DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Sorrows Of A Simple Bard
by Henry Lawson

When I tell a tale of virtue and of injured innocence,
Then my publishers and lawyers are the densest of the dense:
With the blank face of an image and the nod of keep-it-dark
And a wink of mighty meaning at their confidential clerk.
(When, Oh! tell me when shall poets cease to be misunderstood?
When, Oh! When? shall people reckon rhymers can be any good?
Do their work and pay their debts and drink their pint of beer, and then,
Look in woman's eyes and leave them, just like ordinary men?)
'Is there literary friendship 'twix the sexes? don't you think?'
And they wink their idiotic and exasperating wink.
'Can't we kiss a clever woman without wanting any more?'
And their clock-work nod is only more decided than before.
But if I should hint that there's a little woman somewhere, say,
Then the public and the law are interested straight away,
The impassive confidential gets a bright and cheerful glance,
Things are straightway on a footing that may lead to an advance.
Both are married and respected and they both are rising higher:
One's church warden, one's a deacon in a fashionable choir.
And the clerks have both unblemished private characters to show,
What do they know about woman? That's what I should like to know.
(Flash of dark eyes in the moonlight, in the scrub or far afield,
Blouse-sleeves back from white arms clinging, clinging while she will not yield,
Or the fair head on your shoulder and the grey eyes moist and mild,
Weary of the strife with passion, yielding like a tired child.)
There's my aunt; the dear old lady hints about 'experience'
When I go to her for comfort with my injured innocence.
She screws up a wise expression, while she listens, for my pains,
Isn't it an awful pity women haven't any brains?
Now I'm serious and angry, for it isn't any joke,
Poets have been damned for ages by such evil-minded folk.
Must we all be public blackguards? Can't a rhymer be a man,
Spite of Byron's silly mistress, Burns's gawky Mary Ann?
As tame bards they will not have us, and I don't know what they want,
There's my publisher and lawyer, my admirers and my aunt.
Do they want a rake and a spendthrift? Look out! Tradesman trusting me!
Look out! Husbands! Fathers! Brothers! I'll be wicked as can be!
There now.
Upon Julia's Voice
by Robert Herrick

When I thy singing next shall hear,
I'll wish I might turn all to ear,
To drink-in notes and numbers, such
As blessed souls can't hear too much
Then melted down, there let me lie
Entranced, and lost confusedly;
And by thy music strucken mute,
Die, and be turn'd into a Lute.
God's Pardon.
by Robert Herrick

When I shall sin, pardon my trespass here;
For once in hell, none knows remission there.
When I Was A Much Younger Man
by Paul Cameron Brown

When I was a much younger man,
my spiritual homeland was a scrub-mile of bush with thicket
leaves the size of your palms.
Saucer-size holes of white air enveloped the edge of trees
and the sky was large, an upturned pitcher
placed upon its ears...
edge-wise cicadas & June Beetles let out long throbs
and the people rounded out lives between the farmhouse & the barn.
This ennobled them and they were famously resilient and, in turn,
redolent with firmness & the gladness of life.
There was a Drive House, a pig pen, sheds & a chicken coop and, by
night, stars became the earlier evening swallows gulping the space Left in
the train of the moon. There was no one Empress of the Night anymore
than a Prince or Kings towered across the landscape.
Stillness and the largeness of things, predominated, and a hill cascading
between the fields & pond held both largess and chaos in nature.
A fence line divided the dynasties, then Regencies across an orchard
& what seemed to many an enchanted bridge to the woods.
It was here a boy made his stand.
The language of rock/hillside/lakes & nettle stands like the back of my hand
to fill a calendar wall, their musical sounds are brave arias in waves
with sonatas first in strength, then pleasure.
This Frontenac Axis as fortress, strong-hold, its booty lichens, moss,
legends such as Meyer's Cave, John Meyers murdered for silver,
Mazinaw Rock, the Mugwumps
more water in this Davy Jones locker than all Araby,
this wonder & merriment all strung in a violin string
as webs of beads these lakes
silver cistern,
lovely listening,
this necklace of forest wreath,
placid leaf fingering wide-eyed watershed rich in Massasauga serpents
like daggers in that tarn, karst topography lime-stone carapace
Painted Turtle hemorrhaging as orange leaves in Sumac troves,
copses as sky counts, lakes like the back of my hand ache with the wish
I could swim them all, wallow in their own restless energy.
Snapping Turtle Point, a pail of water and a beast three bucket sizes
with a yellow underbelly like an alligator, claws, black raven mouth
lunging his neck as some gladiator's sword primitive in his ferocity.
Nigh near lacerated my hand, no wish, here, to leave digits there as new
Finger Lakes.
Names masculine to the touch and their roundness -    - Mississageon,
Buckshot could pepper a listener or blur in seconds turning effete,
Shabomeeka, Sharbot or learn likeness and leisure in the form of the
lute, Kashwakemak, sound brittle -    - Rogue's Hollow, Marlbank,
Lime Lake, the Claire River disappearing into a swamp & muskeg
where one maps out one's personal Mythology - 
Napanee is and as Anthology.
When I Think On The Happy Days.
by Robert Burns

I.
When I think on the happy days
I spent wi' you, my dearie;
And now what lands between us lie,
How can I be but eerie!
II.
How slow ye move, ye heavy hours,
As ye were wae and weary!
It was na sae ye glinted by,
When I was wi' my dearie.
When I Set Out For Lyonnesse
by Thomas Hardy

When I set out for Lyonnesse,
A hundred miles away,
The rime was on the spray,
And starlight lit my lonesomeness
When I set out for Lyonnesse
A hundred miles away.
What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there
No prophet durst declare,
Nor did the wisest wizard guess
What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there.
When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes,
None managed to surmise
What meant my godlike gloriousness,
When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes.
Improvisations: Light And Snow: 05
by Conrad Potter Aiken

When I was a boy, and saw bright rows of icicles
In many lengths along a wall
I was dissappointed to find
That I could not play music upon them:
I ran my hand lightly across them
And they fell, tinkling.
I tell you this, young man, so that your expectations of life
Will not be too great.
Nursery Rhyme. CLXXXVI. Riddles.
by Unknown

[A pen.]
When I was taken from the fair body,
They then cut off my head,
And thus my shape was altered;
It's I that make peace between king and king,
And many a true lover glad:
All this I do and ten times more,
And more I could do still,
But nothing can I do,
Without my guider's will.
The First Lord's Song.
by William Schwenck Gilbert

When I was a lad I served a term
As office boy to an Attorney's firm.
I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor,
And I polished up the handle of the big front door.
I polished up that handle so successfullee
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
As office boy I made such a mark
That they gave me the post of a junior clerk.
I served the writs with a smile so bland,
And I copied all the letters in a big round hand.
I copied all the letters in a hand so free,
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
In serving writs I made such a name
That an articled clerk I soon became;
I wore clean collars and a brand-new suit
For the Pass Examination at the Institute.
And that Pass Examination did so well for me,
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
Of legal knowledge I acquired such a grip
That they took me into the partnership.
And that junior partnership, I ween,
Was the only ship that I ever had seen,
But that kind of ship so suited me,
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
I grew so rich that I was sent
By a pocket borough into Parliament.
I always voted at my party's call,
And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
I thought so little, they rewarded me,
By making me the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
Now, landsmen all, whoever you may be,
If you want to rise to the top of the tree,
If your soul isn't fettered to an office stool,
Be careful to be guided by this golden rule 
Stick close to your desks and never go to sea,
And you all may be Rulers of the Queen's Navee!
When I Was Still A Youthful Wight,
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When I was still a youthful wight,
So full of enjoyment and merry,
The painters used to assert, in spite,
That my features were small yes, very;
Yet then full many a beauteous child
With true affection upon me smil'd.
Now as a greybeard I sit here in state,
By street and by lane held in awe, sirs;
And may be seen, like old Frederick the Great,
On pipebowls, on cups, and on saucers.
Yet the beauteous maidens, they keep afar;
Oh vision of youth! Oh golden star!
Closing Chords.
by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

I.
Death's Eloquence.
When I shall go
Into the narrow home that leaves
No room for wringing of the hands and hair,
And feel the pressing of the walls which bear
The heavy sod upon my heart that grieves,
(As the weird earth rolls on),
Then I shall know
What is the power of destiny. But still,
Still while my life, however sad, be mine,
I war with memory, striving to divine
Phantom to-morrows, to outrun the past;
For yet the tears of final, absolute ill
And ruinous knowledge of my fate I shun.
Even as the frail, instinctive weed
Tries, through unending shade, to reach at last
A shining, mellowing, rapture-giving sun;
So in the deed of breathing joy's warm breath,
Fain to succeed,
I, too, in colorless longings, hope till death.
II.
Peace.
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!
Along The Potomac.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

When I was small, a woman died.
To-day her only boy
Went up from the Potomac,
His face all victory,
To look at her; how slowly
The seasons must have turned
Till bullets clipt an angle,
And he passed quickly round!
If pride shall be in Paradise
I never can decide;
Of their imperial conduct,
No person testified.
But proud in apparition,
That woman and her boy
Pass back and forth before my brain,
As ever in the sky.
Her New-Year Posy
by William Kerr

When I seek the world through
For images of you,
Though apple-blossom is glad
And the lily stately-sad,
Gilliflowers kind of breath,
Rosemary true till death;
Though the wind can stir the grass
To memories as you pass.
And the soft-singing streams
Are music like your dreams;
Though constant stars embrace
The quiet of your face,
Your smile lights up sunrise,
And evening's in your eyes, 
Each so shadows its part,
All cannot show your heart;
And weighing the beauty of earth
I see it so little worth,
When reckoned beside you,
That I hold heaven for true
But all my heaven is you.
Margaretta.
by George Pope Morris

When I was in my teens,
I loved dear Margaretta:
I know not what it means,
I can not now forget her!
That vision of the past
My head is ever crazing;
Yet, when I saw her last,
I could not speak for gazing!
Oh, lingering bud of May!
Dear as when first I met her;
Worn in my heart always,
Life-cherished Margaretta!
We parted near the stile,
As morn was faintly breaking:
For many a weary mile
Oh how my heart was aching!
But distance, time, and change,
Have lost me Margaretta;
And yet 'tis sadly strange
That I can not forget her!
O queen of rural maids--
My dark-eyed Magaretta--
The heart the mind upbraids
That struggles to forget her!
My love, I know, will seem
A wayward, boyish folly;
But, ah! it was a dream
Most sweet--most melancholy.
Were mine the world's domain,
To me 'twere fortune better
To be a boy again,
And dream of Margaretta.
Oh! memory of the past,
Why linger to regret her?
My first love was my last!
And that is Margaretta!
Picture Of A Young Lady
by William Lisle Bowles

When I was sitting, sad, and all alone,
Remembering youth and love for ever fled,
And many friends now resting with the dead,
While the still summer's light departing shone,
Like many sweet and silent summers gone;
Thou camest, as a vision, with a mien
And smile like those I once on earth had seen,
And with a voice of that remembered tone
Which I in other days, long since, had heard:
Like Peace approaching, when distempers fret
Most the tired spirit, thy fair form appeared;
And till I die, I never shall forget,
For at thy footstep light, the gloom was cheered,
Thy look and voice, oh! gentle Margaret.
Sonnet XIII.
by Fernando Ant'nio Nogueira Pessoa

When I should be asleep to mine own voice
In telling thee how much thy love's my dream,
I find me listening to myself, the noise
Of my words othered in my hearing them.
Yet wonder not: this is the poet's soul.
I could not tell thee well of how I love,
Loved I not less by knowing it, were all
My self my love and no thought love to prove.
What consciousness makes more by consciousness,
It makes less, for it makes it less itself,
My sense of love could not my love rich-dress
Did it not for it spend love's own love-pelf.
Poet's love's this (as in these words I prove thee):
I love my love for thee more than I love thee.
Jealousy
by Rupert Brooke

When I see you, who were so wise and cool,
Gazing with silly sickness on that fool
You've given your love to, your adoring hands
Touch his so intimately that each understands,
I know, most hidden things; and when I know
Your holiest dreams yield to the stupid bow
Of his red lips, and that the empty grace
Of those strong legs and arms, that rosy face,
Has beaten your heart to such a flame of love,
That you have given him every touch and move,
Wrinkle and secret of you, all your life,
Oh! then I know I'm waiting, lover-wife,
For the great time when love is at a close,
And all its fruit's to watch the thickening nose
And sweaty neck and dulling face and eye,
That are yours, and you, most surely, till you die!
Day after day you'll sit with him and note
The greasier tie, the dingy wrinkling coat;
As prettiness turns to pomp, and strength to fat,
And love, love, love to habit!
And after that,
When all that's fine in man is at an end,
And you, that loved young life and clean, must tend
A foul sick fumbling dribbling body and old,
When his rare lips hang flabby and can't hold
Slobber, and you're enduring that worst thing,
Senility's queasy furtive love-making,
And searching those dear eyes for human meaning,
Propping the bald and helpless head, and cleaning
A scrap that life's flung by, and love's forgotten,
Then you'll be tired; and passion dead and rotten;
And he'll be dirty, dirty!
O lithe and free
And lightfoot, that the poor heart cries to see,
That's how I'll see your man and you!
But you
Oh, when THAT time comes, you'll be dirty too!
The Viking's Song
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

When I thy lover first
Shook out my canvas free
And like a pirate burst
Into that dreaming sea,
The land knew no such thirst
As then tormented me.
Now when at eve returned
I near that shore divine,
Where once but watch-fires burned
I see thy beacon shine,
And know the land hath learned
Desire that welcomes mine.
Other Men
by Sara Teasdale

When I talk with other men
I always think of you
Your words are keener than their words,
And they are gentler, too.
When I look at other men,
I wish your face were there,
With its gray eyes and dark skin
And tossed black hair.
When I think of other men,
Dreaming alone by day,
The thought of you like a strong wind
Blows the dreams away.
To Perenna
by Robert Herrick

When I thy parts run o'er, I can't espy
In any one, the least indecency;
But every line and limb diffused thence
A fair and unfamiliar excellence;
So that the more I look, the more I prove
There's still more cause why I the more should love.
The Faun
by John Le Gay Brereton

When I was but a little boy
Who hunted in the wood
To scare or mangle or destroy
A freakish elemental joy
That tasted life and found it good
I hardly heard the awful ban
That mutters round the free,
But followed where the waters ran,
And wondered when the pipe of Pan
Shook silence with its minstrelsy.
Where sun-spray glittered on my limbs
I danced, and laughed, and trilled
My happy incoherent hymns,
Sped only by the whirling whims
With which my eager heart was filled.
The wind was glad and so was I;
My soul lay open wide,
Reflecting all the starry sky;
The swallows called to me to fly;
I dreamed of how the fishes glide.
But while my errant feet were set
On mosses cool and sweet,
The great grey phantoms brooding met
Within the shades, and cast a net
With dreary charms about my feet.
They pent me in a barren place,
A city, so they said,
Of gallant wonder-working grace
But haunted, haunted by a race
Of rigid unperceptive dead.
With sightless eyes they pored on books,
And scrawled on many a sheet
Their regimental strokes and hooks,
And stalked about with pompous looks,
Top-hatted, in the civil street.
I strove to flee, but everywhere
Met solid-seeming walls;
And yet I knew the world was fair,
And, hearkening well, heard, even there,
A bird and distant waterfalls.
And love which I had scarcely known
Leaped upward as I heard;
I blessed the creek, the mossy stone,
The fern along the gully strown,
The little beasts, the piping bird.
Could walls o'ermaster one who knew
The world of outer light?
The very shadow that they threw
Was tindured with a deeper blue
Because the quickening sun was bright.
I laughed aloud, as one who leaps
Against a curling wave,
And, as a widening ripple creeps,
A shudder caught the stony steeps,
And life shook, laughing, in the grave.
'O phantoms, who are you to fix
Eternal towers of pride?'
I mocked at their fantastic tricks,
I thrust my fingers through the bricks
And felt the flowers the other side.
I pricked my pointed ears to hear
The love-song of the bird,
And dear was every note, and dear
The myriad sounds that echoed near
The magically chorus'd word.
I saw the fading phantoms glare;
Their tones to silence hissed.
The walls bulged, brightening everywhere,
And thinned and melted in the air
To ragged streams of rosy mist.
Trill, happy bird, for ever trill,
For I have learned to bless
The great grey shades whose thwarted will
Turned earth to heaven; and I am still
A dweller in the wilderness.
The Picture Book.
by Robert von Ranke Graves

When I was not quite five years old
I first saw the blue picture book,
And Fraulein Spitzenburger told
Stories that sent me hot and cold;
I loathed it, yet I had to look:
It was a German book.
I smiled at first, for she'd begun
With a back-garden broad and green,
And rabbits nibbling there:    page one
Turned; and the gardener fired his gun
From the low hedge:    he lay unseen
Behind:    oh, it was mean!
They're hurt, they can't escape, and so
He stuffs them head-down in a sack,
Not quite dead, wriggling in a row,
And Fraulein laughed, "Ho, ho!    Ho, ho!"
And gave my middle a hard smack,
I wish that I'd hit back.
Then when I cried she laughed again;
On the next page was a dead boy
Murdered by robbers in a lane;
His clothes were red with a big stain
Of blood, he held a broken toy,
The poor, poor little boy!
I had to look:    there was a town
Burning where every one got caught,
Then a fish pulled a nigger down
Into the lake and made him drown,
And a man killed his friend; they fought
For money, Fraulein thought.
Old Fraulein laughed, a horrid noise.
"Ho, ho!"    Then she explained it all
How robbers kill the little boys
And torture them and break their toys.
Robbers are always big and tall:
I cried:    I was so small.
How a man often kills his wife,
How every one dies in the end
By fire, or water or a knife.
If you're not careful in this life,
Even if you can trust your friend,
You won't have long to spend.
I hated it, old Fraulein picked
Her teeth, slowly explaining it.
I had to listen, Fraulein licked
Her fingers several times and flicked
The pages over; in a fit
Of rage I spat at it...
And lying in my bed that night
Hungry, tired out with sobs, I found
A stretch of barren years in sight,
Where right is wrong, but strength is right,
Where weak things must creep underground,
And I could not sleep sound.
Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - XIII
by Alfred Edward Housman

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free."
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue."
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.
A Boy's Trials.
by Jean Blewett

When I was but a little lad
One thing I could not bear,
It was to stand at mother's knee
And have her comb my hair.
They didn't keep boys' hair as short
As it's kept now-a-days,
And mine was always tangled up
In twenty different ways.
I'd twist my mouth and grit my teeth,
And say it wasn't fair - 
It was a trial, and no mistake,
When mother combed my hair.
She'd brush and brush each stubborn curl
That grew upon my pate,
And with her scissors nip and clip
To make the edges straight.
Then smooth it down until it shone,
While I would grin and bear,
And feel a martyr through and through,
When mother combed my hair.
She'd take my round chin in her hand
And hold it there the while
She made the parting carefully,
Then tell me with a smile:
"Don't push your cap down on your curls
And spoil my work and care;
He is a pretty little lad
When mother combs his hair."
I'd hurry out and rumple up
That mop of hair so thick - 
A vandal, I, for she had worked
So hard to make it slick - 
And wish I were a grown-up man
So nobody would dare
To put a washrag in my ears,
Or comb my tangled hair.
Heigho! now that I'm bald and gray,
Methinks I would be glad
To have her smooth my brow and cheeks,
And whisper, "Mother's lad!"
A longing for the care-free days
Doth take me unaware;
To stand, a boy, at mother's knee
And have her comb my hair.
Ridden Down
by Ellis Parker Butler

When I taught Ida how to ride a
Bicycle that night,
I ran beside her, just to guide her
Erring wheel aright;
And many times there in the street
She rode upon my weary feet.
But now can Ida mount and ride a
Wheel with graceful ease,
And I, untiring in admiring,
Fall upon my knees
To worship her, and, for her part,
She rides upon my proffered heart!
His Wonderful Choo-Choos
by Ringgold Wilmer Lardner

When I see his wonderful choo-choo trains,
Which he daily builds with infinite pains,
Whose cars are a crazy and curious lot - 
A doll, a picture, a pepper pot,
A hat, a pillow, a horse, a book,
A pote, a mintie, a button hook,
A bag of tobacco, a piece of string,
A pair of wubbas, a bodkin ring,
A deck of twos and a paper box,
A brush, a comb and a lot of blocks - 
When I first gaze on his wonderful trains,
Which he daily builds with infinite pains,
I laugh, and I think to myself, "O gee!
Was ever a child as cute as he?"
But when he's gone to his cozy nest,
From the toil of his strenuous day to rest,
And when I gaze on his trains once more,
Where they lie, abandoned, across the floor,
And when the terrible task I face
Of putting each "Pullman" back in its place,
I groan a little, and think, "O gee!
Was ever a child as mean as he?"
The Puncture
by Oliver Herford

When I was just a Kitten small,
They gave to me a Rubber Ball
To roll upon the floor.
One day I tapped it with my paw
And pierced the rubber with my claw;
Now it will roll no more.