

I'm wonderin' why those fellers who go buildin' chipper ditties,
'Bout the rosy times out drovin', an' the dust an' death of cities,
Don't sling the bloomin' office, strike some drover for a billet,
And soak up all the glory that comes handy while they fill it.
P'r'aps it's fun to travel cattle or to picnic with merinos,
But the drover don't catch on, sir, not much high-class rapture he knows.
As for sleepin' on the plains there in the shadder of the spear-grass,
That's liked best by the Juggins with a spring-bed an' a pier-glass.
An' the camp-fire, an' the freedom, and the blanky constellations,
The 'possum-rug an' billy, an' the togs an' stale ole rations,
It's strange they're only raved about by coves that dress up pretty,
An' sport a wife, an' live on slap-up tucker in the city.
I've tickled beef in my time clear from Clarke to Riverina,
An' shifted sheep all round the shop, but blow me if I've seen a
Single blanky hand who didn't buck at pleasures of this kidney,
And wouldn't trade his blisses for a flutter down in Sydney.
Night-watches are delightful when the stars are really splendid
To the chap who's fresh upon the job, but, you bet, his rapture's ended
When the rain comes down in sluice-heads, or the cuttin' hailstones pelter,
An' the sheep drift off before the wind, an' the horses strike for shelter.
Don't take me for a howler, but I find it come annoyin'
To hear these fellers rave about the pleasures we're enjoyin',
When p'r'aps we've nothin' better than some fluky water handy,
An' they're right on all the lickers, rum, an' plenty beer an' brandy.
The town is dusty, may be, but it isn't worth the curses
'Side the dust a feller swallers an' the blinded thirst he nurses
When he's on the hard macadam, where the jumbucks cannot browse, an'
The wind is in his whiskers, an' he follers twenty thousan'.
This drovin' on the plain, too, it's all O.K. when the weather
Isn't hot enough to curl the soles right off your upper leather,
Or so cold that when the mornin' wind comes hissin' through the grasses
You can feel it cut your eyelids like a whip-lash as it passes.
Then there's bull-ants in the blankets, an' a lame horse, an' muskeeters,
An' a D.T. boss like Halligan, or one like Humpy Peters,
Who is mean about the tucker, an' can curse from start to sundown,
An' can fight like fifty devils, an' whose growler's never run down.
Yes, I wonder why the fellers what go building chipper ditties
'Bout the rosy times out drovin' an' the dust an' death of cities,
Don't sling the bloomin' office, strike ole Peters for a billet,
An' soak up all the glory that comes handy while they fill it.
Faith
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

I's a-gittin' weary of de way dat people do,
De folks dat's got dey 'ligion in dey fiah-place an' flue;
Dey's allus somep'n comin' so de spit'll have to turn,
An' hit tain't no p'oposition fu' to mek de hickory bu'n.
Ef de sweet pertater fails us an' de go'geous yallah yam,
We kin tek a bit o' comfo't f'om ouah sto' o' summah jam.
W'en de snow hit git to flyin', dat's de Mastah's own desiah,
De Lawd'll run de wintah an' yo' mammy'll run de fiah.
I ain' skeered because de win' hit staht to raih and blow,
I ain't bothahed w'en he come er rattlin' at de do',
Let him taih hisse'f an' shout, let him blow an' bawl,
Dat's de time de branches shek an' bresh-wood 'mence to fall.
W'en de sto'm er railin' an' de shettahs blowin' 'bout,
Dat de time de fiah-place crack hits welcome out.
Tain' my livin' business fu' to trouble ner enquiah,
De Lawd'll min' de wintah an' my mammy'll min' de fiah.
Ash-cake allus gits ez brown w'en February's hyeah
Ez it does in bakin' any othah time o' yeah.
De bacon smell ez callin'-like, de kittle rock an' sing,
De same way in de wintah dat dey do it in de spring;
Dey ain't no use in mopin' 'round an' lookin' mad an' glum
Erbout de wintah season, fu' hit's des plumb boun' to come;
An' ef it comes to runnin' t'ings I's willin' to retiah,
De Lawd'll min' de wintah an' my mammy'll min' de fiah.