DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The House Of Dust: Part 01: 01: The Sun Goes Down In A Cold Pale Flare Of Light
by Conrad Potter Aiken

The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.
And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,
The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street,
And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.
The purple lights leap down the hill before him.
The gorgeous night has begun again.
'I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams,
I will hold my light above them and seek their faces.
I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins . . .'
The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness,
Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest,
Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains.
We hear him and take him among us, like a wind of music,
Like the ghost of a music we have somewhere heard;
We crowd through the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamplight,
We pour in a sinister wave, ascend a stair,
With laughter and cry, and word upon murmured word;
We flow, we descend, we turn . . . and the eternal dreamer
Moves among us like light, like evening air . . .
Good-night! Good-night! Good-night! We go our ways,
The rain runs over the pavement before our feet,
The cold rain falls, the rain sings.
We walk, we run, we ride. We turn our faces
To what the eternal evening brings.
Our hands are hot and raw with the stones we have laid,
We have built a tower of stone high into the sky,
We have built a city of towers.
Our hands are light, they are singing with emptiness.
Our souls are light; they have shaken a burden of hours . . .
What did we build it for? Was it all a dream? . . .
Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam . . .
And after a while they will fall to dust and rain;
Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands;
And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.
The Carpenter's Son
by Sara Teasdale

The summer dawn came over-soon,
The earth was like hot iron at noon
In Nazareth;
There fell no rain to ease the heat,
And dusk drew on with tired feet
And stifled breath.
The shop was low and hot and square,
And fresh-cut wood made sharp the air,
While all day long
The saw went tearing thru the oak
That moaned as tho' the tree's heart broke
Beneath its wrong.
The narrow street was full of cries,
Of bickering and snarling lies
In many keys
The tongues of Egypt and of Rome
And lands beyond the shifting foam
Of windy seas.
Sometimes a ruler riding fast
Scattered the dark crowds as he passed,
And drove them close
In doorways, drawing broken breath
Lest they be trampled to their death
Where the dust rose.
The Evening Hours.
by John Clare

The sultry day it wears away,
And o'er the distant leas
The mist again, in purple stain,
Falls moist on flower and trees:
His home to find, the weary hind
Glad leaves his carts and ploughs;
While maidens fair, with bosoms bare,
Go coolly to their cows.
The red round sun his work has done,
And dropp'd into his bed;
And sweetly shin'd the oaks behind
His curtains fringed with red:
And step by step the night has crept,
And day, as loth, retires;
But clouds, more dark, night's entrance mark.
Till day's last spark expires.
Pride of the vales, the nightingales
Now charm the oaken grove;
And loud and long, with amorous tongue,
They try to please their love:
And where the rose reviving blows
Upon the swelter'd bower,
I'll take my seat, my love to meet,
And wait th' appointed hour.
And like the bird, whose joy is heard
Now he his love can join,
Who hails so loud the even's shroud,
I'll wait as glad for mine:
As weary bees o'er parched leas
Now meet reviving flowers,
So on her breast I'll sink to rest,
And bless the evening hours.
Discontent.
by Freeman Edwin Miller

The sun comes up in the east
And the sun goes down in the west,
And man to me is a heartless beast
And the world has only a savage breast.
How thoughts rush over my soul
As the waves walk over the sea!
Their forms flee soon and the sorrows roll
In the deep distress that is over me.
How hopes arise in my heart,
As the roses bloom over the plain!
But time is tearing their sweets apart
And they die in darkness and awful pain.
Ambitions burn in my breast,
As the fires in a city rage;
But damp creeps over their fervid zest
And they sink away into ashen age.
If there was pleasure for pain
I could well be happy awhile,
And, O, my bosom would ne'er complain,
If my fortune gave me a single smile.
But here I am, and the curse is on,
And my life is a waste of woe,
And ere one river of tears is gone,
O, another torrent begins to flow.
Ah, the sun comes up in the east
And the sun goes down in the west.
And man to me is a heartless beast
And the world has only a savage breast!
A Thought
by Abram Joseph Ryan

The summer rose the sun has flushed
With crimson glory may be sweet;
'Tis sweeter when its leaves are crushed
Beneath the wind's and tempest's feet.
The rose that waves upon its tree,
In life sheds perfume all around;
More sweet the perfume floats to me
Of roses trampled on the ground.
The waving rose with every breath
Scents carelessly the summer air;
The wounded rose bleeds forth in death
A sweetness far more rich and rare.
It is a truth beyond our ken --
And yet a truth that all may read --
It is with roses as with men,
The sweetest hearts are those that bleed.
The flower which Bethlehem saw bloom
Out of a heart all full of grace,
Gave never forth its full perfume
Until the cross became its vase.
On Flaxman's Penelope.
by William Cowper

The suitors sinn'd, but with a fair excuse,
Whom all this elegance might well seduce;
Nor can our censure on the husband fall,
Who, for a wife so lovely, slew them all.
The Burghers
by Thomas Hardy

The sun had wheeled from Grey's to Dammer's Crest,
And still I mused on that Thing imminent:
At length I sought the High-street to the West.
The level flare raked pane and pediment
And my wrecked face, and shaped my nearing friend
Like one of those the Furnace held unshent.
"I've news concerning her," he said. "Attend.
They fly to-night at the late moon's first gleam:
Watch with thy steel: two righteous thrusts will end
Her shameless visions and his passioned dream.
I'll watch with thee, to testify thy wrong -
To aid, maybe. Law consecrates the scheme."
I started, and we paced the flags along
Till I replied: "Since it has come to this
I'll do it! But alone. I can be strong."
Three hours past Curfew, when the Froom's mild hiss
Reigned sole, undulled by whirr of merchandize,
From Pummery-Tout to where the Gibbet is,
I crossed my pleasaunce hard by Glyd'path Rise,
And stood beneath the wall. Eleven strokes went,
And to the door they came, contrariwise,
And met in clasp so close I had but bent
My lifted blade upon them to have let
Their two souls loose upon the firmament.
But something held my arm. "A moment yet
As pray-time ere you wantons die!" I said;
And then they saw me. Swift her gaze was set
With eye and cry of love illimited
Upon her Heart-king. Never upon me
Had she thrown look of love so thorough-sped! . . .
At once she flung her faint form shieldingly
On his, against the vengeance of my vows;
The which o'erruling, her shape shielded he.
Blanked by such love, I stood as in a drowse,
And the slow moon edged from the upland nigh,
My sad thoughts moving thuswise: "I may house
And I may husband her, yet what am I
But licensed tyrant to this bonded pair?
Says Charity, Do as ye would be done by." . . .
Hurling my iron to the bushes there,
I bade them stay. And, as if brain and breast
Were passive, they walked with me to the stair.
Inside the house none watched; and on we prest
Before a mirror, in whose gleam I read
Her beauty, his, and mine own mien unblest;
Till at her room I turned. "Madam," I said,
"Have you the wherewithal for this? Pray speak.
Love fills no cupboard. You'll need daily bread."
"We've nothing, sire," said she; "and nothing seek.
'Twere base in me to rob my lord unware;
Our hands will earn a pittance week by week."
And next I saw she'd piled her raiment rare
Within the garde-robes, and her household purse,
Her jewels, and least lace of personal wear;
And stood in homespun. Now grown wholly hers,
I handed her the gold, her jewels all,
And him the choicest of her robes diverse.
"I'll take you to the doorway in the wall,
And then adieu," I to them. "Friends, withdraw."
They did so; and she went beyond recall.
And as I paused beneath the arch I saw
Their moonlit figures slow, as in surprise -
Descend the slope, and vanish on the haw.
"'Fool,' some will say," I thought. "But who is wise,
Save God alone, to weigh my reasons why?"
- "Hast thou struck home?" came with the boughs' night-sighs.
It was my friend. "I have struck well. They fly,
But carry wounds that none can cicatrize."
- "Not mortal?" said he. "Lingering worse," said I.
The Sun Has Long Been Set
by William Wordsworth

The sun has long been set,
The stars are out by twos and threes,
The little birds are piping yet
Among the bushes and the trees;
There's a cuckoo, and one or two thrushes,
And a far-off wind that rushes,
And a sound of water that gushes,
And the cuckoo's sovereign cry
Fills all the hollow of the sky.
Who would go `parading'
In London, `and masquerading',
On such a night of June
With that beautiful soft half-moon,
And all these innocent blisses?
On such a night as this is!
Clarence Fawcett
by Edgar Lee Masters

The sudden death of Eugene Carman
Put me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month,
And I told my wife and children that night.
But it didn't come, and so I thought
Old Rhodes suspected me of stealing
The blankets I took and sold on the side
For money to pay a doctor's bill for my little girl.
Then like a bolt old Rhodes accused me,
And promised me mercy for my family's sake
If I confessed, and so I confessed,
And begged him to keep it out of the papers,
And I asked the editors, too.
That night at home the constable took me
And every paper, except the Clarion,
Wrote me up as a thief
Because old Rhodes was an advertiser
And wanted to make an example of me.
Oh! well, you know how the children cried,
And how my wife pitied and hated me,
And how I came to lie here.
The Strange Lady.
by William Cullen Bryant

The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by,
As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky;
Young Albert, in the forest's edge, has heard a rustling sound,
An arrow slightly strikes his hand and falls upon the ground.
A dark-haired woman from the wood comes suddenly in sight;
Her merry eye is full and black, her cheek is brown and bright;
Her gown is of the mid-sea blue, her belt with beads is strung,
And yet she speaks in gentle tones, and in the English tongue.
"It was an idle bolt I sent, against the villain crow;
Fair sir, I fear it harmed thy hand; beshrew my erring bow!"
"Ah! would that bolt had not been spent! then, lady, might I wear
A lasting token on my hand of one so passing fair!"
"Thou art a flatterer like the rest, but wouldst thou take with me
A day of hunting in the wilds, beneath the greenwood tree,
I know where most the pheasants feed, and where the red-deer herd,
And thou shouldst chase the nobler game, and I bring down the bird."
Now Albert in her quiver lays the arrow in its place,
And wonders as he gazes on the beauty of her face:
"Those hunting-grounds are far away, and, lady, 'twere not meet
That night, amid the wilderness, should overtake thy feet."
"Heed not the night; a summer lodge amid the wild is mine, 
'Tis shadowed by the tulip-tree, 'tis mantled by the vine;
The wild plum sheds its yellow fruit from fragrant thickets nigh,
And flowery prairies from the door stretch till they meet the sky.
"There in the boughs that hide the roof the mock-bird sits and sings,
And there the hang-bird's brood within its little hammock swings;
A pebbly brook, where rustling winds among the hopples sweep,
Shall lull thee till the morning sun looks in upon thy sleep."
Away, into the forest depths by pleasant paths they go,
He with his rifle on his arm, the lady with her bow,
Where cornels arch their cool dark boughs o'er beds of winter-green,
And never at his father's door again was Albert seen.
That night upon the woods came down a furious hurricane,
With howl of winds and roar of streams, and beating of the rain;
The mighty thunder broke and drowned the noises in its crash;
The old trees seemed to fight like fiends beneath the lightning-flash.
Next day, within a mossy glen, 'mid mouldering trunks were found
The fragments of a human form upon the bloody ground;
White bones from which the flesh was torn, and locks of glossy hair;
They laid them in the place of graves, yet wist not whose they were.
And whether famished evening wolves had mangled Albert so,
Or that strange dame so gay and fair were some mysterious foe,
Or whether to that forest lodge, beyond the mountains blue,
He went to dwell with her, the friends who mourned him never knew.
The Sun Has Set
by Emily Bronte

The sun has set, and the long grass now
Waves dreamily in the evening wind;
And the wild bird has flown from that old gray stone
In some warm nook a couch to find.
In all the lonely landscape round
I see no light and hear no sound,
Except the wind that far away
Come sighing o'er the healthy sea.
Song for "The Jacquerie". - Betrayal.
by Sidney Lanier

The sun has kissed the violet sea,
And burned the violet to a rose.
O Sea! wouldst thou not better be
Mere violet still? Who knows? who knows?
Well hides the violet in the wood:
The dead leaf wrinkles her a hood,
And winter's ill is violet's good;
But the bold glory of the rose,
It quickly comes and quickly goes -
Red petals whirling in white snows,
Ah me!
The sun has burnt the rose-red sea:
The rose is turned to ashes gray.
O Sea, O Sea, mightst thou but be
The violet thou hast been to-day!
The sun is brave, the sun is bright,
The sun is lord of love and light;
But after him it cometh night.
Dim anguish of the lonesome dark! -
Once a girl's body, stiff and stark,
Was laid in a tomb without a mark,
Ah me!
Macon, Georgia, 1868.
Formerly A Slave
by Herman Melville

An idealized Portrait, by E. Vedder, in the Spring Exhibition of the National Academy, 1865
The sufferance of her race is shown,
And retrospect of life,
Which now too late deliverance dawns upon;
Yet is she not at strife.
Her children's children they shall know
The good withheld from her;
And so her reverie takes prophetic cheer--
In spirit she sees the stir.
Far down the depth of thousand years,
And marks the revel shine;
Her dusky face is lit with sober light,
Sibylline, yet benign.
Womanhood
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
The summer takes its hue
From something opulent as fair in her,
And the bright heav'n is brighter than it was;
Brighter and lovelier,
Arching its beautiful blue,
Serene and soft, as her sweet gaze, o'er us.
II.
The springtime takes its moods
From something in her made of smiles and tears,
And flowery earth is flowerier than before,
And happier, it appears,
Adding new multitudes
To flowers, like thoughts, that haunt us ever more.
III.
Summer and spring are wed
In her her nature; and the glamour of
Their loveliness, their bounty, as it were,
Of life, and joy, and love,
Her being seems to shed,
The magic aura of the heart of her.
Hazel Blossoms
by John Greenleaf Whittier

The summer warmth has left the sky,
The summer songs have died away;
And, withered, in the footpaths lie
The fallen leaves, but yesterday
With ruby and with topaz gay.
The grass is browning on the hills;
No pale, belated flowers recall
The astral fringes of the rills,
And drearily the dead vines fall,
Frost-blackened, from the roadside wall.
Yet through the gray and sombre wood,
Against the dusk of fir and pine,
Last of their floral sisterhood,
The hazel's yellow blossoms shine,
The tawny gold of Afric's mine!
Small beauty hath my unsung flower,
For spring to own or summer hail;
But, in the season's saddest hour,
To skies that weep and winds that wail
Its glad surprisals never fail.
O days grown cold! O life grown old
No rose of June may bloom again;
But, like the hazel's twisted gold,
Through early frost and latter rain
Shall hints of summer-time remain.
And as within the hazel's bough
A gift of mystic virtue dwells,
That points to golden ores below,
And in dry desert places tells
Where flow unseen the cool, sweet wells,
So, in the wise Diviner's hand,
Be mine the hazel's grateful part
To feel, beneath a thirsty land,
The living waters thrill and start,
The beating of the rivulet's heart!
Sufficeth me the gift to light
With latest bloom the dark, cold days;
To call some hidden spring to sight
That, in these dry and dusty ways,
Shall sing its pleasant song of praise.
O Love! the hazel-wand may fail,
But thou canst lend the surer spell,
That, passing over Baca's vale,
Repeats the old-time miracle,
And makes the desert-land a well.
A Picture
by Victor James Daley

The sun burns fiercely down the skies;
The sea is full of flashing eyes;
The waves glide shoreward serpentwise
And fawn with foamy tongues on stark
Gray rocks, each sharp-toothed as a shark,
And hiss in clefts and channels dark.
Blood-purple soon the waters grow,
As though drowned sea-kings fought below
Forgotten fights of long ago.
The gray owl Dusk its wings has spread;
The sun sinks in a blossom-bed
Of poppy-clouds; the day is dead.
Evening Hymn.
by H. P. Nichols

The sun has set behind the hill,
The bird is sleeping in his nest;
And now, when all around is still,
I lay me down to welcome rest.
May the kind God, who lives above,
And watches o'er us day and night,
Bless us, and grant us, in His love,
Again to see the morning light.
Broken Waves.
by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

The sun is lying on the garden-wall,
The full red rose is sweetening all the air,
The day is happier than a dream most fair;
The evening weaves afar a wide-spread pall,
And lo! sun, day, and rose, no longer there!
I have a lover now my life is young,
I have a love to keep this many a day;
My heart will hold it when my life is gray,
My love will last although my heart be wrung.
My life, my heart, my love shall fade away!
O lover loved, the day has only gone!
In death or life, our love can only go;
Never forgotten is the joy we know,
We follow memory when life is done:
No wave is lost in all the tides that flow.
Alulvan
by Walter De La Mare

The sun is clear of bird and cloud,
The grass shines windless, grey, and still,
In dusky ruin the owl dreams on,
The cuckoo echoes on the hill;
Yet soft along Alulvan's walks
The ghost at noonday stalks.
His eyes in shadow of his hat
Stare on the ruins of his house;
His cloak, up-fasten'd with a brooch,
Of faded velvet grey as mouse,
Brushes the roses as he goes:
Yet wavers not one rose.
The wild birds in a cloud fly up
From their sweet feeding in the fruit;
The droning of the bees and flies
Rises gradual as a lute;
Is it for fear the birds are flown,
And shrills the insect-drone?
Thick is the ivy o'er Alulvan,
And crisp with summer-heat its turf;
Far, far across its empty pastures
Alulvan's sands are white with surf:
And he himself is grey as sea,
Watching beneath an elder-tree.
All night the fretful, shrill Banshee
Lurks in the chambers' dark festoons,
Calling for ever, o'er garden and river,
Through magpie changing of the moons:
'Alulvan, O, alas! Alulvan,
The doom of lone Alulvan!'
Twilight.
by George W. Doneghy

The sun is sinking where the western hills
The vision bounds with rugged summits old,
And with his latest beam he brightly gilds
And crowns with amethyst and gold.
The distant music of a tinkling bell
Is floating o'er the meadow's gentle sweep--
No discords mar the magic of the spell,
And stealthily the twilight shadows creep.
And gently falls upon the listening ear--
Like tones from voices of the long-ago--
The cadence of the murmuring waters near--
With rhythmic ripplings soft and low.
Now grow apace the shadows' slanting shapes
And fade the rugged hills to misty gray,
As dying day its calm departure takes
And yields to coming night her sable sway.
The vaulted dome above now glows afar
With many a soft and tender light,
Each sparkling gem it wears a jeweled star,
With sweet effulgence purely bright.
Sweet scene! Sweet hour! If to the heart
No quick'ning pulses they can lend,
And to the soul no rapture thus impart--
Vain were our lives--and vainer still the end!
O, such the time when he who will may feel
Release from care, vexation, toil, and strife--
And musing then will gently o'er him steal
The sweetest moments of the turmoil--life!
A May-Day Madrigal
by Robert Fuller Murray

The sun shines fair on Tweedside, the river flowing bright,
Your heart is full of pleasure, your eyes are full of light,
Your cheeks are like the morning, your pearls are like the dew,
Or morning and her dew-drops are like your pearls and you.
Because you are a princess, a princess of the land,
You will not turn your lightsome eyes a moment where I stand,
A poor unnoticed poet, a-making of his rhymes;
But I have found a mistress, more fair a thousand times.
'Tis May, the elfish maiden, the daughter of the Spring,
Upon whose birthday morning the birds delight to sing.
They would not sing one note for you, if you should so command,
Although you are a princess, a princess of the land.
Storm At Annisquam
by Madison Julius Cawein

The sun sinks scarlet as a barberry.
Far off at sea one vessel lifts a sail,
Hurrying to harbor from the coming gale,
That banks the west above a choppy sea.
The sun is gone; the fide is flowing free;
The bay is opaled with wild light; and pale
The lighthouse spears its flame now; through a veil
That falls about the sea mysteriously.
Out there she sits and mutters of her dead,
Old Ocean; of the stalwart and the strong,
Skipper and fisher whom her arms dragged down:
Before her now she sees their ghosts; o'erhead
As gray as rain, their wild wrecks sweep along,
And all night long lay siege to this old town.
The Star of Youth.
by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick

The sun sinks down in the crimson west,
Oh, a beautiful sun is he;
With his purple robes and his crown of gold
And his feet dipped in the sea.
Along the shore where the sea-weeds lie
Like threads of her tangled hair,
Naomi stands in the amber glow
Of the mystical sunset air.
Her hair is brown, with a yellow tinge
That rivals the gold of the west;
Her eyes are dark with the velvety glow
That darkens the pansy's breast.
A star shines out in the purple east,
Oh, a beautiful star is he!
With his home in the wonderful azure skies,
And his throne in the deep blue sea.
There are bars of gold in the crimson west
And jewels on every bar;
Yet Naomi's soul is beyond the sea,
And her eyes are fixed on the star.
O star that shines in the dusky east,
Be thou the star of my youth,
And guide my soul through the shadows of earth
To the shining gates of truth.
There are years that melt in the seas of life
Like drops in the ocean of time;
And the joys they bring are as soon forgot
As the words of a careless rhyme.
Be thou the light that shall guide me far
From the years that vanish as rain,
And lead my soul to the feet of God,
Even through years of pain.