DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
To Ellen
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

And Ellen, when the graybeard years
Have brought us to life's evening hour,
And all the crowded Past appears
A tiny scene of sun and shower,
Then, if I read the page aright
Where Hope, the soothsayer, reads our lot,
Thyself shalt own the page was bright,
Well that we loved, woe had we not,
When Mirth is dumb and Flattery's fled,
And mute thy music's dearest tone,
When all but Love itself is dead
And all but deathless Reason gone.
Both Sides Of The Medal
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

And because you love me
think you you do not hate me?
Ha, since you love me to ecstasy
it follows you hate me to ecstasy.
Because when you hear me
go down the road outside the house
you must come to the window to watch me go,
do you think it is pure worship?
Because, when I sit in the room,
here, in my own house,
and you want to enlarge yourself with this friend of mine,
such a friend as he is,
yet you cannot get beyond your awareness of me
you are held back by my being in the same world with you,
do you think it is bliss alone?
sheer harmony?
No doubt if I were dead, you must
reach into death after me,
but would not your hate reach even more madly than your love?
your impassioned, unfinished hate?
Since you have a passion for me,
as I for you,
does not that passion stand in your way like a Balaam's ass?
and am I not Balaam's ass
golden-mouthed occasionally?
But mostly, do you not detest my bray?
Since you are confined in the orbit of me
do you not loathe the confinement?
Is not even the beauty and peace of an orbit
an intolerable prison to you,
as it is to everybody?
But we will learn to submit
each of us to the balanced, eternal orbit
wherein we circle on our fate
in strange conjunction.
What is chaos, my love?
It is not freedom.
A disarray of falling stars coming to nought.
A Drizzling Easter Morning
by Thomas Hardy

And he is risen? Well, be it so . . .
And still the pensive lands complain,
And dead men wait as long ago,
As if, much doubting, they would know
What they are ransomed from, before
They pass again their sheltering door.
I stand amid them in the rain,
While blusters vex the yew and vane;
And on the road the weary wain
Plods forward, laden heavily;
And toilers with their aches are fain
For endless rest though risen is he.
Refresher Course
by Paul Cameron Brown

And he told them "the universe is a ripe apple in heavenly
consummation with Newtonian physics".
Comparisons grew rife with planets in the cosmos measured
against all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.
Sobering stuff, this astronomical speculation. Each sun a
star fathering an impressive roster, its "family" in the earthy
scheme of things.
So one kid spat on his shoe and asked if a gob,
hypothetically speaking of course, could be likened to a
solitary ocean.
Two Fusiliers
by Robert von Ranke Graves

And have we done with War at last?
Well, we've been lucky devils both,
And there's no need of pledge or oath
To bind our lovely friendship fast,
By firmer stuff
Close bound enough.
By wire and wood and stake we're bound,
By Fricourt and by Festubert,
By whipping rain, by the sun's glare,
By all the misery and loud sound,
By a Spring day,
By Picard clay.
Show me the two so closely bound
As we, by the red bond of blood,
By friendship, blossoming from mud,
By Death: we faced him, and we found
Beauty in Death,
In dead men breath.
The River
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

And I behold once more
My old familiar haunts; here the blue river,
The same blue wonder that my infant eye
Admired, sage doubting whence the traveller came,--
Whence brought his sunny bubbles ere he washed
The fragrant flag-roots in my father's fields,
And where thereafter in the world he went.
Look, here he is, unaltered, save that now
He hath broke his banks and flooded all the vales
With his redundant waves.
Here is the rock where, yet a simple child,
I caught with bended pin my earliest fish,
Much triumphing,--and these the fields
Over whose flowers I chased the butterfly
A blooming hunter of a fairy fine.
And hark! where overhead the ancient crows
Hold their sour conversation in the sky:--
These are the same, but I am not the same,
But wiser than I was, and wise enough
Not to regret the changes, tho' they cost
Me many a sigh. Oh, call not Nature dumb;
These trees and stones are audible to me,
These idle flowers, that tremble in the wind,
I understand their faery syllables,
And all their sad significance. The wind,
That rustles down the well-known forest road--
It hath a sound more eloquent than speech.
The stream, the trees, the grass, the sighing wind,
All of them utter sounds of 'monishment
And grave parental love.
They are not of our race, they seem to say,
And yet have knowledge of our moral race,
And somewhat of majestic sympathy,
Something of pity for the puny clay,
That holds and boasts the immeasurable mind.
I feel as I were welcome to these trees
After long months of weary wandering,
Acknowledged by their hospitable boughs;
They know me as their son, for side by side,
They were coeval with my ancestors,
Adorned with them my country's primitive times,
And soon may give my dust their funeral shade.
CONCORD, June, 1827.
Country Boy's Boast.
by W. M. MacKeracher

And hath he not whereof he needs must sing?
And hath he not whereof he well may boast? -
He from whose kin so many a one did spring
To shape the mighty rocks that guard the coast
Of History 'gainst Time, lest all be lost;
And chiefly those who stamped the speaking page,
Who bore the standard of Achievement's host
In Fame's tenth legion, from the earliest age
Till stately Vergil wrote, till Chelsea's Vulcan sage.
Judea's royal, world-renowned bard
Was once a shepherd. How must Bethlehem's hills
Have leaped and grown more lovely as they heard;
Till raging monsters, music-charmed, he kills.
And saves his flock, or with his harping stills
More dire destroyers in his monarch's breast!
And whence did Job arise, that prince whose ills, -
Lost, flocks, lands, family, all that he possessed, -
Wrung the immoral song his virtue to attest?
Let him be proud in later days to roam
In Warwick vales by virtuous Avon's shore,
Through fields of Ayr, around the humble home
Of him, the Cincinnatus of song, or o'er
Ettrick and Tweeddale in their days of yore,
Or with the Seasons' bard on Cheviot green,
With young Chile Harold laugh o'er Loch na Garr,
The Solitary trace through Cumbrian scene,
Or weep on Sussex downs with him of gentle mien.
In Age
by William Lisle Bowles

And art thou he, now "fall'n on evil days,"
And changed indeed! Yet what do this sunk cheek,
These thinner locks, and that calm forehead speak!
A spirit reckless of man's blame or praise,
A spirit, when thine eyes to the noon's blaze
Their dark orbs roll in vain, in suffering meek,
As in the sight of God intent to seek,
'Mid solitude or age, or through the ways
Of hard adversity, the approving look
Of its great Master; whilst the conscious pride
Of wisdom, patient and content to brook
All ills to that sole Master's task applied,
Shall show before high heaven the unaltered mind,
Milton, though thou art poor, and old, and blind!
Jerusalem
by William Blake

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
To The Fragment Of A Statue Of Hercules, Commonly Called The Torso.
by Samuel Rogers

And dost thou still, thou mass of breathing stone,
(Thy giant limbs to night and chaos hurl'd)
Still sit as on the fragment of a world;
Surviving all, majestic and alone?
What tho' the Spirits of the North, that swept
Rome from the earth, when in her pomp she slept,
Smote thee with fury, and thy headless trunk
Deep in the dust mid tower and temple sunk;
Soon to subdue mankind 'twas thine to rise.
Still, still unquell'd thy glorious energies!
Aspiring minds, with thee conversing, caught [1]
Bright revelations of the Good they sought;
By thee that long-lost spell [2] in secret given,
To draw down Gods, and lift the soul to Heav'n!
Credhe's Complaint At The Battle Of The White Strand
by Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory

And Credhe came to where her man was, and she keened him and cried over him, and she made this complaint: The Harbour roars, O the harbour roars over the rushing race of the Headland of the Two Storms, the drowning of the hero of the Lake of the Two Dogs, that is what the waves are keening on the strand.
Sweet-voiced is the crane, O sweet-voiced is the crane in the marshes of the Ridge of the Two Strong Men; it is she cannot save her nestlings, the wild dog of two colours is taking her little ones.
Pitiful the cry, pitiful the cry the thrush is making in the Pleasant Ridge; sorrowful is the cry of the blackbird in Leiter Laeig.
Sorrowful the call, O sorrowful the call of the deer in the Ridge of Two Lights; the doe is lying dead in Druim Silenn, the mighty stag cries after her.
Sorrowful to me, O sorrowful to me the death of the hero that lay beside me; the son of the woman of the Wood of the Two Thickets, to be with a bunch of grass under his head.
Sore to me, O sore to me Cael to be a dead man beside me, the waves to have gone over his white body; it is his pleasantness that has put my wits astray.
A woeful shout, O a woeful shout the waves are making on the strand; they that took hold of comely Cael, a pity it is he went to meet them.
A woeful crash, O a woeful crash the waves are making on the strand to the north; breaking against the smooth rock, crying after Cael now he is gone.
A sorrowful fight, O a sorrowful fight, the sea is making with the strand to the north; my beauty is lessened; the end of my life is measured.
A song of grief, O a song of grief is made by the waves of Tulcha Leis; all I had is gone since this story came to me. Since the son of Crimthann is drowned I will love no one after him for ever; many a king fell by his hand; his shield never cried out in the battle.
After she had made that complaint Credhe laid herself down beside Cael and died for grief after him. And they were put in the one grave, and it was Caoilte raised the stone over them.
Willow
by Anna Akhmatova

And I grew up in patterned tranquility,
In the cool nursery of the young century.
And the voice of man was not dear to me,
But the voice of the wind I could understand.
But best of all the silver willow.
And obligingly, it lived
With me all my life; it's weeping branches
Fanned my insomnia with dreams.
And strange!--I outlived it.
There the stump stands; with strange voices
Other willows are conversing
Under our, under those skies.
And I am silent...As if a brother had died.
Matilda Gathering Flowers.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

From The Purgatorio Of Dante, Canto 28, Lines 1-51.
And earnest to explore within - around -
The divine wood, whose thick green living woof
Tempered the young day to the sight - I wound
Up the green slope, beneath the forest's roof,
With slow, soft steps leaving the mountain's steep,
And sought those inmost labyrinths, motion-proof
Against the air, that in that stillness deep
And solemn, struck upon my forehead bare,
The slow, soft stroke of a continuous...
In which the ... leaves tremblingly were
All bent towards that part where earliest
The sacred hill obscures the morning air.
Yet were they not so shaken from the rest,
But that the birds, perched on the utmost spray,
Incessantly renewing their blithe quest,
With perfect joy received the early day,
Singing within the glancing leaves, whose sound
Kept a low burden to their roundelay,
Such as from bough to bough gathers around
The pine forest on bleak Chiassi's shore,
When Aeolus Sirocco has unbound.
My slow steps had already borne me o'er
Such space within the antique wood, that I
Perceived not where I entered any more, -
When, lo! a stream whose little waves went by,
Bending towards the left through grass that grew
Upon its bank, impeded suddenly
My going on. Water of purest hue
On earth, would appear turbid and impure
Compared with this, whose unconcealing dew,
Dark, dark, yet clear, moved under the obscure
Eternal shades, whose interwoven looms
The rays of moon or sunlight ne'er endure.
I moved not with my feet, but mid the glooms
Pierced with my charmed eye, contemplating
The mighty multitude of fresh May blooms
Which starred that night, when, even as a thing
That suddenly, for blank astonishment,
Charms every sense, and makes all thought take wing, -
A solitary woman! and she went
Singing and gathering flower after flower,
With which her way was painted and besprent.
'Bright lady, who, if looks had ever power
To bear true witness of the heart within,
Dost bask under the beams of love, come lower
Towards this bank. I prithee let me win
This much of thee, to come, that I may hear
Thy song: like Proserpine, in Enna's glen,
Thou seemest to my fancy, singing here
And gathering flowers, as that fair maiden when
She lost the Spring, and Ceres her, more dear.
A Thought.
by Madison Julius Cawein

And I have thought of youth which strains
Nearer its God to rise, - 
What were ambition and its pains
Were life a cowardice!
The grander souls that rose above
Thought's noblest heights to tread,
Found their endeavor in their love,
And truth behind the dead.
A secret glory in the tomb,
A night that dawns in light,
An intense presence veiled with gloom,
And not an endless night....
Nepenthe of this struggling world,
Thou who dost stay mad Care
When her fury's scourge above is curled
And we see her writhing hair!
Above The Clouds.
by Jean Ingelow

And can this be my own world?
'Tis all gold and snow,
Save where scarlet waves are hurled
Down yon gulf below.
'Tis thy world, 'tis my world,
City, mead, and shore,
For he that hath his own world
Hath many worlds more.
Millar.
by James McIntyre

And Millar poet of Sierras,
For bold deeds he doth prepare us,
And now he lives by the golden gate,
Honored in California's state,
To poet 'tis position grand,
Commissioner of Forest land.
The Rich Boy's Christmas
by Ellis Parker Butler

And now behold this sulking boy,
His costly presents bring no joy;
Harsh tears of anger fill his eye
Tho' he has all that wealth can buy.
What profits it that he employs
His many gifts to make a noise?
His playroom is so placed that he
Can cause his folks no agony.
Moral:
Mere worldly wealth does not possess
The power of giving happiness.
To My Own Miniature Picture Taken At Two Years Of Age.
by Robert Southey

And I was once like this! that glowing cheek
Was mine, those pleasure-sparkling eyes, that brow
Smooth as the level lake, when not a breeze
Dies o'er the sleeping surface! twenty years
Have wrought strange alteration! Of the friends
Who once so dearly prized this miniature,
And loved it for its likeness, some are gone
To their last home; and some, estranged in heart,
Beholding me with quick-averted glance
Pass on the other side! But still these hues
Remain unalter'd, and these features wear
The look of Infancy and Innocence.
I search myself in vain, and find no trace
Of what I was: those lightly-arching lines
Dark and o'erhanging now; and that mild face
Settled in these strong lineaments!--There were
Who form'd high hopes and flattering ones of thee
Young Robert! for thine eye was quick to speak
Each opening feeling: should they not have known
When the rich rainbow on the morning cloud
Reflects its radiant dies, the husbandman
Beholds the ominous glory sad, and fears
Impending storms? they augur'd happily,
For thou didst love each wild and wonderous tale
Of faery fiction, and thine infant tongue
Lisp'd with delight the godlike deeds of Greece
And rising Rome; therefore they deem'd forsooth
That thou shouldst tread PREFERMENT'S pleasant path.
Ill-judging ones! they let thy little feet
Stray in the pleasant paths of POESY,
And when thou shouldst have prest amid the crowd
There didst thou love to linger out the day
Loitering beneath the laurels barren shade.
SPIRIT of SPENSER! was the wanderer wrong?
This little picture was for ornament
Design'd, to shine amid the motley mob
Of Fashion and of Folly,--is it not
More honour'd by this solitary song?
The Pond
by Madison Julius Cawein

And I told the boy next door
What Jack Frost had done; and he
Said, "Ah shucks! that's nothing; see?
I have seen all that before.
You just come along with me;
I will show you something more."
And he took me to a lot
Where there was a shallow pool;
And this pool was frozen; full
Of the slickest ice. I got
On it, but he said, "You fool!
It will break. You'd better not."
And right then it broke. O my!
In I went above my knees.
Thought that I would surely freeze.
Old Jack Frost just caught me by
Both my legs; began to squeeze;
And then I began to cry.
I just helloed, and the boy
Helloed too; until a man,
With a dinner-pail or can,
Heard us, and cried out, "Ahoy!
What 've you run into?" Then ran
Till he got there, to our joy.
He just took me round the waist,
Lifted me as easy; so;
Then he said, "I think, by Joe!
You two boys were both in haste
To go skating, don't you know?
Better wait till summer's chased.
"Where you live, eh?" And I told.
"Well, we'll have to hurry. Come.
Old Jack Frost has nipped my thumb.
I shall have an awful cold;
And suppose that you'll have some.
Can't be helped. Hope Ma won't scold.
"My! but you're a mighty fine
Little boy! Remind me of
One at home my own I love.
Eyes just like yours clear as wine.
There now! I have lost my glove.
You're just like that boy of mine.
"Wish he knew you. Got blue eyes
Same as yours and same brown hair.
But he's crippled. Has a chair
Where he sits all day, or lies.
'He's our only love and care'
So his mother says, then cries.
"Here's your street and here's your home.
Run 'long to your mother. Then
I'll be seeing you again.
So long. Hope the day will come
My boy'll be like you young men,
Straight and strong and mettlesome."
Then he went and, man alive!
I felt sorrier for that man
With his battered dinner-can,
And his crippled boy, than I've
Ever felt. And I began
Crying; and then made a dive
For the back-door. Won't forget
All the fuss there: first they told
Mother, and how she did scold!
Father said, "This getting wet
Will, I'm sure, give you a cold."
But I have n't had it yet.
Sketch Of The First Act Of A New Romantic Drama.
by Thomas Moore

"And now," quoth the goddess, in accents jocose,
"Having got good materials, I'll brew such a dose
"Of Double X mischief as, mortals shall say,
"They've not known its equal for many a long day."
Here she winkt to her subaltern imps to be steady,
And all wagged their fire-tipt tails and stood ready.
"So, now for the ingredients:--first, hand me that bishop;"
Whereupon, a whole bevy of imps run to fish up
From out a large reservoir wherein they pen 'em
The blackest of all its black dabblers in venom;
And wrapping him up (lest the virus should ooze,
And one "drop of the immortal"[1] Right Rev.[2] they might lose)
In the sheets of his own speeches, charges, reviews,
Pop him into the caldron, while loudly a burst
From the by-standers welcomes ingredient the first!
"Now fetch the Ex-Chancellor," muttered the dame--
"He who's called after Harry the Older, by name."
"The Ex-Chancellor!" echoed her imps, the whole crew of 'em--
"Why talk of one Ex, when your Mischief has two of 'em?"
"True, true," said the hag, looking arch at her elves,
"And a double-Ex dose they compose, in themselves."
This joke, the sly meaning of which was seen lucidly,
Set all the devils a laughing most deucedly.
So, in went the pair, and (what none thought surprising)
Showed talents for sinking as great as for rising;
While not a grim phiz in that realm but was lighted
With joy to see spirits so twin-like united--
Or (plainly to speak) two such birds of a feather,
In one mess of venom thus spitted together.
Here a flashy imp rose--some connection, no doubt,
Of the young lord in question--and, scowling about,
"Hoped his fiery friend, Stanley, would not be left out;
"As no schoolboy unwhipt, the whole world must agree,
"Loved mischief, pure mischief, more dearly than he."
But, no--the wise hag wouldn't hear of the whipster;
Not merely because, as a shrew, he eclipst her,
And nature had given him, to keep him still young,
Much tongue in his head and no head in his tongue;
But because she well knew that, for change ever ready,
He'd not even to mischief keep properly steady:
That soon even the wrong side would cease to delight,
And, for want of a change, he must swerve to the right;
While, on each, so at random his missiles he threw,
That the side he attackt was most safe, of the two.--
This ingredient was therefore put by on the shelf,
There to bubble, a bitter, hot mess, by itself.
"And now," quoth the hag, as her caldron she eyed.
And the tidbits so friendlily rankling inside,
"There wants but some seasoning;--so, come, ere I stew 'em,
"By way of a relish we'll throw in John Tuam.'
"In cooking up mischief, there's no flesh or fish
"Like your meddling High Priest, to add zest to the dish."
Thus saying, she pops in the Irish Grand Lama--
Which great event ends the First Act of the Drama.
Foreword. To Idyllic Monologues
by Madison Julius Cawein

And one, perchance, will read and sigh:
"What aimless songs! Why will he sing
Of nature that drags out her woe
Through wind and rain, and sun, and snow,
From miserable spring to spring?"
Then put me by.
And one, perhaps, will read and say:
"Why write of things across the sea;
Of men and women, far and near,
When we of things at home would hear - 
Well, who would call this poetry?"
Then toss away.
A hopeless task have we, meseems,
At this late day; whom fate hath made
Sad, bankrupt heirs of song; who, filled
With kindred yearnings, try to build
A tower like theirs, that will not fade,
Out of our dreams.
Cromwell And The Crown.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Ah! je le tiens enfin.")
[CROMWELL, Act II., October, 1827.]
THURLOW communicates the intention of Parliament to
offer CROMWELL the crown.
CROMWELL. And is it mine? And have my feet at length
Attained the summit of the rock i' the sand?
THURLOW. And yet, my lord, you have long reigned.
CROM.        Nay, nay!
Power I have 'joyed, in sooth, but not the name.
Thou smilest, Thurlow. Ah, thou little know'st
What hole it is Ambition digs i' th' heart
What end, most seeming empty, is the mark
For which we fret and toil and dare! How hard
With an unrounded fortune to sit down!
Then, what a lustre from most ancient times
Heaven has flung o'er the sacred head of kings!
King - Majesty - what names of power! No king,
And yet the world's high arbiter! The thing
Without the word! no handle to the blade!
Away - the empire and the name are one!
Alack! thou little dream'st how grievous 'tis,
Emerging from the crowd, and at the top
Arrived, to feel that there is something still
Above our heads; something, nothing! no matter - 
That word is everything.
LEITCH RITCHIE.
Satires Of Circumstances In Fifteen Glimpses - II In Church
by Thomas Hardy

"And now to God the Father," he ends,
And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles:
Each listener chokes as he bows and bends,
And emotion pervades the crowded aisles.
Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door,
And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more.
The door swings softly ajar meanwhile,
And a pupil of his in the Bible class,
Who adores him as one without gloss or guile,
Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile
And re-enact at the vestry-glass
Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show
That had moved the congregation so.