DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Australian Sunrise
by James Lister Cuthbertson

The morning star paled slowly, the Cross1 hung low to the sea,
And down the shadowy reaches the tide came swirling free,
The lustrous purple blackness of the soft Australian night
Waned in the grey awakening that heralded the light;
Still in the dying darkness, still in the forest dim
The pearly dew of the dawning clung to each giant limb,
Till the sun came up from ocean, red with the cold sea mist,
And smote on the limestone ridges, and the shining tree-tops kissed;
Then the fiery Scorpion2 vanished, the magpie's note was heard,
And the wind in the sheoak wavered and the honeysuckles stirred;
The airy golden vapour rose from the river breast,
The kingfisher came darting out of his crannied nest,
And the bulrushes and reed-beds put off their sallow grey
And burnt with cloudy crimson at the dawning of the day.
The Outgoing Race.
by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

The mothers wish for no more daughters;
There is no future before them.
They bow their heads and their pride
At the end of the many tribes' journey.
The mothers weep over their children,
Loved and unwelcome together,
Who should have been dreamed, not born,
Since there is no road for the Indian.
The mothers see into the future,
Beyond the end of that Chieftain
Who shall be the last of the race
Which allowed only death to a coward.
The square, cold cheeks, lips firm-set,
The hot, straight glance, and the throat-line,
Held like a stag's on the cliff,
Shall be swept by the night-winds, and vanish!
Sonnet CVIII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Quanto pi' desiose l' ali spando.
FAR FROM HIS FRIENDS, HE FLIES TO THEM IN THOUGHT.
The more my own fond wishes would impel
My steps to you, sweet company of friends!
Fortune with their free course the more contends,
And elsewhere bids me roam, by snare and spell
The heart, sent forth by me though it rebel,
Is still with you where that fair vale extends,
In whose green windings most our sea ascends,
From which but yesterday I wept farewell.
It took the right-hand way, the left I tried,
I dragg'd by force in slavery to remain,
It left at liberty with Love its guide;
But patience is great comfort amid pain:
Long habits mutually form'd declare
That our communion must be brief and rare.
MACGREGOR.
Sunday Dip
by John Clare

The morning road is thronged with merry boys
Who seek the water for their Sunday joys;
They run to seek the shallow pit, and wade
And dance about the water in the shade.
The boldest ventures first and dashes in,
And others go and follow to the chin,
And duck about, and try to lose their fears,
And laugh to hear the thunder in their ears.
They bundle up the rushes for a boat
And try across the deepest place to float:
Beneath the willow trees they ride and stoop--
The awkward load will scarcely bear them up.
Without their aid the others float away,
And play about the water half the day.
Snow
by Madison Julius Cawein

The moon, like a round device
On a shadowy shield of war,
Hangs white in a heaven of ice
With a solitary star.
The wind is sunk to a sigh,
And the waters are stern with frost;
And gray, in the eastern sky,
The last snow-cloud is lost.
White fields, that are winter-starved,
Black woods, that are winter-fraught,
Cold, harsh as a face death-carved
With the iron of some black thought.
The River Of Life
by Thomas Campbell

The more we live, more brief appear
Our life's succeeding stages;
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages.
The gladsome current of our youth,
Ere passion yet disorders,
Steals lingering like a river smooth
Along its grassy borders.
But as the careworn cheek grows wan,
And sorrow's shafts fly thicker,
Ye stars, that measure life to man,
Why seem your courses quicker?
When joys have lost their bloom and breath,
And life itself is vapid,
Why, as we reach the Falls of Death
Feel we its tide more rapid?
It may be strange, yet who would change
Time's course to slower speeding,
When one by one our friends have gone,
And left our bosoms bleeding?
Heaven gives our years of fading strength
Indemnifying fleetness;
And those of youth, a seeming length,
Proportion'd to their sweetness.
Winged Man
by Stephen Vincent Benet

The moon, a sweeping scimitar, dipped in the stormy straits,
The dawn, a crimson cataract, burst through the eastern gates,
The cliffs were robed in scarlet, the sands were cinnabar,
Where first two men spread wings for flight and dared the hawk afar.
There stands the cunning workman, the crafty past all praise,
The man who chained the Minotaur, the man who built the Maze.
His young son is beside him and the boy's face is a light,
A light of dawn and wonder and of valor infinite.
Their great vans beat the cloven air, like eagles they mount up,
Motes in the wine of morning, specks in a crystal cup,
And lest his wings should melt apace old Daedalus flies low,
But Icarus beats up, beats up, he goes where lightnings go.
He cares no more for warnings, he rushes through the sky,
Braving the crags of ether, daring the gods on high,
Black 'gainst the crimson sunset, golden o'er cloudy snows,
With all Adventure in his heart the first winged man arose.
Dropping gold, dropping gold, where the mists of morning rolled,
On he kept his way undaunted, though his breaths were stabs of cold,
Through the mystery of dawning that no mortal may behold.
Now he shouts, now he sings in the rapture of his wings,
And his great heart burns intenser with the strength of his desire,
As he circles like a swallow, wheeling, flaming, gyre on gyre.
Gazing straight at the sun, half his pilgrimage is done,
And he staggers for a moment, hurries on, reels backward, swerves
In a rain of scattered feathers as he falls in broken curves.
Icarus, Icarus, though the end is piteous,
Yet forever, yea, forever we shall see thee rising thus,
See the first supernal glory, not the ruin hideous.
You were Man, you who ran farther than our eyes can scan,
Man absurd, gigantic, eager for impossible Romance,
Overthrowing all Hell's legions with one warped and broken lance.
On the highest steeps of Space he will have his dwelling-place,
In those far, terrific regions where the cold comes down like Death
Gleams the red glint of his pinions, smokes the vapor of his breath.
Floating downward, very clear, still the echoes reach the ear
Of a little tune he whistles and a little song he sings,
Mounting, mounting still, triumphant, on his torn and broken wings!
Fairy Song.
by Louisa May Alcott

The moonlight fades from flower and tree,
And the stars dim one by one;
The tale is told, the song is sung,
And the Fairy feast is done.
The night-wind rocks the sleeping flowers,
And sings to them, soft and low.
The early birds erelong will wake:
'T is time for the Elves to go.
O'er the sleeping earth we silently pass,
Unseen by mortal eye,
And send sweet dreams, as we lightly float
Through the quiet moonlit sky;--
For the stars' soft eyes alone may see,
And the flowers alone may know,
The feasts we hold, the tales we tell:
So 't is time for the Elves to go.
From bird, and blossom, and bee,
We learn the lessons they teach;
And seek, by kindly deeds, to win
A loving friend in each.
And though unseen on earth we dwell,
Sweet voices whisper low,
And gentle hearts most joyously greet
The Elves where'er they go.
When next we meet in the Fairy dell,
May the silver moon's soft light
Shine then on faces gay as now,
And Elfin hearts as light.
Now spread each wing, for the eastern sky
With sunlight soon will glow.
The morning star shall light us home:
Farewell! for the Elves must go.
Bonny Mary O!
by John Clare

The morning opens fine, bonny Mary O!
The robin sings his song by the dairy O!
Where the little Jenny wrens cock their tails among the hens,
Singing morning's happy songs with Mary O!
The swallow's on the wing, bonny Mary O!
Where the rushes fringe the spring, bonny Mary O!
Where the cowslips do unfold, shaking tassels all of gold,
Which make the milk so sweet, bonny Mary O!
There's the yellowhammer's nest, bonny Mary O!
Where she hides her golden breast, bonny Mary O!
On her mystic eggs she dwells, with strange writing on their shells,
Hid in the mossy grass, bonny Mary O!
There the spotted cow gets food, bonny Mary O!
And chews her peaceful cud, bonny Mary O!
In the mole-hills and the bushes, and the clear brook fringed with rushes
To fill the evening pail, bonny Mary O!
The cowpond once agen, bonny Mary O!
Lies dimpled like thy sen, bonny Mary O!
Where the gnat swarms fall and rise under evening's mellow skies,
And on flags sleep dragon flies, bonny Mary O!
And I will meet thee there, bonny Mary O!
When a-milking you repair, bonny Mary O!
And I'll kiss thee on the grass, my buxom, bonny lass,
And be thine own for aye, bonny Mary O!
The Gifts Of The Moon
by Charles Baudelaire

The Moon, who is caprice itself, looked in at the window as you slept in your cradle, and said to herself:
"I am well pleased with this child."
And she softly descended her stairway of clouds and passed through the window-pane without noise.
She bent over you with the supple tenderness of a mother and laid her colours upon your face. Therefrom your eyes have remained green and your cheeks extraordinarily pale. From contemplation of your visitor your eyes are so strangely wide; and she so tenderly wounded you upon the breast that you have
ever kept a certain readiness to tears.
In the amplitude of her joy, the Moon filled all your chamber as with a phosphorescent air, a luminous poison ; and all this living radiance thought and said: "You shall be for ever under the influence of my kiss. You shall love all that loves me and that I love: clouds, and silence, and night; the vast green sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; the place where you are not; the lover you will never know; monstrous flowers, and perfumes that bring madness; cats that stretch themselves swooning upon the piano and lament with the sweet, hoarse voices of women.
"And you shall be loved of my lovers, courted of my courtesans. You shall be the Queen of men with green eyes, whose breasts also I have wounded in my nocturnal caress: men that love the sea, the immense green ungovernable sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; the place where they are not; the woman they will never know; sinister flowers that seem to bear the incense of some unknown religion; perfumes that trouble the will; and all savage and voluptuous animals, images of their own folly."
And that is why I am couched at your feet, o spoiled child, beloved and accursed, seeking in all your being the reflection of that august divinity, that prophetic godmother, that poisonous nurse of all lunatics.
Drowned
by Pamela S. Vining, (J. C. Yule)

[Footnote: In the Grand River, at Brantford, July 30th, 1875, Miss Jessie Hamilton, adopted daughter of C.H. Waterous, Esq., Brantford, aged 14 years and 3 months, and Miss Ella E. Murton, only daughter of John W. Murton, Esq., Hamilton, aged 14 years.]
The morning dawned without a cloud,
But evening came with pall and shroud, - 
With muffled step, and bated breath,
And mournful whisperings of - death!
*             *             *
Young lips, that in the morning sung
The summer's opening flowers among,
Were hushed and cold; - young, laughing eyes,
That met the dawn with sweet surprise,
Were darkly sealed; - young feet, that pressed
The dewy turf with glad unrest,
Were cold and stirless, never more
To tread the paths they trod before; - 
And they, who in the morning strayed
In fawn-like freedom down the glade,
In solemn, dreamless slumber lay,
To wake no more, at fall of day!
O stern, remorseless, sullen Tide!
O dark Flood, never satisfied!
Couldst thou not pity, when, to thee
Those young lambs sped so trustingly?
Nay, nay; - the tempest's stormy wrath
Spares not the lily in its path! - 
The tameless river will not rest,
To heed the rose-leaf on its breast! - 
A moment, and the quiet shore
Heard a low wail, and heard no more; - 
And then, with calm, unaltered mien,
The river glided on serene - 
With what a weight of anguish fraught! - 
Unconscious of the woe it wrought.
"Dust unto dust!" O God, thy way
Strange and mysterious seems to-day,
As, in the darkness of the tomb,
What but an hour ago was bloom
And beauty, now we hide away,
And leave to silence and decay!
Aid us in lowliness to bow,
And own how just and good art thou,
And, though thou hidest still thy face,
Trust the great love we may not trace!
Hewanorra
by Paul Cameron Brown

The moon, at most a shudder or two away.
The sky, bivouaked and cloudy, is within twin sloops of a bay.
The lagoon opens, spars with the greater ocean
by island hopping, green azure blue, as
the wind steps before an open sea.
The great ridge of the mountain
lies obscured by rain;
jasmine, frequent colour
and plantations
with cocoa, soursop, and cinnamon.
Arawaks, Pelee,
Carriacoi, Anegada,
Josephine of the Creoles,
let Admiral Rodney atone Lord Byng.
And my Patois beauty,
breath laced Oleander sweet -
take the hemming from your dress
then come sit down with me.
The Morn That Breaks Its Heart Of Gold
by Madison Julius Cawein

From an ode "In Commemoration of the Founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony."
The morn that breaks its heart of gold
Above the purple hills;
The eve, that spills
Its nautilus splendor where the sea is rolled;
The night, that leads the vast procession in
Of stars and dreams, - 
The beauty that shall never die or pass: - 
The winds, that spin
Of rain the misty mantles of the grass,
And thunder raiment of the mountain-streams;
The sunbeams, penciling with gold the dusk
Green cowls of ancient woods;
The shadows, thridding, veiled with musk,
The moon-pathed solitudes,
Call to my Fancy, saying, "Follow! follow!"
Till, following, I see, - 
Fair as a cascade in a rainbowed hollow, - 
A dream, a shape, take form,
Clad on with every charm, - 
The vision of that Ideality,
Which lured the pioneer in wood and hill,
And beckoned him from earth and sky;
The dream that cannot die,
Their children's children did fulfill,
In stone and iron and wood,
Out of the solitude,
And by a stalwart act
Create a mighty fact - 
A Nation, now that stands
Clad on with hope and beauty, strength and song,
Eternal, young and strong,
Planting her heel on wrong,
Her starry banner in triumphant hands....
Within her face the rose
Of Alleghany dawns;
Limbed with Alaskan snows,
Floridian starlight in her eyes, - 
Eyes stern as steel yet tender as a fawn's, - 
And in her hair
The rapture of her rivers; and the dare,
As perishless as truth,
That o'er the crags of her Sierras flies,
Urging the eagle ardor through her veins,
Behold her where,
Around her radiant youth,
The spirits of the cataracts and plains,
The genii of the floods and forests, meet,
In rainbow mists circling her brow and feet:
The forces vast that sit
In session round her; powers paraclete,
That guard her presence; awful forms and fair,
Making secure her place;
Guiding her surely as the worlds through space
Do laws sidereal; edicts, thunder-lit,
Of skyed eternity, in splendor borne
On planetary wings of night and morn.
*             *             *             *             *
From her high place she sees
Her long procession of accomplished acts,
Cloud-winged refulgences
Of thoughts in steel and stone, of marble dreams,
Lift up tremendous battlements,
Sun-blinding, built of facts;
While in her soul she seems,
Listening, to hear, as from innumerable tents,
'onian thunder, wonder, and applause
Of all the heroic ages that are gone;
Feeling secure
That, as her Past, her Future shall endure,
As did her Cause
When redly broke the dawn
Of fierce rebellion, and, beneath its star,
The firmaments of war
Poured down infernal rain,
And North and South lay bleeding mid their slain.
And now, no less, shall her great Cause prevail,
More so in peace than war,
Through the thrilled wire and electric rail,
Carrying her message far:
Shaping her dream
Within the brain of steam,
That, with a myriad hands,
Labors unceasingly, and knits her lands
In firmer union; joining plain and stream
With steel; and binding shore to shore
With bands of iron; - nerves and arteries,
Along whose adamant forever pour
Her concrete thoughts, her tireless energies.
Sunset Dreams
by Madison Julius Cawein

The moth and beetle wing about
The garden ways of other days;
Above the hills, a fiery shout
Of gold, the day dies slowly out,
Like some wild blast a huntsman blows:
And o'er the hills my Fancy goes,
Following the sunset's golden call
Unto a vine-hung garden wall,
Where she awaits me in the gloom,
Between the lily and the rose,
With arms and lips of warm perfume,
The dream of Love my Fancy knows.
The glowworm and the firefly glow
Among the ways of bygone days;
A golden shaft shot from a bow
Of silver, star and moon swing low
Above the hills where twilight lies:
And o'er the hills my Longing flies,
Following the star's far-arrowed gold,
Unto a gate where, as of old,
She waits amid the rose and rue,
With star-bright hair and night-dark eyes,
The dream, to whom my heart is true,
My dream of Love that never dies.
Muses
by Victor James Daley

The Muse who comes each morning
In rozy gauze is clad;
Her head is crowned with flowers,
Her eyes are clear and glad.
Upon her virgin bosom
Bloom lilies of white fire,
Her tender heart a rose is
Of delicate desire.
She is the gentle Goddess
Who rules the dreams of youth;
Her wonderful sweet stories
Are truer than the truth.
The Muse that comes at midnight,
When lamps of revel shine,
Her robe is laburnum,
All splashed with crimson wine.
Upon her head defiant,
She wears a vine-leaf crown,
And on her naked shoulders,
Her hair is hanging down.
And she at times is paler,
And paler than the dead
But O her lips are burning,
And O her lips are red.
She lifts a brimming goblet,
She spills three drops on the floor
"Drink deep and kiss your leman!
For Death is at the door."
The gentle Muse of Morning
Comes now no more to me,
But with the Muse of Midnight
I revel royally.
Morning
by William Browne

The Muses' friend (grey-eyed Aurora) yet
Held all the meadows in a cooling sweat,
The milk-white gossamers not upwards snow'd,
Nor was the sharp and useful-steering goad
Laid on the strong-neck'd ox; no gentle bud
The sun had dried; the cattle chew'd the cud
Low levell'd on the grass; no fly's quick sting
Enforc'd the stonehorse in a furious ring
To tear the passive earth, nor lash his tail
About his buttocks broad; the slimy snail
Might on the wainscot, by his many mazes,
Winding meanders and self-knitting traces,
Be follow'd where he stuck, his glittering slime
Not yet wip'd off. It was so early time,
The careful smith had in his sooty forge
Kindled no coal; nor did his hammers urge
His neighbours' patience: owls abroad did fly,
And day as then might plead his in fancy.
From Britannia's Pastorals.
The Wirtemberger.
by Friedrich Schiller

The name of Wirtemberg they hold
To come from Wirth am berg [69], I'm told.
A Wirtemberger who ne'er drinks
No Wirtemberger is, methinks!
A Name
by John Greenleaf Whittier

The name the Gallic exile bore,
St. Malo! from thy ancient mart,
Became upon our Western shore
Greenleaf for Feuillevert.
A name to hear in soft accord
Of leaves by light winds overrun,
Or read, upon the greening sward
Of May, in shade and sun.
The name my infant ear first heard
Breathed softly with a mother's kiss;
His mother's own, no tenderer word
My father spake than this.
No child have I to bear it on;
Be thou its keeper; let it take
From gifts well used and duty done
New beauty for thy sake.
The fair ideals that outran
My halting footsteps seek and find
The flawless symmetry of man,
The poise of heart and mind.
Stand firmly where I felt the sway
Of every wing that fancy flew,
See clearly where I groped my way,
Nor real from seeming knew.
And wisely choose, and bravely hold
Thy faith unswerved by cross or crown,
Like the stout Huguenot of old
Whose name to thee comes down.
As Marot's songs made glad the heart
Of that lone exile, haply mine
May in life's heavy hours impart
Some strength and hope to thine.
Yet when did Age transfer to Youth
The hard-gained lessons of its day?
Each lip must learn the taste of truth,
Each foot must feel its way.
We cannot hold the hands of choice
That touch or shun life's fateful keys;
The whisper of the inward voice
Is more than homilies.
Dear boy! for whom the flowers are born,
Stars shine, and happy song-birds sing,
What can my evening give to morn,
My winter to thy spring!
A life not void of pure intent,
With small desert of praise or blame,
The love I felt, the good I meant,
I leave thee with my name.
Going And Staying
by Thomas Hardy

I
The moving sun-shapes on the spray,
The sparkles where the brook was flowing,
Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May,
These were the things we wished would stay;
But they were going.
II
Seasons of blankness as of snow,
The silent bleed of a world decaying,
The moan of multitudes in woe,
These were the things we wished would go;
But they were staying.
III
Then we looked closelier at Time,
And saw his ghostly arms revolving
To sweep off woeful things with prime,
Things sinister with things sublime
Alike dissolving.
Fable
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel,
And the former called the latter 'Little Prig;
Bun replied,
'You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together,
To make up a year
And a sphere.
And I think it no disgrace
To occupy my place.
If I'm not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry.
I'll not deny you make
A very pretty squirrel track;
Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.'
The Motor Car
by Henry Lawson

The motor car is sullen, like a thing that should not be;
The motor car is master of Smart Society.
'Twas born of sweated genius and collared by a clown;
'Twas planned by Retribution to ride its riders down.
And straight for Caesar's Column,
It runs to Caesar's Column,
Last section, Caesar's Column
To ride its riders down!
The motor car is shame-struck, for greed and misery,
For mad and hopeless self-lust, and the sins that need not be.
The motor car is vicious, for its conscience makes it so,
It aye would smash the victims while it runs the riders low.
And straight for Caesar's Column,
Its goal is Caesar's Column,
It longs for Caesar's Column
To lay its riders low.
The motor car is maddened like a horse that's had a fright,
The shameful day behind it and the Coming of the Night!
It flees across the country and it flees back to the town
And straight for Caesar's Column to run its riders down.
And straight for Caesar's Column,
What ho! for Caesar's Column!
Hurrah! for Caesar's Column!
To seal its riders down.
The motor car is reckless like a gambler losing fast;
The motor car's in terror of the Future, and the Past;
The motor car is worn out and has passed Sin's boundary by,
And is bound for Caesar's Column where to pile its riders high.
It's bound for Caesar's Column
And marked for Caesar's Column,
And doomed for Caesar's Column
To pile its riders high.
The motor car is brainless, and scornful of all tears,
Its dust is in our faces, its giggle in our ears,
Its harsh laugh is the last laugh of the last lost soul alone,
'Tis nearing Caesar's Column to set self-damned in stone.
Change here for Caesar's Column!
All out for Caesar's Column!
Past Hope, and Caesar's Column
To lodge self-damned in stone.
I don't know how 'twill happen, or when 'twill come to pass,
But folk shall yet pass sanely by river, tree and grass;
By homesteads and farm wagons, they'll ride each pleasant mile,
And back from Caesar's Column where the world went mad awhile.
And back from Caesar's Column
With lessons from the Column;
Grown sane at Caesar's Column
To save the world awhile.
Thrift
by Unknown

The Mrs. never misses
Any bargain sale,
For the female of the species
Is more thrifty than the male.
Judgment Day
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

The nations are in the proving;
Each day is Judgment Day;
And the peoples He finds wanting
Shall pass--by the Shadowy Way.