DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Song Of The Stars
by Clark Ashton Smith

From the final reach of the upper night
To the nether darks where the comets die,
From the outmost bourn of the reigns of light
To the central gloom of the midmost sky,
In our mazeful gyres we fly.
And our flight is a choral chant of flame,
That ceaseless fares to the outer void,
With the undersong of the peopled spheres,
The voices of comet and asteroid,
And the wail of the spheres destroyed.
Forever we sing to a god unseen -
In the dark shall our voices fail?
The void is his robe inviolate,
The night is his awful veil -
How our fires grow dim and pale!
From the ordered gyres goes ever afar
Our song of flame o'er the void unknown,
Where circles nor world, nor comet, nor star.
Shall it die ere it reach His throne?
On the shoreless deeps of the seas of gloom
Sailing, we venture afar and wide,
Where ever await the tempests of doom,
Where the silent maelstroms lurk and hide,
And the darkling reefs abide.
And the change and ruin of stars is a song
That rises and ebbs in a tide of fire -
A music whose notes are of dreadful flame,
Whose harmonies ever leap high'r
Where the suns and the worlds expire.
Is such music not fit for a god?
Yet ever the deep is a dark,
And ever the night is a void,
Nor brightens a word nor a mark
To show if our God may hark.
From the gyres of change goes ever afar
Our flaming chant o'er the deep unknown,
The song of the death of planet and star.
Shall it die ere it reach His throne?
In our shadows of light the planets sweep,
And endure for the span of our prime -
Globed atoms that hazard the termless deep
With races that bow to the law of Time,
And yet cherish a dream sublime.
And they cry to the god behind the veil.
Yet how should their voices pass the night,
The silence that waits in the rayless void,
If he hear not our music of light,
And the thundrous song of our might?
And they strive in the gloom for truth -
Yet how should they pierce the veil,
When we, with our splendors of flame,
In the darkness faint and fail,
Our fires how feeble and pale!
From the ordered gyres goes ever afar
Our song of flame o'er the void unknown,
Where circles nor world, nor comet, nor star,
Shall it die ere it reach His throne?
Faerie.
by Emma Lazarus

From the oped lattice glance once more abroad
While the ethereal moontide bathes with light
Hill, stream, and garden, and white-winding road.
All gracious myths born of the shadowy night
Recur, and hover in fantastic guise,
Airy and vague, before the drowsy sight.
On yonder soft gray hill Endymion lies
In rosy slumber, and the moonlit air
Breathes kisses on his cheeks and lips and eyes.
'Twixt bush and bush gleam flower-white limbs, left bare,
Of huntress-nymphs, and flying raiment thin,
Vanishing faces, and bright floating hair.
The quaint midsummer fairies and their kin,
Gnomes, elves, and trolls, on blossom, branch, and grass
Gambol and dance, and winding out and in
Leave circles of spun dew where'er they pass.
Through the blue ether the freed Ariel flies;
Enchantment holds the air; a swarming mass
Of myriad dusky, gold-winged dreams arise,
Throng toward the gates of sense, and so possess
The soul, and lull it to forgetfulness.
A King's Soliloquy
by Thomas Hardy

ON THE NIGHT OF HIS FUNERAL
From the slow march and muffled drum
And crowds distrest,
And book and bell, at length I have come
To my full rest.
A ten years' rule beneath the sun
Is wound up here,
And what I have done, what left undone,
Figures out clear.
Yet in the estimate of such
It grieves me more
That I by some was loved so much
Than that I bore,
From others, judgment of that hue
Which over-hope
Breeds from a theoretic view
Of regal scope.
For kingly opportunities
Right many have sighed;
How best to bear its devilries
Those learn who have tried!
I have eaten the fat and drunk the sweet,
Lived the life out
From the first greeting glad drum-beat
To the last shout.
What pleasure earth affords to kings
I have enjoyed
Through its long vivid pulse-stirrings
Even till it cloyed.
What days of drudgery, nights of stress
Can cark a throne,
Even one maintained in peacefulness,
I too have known.
And so, I think, could I step back
To life again,
I should prefer the average track
Of average men,
Since, as with them, what kingship would
It cannot do,
Nor to first thoughts however good
Hold itself true.
Something binds hard the royal hand,
As all that be,
And it is That has shaped, has planned
My acts and me.
May 1910.
Congenial Horror
by Charles Baudelaire

From this bizarre and livid sky
Tormented by your destiny,
Into your vacant spirit fly
What tho~ghts? respond, you libertine.
Voracious in my appetite
For the uncertain and unknown,
I do not whine for paradise
As Ovid did, expelled from Rome.
Skies tom apart like wind-swept sands,
You are the mirrors of my pride;
Your mourning clouds, so black and wide,
Are hearses that my dreams command,
And you reflect in flashing light
The Hell in which my heart delights.
Elysium
by John Kendall (Dum-Dum)

From the dust, and the drought, and the heat,
I am borne on the pinions of leave,
From the things that are bad to repeat
To the things that are good to receive.
From the glare of the day at its height
On a land that was blinding to see,
From the wearisome hiss of the night,
By a turn of the wheel I am free.
I have passed to the heart of the Hills,
For a season of halcyon hours,
'Mid the music of murmurous rills,
And the delicate odours of flowers;
And I walk in an exquisite shade,
Where the fern-tasselled boughs interlace;
And the verdurous fringe of the glade
Is a marvel of fairylike grace;
And with never an aim or a plan
I can wander in uttermost ease,
Where the only reminders of Man
Are the monkeys aloft in the trees;
Or, perchance, on the 'silvery mere,'
In a 'shallop' I lazily float,
With - it's possible - some one to steer,
Or with no one (which lightens the boat).
O the glorious gift of release
From the chains that encircle the thrall,
To be quiet, and cool, and at peace,
And to loaf, and do nothing at all!
I am clear of that infamous lark;
I am far from the blare of the Band;
And the bugles are silent, the bark
Of the Colonel is hushed in the land.
And - I say it again - I am free,
In the valleys of wandering bliss;
And most gratefully 'own, if there be
An Elysium on earth, it is this!'
The Year Of The Rose
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

From the depths of the green garden-closes
Where the summer in darkness dozes
Till autumn pluck from his hand
An hour-glass that holds not a sand;
From the maze that a flower-belt encloses
To the stones and sea-grass on the strand
How red was the reign of the roses
Over the rose-crowned land!
The year of the rose is brief;
From the first blade blown to the sheaf,
From the thin green leaf to the gold,
It has time to be sweet and grow old,
To triumph and leave not a leaf
For witness in winter's sight
How lovers once in the light
Would mix their breath with its breath,
And its spirit was quenched not of night,
As love is subdued not of death.
In the red-rose land not a mile
Of the meadows from stile to stile,
Of the valleys from stream to stream,
But the air was a long sweet dream
And the earth was a sweet wide smile
Red-mouthed of a goddess, returned
From the sea which had borne her and burned,
That with one swift smile of her mouth
Looked full on the north as it yearned,
And the north was more than the south.
For the north, when winter was long,
In his heart had made him a song,
And clothed it with wings of desire,
And shod it with shoon as of fire,
To carry the tale of his wrong
To the south-west wind by the sea,
That none might bear it but he
To the ear of the goddess unknown
Who waits till her time shall be
To take the world for a throne.
In the earth beneath, and above
In the heaven where her name is love,
She warms with light from her eyes
The seasons of life as they rise,
And her eyes are as eyes of a dove,
But the wings that lift her and bear
As an eagle's, and all her hair
As fire by the wind's breath curled,
And her passage is song through the air,
And her presence is spring through the world.
So turned she northward and came,
And the white-thorn land was aflame
With the fires that were shed from her feet,
That the north, by her love made sweet,
Should be called by a rose-red name;
And a murmur was heard as of doves,
And a music beginning of loves
In the light that the roses made,
Such light as the music loves,
The music of man with maid.
But the days drop one upon one,
And a chill soft wind is begun
In the heart of the rose-red maze
That weeps for the roseleaf days
And the reign of the rose undone
That ruled so long in the light,
And by spirit, and not by sight,
Through the darkness thrilled with its breath,
Still ruled in the viewless night,
As love might rule over death.
The time of lovers is brief;
From the fair first joy to the grief
That tells when love is grown old,
From the warm wild kiss to the cold,
From the red to the white-rose leaf,
They have but a season to seem
As rose-leaves lost on a stream
That part not and pass not apart
As a spirit from dream to dream,
As a sorrow from heart to heart.
From the bloom and the gloom that encloses
The death-bed of Love where he dozes
Till a relic be left not of sand
To the hour-glass that breaks in his hand;
From the change in the grey garden-closes
To the last stray grass of the strand,
A rain and ruin of roses
Over the red-rose land.
Lesley.
by Jean Blewett

From the little bald head to the two little feet,
You are winsome, and bonnie, and tender, and sweet,
But not for this do I love you.
You're wilful, cajoling, not fond of restraint,
A creature of moods - no tiresome saint - 
You're wise and you're wistful, and oh, you are quaint,
But not for this do I love you.
You're a rose of a maiden, the pink and the white
Of your face is to me a rare thing of delight,
But not for this do I love you.
That "agoo" on your lips is the tenderest thing,
And the eyes smiling at me, ye bonnie wee thing,
Are violets washed with the dewdrops of spring,
But not for this do I love you.
Come, nestle down close on my bosom, you dear,
The secret I'll whisper right into your ear,
Because you are you do I love you,
Because you are you, just you, oh, my own,
Because you are Lesley, this reason alone
Will do for us, darling, until you are grown,
Because you are you do I love you.
Eliza.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "Gilderoy."
I.
From thee, Eliza, I must go,
And from my native shore;
The cruel Fates between us throw
A boundless ocean's roar:
But boundless oceans roaring wide
Between my love and me,
They never, never can divide
My heart and soul from thee!
II.
Farewell, farewell, Eliza dear,
The maid that I adore!
A boding voice is in mine ear,
We part to meet no more!
The latest throb that leaves my heart,
While death stands victor by,
That throb, Eliza, is thy part,
And thine that latest sigh!
His Return To London
by Robert Herrick

From the dull confines of the drooping west
To see the day spring from the pregnant east,
Ravish'd in spirit, I come, nay more, I fly
To thee, blest place of my nativity!
Thus, thus with hallow'd foot I touch the ground,
With thousand blessings by thy fortune crown'd.
O fruitful genius! that bestowest here
An everlasting plenty, year by year.
O place! O people! Manners! fram'd to please
All nations, customs, kindreds, languages!
I am a free-born Roman; suffer then
That I amongst you live a citizen.
London my home is, though by hard fate sent
Into a long and irksome banishment;
Yet since call'd back, henceforward let me be,
O native country, repossess'd by thee!
For, rather than I'll to the west return,
I'll beg of thee first here to have mine urn.
Weak I am grown, and must in short time fall;
Give thou my sacred relics burial.
The Convention
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

From the Queen Bee mother, the mother Beast, and the mother Fowl in the fen,
A call went up to the human world, to Woman, the mother of men.
The call said, 'Come:    for we, the dumb, are given speech for a day,
And the things we have thought for a thousand years we are going at last to say.'
Much they marvelled, these women of earth, at the strange and curious call,
And some of them laughed, and some of them sneered, but they answered it one and all,
For they wanted to hear what never before was heard since the world began -
The spoken word of Beast and Bird, and the message it held for Man.
'A plea for shelter,' the woman said, 'or food in the wintry weathers,
Or a foolish request that we be dressed without their furs or feathers.
We will do what we can for the poor dumb things, but they must be sensible.'    Then
The meeting was called and a she-bear stood and voiced the thought of the fen.
'Now this is the message we give to you' (it was thus the she-bear spake):
'You the creatures of homes and shrines, and we of the wold and brake,
We have no churches, we have no schools, and our minds you question and doubt,
But we follow the laws which some Great Cause, alike for us all, laid out.
'We eat and we drink to live; we shun the things that poison and kill,
And we settle the problems of sex and birth by the law of the female will,
For never was one of us known by a male, or made to mother its kind,
Unless there went from our minds consent (or from what we call the mind).
'But you, the highest of all she-things, you gorge yourselves at your feasts,
And you smoke and drink in a way we think would lower the standard of beasts;
For a ring, a roof and a rag, you are bought by your males, to have and to hold,
And you mate and you breed without nature's need, while your hearts and your bodies are cold.
'All unwanted your offspring come, or you slay them before they are born;
And now the wild she-things of the earth have spoken and told their scorn.
We have no mind and we have no souls, maybe as you think -And still,
Never one of us ate or drank the things that poison and kill,
And never was one of us known by a male except by our wish and will.'
The Barcoo (The Squatters' Song)
by Henry Kendall

From the runs of the Narran, wide-dotted with sheep,
And loud with the lowing of cattle,
We speed for a land where the strange forests sleep
And the hidden creeks bubble and brattle!
Now call on the horses, and leave the blind courses
And sources of rivers that all of us know;
For, crossing the ridges, and passing the ledges,
And running up gorges, we'll come to the verges
Of gullies where waters eternally flow.
Oh! the herds they will rush down the spurs of the hill
To feed on the grasses so cool and so sweet;
And I think that my life with delight will stand still
When we halt with the pleasant Barcoo at our feet.
Good-bye to the Barwon, and brigalow scrubs,
Adieu to the Culgoa ranges,
But look for the mulga and salt-bitten shrubs,
Though the face of the forest-land changes.
The leagues we may travel down beds of hot gravel,
And clay-crusted reaches where moisture hath been,
While searching for waters, may vex us and thwart us,
Yet who would be quailing, or fainting, or failing?
Not you, who are men of the Narran, I ween!
When we leave the dry channels away to the south,
And reach the far plains we are journeying to,
We will cry, though our lips may be glued with the drouth,
Hip, hip, and hurrah for the pleasant Barcoo!
Nothing New.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

From the dawn of spring till the year grows hoary,
Nothing is new that is done or said,
The leaves are telling the same old story - 
"Budding, bursting, dying, dead."
And ever and always the wild bird's chorus
Is "coming, building, flying, fled."
Never the round earth roams or ranges
Out of her circuit, so old, so old,
And the smile o' the sun knows but these changes - 
Beaming, burning, tender, cold,
As Spring time softens or Winter estranges
The mighty heart of this orb of gold.
From our great sire's birth to the last morn's breaking
There were tempest, sunshine, fruit and frost,
And the sea was calm or the sea was shaking
His mighty main like a lion crossed,
And ever this cry the heart was making - 
Longing, loving, losing, lost.
Forever the wild wind wanders, crying,
Southerly, easterly, north and west,
And one worn song the fields are sighing,
"Sowing, growing, harvest, rest,"
And the tired thought of the world, replying
Like an echo to what is last and best,
Murmurs - "Rest."
Dora Versus Rose.
by Henry Austin Dobson

"The Case is proceeding."
From the tragic-est novels at Mudie's--
At least, on a practical plan--
To the tales of mere Hodges and Judys,
One love is enough for a man.
But no case that I ever yet met is
Like mine: I am equally fond
Of Rose, who a charming brunette is,
And Dora, a blonde.
Each rivals the other in powers--
Each waltzes, each warbles, each paints--
Miss Rose, chiefly tumble-down towers;
Miss Do., perpendicular saints.
In short, to distinguish is folly;
'Twixt the pair I am come to the pass
Of Macheath, between Lucy and Polly,--
Or Buridan's ass.
If it happens that Rosa I've singled
For a soft celebration in rhyme,
Then the ringlets of Dora get mingled
Somehow with the tune and the time;
Or I painfully pen me a sonnet
To an eyebrow intended for Do.'s,
And behold I am writing upon it
The legend "To Rose."
Or I try to draw Dora (my blotter
Is all overscrawled with her head),
If I fancy at last that I've got her,
It turns to her rival instead;
Or I find myself placidly adding
To the rapturous tresses of Rose
Miss Dora's bud-mouth, and her madding,
Ineffable nose.
Was there ever so sad a dilemma?
For Rose I would perish (pro tem.);
For Dora I'd willingly stem a--
(Whatever might offer to stem);
But to make the invidious election,--
To declare that on either one's side
I've a scruple,--a grain, more affection,
I cannot decide.
And, as either so hopelessly nice is,
My sole and my final resource
Is to wait some indefinite crisis,--
Some feat of molecular force,
To solve me this riddle conducive
By no means to peace or repose,
Since the issue can scarce be inclusive
Of Dora and Rose.
(Afterthought.)
But, perhaps, if a third (say a Norah),
Not quite so delightful as Rose,--
Not wholly so charming as Dora,--
Should appear, is it wrong to suppose,--
As the claims of the others are equal,--
And flight--in the main--is the best,--
That I might ... But no matter,--the sequel
Is easily guessed.
In Hospital - XIV - Ave Caeser!
by William Ernest Henley

From the winter's grey despair,
From the summer's golden languor,
Death, the lover of Life,
Frees us for ever.
Inevitable, silent, unseen,
Everywhere always,
Shadow by night and as light in the day,
Signs she at last to her chosen;
And, as she waves them forth,
Sorrow and Joy
Lay by their looks and their voices,
Set down their hopes, and are made
One in the dim Forever.
Into the winter's grey delight,
Into the summer's golden dream,
Holy and high and impartial,
Death, the mother of Life,
Mingles all men for ever.
The Waster
by Rudyard Kipling

From the date that the doors of his prep-school close
On the lonely little son
He is taught by precept, insult, and blows
The Things that Are Never Done.
Year after year, without favour or fear,
From seven to twenty-two,
His keepers insist he shall learn the list
Of the things no fellow can do.
(They are not so strict with the average Pict
And it isn't set to, etc.)
For this and not for the profit it brings
Or the good of his fellow-kind
He is and suffers unspeakable things
In body and soul and mind.
But the net result of that Primitive Cult,
Whatever else may be won,
Is definite knowledge ere leaving College
Of the Things that Are Never Done.
(An interdict which is strange to the Pict
And was never revealed to, etc.)
Slack by training and slow by birth,
Only quick to despise,
Largely assessing his neighbour's worth
By the hue of his socks or ties,
A loafer-in-grain, his foes maintain,
And how shall we combat their view
When, atop of his natural sloth, he holds
There are Things no Fellow can do?
(Which is why he is licked from the first by the Pict
And left at the post by, etc.)
The Breath of Light
by George William Russell

From the cool and dark-lipped furrows
breathes a dim delight
Aureoles of joy encircle
every blade of grass
Where the dew-fed creatures silent
and enraptured pass:
And the restless ploughman pauses,
turns, and wondering
Deep beneath his rustic habit
finds himself a king;
For a fiery moment looking
with the eyes of God
Over fields a slave at morning
bowed him to the sod.
Blind and dense with revelation
every moment flies,
And unto the Mighty Mother
gay, eternal, rise
All the hopes we hold, the gladness,
dreams of things to be.
One of all they generations,
Mother, hails to thee!
Hail! and hail! and hail for ever:
though I turn again
For they joy unto the human
vestures of pain.
I, thy child, who went forth radiant
in the golden prime
Find thee still the mother-hearted
through my night in time;
Find in thee the old enchantment,
there behind the veil
Where the Gods my brothers linger,
Hail! for ever, Hail!
--May 15, 1895
From the Midst of the Fire
by James Thomson -  (Bysshe Vanolis)

From the midst of the fire I fling
These arrows of fire to you:
If they sing, and burn, and sting,
You feel how I burn too;
But if they reach you there
Speed-spent, charred black and cold,
The fire burns out in the air,
The Passion will not be told.
Memorials Of A Tour On The Continent, 1820 - XII. - The Fall Of The Aar - Handec
by William Wordsworth

From the fierce aspect of this River, throwing
His giant body o'er the steep rock's brink,
Back in astonishment and fear we shrink:
But, gradually a calmer look bestowing,
Flowers we espy beside the torrent growing;
Flowers that peep forth from many a cleft and chink,
And, from the whirlwind of his anger, drink
Hues ever fresh, in rocky fortress blowing:
They suck from breath that, threatening to destroy,
Is more benignant than the dewy eve
Beauty, and life, and motions as of joy:
Nor doubt but He to whom yon Pine-trees nod
Their heads in sign of worship, Nature's God,
These humbler adorations will receive.
Nomads
by Victoria Mary Sackville-West

From the shores of the Atlantic to the gardens of Japan,
From the darkness of the Neva to the courts of Ispahan,
There is nothing that can hold us, hold our wandering caravan.
Leisurely is our encamping; nowhere pause in hasty flight.
Long enough to learn the secret, and the value, and the might,
Whether of the northern mountains or the southern lands of light.
And the riches of the regions will be ours from land to land,
Falling as a wiling booty under our marauding hand,
Rugs from Persia, gods from China, emeralds from Samarcand!
And the old forgotten empires, which have faded turn by turn,
From the shades emerging slowly to their ancient sway return,
And to their imperial manhood rise the ashes from the urn.
We have known Bzyantium's glory when the eagled flag was flown,
When the ruins were not ruins; eagled visions have I known
Of a spectral Roman emperor seated on a spectral throne.
We have tasted space and freedom, frontiers falling as we went,
Now with narrow bonds and limits never could we be content,
For we have abolished boundaries, straitened borders have we rent,
And a house no more confines us than the roving nomad's tent.
V-A-S-E, The
by James Jeffrey Roche

From the madding crowd they stand apart,
The maidens four and the Work of Art;
And none might tell from sight alone
In which had culture ripest grown,
The Gotham Million fair to see,
The Philadelphia Pedigree,
The Boston Mind of azure hue,
Or the soulful Soul from Kalamazoo,
For all loved Art in a seemly way,
With an earnest soul and a capital A.
*    *    *    *    *
Long they worshiped; but no one broke
The sacred stillness, until up spoke
The Western one from the nameless place,
Who blushing said, "What a lovely vace!"
Over three faces a sad smile flew,
And they edged away from Kalamazoo.
But Gotham's haughty soul was stirred
To crush the stranger with one small word.
Deftly hiding reproof in praise,
She cries, "'Tis, indeed, a lovely vaze!"
But brief her unworthy triumph when
The lofty one from the house of Penn,
With the consciousness of two grandpapas,
Exclaims, "It is quite a lovely vahs!"
And glances round with an anxious thrill,
Awaiting the word of Beacon Hill.
But the Boston maid smiles courteouslee,
And gently murmurs, "Oh, pardon me!
"I did not catch your remark, because
I was so entranced with that lovely vaws!"
Dies erit praegelida
Sinistra quum Bostonia.