DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
My Dancin'-Days Is Over
by James Whitcomb Riley

What is it in old fiddle-chunes 'at makes me ketch my breath
And ripples up my backbone tel I'm tickled most to death? -
Kindo' like that sweet-sick feelin', in the long sweep of a swing,
The first you ever swung in, with yer first sweet-heart, i jing! -
Yer first picnic - yer first ice-cream - yer first o' ever'thing
'At happened 'fore yer dancin'-days wuz over!
I never understood it - and I s'pose I never can, -
But right in town here, yisterd'y, I heerd a pore blindman
A-fiddlin' old "Gray Eagle" - And-sir! I jes stopped my load
O' hay and listened at him - yes, and watched the way he "bow'd," -
And back I went, plum forty year', with boys and girls I knowed
And loved, long 'fore my dancin'-days wuz over! -
At high noon in yer city, - with yer blame Magnetic-Cars
A-hummin' and a-screetchin' past - and bands and G.A.R.'s
A-marchin' - and fire-ingines. - All the noise, the whole street through,
Wuz lost on me! - I only heerd a whipperwill er two,
It 'peared-like, kindo' callin' 'crost the darkness and the dew,
Them nights afore my dancin'-days wuz over.
T'uz Chused'y-night at Wetherell's, er We'nsd'y-night at Strawn's,
Er Fourth-o'-July-night at uther Tomps's house er John's! -
With old Lew Church from Sugar Crick, with that old fiddle he
Had sawed clean through the Army, from Atlanty to the sea -
And yit he'd fetched, her home ag'in, so's he could play fer me
One't more afore my dancin'-days wuz over!
The woods 'at's all ben cut away wuz growin' same as then;
The youngsters all wuz boys ag'in 'at's now all oldish men;
And all the girls 'at then wuz girls - I saw 'em, one and all,
As plain as then - the middle-sized, the short-and-fat, and tall -
And, 'peared-like, I danced "Tucker" fer 'em up and down the wall
Jes like afore my dancin' days wuz over!
*        *        *        *        *
Yer po-leece they can holler "Say! you, Uncle! drive ahead! -
You can't use all the right-o'-way!" - fer that wuz what they said! -
But, jes the same, - in spite of all 'at you call "interprise
And prog-gress of you-folks Today," we're all of fambly-ties -
We're all got feelin's fittin' fer the tears 'at's in our eyes
Er the smiles afore our dancin'-days is over.
What Is To Come We Know Not
by William Ernest Henley

What is to come we know not.    But we know
That what has been was good, was good to show,
Better to hide, and best of all to bear.
We are the masters of the days that were:
We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered . . . even so.
Shall we not take the ebb who had the flow?
Life was our friend.    Now, if it be our foe
Dear, though it spoil and break us! need we care
What is to come?
Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow,
Or the gold weather round us mellow slow:
We have fulfilled ourselves, and we can dare
And we can conquer, though we may not share
In the rich quiet of the afterglow
What is to come.
Harp Song Of The Dane Women
by Rudyard Kipling

What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?
She has no house to lay a guest in,
But one chill bed for all to rest in,
That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.
She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you,
Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.
Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,
And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,
Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken.
Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters.
You steal away to the lapping waters,
And look at your ship in her winter-quarters.
You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,
The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables,
To pitch her sides and go over her cables.
Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow,
And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow,
Is all we have left through the months to follow.
Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?
Discovery
by Madison Julius Cawein

What is it now that I shall seek
Where woods dip downward, in the hills;
A mossy nook, a ferny creek,
And May among the daffodils.
Or in the valley's vistaed glow,
Past rocks of terraced trumpet-vines,
Shall I behold her coming slow,
Sweet May, among the columbines?
With red-bud cheeks and bluet eyes,
Big eyes, the homes of happiness,
To meet me with the old surprise,
Her hoiden hair all bonnetless.
Who waits for me, where, note for note,
The birds make glad the forest trees?
A dogwood blossom at her throat,
My May among th' anemones.
As sweetheart breezes kiss the blooms,
And dewdrops drink the moonlight's gleam,
My soul shall kiss her lips' perfumes,
And drink the magic of her dreams.
Questions
by Dora Sigerson Shorter

What is the secret of your life, browsing ox,
Ox the sweet grass eating?
Who strung the mighty sinews in your flesh?
Who set that great heart beating?
What is the secret of your death, soulless ox,
Ox so patiently waiting?
Why hath pain wove her net for your brain's anguish
If for you Death will gain no life's creating?
Upon Coone. Epig.
by Robert Herrick

What is the reason Coone so dully smells?
His nose is over-cool'd with icicles.
Confessions
by Robert Browning

What is he buzzing in my ears?
'Now that I come to die,
Do I view the world as a vale of tears?'
Ah, reverend sir, not I!
What I viewed there once, what I view again
Where the physic bottles stand
On the table's edge, is a suburb lane,
With a wall to my bedside hand.
That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,
From a house you could descry
O'er the garden-wall; is the curtain blue
Or green to a healthy eye?
To mine, it serves for the old June weather
Blue above lane and wall;
And that farthest bottle labelled 'Ether'
Is the house o'ertopping all.
At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper,
There watched for me, one June,
A girl: I know, sir, it's improper,
My poor mind's out of tune.
Only, there was a way . . . you crept
Close by the side, to dodge
Eyes in the house, two eyes except:
They styled their house 'The Lodge.'
What right had a lounger up their lane?
But, by creeping very close,
With the good wall's help, their eyes might strain
And stretch themselves to Oes,
Yet never catch her and me together,
As she left the attic, there,
By the rim of the bottle labelled 'Ether,'
And stole from stair to stair,
And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,
We loved, sir, used to meet:
How sad and bad and mad it was,
But then, how it was sweet!
Communion.
by Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey)

What is it to commune?
It is when soul meets soul, and they embrace
As souls may, stooping from each separate sphere
For a brief moment's space.
What is it to commune?
It is to lay the veil of custom by,
To be all unafraid of truth to talk,
Face to face, eye to eye.
Not face to face, dear Lord;
That is the joy of brighter worlds to be;
And yet, Thy bidden guests about Thy board,
We do commune with Thee.
Behind the white-robed priest
Our eyes, anointed with a sudden grace,
Dare to conjecture of a mighty guest,
A dim beloved Face.
And is it Thou, indeed?
And dost Thou lay Thy glory all away
To visit us, and with Thy grace to feed
Our hungering hearts to-day?
And can a thing so sweet,
And can such heavenly condescension be?
Ah! wherefore tarry thus our lingering feet?
It can be none but Thee.
There is the gracious ear
That never yet was deaf to sinner's call;
We will not linger, and we dare not fear,
But kneel,--and tell Thee all.
We tell Thee of our sin
Only half loathed, only half wished away,
And those clear eyes of Love that look within
Rebuke us, seem to say,--
"O, bought with my own blood,
Mine own, for whom my precious life I gave,
Am I so little prized, remembered, loved,
By those I died to save?"
And under that deep gaze
Sorrow awakes; we kneel with eyelids wet,
And marvel, as with Peter at the gate,
That we could so forget,
We tell Thee of our care,
Of the sore burden, pressing day by day,
And in the light and pity of Thy face
The burden melts away.
We breathe our secret wish,
The importunate longing which no man may see;
We ask it humbly, or, more restful still,
We leave it all to Thee.
And last our amulet
Of precious names we thread, and soft and low
We crave for each beloved, or near or far,
A blessing ere we go.
The thorns are turned to flowers,
All dark perplexities seem light and fair,
A mist is lifted from the heavy hours,
And Thou art everywhere.
Love Abused.
by William Cowper

What is there in the vale of life
Half so delightful as a wife,
When friendship, love, and peace combine
To stamp the marriage-bond divine?
The stream of pure and genuine love
Derives its current from above;
And earth a second Eden shows,
Where'er the healing water flows:
But ah, if from the dykes and drains
Of sensual nature's feverish veins,
Lust, like a lawless headstrong flood,
Impregnated with ooze and mud,
Descending fast on every side,
Once mingles with the sacred tide,
Farewell the soul-enlivening scene!
The banks that wore a smiling green,
With rank defilement overspread,
Bewail their flowery beauties dead.
The stream polluted, dark, and dull,
Diffused into a Stygian pool,
Through life's last melancholy years
Is fed with overflowing tears:
Complaints supply the zephyr's part,
And sighs that heave a breaking heart.
The Poet's Lot
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

What is a poet's love? - 
To write a girl a sonnet,
To get a ring, or some such thing,
And fustianize upon it.
What is a poet's fame? - 
Sad hints about his reason,
And sadder praise from garreteers,
To be returned in season.
Where go the poet's lines? - 
Answer, ye evening tapers!
Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls,
Speak from your folded papers!
Child of the ploughshare, smile;
Boy of the counter, grieve not,
Though muses round thy trundle-bed
Their broidered tissue weave not.
The poet's future holds
No civic wreath above him;
Nor slated roof, nor varnished chaise,
Nor wife nor child to love him.
Maid of the village inn,
Who workest woe on satin,
(The grass in black, the graves in green,
The epitaph in Latin,)
Trust not to them who say,
In stanzas, they adore thee;
Oh rather sleep in churchyard clay,
With urn and cherub o'er thee!
The Force Of Prayer, Or, The Founding Of Bolton, A Tradition
by William Wordsworth

"What is good for a bootless bene?"
With these dark words begins my Tale;
And their meaning is, whence can comfort spring
When Prayer is of no avail?
"What is good for a bootless bene?"
The Falconer to the Lady said;
And she made answer "ENDLESS SORROW!"
For she knew that her Son was dead.
She knew it by the Falconer's words,
And from the look of the Falconer's eye;
And from the love which was in her soul
For her youthful Romilly.
Young Romilly through Barden woods
Is ranging high and low;
And holds a greyhound in a leash,
To let slip upon buck or doe.
The pair have reached that fearful chasm,
How tempting to bestride!
For lordly Wharf is there pent in
With rocks on either side.
This striding-place is called the strid,
A name which it took of yore:
A thousand years hath it borne that name,
And shall a thousand more.
And hither is young Romilly come,
And what may now forbid
That he, perhaps for the hundredth time,
Shall bound across the strid?
He sprang in glee, for what cared he
That the river was strong, and the rocks were steep?
But the greyhound in the leash hung back,
And checked him in his leap.
The Boy is in the arms of Wharf,
And strangled by a merciless force;
For never more was young Romilly seen
Till he rose a lifeless corse.
Now there is stillness in the vale,
And long, unspeaking, sorrow:
Wharf shall be to pitying hearts
A name more sad than Yarrow.
If for a lover the Lady wept,
A solace she might borrow
From death, and from the passion of death;
Old Wharf might heal her sorrow.
She weeps not for the wedding-day
Which was to be to-morrow:
Her hope was a further-looking hope,
And hers is a mother's sorrow.
He was a tree that stood alone,
And proudly did its branches wave;
And the root of this delightful tree
Was in her husband's grave!
Long, long in darkness did she sit,
And her first words were, "Let there be
In Bolton, on the field of Wharf,
A stately Priory!"
The stately Priory was reared;
And Wharf, as he moved along,
To matins joined a mournful voice,
Nor failed at evensong.
And the Lady prayed in heaviness
That looked not for relief!
But slowly did her succour come,
And a patience to her grief.
Oh! there is never sorrow of heart
That shall lack a timely end,
If but to God we turn, and ask
Of Him to be our friend!
Interpreted
by Madison Julius Cawein

What magic shall solve us the secret
Of beauty that's born for an hour?
That gleams like the flight of an egret,
Or burns like the scent of a flower,
With death for a dower?
What leaps in the bosk but a satyr?
What pipes on the wind but a faun?
Or laughs in the waters that scatter,
But limbs of a nymph who is gone,
When we walk in the dawn?
What sings on the hills but a fairy?
Or sighs in the fields but a sprite?
What breathes through the leaves but the airy
Soft spirits of shadow and light,
When we walk in the night?
Behold how the world-heart is eager
To draw us and hold us and claim!
Through truths of the dreams that beleaguer
Her soul she makes ours the same,
And death but a name.
Composed By The Seashore
by William Wordsworth

What mischief cleaves to unsubdued regret,
How fancy sickens by vague hopes beset;
How baffled projects on the spirit prey,
And fruitless wishes eat the heart away,
The Sailor knows; he best, whose lot is cast
On the relentless sea that holds him fast
On chance dependent, and the fickle star
Of power, through long and melancholy war.
O sad it is, in sight of foreign shores,
Daily to think on old familiar doors,
Hearths loved in childhood, and ancestral floors;
Or, tossed about along a waste of foam,
To ruminate on that delightful home
Which with the dear Betrothed 'was' to come;
Or came and was and is, yet meets the eye
Never but in the world of memory;
Or in a dream recalled, whose smoothest range
Is crossed by knowledge, or by dread, of change,
And if not so, whose perfect joy makes sleep
A thing too bright for breathing man to keep.
Hail to the virtues which that perilous life
Extracts from Nature's elemental strife;
And welcome glory won in battles fought
As bravely as the foe was keenly sought.
But to each gallant Captain and his crew
A less imperious sympathy is due,
Such as my verse now yields, while moonbeams play
On the mute sea in this unruffled bay;
Such as will promptly flow from every breast,
Where good men, disappointed in the quest
Of wealth and power and honours, long for rest;
Or, having known the splendours of success,
Sigh for the obscurities of happiness.
Fragment: 'What Men Gain Fairly'.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

What men gain fairly - that they should possess,
And children may inherit idleness,
From him who earns it - This is understood;
Private injustice may be general good.
But he who gains by base and armed wrong,
Or guilty fraud, or base compliances,
May be despoiled; even as a stolen dress
Is stripped from a convicted thief; and he
Left in the nakedness of infamy.
Helpstone Church-Yard.
by John Clare

What makes me love thee now, thou dreary scene,
And see in each swell'd heap a peaceful bed?
I well remember that the time has been,
To walk a church-yard when I us'd to dread;
And shudder'd, as I read upon the stone
Of well-known friends and next-door-neighbours gone.
But then I knew no cloudy cares of life,
Where ne'er a sunbeam comes to light me thorough;
A stranger then to this world's storms and strife,
Where ne'er a charm is met to lull my sorrow:
I then was blest, and had not eyes to see
Life's future change, and Fate's severe to-morrow;
When all those ills and pains should compass me,
With no hope left but what I meet in thee.
The Grasshopper.
by Madison Julius Cawein

What joy you take in making hotness hotter,
In emphasizing dullness with your buzz,
Making monotony more monotonous!
When Summer comes, and drouth hath dried the water
In all the creeks, we hear your ragged rasp
Filing the stillness. Or, as urchins beat
A stagnant pond whereon the bubbles gasp,
Your switch-like music whips the midday heat.
O bur of sound caught in the Summer's hair,
We hear you everywhere!
We hear you in the vines and berry-brambles,
Along the unkempt lanes, among the weeds,
Amid the shadeless meadows, gray with seeds,
And by the wood 'round which the rail-fence rambles,
Sawing the sunlight with your sultry saw.
Or, like to tomboy truants, at their play
With noisy mirth among the barn's deep straw,
You sing away the careless summer-day.
O brier-like voice that clings in idleness
To Summer's drowsy dress!
You tramp of insects, vagrant and unheeding,
Improvident, who of the summer make
One long green mealtime, and for winter take
No care, aye singing or just merely feeding!
Happy-go-lucky vagabond, 'though frost
Shall pierce, ere long, your green coat or your brown,
And pinch your body, let no song be lost,
But as you lived into your grave go down
Like some small poet with his little rhyme,
Forgotten of all time.
Ribb In Ecstasy
by William Butler Yeats

What matter that you understood no word!
Doubtless I spoke or sang what I had heard
In broken sentences. My soul had found
All happiness in its own cause or ground.
Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot
Godhead. Some shadow fell. My soul forgot
Those amorous cries that out of quiet come
And must the common round of day resume.
Memorials Of A Tour On The Continent, 1820 - V. - Between Namur And Liege
by William Wordsworth

What lovelier home could gentle Fancy choose?
Is this the stream, whose cities, heights, and plains,
War's favourite playground, are with crimson stains
Familiar, as the Morn with pearly dews?
The Morn, that now, along the silver Meuse,
Spreading her peaceful ensigns, calls the swains
To tend their silent boats and ringing wains,
Or strip the bough whose mellow fruit bestrews
The ripening corn beneath it. As mine eyes
Turn from the fortified and threatening hill,
How sweet the prospect of yon watery glade,
With its grey rocks clustering in pensive shade
That, shaped like old monastic turrets, rise
From the smooth meadow-ground, serene and still!
What Kind Of A Person
by Yehuda Amichai

"What kind of a person are you," I heard them say to me.
I'm a person with a complex plumbing of the soul,
Sophisticated instruments of feeling and a system
Of controlled memory at the end of the twentieth century,
But with an old body from ancient times
And with a God even older than my body.
I'm a person for the surface of the earth.
Low places, caves and wells
Frighten me. Mountain peaks
And tall buildings scare me.
I'm not like an inserted fork,
Not a cutting knife, not a stuck spoon.
I'm not flat and sly
Like a spatula creeping up from below.
At most I am a heavy and clumsy pestle
Mashing good and bad together
For a little taste
And a little fragrance.
Arrows do not direct me. I conduct
My business carefully and quietly
Like a long will that began to be written
The moment I was born.
s Now I stand at the side of the street
Weary, leaning on a parking meter.
I can stand here for nothing, free.
I'm not a car, I'm a person,
A man-god, a god-man
Whose days are numbered. Hallelujah.
The Cloud-Islands
by Clark Ashton Smith

What islands marvellous are these,
That gem the sunset's tides of light -
Opals aglow in saffron seas?
How beautiful they lie, and bright,
Like some new-found Hesperides!
What varied, changing magic hues
Tint gorgeously each shore and hill!
What blazing, vivid golds and blues
Their seaward winding valleys fill!
What amethysts their peaks suffuse!
Close held by curving arms of land
That out within the ocean reach,
I mark a faery city stand,
Set high upon a sloping beach
That burns with fire of shimmering sand.
Of sunset-light is formed each wall;
Each dome a rainbow-bubble seems;
And every spire that towers tall
A ray of golden moonlight gleams;
Of opal-flame is every hall.
Alas! how quickly dims their glow!
What veils their dreamy splendours mar!
Like broken dreams the islands go,
As down from strands of cloud and star,
The sinking tides of daylight flow.
The Song Of The Pilgrims
by Rupert Brooke

(Halted around the fire by night, after moon-set, they sing this beneath the trees.)
What light of unremembered skies
Hast thou relumed within our eyes,
Thou whom we seek, whom we shall find? . . .
A certain odour on the wind,
Thy hidden face beyond the west,
These things have called us; on a quest
Older than any road we trod,
More endless than desire. . . .
Far God,
Sigh with thy cruel voice, that fills
The soul with longing for dim hills
And faint horizons! For there come
Grey moments of the antient dumb
Sickness of travel, when no song
Can cheer us; but the way seems long;
And one remembers. . . .
Ah! the beat
Of weary unreturning feet,
And songs of pilgrims unreturning! . . .
The fires we left are always burning
On the old shrines of home. Our kin
Have built them temples, and therein
Pray to the Gods we know; and dwell
In little houses lovable,
Being happy (we remember how!)
And peaceful even to death. . . .
O Thou,
God of all long desirous roaming,
Our hearts are sick of fruitless homing,
And crying after lost desire.
Hearten us onward! as with fire
Consuming dreams of other bliss.
The best Thou givest, giving this
Sufficient thing, to travel still
Over the plain, beyond the hill,
Unhesitating through the shade,
Amid the silence unafraid,
Till, at some sudden turn, one sees
Against the black and muttering trees
Thine altar, wonderfully white,
Among the Forests of the Night.
Beata Solitudo
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

What land of Silence,
Where pale stars shine
On apple-blossom
And dew-drenched vine,
Is yours and mine?
The silent valley
That we will find,
Where all the voices
Of humankind
Are left behind.
There all forgetting,
Forgotten quite,
We will repose us,
With our delight
Hid out of sight.
The world forsaken,
And out of mind
Honour and labour,
We shall not find
The stars unkind.
And men shall travail,
And laugh and weep;
But we have vistas
Of Gods asleep,
With dreams as deep.
A land of Silence,
Where pale stars shine
On apple-blossoms
And dew-drenched vine,
Be yours and mine!
At Devlin's Siding
by Barcroft Boake

What made the porter stare so hard? what made the porter stare
And eye the tall young woman and the bundle that she bare?
What made the tall young woman flush, and strive to hide her face,
As the train slid past the platform and the guard swung in his place?
What made her look so stealthily both up and down the line,
And quickly give the infant suck to still its puny whine?
Why was the sawmill not at work? why were the men away?
They might have turned a woman from a woeful deed that day.
Why did the pine-scrub stand so thick? why was the place so lone
That nothing but the soldier-birds might hear a baby moan?
Why doth the woman tear the child? why doth the mother take
The infant from her breast, and weep as if her heart would break?
Why doth she moan, and grind her teeth, and weave an awful curse
To fall on him who made of her a harlot, ay, and worse?
Why should she fall upon her knees and, with a trembling hand,
Clear off the underbrush and scrape a cradle in the sand?
Why doth she shudder as she hears the buzz of eager flies,
And bind a handkerchief across the sleeping infant's eyes?
Why doth she turn, but come again and feverishly twine,
To shield it from the burning sun, the fragrant fronds of pine?
Why, as she strides the platform, does she try hard not to think
That somewhere in the scrub a babe is calling her for drink?
Why, through the alleys of the pine, do languid breezes sigh
A low refrain that seems to mock her with a baby's cry?
Seek not to know! but pray for her, and pity, as the train
Carries a white-faced woman back to face the world again.