DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Napoleon "The Little."
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Ah! tu finiras bien par hurler!")
[Bk. III. ii., Jersey, August, 1852.]
How well I knew this stealthy wolf would howl,
When in the eagle talons ta'en in air!
Aglow, I snatched thee from thy prey - thou fowl - 
I held thee, abject conqueror, just where
All see the stigma of a fitting name
As deeply red as deeply black thy shame!
And though thy matchless impudence may frame
Some mask of seeming courage - spite thy sneer,
And thou assurest sloth and skunk: "It does not smart!"
Thou feel'st it burning, in and in, - and fear
None will forget it till shall fall the deadly dart!
The Bobolink.
by George Parsons Lathrop

How sweetly sang the bobolink,
When thou, my Love, wast nigh!
His liquid music from the brink
Of some cloud-fountain seemed to sink,
Built in the blue-domed sky.
How sadly sings the bobolink!
No more my Love is nigh:
Yet rise, my spirit, rise, and drink
Once more from that cloud-fountain's brink, - 
Once more before I die!
Recollections of Love
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I
How warm this woodland wild Recess!
Love surely hath been breathing here;
And this sweet bed of heath, my dear!
Swells up, then sinks with faint caress,
As if to have you yet more near.
II
Eight springs have flown, since last I lay
On sea-ward Quantock's heathy hills,
Where quiet sounds from hidden rills
Float hear and there, like things astray,
And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills.
III
No voice as yet had made the air
Be music with your name; yet why
That asking look? that yearning sigh?
That sense of promise every where?
Belov'd! flew your spirit by?
IV
As when a mother doth explore
The rose-mark on her long-lost child,
I met, I loved you, maiden mild!
As whom I long had loved before
So deeply had I been beguiled.
V
You stood before me like a thought,
A dream remembered in a dream.
But when those meek eyes first did seem
To tell me, Love within you wrought
O Greta, dear domestic stream!
VI
Has not, since then, Love's prompture deep,
Has not Love's whisper evermore
Been ceaseless, as thy gentle roar?
Sole voice, when other voices sleep,
Dear under-song in clamor's hour.
The Old Year and the New
by Abram Joseph Ryan

How swift they go,
Life's many years,
With their winds of woe
And their storms of tears,
And their darkest of nights whose shadowy slopes
Are lit with the flashes of starriest hopes,
And their sunshiny days in whose calm heavens loom
The clouds of the tempest -- the shadows of the gloom!
And ah! we pray
With a grief so drear,
That the years may stay
When their graves are near;
Tho' the brows of To-morrows be radiant and bright,
With love and with beauty, with life and with light,
The dead hearts of Yesterdays, cold on the bier,
To the hearts that survive them, are evermore dear.
For the hearts so true
To each Old Year cleaves;
Tho' the hand of the New
Flowery garlands weaves.
But the flowers of the future, tho' fragrant and fair,
With the past's withered leaflets may never compare;
For dear is each dead leaf -- and dearer each thorn --
In the wreaths which the brows of our past years have worn.
Yea! men will cling
With a love to the last,
And wildly fling
Their arms round their past!
As the vine that clings to the oak that falls;
As the ivy twines round the crumbled walls;
For the dust of the past some hearts higher prize
Than the stars that flash out from the future's bright skies.
And why not so?
The old, Old Years,
They knew and they know
All our hopes and fears;
We walked by their side, and we told them each grief,
And they kissed off our tears while they whispered relief;
And the stories of hearts that may not be revealed
In the hearts of the dead years are buried and sealed.
Let the New Year sing
At the Old Year's grave:
Will the New Year bring
What the Old Year gave?
Ah! the Stranger-Year trips over the snows,
And his brow is wreathed with many a rose:
But how many thorns do the roses conceal
Which the roses, when withered, shall so soon reveal?
Let the New Year smile
When the Old Year dies;
In how short a while
Shall the smiles be sighs?
Yea! Stranger-Year, thou hast many a charm,
And thy face is fair and thy greeting warm,
But, dearer than thou -- in his shroud of snows --
Is the furrowed face of the Year that goes.
Yea! bright New Year,
O'er all the earth,
With song and cheer,
They will hail thy birth;
They will trust thy words in a single hour,
They will love thy face, they will laud thy power;
For the ~New~ has charms which the ~Old~ has not,
And the Stranger's face makes the Friend's forgot.
Beginners
by Walt Whitman

How they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals;)
How dear and dreadful they are to the earth;
How they inure to themselves as much as to any--What a paradox appears their age;
How people respond to them, yet know them not;
How there is something relentless in their fate, all times;
How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward,
And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great purchase.
The Coming Of Night.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

How the old mountains drip with sunset,
And the brake of dun!
How the hemlocks are tipped in tinsel
By the wizard sun!
How the old steeples hand the scarlet,
Till the ball is full, --
Have I the lip of the flamingo
That I dare to tell?
Then, how the fire ebbs like billows,
Touching all the grass
With a departing, sapphire feature,
As if a duchess pass!
How a small dusk crawls on the village
Till the houses blot;
And the odd flambeaux no men carry
Glimmer on the spot!
Now it is night in nest and kennel,
And where was the wood,
Just a dome of abyss is nodding
Into solitude! --
These are the visions baffled Guido;
Titian never told;
Domenichino dropped the pencil,
Powerless to unfold.
Summer.
by John Clare

How sweet, when weary, dropping on a bank,
Turning a look around on things that be!
E'en feather-headed grasses, spindling rank,
A trembling to the breeze one loves to see;
And yellow buttercup, where many a bee
Comes buzzing to its head and bows it down;
And the great dragon-fly with gauzy wings,
In gilded coat of purple, green, or brown,
That on broad leaves of hazel basking clings,
Fond of the sunny day:--and other things
Past counting, please me while thus here I lie.
But still reflective pains are not forgot:
Summer sometime shall bless this spot, when I
Hapt in the cold dark grave, can heed it not.
The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - To God For Help.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Come vuoi, ch' a buon porto.
How wilt Thou I should gain a harbour fair,
If after proof among my friends I find
That some are faithless, some devoid of mind,
Some short of sense, though stout to do and dare?
If some, though wise and loyal, like the hare
Hide in a hole, or fly in terror blind,
While nerve with wisdom and with faith combined
Through malice and through penury despair?
Reason, Thy honour, and my weal eschewed
That false ally who said he came from Thee,
With promise vain of power and liberty.
I trust:--I'll do. Change Thou the bad to good!--
But ere I raise me to that altitude,
Needs must I merge in Thee as Thou in me.
The End Of May.
by William Morris

How the wind howls this morn
About the end of May,
And drives June on apace
To mock the world forlorn
And the world's joy passed away
And my unlonged-for face!
The world's joy passed away;
For no more may I deem
That any folk are glad
To see the dawn of day
Sunder the tangled dream
Wherein no grief they had.
Ah, through the tangled dream
Where others have no grief
Ever it fares with me
That fears and treasons stream
And dumb sleep slays belief
Whatso therein may be.
Sleep slayeth all belief
Until the hopeless light
Wakes at the birth of June
More lying tales to weave,
More love in woe's despite,
More hope to perish soon.
Autumn.
by Marietta Holley

How the sumac banners bent, dripping as if with blood,
What a mournful presence brooded upon the slumbrous air;
A mocking-bird screamed noisily in the depth of the silent wood,
And in my heart was crying the raven of despair,
Thrilling my being through with its bitter, bitter cry - 
"It were better to die, it were better to die."
For she, my love, my fate, she sat by my side
On a fallen oak, her cheek all flushed with a bashful shame,
Telling me what her innocent heart had hid - 
"For was not I her brother, her dear brother, all but in name."
I listened to her low words, but turned my face away - 
Away from her eyes' soft light, and the mocking light of the day.
"He was noble and proud," she said, "and had chosen her from all
The haughty ladies, and great; she didn't deserve her lot."
I knew her peer could never be found in palace or hall,
And my white face told my thought, but she saw it not.
She was crushing some scarlet leaves in her dainty fingers of snow,
Her maiden joy crowning her face with a radiant glow.
"She had wanted me to know," and then a smile and a blush;
Her smile was always just like a baby's smile, and the red
Came to her cheek at a word or a glance - then there fell a hush.
She was waiting some word from me, I knew, so I said,
"May Heaven bless you both" - words spoken full quietly,
And she, God bless her, never knew how much they cost to me.
How the sumac banners bent, dripping as if with blood,
What a mournful presence brooded upon the slumbrous air;
A mocking-bird screamed noisily in the depths of the silent wood,
And in my heart was crying the raven of despair,
Thrilling my being through with its desolate, desolate cry - 
"It were better to die, it were better to die."
The white dawn follows the darkness; out of the years' decay
Shineth the golden fire that gildeth the autumn with light;
From another's sin and loss, cometh this good to me,
By another's fall am I raised to this blissful height.
"Let me be humble," said my heart, as from her sweet lips fell,
"Let a prayer for him arise, with the sound of our marriage bell."
The Little Bell
by Jean de La Fontaine

HOW weak is man! how changeable his mind!
His promises are naught, too oft we find;
I vowed (I hope in tolerable verse,)
Again no idle story to rehearse.
And whence this promise? - Not two days ago;
I'm quite confounded; better I should know:
A rhymer hear then, who himself can boast,
Quite steady for - a minute at the most.
The pow'rs above could PRUDENCE ne'er design;
For those who fondly court the SISTERS NINE.
Some means to please they've got, you will confess;
But none with certainty the charm possess.
If, howsoever, I were doomed to find
Such lines as fully would content the mind:
Though I should fail in matter, still in art;
I might contrive some pleasure to impart.
LET'S see what we are able to obtain: - 
A bachelor resided in Touraine.
A sprightly youth, who oft the maids beset,
And liked to prattle to the girls he met,
With sparkling eyes, white teeth, and easy air,
Plain russet petticoat and flowing hair,
Beside a rivulet, while Io round,
With little bell that gave a tinkling sound,
On herbs her palate gratified at will,
And gazed and played, and fondly took her fill.
AMONG the rustic nymphs our spark perceived
A charming girl, for whom his bosom heaved;
Too young, however, to feel the poignant smart,
By Cupid oft inflicted on the heart.
I will not say thirteen's an age unfit
The contrary most fully I admit;
The LAW supposes (such its prudent fears)
Maturity at still more early years;
But this apparently refers to towns,
While LOVE was born for groves, and lawns, and downs.
THE youth exerted ev'ry art to please;
But all in vain: he only seemed to teaze:
Whate'er he said, however nicely graced,
Ill-humour, inexperience, or distaste,
Induced the belle, unlearned in Cupid's book;
To treat his passion with a froward look.
BELIEVING ev'ry artifice in love
Was tolerated by the pow'rs above,
One eve he turned a heifer from the rest;
Conducted by the girl his thoughts possessed;
The others left, not counted by the fair,
(Youth seldom shows the necessary care,)
With easy, loit'ring steps the cottage sought,
Where ev'ry night they usually were brought.
HER mother, more experienced than the maid,
Observed, that from the cattle one had strayed;
The girl was scolded much, and sent to find
The heifer indiscreetly left behind.
Fair Isabella gave a vent to tears;
Invoked sweet echo to disperse her fears:
Solicited with fervent, piercing cry,
To tell her where lorn Io she might spy,
Whose little bell the spark deprived of sound;
When he withdrew her from the herd around.
THE lover now the tinkling metal shook;
The path that t'wards it led the charmer took.
The well known note was pleasing to her ear;
Without suspecting treachery was near,
She followed to a wood, both deep and large,
In hopes at least she might regain her charge.
GUESS her surprise, good reader, when she heard,
A lover's voice, who would not be deterred.
Said he, fair maid whene'er the heart's on fire,
'Tis all permitted that can quench desire.
On this, with piercing cries she rent the air;
But no one came: - she sunk to dire despair.
YE beauteous dames avoid the Sylvan shade;
Dread dangers solitary woods pervade.
The Second Coming
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

How will Christ come back again,
How will He be seen, and where,
Where His chosen way?
Will He come in dead of night,
Shining in His robes of light,
Or at dawn of day?
Will it be at Christmas time,
When the bells are all achime,
That He is re-born?
Or will He return and bring
Wide and wondrous wakening
On some Easter morn?
When will this sad world rejoice,
Listening to that golden voice
Speaking unto men?
Lives there one who yet shall cry
Loud to startled passers-by - 
'Christ has come again?'
List the answer - Christ is here!
Seek and you shall find him near - 
Dwelling on the earth.
By the world's awakened thought,
This great miracle is wrought,
This the second birth.
While you wonder where and now
Christ shall come - behold him NOW,
Patient, loving, meek.
Looking from your neighbour's eyes,
Or in humble toiling guise - 
Lo! the Christ you seek.
Look for him in human hearts,
In the shops, and in the marts,
And beside your hearth.
Search and speak the watchword Love,
And the Christ shall rise and prove
He has come to earth.
Sorrowful ofttimes is He
That we have not eyes to see,
Have not ears to hear,
As we call to Him afar,
Out beyond some distant star,
While He stands so near.
Seek Him, seek Him, where He dwells,
Chime the voices of the bells
On the Christmas air.
Christ has come to earth again,
He is in the hearts of men,
Seek and find him there.
He Nears the Goal
by Vachel Lindsay

How the red bells rang
As I neared the Chaos-shore!
As I flew across to the end of the West
The young bells rang and rang
Above the Chaos roar,
And the Wings of the Morning
Beat in tune
And bore me like a bird along - 
And the nearing star turned to a moon - 
Gray moon, with a brow of red - 
Gray moon with a golden song.
Like a diver after pearls
I plunged to that stifling floor.
It was wide as a giant's wheat-field
An icy, wind-washed shore.
O laughing, proud, but trembling star!
O wind that wounded sore!
With Two Spoons For Two Spoons
by Eugene Field

How trifling shall these gifts appear
Among the splendid many
That loving friends now send to cheer
Harvey and Ellen Jenney.
And yet these baubles symbolize
A certain fond relation
That well beseems, as I surmise,
This festive celebration.
Sweet friends of mine, be spoons once more,
And with your tender cooing
Renew the keen delights of yore--
The rapturous bliss of wooing.
What though that silver in your hair
Tells of the years aflying?
'T is yours to mock at Time and Care
With love that is undying.
In memory of this Day, dear friends,
Accept the modest token
From one who with the bauble sends
A love that can't be spoken.
A Farewell To Agassiz
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

How the mountains talked together,
Looking down upon the weather,
When they heard our friend had planned his
Little trip among the Andes!
How they'll bare their snowy scalps
To the climber of the Alps
When the cry goes through their passes,
"Here comes the great Agassiz!"
"Yes, I'm tall," says Chimborazo,
"But I wait for him to say so, - 
That's the only thing that lacks, - he
Must see me, Cotopaxi!"
"Ay! ay!" the fire-peak thunders,
"And he must view my wonders!
I'm but a lonely crater
Till I have him for spectator!"
The mountain hearts are yearning,
The lava-torches burning,
The rivers bend to meet him,
The forests bow to greet him,
It thrills the spinal column
Of fossil fishes solemn,
And glaciers crawl the faster
To the feet of their old master!
Heaven keep him well and hearty,
Both him and all his party!
From the sun that broils and smites,
From the centipede that bites,
From the hail-storm and the thunder,
From the vampire and the condor,
From the gust upon the river,
From the sudden earthquake shiver,
From the trip of mule or donkey,
From the midnight howling monkey,
From the stroke of knife or dagger,
From the puma and the jaguar,
From the horrid boa-constrictor
That has scared us in the pictur',
From the Indians of the Pampas
Who would dine upon their grampas,
From every beast and vermin
That to think of sets us squirmin',
From every snake that tries on
The traveller his p'ison,
From every pest of Natur',
Likewise the alligator,
And from two things left behind him, - 
(Be sure they'll try to find him,)
The tax-bill and assessor, - 
Heaven keep the great Professor
May he find, with his apostles,
That the land is full of fossils,
That the waters swarm with fishes
Shaped according to his wishes,
That every pool is fertile
In fancy kinds of turtle,
New birds around him singing,
New insects, never stinging,
With a million novel data
About the articulata,
And facts that strip off all husks
From the history of mollusks.
And when, with loud Te Deum,
He returns to his Museum,
May he find the monstrous reptile
That so long the land has kept ill
By Grant and Sherman throttled,
And by Father Abraham bottled,
(All specked and streaked and mottled
With the scars of murderous battles,
Where he clashed the iron rattles
That gods and men he shook at,)
For all the world to look at.
God bless the great Professor!
And Madam, too, God bless her!
Bless him and all his band,
On the sea and on the land,
Bless them head and heart and hand,
Till their glorious raid is o'er,
And they touch our ransomed shore!
Then the welcome of a nation,
With its shout of exultation,
Shall awake the dumb creation,
And the shapes of buried aeons
Join the living creatures' poeans,
Till the fossil echoes roar;
While the mighty megalosaurus
Leads the palaeozoic chorus, - 
God bless the great Professor,
And the land his proud possessor, - 
Bless them now and evermore!
1865.
Phedre
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

(To Sarah Bernhardt)
How vain and dull this common world must seem
To such a One as thou, who should'st have talked
At Florence with Mirandola, or walked
Through the cool olives of the Academe:
Thou should'st have gathered reeds from a green stream
For Goat-foot Pan's shrill piping, and have played
With the white girls in that Phaeacian glade
Where grave Odysseus wakened from his dream.
Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay
Held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again
Back to this common world so dull and vain,
For thou wert weary of the sunless day,
The heavy fields of scentless asphodel,
The loveless lips with which men kiss in Hell.
Thoughts On Mischief.
by Thomas Moore

BY LORD STANLEY.
(HIS FIRST ATTEMPT IN VERSE.)
"Evil, be thou my good."
--MILTON.
How various are the inspirations
Of different men in different nations!
As genius prompts to good or evil,
Some call the Muse, some raise the devil.
Old Socrates, that pink of sages,
Kept a pet demon on board wages
To go about with him incog.,
And sometimes give his wits a jog.
So Lyndhurst, in our day, we know,
Keeps fresh relays of imps below,
To forward from that nameless spot;
His inspirations, hot and hot.
But, neat as are old Lyndhurst's doings--
Beyond even Hecate's "hell-broth" brewings--
Had I, Lord Stanley, but my will,
I'd show you mischief prettier still;
Mischief, combining boyhood's tricks
With age's sourest politics;
The urchin's freaks, the veteran's gall,
Both duly mixt, and matchless all;
A compound naught in history reaches
But Machiavel, when first in breeches!
Yes, Mischief, Goddess multiform,
Whene'er thou, witch-like, ridest the storm,
Let Stanley ride cockhorse behind thee--
No livelier lackey could they find thee.
And, Goddess, as I'm well aware,
So mischief's done, you care not where,
I own, 'twill most my fancy tickle
In Paddyland to play the Pickle;
Having got credit for inventing
A new, brisk method of tormenting--
A way they call the Stanley fashion,
Which puts all Ireland in a passion;
So neat it hits the mixture due
Of injury and insult too;
So legibly it bears upon't
The stamp of Stanley's brazen front.
Ireland, we're told, means the land of Ire;
And why she's so, none need inquire,
Who sees her millions, martial, manly,
Spat upon thus by me, Lord Stanley.
Already in the breeze I scent
The whiff of coming devilment;
Of strife, to me more stirring far
Than the Opium or the Sulphur war,
Or any such drug ferments are.
Yes--sweeter to this Tory soul
Than all such pests, from pole to pole,
Is the rich, "sweltered venom" got
By stirring Ireland's "charmed pot;"
And thanks to practice on that land
I stir it with a master-hand.
Again thou'lt see, when forth have gone
The War-Church-cry, "On, Stanley, on!"
How Caravats and Shanavests
Shall swarm from out their mountain nests,
With all their merry moonlight brothers,
To whom the Church (step-dame to others)
Hath been the best of nursing mothers.
Again o'er Erin's rich domain
Shall Rockites and right reverends reign;
And both, exempt from vulgar toil,
Between them share that titheful soil;
Puzzling ambition which to climb at,
The post of Captain, or of Primate.
And so, long life to Church and Co.--
Hurrah for mischief!--here we go.