DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Lang Road
by Violet Jacob

Below the braes o' heather, and far alang the glen,
The road rins southward, southward, that grips the souls o' men,
That draws their fitsteps aye awa' frae hearth and frae fauld,
That pairts ilk freen' frae ither, and the young frae the auld.
And whiles I stand at mornin' and whiles I stand at nicht,
To see it through the gaisty gloom, gang slippin oot o sicht;
There's mony a lad will ne'er come back amang his ain to lie,
An' its lang, lang waitin' till the time gangs by.
An far ayont the bit o' sky that lies abune the hills,
There is the black toon standin' mid the roarin' o' the mills.
Whaur the reek frae mony engines hangs 'atween it and the sun
An the lives are weary, weary, that are just begun.
Doon yon lang road that winds awa' my ain three sons they went,
They turned their faces southward frae the glens they aye had kent,
And twa will never see the hills wi' livin' een again,
An' it's lang, lang waitin' while I sit my lane.
For ane lies whaur the grass is hiech abune the gallant deid,
An ane whaur England's michty ships sail proud abune his heid,
They couldna' sleep mair saft at hame, the twa that sairved their king,
Were they laid aside their ain kirk yett, i' the flower o' the ling.
But whaur the road is twistin' through yon streets o' care an' sin,
My third braw son toils nicht and day for the gowd he fain would win,
Whaur ilka man grapes i' the dark to get his neebour's share,
An' it's lang, lang strivin' i' the mirk that's there.
The een o' love can pierce the mools that hide a sodger's grave,
An' love that doesna' heed the sod will naither hear the wave,
But it canna' see 'ayont the cloud that hauds my youngest doon
Wi' its mist o' greed an' sorrow i' the smokin' toon.
An whiles, when through the open door there fades the deein' licht,
I think I hear my ain twa men come up the road at nicht,
But him that bides the nearest seems the furthest aye frae me - 
And it's lang, lang listenin' till I hear the three!
Behold Vale! I Said, When I Shall Con
by William Wordsworth

"Beloved Vale!" I said, "when I shall con
Those many records of my childish years,
Remembrance of myself and of my peers
Will press me down: to think of what is gone
Will be an awful thought, if life have one."
But, when into the Vale I came, no fears
Distressed me; from mine eyes escaped no tears;
Deep thought, or dread remembrance, had I none.
By doubts and thousand petty fancies crost
I stood, of simple shame the blushing Thrall;
So narrow seemed the brooks, the fields so small!
A Juggler's balls old Time about him tossed;
I looked, I stared, I smiled, I laughed; and all
The weight of sadness was in wonder lost.
Every Man His Chimera
by Charles Baudelaire

Beneath a broad grey sky, upon a vast and dusty plain devoid of grass, and where not even a nettle or a thistle was to be seen, I met several men who walked bowed down to the ground.
Each one carried upon his back an enormous Chimera as heavy as a sack of flour or coal, or as the equipment of a Roman foot-soldier.
But the monstrous beast was not a dead weight, rather she enveloped and oppressed the men with her powerful and elastic muscles, and clawed with her two vast talons at the breast of her mount. Her fabulous head reposed upon the brow of the man like one of those horrible casques by which ancient warriors hoped to add to the terrors of the enemy.
I questioned one of the men, asking him why they went so. He replied that he knew nothing, neither he nor the others, but that evidently they went somewhere, since they were urged on by an unconquerable desire to walk.
Very curiously, none of the wayfarers seemed to be irritated by the ferocious beast hanging at his neck and cleaving to his back: one had said that he considered it as a part of himself. These grave and weary faces bore witness to no despair. Beneath the splenetic cupola of the heavens, their feet trudging through the dust of an earth as desolate as the sky, they journeyed onwards with the resigned faces of men condemned to hope for ever. So the train passed me and faded into the atmosphere of the horizon at the place where the planet unveils herself to the curiosity of the human eye.
During several moments I obstinately endeavoured to comprehend this mystery; but irresistible Indifference soon threw herself upon me, nor was I more heavily dejected thereby than they by their crushing Chimeras.
The Mind Of Man
by John Collings Squire, Sir

I
Beneath my skull-bone and my hair,
Covered like a poisonous well,
There is a land: if you looked there
What you saw you'd quail to tell.
You that sit there smiling, you
Know that what I say is true.
My head is very small to touch,
I feel it all from front to back,
An ear'd round that weighs not much,
Eyes, nose-holes, and a pulpy crack:
Oh, how small, how small it is!
How could countries be in this?
Yet, when I watch with eyelids shut,
It glimmers forth, now dark, now clear,
The city of Cis-Occiput,
The marshes and the writhing mere,
The land that every man I see
Knows in himself but not in me.
II
Upon the borders of the weald
(I walk there first when I step in)
Set in green wood and smiling field,
The city stands, unstained of sin;
White thoughts and wishes pure
Walk the streets with steps demure.
In its clean groves and spacious halls
The quiet-eyed inhabitants
Hold innocent sunny festivals
And mingle in decorous dance;
Things that destroy, distort, deface,
Come never to that lovely place.
Never could evil enter thither,
It could not live in that sweet air,
The shadow of an ill deed must wither
And fall away to nothing there.
You would say as there you stand
That all was beauty in the land.
*     *     *     *     *
But go you out beyond the gateway,
Cleave you the woods and pass the plain,
Cross you the frontier down, and straightway
The trees will end, the grass will wane,
And you will come to a wilderness
Of sticks and parch'd barrenness.
The middle of the land is this,
A tawny desert midmost set,
Barren of living things it is,
Saving at night some vampires flit
That nest them in the farther marish
Where all save vilest things must perish.
Here in this reedy marsh of green
And oily pools, swarm insects fat
And birds of prey and beasts obscene,
Things that the traveller shudders at,
All cunning things that creep and fly
To suck men's blood until they die.
Rarely from hence does aught escape
Into the world of outer light,
But now and then some sable shape
Outward will dash in sudden flight;
And men stand stonied or distraught
To know the loathly deed or thought.
But, ah! beyond the marsh you reach
A purulent place more vile than all,
A festering lake too foul for speech,
Rotten and black, with coils acrawl,
Where writhe with lecherous squeakings shrill
Horrors that make the heart stand still.
There, 'neath a heaven diseased, it lies,
The mere alive with slimy worms,
With perverse terrible infamies,
And murders and repulsive forms
That have no name, but slide here deep,
Whilst I, their holder, silence keep.
In Memory of Aurelio Saffi
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Beloved above all nations, land adored,
Sovereign in spirit and charm, by song and sword,
Sovereign whose life is love, whose name is light,
Italia, queen that hast the sun for lord,
Bride that hast heaven for bridegroom, how should night
Veil or withhold from faith's and memory's sight
A man beloved and crowned of thee and fame,
Hide for an hour his name's memorial might?
Thy sons may never speak or hear the name
Saffi, and feel not love's regenerate flame
Thrill all the quickening heart with faith and pride
In one whose life makes death and life the same.
They die indeed whose souls before them died:
Not he, for whom death flung life's portal wide,
Who stands where Dante's soul in vision came,
In Dante's presence, by Mazzini's side.
Tschatir Dagh (The Pilgrim)
by Adam Bernard Mickiewicz

Below me half a world I see outspread;
Above, blue heaven; around, peaks of snow;
And yet the happy pulse of life is slow,
I dream of distant places, pleasures dead.
The woods of Lithuania I would tread
Where happy-throated birds sing songs I know;
Above the trembling marshland I would go
Where chill-winged curlews dip and call o'er head.
A tragic, lonely terror grips my heart,
A longing for some peaceful, gentle place,
And memories of youthful love I trace.
Unto my childhood home I long to start,
And yet if all the leaves my name could cry
She would not pause nor heed as she passed by.
Below The Sunset's Range Of Rose
by Madison Julius Cawein

Below the sunset's range of rose,
Below the heaven's deepening blue,
Down woodways where the balsam blows,
And milkweed tufts hang, gray with dew,
A Jersey heifer stops and lows - 
The cows come home by one, by two.
There is no star yet: but the smell
Of hay and pennyroyal mix
With herb aromas of the dell,
Where the root-hidden cricket clicks:
Among the ironweeds a bell
Clangs near the rail-fenced clover-ricks.
She waits upon the slope beside
The windlassed well the plum trees shade,
The well curb that the goose-plums hide;
Her light hand on the bucket laid,
Unbonneted she waits, glad-eyed,
Her gown as simple as her braid.
She sees fawn-colored backs among
The sumacs now; a tossing horn
Its clashing bell of copper rung:
Long shadows lean upon the corn,
And slow the day dies, scarlet stung,
The cloud in it a rosy thorn.
Below the pleasant moon, that tips
The tree tops of the hillside, fly
The flitting bats; the twilight slips,
In firefly spangles, twinkling by,
Through which _he_ comes: Their happy lips
Meet - and one star leaps in the sky.
He takes her bucket, and they speak
Of married hopes while in the grass
The plum drops glowing as her cheek;
The patient cows look back or pass:
And in the west one golden streak
Burns as if God gazed through a glass.
To A Violet Found On All Saints' Day
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Belated wanderer of the ways of spring,
Lost in the chill of grim November rain,
Would I could read the message that you bring
And find in it the antidote for pain.
Does some sad spirit out beyond the day,
Far looking to the hours forever dead,
Send you a tender offering to lay
Upon the grave of us, the living dead?
Or does some brighter spirit, unforlorn,
Send you, my little sister of the wood,
To say to some one on a cloudful morn,
"Life lives through death, my brother, all is good?"
With meditative hearts the others go
The memory of their dead to dress anew.
But, sister mine, bide here that I may know,
Life grows, through death, as beautiful as you.
Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise The Rain
by Conrad Potter Aiken

Beloved, let us once more praise the rain.
Let us discover some new alphabet,
For this, the often praised; and be ourselves,
The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf,
The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone,
And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,
Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion,
Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done.
There is an oriole who, upside down,
Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,
Under a tree as dead and still as lead;
There is a single leaf, in all this heaven
Of leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig:
The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caught
Upon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs;
There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroom
Which catches three drops from the stooping cloud.
The timid bee goes back to the hive; the fly
Under the broad leaf of the hollyhock
Perpends stupid with cold; the raindark snail
Surveys the wet world from a watery stone...
And still the syllables of water whisper:
The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait
In the dark room; and in your heart I find
One silver raindrop, on a hawthorn leaf,
Orion in a cobweb, and the World.
Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms.
by Thomas Moore

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly today,
Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms,
Like fairy-gifts fading away,
Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art.
Let thy loveliness fade as it will.
And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself verdantly still.
It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,
And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear,
That the fervor and faith of a soul can be known,
To which time will but make thee more dear;
No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close,
As the sun-flower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look which she turned when he rose.
Cock-Crow
by Robert Herrick

Bell-man of night, if I about shall go
For to deny my Master, do thou crow!
Thou stop'st Saint Peter in the midst of sin;
Stay me, by crowing, ere I do begin;
Better it is, premonish'd, for to shun
A sin, than fall to weeping when 'tis done.
To The Beloved Dead - A Lament
by Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell

Beloved, thou art like a tune that idle fingers
Play on a window-pane.
The time is there, the form of music lingers;
But O thou sweetest strain,
Where is thy soul? Thou liest i' the wind and rain.
Even as to him who plays that idle air,
It seems a melody,
For his own soul is full of it, so, my Fair,
Dead, thou dost live in me,
And all this lonely soul is full of thee.
Thou song of songs!-not music as before
Unto the outward ear;
My spirit sings thee inly evermore,
Thy falls with tear on tear.
I fail for thee, thou art too sweet, too dear.
Thou silent song, thou ever voiceless rhyme,
Is there no pulse to move thee,
At windy dawn, with a wild heart beating time,
And falling tears above thee,
O music stifled from the ears that love thee?
Oh, for a strain of thee from outer air!
Soul wearies soul, I find.
Of thee, thee, thee, I am mournfully aware,
-Contained in one poor mind,
Who wert in tune and time to every wind.
Poor grave, poor lost beloved! but I burn
For some more vast To be.
As he that played that secret tune may turn
And strike it on a lyre triumphantly,
I wait some future, all a lyre for thee.
Ben Boyd's Tower
by Henry Lawson

Ben Boyd's Tower is watching,
Watching o'er the sea;
Ben Boyd's Tower is waiting
For her and me.
We do not know the day,
We do not know the hour,
But we know that we shall meet
By Ben Boyd's Tower.
Moonlight peoples Boyd Tower,
Mystic are its walls;
Lightly dance the lovers
In its haunted halls.
Ben Boyd's Tower is watching,
Watching o'er the foam;
Ben Boyd's Tower is waiting
Till the 'Wanderer' comes home.
O! he lay above us,
High above the surf,
Finger-nails and toe-caps
Digging in the turf.
We do not know the day,
We do not know the hour,
But Two and Two shall meet again
By Ben Boyd's Tower.
There's an ancient dame in Eden,
Basket on her arm,
And she goes down the Main Street
From the old, old farm.
Hood drawn on her forehead,
Withered dame and grey,
She never looks on Boyd Tower
Out across the Bay.
Bright eyes in the ballroom,
Coquetting with two,
Just for love of mischief,
As a girl will do.
A quarrel in the bar-room,
All within the hour,
And four men rode from Boyd Town
To Ben Boyd's Tower.
Song Of The Bell.  From The German.
by William Henry Giles Kingston

Bell! thou soundest merrily,
When the bridal party
To the church doth hie!
Bell! thou soundest solemnly,
When, on Sabbath morning,
Fields deserted lie!
Bell! thou soundest merrily;
Tellest thou at evening,
Bed-time draweth nigh!
Bell! thou soundest mournfully;
Tellest thou the bitter
Parting hath gone by!
Say! how canst thou mourn?
How canst thou rejoice?
Thou art but metal dull!
And yet all our sorrowings,
And all our rejoicings,
Thou dost feed them all!
God hath wonders many,
Which we cannot fathom,
Placed within thy form!
When the heart is sinking,
Thou alone canst raise it,
Trembling in the storm!
On A Noisy Polemic.
by Robert Burns

Below thir stanes lie Jamie's banes:
O Death, it's my opinion,
Thou ne'er took such a blethrin' b--ch
Into thy dark dominion!
The Rose
by Sara Teasdale

Beneath my chamber window
Pierrot was singing, singing;
I heard his lute the whole night thru
Until the east was red.
Alas, alas Pierrot,
I had no rose for flinging
Save one that drank my tears for dew
Before its leaves were dead.
I found it in the darkness,
I kissed it once and threw it,
The petals scattered over him,
His song was turned to joy;
And he will never know,
Alas, the one who knew it!
The rose was plucked when dusk was dim
Beside a laughing boy.
Love Disarmed
by Matthew Prior

Beneath a Myrtle's verdant Shade
As Cloe half asleep was laid,
Cupid perch'd lightly on Her Breast,
And in That Heav'n desir'd to rest:
Over her Paps his Wings He spread:
Between He found a downy Bed,
And nestl'd in His little Head.
Still lay the God: The Nymph surpriz'd,
Yet Mistress of her self, devis'd,
How She the Vagrant might inthral,
And Captive Him, who Captives All.
Her Boddice half way She unlac'd:
About his Arms She slily cast
The silken Bond, and held Him fast.
The God awak'd; and thrice in vain
He strove to break the cruel Chain;
And thrice in vain He shook his Wing,
Incumber'd in the silken String.
Flutt'ring the God, and weeping said,
Pity poor Cupid, generous Maid,
Who happen'd, being Blind, to stray,
And on thy Bosom lost his Way:
Who stray'd, alas! but knew too well,
He never There must hope to dwell.
Set an unhappy Pris'ner free,
Who ne'er intended Harm to Thee.
To Me pertains not, She replies,
To know or care where Cupid flies;
What are his Haunts, or which his Way;
Where He would dwell, or whither stray:
Yet will I never set Thee free:
For Harm was meant, and Harm to Me.
Vain Fears that vex thy Virgin Heart!
I'll give Thee up my Bow and Dart:
Untangle but this cruel Chain,
And freely let Me fly again.
Agreed: Secure my Virgin Heart:
Instant give up thy Bow and Dart:
The Chain I'll in Return unty;
And freely Thou again shalt fly.
Thus She the Captive did deliver:
The Captive thus gave up his Quiver.
The God disarm'd, e'er since that Day
Passes his Life in harmless Play;
Flies round, or sits upon her Breast,
A little, flutt'ring, idle Guest.
E'er since that Day the beauteous Maid
Governs the World in Cupid's stead;
Directs his Arrow as She wills;
Gives Grief, or Pleasure; spares, or kills.
Then And Now
by John Alexander McCrae

Beneath her window in the fragrant night
I half forget how truant years have flown
Since I looked up to see her chamber-light,
Or catch, perchance, her slender shadow thrown
Upon the casement; but the nodding leaves
Sweep lazily across the unlit pane,
And to and fro beneath the shadowy eaves,
Like restless birds, the breath of coming rain
Creeps, lilac-laden, up the village street
When all is still, as if the very trees
Were listening for the coming of her feet
That come no more; yet, lest I weep, the breeze
Sings some forgotten song of those old years
Until my heart grows far too glad for tears.
Ditty
by Thomas Hardy

(E. L G.)
Beneath a knap where flown
Nestlings play,
Within walls of weathered stone,
Far away
From the files of formal houses,
By the bough the firstling browses,
Lives a Sweet: no merchants meet,
No man barters, no man sells
Where she dwells.
Upon that fabric fair
"Here is she!"
Seems written everywhere
Unto me.
But to friends and nodding neighbours,
Fellow-wights in lot and labours,
Who descry the times as I,
No such lucid legend tells
Where she dwells.
Should I lapse to what I was
Ere we met;
(Such can not be, but because
Some forget
Let me feign it) none would notice
That where she I know by rote is
Spread a strange and withering change,
Like a drying of the wells
Where she dwells.
To feel I might have kissed -
Loved as true -
Otherwhere, nor Mine have missed
My life through.
Had I never wandered near her,
Is a smart severe severer
In the thought that she is nought,
Even as I, beyond the dells
Where she dwells.
And Devotion droops her glance
To recall
What bond-servants of Chance
We are all.
I but found her in that, going
On my errant path unknowing,
I did not out-skirt the spot
That no spot on earth excels,
Where she dwells!
1870.
Sonnet CLVII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Una candida cerva sopra l' erba.
THE VISION OF THE FAWN.
Beneath a laurel, two fair streams between,
At early sunrise of the opening year,
A milk-white fawn upon the meadow green,
Of gold its either horn, I saw appear;
So mild, yet so majestic, was its mien,
I left, to follow, all my labours here,
As miners after treasure, in the keen
Desire of new, forget the old to fear.
"Let none impede"--so, round its fair neck, run
The words in diamond and topaz writ--
"My lord to give me liberty sees fit."
And now the sun his noontide height had won
When I, with weary though unsated view,
Fell in the stream--and so my vision flew.
MACGREGOR.
A form I saw with secret awe, nor ken I what it warns;
Pure as the snow, a gentle doe it seem'd, with silver horns:
Erect she stood, close by a wood, between two running streams;
And brightly shone the morning sun upon that land of dreams!
The pictured hind fancy design'd glowing with love and hope;
Graceful she stepp'd, but distant kept, like the timid antelope;
Playful, yet coy, with secret joy her image fill'd my soul;
And o'er the sense soft influence of sweet oblivion stole.
Gold I beheld and emerald on the collar that she wore;
Words, too--but theirs were characters of legendary lore.
"C'sar's decree hath made me free; and through his solemn charge,
Untouch'd by men o'er hill and glen I wander here at large."
The sun had now, with radiant brow, climb'd his meridian throne,
Yet still mine eye untiringly gazed on that lovely one.
A voice was heard--quick disappear'd my dream--the spell was broken.
Then came distress: to the consciousness of life I had awoken.
FATHER PROUT.
The Two Trees
by William Butler Yeats

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling flowers they bear.
The changing colours of its fruit
Have dowered the stars with metry light;
The surety of its hidden root
Has planted quiet in the night;
The shaking of its leafy head
Has given the waves their melody,
And made my lips and music wed,
Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
There the Joves a circle go,
The flaming circle of our days,
Gyring, spiring to and fro
In those great ignorant leafy ways;
Remembering all that shaken hair
And how the winged sandals dart,
Thine eyes grow full of tender care:
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.
Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile.
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For ill things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old.
There, through the broken branches, go
The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, crying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,
Or else they stand and sniff the wind,
And shake their ragged wings; alas!
Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:
Gaze no more in the bitter glass.
To F--
by Edgar Allan Poe

Beloved! amid the earnest woes
That crowd around my earthly path,
(Drear path, alas! where grows
Not even one lonely rose),
My soul at least a solace hath
In dreams of thee, and therein knows
An Eden of bland repose.
And thus thy memory is to me
Like some enchanted far-off isle
In some tumultuous sea,
Some ocean throbbing far and free
With storm,but where meanwhile
Serenest skies continually
Just o'er that one bright inland smile.
Quits
by Edward Dyson

Ben Unger's wife was dark and small,
With little, round, black eyes;
Ben Unger started at her call,
For Ben had been made wise.
No dirge could crush his spirit but
The one by Annie sung;
No whip-lash ever made could cut
Like Annie Unger's tongue.
But Annie had a round, red cheek,
A figure like a plum,
And Henderson from up the creek
In courtship sly would come.
Then Annie voiced no angry call,
Here dirge remained unsung,
And very gentle was the fall
Of Annie Unger's tongue.
Ned Holman went to Ben upon
The hill in Colter's hay.
He said: 'your wife with Henderson
Ran off at ten to-day!'
Ben stood stock still. 'All right!' said he;
Then with a little laugh:
'That makes us quits at last. 'Twas me
That stole his brindle calf!'