DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
On Cutting Down The Thorn At Market-Hill.[1]
by Jonathan Swift

At Market-Hill, as well appears
By chronicle of ancient date,
There stood for many hundred years
A spacious thorn before the gate.
Hither came every village maid,
And on the boughs her garland hung,
And here, beneath the spreading shade,
Secure from satyrs sat and sung.
Sir Archibald,[2] that valorous knight.
The lord of all the fruitful plain,
Would come to listen with delight,
For he was fond of rural strain.
(Sir Archibald, whose favourite name
Shall stand for ages on record,
By Scottish bards of highest fame,
Wise Hawthornden and Stirling's lord.[3])
But time with iron teeth, I ween,
Has canker'd all its branches round;
No fruit or blossom to be seen,
Its head reclining toward the ground.
This aged, sickly, sapless thorn,
Which must, alas! no longer stand,
Behold the cruel Dean in scorn
Cuts down with sacrilegious hand.
Dame Nature, when she saw the blow,
Astonish'd gave a dreadful shriek;
And mother Tellus trembled so,
She scarce recover'd in a week.
The Sylvan powers, with fear perplex'd,
In prudence and compassion sent
(For none could tell whose turn was next)
Sad omens of the dire event.
The magpie, lighting on the stock,
Stood chattering with incessant din:
And with her beak gave many a knock,
To rouse and warn the nymph within.
The owl foresaw, in pensive mood,
The ruin of her ancient seat;
And fled in haste, with all her brood,
To seek a more secure retreat.
Last trotted forth the gentle swine,
To ease her itch against the stump,
And dismally was heard to whine,
All as she scrubb'd her meazly rump.
The nymph who dwells in every tree,
(If all be true that poets chant,)
Condemn'd by Fate's supreme decree,
Must die with her expiring plant.
Thus, when the gentle Spina found
The thorn committed to her care,
Received its last and deadly wound,
She fled, and vanish'd into air.
But from the root a dismal groan
First issuing struck the murderer's ears:
And, in a shrill revengeful tone,
This prophecy he trembling hears:
"Thou chief contriver of my fall,
Relentless Dean, to mischief born;
My kindred oft thine hide shall gall,
Thy gown and cassock oft be torn.
"And thy confederate dame, who brags
That she condemn'd me to the fire,
Shall rend her petticoats to rags,
And wound her legs with every brier.
"Nor thou, Lord Arthur,[4] shall escape;
To thee I often call'd in vain,
Against that assassin in crape;
Yet thou couldst tamely see me slain:
"Nor, when I felt the dreadful blow,
Or chid the Dean, or pinch'd thy spouse;
Since you could see me treated so,
(An old retainer to your house:)
"May that fell Dean, by whose command
Was form'd this Machiavelian plot,
Not leave a thistle on thy land;
Then who will own thee for a Scot?
"Pigs and fanatics, cows and teagues,
Through all my empire I foresee,
To tear thy hedges join in leagues,
Sworn to revenge my thorn and me.
"And thou, the wretch ordain'd by fate,
Neal Gahagan, Hibernian clown,
With hatchet blunter than thy pate,
To hack my hallow'd timber down;
"When thou, suspended high in air,
Diest on a more ignoble tree,
(For thou shall steal thy landlord's mare,)
Then, bloody caitiff! think on me."
Good Shot.
by James McIntyre

At great reunion of the South,
Of those had faced the cannon's mouth,
Where each could show a glorious scar
He had received in the war.
And there was an artillery major,
Said he, I am free to wager
I fired the best shot in the war,
And fame of it was heard afar.
The Federals fired at us a shell,
And near our battery it fell,
It gave us momentary alarm,
But it caused us little harm.
For the fuse it ceased to burn,
And I resolved shell to return
To the same spot from whence it came,
I put in fuse was sure to flame.
From mortar's mouth it went forth
Seeking for vengeance on the North,
And this swift messenger from South
It entered their great cannon's mouth.
And blew the gun all into atoms,
Which left desolate many homes,
But North had justice on her side.
In truth and virtue was her pride.
And high Heaven had well decreed
That the poor slave he should be freed,
And even the South doth prosper more
With freedom than she did before.
At Husking Time
by Emily Pauline Johnson

At husking time the tassel fades
To brown above the yellow blades,
Whose rustling sheath enswathes the corn
That bursts its chrysalis in scorn
Longer to lie in prison shades.
Among the merry lads and maids
The creaking ox-cart slowly wades
Twixt stalks and stubble, sacked and torn
At husking time.
The prying pilot crow persuades
The flock to join in thieving raids;
The sly racoon with craft inborn
His portion steals; from plenty's horn
His pouch the saucy chipmunk lades
At husking time.
Disaster To Steamer Victoria At London.
by James McIntyre

At London Thames is a broad stream,
Which was the scene of a sad theme,
A fragile steamer there did play,
O'ercrowded on a Queen's Birthday,
While all on board was bright and gay,
But soon 'neath the cold waters lay,
Naught but forms of lifeless clay,
Which made, alas! sad month of May.
At Marliave's
by Arthur Macy

At Marliave's when eventide
Finds rare companions at my side,
The laughter of each merry guest
At quaint conceit, or kindly jest,
Makes golden moments swiftly glide.
No voice unkind our faults to chide,
Our smallest virtue magnified;
And friendly hand to hand is pressed
At Marliave's.
I lay my years and cares aside
Accepting what the gods provide,
I ask not for a lot more blest,
Nor do I crave a sweeter rest
Than that which comes with eventide
At Marliave's.
This Heart - A Woman's Dream
by Thomas Hardy

At midnight, in the room where he lay dead
Whom in his life I had never clearly read,
I thought if I could peer into that citadel
His heart, I should at last know full and well
What hereto had been known to him alone,
Despite our long sit-out of years foreflown,
"And if," I said, "I do this for his memory's sake,
It would not wound him, even if he could wake."
So I bent over him. He seemed to smile
With a calm confidence the whole long while
That I, withdrawing his heart, held it and, bit by bit,
Perused the unguessed things found written on it.
It was inscribed like a terrestrial sphere
With quaint vermiculations close and clear -
His graving. Had I known, would I have risked the stroke
Its reading brought, and my own heart nigh broke!
Yes, there at last, eyes opened, did I see
His whole sincere symmetric history;
There were his truth, his simple singlemindedness,
Strained, maybe, by time's storms, but there no less.
There were the daily deeds from sun to sun
In blindness, but good faith, that he had done;
There were regrets, at instances wherein he swerved
(As he conceived) from cherishings I had deserved.
There were old hours all figured down as bliss -
Those spent with me - (how little had I thought this!)
There those when, at my absence, whether he slept or waked,
(Though I knew not 'twas so!) his spirit ached.
There that when we were severed, how day dulled
Till time joined us anew, was chronicled:
And arguments and battlings in defence of me
That heart recorded clearly and ruddily.
I put it back, and left him as he lay
While pierced the morning pink and then the gray
Into each dreary room and corridor around,
Where I shall wait, but his step will not sound.
Trinitas
by John Greenleaf Whittier

At morn I prayed, "I fain would see
How Three are One, and One is Three;
Read the dark riddle unto me."
I wandered forth, the sun and air
I saw bestowed with equal care
On good and evil, foul and fair.
No partial favor dropped the rain;
Alike the righteous and profane
Rejoiced above their heading grain.
And my heart murmured, "Is it meet
That blindfold Nature thus should treat
With equal hand the tares and wheat?"
A presence melted through my mood,
A warmth, a light, a sense of good,
Like sunshine through a winter wood.
I saw that presence, mailed complete
In her white innocence, pause to greet
A fallen sister of the street.
Upon her bosom snowy pure
The lost one clung, as if secure
From inward guilt or outward lure.
"Beware!" I said; "in this I see
No gain to her, but loss to thee
Who touches pitch defiled must be."
I passed the haunts of shame and sin,
And a voice whispered, "Who therein
Shall these lost souls to Heaven's peace win?
"Who there shall hope and health dispense,
And lift the ladder up from thence
Whose rounds are prayers of penitence?"
I said, "No higher life they know;
These earth-worms love to have it so.
Who stoops to raise them sinks as low."
That night with painful care I read
What Hippo's saint and Calvin said;
The living seeking to the dead!
In vain I turned, in weary quest,
Old pages, where (God give them rest!)
The poor creed-mongers dreamed and guessed.
And still I prayed, "Lord, let me see
How Three are One, and One is Three;
Read the dark riddle unto me!"
Then something whispered, "Dost thou pray
For what thou hast? This very day
The Holy Three have crossed thy way.
"Did not the gifts of sun and air
To good and ill alike declare
The all-compassionate Father's care?
"In the white soul that stooped to raise
The lost one from her evil ways,
Thou saw'st the Christ, whom angels praise!
"A bodiless Divinity,
The still small Voice that spake to thee
Was the Holy Spirit's mystery!
"O blind of sight, of faith how small!
Father, and Son, and Holy Call
This day thou hast denied them all!
"Revealed in love and sacrifice,
The Holiest passed before thine eyes,
One and the same, in threefold guise.
"The equal Father in rain and sun,
His Christ in the good to evil done,
His Voice in thy soul; and the Three are One!"
I shut my grave Aquinas fast;
The monkish gloss of ages past,
The schoolman's creed aside I cast.
And my heart answered, "Lord, I see
How Three are One, and One is Three;
Thy riddle hath been read to me!"
Revealment.
by Madison Julius Cawein

At moonset when ghost speaks with ghost,
And spirits meet where once they sinned,
Between the bournes of found and lost,
My soul met her soul on the wind,
My late-lost Evalind.
I kissed her mouth. Her face was wild.
Two burning shadows were her eyes,
Wherefrom the maiden love, that smiled
A heartbreak smile of severed ties,
Gazed with a wan surprise.
Then suddenly I seemed to see
No more her shape where beauty bloomed ...
My own sad self gazed up at me
My sorrow, that had so assumed
The form of her entombed.
The Count Of Greiers. - From The German Of Uhland. (Translations.)
by William Cullen Bryant

At morn the Count of Greiers before his castle stands;
He sees afar the glory that lights the mountain lands;
The horned crags are shining, and in the shade between
A pleasant Alpine valley lies beautifully green.
"Oh, greenest of the valleys, how shall I come to thee!
Thy herdsmen and thy maidens, how happy must they be!
I have gazed upon thee coldly, all lovely as thou art,
But the wish to walk thy pastures now stirs my inmost heart."
He hears a sound of timbrels, and suddenly appear
A troop of ruddy damsels and herdsmen drawing near;
They reach the castle greensward, and gayly dance across;
The white sleeves flit and glimmer, the wreaths and ribands toss.
The youngest of the maidens, slim as a spray of spring,
She takes the young count's fingers, and draws him to the ring,
They fling upon his forehead a crown of mountain flowers,
"And ho, young Count of Greiers! this morning thou art ours!"
Then hand in hand departing, with dance and roundelay,
Through hamlet after hamlet, they lead the Count away.
They dance through wood and meadow, they dance across the linn,
Till the mighty Alpine summits have shut the music in.
The second morn is risen, and now the third is come;
Where stays the Count of Greiers? has he forgot his home?
Again the evening closes, in thick and sultry air;
There's thunder on the mountains, the storm is gathering there.
The cloud has shed its waters, the brook comes swollen down;
You see it by the lightning, a river wide and brown.
Around a struggling swimmer the eddies dash and roar,
Till, seizing on a willow, he leaps upon the shore.
"Here am I cast by tempests far from your mountain dell.
Amid our evening dances the bursting deluge fell.
Ye all, in cots and caverns, have 'scaped the water-spout,
While me alone the tempest o'erwhelmed and hurried out.
"Farewell, with thy glad dwellers, green vale among the rocks!
Farewell the swift sweet moments, in which I watched thy flocks!
Why rocked they not my cradle in that delicious spot,
That garden of the happy, where Heaven endures me not?
"Rose of the Alpine valley! I feel, in every vein,
Thy soft touch on my fingers; oh, press them not again!
Bewitch me not, ye garlands, to tread that upward track,
And thou, my cheerless mansion, receive thy master back."
Philosophy.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

At morn the wise man walked abroad,
Proud with the learning of great fools.
He laughed and said, "There is no God - 
'Tis force creates, 'tis reason rules."
Meek with the wisdom of great faith,
At night he knelt while angels smiled,
And wept and cried with anguished breath,
"Jehovah, God, save thou my child."
Song Of The Soldiers' Wives
by Thomas Hardy

I
At last! In sight of home again,
Of home again;
No more to range and roam again
As at that bygone time?
No more to go away from us
And stay from us? -
Dawn, hold not long the day from us,
But quicken it to prime!
II
Now all the town shall ring to them,
Shall ring to them,
And we who love them cling to them
And clasp them joyfully;
And cry, "O much we'll do for you
Anew for you,
Dear Loves! - aye, draw and hew for you,
Come back from oversea."
III
Some told us we should meet no more,
Should meet no more;
Should wait, and wish, but greet no more
Your faces round our fires;
That, in a while, uncharily
And drearily
Men gave their lives - even wearily,
Like those whom living tires.
IV
And now you are nearing home again,
Dears, home again;
No more, may be, to roam again
As at that bygone time,
Which took you far away from us
To stay from us;
Dawn, hold not long the day from us,
But quicken it to prime!
At Last I Got A Letter From The Dead
by Richard Le Gallienne

At last I got a letter from the dead,
And out of it there fell a little flower, - 
The violet of an unforgotten hour.
A Valentine
by Kate Seymour Maclean

At last, dear love, the day is gone,
The doors are barred--the lamps are lit,
The couch beside the fire is drawn,
The nook whore thou wert wont to sit;
The book is open at the place,
And half its leaves are still uncut,
And yet without thy listening face,
I cannot read, the book I shut,
And muse, and dream:--it is the day
When lovers, silent all the year,
Find tongues in floral tokens gay,
To whisper all they long to hear.
Ah, many a time, and many a time
I saw the question in thine eyes,
Where is the silver-sounding rhyme,
The simple household melodies,
The harp that trembled to thy touch;
Hast thou forgot thine early lore?
And know'st not that I love so much,
That song contents my heart no more.
For thou hast made my life so sweet,
With dainty gifts thy dear hands bring,
Rich with thine affluence, and complete,
I have no longing left to sing.
And yet, I have such vast desires,
Such thirst for some great destiny,
That all the poet's weaker fires
Burn into prophecies for thee.
The circle of our home could make
The boundaries of my world, but thine
So splendid is,--for thy dear sake,
I fain would push the bounds of mine.
For this I study as I may
To walk with thee, the world of mind,
To follow where thou lead'st the way,
A step,--but just a step behind.
Thy hand in mine, thine earnest eyes
Fixed ever on the radiant goal,
Together shall we climb the skies,
And mingle there, one perfect soul.
In Rome
by Abram Joseph Ryan

At last the dream of youth
Stands fair and bright before me,
The sunshine of the home of truth
Falls tremulously o'er me.
And tower, and spire, and lofty dome
In brightest skies are gleaming;
Walk I, to-day, the ways of Rome,
Or am I only dreaming?
No, 'tis no dream; my very eyes
Gaze on the hill-tops seven;
Where crosses rise and kiss the skies,
And grandly point to Heaven.
Gray ruins loom on ev'ry side,
Each stone an age's story;
They seem the very ghosts of pride
That watch the grave of glory.
There senates sat, whose sceptre sought
An empire without limit;
There grandeur dreamed its dream and thought
That death would never dim it.
There rulers reigned; yon heap of stones
Was once their gorgeous palace;
Beside them now, on altar-thrones,
The priests lift up the chalice.
There legions marched with bucklers bright,
And lances lifted o'er them;
While flags, like eagles plumed for flight,
Unfurled their wings before them.
There poets sang, whose deathless name
Is linked to deathless verses;
There heroes hushed with shouts of fame
Their trampled victim's curses.
There marched the warriors back to home,
Beneath yon crumbling portal,
And placed upon the brow of Rome
The proud crown of immortal.
There soldiers stood with armor on,
In steel-clad ranks and serried,
The while their red swords flashed upon
The slaves whose rights they buried.
Here pagan pride, with sceptre, stood,
And fame would not forsake it,
Until a simple cross of wood
Came from the East to break it.
That Rome is dead -- here is the grave --
Dead glory rises never;
And countless crosses o'er it wave,
And will wave on forever.
Beyond the Tiber gleams a dome
Above the hill-tops seven;
It arches o'er the world from Rome,
And leads the world to Heaven.
____
December 6, 1872.
He Abjures Love
by Thomas Hardy

At last I put off love,
For twice ten years
The daysman of my thought,
And hope, and doing;
Being ashamed thereof,
And faint of fears
And desolations, wrought
In his pursuing,
Since first in youthtime those
Disquietings
That heart-enslavement brings
To hale and hoary,
Became my housefellows,
And, fool and blind,
I turned from kith and kind
To give him glory.
I was as children be
Who have no care;
I did not shrink or sigh,
I did not sicken;
But lo, Love beckoned me,
And I was bare,
And poor, and starved, and dry,
And fever-stricken.
Too many times ablaze
With fatuous fires,
Enkindled by his wiles
To new embraces,
Did I, by wilful ways
And baseless ires,
Return the anxious smiles
Of friendly faces.
No more will now rate I
The common rare,
The midnight drizzle dew,
The gray hour golden,
The wind a yearning cry,
The faulty fair,
Things dreamt, of comelier hue
Than things beholden! . . .
- I speak as one who plumbs
Life's dim profound,
One who at length can sound
Clear views and certain.
But - after love what comes?
A scene that lours,
A few sad vacant hours,
And then, the Curtain.
1883.
At Fontainebleau
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

At Fontainebleau, I saw a little bed
Fashioned of polished wood, with gold ornate,
Ambition, hope, and sorrow, ay, and hate
Once battled there, above a childish head,
And there in vain, grief wept, and memory plead
It was so small! but Ah, dear God, how great
The part it played in one sad woman's fate.
How wide the gloom, that narrow object shed.
The symbol of an over-reaching aim,
The emblem of a devastated joy,
It spoke of glory, and a blasted home:
Of fleeting honours, and disordered fame,
And the lone passing of a fragile boy.
* * *
It was the cradle of the King of Rome.
The Epic
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

At Francis Allen's on the Christmas-eve,'
The game of forfeits done'the girls all kiss'd
Beneath the sacred bush and past away'
The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall,
The host, and I sat round the wassail-bowl,
Then half-way ebb'd: and there we held a talk,
How all the old honour had from Christmas gone,
Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games
In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out
With cutting eights that day upon the pond,
Where, three times slipping from the outer edge,
I bump'd the ice into three several stars,
Fell in a doze; and half-awake I heard
The parson taking wide and wider sweeps,
Now harping on the church-commissionners,
Now hawking at Geology and schism;
Until I woke, and found him settled down
Upon the general decay of faith
Right thro' the world, 'at home was little left,
And none abroad: there was no anchor none,
To hold by.' Francis, laughing, clapt his hand
On Everard's shoulder, with 'I hold by him.'
'And I,' quoth Everard, 'by the wassail-bowl.'
'Why yes,' I said, 'we knew your gift that way
At college: but another which you had,
I mean of verse (for so we held it then),
What came of that ?' 'You know,' said Frank, 'he burnt
His epic, his King Arthur, some twelve books''
And then to me demanding why? 'Oh, sir,
He thought that nothing new was said, or else
Something so said 'twas nothing'that a truth
Looks freshest in the fashion of the clay
God knows: he has a mint of reasons: ask.
It pleased me well enough.' 'Nay, nay,' said Hall,
'Why take the style of those heroic times?
For nature brings not back the Mastodon,
Nor we those times; and why should any man
Remodel models? these twelve books of mine
Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing-worth.
Mere chaff and draft, much better burnt.' 'But I,'
Said Francis, 'pick'd the eleventh from this hearth
And have it: keep a thing, its use will come.
I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes.'
He laugh'd, and I, tho' sleepy, like a horse
That hears the corn-bin open, prick'd my ears;
For I remember'd Everard's college fame
When we were Freshmen: then at my request
He brought it ; and the poet little urged,
But with some prelude of disparagement,
Read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes,
Deep-chested music, and to this result.
At Midnight Hour.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

At midnight hour I went, not willingly,
A little, little boy, yon churchyard past,
To Father Vicar's house; the stars on high
On all around their beauteous radiance cast,
At midnight hour.
And when, in journeying o'er the path of life,
My love I follow'd, as she onward moved,
With stars and northern lights o'er head in strife,
Going and coming, perfect bliss I proved
At midnight hour.
Until at length the full moon, lustre-fraught,
Burst thro' the gloom wherein she was enshrined;
And then the willing, active, rapid thought
Around the past, as round the future twined,
At midnight hour.
The Sleeper
by Edgar Allan Poe

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin molders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!, and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!
O, lady bright! can it be right,
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop,
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully, so fearfully,
Above the closed and fringed lid
'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,
That, o'er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come O'er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress,
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!
The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
For ever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!
My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold,
Some vault that oft has flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o'er the crested palls,
Of her grand family funerals,
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone,
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne'er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.