DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Boy On The Barricade.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Sur une barricade.")
[June, 1871.]
Like Casabianca on the devastated deck,
In years yet younger, but the selfsame core.
Beside the battered barricado's restless wreck,
A lad stood splashed with gouts of guilty gore,
But gemmed with purest blood of patriot more.
Upon his fragile form the troopers' bloody grip
Was deeply dug, while sharply challenged they:
"Were you one of this currish crew?" - pride pursed his lip,
As firm as bandog's, brought the bull to bay - 
While answered he: "I fought with others. Yea!"
"Prepare then to be shot! Go join that death-doomed row."
As paced he pertly past, a volley rang - 
And as he fell in line, mock mercies once more flow
Of man's lead-lightning's sudden scathing pang,
But to his home-turned thoughts the balls but sang.
"Here's half-a-franc I saved to buy my mother's bread!" - 
The captain started - who mourns not a dear,
The dearest! mother! - "Where is she, wolf-cub?" he said
Still gruffly. "There, d'ye see? not far from here."
"Haste! make it hers! then back to swell their bier."
He sprang aloof as springald from detested school,
Or ocean-rover from protected port.
"The little rascal has the laugh on us! no fool
To breast our bullets!" - but the scoff was short,
For soon! the rogue is racing from his court;
And with still fearless front he faces them and calls:
"READY! but level low - she's kissed these eyes!"
From cooling hands of men each rifle falls,
And their gray officer, in grave surprise,
Life grants the lad whilst his last comrade dies.
Brave youth! I know not well what urged thy act,
Whether thou'lt pass in palace, or die rackt;
But then, shone on the guns, a sublime soul. - 
A Bayard-boy's, bound by his pure parole!
Honor redeemed though paid by parlous price,
Though lost be sunlit sports, wild boyhood's spice,
The Gates, the cheers of mates for bright device!
Greeks would, whilom, have choicely clasped and circled thee,
Set thee the first to shield some new Thermopylae;
Thy deed had touched and tuned their true Tyrtaeus tongue,
And staged by Aeschylus, grouped thee grand gods among.
And thy lost name (now known no more) been gilt and graved
On cloud-kissed column, by the sweet south ocean laved.
From us no crown! no honors from the civic sheaf - 
Purely this poet's tear-bejewelled, aye-green leaf!
H.L.W.
Under the Figtree
by Henry Kendall

Like drifts of balm from cedared glens, those darling memories come,
With soft low songs, and dear old tales, familiar to our home.
Then breathe again that faint refrain, so tender, sad, and true,
My soul turns round with listening eyes unto the harp and you!
The fragments of a broken Past are floating down the tide,
And she comes gleaming through the dark, my love, my life, my bride!
Oh! sit and sing I know her well, that phantom deadly fair
With large surprise, and sudden sighs, and streaming midnight hair!
I know her well, for face to face we stood amongst the sheaves,
Our voices mingling with a mist of music in the leaves!
I know her well, for hand in hand we walked beside the sea,
And heard the huddling waters boom beneath this old Figtree.
God help the man that goes abroad amongst the windy pines,
And wanders, like a gloomy bat, where never morning shines!
That steals about amidst the rout of broken stones and graves,
When round the cliffs the merry skiffs go scudding through the waves;
When, down the bay, the children play, and scamper on the sand,
And Life and Mirth illume the Earth, and Beauty fills the Land!
God help the man! He only hears and fears the sleepless cries
Of smitten Love of homeless Love and moaning Memories.
Oh! when a rhyme of olden time is sung by one so dear,
I feel again the sweetest pain I've known for many a year;
And from a deep, dull sea of sleep faint fancies come to me,
And I forget how lone we sit beneath this old Figtree.
The Sonnets CXVIII - Like as, to make our appetite more keen
by William Shakespeare

Like as, to make our appetite more keen,
With eager compounds we our palate urge;
As, to prevent our maladies unseen,
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge;
Even so, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;
And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness
To be diseas'd, ere that there was true needing.
Thus policy in love, to anticipate
The ills that were not, grew to faults assur'd,
And brought to medicine a healthful state
Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cur'd;
But thence I learn and find the lesson true,
Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.
The Reply. (The Reproof.)
by Robert Burns

Like Esop's lion, Burns says, sore I feel
All others' scorn, but damn that ass's heel.
Autumn Wild-Flowers
by Madison Julius Cawein

Like colored lanterns swung in Elfin towers,
Wild morning-glories light the tangled ways,
And, like the rosy rockets of the Fays,
Burns the sloped crimson of the cardinal-flowers.
Sonnet--The Love Of Narcissus
by Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell

Like him who met his own eyes in the river,
The poet trembles at his own long gaze
That meets him through the changing nights and days
From out great Nature; all her waters quiver
With his fair image facing him for ever;
The music that he listens to betrays
His own heart to his ears; by trackless ways
His wild thoughts tend to him in long endeavour.
His dreams are far among the silent hills;
His vague voice calls him from the darkened plain
With winds at night; strange recognition thrills
His lonely heart with piercing love and pain;
He knows his sweet mirth in the mountain rills,
His weary tears that touch him with the rain.
The End
by Alfred Lichtenstein

Like a white fungus, a lump of wind covers
The green corpse of the lost world.
Frozen rivers form an iron dam
Which holds together the rotten remains.
In a small rainy corner stands
The last city in stony patience.
A dead skull lies - like a prayer - 
Slanted on the body, the black penitential bench.
Jenny Dead
by Richard Le Gallienne

Like a flower in the frost
Sweet Jenny lies,
With her frail hands calmly crossed,
And close-shut eyes.
Bring a candle, for the room
Is dark and cold,
Antechamber of the tomb - 
O grief untold!
Like a snowdrift is her bed,
Dinted the snow,
Faint frozen lines from foot to head, - 
She lies below.
Turn from off her shrouded face
The frigid sheet....
Death hath doubled all her grace - 
O Jenny, sweet!
In Hospital - VI - After
by William Ernest Henley

Like as a flamelet blanketed in smoke,
So through the anaesthetic shows my life;
So flashes and so fades my thought, at strife
With the strong stupor that I heave and choke
And sicken at, it is so foully sweet.
Faces look strange from space - and disappear.
Far voices, sudden loud, offend my ear -
And hush as sudden.    Then my senses fleet:
All were a blank, save for this dull, new pain
That grinds my leg and foot; and brokenly
Time and the place glimpse on to me again;
And, unsurprised, out of uncertainty,
I wake - relapsing - somewhat faint and fain,
To an immense, complacent dreamery.
Quatrains.
by Charles Hamilton Musgrove

The Sky Line.
Like black fangs in a cruel ogre's jaw
The grim piles lift against the sunset sky;
Down drops the night, and shuts the horrid maw--
I listen, breathless, but there comes no cry.
Defeat.
He sits and looks into the west
Where twilight gathers, wan and gray,
A knight who quit the Golden Quest,
And flung Excalibur away.
To an Amazon.
O! twain in spirit, we shall know
Thy like no more, so fierce, so mild,
One breast shorn clean to rest the bow,
One milk-full for thy warrior child.
The Old Mother.
Life is like an old mother whom trouble and toil
Have sufficed the best part of her nature to spoil,
Whom her children, the Passions, so worry and vex
That the good are forgot while the evil perplex.
The Call.
When the north wind, riding o'er the uplands,
Shouted to the red leaves: "I am Death!"
Was it fear that sent them all a-flying,
Sighing, flying o'er the withered heath?
Life.
Life is just a web of doubt
Where, with iridescent gleams,
Flickers in or struggles out
Love, the golden moth of dreams.
Revelation.
I called your name, Man-in-the-Grave,
And straight her lips grew cold on mine,
And then I knew although I have
Her hand, her heart and soul are thine.
Tears of Men.
Men shed their blood for honor or renown,
For freedom's sake to nameless graves go down,
But there's one cause alone 'neath heaven above
For which they shed their tears, and that is--Love.
Letter In Verse
by John Clare

Like boys that run behind the loaded wain
For the mere joy of riding back again,
When summer from the meadow carts the hay
And school hours leave them half a day to play;
So I with leisure on three sides a sheet
Of foolscap dance with poesy's measured feet,
Just to ride post upon the wings of time
And kill a care, to friendship turned in rhyme.
The muse's gallop hurries me in sport
With much to read and little to divert,
And I, amused, with less of wit than will,
Run till I tire.--And so to cheat her still.
Like children running races who shall be
First in to touch the orchard wall or tree,
The last half way behind, by distance vext,
Turns short, determined to be first the next;
So now the muse has run me hard and long--
I'll leave at once her races and her song;
And, turning round, laugh at the letter's close
And beat her out by ending it in prose.
The Grave Of Shelley
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Like burnt-out torches by a sick man's bed
Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone;
Here doth the little night-owl make her throne,
And the slight lizard show his jewelled head.
And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red,
In the still chamber of yon pyramid
Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid,
Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead.
Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb
Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep,
But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb
In the blue cavern of an echoing deep,
Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom
Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep.
ROME.
Like Crusoe, Walking By The Lonely Strand
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Like Crusoe, walking by the lonely strand
And seeing a human footprint on the sand,
Have I this day been startled, finding here,
Set in brown mould and delicately clear,
Spring's footprint--the first crocus of the year!
O sweet invasion!    Farewell solitude!
Soon shall wild creatures of the field and wood
Flock from all sides with much ado and stir,
And make of me most willing prisoner!
A. B. A. Lines Written by Louisa M. Alcott to Her Father
by Louisa May Alcott

Like Bunyan's pilgrim with his pack,
Forth went the dreaming youth
To seek, to find, and make his own
Wisdom, virtue, and truth.
Life was his book, and patiently
He studied each hard page;
By turns reformer, outcast, priest,
Philosopher and sage.
Christ was his Master, and he made
His life a gospel sweet;
Plato and Pythagoras in him
Found a disciple meet.
The noblest and best his friends,
Faithful and fond, though few;
Eager to listen, learn, and pay
The love and honor due.
Power and place, silver and gold,
He neither asked nor sought;
Only to serve his fellowmen,
With heart and word and thought.
A pilgrim still, but in his pack
No sins to frighten or oppress;
But wisdom, morals, piety,
To teach, to warn and bless.
The world passed by, nor cared to take
The treasure he could give;
Apart he sat, content to wait
And beautifully live;
Unsaddened by long, lonely years
Of want, neglect, and wrong,
His soul to him a kingdom was,
Steadfast, serene, and strong.
Magnanimous and pure his life,
Tranquil its happy end;
Patience and peace his handmaids were,
Death an immortal friend.
For him no monuments need rise,
No laurels make his pall;
The mem'ry of the good and wise
Outshines, outlives them all.
A Hero
by Helen Leah Reed

Like many another I have crossed
Oftener than once the broad Atlantic,
And - feeling qualms when tempest-tossed,
Have shuddered at the waves gigantic,
Fearing that really nevermore
I'd find myself again ashore.
Then when - upset - and scarce awake,
In moments of perturbed reflection,
My wandering thoughts would slowly take
Time and again the same direction.
I'd think of that adventurous man,
Who crossed the sea - first of my clan.
'Tis not for me to hope to find
Upon my family tree's broad branches
Ancestors wholly to my mind;
I know that I am taking chances
In digging them up from the past
To deck this hardy tree at last.
Indeed I would not waste my breath,
And even less my ink and paper,
To prove from Queen Elizabeth
Is my descent (some cut this caper),
Nor in King Alfred root my tree - 
Here's jocund genealogy.
A Governor or two, of course, - 
Or even a Colonial preacher
I'd not despise, - nor yet perforce
A good Selectman, stern of feature,
Provided they came early here.
Such ancestors to me are dear.
Yet of them all the man I hold
A mighty hero - none seems greater - 
Is he - that honest man and bold - 
Whether Psalm-singer, or bear-baiter,
First of my name to reach the strand,
Of this almost unpeopled land.
He may have been of high estate,
He may have been a simple yeoman,
Undaunted by an adverse fate,
Brave was he as the bravest Roman.
At naught he quailed, his heart was stout,
When he for the New World set out.
Compared with mine - a little skiff
His boat was, on the untracked ocean,
Comforts were scarce, and breezes stiff - 
No luxuries, - though I've a notion
Billows were just as high as now,
While Danger sat upon the prow.
Just where would be his landing-place.
He hardly knew when waves he tossed on
While my woes at sea efface
By merely murmuring, "Home is Boston."
Yet he had left his all behind
In the new world his all to find.
"R-E-E-D" - "E-I" - "E-A,"
Just how we spell it need not matter.
The name we honor here today
Each clan may claim with equal clatter
British, euphonious, clear and short,
Rede me a name of better sort!
Read at a meeting of a Genealogical Society.
Life's Opera
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Like an opera-house is the world, I ween,
Where the passionate lover of music is seen
In the balcony near the roof:
While the very best seat in the first stage-box
Is filled by the person who laughs and talks
Through the harmony's warp and woof.
Prefixed to Christopher Middleton's Legend of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester (1600). - To his friend, Master Chr. M. his Booke.
by Michael Drayton

Like as a man, on some aduenture bound
His honest friendes, their kindnes to expresse,
T'incourage him of whome the maine is own'd;
Some venture more, and some aduenture lesse,
That if the voyage (happily) be good:
They his good fortune freely may pertake;
If otherwise it perrish in the flood,
Yet like good friends theirs perish'd for his sake.
On thy returne I put this little forth,
My chaunce with thine indifferently to proue,
Which though (I know) not fitting with thy worth,
Accept it yet since it proceedes from loue;
And if thy fortune prosper, I may see
I haue some share, though most returne to thee.
The Wolf
by Emily Pauline Johnson

Like a grey shadow lurking in the light,
He ventures forth along the edge of night;
With silent foot he scouts the coulie's rim
And scents the carrion awaiting him.
His savage eyeballs lurid with a flare
Seen but in unfed beasts which leave their lair
To wrangle with their fellows for a meal
Of bones ill-covered. Sets he forth to steal,
To search and snarl and forage hungrily;
A worthless prairie vagabond is he.
Luckless the settler's heifer which astray
Falls to his fangs and violence a prey;
Useless her blatant calling when his teeth
Are fast upon her quivering flank - beneath
His fell voracity she falls and dies
With inarticulate and piteous cries,
Unheard, unheeded in the barren waste,
To be devoured with savage greed and haste.
Up the horizon once again he prowls
And far across its desolation howls;
Sneaking and satisfied his lair he gains
And leaves her bones to bleach upon the plains.
Sonnet 1
by Michael Drayton

Like an aduenturous Sea-farer am I,
Who hath some long and dang'rous Voyage beene,
And call'd to tell of his Discouerie,
How farre he sayl'd, what Countries he had seene,
Proceeding from the Port whence he put forth,
Shewes by his Compasse, how his Course he steer'd,
When East, when West, when South, and when by North,
As how the Pole to eu'ry place was rear'd,
What Capes he doubled, of what Continent,
The Gulphes and Straits, that strangely he had past,
Where most becalm'd, wherewith foule Weather spent,
And on what Rocks in perill to be cast?
Thus in my Loue, Time calls me to relate
My tedious Trauels, and oft-varying Fate.
Samuel Pepys
by Rudyard Kipling

Like as the Oak whose roots descend
Through earth and stillness seeking food
Most apt to furnish in the end
That dense, indomitable wood
Which, felled, may arm a seaward flank
Of Ostia's mole or, bent to frame
The beaked Liburnian's triple bank,
Carry afar the Roman name;
But which, a tree, the season moves
Through gentler Gods than Wind or Tide,
Delightedly to harbour doves,
Or take some clasping vine for bride;
So this man, prescient to ensure
(Since even now his orders hold)
A little State might ride secure
At sea from foes her sloth made bold,,
Turned in his midmost harried round,
As Venus drove or Liber led,
And snatched from any shrine he found
The Stolen Draught, the Secret Bread.
Nor these alone. His life betrayed
No gust unslaked, no pleasure missed.
He called the obedient Nine to aid
The varied chase. And Clio kissed;
Bidding him write each sordid love,
Shame, panic, stratagem, and lie
In full, that sinners undiscov-
ered, like ourselves, might say:, ''Tis I!'
Landscape
by Alfred Lichtenstein

Like old bones in the pot
Of noon the damned streets lie there.
It's a long time since I saw you here.
A young man pulls at a girl's pigtail.
And a couple of dogs wallow in filth.
I would like to go arm and arm with you.
The sky is gray wrapping paper
On which the sun sticks - a spot of butter.
Sonnet - The Love Of Narcissus
by Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell

Like him who met his own eyes in the river,
The poet trembles at his own long gaze
That meets him through the changing nights and days
From out great Nature; all her waters quiver
With his fair image facing him for ever;
The music that he listens to betrays
His own heart to his ears; by trackless ways
His wild thoughts tend to him in long endeavour.
His dreams are far among the silent hills;
His vague voice calls him from the darkened plain
With winds at night; strange recognition thrills
His lonely heart with piercing love and pain;
He knows his sweet mirth in the mountain rills,
His weary tears that touch him with the rain.
A Ballad of Bath
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Like a queen enchanted who may not laugh or weep,
Glad at heart and guarded from change and care like ours,
Girt about with beauty by days and nights that creep
Soft as breathless ripples that softly shoreward sweep,
Lies the lovely city whose grace no grief deflowers.
Age and grey forgetfulness, time that shifts and veers,
Touch not thee, our fairest, whose charm no rival nears,
Hailed as England's Florence of one whose praise gives grace,
Landor, once thy lover, a name that love reveres:
Dawn and noon and sunset are one before thy face.
Dawn whereof we know not, and noon whose fruit we reap,
Garnered up in record of years that fell like flowers,
Sunset liker sunrise along the shining steep
Whence thy fair face lightens, and where thy soft springs leap,
Crown at once and gird thee with grace of guardian powers
Loved of men beloved of us, souls that fame inspheres,
All thine air hath music for him who dreams and hears;
Voices mixed of multitudes, feet of friends that pace,
Witness why for ever, if heaven's face clouds or clears,
Dawn and noon and sunset are one before thy face.
Peace hath here found harbourage mild as very sleep:
Not the hills and waters, the fields and wildwood bowers,
Smile or speak more tenderly, clothed with peace more deep,
Here than memory whispers of days our memories keep
Fast with love and laughter and dreams of withered hours.
Bright were these as blossom of old, and thought endears
Still the fair soft phantoms that pass with smiles or tears,
Sweet as roseleaves hoarded and dried wherein we trace
Still the soul and spirit of sense that lives and cheers:
Dawn and noon and sunset are one before thy face.
City lulled asleep by the chime of passing years,
Sweeter smiles thy rest than the radiance round thy peers;
Only love and lovely remembrance here have place.
Time on thee lies lighter than music on men's ears;
Dawn and noon and sunset are one before thy face.
Milton.
by James McIntyre

Like mightiest organ in full tone,
Melodious, grand, is great Milton,
He did in lofty measures tell
How Satan, great archangel, fell,
When from heaven downward hurled;
And how he ruined this our world,
So full of guile he did deceive
Our simple hearted parent Eve.
He shows how pardon is obtained
And paradise may be regained.
To ''. Upon The Birth Of Her First-Born Child, March 1833
by William Wordsworth

"Tum porro puer, ut saevis projectus ab undis
Navita, nudus humi jacet, etc." Lucretius.
Like a shipwrecked Sailor tost
By rough waves on a perilous coast,
Lies the Babe, in helplessness
And in tenderest nakedness,
Flung by labouring nature forth
Upon the mercies of the earth.
Can its eyes beseech? no more
Than the hands are free to implore:
Voice but serves for one brief cry;
Plaint was it? or prophecy
Of sorrow that will surely come?
Omen of man's grievous doom!
But, O Mother! by the close
Duly granted to thy throes;
By the silent thanks, now tending
Incense-like to Heaven, descending
Now to mingle and to move
With the gush of earthly love,
As a debt to that frail Creature,
Instrument of struggling Nature
For the blissful calm, the peace
Known but to this 'one' release,
Can the pitying spirit doubt
That for human-kind springs out
From the penalty a sense
Of more than mortal recompense?
As a floating summer cloud,
Though of gorgeous drapery proud,
To the sun-burnt traveler,
Or the stooping labourer,
Oft-times makes its bounty known
By its shadow round him thrown;
So, by chequerings of sad cheer,
Heavenly Guardians, brooding near,
Of their presence tell, too bright
Haply for corporeal sight!
Ministers of grace divine
Feelingly their brows incline
O'er this seeming Castaway
Breathing, in the light of day,
Something like the faintest breath
That has power to baffle death,
Beautiful, while very weakness
Captivates like passive meekness.
And, sweet Mother! under warrant
Of the universal Parent,
Who repays in season due
Them who have, like thee, been true
To the filial chain let down
From his everlasting throne,
Angels hovering round thy couch,
With their softest whispers vouch,
That, whatever griefs may fret,
Cares entangle, sins beset,
This thy First-born, and with tears
Stain her cheek in future years,
Heavenly succour, not denied
To the babe, whate'er betide,
Will to the woman be supplied!
Mother! blest be thy calm ease;
Blest the starry promises,
And the firmament benign
Hallowed be it, where they shine!
Yes, for them whose souls have scope
Ample for a winged hope,
And can earthward bend an ear
For needful listening, pledge is here,
That, if thy new-born Charge shall tread
In thy footsteps, and be led
By that other Guide, whose light
Of manly virtues, mildly bright,
Gave him first the wished-for part
In thy gentle virgin heart;
Then, amid the storms of life
Presignified by that dread strife
Whence ye have escaped together,
She may look for serene weather;
In all trials sure to find
Comfort for a faithful mind;
Kindlier issues, holier rest,
Than even now await her prest,
Conscious Nursling, to thy breast!
A Man Young And Old:- Human Dignity
by William Butler Yeats

Like the moon her kindness is,
If kindness I may call
What has no comprehension in't,
But is the same for all
As though my sorrow were a scene
Upon a painted wall.
So like a bit of stone I lie
Under a broken tree.
I could recover if I shrieked
My heart's agony
To passing bird, but I am dumb
From human dignity.
To Rosa.
by Thomas Moore

Like one who trusts to summer skies,
And puts his little bark to sea,
Is he who, lured by smiling eyes,
Consigns his simple heart to thee.
For fickle is the summer wind,
And sadly may the bark be tost;
For thou art sure to change thy mind,
And then the wretched heart is lost!