DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Division Of The Earth.
by Friedrich Schiller

"Take the world!" Zeus exclaimed from his throne in the skies
To the children of man "take the world I now give;
It shall ever remain as your heirloom and prize,
So divide it as brothers, and happily live."
Then all who had hands sought their share to obtain,
The young and the aged made haste to appear;
The husbandman seized on the fruits of the plain,
The youth through the forest pursued the fleet deer.
The merchant took all that his warehouse could hold,
The abbot selected the last year's best wine,
The king barred the bridges, the highways controlled,
And said, "Now remember, the tithes shall be mine!"
But when the division long-settled had been,
The poet drew nigh from a far distant land;
But alas! not a remnant was now to be seen,
Each thing on the earth owned a master's command.
"Alas! shall then I, of thy sons the most true, 
Shall I, 'mongst them all, be forgotten alone?"
Thus loudly he cried in his anguish, and threw
Himself in despair before Jupiter's throne.
"If thou in the region of dreams didst delay,
Complain not of me," the Immortal replied;
"When the world was apportioned, where then wert thou, pray?"
"I was," said the poet, "I was by thy side!"
"Mine eye was then fixed on thy features so bright,
Mine ear was entranced by thy harmony's power;
Oh, pardon the spirit that, awed by thy light,
All things of the earth could forget in that hour!"
"What to do?" Zeus exclaimed, "for the world has been given;
The harvest, the market, the chase, are not free;
But if thou with me wilt abide in my heaven,
Whenever thou comest, 'twill be open to thee!"
A Dream Within A Dream
by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow 
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream:
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand 
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep
While I weep while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
A Dream Within A Dream
by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow,
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand,
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep, while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Warhorse
by Paul Cameron Brown

Taken as metaphor ...
Ophelia's funeral oration,
derogatory snout
of the Morning Glory
breathing pollened fire
overladen steps of the church.
II
Limestone rock
caulking in grey
limpid cracks ...
doublet and hose
then gold doubloons
down sunlit honey
where a smear of red lichen
onto brown-yellow moss
colonizes rock.
III
Poor Ophelia, dicing
for a sedentary-free Hamlet,
duty-free of fissures + frost.
IV
Elusiveness,
water rushing over stone
torrent of words
(Ophelia receiving these),
red hand of the berry
swollen shut,
prisoner in the dock
bird of quarry, pit
& gunny sack.
V
Night plummets to quarry,
sky to earth in brazen glory.
Magic of the palm
spans an upturned hand ...
"To each his own
nothing's known."
A Welcome To Lowell
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Take our hands, James Russell Lowell,
Our hearts are all thy own;
To-day we bid thee welcome
Not for ourselves alone.
In the long years of thy absence
Some of us have grown old,
And some have passed the portals
Of the Mystery untold;
For the hands that cannot clasp thee,
For the voices that are dumb,
For each and all I bid thee
A grateful welcome home!
For Cedarcroft's sweet singer
To the nine-fold Muses dear;
For the Seer the winding Concord
Paused by his door to hear;
For him, our guide and Nestor,
Who the march of song began,
The white locks of his ninety years
Bared to thy winds, Cape Ann!
For him who, to the music
Her pines and hemlocks played,
Set the old and tender story
Of the lorn Acadian maid;
For him, whose voice for freedom
Swayed friend and foe at will,
Hushed is the tongue of silver,
The golden lips are still!
For her whose life of duty
At scoff and menace smiled,
Brave as the wife of Roland,
Yet gentle as a Child.
And for him the three-hilled city
Shall hold in memory long,
Those name is the hint and token
Of the pleasant Fields of Song!
For the old friends unforgotten,
For the young thou hast not known,
I speak their heart-warm greeting;
Come back and take thy own!
From England's royal farewells,
And honors fitly paid,
Come back, dear Russell Lowell,
To Elmwood's waiting shade!
Come home with all the garlands
That crown of right thy head.
I speak for comrades living,
I speak for comrades dead
A Charm
by Rudyard Kipling

Take of English earth as much
As either hand may rightly clutch.
In the taking of it breathe
Prayer for all who lie beneath.
Not the great nor well-bespoke,
But the mere uncounted folk
Of whose life and death is none
Report or lamentation.
Lay that earth upon thy heart,
And thy sickness shall depart!
It shall sweeten and make whole
Fevered breath and festered soul.
It shall mightily restrain
Over-busied hand and brain.
It shall ease thy mortal strife
'Gainst the immortal woe of life,
Till thyself, restored, shall prove
By what grace the Heavens do move.
Take of English flowers these,
Spring's full-faced primroses,
Summer's wild wide-hearted rose,
Autumn's wall-flower of the close,
And, thy darkness to illume,
Winter's bee-thronged ivy-bloom.
Seek and serve them where they bide
From Candlemas to Christmas-tide,
For these simples, used aright,
Can restore a failing sight.
These shall cleanse and purify
Webbed and inward-turning eye;
These shall show thee treasure hid
Thy familiar fields amid;
And reveal (which is thy need)
Every man a King indeed!
The Curate To His Slippers.
by Horace Smith

Take, oh take those boots away,
That so nearly are outworn;
And those shoes remove, I pray--
Pumps that but induce the corn!
But my slippers bring again,
Bring again;
Works of love, but worked in vain,
Worked in vain!
Dedication to Joseph Mazzini
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Take, since you bade it should bear,
These, of the seed of your sowing,
Blossom or berry or weed.
Sweet though they be not, or fair,
That the dew of your word kept growing,
Sweet at least was the seed.
Men bring you love-offerings of tears,
And sorrow the kiss that assuages,
And slaves the hate-offering of wrongs,
And time the thanksgiving of years,
And years the thanksgiving of ages;
I bring you my handful of songs.
If a perfume be left, if a bloom,
Let it live till Italia be risen,
To be strewn in the dust of her car
When her voice shall awake from the tomb
England, and France from her prison,
Sisters, a star by a star.
I bring you the sword of a song,
The sword of my spirit's desire,
Feeble; but laid at your feet,
That which was weak shall be strong,
That which was cold shall take fire,
That which was bitter be sweet.
It was wrought not with hands to smite,
Nor hewn after swordsmiths' fashion,
Nor tempered on anvil of steel;
But with visions and dreams of the night,
But with hope, and the patience of passion,
And the signet of love for a seal.
Be it witness, till one more strong,
Till a loftier lyre, till a rarer
Lute praise her better than I,
Be it witness before you, my song,
That I knew her, the world's banner-bearer,
Who shall cry the republican cry.
Yea, even she as at first,
Yea, she alone and none other,
Shall cast down, shall build up, shall bring home;
Slake earth's hunger and thirst,
Lighten, and lead as a mother;
First name of the world's names, Rome.
After
by Robert Browning

Take the cloak from his face, and at first
Let the corpse do its worst!
How he lies in his rights of a man!
Death has done all death can.
And, absorbed in the new life he leads,
He recks not, he heeds
Nor his wrong nor my vengeance, both strike
On his senses alike,
And are lost in the solemn and strange
Surprise of the change.
Ha, what avails death to erase
His offence, my disgrace?
I would we were boys as of old
In the field, by the fold
His outrage, God's patience, man's scorn
Were so easily borne!
I stand here now, he lies in his place:
Cover the face!
Take No Thought For The Morrow.
by Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow

Take no thought for the morrow, the Saviour hath said,
And he spake as ne'er man spake before;
"He carried our sorrows," "was acquainted with grief,"
And knew well what the heart could endure.
Let the morrow take care for the things of itself,
And not by its weight crush thee down;
Sufficient to-day is the evil thereof,
Let the ills of to-morrow alone.
Neither boast of to-morrow, for what is thy life,
But a vapor that floateth away;
Like a tale quickly told, or a dream of the night,
That departs at the breaking of day.
Be not like the man who once said in his heart,
"I have goods that are laid by for years;"
But scarce had he planned how they best might be stored,
When he dies and leaves all to his heirs.
Neither dread then, nor boast of to-morrow, my soul,
But make most of the time that's now given;
Be the ground well prepared, with good seed sown thereon,
And 'twill yield a rich harvest in heaven.
Jan. 24, 1853.
To J. S. B.
by Edward Smyth Jones

On seeing her December 25th, 1904, after two years' travel.
Take, fair maid, these simple lines
From my pen;
Think of strollings 'neath the pines,
Which have been - 
Long and lonesome were the days
We were apart,
But may Love, now, have her sways, - 
Bind heart to heart!
O'er main to isle and back to land
Have I been;
Beheld on either hand
A maiden queen:
But none with captivating charms
Like thine;
None to nestle in her arms,
Love of mine!
Charms unto thee God gave
To banish strife;
To glorify and save
One sweet life - 
Take this, dear, before we part
From this bliss;
'Tis but love flowing from my heart,
Thine to kiss!
To My Father.
by George MacDonald

I.
Take of the first fruits, Father, of thy care,
Wrapped in the fresh leaves of my gratitude
Late waked for early gifts ill understood;
Claiming in all my harvests rightful share,
Whether with song that mounts the joyful air
I praise my God; or, in yet deeper mood,
Sit dumb because I know a speechless good,
Needing no voice, but all the soul for prayer.
Thou hast been faithful to my highest need;
And I, thy debtor, ever, evermore,
Shall never feel the grateful burden sore.
Yet most I thank thee, not for any deed,
But for the sense thy living self did breed
That fatherhood is at the great world's core.
II.
All childhood, reverence clothed thee, undefined,
As for some being of another race;
Ah! not with it departing--grown apace
As years have brought me manhood's loftier mind
Able to see thy human life behind--
The same hid heart, the same revealing face--
My own dim contest settling into grace
Of sorrow, strife, and victory combined.
So I beheld my God, in childhood's morn,
A mist, a darkness, great, and far apart,
Moveless and dim--I scarce could say Thou art:
My manhood came, of joy and sadness born--
Full soon the misty dark, asunder torn,
Revealed man's glory, God's great human heart.
G.M.D. Jr.
Algiers, April, 1857.
The Sinking Fund Cried.
by Thomas Moore

"Now what, we ask, is become of this Sinking Fund--these eight millions of surplus above expenditure, which were to reduce the interest of the national debt by the amount of four hundred thousand pounds annually? Where, indeed, is the Sinking Fund itself?"
--The Times.
Take your bell, take your bell,
Good Crier, and tell
To the Bulls and the Bears, till their ears are stunned,
That, lost or stolen,
Or fallen thro' a hole in
The Treasury floor, is the Sinking Fund!
O yes! O yes!
Can anybody guess
What the deuce has become of this Treasury wonder?
It has Pitt's name on't,
All brass, in the front,
And Robinson's scrawled with a goose-quill under.
Folks well knew what
Would soon be its lot,
When Frederick and Jenky set hob-nobbing,[1]
And said to each other,
"Suppose, dear brother,
"We make this funny old Fund worth robbing."
We are come, alas!
To a very pretty pass--
Eight Hundred Millions of score, to pay,
With but Five in the till,
To discharge the bill,
And even that Five, too, whipt away!
Stop thief! stop thief!--
From the Sub to the Chief,
These Gemmen of Finance are plundering cattle--
Call the watch--call Brougham,
Tell Joseph Hume,
That best of Charleys, to spring his rattle.
Whoever will bring
This aforesaid thing
To the well-known House of Robinson and Jenkin,
Shall be paid, with thanks,
In the notes of banks,
Whose Funds have all learned "the Art of Sinking."
O yes! O yes!
Can anybody guess
What the devil has become of this Treasury wonder?
It has Pitt's name on't,
All brass, in the front,
And Robinson's, scrawled with a goose-quill under.
To His Book (2)
by Robert Herrick

Take mine advice, and go not near
Those faces, sour as vinegar;
For these, and nobler numbers, can
Ne'er please the supercilious man.
Suspiria
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Take them, O Death! and bear away
Whatever thou canst call thine own!
Thine image, stamped upon this clay,
Doth give thee that, but that alone!
Take them, O Grave! and let them lie
Folded upon thy narrow shelves,
As garments by the soul laid by,
And precious only to ourselves!
Take them, O great Eternity!
Our little life is but a gust
That bends the branches of thy tree,
And trails its blossoms in the dust!
Daniel Henry Deniehy
by Henry Kendall

Take the harp, but very softly for our brother touch the strings:
Wind and wood shall help to wail him, waves and mournful mountain-springs.
Take the harp, but very softly, for the friend who grew so old
Through the hours we would not hear of nights we would not fain behold!
Other voices, sweeter voices, shall lament him year by year,
Though the morning finds us lonely, though we sit and marvel here:
Marvel much while Summer cometh, trammelled with November wheat,
Gold about her forehead gleaming, green and gold about her feet;
Yea, and while the land is dark with plover, gull, and gloomy glede,
Where the cold, swift songs of Winter fill the interlucent reed.
Yet, my harp and oh, my fathers! never look for Sorrow's lay,
Making life a mighty darkness in the patient noon of day;
Since he resteth whom we loved so, out beyond these fleeting seas,
Blowing clouds and restless regions paved with old perplexities,
In a land where thunder breaks not, in a place unknown of snow,
Where the rain is mute for ever, where the wild winds never go:
Home of far-forgotten phantoms genii of our peaceful prime,
Shining by perpetual waters past the ways of Change and Time:
Haven of the harried spirit, where it folds its wearied wings,
Turns its face and sleeps a sleep with deep forgetfulness of things.
His should be a grave by mountains, in a cool and thick-mossed lea,
With the lone creek falling past it falling ever to the sea.
His should be a grave by waters, by a bright and broad lagoon,
Making steadfast splendours hallowed of the quiet, shining moon.
There the elves of many forests wandering winds and flying lights
Born of green, of happy mornings, dear to yellow summer nights,
Full of dole for him that loved them, then might halt and then might go,
Finding fathers of the people to their children speaking low
Speaking low of one who, failing, suffered all the poet's pain,
Dying with the dead leaves round him hopes which never grow again.
Shade
by Anna Akhmatova

'What does a certain woman know of the hour of her death?' - Mandelstam
Tallest, suavest of us, why Memory,
forcing you to appear from the past, pass
down a train, swaying, to find me
clear profiled through the window-glass?
Angel or bird? How we debated!
The poet thought you like translucent straw.
Through dark lashes, your eyes, Georgian,
looking, with gentleness, on it all.
Shade, forgive. Blue skies, Flaubert,
Insomnia, late-blooming lilac flower,
bring you, and the magnificence of the year,
nineteen-thirteen, to mind, and your
unclouded temperate afternoon, memory
difficult for me now ' Oh, shade!
To My Friend Sydney Jephcott, With A Copy Of My "Poetical Works."
by Francis William Lauderdale Adams

"Take with all my heart, friend, this,
The labour of my past,
Though the heart here hidden is
And the soul's eternities
Hold the present fast.
"Take it, still, with soul and heart,
Pledge of that dear day
When the shadows stir and start,
By the bright Sun burst apart - 
Young Australia!"
Though in my Firmament thou wilt not shine
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

Talk not, my Lord, of unrequited love,
Since love requites itself most royally.
Do we not live but by the sun above,
And takes he any heed of thee or me?
Though in my firmament thou wilt not shine,
Thy glory, as a Star, is none the less.
Oh, Rose, though all unplucked by hand of mine,
Still am I debtor to thy loveliness.
He Will Not Come
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Take out the blossom in your hair abloom,
No more it seemeth beautiful, or bright,
And sickening is its subtly sweet perfume -
He will not come to-night.
Take off the necklace with its sparkling gem,
And rings that glow and glitter in the light,
And fling them in the case that waits for them -
He will not come to-night.
Take off the robe a little while ago
You chose, to make you fairer in his sight;
'Tis ten o'clock.    So late you can but know
He will not come to-night.
He will not come.    God grant you strength and grace,
For never more upon your mortal sight
Shall dawn a glimpse of that beloved face
That did not come to-night.
He will not come.    And through the shadowed years,
The perfume of that blossom that you wore
Shall stir the fount of salt and bitter tears -
For one who comes no more.
Dan, The Wreck
by Henry Lawson

Tall, and stout, and solid-looking,
Yet a wreck;
None would think Death's finger's hooking
Him from deck.
Cause of half the fun that's started, 
`Hard-case' Dan, 
Isn't like a broken-hearted,
Ruined man.
Walking-coat from tail to throat is
Frayed and greened, 
Like a man whose other coat is
Being cleaned;
Gone for ever round the edging
Past repair, 
Waistcoat pockets frayed with dredging
After `sprats' no longer there.
Wearing summer boots in June, or
Slippers worn and old, 
Like a man whose other shoon are
Getting soled.
Pants? They're far from being recent, 
But, perhaps, I'd better not, 
Says they are the only decent
Pair he's got.
And his hat, I am afraid, is
Troubling him, 
Past all lifting to the ladies
By the brim.
But, although he'd hardly strike a
Girl, would Dan,
Yet he wears his wreckage like a
Gentleman!
Once, no matter how the rest dressed, 
Up or down, 
Once, they say, he was the best-dressed
Man in town.
Must have been before I knew him, 
Now you'd scarcely care to meet
And be noticed talking to him
In the street.
Drink the cause, and dissipation,
That is clear, 
Maybe friend or kind relation
Cause of beer.
And the talking fool, who never
Reads or thinks,
Says, from hearsay: `Yes, he's clever;
But, you know, he drinks.'
Been an actor and a writer, 
Doesn't whine, 
Reckoned now the best reciter
In his line.
Takes the stage at times, and fills it, 
`Princess May' or `Waterloo'.
Raise a sneer!, his first line kills it,
`Brings 'em', too.
Where he lives, or how, or wherefore
No one knows;
Lost his real friends, and therefore
Lost his foes.
Had, no doubt, his own romances, 
Met his fate;
Tortured, doubtless, by the chances
And the luck that comes too late.
Now and then his boots are polished,
Collar clean,
And the worst grease stains abolished
By ammonia or benzine:
Hints of some attempt to shove him
From the taps,
Or of someone left to love him, 
Sister, p'r'aps.
After all, he is a grafter,
Earns his cheer, 
Keeps the room in roars of laughter
When he gets outside a beer.
Yarns that would fall flat from others
He can tell;
How he spent his `stuff', my brothers,
You know well.
Manner puts a man in mind of
Old club balls and evening dress,
Ugly with a handsome kind of
Ugliness.
.    .    .    .    .
One of those we say of often,
While hearts swell,
Standing sadly by the coffin:
`He looks well.'
.    .    .    .    .
We may be, so goes a rumour, 
Bad as Dan;
But we may not have the humour
Of the man;
Nor the sight, well, deem it blindness,
As the general public do, 
And the love of human kindness,
Or the grit to see it through!
December Night
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

Take off your cloak and your hat
And your shoes, and draw up at my hearth
Where never woman sat.
I have made the fire up bright;
Let us leave the rest in the dark
And sit by firelight.
The wine is warm in the hearth;
The flickers come and go.
I will warm your feet with kisses
Until they glow.
To The Christians.
by Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Take, then, your paltry Christ,
Your gentleman God.
We want the carpenter's son,
With his saw and hod.
We want the man who loved
The poor and oppressed,
Who hated the rich man and king
And the scribe and the priest.
We want the Galilean
Who knew cross and rod.
It's your "good taste" that prefers
A bastard God!
The Circuit Judge
by Edgar Lee Masters

Take note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions
Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain - 
Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred
Were marking scores against me,
But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory.
I in life was the Circuit judge, a maker of notches,
Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored,
Not on the right of the matter.
O wind and rain, leave my head-stone alone
For worse than the anger of the wronged,
The curses of the poor,
Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear,
Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer,
Hanged by my sentence,
Was innocent in soul compared with me.
Unity In Space.
by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

Take me away into a storm of snow
So white and soft, I feel no deathly chill,
But listen to the murmuring overflow
Of clouds that fall in many a frosty rill!
Take me away into the sunset's glow,
That holds a summer in a glorious bloom;
Or take me to the shadowed woods that grow
On the sky's mountains, in the evening gloom!
Give me an entrance to the limpid lake
When moonbeams shine across its purity!
A life there is, within the life we take
So commonly, for which 't were well to die.
Conquest
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Talk not of strength, until your heart has known
And fought with weakness through long hours alone.
Talk not of virtue, till your conquering soul
Has met temptation and gained full control.
Boast not of garments, all unscorched by sin,
Till you have passed, unscathed, through fires within.
Oh, poor that pride the unscarred soldier shows,
Who safe in camp, has never faced his foes.
Take Up The Household Burden.
by Edwin C. Ranck

Take up the household burden,
No iron rule of kings,
But make your family understand
That you are running things,
Don't storm around and bluster,
And don't get mad and swear
If in the soup is floating--
A rag and a hank of hair.
Take up the household burden
In patience to abide,
To curse the irate grocer
And make your wife confide
By open speech and simple
And hundred times made plain
How she has sought to profit
In spending all you gain.
Take up the household burden--
The little baby boy,
And walk the floor in anguish
And don't let it annoy.
For when the kid seems sleepy
And you are feeling "sold,"
There comes a cry from baby boy
That makes your blood run cold.
Take up the household burden
And try and be a man,
Just simply grin and bear it
And do the best you can.
Come now and try your manhood
And let the future go,
And listen to your elders--
They've tried it and they know.
Dedication - To My Wife
by William Ernest Henley

Take, dear, my little sheaf of songs,
For, old or new,
All that is good in them belongs
Only to you;
And, singing as when all was young,
They will recall
Those others, lived but left unsung -
The bent of all.
W. E. H
APRIL 1888
SEPTEMBER 1897.