DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Ways Are Green
by William Ernest Henley

The ways are green with the gladdening sheen
Of the young year's fairest daughter.
O, the shadows that fleet o'er the springing wheat!
O, the magic of running water!
The spirit of spring is in every thing,
The banners of spring are streaming,
We march to a tune from the fifes of June,
And life's a dream worth dreaming.
It's all very well to sit and spell
At the lesson there's no gainsaying;
But what the deuce are wont and use
When the whole mad world's a-maying?
When the meadow glows, and the orchard snows,
And the air's with love-motes teeming,
When fancies break, and the senses wake,
O, life's a dream worth dreaming!
What Nature has writ with her lusty wit
Is worded so wisely and kindly
That whoever has dipped in her manuscript
Must up and follow her blindly.
Now the summer prime is her blithest rhyme
In the being and the seeming,
And they that have heard the overword
Know life's a dream worth dreaming.
1878
Before The Tomb.
by Madison Julius Cawein

The way went under cedared gloom
To moonlight, like a cactus bloom,
Before the entrance of her tomb.
I had an hour of night and thin
Sad starlight; and I set my chin
Against the grating and looked in.
A gleam, like moonlight, through a square
Of opening, I knew not where 
Shone on her coffin resting there.
And on its oval silver-plate
I read her name and age and date,
And smiled, soft-thinking on my hate.
There was no insect sound to chirr;
No wind to make a little stir.
I stood and looked and thought on her.
The gleam stole downward from her head,
Till at her feet it rested red
On Gothic gold, that sadly said: 
"God to her love lent a weak reed
Of strength: and gave no light to lead:
Pray for her soul; for it hath need."
There was no night-bird's twitter near,
No low vague water I might hear
To make a small sound in the ear.
The gleam, that made a burning mark
Of each dim word, died to a spark;
Then left the tomb and coffin dark.
I had a little while to wait;
And prayed with hands against the grate,
And heart that yearned and knew too late.
There was no light below, above,
To point my soul the way thereof, 
The way of hate that led to love.
In The Mountains
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
Land-Marks
The way is rock and rubbish to a road
That leads through woods of stunted oaks and thorns
Into a valley that no flower adorns,
One mass of blackened brier; overflowed
With desolation: whence their mighty load
Of lichened limbs, like two colossal horns,
Two dead trees lift: trees, that the foul earth scorns
To vine with poison, spotted like the toad.
Here, on gaunt boughs, unclean, red-beaked, and bald,
The buzzards settle; roost, since that fierce night
When, torched with pine-knots, grim and shadowy,
Judge Lynch held court here; and the dark, appalled,
Heard words of hollow justice; and the light
Saw, on these trees, dread fruit swing suddenly.
II.
The Ox-Team
An ox-team, its lean oxen, slow of tread,
Weighed with an old-time yoke, creaked heavily
Along the mountain road. Beside it, three
Walked with no word: A woman with bowed head,
A young girl, old before her youth had fled,
Hugging a sleeping baby; near her knee
A gaunt hound trotted. Any one could see
The wagon held their all, from box to bed.
Slowly they creaked into the mountain town
And asked their way. Their men had all been killed,
Father and brother, at some mountain ball,
This girl the cause: a man had shot them down,
The father of the infant. As God willed,
They sought another State, and that was all.
By The Lake.
by Thomas Frederick Young

The waves are dashing on the shore,
With wild, glad joy, I stand and view them;
And, as they break with sullen roar,
My heart responds with gladness, to them.
They've pow'r to thrill the human soul,
As on the shore they break so madly,
The spirit, bounding, hears their roll,
And speaks responsive, wildly, gladly.
The heart, with proud, defiant beats,
Re-echoes the triumphant roar,
And, as each wave its course retreats,
The pulse retires to beat once more.
The gull screams wildly o'er the waves,
Defiant in its stormy glee;
It screams, perchance, o'er wat'ry graves
And recks not, heeds not, nor do we.
But comes a time, when waves and wind,
In restful quietude remain,
A change then comes upon the mind,
And stormy passion's recent reign.
The gull sails softly thro' the air,
For all is calm and still below;
Peace, blessed peace is ev'rywhere,
And all regret the recent throe.
The man, remorseful, thinks of how
Defiant thoughts reign'd wild and high,
The waves are mourning, sobbing now,
In peace, but yet in agony.
The Gipsy Trail
by Rudyard Kipling

The white moth to the closing bine,
The bee to the opened clover,
And the gipsy blood to the gipsy blood
Ever the wide world over.
Ever the wide world over, lass,
Ever the trail held true,
Over the world and under the world,
And back at the last to you.
Out of the dark of the gorgio camp,
Out of the grime and the grey
(Morning waits at the end of the world),
Gipsy, come away!
The wild boar to the sun-dried swamp,
The red crane to her reed,
And the Romany lass to the Romany lad,
By the tie of a roving breed.
The pied snake to the rifted rock,
The buck to the stony plain,
And the Romany lass to the Romany lad,
And both to the road again.
Both to the road again, again!
Out on a clean sea-track,
Follow the cross of the gipsy trail
Over the world and back!
Follow the Romany patteran
North where the blue bergs sail,
And the bows are grey with the frozen spray,
And the masts are shod with mail.
Follow the Romany patteran
Sheer to the Austral Light,
Where the besom of God is the wild South wind,
Sweeping the sea-floors white.
Follow the Romany patteran
West to the sinking sun,
Till the junk-sails lift through the houseless drift.
And the east and west are one.
Follow the Romany patteran
East where the silence broods
By a purple wave on an opal beach
In the hush of the Mahim woods.
"The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky,
The deer to the wholesome wold,
And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid,
As it was in the days of old."
The heart of a man to the heart of a maid,
Light of my tents, be fleet.
Morning waits at the end of the world,
And the world is all at our feet!
The Last Dance
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

WHEN LOVE FOR HIS MAKER AWOKE IN MAN, THE DANCE BEGAN
The wave of the ocean, the leaf of the wood,
In the rhythm of motion proclaim life is good.
The stars are all swinging to metres and rhyme,
The planets are singing while suns mark the time.
The moonbeams and rivers float off in a trance,
The Universe quivers - on, on with the dance!
Our partners we pick from the best of the throng
In the ballroom of Life and go lilting along;
We follow our fancy, and choose as we will,
For waltz or for tango or merry quadrille;
But ever one partner is waiting us all
At the end of the programme, to finish the ball.
Unasked, and unwelcome, he comes without leave
And calls when he chooses, 'My dance, I believe?'
And none may refuse him, and none may say no;
When he beckons the dancer, the dancer must go.
You may hate him, and shun him; and yet in life's ball
For the one who lives well 'tis the best dance of all.
The House Of Dust: Part 01: 08: The White Fog Creeps From The Cold Sea Over The City
by Conrad Potter Aiken

The white fog creeps from the cold sea over the city,
Over the pale grey tumbled towers,
And settles among the roofs, the pale grey walls.
Along damp sinuous streets it crawls,
Curls like a dream among the motionless trees
And seems to freeze.
The fog slips ghostlike into a thousand rooms,
Whirls over sleeping faces,
Spins in an atomy dance round misty street lamps;
And blows in cloudy waves over open spaces . . .
And one from his high window, looking down,
Peers at the cloud-white town,
And thinks its island towers are like a dream . . .
It seems an enormous sleeper, within whose brain
Laborious shadows revolve and break and gleam.
The Whale
by Hilaire Belloc

The Whale that wanders round the Pole
Is not a table fish.
You cannot bake or boil him whole
Nor serve him in a dish;
But you may cut his blubber up
And melt it down for oil.
And so replace the colza bean
(A product of the soil).
These facts should all be noted down
And ruminated on,
By every boy in Oxford town
Who wants to be a Don.
I. M. R. G. C. B. 1878
by William Ernest Henley

The ways of Death are soothing and serene,
And all the words of Death are grave and sweet.
From camp and church, the fireside and the street,
She beckons forth - and strife and song have been.
A summer night descending cool and green
And dark on daytime's dust and stress and heat,
The ways of Death are soothing and serene,
And all the words of Death are grave and sweet.
O glad and sorrowful, with triumphant mien
And radiant faces look upon, and greet
This last of all your lovers, and to meet
Her kiss, the Comforter's, your spirit lean . . .
The ways of Death are soothing and serene.
***
We shall surely die:
Must we needs grow old?
Grow old and cold,
And we know not why?
O, the By-and-By,
And the tale that's told!
We shall surely die:
Must we needs grow old?
Grow old and sigh,
Grudge and withhold,
Resent and scold? . . .
Not you and I?
We shall surely die!
***
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.
Adieu To My False Love Forever
by John Clare

The week before Easter, the days long and clear,
So bright shone the sun and so cool blew the air,
I went in the meadow some flowers to find there,
But the meadow would yield me no posies.
The weather, like love, did deceitful appear,
And I wandered alone when my sorrow was near,
For the thorn that wounds deeply doth bide the whole year,
When the bush it is naked of roses.
I courted a girl that was handsome and gay,
I thought her as constant and true as the day,
Till she married for riches and said my love "Nay,"
And so my poor heart got requited.
I was bid to the bridal; I could not say "No:"
The bridemen and maidens they made a fine show;
I smiled like the rest but my heart it was low,
To think how its hopes they were blighted.
The bride started gaily, the weather was fine,
Her parents looked after, and thought her divine;
She smiled in their faces, but looked not in mine,
Indeed I'd no heart to regard her.
Though love like the poplar doth lift its head high,
The top it may fade and the root it may die,
And they may have heart-aches that now live in joy,
But Heaven I'll leave to reward her.
When I saw my false love in the merry church stand,
With her ring on her finger and her love in her hand,
Smiling out in the joy of her houses and land,
My sighs I strove vainly to smother.
When my false love for dinner did dainties partake,
I sat me down also, but nothing could eat;
I thought her sweet company better than meat,
Although she was tied to another.
When my false love had gone to her bride bed at night,
My eyes filled with water which made double my sight;
I thought she was there when she'd bade us "Good night"
And her chair was put by till the morrow.
I drank to her joy with a tear on my face,
And the wine glass as usual I pushed on the space,
Nor knew she was gone till I looked at the place,
Such a fool was I made of by sorrow.
Now make me a bed in yon river so deep,
Let its waves be my mourners; nought living will weep,
And there let me lie and take a long sleep,
So adieu to my false love for ever.
Poem: Serenade (For Music)
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

The western wind is blowing fair
Across the dark AEgean sea,
And at the secret marble stair
My Tyrian galley waits for thee.
Come down! the purple sail is spread,
The watchman sleeps within the town,
O leave thy lily-flowered bed,
O Lady mine come down, come down!
She will not come, I know her well,
Of lover's vows she hath no care,
And little good a man can tell
Of one so cruel and so fair.
True love is but a woman's toy,
They never know the lover's pain,
And I who loved as loves a boy
Must love in vain, must love in vain.
O noble pilot, tell me true,
Is that the sheen of golden hair?
Or is it but the tangled dew
That binds the passion-flowers there?
Good sailor come and tell me now
Is that my Lady's lily hand?
Or is it but the gleaming prow,
Or is it but the silver sand?
No! no! 'tis not the tangled dew,
'Tis not the silver-fretted sand,
It is my own dear Lady true
With golden hair and lily hand!
O noble pilot, steer for Troy,
Good sailor, ply the labouring oar,
This is the Queen of life and joy
Whom we must bear from Grecian shore!
The waning sky grows faint and blue,
It wants an hour still of day,
Aboard! aboard! my gallant crew,
O Lady mine, away! away!
O noble pilot, steer for Troy,
Good sailor, ply the labouring oar,
O loved as only loves a boy!
O loved for ever evermore!
In The Springtime II
by Eugene Field

The western breeze is springing up, the ships are in the bay,
And spring has brought a happy change as winter melts away.
No more in stall or fire the herd or plowman finds delight;
No longer with the biting frosts the open fields are white.
Our Lady of Cythera now prepares to lead the dance,
While from above the kindly moon gives an approving glance;
The Nymphs and comely Graces join with Venus and the choir,
And Vulcan's glowing fancy lightly turns to thoughts of fire.
Now it is time with myrtle green to crown the shining pate,
And with the early blossoms of the spring to decorate;
To sacrifice to Faunus, on whose favor we rely,
A sprightly lamb, mayhap a kid, as he may specify.
Impartially the feet of Death at huts and castles strike;
The influenza carries off the rich and poor alike.
O Sestius, though blessed you are beyond the common run,
Life is too short to cherish e'en a distant hope begun.
The Shades and Pluto's mansion follow hard upon the grip.
Once there you cannot throw the dice, nor taste the wine you sip;
Nor look on blooming Lycidas, whose beauty you commend,
To whom the girls will presently their courtesies extend.
The Big Bear Creek
by Joseph Horatio Chant

The waters of the Big Bear creek
Glide slowly on their way;
The western lakes they surely seek,
Which they will reach some day;
But sluggishly they seek their end--
They scarcely seem to move;
Yet through the fields and round each bend
Their progress daily prove.
By debris borne upon their breast,
And strewn along each shore,
They slowly move, but never rest,
Yet turbid evermore.
But when they reach the Johnson bend
And the Sni Chartna meet,
The turbid and the sky-blue blend--
The union is complete.
And soon is lost all trace of mud;
Of azure tint the whole;
With heaven's own hue the rolling flood
Has gained the long-sought goal.
So is it with the soul renewed
While on its heaven-bound way,
With grace divine it is embued,
Yet shows the trace of clay.
And though to rest it never halts,
Its progress is so slow;
Alas, it has too many faults,
Nor much of heavenly glow.
But when God's sanctifying grace
Shall meet it from above,
You seek in vain for sinful trace--
It now is full of love.
A new impulse it then receives
Which speeds it on its way;
To it no stain of sin now cleaves--
It seeks its perfect day.
And as the azure stream has found
Its home in brimming lake,
So shall the soul thus heavenward bound
Of God's own joy partake.
The Three Voices
by Robert William Service

The waves have a story to tell me,
As I lie on the lonely beach;
Chanting aloft in the pine-tops,
The wind has a lesson to teach;
But the stars sing an anthem of glory
I cannot put into speech.
The waves tell of ocean spaces,
Of hearts that are wild and brave,
Of populous city places,
Of desolate shores they lave;
Of men who sally in quest of gold
To sink in an ocean grave.
The wind is a mighty roamer;
He bids me keep me free,
Clean from the taint of the gold-lust,
Hardy and pure as he;
Cling with my love to nature
As a child to the mother-knee.
But the stars throng out in their glory,
And they sing of the God in man;
They sing of the mighty Master,
Of the loom His fingers span;
Where a star or a soul is a part of the whole,
And weft in the wondrous plan.
Here by the camp-fire's flicker,
Deep in my blanket curled,
I long for the peace of the pine-gloom
When the scroll of the Lord is unfurled,
And the wind and the wave are silent,
And world is singing to world.
Autumn Storm
by Madison Julius Cawein

The wind is rising and the leaves are swept
Wildly before it, hundreds on hundreds fall
Huddling beneath the trees. With brag and brawl
Of storm the day is grown a tavern, kept
Of madness, where, with mantles torn and ripped
Of flying leaves that beat above it all,
The wild winds fight; and, like some half-spent ball,
The acorn stings the rout; and, silver-stripped,
The milkweed-pod winks an exhausted lamp:
Now, in his coat of tatters dark that streams,
The ragged rain sweeps stormily this way,
With all his clamorous followers clouds that camp
Around the hearthstone of the west where gleams
The last chill flame of the expiring day.
The White Rose And The Red Rose
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

The white rose and the red rose,
So sisters two were named, yes, named.
The white one was so quiet,
The red one laughed and flamed.
But different was their doing, yes,
When came the time of wooing, yes.
The white one turned so red, so red,
The red one turned so white.
For him the red one favored,
Him father would not bless, not bless.
But him the white one favored,
He got at once his "Yes."
The red one now was paling, yes,
With sorrow, psalms, and wailing, yes.
The white one turned so red, so red,
The red one turned so white.
Then father grew so fearful
And had to give his "Yes," oh, yes!
With songs and music cheerful
The wedding rang, oh, yes!
And soon sprang children rosen, yes,
In shoes and little hosen, yes.
The red one's, they were white, - and oh,
The white one's, they were red.
Cienfuegos
by Paul Cameron Brown

The white pin wheel of heat turns up the grasses' edge.
Some dried plant stalks shrivel,
then melt openly into layers of fire.
It is end - time for the community's Christmas trees.
Something akin to burnt offerings,
reluctant souls or
hedging captives kept alive
ghoulishly for some cannibal's feast;
this festival of crackling.
They have served their purpose, now.
Bound, no faggots need be applied.
Contumely, the quiet desperation darkens
the child's face.
The headlights rain down on Christmas' debris.
A hundred little fires as cigarette warnings
daub the night air.
The forest of smoke, canyon of the torch,
where black marauders poke the nostril.
E. B. B.
by James Thomson -  (Bysshe Vanolis)

I.
The white-rose garland at her feet,
The crown of laurel at her head,
Her noble life on earth complete,
Lay her in the last low bed
For the slumber calm and deep:
'He giveth His belov'd sleep.'
II.
Soldiers find their fittest grave
In the field whereon they died;
So her spirit pure and brave
Leaves the clay it glorified
To the land for which she fought
With such grand impassioned thought.
III.
Keats and Shelley sleep at Rome,
She in well-loved Tuscan earth;
Finding all their death's long home
Far from their old home of birth.
Italy, you hold in trust
Very sacred English dust.
IV.
Therefore this one prayer I breathe,
That you yet may worthy prove
Of the heirlooms they bequeath
Who have loved you with such love:
Fairest land while land of slaves
Yields their free souls no fit graves.
A Summer Evening Churchyard.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The wind has swept from the wide atmosphere
Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray;
And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair
In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day:
Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men,
Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.
They breathe their spells towards the departing day,
Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;
Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway,
Responding to the charm with its own mystery.
The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass
Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.
Thou too, aereal Pile! whose pinnacles
Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,
Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells,
Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,
Around whose lessening and invisible height
Gather among the stars the clouds of night.
The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:
And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound,
Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,
Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around,
And mingling with the still night and mute sky
Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.
Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild
And terrorless as this serenest night:
Here could I hope, like some inquiring child
Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight
Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep
That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.
God Help Our Men at Sea
by Henry Kendall

The wild night comes like an owl to its lair,
The black clouds follow fast,
And the sun-gleams die, and the lightnings glare,
And the ships go heaving past, past, past
The ships go heaving past!
Bar the doors, and higher, higher
Pile the faggots on the fire:
Now abroad, by many a light,
Empty seats there are to-night
Empty seats that none may fill,
For the storm grows louder still:
How it surges and swells through the gorges and dells,
Under the ledges and over the lea,
Where a watery sound goeth moaning around
God help our men at sea!
Oh! never a tempest blew on the shore
But that some heart did moan
For a darling voice it would hear no more
And a face that had left it lone, lone, lone
A face that had left it lone!
I am watching by a pane
Darkened with the gusty rain,
Watching, through a mist of tears,
Sad with thoughts of other years,
For a brother I did miss
In a stormy time like this.
Ah! the torrent howls past, like a fiend on the blast,
Under the ledges and over the lea;
And the pent waters gleam, and the wild surges scream
God help our men at sea!
Ah, Lord! they may grope through the dark to find
Thy hand within the gale;
And cries may rise on the wings of the wind
From mariners weary and pale, pale, pale
From mariners weary and pale!
'Tis a fearful thing to know,
While the storm-winds loudly blow,
That a man can sometimes come
Too near to his father's home;
So that he shall kneel and say,
'Lord, I would be far away!'
Ho! the hurricanes roar round a dangerous shore,
Under the ledges and over the lea;
And there twinkles a light on the billows so white
God help our men at sea!