DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Hamatreya
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood.
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,
Saying, ''Tis mine, my children's and my name's.
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!
I fancy these pure waters and the flags
Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize;
And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.'
Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:
And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.
Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.
They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,
And sighed for all that bounded their domain;
'This suits me for a pasture; that's my park;
We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,
And misty lowland, where to go for peat.
The land is well,--lies fairly to the south.
'Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back,
To find the sitfast acres where you left them.'
Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds
Him to his land, a lump of mould the more.
Hear what the Earth says:--
EARTH-SONG
'Mine and yours;
Mine, not yours.
Earth endures;
Stars abide--
Shine down in the old sea;
Old are the shores;
But where are old men?
I who have seen much,
Such have I never seen.
'The lawyer's deed
Ran sure,
In tail,
To them, and to their heirs
Who shall succeed,
Without fail,
Forevermore.
'Here is the land,
Shaggy with wood,
With its old valley,
Mound and flood.
But the heritors?--
Fled like the flood's foam.
The lawyer, and the laws,
And the kingdom,
Clean swept herefrom.
'They called me theirs,
Who so controlled me;
Yet every one
Wished to stay, and is gone,
How am I theirs,
If they cannot hold me,
But I hold them?'
When I heard the Earth-song
I was no longer brave;
My avarice cooled
Like lust in the chill of the grave.
A Song.
by Robert Herrick

Burn, or drown me, choose ye whether,
So I may but die together;
Thus to slay me by degrees
Is the height of cruelties.
What needs twenty stabs, when one
Strikes me dead as any stone?
O show mercy then, and be
Kind at once to murder me.
Nursery Rhyme. DIV. Natural History.
by Unknown

Burnie bee, burnie bee,
Tell me when your wedding be?
If it be to-morrow day,
Take your wings and fly away.
Nursery Rhyme. CCLXXXII. Games.
by Unknown

[One child holds a wand to the face of another, repeating these lines, and making grimaces, to cause the latter to laugh, and so to the others; those who laugh paying a forfeit.]
Buff says Buff to all his men,
And I say Buff to you again;
Buff neither laughs nor smiles,
But carries his face
With a very good grace,
And passes the stick to the very next place!
Sonnet. About Jesus. X.
by George MacDonald

But as Thou earnest forth to bring the Poor,
Whose hearts were nearer faith and verity,
Spiritual childhood, thy philosophy,--
So taught'st the A, B, C of heavenly lore;
Because Thou sat'st not, lonely evermore,
With mighty thoughts informing language high;
But, walking in thy poem continually,
Didst utter acts, of all true forms the core;
Instead of parchment, writing on the soul
High thoughts and aspirations, being so
Thine own ideal; Poet and Poem, lo!
One indivisible; Thou didst reach thy goal
Triumphant, but with little of acclaim,
Even from thine own, escaping not their blame.
Upon Bungy.
by Robert Herrick

Bungy does fast; looks pale; puts sackcloth on;
Not out of conscience, or religion:
Or that this younker keeps so strict a Lent,
Fearing to break the king's commandement:
But being poor, and knowing flesh is dear,
He keeps not one, but many Lents i' th' year.
But What's The Use
by Henry Lawson

But what's the use of writing 'bush', 
Though editors demand it, 
For city folk, and farming folk,
Can never understand it.
They're blind to what the bushman sees
The best with eyes shut tightest,
Out where the sun is hottest and
The stars are most and brightest.
The crows at sunrise flopping round
Where some poor life has run down;
The pair of emus trotting from
The lonely tank at sundown,
Their snaky heads well up, and eyes
Well out for man's manoeuvres,
And feathers bobbing round behind
Like fringes round improvers.
The swagman tramping 'cross the plain;
Good Lord, there's nothing sadder,
Except the dog that slopes behind
His master like a shadder;
The turkey-tail to scare the flies,
The water-bag and billy;
The nose-bag getting cruel light,
The traveller getting silly.
The plain that seems to Jackaroos
Like gently sloping rises,
The shrubs and tufts that's miles away
But magnified in sizes;
The track that seems arisen up
Or else seems gently slopin',
And just a hint of kangaroos
Way out across the open.
The joy and hope the swagman feels
Returning, after shearing,
Or after six months' tramp Out Back,
He strikes the final clearing.
His weary spirit breathes again,
His aching legs seem limber
When to the East across the plain
He spots the Darling Timber!
But what's the use of writing 'bush', 
Though editors demand it, 
For city folk and cockatoos,
They do not understand it.
They're blind to what the whaler sees
The best with eyes shut tightest,
Out where Australia's widest, and
The stars are most and brightest.
Swiss Air.--"Ranz Des Vaches."
by Thomas Moore

But wake, the trumpet's blast again,
And rouse the ranks of warrior-men!
Oh War, when Truth thy arm employs,
And Freedom's spirit guides the laboring storm,
'Tis then thy vengeance takes a hallowed form,
And like Heaven's lightning sacredly destroys.
Nor, Music, thro' thy breathing sphere,
Lives there a sound more grateful to the ear
Of Him who made all harmony,
Than the blest sound of fetters breaking,
And the first hymn that man awaking
From Slavery's slumber breathes to Liberty.
To A Boy-Poet Of The Decadence
by Owen Seaman

[Showing curious reversal of epigram, 'La nature l'a fait sanglier; la civilisation l'a reduit a l'etat de cochon.']
But my good little man, you have made a mistake
If you really are pleased to suppose
That the Thames is alight with the lyrics you make;
We could all do the same if we chose.
From Solomon down, we may read, as we run,
Of the ways of a man and a maid;
There is nothing that's new to us under the sun,
And certainly not in the shade.
The erotic affairs that you fiddle aloud
Are as vulgar as coin of the mint;
And you merely distinguish yourself from the crowd
By the fact that you put 'em in print.
You're a 'prentice, my boy, in the primitive stage,
And you itch, like a boy, to confess:
When you know a bit more of the arts of the age
You will probably talk a bit less.
For your dull little vices we don't care a fig,
It is this that we deeply deplore;
You were cast for a common or usual pig,
But you play the invincible bore.
But Lately Seen.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "The winter of life."
I.
But lately seen in gladsome green,
The woods rejoiced the day;
Thro' gentle showers and laughing flowers,
In double pride were gay:
But now our joys are fled
On winter blasts awa!
Yet maiden May, in rich array,
Again shall bring them a'.
II.
But my white pow, nae kindly thowe
Shall melt the snaws of age;
My trunk of eild, but buss or bield,
Sinks in Time's wintry rage.
Oh! age has weary days,
And nights o' sleepless pain!
Thou golden time o' youthfu' prime,
Why comes thou not again?
To-Morrow.
by Sophie M. (Almon) Hensley

But one short night between my Love and me!
I watch the soft-shod dusk creep wistfully
Through the slow-moving curtains, pausing by
And shrouding with its spirit-fingers free
Each well-known chair. There is a growing grace
Of tender magic in this little place.
Comes through half-opened windows, soft and cool
As Spring's young breath, the vagrant evening air,
My day-worn soul is hushed. I fain would bear
No burdens on my brain to-night, no rule
Of anxious thought; the world has had my tears,
My thoughts, my hopes, my aims these many years;
This is Thy hour, and I shall sink to sleep
With a glad weariness, to know that when
The new day dawns I shall lay by my pen
Needed no more. If I, perchance, should weep
A few quick tears, so doing, who would guess
'Twas the last throb of my soul's loneliness?
Not even thou, Dear Heart, canst ever know
How I have yearned these many months, these years
For love, for thee. As the calm boatman steers
His slender shallop where he fain would go,
Tempests and rocks before, so through the dark
To this dim, far-off day has set my bark.
To-morrow! I can hear the quick-closed door,
The approaching steps, my pained heart's fluttering,
Thy voice, then Thee! And all the storm and sting
Of bygone griefs are passed forevermore,
Swept from my life as the resistless wind
Scatters the chaff, nor leaves a mote behind.
As long-imprisoned captives reach the light,
And gaze with greedy eyes on field and tree,
Drinking the beauties of the sky and sea
Half fearful of their bliss; so from the night
Of dreams and shades, half doubting, we awake
And grasp the joy we almost fear to take.
Thou hidest in thy warm ones my cold hand,
Reading my soul in these unwavering eyes.
Nay, thou hast known my hopes, my agonies
Through written words, and thou canst understand.
I have kept nothing back of all the streams
Of my heart-flowings - doubts, nor fears, nor dreams.
So long my life has followed no control
But mine own impulse; now, I pray thee, bend
My will to thine, and so, unhindered, tend
My soul's wild garden. I have laid the whole
Bare to thy sowing; and life's precious wine
Is of thy pouring, and thy way is mine.
To - - [606]
by George Gordon Byron

1.
But once I dared to lift my eyes -
To lift my eyes to thee;
And since that day, beneath the skies,
No other sight they see.
2.
In vain sleep shuts them in the night -
The night grows day to me;
Presenting idly to my sight
What still a dream must be.
3.
A fatal dream - for many a bar
Divides thy fate from mine;
And still my passions wake and war,
But peace be still with thine.
[First published, New Monthly Magazine, 1833, vol. 37, p. 308.]
The Object Aimed At.
by Horatio Alger, Jr.

But what "lady patron" as queen holds the sway;
Or sweeping, whose hoops in the street are most sweeping;
The burthen is not of this truth-telling lay,
That should in its reading the world set to weeping,
While telling the suff'rings from head to the feet,
Of poor human beings with nothing to eat.
In Anticipation Of Autumn.
by W. M. MacKeracher

But now the Summer hastens to its close,
And soon will Song a different aspect wear,
Sweeping terrific, clad in ghostly snows,
And lit by the flash of the Boreal glare,
Or, but a poet in his easy chair;
And her most pleasing aspect now beguiles
What time is hers with deft, endearing air:
With gorgeous gold she decks her garments, whiles
Her melancholy face with Indian Summer smiles.
Thy very smile sends sadness to my heart.
Farewell! sweet love, the happy hour is o'er:
Too well I knew that we again must part.
Her garments trail the fond, reluctant floor.
But I shall ne'er forget the dress she wore,
Her looks, her words, the pleasing song she sung -
'Tis melody will charm me more and more,
'Tis music that will keep my spirit young,
'Tis joyance in my soul, though jarring on my tongue.
I've hummed the music after thee as well
As changing tones of youth allowed, and fear,
And vexing sprites that choke the upward swell.
But yet, perchance, some bosom it may cheer,
By recollection making thee more dear
To those who've drunk thy music at its spring,
To some, mayhap, who never learned to hear, -
Alas! poor, wretched souls! - its sound may bring
Some semblance of thy strain, some wish to hear thee sing.
What though I have expounded nothing new,
And traced, I trow, unworthily the old?
Song is no mystic science. - Men may do
Strange things in other spheres, and may unfold
Secrets unthought, tell tales before untold;
But what thou wilt, the bard; nor less, nor more.
And to the mind informed in Nature's mould
Thou has revealed thyself - the same of yore,
The same to-day thou art, and shalt be evermore.
Let them who will, content themselves to sing
In trifling pageantry and gilt array,
To pluck the song-beads from the shimmering string
That skirts thy robe. But such my soul doth sway
As makes me hang upon thy breast and say
"I love thee!" - as a mistress? - then mine own;
Blindly and recklessly? - some future day,
Mine eye, from thine clearer and stronger grown,
May thrid the straggling stars and search the deepening dawn.
O, make my soul an argosy of song,
Tranquilly floating on a sea of peace,
As with her rowers beautiful and strong
Some trireme bears among the Isles of Greece
With music-muffled oars! Give safe release
From murky moorings, storms, and rocks that jar,
And let its pearls in purity increase,
Until with singing sails it cross the bar
To melt in golden waves with gems of many a star!
Preconception
by Ben Jonson

I have no children:
But tonight a poem came
in which a small child,
my daughter, appeared at the door
of a half-lit room
where late one night I wrote
at a heavy desk.
And though interruption
was hardly welcome
I took her to myself,
just as the poem,
comforted this daughter
until she found peace.
The poems as the children
come as they will come.
The Handsome Heart: at a Gracious Answer
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

'But tell me, child, your choice; what shall I buy
You?' - 'Father, what you buy me I like best.'
With the sweetest air that said, still plied and pressed,
He swung to his first poised purport of reply.
What the heart is! which, like carriers let fly - 
Doff darkness, homing nature knows the rest - 
To its own fine function, wild and self-instressed,
Falls light as ten years long taught how to and why.
Mannerly-hearted! more than handsome face - 
Beauty's bearing or muse of mounting vein,
All, in this case, bathed in high hallowing grace . . .
Of heaven what boon to buy you, boy, or gain
Not granted? - Only ... O on that path you pace
Run all your race, O brace sterner that strain!
The Philosophers
by Michael Earls

But the children are the wise men,
With the clearest heart and mind;
If two and one are three, they say,
Then truth is near to find;
If this be now that once was not,
If things must have a cause,
Then very simple is the sum
That God is in His laws.
The world's men that are fools enough,
They will not speak that way,
But with a cloud of muddled thought
They hide the light of day;
Yet laughing words and candid truth
Abide by field and hall,
Where the best of true philosophers
Are the children, after all.
A Friendly Apology For A Certain Justice Of Peace By Way Of Defence Of Hartley Hutcheson, Esq. By James Black-Well, Operator For The Feet
by Jonathan Swift

But he by bawling news about,
And aptly using brush and clout,
A justice of the peace became,
To punish rogues who do the same.
I sing the man of courage tried,
O'errun with ignorance and pride,
Who boldly hunted out disgrace
With canker'd mind, and hideous face;
The first who made (let none deny it)
The libel-vending rogues be quiet.
The fact was glorious, we must own,
For Hartley was before unknown,
Contemn'd I mean; - for who would chuse
So vile a subject for the Muse?
'Twas once the noblest of his wishes
To fill his paunch with scraps from dishes,
For which he'd parch before the grate,
Or wind the jack's slow-rising weight,
(Such toils as best his talents fit,)
Or polish shoes, or turn the spit;
But, unexpectedly grown rich in
Squire Domvile's family and kitchen,
He pants to eternize his name,
And takes the dirty road to fame;
Believes that persecuting wit
Will prove the surest way to it;
So with a colonel[1] at his back,
The Libel feels his first attack;
He calls it a seditious paper,
Writ by another patriot Drapier;
Then raves and blunders nonsense thicker
Than alderman o'ercharged with liquor:
And all this with design, no doubt,
To hear his praises hawk'd about;
To send his name through every street,
Which erst he roam'd with dirty feet;
Well pleased to live in future times,
Though but in keen satiric rhymes.
So, Ajax, who, for aught we know,
Was justice many years ago,
And minding then no earthly things,
But killing libellers of kings;
Or if he wanted work to do,
To run a bawling news-boy through;
Yet he, when wrapp'd up in a cloud,
Entreated father Jove aloud,
Only in light to show his face,
Though it might tend to his disgrace.
And so the Ephesian villain [2] fired
The temple which the world admired,
Contemning death, despising shame,
To gain an ever-odious name.
Mrs. Merdle Discourseth Of Hygiene And Fish Sauce.
by Horatio Alger, Jr.

But this is concocted by rules so complete;
Though piquant, is healthy and easy digested;
And if you will note it as slowly we eat,
The contents I'll give for our friends interested.
Imprimus: in fish stock, an onion we stew,
And anchovy essence two spoonfuls we add;
With butter, horse-radish, and lemons a few;
Mushrooms, too, in ketchup is not very bad;
And pickle of walnuts with onions chopped fine,
To which there is added some old sherry wine.
My doctor, so queer, when I suffer distress,
Inquires what I've latterly foolishly eaten,
And swears that to swallow this 'horrible mess,'
Would entitle a dog like a dog to be beaten.
But la! such a doctor knows nothing of women's complaints,
And talks Latin nonsense about 'regular diet;'
And thinks that us mortals--should live more like saints,
On moonshine and nonsense of a heavenly quiet.
He says that a woman of my plaint complaining,
If she was a woman at all half discreet,
Would shudder to think every day she is maiming
Her stomach with trash, and such stuff as we eat!
Satires Of Circumstances In Fifteen Glimpses - XI In The Restaurant
by Thomas Hardy

"But hear. If you stay, and the child be born,
It will pass as your husband's with the rest,
While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn
Will be gleaming at us from east to west;
And the child will come as a life despised;
I feel an elopement is ill-advised!"
"O you realize not what it is, my dear,
To a woman! Daily and hourly alarms
Lest the truth should out. How can I stay here,
And nightly take him into my arms!
Come to the child no name or fame,
Let us go, and face it, and bear the shame."
But In The Wine-Presses The Human Grapes Sing Not Nor Dance
by William Blake

But in the Wine-presses the human grapes sing not nor dance:
They howl and writhe in shoals of torment, in fierce flames consuming,
In chains of iron and in dungeons circled with ceaseless fires,
In pits and dens and shades of death, in shapes of torment and woe:
The plates and screws and racks and saws and cords and fires and cisterns
The cruel joys of Luvah's Daughters, lacerating with knives
And whips their victims, and the deadly sport of Luvah's Sons.
They dance around the dying and they drink the howl and groan,
They catch the shrieks in cups of gold, they hand them to one another:
These are the sports of love, and these the sweet delights of amorous play,
Tears of the grape, the death sweat of the cluster, the last sigh
Of the mild youth who listens to the luring songs of Luvah.
Sonnet XXXIV.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Ma poi che 'l dolce riso umile e piano.
HER RETURN GLADDENS THE EARTH AND CALMS THE SKY.
But when her sweet smile, modest and benign,
No longer hides from us its beauties rare,
At the spent forge his stout and sinewy arms
Plieth that old Sicilian smith in vain,
For from the hands of Jove his bolts are taken
Temper'd in 'tna to extremest proof;
And his cold sister by degrees grows calm
And genial in Apollo's kindling beams.
Moves from the rosy west a summer breath,
Which safe and easy wafts the seaward bark,
And wakes the sweet flowers in each grassy mead.
Malignant stars on every side depart,
Dispersed before that bright enchanting face,
For which already many tears are shed.
MACGREGOR.
Rivers To The Sea
by Sara Teasdale

But what of her whose heart is troubled by it,
The mother who would soothe and set him free,
Fearing the song's storm-shaken ecstasy
Oh, as the moon that has no power to quiet
The strong wind-driven sea.
The River Duddon - A Series Of Sonnets, 1820. - XXXIII - Conclusion
by William Wordsworth

But here no cannon thunders to the gale;
Upon the wave no haughty pendants cast
A crimson splendour: lowly is the mast
That rises here, and humbly spread, the sail;
While, less disturbed than in the narrow Vale
Through which with strange vicissitudes he passed,
The Wanderer seeks that receptacle vast
Where all his unambitious functions fail
And may thy Poet, cloud-born Stream! be free
The sweets of earth contentedly resigned,
And each tumultuous working left behind
At seemly distance, to advance like Thee;
Prepared, in peace of heart, in calm of mind
And soul, to mingle with Eternity!
Mrs. Merdle Describeth Her Doctor.
by Horatio Alger, Jr.

But he's an old fogy, you may know by this sign--
He don't smoke tobacco, drink lager or wine;
And swears that rich gravy, roast pork or chop,
Would kill a big ostrich, if stuffed in his crop.
He told me one day 'bout the pain in my feet,
'I see what 't is ails you--you've nothing to eat!'
Provoking, absurd, foolish hint that my health
Was injured by eating what station and wealth
And fashion give right for my sex to enjoy
In spite of the doctors we choose to employ.
But Outer Space
by Robert Lee Frost

But outer Space,
At least this far,
For all the fuss
Of the populace
Stays more popular
Than populous
Darkness
by Arthur Hugh Clough

But that from slow dissolving pomps of dawn
No verity of slowly strengthening light
Early or late hath issued; that the day
Scarce-shown, relapses rather, self-withdrawn,
Back to the glooms of ante-natal night,
For this, O human beings, mourn we may.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - XXXVIII - New Churches
by William Wordsworth

But liberty, and triumphs on the Main,
And laureled armies, not to be withstood
What serve they? if, on transitory good
Intent, and sedulous of abject gain,
The State (ah, surely not preserved in vain!)
Forbear to shape due channels which the Flood
Of sacred truth may enter, till it brood
O'er the wide realm, as o'er the Egyptian plain
The all-sustaining Nile. No more, the time
Is conscious of her want; through England's bounds,
In rival haste, the wished-for Temples rise!
I hear their sabbath bells' harmonious chime
Float on the breeze, the heavenliest of all sounds
That vale or hill prolongs or multiplies!
Escape
by Robert von Ranke Graves

(August 6, 1916., Officer previously reported died of wounds, now reported wounded: Graves, Captain R., Royal Welch Fusiliers.)
... But I was dead, an hour or more.
I woke when I'd already passed the door
That Cerberus guards, and half-way down the road
To Lethe, as an old Greek signpost showed.
Above me, on my stretcher swinging by,
I saw new stars in the subterrene sky:
A Cross, a Rose in bloom, a Cage with bars,
And a barbed Arrow feathered in fine stars.
I felt the vapours of forgetfulness
Float in my nostrils. Oh, may Heaven bless
Dear Lady Proserpine, who saw me wake,
And, stooping over me, for Henna's sake
Cleared my poor buzzing head and sent me back
Breathless, with leaping heart along the track.
After me roared and clattered angry hosts
Of demons, heroes, and policeman-ghosts.
"Life! life! I can't be dead! I won't be dead!
Damned if I'll die for any one!" I said....
Cerberus stands and grins above me now,
Wearing three heads, lion, and lynx, and sow.
"Quick, a revolver! But my Webley's gone,
Stolen!... No bombs ... no knife....
The crowd swarms on,
Bellows, hurls stones.... Not even a honeyed sop ...
Nothing.... Good Cerberus!... Good dog!... but stop!
Stay!... A great luminous thought ... I do believe
There's still some morphia that I bought on leave."
Then swiftly Cerberus' wide mouths I cram
With army biscuit smeared with ration jam;
And sleep lurks in the luscious plum and apple.
He crunches, swallows, stiffens, seems to grapple
With the all-powerful poppy ... then a snore,
A crash; the beast blocks up the corridor
With monstrous hairy carcase, red and dun, 
Too late! for I've sped through.
O Life! O Sun!