DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Moral Bully
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Yon whey-faced brother, who delights to wear
A weedy flux of ill-conditioned hair,
Seems of the sort that in a crowded place
One elbows freely into smallest space;
A timid creature, lax of knee and hip,
Whom small disturbance whitens round the lip;
One of those harmless spectacled machines,
The Holy-Week of Protestants convenes;
Whom school-boys question if their walk transcends
The last advices of maternal friends;
Whom John, obedient to his master's sign,
Conducts, laborious, up to ninety-nine,
While Peter, glistening with luxurious scorn,
Husks his white ivories like an ear of corn;
Dark in the brow and bilious in the cheek,
Whose yellowish linen flowers but once a week,
Conspicuous, annual, in their threadbare suits,
And the laced high-lows which they call their boots,
Well mayst thou shun that dingy front severe,
But him, O stranger, him thou canst not fear.
Be slow to judge, and slower to despise,
Man of broad shoulders and heroic size
The tiger, writhing from the boa's rings,
Drops at the fountain where the cobra stings.
In that lean phantom, whose extended glove
Points to the text of universal love,
Behold the master that can tame thee down
To crouch, the vassal of his Sunday frown;
His velvet throat against thy corded wrist,
His loosened tongue against thy doubled fist.
The MORAL BULLY, though he never swears,
Nor kicks intruders down his entry stairs,
Though meekness plants his backward-sloping hat,
And non-resistance ties his white cravat,
Though his black broadcloth glories to be seen
In the same plight with Shylock's gaberdine,
Hugs the same passion to his narrow breast
That heaves the cuirass on the trooper's chest,
Hears the same hell-hounds yelling in his rear
That chase from port the maddened buccaneer,
Feels the same comfort while his acrid words
Turn the sweet milk of kindness into curds,
Or with grim logic prove, beyond debate,
That all we love is worthiest of our hate,
As the scarred ruffian of the pirate's deck,
When his long swivel rakes the staggering wreck!
Heaven keep us all! Is every rascal clown
Whose arm is stronger free to knock us down?
Has every scarecrow, whose cachectic soul
Seems fresh from Bedlam, airing on parole,
Who, though he carries but a doubtful trace
Of angel visits on his hungry face,
From lack of marrow or the coins to pay,
Has dodged some vices in a shabby way,
The right to stick us with his cutthroat terms,
And bait his homilies with his brother worms?
The Lady And The Painter
by Robert Browning

She. Yet womanhood you reverence,
So you profess!
He. With heart and soul.
She. Of which fact this is evidence!
To help Art-study, for some dole
Of certain wretched shillings, you
Induce a woman, virgin too
To strip and stand stark-naked?
He. True.
She. Nor feel you so degrade her?
He. What
(Excuse the interruption), clings
Half-savage-like around your hat?
She. Ah, do they please you? Wild-bird-wings!
Next season, Paris-prints assert,
We must go feathered to the skirt:
My modiste keeps on the alert.
Owls, hawks, jays, swallows most approve.
He. Dare I speak plainly?
She. Oh, I trust!
He. Then, Lady Blanche, it less would move
In heart and soul of me disgust
Did you strip off those spoils you wear,
And stand, for thanks, not shillings, bare
To help Art like my Model there.
She well knew what absolved her, praise
In me for God's surpassing good,
Who granted to my reverent gaze
A type of purest womanhood.
You, clothed with murder of his best
Of harmless beings, stand the test!
What is it you know?
She. That you jest!
Our Indian Summer
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

1856
You 'll believe me, dear boys, 't is a pleasure to rise,
With a welcome like this in your darling old eyes;
To meet the same smiles and to hear the same tone
Which have greeted me oft in the years that have flown.
Were I gray as the grayest old rat in the wall,
My locks would turn brown at the sight of you all;
If my heart were as dry as the shell on the sand,
It would fill like the goblet I hold in my hand.
There are noontides of autumn when summer returns.
Though the leaves are all garnered and sealed in their urns,
And the bird on his perch, that was silent so long,
Believes the sweet sunshine and breaks into song.
We have caged the young birds of our beautiful June;
Their plumes are still bright and their voices in tune;
One moment of sunshine from faces like these
And they sing as they sung in the green-growing trees.
The voices of morning! how sweet is their thrill
When the shadows have turned, and the evening grows still!
The text of our lives may get wiser with age,
But the print was so fair on its twentieth page!
Look off from your goblet and up from your plate,
Come, take the last journal, and glance at its date:
Then think what we fellows should say and should do,
If the 6 were a 9 and the 5 were a 2.
Ah, no! for the shapes that would meet with as here,
From the far land of shadows, are ever too dear!
Though youth flung around us its pride and its charms,
We should see but the comrades we clasped in our arms.
A health to our future - a sigh for our past,
We love, we remember, we hope to the last;
And for all the base lies that the almanacs hold,
While we've youth in our hearts we can never grow old!
A Mother To The Sea.
by Charles Hamilton Musgrove

You are blue, you are blue like the sky,
Cruel and cold and blue,
And I turn from you, voiceless sea,
To a sky that is voiceless, too.
Upward the vast blue arch,
Downward the blue abyss,
With a line of foam where your lips
Meet in a passionless kiss.
But the silence is breaking my heart,
And tears cannot comfort me
With God in His cold blue sky,
And my boy in the cold blue sea.
Feelings Of A Noble Biscayan At One Of Those Funerals
by William Wordsworth

Yet, yet, Biscayans! we must meet our Foes
With firmer soul, yet labour to regain
Our ancient freedom; else 'twere worse than vain
To gather round the bier these festal shows.
A garland fashioned of the pure white rose
Becomes not one whose father is a slave:
Oh, bear the infant covered to his grave!
These venerable mountains now enclose
A people sunk in apathy and fear.
If this endure, farewell, for us, all good!
The awful light of heavenly innocence
Will fail to illuminate the infant's bier;
And guilt and shame, from which is no defense,
Descend on all that issues from our blood.
The Parasol
by Helen Leah Reed

You are the loveliest parasol
I ever saw, - and all my own, - 
What frilly frills! I feel as tall
As mother now. Here! take my doll.
Dolls are for children - ladies grown
Have parasols, and fans, and rings,
And all those pretty, shiny things.
Nurse calls you "sunshade," but I think
That is too plain a word, for see!
You are so satiny and pink
And there is such a curly kink
Here in your handle, there could be
No name too fine, I love you so,
I'll take you everywhere I go.
Next Sunday when to church I walk,
Above my head I'll hold you high.
Oh! how the other girls will talk,
And maybe some of them will mock,
"How proud she feels," as I pass by - 
I'd hold you up, straight down the aisle,
If only people wouldn't smile.
Existence
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

You are here, and you are wanted,
Though a waif upon life's stair;
Though the sunlit hours are haunted
With the shadowy shapes of care.
Still the Great One, the All-Seeing
Called your spirit into being - 
Gave you strength for any fate.
Since your life by Him was needed,
All your ways by Him are heeded - 
You can trust and you can wait.
You can wait to know the meaning
Of the troubles sent your soul;
Of the chasms intervening
'Twixt your purpose and your goal;
Of the sorrows and the trials,
Of the silence and denials,
Ofttimes answering to your pleas;
Of the stinted sweets of pleasure,
And of pain's too generous measure - 
You can wait the WHY of these.
Forth from planet unto planet,
You have gone, and you will go.
Space is vast, but we must span it;
For life's purpose is TO KNOW.
Earth retains you but a minute,
Make the best of what lies in it;
Light the pathway where you are.
There is nothing worth the doing
That will leave regret or rueing,
As you speed from star to star.
You are part of the Beginning,
You are parcel of To-day.
When He set His world to spinning
You were flung upon your way.
When the system falls to pieces,
When this pulsing epoch ceases,
When the IS becomes the WAS,
You will live, for you will enter
In the great Creative Centre,
In the All-Enduring Cause.
The Curse Of Cromwell
by William Butler Yeats

You ask what -- I have found, and far and wide I go:
Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's mur-
derous crew,
The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay,
And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen,
where are they?
And there is an old beggar wandering in his pride -- -
His fathers served their fathers before Christ was
crucified.
i(O what of that, O what of that,)
i(What is there left to say?)
All neighbourly content and easy talk are gone,
But there's no good complaining, for money's rant is
on.
He that's mounting up must on his neighbour mount,
And we and all the Muses are things of no account.
They have schooling of their own, but I pass their
schooling by,
What can they know that we know that know the
time to die?
i(O what of that, O what of that,)
i(What is there left to say?)
But there's another knowledge that my heart destroys,
As the fox in the old fable destroyed the Spartan boy's
Because it proves that things both can and cannot be;
That the swordsmen and the ladies can still keep com-
pany,
Can pay the poet for a verse and hear the fiddle sound,
That I am still their setvant though all are under-
ground.
i(O what of that, O what of that,)
i(What is there left to say?)
I came on a great house in the middle of the night,
Its open lighted doorway and its windows all alight,
And all my friends were there and made me welcome
too;
But I woke in an old ruin that the winds. howled
through;
And when I pay attention I must out and walk
Among the dogs and horses that understand my talk.
i(O what of that, O what of that,)
i(What is there left to say?)
You Ask Me, Why, Tho' Ill At Ease
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease,
Within this region I subsist,
Whose spirits falter in the mist,
And languish for the purple seas.
It is the land that freemen till,
That sober-suited Freedom chose,
The land, where girt with friends or foes
A man may speak the thing he will;
A land of settled government,
A land of just and old renown,
Where Freedom slowly broadens down
From precedent to precedent:
Where faction seldom gathers head,
But by degrees to fullness wrought,
The strength of some diffusive thought
Hath time and space to work and spread.
Should banded unions persecute
Opinion, and induce a time
When single thought is civil crime,
And individual freedom mute;
Tho' Power should make from land to land
The name of Britain trebly great--
Tho' every channel of the State
Should fill and choke with golden sand--
Yet waft me from the harbour-mouth,
Wild wind! I seek a warmer sky,
And I will see before I die
The palms and temples of the South.
Weltschmertz
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

You ask why I am sad to-day,
I have no cares, no griefs, you say?
Ah, yes, 't is true, I have no grief--
But--is there not the falling leaf?
The bare tree there is mourning left
With all of autumn's gray bereft;
It is not what has happened me,
Think of the bare, dismantled tree.
The birds go South along the sky,
I hear their lingering, long good-bye.
Who goes reluctant from my breast?
And yet--the lone and wind-swept nest.
The mourning, pale-flowered hearse goes by,
Why does a tear come to my eye?
Is it the March rain blowing wild?
I have no dead, I know no child.
I am no widow by the bier
Of him I held supremely dear.
I have not seen the choicest one
Sink down as sinks the westering sun.
Faith unto faith have I beheld,
For me, few solemn notes have swelled;
Love bekoned me out to the dawn,
And happily I followed on.
And yet my heart goes out to them
Whose sorrow is their diadem;
The falling leaf, the crying bird,
The voice to be, all lost, unheard--
Not mine, not mine, and yet too much
The thrilling power of human touch,
While all the world looks on and scorns
I wear another's crown of thorns.
Count me a priest who understands
The glorious pain of nail-pierced hands;
Count me a comrade of the thief
Hot driven into late belief.
Oh, mother's tear, oh, father's sigh,
Oh, mourning sweetheart's last good-bye,
I yet have known no mourning save
Beside some brother's brother's grave.
Welcome Home
by Nora Pembroke (Margaret Moran Dixon McDougall)

You are coming home with the breath of spring
Flying home to a love-lined nest,
Most loving care hath made it fair
Your hands will do the rest
And the bridal robe you have laid aside
And the vail all of lacy foam,
The maiden's wed, the tour is sped
So welcome, welcome home
The past is laid by with the bridal wreath
The bride has come home a wife,
And now we pray that blessings may
Crown all your wedded life
What shall be the blessing, my dearest dear,
When it's all that we have to give?
That peace and love, from God above,
Be yours while ye both shall live.
That high love that makes of the wife a queen,
Of a cottage a palace home,
The coarse web fine, life's water wine,
The fire-side chair a throne.
Love that drops like dew from heaven to fill
With all blessing your earthly cup;
That draws you nigh to Him Most High,
Bidding your souls look up
Unto Him who has ordered all your lot,
To the Hand that will give the best,
That bids you come up to His home
To be His wedding guest.
To The Viriginian Voyage
by Michael Drayton

You braue Heroique minds,
Worthy your Countries Name;
That Honour still pursue,
Goe, and subdue,
Whilst loyt'ring Hinds
Lurke here at home, with shame.
Britans, you stay too long,
Quickly aboard bestow you,
And with a merry Gale
Swell your stretch'd Sayle,
With Vowes as strong,
As the Winds that blow you.
Your Course securely steere,
West and by South forth keepe,
Rocks, Lee-shores, nor Sholes,
When EOLVS scowles,
You need not feare,
So absolute the Deepe.
And cheerefully at Sea,
Successe you still intice,
To get the Pearle and Gold,
And ours to hold,
VIRGINIA,
Earth's onely Paradise.
Where Nature hath in store
Fowle, Venison, and Fish,
And the Fruitfull'st Soyle,
Without your Toyle,
Three Haruests more,
All greater then your Wish.
And the ambitious Vine
Crownes with his purple Masse,
The cedar reaching hie
To kisse the Sky
The Cypresse, Pine
And vse-full Sassafras.
To whome, the golden Age
Still Natures lawes doth giue,
No other Cares that tend,
But Them to defend
From Winters rage,
That long there doth not liue.
When as the Lushious smell
Of that delicious Land,
Aboue the Seas that flowes,
The cleere Wind throwes,
Your Hearts to swell
Approaching the deare Strande.
In kenning of the Shore
(Thanks to God first giuen,)
O you the happy'st men,
Be Frolike then,
Let Cannons roare,
Frighting the wide Heauen.
And in Regions farre
Such Heroes bring yee foorth,
As those from whom We came,
And plant Our name,
Vnder that Starre
Not knowne vnto our North.
And as there Plenty growes
Of Lawrell euery where,
APOLLO'S Sacred tree,
You may it see,
A Poets Browes
To crowne, that may sing there.
Thy Voyages attend,
Industrious HACKLVIT,
Whose Reading shall inflame
Men to seeke Fame,
And much commend
To after-Times thy Wit.
Translation: From Horace, Book II. Ode X., beginning "Rectius vives, Licini," &c.
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

You better sure shall live, not evermore
Trying high seas; nor, while sea's rage you flee,
Pressing too much upon ill-harboured shore.
The golden mean who loves, lives safely free
From filth of foreworn house, and quiet lives,
Released from court, where envy needs must be.
The wind most oft the hugest pine tree grieves:
The stately towers come down with greater fall:
The highest hills the bolt of thunder cleaves.
Evil haps do fill with hope, good haps appall
With fear of change, the courage well prepared:
Foul winters, as they come, away they shall.
Though present times, and past, with evils be snared,
They shall not last:    with cithern silent Muse,
Apollo wakes, and bow hath sometime spared.
In hard estate, with stout shows, valour use,
The same man still, in whom wisdom prevails;
In too full wind draw in thy swelling sails.
Seven Times Two. Romance.
by Jean Ingelow

You bells in the steeple, ring, ring out your changes,
How many soever they be,
And let the brown meadow-lark's note as he ranges
Come over, come over to me.
Yet bird's clearest carol by fall or by swelling
No magical sense conveys,
And bells have forgotten their old art of telling
The fortune of future days.
"Turn again, turn again," once they rang cheerily,
While a boy listened alone;
Made his heart yearn again, musing so wearily
All by himself on a stone.
Poor bells! I forgive you; your good days are over,
And mine, they are yet to be;
No listening, no longing shall aught, aught discover:
You leave the story to me.
The foxglove shoots out of the green matted heather,
And hangeth her hoods of snow;
She was idle, and slept till the sunshiny weather:
O, children take long to grow.
I wish, and I wish that the spring would go faster,
Nor long summer bide so late;
And I could grow on like the foxglove and aster,
For some things are ill to wait.
I wait for the day when dear hearts shall discover,
While dear hands are laid on my head;
"The child is a woman, the book may close over,
For all the lessons are said."
I wait for my story - the birds cannot sing it,
Not one, as he sits on the tree;
The bells cannot ring it, but long years, O bring it!
Such as I wish it to be.
The Magic Flower
by Richard Le Gallienne

You bear a flower in your hand,
You softly take it through the air,
Lest it should be too roughly fanned,
And break and fall, for all your care.
Love is like that, the lightest breath
Shakes all its blossoms o'er the land,
And its mysterious cousin, Death,
Waits but to snatch it from your hand.
O some day, should your hand forget,
Your guardian eyes stray otherwhere,
Your cheeks shall all in vain be wet,
Vain all your penance and your prayer.
God gave you once this creature fair,
You two mysteriously met;
By Time's strange stream
There stood this Dream,
This lovely Immortality
Given your mortal eyes to see,
That might have been your darling yet;
But in the place
Of her strange face
Sorrow will stand forever more,
And Sorrow's hand be on your brow,
And vainly you shall watch the door
For her so lightly with you now,
And all the world be as before.
Ah; Spring shall sing and Summer bloom,
And flowers fill Life's empty room,
And all the singers sing in vain,
Nor bring you back your flower again.
O have a care! - for this is all:
Let not your magic blossom fall.
My Love's Gift.
by Juliana Horatia Ewing

You ask me what--since we must part--
You shall bring home to me;
Bring back a pure and faithful heart,
As true as mine to thee.
I ask not wealth nor fame,
I only ask for thee,
Thyself--and that dear self the same--
My love, bring back to me!
You talk of gems from foreign lands,
Of treasure, spoil, and prize.
Ah, love! I shall not search your hands,
But look into your eyes.
I ask not wealth nor fame,
I only ask for thee,
Thyself--and that dear self the same--
My love, bring back to me!
You speak of glory and renown,
With me to share your pride,
Unbroken faith is all the crown
I ask for as your bride.
I ask not wealth nor fame,
I only ask for thee,
Thyself--and that dear self the same--
My love, bring back to me!
You bid me with hope's eager gaze
Behold fair fortune come.
I only dream I see your face
Beside the hearth at home.
I ask not wealth nor fame,
I do but ask for thee!
Thyself--and that dear self the same--
May God restore to me!
From The Hon. Henry ----, To Lady Emma ----.
by Thomas Moore

Paris, March 30,1833.
You bid me explain, my dear angry Ma'amselle,
How I came thus to bolt without saying farewell;
And the truth is,--as truth you will have, my sweet railer,--
There are two worthy persons I always feel loath
To take leave of at starting,--my mistress and tailor,--
As somehow one always has scenes with them both;
The Snip in ill-humor, the Syren in tears,
She calling on Heaven, and he on the attorney,--
Till sometimes, in short, 'twixt his duns and his dears,
A young gentleman risks being stopt in his journey.
But to come to the point, tho' you think, I dare say.
That 'tis debt or the Cholera drives me away,
'Pon honor you're wrong;--such a mere bagatelle
As a pestilence, nobody now-a-days fears;
And the fact is, my love, I'm thus bolting, pell-mell,
To get out of the way of these horrid new Peers;[1]
This deluge of coronets frightful to think of;
Which England is now for her sins on the brink of;
This coinage of nobles,--coined all of 'em, badly,
And sure to bring Counts to a dis-count most sadly.
Only think! to have Lords over running the nation,
As plenty as frogs in a Dutch inundation;
No shelter from Barons, from Earls no protection,
And tadpole young Lords too in every direction,--
Things created in haste just to make a Court list of,
Two legs and a coronet all they consist of!
The prospect's quite frightful, and what Sir George Rose
(My particular friend) says is perfectly true,
That, so dire the alternative, nobody knows,
'Twixt the Peers and the Pestilence, what he's to do;
And Sir George even doubts,--could he choose his disorder,--
'Twixt coffin and coronet, which he would order.
This being the case, why, I thought, my dear Emma,
'Twere best to fight shy of so curst a dilemma;
And tho' I confess myself somewhat a villain,
To've left idol mio without an addio,
Console your sweet heart, and a week hence from Milan
I'll send you--some news of Bellini's last trio.
N.B.    Have just packt up my travelling set-out,
Things a tourist in Italy can't go without--
Viz., a pair of gants gras, from old Houbigant's shop,
Good for hands that the air of Mont Cenis might chap.
Small presents for ladies,--and nothing so wheedles
The creatures abroad as your golden-eyed needles.
A neat pocket Horace by which folks are cozened
To think one knows Latin, when--one, perhaps, doesn't;
With some little book about heathen mythology,
Just large enough to refresh one's theology;
Nothing on earth being half such a bore as
Not knowing the difference 'twixt Virgins and Floras.
Once more, love, farewell, best regards to the girls,
And mind you beware of damp feet and new Earls.
HENRY.
Remembrance.[A]
by Samuel Griswold Goodrich

You bid the minstrel strike the lute,
And wake once more a soothing tone 
Alas! its strings, untuned, are mute,
Or only echo moan for moan.
The flowers around it twined are dead,
And those who wreathed them there, are flown;
The spring that gave them bloom is fled,
And winter's frost is o'er them thrown.
Poor lute! forgot 'mid strife and care,
I fain would try thy strings once more, 
Perchance some lingering tone is there 
Some cherished melody of yore.
If flowers that bloom no more are here,
Their odors still around us cling 
And though the loved are lost-still dear,
Their memories may wake the string.
I strike but lo, the wonted thrill,
Of joy in sorrowing cadence dies:
Alas! the minstrel's hand is chill,
And the sad lute, responsive, sighs.
'Tis ever thus our life begins,
In Eden, and all fruit seems sweet 
We taste and knowledge, with our sins,
Creeps to the heart and spoils the cheat.
In youth, the sun brings light alone 
No shade then rests upon the sight 
But when the beaming morn is flown,
We see the shadows not the light
I once found music every where 
The whistle from the willow wrung 
The string, set in the window, there,
Sweet measures to my fancy flung.
But now, this dainty lute is dead 
Or answers but to sigh and wail,
Echoing the voices of the fled,
Passing before me dim and pale!
Yet angel forms are in that train,
And One upon the still air flings,
Of woven melody, a strain,
Down trembling from Her heaven-bent wings.
'Tis past that Speaking Form is flown 
But memory's pleased and listening ear,
Shall oft recall that choral tone,
To love and poetry so dear.
And far away in after time,
Shall blended Piety and Love
Find fond expression in the rhyme,
Bequeathed to earth by One above.
* * * * *
Poor lute! thy bounding pulse is still, 
Yet all thy silence I forgive,
That thus thy last thy dying thrill,
Would make Her gentle virtues live!