DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Our M'cenas
by Victor James Daley

What! Don't you our M'cenas know
The man who started, years ago,
Our Wild Australian Author show?
You don't? Your ignorance sublime
Exceeds - to use a Boston rhyme
The taciturnity of time.
Well, there he is, across the way
Tall, thin, and growing somwhat grey
He has good reason, you will say.
He's entering a bookshop. Fine!
He buys a book. Don't make a sign!
Don't speak! Don't breathe! It may be mine!
Alas! The cover isn't blue;
It's green - it's Quinn's - I always knew
His taste was never sound and true!
We all have hobbies. Some endure,
Some pass. Australian Literature
Is his. He likes it straight and pure.
Those breezy gentlemen you see
Walk up the street so spaciously,
He started them; he started me.
My word! My oath, if that you wish!
I would have now been selling fish,
Or something hot and sausageish
And friends of mine, with names renowned
Would now be driving picks in ground,
And hoisting New South Wales around,
If he - the Lord of the Event
Had not appeared, pre-subsequent,
And given us encouragement.
He's now, you see, just skin and bone,
Yet once he weighed quite fourteen stone
When he left coves like us alone.
And he was - breathe it hoarse and low
A man of substance. This I know
But that was several years ago.
Now was he thus to leanness brought?
What tragic Fate his sorrow wrought?
Alas! he read the books he bought!
And now he's growing grey and old:
But while he lives, we'll say: "Behold!
One copy of our works is sold!"
He is the apple of our eye;
His health to us is precious. Why?
We have to live; he dare not die.
Wishes For A Little Girl
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

What would I ask the kindly fates to give
To crown her life, if I could have my way?
My strongest wishes would be negative,
If they would but obey.
Give her not greatness.    For great souls must stand
Alone and lonely in this little world:
Cleft rocks that show the great Creator's hand,
Thither by earthquakes hurled.
Give her not genius.    Spare her the cruel pain
Of finding her whole life a prey for daws;
Of hearing with quickened sense and burning brain
The world's sneer-tinged applause.
Give her not perfect beauty's gifts.    For then
Her truthful mirror would infuse her mind
With love for self, and for the praise of men,
That lowers woman-kind.
But make her fair and comely to the sight,
Give her more heart than brain, more love than pride.
Let her be tender-thoughted, cheerful, bright,
Some strong man's star and guide.
Not vainly questioning why she was sent
Into this restless world of toil and strife,
Let her go bravely on her way, content
To make the best of life.
The Pauper's Funeral
by Robert Southey

What! and not one to heave the pious sigh!
Not one whose sorrow-swoln and aching eye
For social scenes, for life's endearments fled,
Shall drop a tear and dwell upon the dead!
Poor wretched Outcast! I will weep for thee,
And sorrow for forlorn humanity.
Yes I will weep, but not that thou art come
To the stern Sabbath of the silent tomb:
For squalid Want, and the black scorpion Care,
Heart-withering fiends! shall never enter there.
I sorrow for the ills thy life has known
As thro' the world's long pilgrimage, alone,
Haunted by Poverty and woe-begone,
Unloved, unfriended, thou didst journey on:
Thy youth in ignorance and labour past,
And thine old age all barrenness and blast!
Hard was thy Fate, which, while it doom'd to woe,
Denied thee wisdom to support the blow;
And robb'd of all its energy thy mind,
Ere yet it cast thee on thy fellow-kind,
Abject of thought, the victim of distress,
To wander in the world's wide wilderness.
Poor Outcast sleep in peace! the wintry storm
Blows bleak no more on thine unshelter'd form;
Thy woes are past; thou restest in the tomb;--
I pause--and ponder on the days to come.
To A Day Lily
by Pamela S. Vining, (J. C. Yule)

What! only to stay
For a single day?
Thou beautiful, bright hued on
Just to open thine eyes
To the blue of the skies
And the light of the glorious sun,
Then, to fade away
In the same rich ray,
And die ere the day is done?
Bright thing of a day
Thou hast caught a ray
From Morn's jewelled curtain fold
On thy burning cheek,
And the ruby streak
His dyed it with charms untold - 
And the gorgeous vest
On thy queenly breast,
Is dashed with her choicest gold.
A statelier queen
Has never been seen,
A lovelier never will be! - 
Nay, Solomon, dressed
In his kingliest best,
Was never a match for thee,
O beautiful flower,
O joy of an hour - 
And only an hour - for me!
An hour, did I say?
Nay, loveliest, nay,
Not thus shall I part with thee,
But with subtle skill
I shall keep thee still,
Fadeless and fresh with me: - 
Through toil and duty,
"A thing of beauty
Forever" my own to be'
As with drooping head
Amid thorns I tread,
I shall see thee unfold anew,
In the desert's dust,
Where journey I must,
Why beautiful form shall view,
And visions of Home
O'er my spirit will come,
As thro' tear-drops I gaze on you'
Stanzas Addressed To Lady Hesketh, By A Lady,
by William Cowper

In Returning A Poem Of Mr. Cowper's, Lent To The Writer, On Condition She Should Neither Show It Nor Take A Copy.
What wonder! if my wavering hand
Had dared to disobey,
When Hesketh gave a harsh command,
And Cowper led astray.
Then take this tempting gift of thine,
By pen uncopied yet!
But canst thou Memory confine,
Or teach me to forget?
More lasting than the touch of art,
Her characters remain;
When written by a feeling heart
On tablets of the brain.
What's The Use
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

What's the use o' folks a-frownin'
When the way's a little rough?
Frowns lay out the road fur smilin'
You'll be wrinkled soon enough.
What's the use?
What's the use o' folks a-sighin'?
It's an awful waste o' breath,
An' a body can't stand wastin'
What he needs so bad in death.
What's the use?
What's the use o' even weepin'?
Might as well go long an' smile.
Life, our longest, strongest arrow,
Only lasts a little while.
What's the use?
Remonstrance.
by Thomas Moore

After a Conversation with Lord John Russell, in which he had intimated some Idea of giving up all political Pursuits. 
What! thou, with thy genius, thy youth, and thy name--
Thou, born of a Russell--whose instinct to run
The accustomed career of thy sires, is the same
As the eaglet's, to soar with his eyes on the sun!
Whose nobility comes to thee, stampt with a seal,
Far, far more ennobling than monarch e'er set;
With the blood of thy race, offered up for the weal
Of a nation that swears by that martyrdom yet!
Shalt thou be faint-hearted and turn from the strife,
From the mighty arena, where all that is grand
And devoted and pure and adorning in life,
'Tis for high-thoughted spirits like thine to command?
Oh no, never dream it--while good men despair
Between tyrants and traitors, and timid men bow,
Never think for an instant thy country can spare
Such a light from her darkening horizon as thou.
With a spirit, as meek as the gentlest of those
Who in life's sunny valley lie sheltered and warm;
Yet bold and heroic as ever yet rose
To the top cliffs of Fortune and breasted her storm;
With an ardor for liberty fresh as in youth
It first kindles the bard and gives life to his lyre;
Yet mellowed, even now, by that mildness of truth
Which tempers but chills not the patriot fire;
With an eloquence--not like those rills from a height,
Which sparkle and foam and in vapor are o'er;
But a current that works out its way into light
Thro' the filtering recesses of thought and of lore.
Thus gifted, thou never canst sleep in the shade;
If the stirrings of Genius, the music of fame,
And the charms of thy cause have not power to persuade,
Yet think how to Freedom thou'rt pledged by thy Name.
Like the boughs of that laurel by Delphi's decree
Set apart for the Fane and its service divine,
So the branches that spring from the old Russell tree
Are by Liberty claimed for the use of her Shrine.
What Would I Give?
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

What would I give for a heart of flesh to warm me through,
Instead of this heart of stone ice-cold whatever I do;
Hard and cold and small, of all hearts the worst of all.
What would I give for words, if only words would come;
But now in its misery my spirit has fallen dumb:
O, merry friends, go your way, I have never a word to say.
What would I give for tears, not smiles but scalding tears,
To wash the black mark clean, and to thaw the frost of years,
To wash the stain ingrain and to make me clean again.
Corn And Catholics.
by Thomas Moore

utrum horum
dirius borun? Incerti Auctoris.
What! still those two infernal questions,
That with our meals our slumbers mix--
That spoil our tempers and digestions--
Eternal Corn and Catholics!
Gods! were there ever two such bores?
Nothing else talkt of night or morn--
Nothing in doors or out of doors,
But endless Catholics and Corn!
Never was such a brace of pests--
While Ministers, still worse than either,
Skilled but in feathering their nests,
Plague us with both and settle neither.
So addled in my cranium meet
Popery and Corn that oft I doubt,
Whether, this year, 'twas bonded Wheat,
Or bonded Papists, they let out.
Here, landlords, here polemics nail you,
Armed with all rubbish they can rake up;
Prices and Texts at once assail you--
From Daniel these, and those from Jacob,
And when you sleep, with head still torn
Between the two, their shapes you mix,
Till sometimes Catholics seem Corn--
Then Corn again seems Catholics.
Now Dantsic wheat before you floats--
Now Jesuits from California--
Now Ceres linkt with Titus Oats,
Comes dancing thro' the "Porta Cornea."[1]
Oft too the Corn grows animate,
And a whole crop of heads appears,
Like Papists, bearding Church and State--
Themselves, together by the ears!
In short these torments never cease,
And oft I wish myself transferred off
To some far, lonely land of peace
Where Corn or Papists ne'er were heard of.
Yes, waft me, Parry, to the Pole;
For--if my fate is to be chosen
'Twixt bores and icebergs--on my soul,
I'd rather, of the two, be frozen!
What Wor it?
by John Hartley

What wor it made me love thee, lass?
Aw connot tell;
Aw know it worn't for thi brass; - 
Tho' poor misel
Aw'd moor nor thee, aw think, if owt,
An what aw had wor next to nowt.
Aw didn't love thi 'coss thi face
Wor fair to see:
For tha wor th' plainest lass i'th' place,
An as for me,
They called me "nooasy," "long-legs," "walkin prop,"
An sed aw freetened customers throo th' shop.
Aw used to read i' Fairy books
Ov e'en soa breet,
Ov gowden hair, angelic looks,
An smiles soa sweet;
Aw used to fancy when aw'd older grown,
Aw'd claim some lovely Fairy for mi own.
An weel aw recollect that neet, - 
'Twor th' furst o'th' year,
Aw tuk thi hooam, soaked throo wi' sleet,
An aw'd a fear
Lest th' owd man's clog should give itsen a treat,
An be too friendly wi' mi britches seeat.
What fun they made, when we went in; - 
They cried, "Yo're catched!"
An then thi mother sed i'th' midst o'th' din
"They're fairly matched,
An beauty's in th' beholder's e'e they say,
An they've booath been gooid childer, onyway."
An then aw saw a little tear,
Unbidden flow,
That settled it! - for then an thear
Aw seemed to know,
'At we wor meant to share each others lot,
An Fancy's Fairies all could goa to pot.
Full thirty years have rolled away,
Sin that rough time;
What won mi love aw connot say,
But this is mine,
To know, mi greatest prize on earth is thee,
But pray, whativver made thee fancy me?
The Broken Dish.
by Thomas Hood

What's life but full of care and doubt
With all its fine humanities,
With parasols we walk about,
Long pigtails, and such vanities.
We plant pomegranate trees and things,
And go in gardens sporting,
With toys and fans of peacocks' wings,
To painted ladies courting.
We gather flowers of every hue,
And fish in boats for fishes,
Build summer-houses painted blue, - 
But life's as frail as dishes!
Walking about their groves of trees,
Blue bridges and blue rivers,
How little thought them two Chinese,
They'd both be smashed to shivers!
Lines Written On Hearing The News Of The Death Of Napoleon.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

What! alive and so bold, O Earth?
Art thou not overbold?
What! leapest thou forth as of old
In the light of thy morning mirth,
The last of the flock of the starry fold?
Ha! leapest thou forth as of old?
Are not the limbs still when the ghost is fled,
And canst thou move, Napoleon being dead?
How! is not thy quick heart cold?
What spark is alive on thy hearth?
How! is not HIS death-knell knolled?
And livest THOU still, Mother Earth?
Thou wert warming thy fingers old
O'er the embers covered and cold
Of that most fiery spirit, when it fled -
What, Mother, do you laugh now he is dead?
'Who has known me of old,' replied Earth,
'Or who has my story told?
It is thou who art overbold.'
And the lightning of scorn laughed forth
As she sung, 'To my bosom I fold
All my sons when their knell is knolled,
And so with living motion all are fed,
And the quick spring like weeds out of the dead.
'Still alive and still bold,' shouted Earth,
'I grow bolder and still more bold.
The dead fill me ten thousandfold
Fuller of speed, and splendour, and mirth.
I was cloudy, and sullen, and cold,
Like a frozen chaos uprolled,
Till by the spirit of the mighty dead
My heart grew warm. I feed on whom I fed.
'Ay, alive and still bold.' muttered Earth,
'Napoleon's fierce spirit rolled,
In terror and blood and gold,
A torrent of ruin to death from his birth.
Leave the millions who follow to mould
The metal before it be cold;
And weave into his shame, which like the dead
Shrouds me, the hopes that from his glory fled.'
A Polish Insurgent
by James Thomson -  (Bysshe Vanolis)

What would you have? said I;1
'Tis so easy to go and die,
'Tis so hard to stay and live,
In this alien peace and this comfort callous,
Where only the murderers get the gallows,
Where the jails are for rogues who thieve.
'Tis so easy to go and die,
Where our Country, our Mother, the Martyr,
Moaning in bonds doth lie,
Bleeding with stabs in her breast,
Her throat with a foul clutch prest,
Under the thrice-accursed Tartar.
But Smith, your man of sense,
Ruddy, and broad, and round, like so!
Kindly, but dense, butt dense,
Said to me: 'Do not go:
It is hopeless; right is wrong;
The tyrant is too strong.'
Must a man have hope to fight?
Can a man not fight in despair?
Must the soul cower down for the body's weakness,
And slaver the devil's hoof with meekness,
Nor care nor dare to share
Certain defeat with the right?
They do not know us, my Mother!
They know not our love, our hate!
And how we would die with each other,
Embracing proud and elate,
Rather than live apart
In peace with shame in the heart.
No hope! If a heavy anger
Our God hath treasured against us long,
His lightning-shafts from His thunder-clangour
Raining a century down:
We have loved when we went most wrong;
He cannot for ever frown.
No hope! We can haste to be killed,
That the tale of the victims get filled;
The more of the debt we pay,
The less on our sons shall weigh:
This star through the baleful rack of the cope
Burns red; red is our hope.
O our Mother, thou art noble and fair!
Fair and proud and chaste, thou Queen!
Chained and stabbed in the breast,
Thy throat with a foul clutch prest;
Yet around thee how coarse, how mean,
Are these rich shopwives who stare!
Art thou moaning, O our Mother, through the swoon
Of thine agony of desolation?
'Do my sons still love me? or can they stand
Gazing afar from a foreign land,
Loving more peace and gold, the boon
Of a people strange, of a sordid nation? '
O our Mother, moan not thus!
We love you as you love us,
And our hearts are wild with thy sorrow:
If we cannot save thee, we are blest
Who can die on thy sacred bleeding breast.
So we left Smith-Land on the morrow,
And we hasten across the West.
Paths
by Madison Julius Cawein

I
What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well? - 
The path that takes me in the spring
Past quince-trees where the bluebirds sing,
And peonies are blossoming,
Unto a porch, wistaria-hung,
Around whose steps May-lilies blow,
A fair girl reaches down among,
Her arm more white than their sweet snow.
II
What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well? - 
Another path that leads me, when
The summer time is here again,
Past hollyhocks that shame the west
When the red sun has sunk to rest;
To roses bowering a nest,
A lattice, 'neath which mignonette
And deep geraniums surge and sough,
Where, in the twilight, starless yet,
A fair girl's eyes are stars enough.
III
What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well? - 
A path that takes me, when the days
Of autumn wrap the hills in haze,
Beneath the pippin-pelting tree,
'Mid flitting butterfly and bee;
Unto a door where, fiery,
The creeper climbs; and, garnet-hued,
The cock's-comb and the dahlia flare,
And in the door, where shades intrude,
Gleams bright a fair girl's sunbeam hair.
IV
What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well? - 
A path that brings me through the frost
Of winter, when the moon is tossed
In clouds; beneath great cedars, weak
With shaggy snow; past shrubs blown bleak
With shivering leaves; to eaves that leak
The tattered ice, whereunder is
A fire-flickering window-space;
And in the light, with lips to kiss,
A fair girl's welcome-smiling face.
Paths
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well?
The path that takes me in the spring
Past quince-trees where the bluebirds sing,
And peonies are blossoming,
Unto a porch, wistaria-hung,
Around whose steps May-lilies blow,
A fair girl reaches down among,
Her arm more white than their sweet snow.
II.
What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well?
Another path that leads me, when
The summer time is here again,
Past hollyhocks that shame the west
When the red sun has sunk to rest;
To roses bowering a nest,
A lattice, 'neath which mignonette
And deep geraniums surge and sough,
Where, in the twilight, starless yet,
A fair girl's eyes are stars enough.
III.
What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well?
A path that takes me, when the days
Of autumn wrap the hills in haze,
Beneath the pippin-pelting tree,
'Mid flitting butterfly and bee;
Unto a door where, fiery,
The creeper climbs; and, garnet-hued,
The cock's-comb and the dahlia flare,
And in the door, where shades intrude,
Gleams bright a fair girl's sunbeam hair.
IV.
What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well?
A path that brings me through the frost
Of winter, when the moon is tossed
In clouds; beneath great cedars, weak
With shaggy snow; past shrubs blown bleak
With shivering leaves; to eaves that leak
The tattered ice, whereunder is
A fire-flickering window-space;
And in the light, with lips to kiss,
A fair girl's welcome-smiling face.
Up In The Tree
by George MacDonald

What would you see, if I took you up
My little aerie-stair?
You would see the sky like a clear blue cup
Turned upside down in the air.
What would you do, up my aerie-stair
In my little nest on the tree?
With cry upon cry you would ripple the air
To get at what you would see.
And what would you reach in the top of the tree
To still your grasping grief?
Not a star would you clutch of all you would see,
You would gather just one green leaf.
But when you had lost your greedy grief,
Content to see from afar,
Your hand it would hold a withering leaf,
But your heart a shining star.
Epistle From Tom Crib To Big Ben.[1] Concerning Some Foul Play In A Late Transaction.[2]
by Thomas Moore

"Ahi, mio Ben!"
--METASTASIO.[3]
What! BEN, my old hero, is this your renown?
Is this the new go?--kick a man when he's down!
When the foe has knockt under, to tread on him then--
By the fist of my father, I blush for thee, BEN!
"Foul! foul!" all the lads of the Fancy exclaim--
CHARLEY SHOCK is electrified--BELCHER spits flame--
And MOLYNEUX--ay, even BLACKY[4] cries "shame!"
Time was, when JOHN BULL little difference spied
'Twixt the foe at his feet and the friend at his side:
When he found (such his humor in fighting and eating)
His foe, like his beef-steak, the sweeter for beating.
But this comes, Master BEN, of your curst foreign notions,
Your trinkets, wigs, thingumbobs, gold lace and lotions;
Your Noyaus, Curacoas, and the devil knows what--
(One swig of Blue Ruin[5] is worth the whole lot!)
Your great and small crosses--my eyes, what a brood!
(A cross-buttock from me would do some of them good!)
Which have spoilt you, till hardly a drop, my old porpoise,
Of pure English claret is left in your corpus;
And (as JIM says) the only one trick, good or bad,
Of the Fancy you're up to, is fibbing, my lad.
Hence it comes,--BOXIANA, disgrace to thy page!--
Having floored, by good luck, the first swell of the age,
Having conquered the prime one, that milled us all round,
You kickt him, old BEN, as he gaspt on the ground!
Ay--just at the time to show spunk, if you'd got any--
Kickt him and jawed him and lagged[6] him to Botany!
Oh, shade of the Cheesemonger![7] you, who, alas!
Doubled up by the dozen those Moun-seers in brass,
On that great day of milling, when blood lay in lakes,
When Kings held the bottle, and Europe the stakes,
Look down upon BEN--see him, dung-hill all o'er,
Insult the fallen foe that can harm him no more!
Out, cowardly spooney!--again and again,
By the fist of my father, I blush for thee, BEN.
To show the white feather is many men's doom,
But, what of one feather?--BEN shows a whole Plume.
The Peacock
by William Butler Yeats

What's riches to him
That has made a great peacock
With the pride of his eye?
The wind-beaten, stone-grey,
And desolate Three-rock
Would nourish his whim.
Live he or die
Amid wet rocks and heather,
His ghost will be gay
Adding feather to feather
For the pride of his eye.
The New Ezekiel.
by Emma Lazarus

What, can these dead bones live, whose sap is dried
By twenty scorching centuries of wrong?
Is this the House of Israel, whose pride
Is as a tale that's told, an ancient song?
Are these ignoble relics all that live
Of psalmist, priest, and prophet? Can the breath
Of very heaven bid these Bones revive,
Open the graves and clothe the ribs of death?
Yea, Prophesy, the Lord hath said. Again
Say to the wind, Come forth and breathe afresh,
Even that they may live upon these slain,
And bone to bone shall leap, and flesh to flesh.
The Spirit is not dead, proclaim the word,
Where lay dead bones, a host of armed men stand!
I ope your graves, my people, saith the Lord,
And I shall place you living in your land.
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet XLVII
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

What, haue I thus betray'd my libertie?
Can those blacke beames such burning markes engraue
In my free side, or am I borne a slaue,
Whose necke becomes such yoke of tyrannie?
Or want I sense to feel my misery,
Or sprite, disdaine of such disdaine to haue,
Who for long faith, tho' daily helpe I craue,
May get no almes, but scorne of beggarie.
Vertue, awake! Beautie but beautie is;
I may, I must, I can, I will, I do
Leaue following that which it is gain to misse.
Let her goe! Soft, but here she comes! Goe to,
Vnkind, I loue you not! O me, that eye
Doth make my heart to giue my tongue the lie!