DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Redbird
by Madison Julius Cawein

From "Wild Thorn and Lily"
Among the white haw-blossoms, where the creek
Droned under drifts of dogwood and of haw,
The redbird, like a crimson blossom blown
Against the snow-white bosom of the Spring,
The chaste confusion of her lawny breast,
Sang on, prophetic of serener days,
As confident as June's completer hours.
And I stood listening like a hind, who hears
A wood nymph breathing in a forest flute
Among the beech-boles of myth-haunted ways:
And when it ceased, the memory of the air
Blew like a syrinx in my brain: I made
A lyric of the notes that men might know:
He flies with flirt and fluting
As flies a crimson star
From flaming star-beds shooting
From where the roses are.
Wings past and sings; and seven
Notes, wild as fragrance is,
That turn to flame in heaven,
Float round him full of bliss.
He sings; each burning feather
Thrills, throbbing at his throat;
A song of firefly weather,
And of a glowworm boat:
Of Elfland and a princess
Who, born of a perfume,
His music rocks, where winces
That rosebud's cradled bloom.
No bird sings half so airy,
No bird of dusk or dawn,
Thou masking King of Faery!
Thou red-crowned Oberon!
The Decadent
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Among the virile hosts he passed along,
Conspicuous for an undetermined grace
Of sexless beauty.    In his form and face
God's mighty purpose somehow had gone wrong.
Then on his loom, he wove a careful song,
Of sensuous threads; a wordy web of lace
Wherein the primal passions of the race
And his own sins made wonder for the throng.
A little pen prick opened up a vein,
And gave the finished mesh a crimson blot - 
The last consummate touch of studied art.
But those who knew strong passion and keen pain,
Looked through and through the pattern and found not
One single great emotion of the heart.
At Utter Loaf.
by James Whitcomb Riley

I.
An afternoon as ripe with heat
As might the golden pippin be
With mellowness if at my feet
It dropped now from the apple-tree
My hammock swings in lazily.
II.
The boughs about me spread a shade
That shields me from the sun, but weaves
With breezy shuttles through the leaves
Blue rifts of skies, to gleam and fade
Upon the eyes that only see
Just of themselves, all drowsily.
III.
Above me drifts the fallen skein
Of some tired spider, looped and blown,
As fragile as a strand of rain,
Across the air, and upward thrown
By breaths of hayfields newly mown - 
So glimmering it is and fine,
I doubt these drowsy eyes of mine.
IV.
Far-off and faint as voices pent
In mines, and heard from underground,
Come murmurs as of discontent,
And clamorings of sullen sound
The city sends me, as, I guess,
To vex me, though they do but bless
Me in my drowsy fastnesses.
V.
I have no care.    I only know
My hammock hides and holds me here
In lands of shade a prisoner:
While lazily the breezes blow
Light leaves of sunshine over me,
And back and forth and to and fro
I swing, enwrapped in some hushed glee,
Smiling at all things drowsily.
Senorita
by Madison Julius Cawein

An agate-black, your roguish eyes
Claim no proud lineage of the skies,
No starry blue; but of good earth
The reckless witchery and mirth.
Looped in your raven hair's repose,
A hot aroma, one red rose
Dies; envious of that loveliness,
By being near which its is less.
Twin sea shells, hung with pearls, your ears,
Whose slender rosiness appears
Part of the pearls; whose pallid fire
Binds the attention these inspire.
One slim hand crumples up the lace
About your bosom's swelling grace;
A ruby at your samite throat
Lends the required color note.
The moon bears through the violet night
A pearly urn of chaliced light;
And from your dark-railed balcony
You stoop and wave your fan at me.
O'er orange orchards and the rose
Vague, odorous lips the south wind blows,
Peopling the night with whispers of
Romance and palely passionate love.
The heaven of your balcony
Smiles down two stars, that say to me
More peril than Angelica
Wrought with her beauty in Cathay.
Oh, stoop to me! and, speaking, reach
My soul like song that learned sweet speech
From some dim instrument - who knows? - 
Or flower, a dulcimer or rose.
A Hint.
by Jean Blewett

Among the vivid green I see
A yellow leaf,
And yonder in the basswood tree
An empty nest swings lonesomely - 
The wheat's in sheaf.
Ribb Denounces Patrick
by William Butler Yeats

An abstract Greek absurdity has crazed the man --
Recall that masculine Trinity. Man, woman, child (a
daughter or a son),
That's how all natural or supernatural stories run.
Natural and supernatural with the self-same ring are
wed.
As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead
begets Godhead,
For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine
Tablet said.
Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind;
When the conflagration of their passion sinks, damped
by the body or the mind,
That juggling nature mounts, her coil in their em-
braces twined.
The mirror-scaled serpent is multiplicity,
But all that run in couples, on earth, in flood or air,
share God that is but three,
And could beget or bear themselves could they but
love as He.
April.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

An altered look about the hills;
A Tyrian light the village fills;
A wider sunrise in the dawn;
A deeper twilight on the lawn;
A print of a vermilion foot;
A purple finger on the slope;
A flippant fly upon the pane;
A spider at his trade again;
An added strut in chanticleer;
A flower expected everywhere;
An axe shrill singing in the woods;
Fern-odors on untravelled roads, --
All this, and more I cannot tell,
A furtive look you know as well,
And Nicodemus' mystery
Receives its annual reply.
Fitz-Greene Halleck
by John Greenleaf Whittier

At the unveiling of his statue.
Among their graven shapes to whom
Thy civic wreaths belong,
O city of his love, make room
For one whose gift was song.
Not his the soldier's sword to wield,
Nor his the helm of state,
Nor glory of the stricken field,
Nor triumph of debate.
In common ways, with common men,
He served his race and time
As well as if his clerkly pen
Had never danced to rhyme.
If, in the thronged and noisy mart,
The Muses found their son,
Could any say his tuneful art
A duty left undone?
He toiled and sang; and year by year
Men found their homes more sweet,
And through a tenderer atmosphere
Looked down the brick-walled street.
The Greek's wild onset gall Street knew;
The Red King walked Broadway;
And Alnwick Castle's roses blew
From Palisades to Bay.
Fair City by the Sea! upraise
His veil with reverent hands;
And mingle with thy own the praise
And pride of other lands.
Let Greece his fiery lyric breathe
Above her hero-urns;
And Scotland, with her holly, wreathe
The flower he culled for Burns.
Oh, stately stand thy palace walls,
Thy tall ships ride the seas;
To-day thy poet's name recalls
A prouder thought than these.
Not less thy pulse of trade shall beat,
Nor less thy tall fleets swim,
That shaded square and dusty street
Are classic ground through him.
Alive, he loved, like all who sing,
The echoes of his song;
Too late the tardy meed we bring,
The praise delayed so long.
Too late, alas! Of all who knew
The living man, to-day
Before his unveiled face, how few
Make bare their locks of gray!
Our lips of praise must soon be dumb,
Our grateful eyes be dim;
O brothers of the days to come,
Take tender charge of him!
New hands the wires of song may sweep,
New voices challenge fame;
But let no moss of years o'ercreep
The lines of Halleck's name
Peace.
by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

An angel spoke with me, and lo, he hoarded
My falling tears to cheer a flower's face!
For, so it seems, in all the heavenly space
A wasted grief was never yet recorded.
Victorious calm those holy tones afforded
Unto my soul, whose outcry, in disgrace,
Changed to low music, leading to the place
Where, though well armed, with futile end awarded,
My past lay dead. "Wars are of earth!" he cried;
"Endurance only breathes immortal air.
Courage eternal, by a world defied,
Still wears the front of patience, smooth and fair."
Are wars so futile, and is courage peace?
Take, then, my soul, thus gently thy release!
At A Pantomime. By A Bilious One.
by William Schwenck Gilbert

An Actor sits in doubtful gloom,
His stock-in-trade unfurled,
In a damp funereal dressing-room
In the Theatre Royal, World.
He comes to town at Christmas-time,
And braves its icy breath,
To play in that favourite pantomime,
Harlequin Life and Death.
A hoary flowing wig his weird
Unearthly cranium caps,
He hangs a long benevolent beard
On a pair of empty chaps.
To smooth his ghastly features down
The actor's art he cribs, -
A long and a flowing padded gown.
Bedecks his rattling ribs.
He cries, "Go on begin, begin!
Turn on the light of lime -
I'm dressed for jolly Old Christmas, in
A favourite pantomime!"
The curtain's up the stage all black -
Time and the year nigh sped -
Time as an advertising quack -
The Old Year nearly dead.
The wand of Time is waved, and lo!
Revealed Old Christmas stands,
And little children chuckle and crow,
And laugh and clap their hands.
The cruel old scoundrel brightens up
At the death of the Olden Year,
And he waves a gorgeous golden cup,
And bids the world good cheer.
The little ones hail the festive King, -
No thought can make them sad.
Their laughter comes with a sounding ring,
They clap and crow like mad!
They only see in the humbug old
A holiday every year,
And handsome gifts, and joys untold,
And unaccustomed cheer.
The old ones, palsied, blear, and hoar,
Their breasts in anguish beat -
They've seen him seventy times before,
How well they know the cheat!
They've seen that ghastly pantomime,
They've felt its blighting breath,
They know that rollicking Christmas-time
Meant Cold and Want and Death, -
Starvation Poor Law Union fare -
And deadly cramps and chills,
And illness illness everywhere,
And crime, and Christmas bills.
They know Old Christmas well, I ween,
Those men of ripened age;
They've often, often, often seen
That Actor off the stage!
They see in his gay rotundity
A clumsy stuffed-out dress -
They see in the cup he waves on high
A tinselled emptiness.
Those aged men so lean and wan,
They've seen it all before,
They know they'll see the charlatan
But twice or three times more.
And so they bear with dance and song,
And crimson foil and green,
They wearily sit, and grimly long
For the Transformation Scene.
The Mistress
by John Wilmot

An age in her embraces passed
Would seem a winter's day;
When life and light, with envious haste,
Are torn and snatched away.
But, oh! how slowly minutes roll.
When absent from her eyes
That feed my love, which is my soul,
It languishes and dies.
For then no more a soul but shade
It mournfully does move
And haunts my breast, by absence made
The living tomb of love.
You wiser men despise me not,
Whose love-sick fancy raves
On shades of souls and Heaven knows what;
Short ages live in graves.
Whene'er those wounding eyes, so full
Of sweetness, you did see,
Had you not been profoundly dull,
You had gone mad like me.
Nor censure us, you who perceive
My best beloved and me
Sign and lament, complain and grieve;
You think we disagree.
Alas, 'tis sacred jealousy,
Love raised to an extreme;
The only proof 'twixt her and me,
We love, and do not dream.
Fantastic fancies fondly move
And in frail joys believe,
Taking false pleasure for true love;
But pain can ne'er deceive.
Kind jealous doubts, tormenting fears,
And anxious cares when past,
Prove our heart's treasure fixed and dear,
And make us blessed at last.
The Woman And The Angel
by Robert William Service

An angel was tired of heaven, as he lounged in the golden street;
His halo was tilted sideways, and his harp lay mute at his feet;
So the Master stooped in His pity, and gave him a pass to go,
For the space of a moon, to the earth-world, to mix with the men below.
He doffed his celestial garments, scarce waiting to lay them straight;
He bade goodbye to Peter, who stood by the golden gate;
The sexless singers of heaven chanted a fond farewell,
And the imps looked up as they pattered on the red-hot flags of hell.
Never was seen such an angel: eyes of a heavenly blue,
Features that shamed Apollo, hair of a golden hue;
The women simply adored him, his lips were like Cupid's bow;
But he never ventured to use them - and so they voted him slow.
Till at last there came One Woman, a marvel of loveliness,
And she whispered to him: "Do you love me?" And he answered that woman, "Yes."
And she said: "Put your arms around me, and kiss me, and hold me - so - "
But fiercely he drew back, saying: "This thing is wrong, and I know."
Then sweetly she mocked his scruples, and softly she him beguiled:
"You, who are verily man among men, speak with the tongue of a child.
We have outlived the old standards; we have burst, like an over-tight thong,
The ancient, outworn, puritanic traditions of Right and Wrong."
Then the Master feared for His angel, and called him again to His side,
For oh, the woman was wondrous, and oh, the angel was tried.
And deep in his hell sang the Devil, and this was the strain of his song:
"The ancient, outworn, puritanic traditions of Right and Wrong."
On The Great Buried Bottle
by Jonathan Swift

BY DR. DELANY
Amphora, quae moestum linquis, laetumque revises
Arentem dominum, sit tibi terra levis.
Tu quoque depositum serves, neve opprime, marmor;
Amphora non meruit tam pretiosa mori.
Protus
by Robert Browning

Among these latter busts we count by scores,
Half-emperors and quarter-emperors,
Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest,
Loric and low-browed Gorgon on the breast,
One loves a baby face, with violets there,
Violets instead of laurel in the hair,
As those were all the little locks could bear.
Now read here. 'Protus ends a period
Of empery beginning with a god:
Born in the porphyry chamber at Byzant,
Queens by his cradle, proud and ministrant:
And if he quickened breath there, 'twould like fire
Pantingly through the dim vast realm transpire.
A fame that he was missing spread afar
The world from its four corners, rose in war,
Till he was borne out on a balcony
To pacify the world when it should see.
The captains ranged before him, one, his hand
Made baby points at, gained the chief command.
And day by day more beautiful he grew
In shape, all said, in feature and in hue,
While young Greek sculptors, gazing on the child,
Because with old Greek sculptore reconciled.
Already sages laboured to condense
In easy tomes a life's experience:
And artists took grave counsel to impart
In one breath and one hand-sweep, all their art
To make his graces prompt as blossoming
Of plentifully-watered palms in spring:
Since well beseems it, whoso mounts the throne,
For beauty, knowledge, strength, should stand alone,
And mortals love the letters of his name.'
Stop! Have you turned two pages? Still the same.
New reign, same date. The scribe goes on to say
How that same year, on such a month and day,
'John the Pannonian, groundedly believed
A Blacksmith's bastard, whose hard hand reprieved
The Empire from its fate the year before,
Came, had a mind to take the crown, and wore
The same for six years (during which the Huns
Kept off their fingers from us), till his sons
Put something in his liquor' and so forth.
Then a new reign. Stay, 'Take at its just worth'
(Subjoins an annotator) 'what I give
As hearsay. Some think, John let Protus live
And slip away. 'Tis said, he reached man's age
At some blind northern court; made, first a page,
Then tutor to the children, last, of use
About the hunting-stables. I deduce
He wrote the little tract 'On worming dogs,'
Whereof the name in sundry catalogues
Is extant yet. A Protus of the race
Is rumoured to have died a monk in Thrace,
And if the same, he reached senility.'
Here's John the Smith's rough-hammered head.
Great eye,
Gross jaw and griped lips do what granite can
To give you the crown-grasper. What a man!
Yattendon
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

Among the woods and tillage
That fringe the topmost downs,
All lonely lies the village,
Far off from seas and towns.
Yet when her own folk slumbered
I heard within her street
Murmur of men unnumbered
And march of myriad feet.
For all she lies so lonely,
Far off from towns and seas,
The village holds not only
The roofs beneath her trees:
While Life is sweet and tragic
And Death is veiled and dumb,
Hither, by singer's magic,
The pilgrim world must come.
The Angel's Kiss
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

An angel stood beside the bed
Where lay the living and the dead.
He gave the mother, her who died,
A kiss that Christ the Crucified
Had sent to greet the weary soul
When, worn and faint, it reached its goal.
He gave the infant kisses twain,
One on the breast, one on the brain.
"Go forth into the world," he said,
"With blessings on your heart and head,
"For God, who ruleth righteously,
Hath ordered that to such as be
"From birth deprived of mother's love,
I bring His blessing from above;
"But if the mother's life he spare
Then she is made God's messenger
"To kiss and pray that heart and brain
May go through life without a stain."
The infant moved towards the light,
The angel spread his wings in flight.
But each man carries to his grave
The kisses that in hopes to save
The angel or his mother gave.
The Drowning Ducks.
by Thomas Hood

Amongst the sights that Mrs. Bond
Enjoyed yet grieved at more than others,
Were little ducklings in a pond,
Swimming about beside their mothers - 
Small things like living water-lilies,
But yellow as the daffo-dillies.
"It's very hard," she used to moan,
"That other people have their ducklings
To grace their waters - mine alone
Have never any pretty chucklings."
For why! - each little yellow navy
Went down - all downy - to old Davy!
She had a lake - a pond, I mean - 
Its wave was rather thick than pearly - 
She had two ducks, their napes were green - 
She had a drake, his tail was curly, - 
Yet 'spite of drake, and ducks, and pond,
No little ducks had Mrs. Bond!
The birds were both the best of mothers - 
The nests had eggs - the eggs had luck - 
The infant D's came forth like others - 
But there, alas! the matter stuck!
They might as well have all died addle
As die when they began to paddle!
For when, as native instinct taught her,
The mother set her brood afloat,
They sank ere long right under water,
Like any overloaded boat;
They were web-footed too to see,
As ducks and spiders ought to be!
No peccant humor in a gander
Brought havoc on her little folks, - 
No poaching cook - a frying pander
To appetite, - destroyed their yolks, - 
Beneath her very eyes, Od rot 'em!
They went, like plummets, to the bottom.
The thing was strange - a contradiction
It seemed of nature and her works!
For little ducks, beyond conviction,
Should float without the help of corks:
Great Johnson, it bewildered him!
To hear of ducks that could not swim.
Poor Mrs. Bond! what could she do
But change the breed - and she tried divers
Which dived as all seemed born to do;
No little ones were e'er survivors - 
Like those that copy gems, I'm thinking,
They all were given to die-sinking!
In vain their downy coats were shorn;
They floundered still! - Batch after batch went!
The little fools seemed only born
And hatched for nothing but a hatchment!
Whene'er they launched - oh, sight of wonder!
Like fires the water "got them under."
No woman ever gave their lucks
A better chance than Mrs. Bond did;
At last quite out of heart and ducks,
She gave her pond up, and desponded;
For Death among the water-lilies,
Cried "Duc ad me" to all her dillies!
But though resolved to breed no more,
She brooded often on this riddle - 
Alas! 'twas darker than before!
At last about the summer's middle,
What Johnson, Mrs. Bond, or none did,
To clear the matter up the Sun did!
The thirsty Sirius dog-like drank
So deep, his furious tongue to cool,
The shallow waters sank and sank,
And lo, from out the wasted pool,
Too hot to hold them any longer,
There crawled some eels as big as conger!
I wish all folks would look a bit,
In such a case below the surface;
And when the eels were caught and split
By Mrs. Bond, just think of her face,
In each inside at once to spy
A duckling turned to giblet-pie!
The sight at once explained the case,
Making the Dame look rather silly:
The tenants of that Eely Place
Had found the way to Pick a dilly,
And so, by under-water suction,
Had wrought the little ducks' abduction.
The Kiss: A Dialogue
by Robert Herrick

Among thy fancies, tell me this,
What is the thing we call a kiss?
I shall resolve ye what it is:
It is a creature born and bred
Between the lips, all cherry-red,
By love and warm desires fed,
CHOR.    And makes more soft the bridal bed.
It is an active flame, that flies
First to the babies of the eyes,
And charms them there with lullabies,
CHOR.    And stills the bride, too, when she cries.
Then to the chin, the cheek, the ear,
It frisks and flies, now here, now there:
'Tis now far off, and then 'tis near,
CHOR.    And here, and there, and every where.
Has it a speaking virtue?    
Yes.
How speaks it, say?    
Do you but this,
Part your join'd lips, then speaks your kiss;
CHOR.    And this Love's sweetest language is.
Has it a body?    
Ay, and wings,
With thousand rare encolourings;
And as it flies, it gently sings
CHOR.    Love honey yields, but never stings.
The New Amor.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Amor, not the child, the youthful lover of Psyche,
Look'd round Olympus one day, boldly, to triumph inured;
There he espied a goddess, the fairest amongst the immortals,
Venus Urania she, straight was his passion inflamed.
Even the holy one powerless proved, alas! 'gainst his wooing,
Tightly embraced in his arm, held her the daring one fast.
Then from their union arose a new, a more beauteous Amor,
Who from his father his wit, grace from his mother derives.
Ever thou'lt find him join'd in the kindly Muses' communion,
And his charm-laden bolt foundeth the love of the arts.
The Daisy
by Virna Sheard

An angel found a daisy where it lay
On Heaven's highroad of transparent gold,
And, turning to one near, he said, "I pray,
Tell me what manner of strange bloom I hold.
You came a long, long way - perchance you know
In what far country such fair flowers blow?"
Then spoke the other: "Turn thy radiant face
And gaze with me down purple depth of space.
See, where the stars lie spilled upon the night,
Like amber beads that hold a yellow light.
Note one that burns with faint yet steady glow;
It is the Earth - and there these blossoms grow.
Some little child from that dear, distant land
Hath borne this hither in his dimpled hand."
Still gazed he down. "Ah, friend," he said, "I, too,
Oft crossed the fields at home where daisies grew."
Dead Cow Farm
by Robert von Ranke Graves

An ancient saga tells us how
In the beginning the First Cow
(For nothing living yet had birth
But Elemental Cow on earth)
Began to lick cold stones and mud:
Under her warm tongue flesh and blood
Blossomed, a miracle to believe:
And so was Adam born, and Eve.
Here now is chaos once again,
Primeval mud, cold stones and rain.
Here flesh decays and blood drips red,
And the Cow's dead, the old Cow's dead.
Senorita.
by Madison Julius Cawein

An agate black thy roguish eyes
Claim no proud lineage of skies,
No velvet blue, but of sweet Earth,
Rude, reckless witchery and mirth.
Looped in thy raven hair's repose,
A hot aroma, one tame rose
Dies envious of that beauty where, - 
By being near which, - it is fair.
Thy ears, - two dainty bits of song
Of unpretending charm, which wrong
Would jewels rich, whose restless fire
Courts coarse attention, - such inspire.
Slim hands, that crumple listless lace
About thy white breasts' swelling grace,
And falter at thy samite throat,
To such harmonious efforts float.
Seven stars stop o'er thy balcony
Cored in taunt heaven's canopy;
No moon flows up the satin night
In pearl-pierced raiment spun of light.
From orange orchards dark in dew
Vague, odorous lips the West wind blew,
Or thou, a new Angelica
From Ariosto, breath'd'st Cathay.
Oh, stoop to me and speaking reach
My soul like song, that learned low speech
From some sad instrument, who knows?
Or bloom, - a dulcimer or rose.
The Serpent's Legacy.
by Victor James Daley

An apple caused man's fall, as some believe;
But that old Snake, malevolently wise,
A deadlier snare set when he left to Eve
His tongue of honey and mesmeric eyes.