DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Phantom
by Walter De La Mare

'Upstairs in the large closet, child,
This side the blue-room door,
Is an old Bible, bound in leather,
Standing upon the floor;
'Go with this taper, bring it me;
Carry it on your arm;
It is the book on many a sea
Hath stilled the waves' alarm.'
Late the hour, dark the night,
The house is solitary,
Feeble is a taper's light
To light poor Ann to see.
Her eyes are yet with visions bright
Of sylph and river, flower and fay,
Now through a narrow corridor
She takes her lonely way.
Vast shadows on the heedless walls
Gigantic loom, stoop low:
Each little hasty footfall calls
Hollowly to and fro.
In the dim solitude her heart
Remembers tearlessly
White winters when her mother was
Her loving company.
Now in the dark clear glass she sees
A taper mocking hers, - 
A phantom face of light blue eyes,
Reflecting phantom fears.
Around her loom the vacant rooms,
Wind the upward stairs,
She climbs on into a loneliness
Only her taper shares.
Her grandmother is deaf with age;
A garden of moonless trees
Would answer not though she should cry
In anguish on her knees.
So that she scarcely heeds - so fast
Her pent-up heart doth beat - 
When, faint along the corridor,
Falleth the sound of feet: - 
Sounds lighter than silk slippers make
Upon a ballroom floor, when sweet
Violin and 'cello wake
Music for twirling feet.
O! in an old unfriendly house,
What shapes may not conceal
Their faces in the open day,
At night abroad to steal?
Even her taper seems with fear
To languish small and blue;
Far in the woods the winter wind
Runs whistling through.
A dreadful cold plucks at each hair,
Her mouth is stretched to cry,
But sudden, with a gush of joy,
It narrows to a sigh.
It is a wilding child which comes
Swift through the corridor,
Singing an old forgotten song,
This ancient burden bore: - 
'Thorn, thorn, I wis,
And roses twain,
A red rose and a white,
Stoop in the blossom, bee, and kiss
A lonely child good-night.
'Swim fish, sing bird,
And sigh again,
I that am lost am lone,
Bee in the blossom never stirred
Locks hid beneath a stone!' - 
Her eye was of the azure fire
That hovers in wintry flame;
Her raiment wild and yellow as furze
That spouteth out the same;
And in her hand she bore no flower,
But on her head a wreath
Of faded flag-flowers that did yet
Smell sweetly after death.
Clear was the light of loveliness
That lit her face like rain;
And sad the mouth that uttered
Her immemorial strain.
*     *     *     *
Gloomy with night the corridor
Is now that she is gone,
Albeit this solitary child
No longer seems alone.
Fast though her taper dwindles down,
Heavy and thick the tome,
A beauty beyond fear to dim
Haunts now her alien home.
Ghosts in the world malignant, grim,
Vex many a wood, and glen,
And house, and pool, - the unquiet ghosts
Of dead and restless men.
But in her grannie's house this spirit - 
A child as lone as she - 
Pining for love not found on earth,
Ann dreams again to see.
Seated upon her tapestry-stool,
Her fairy-book laid by,
She gazes in the fire, knowing
She hath sweet company.
The Lesson Of The Patriot Dead.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("O caresse sublime.")
[April, 1871.]
Upon the grave's cold mouth there ever have caresses clung
For those who died ideally good and grand and pure and young;
Under the scorn of all who clamor: "There is nothing just!"
And bow to dread inquisitor and worship lords of dust;
Let sophists give the lie, hearts droop, and courtiers play the worm,
Our martyrs of Democracy the Truth sublime affirm!
And when all seems inert upon this seething, troublous round,
And when the rashest knows not best to flee ar stand his ground,
When not a single war-cry from the sombre mass will rush,
When o'er the universe is spread by Doubting utter hush,
Then he who searches well within the walls that close immure
Our teachers, leaders, heroes slain because they lived too pure,
May glue his ear upon the ground where few else came to grieve,
And ask the austere shadows: "Ho! and must one still believe?
Read yet the orders: 'Forward, march!' and 'charge!'" Then from the lime,
Which burnt the bones but left the soul (Oh! tyrants' useless crime!)
Will rise reply: "Yes!" "yes!" and "yes!" the thousand, thousandth time!
H.L.W.
Guerdon.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Upon the white cheek of the Cherub Year
I saw a tear.
Alas! I murmured, that the Year should borrow
So soon a sorrow.
Just then the sunlight fell with sudden flame:
The tear became
A wond'rous diamond sparkling in the light - 
A beauteous sight.
Upon my soul there fell such woeful loss,
I said, "The Cross
Is grievous for a life as young as mine."
Just then, like wine,
God's sunlight shone from His high Heavens down;
And lo! a crown
Gleamed in the place of what I thought a burden - 
My sorrow's guerdon.
Upturn The Rock
by Paul Cameron Brown

Upon the rocks where the baubles of broken blue glass wink at the sun and gather strands of rusted wire with the occasional bloodroot wildflower, a man is unbending in his efforts to construct a stone rail fence. Specks of mica in the rock are like lizards basking in the heat of a mid-day or a man's thumb placed squarely about these noisome stones clattering as one more of their number comes to rest and home.
The line of cherokee rocks bends first up, then downward in movement across the meadow much like a labouring oar listing but finally brought into play. The glitter of turquoise water with jewels of light on her passing wave - like wings entrances much as does this fence moving smartly into the space of green and earth.
The man, a stooped farmer, has toiled for days to clear this land for tillage. His impact seems negligible to efforts given yet gradually he surmises a scant return is being paid. He picks a wildflower nudging its face through calloused stone and watches the juice break onto forward skin. An old saying reminds him insect bites will lessen should he smear the liquid onto exposed limbs. He is perspiring now and the rocks shove face-like projections into the consciousness of forest and that periphery area, his clearing.
The fence begins to melt as if in a haze and the logic of clearing this vast expanse of earth and rock escapes him. He thinks of each rock as the buttress of a treasure box he has just hidden and is loath to dislodge further stones. He ponders Christ's parable of the Kingdom of Heaven likened unto treasure buried in a field. For reasons unclear but not necessarily related to the blood juice, he imagines the fence to be the one at Chancellorsville where a Union regiment died to a man and was found by a burial brigade with apple blossoms stuck to each bloodied face.
Evasive now, he perceives the fence to be the one stopping Pickett's charge at Gettysburg or that fence at Mons in northern France which turned a war. He begins to rummage through the piled stones for spent bullets and other mementoes of a great battle. He relives the story of the Angel of Mons[1].
As he dislodges more and more stones, he showers chunks of limestone and granite backward onto the barren field. The shower of rock is somewhat reminiscent of Ungava's meteor spray or splintered debris forced down a soldier's foxhole. Perhaps a runic stone will fall from tangled roots when he burns the dead stumps of trees deciphering once and for all why men labour or think at all. The fence swirls on and on in growing amnesia becoming the very touchstone of all purpose, stones from Jericho's Wall or the passkeys taken from our material existence. Gabriel, the archangel, will sound his trumpet here, he is assured. The dead and unburied of nameless acts of toil and dread will stand a stone's breadth across this fence. The Face of God will be seen in the pact nature has made with earth and stone.
He turns and puts his hat by a tree, lifts a canteen and imagines what all might be should vegetation ever be coded and stones prophets to their accordion earth.
Threnody
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

I
Upon your hearse this flower I lay.
Brief be your sleep!    You shall be known
When lesser men have had their day:
Fame blossoms where true seed is sown,
Or soon or late, let Time wrong what it may.
II
Unvext by any dream of fame,
You smiled, and bade the world pass by:
But I--I turned, and saw a name
Shaping itself against the sky--
White star that rose amid the battle's flame!
III
Brief be your sleep, for I would see
Your laurels--ah, how trivial now
To him must earthly laurel be
Who wears the amaranth on his brow!
How vain the voices of mortality!
The Iron Crags
by Madison Julius Cawein

Upon the iron crags of War I heard his terrible daughters
In battle speak while at their feet,
In gulfs of human waters,
A voice, intoning, "Where is God?" in ceaseless sorrow beat:
And to my heart, in doubt, I said,
"God? God's above the storm!
O heart, be brave, be comforted,
And keep your hearth-stone warm
For her who breasts the storm
God's Peace, the fair of form."
I heard the Battle Angels cry above the slain's red mountains,
While from their wings the lightnings hurled
Of Death's destroying fountains,
And thunder of their revels rolled around the ruined world:
Still to my heart, in fear, I cried,
"God? God is watching there!
My heart, oh, keep the doorway wide
Here in your House of Care,
For her who wanders there,
God's Peace, with happy hair."
The darkness and the battle passed: and rushing on wild pinions
The hosts of Havoc shrieked their hate
And fled to Hell's dominions,
And, lo! I heard, out in the night, a knocking at the gate:
And one who cried aloud to me:
"The night and storm are gone!
Oh, open wide the door and see
Who waits here in the dawn!
Peace, with God's splendor on
Back to the sad world drawn!"
Poets
by Alfred Joyce Kilmer (Joyce)

Vain is the chiming of forgotten bells
That the wind sways above a ruined shrine.
Vainer his voice in whom no longer dwells
Hunger that craves immortal Bread and Wine.
Light songs we breathe that perish with our breath
Out of our lips that have not kissed the rod.
They shall not live who have not tasted death.
They only sing who are struck dumb by God.
"Upon The Gallows Hung A Wretch,"
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Upon the gallows hung a wretch,
Too sullied for the hell
To which the law entitled him.
As nature's curtain fell
The one who bore him tottered in,
For this was woman's son.
''T was all I had,' she stricken gasped;
Oh, what a livid boon!
Titanic
by Thomas William Hodgson Crosland

Upon the tinkling splintery battlements
Which swing and tumble south in ghostly white
Behemoth rushes blindly from the night,
Behemoth whom we have praised on instruments
Dulcet and shrill and impudent with vents:
Behemoth whose huge body was our delight
And miracle, wallows where there is no light,
Shattered and crumpled and torn with pitiful rents.
O towers of steel and masts that gored the moon,
On you we blazoned our pomp and lust and pelf,
And we have died like excellent proud kings
Who take death nobly if it come late or soon:
For our high souls are mirrors of Himself,
Though our great wonders are His littlest things.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part I. - XXVIII - Influence Abused
by William Wordsworth

Urged by Ambition, who with subtlest skill
Changes her means, the Enthusiast as a dupe
Shall soar, and as a hypocrite can stoop,
And turn the instruments of good to ill,
Moulding the credulous people to his will.
Such Dunstan: from its Benedictine coop
Issues the master Mind, at whose fell swoop
The chaste affections tremble to fulfil
Their purposes. Behold, pre-signified,
The Might of spiritual sway! his thoughts, his dreams,
Do in the supernatural world abide:
So vaunt a throng of Followers, filled with pride
In what they see of virtues pushed to extremes,
And sorceries of talent misapplied.
Sabbath Walks.
by John Clare

Upon the sabbath, sweet it is to walk
'Neath wood-side shelter of oak's spreading tree,
Or by a hedge-row track, or padded balk;
Or stretch 'neath willows on the meadow lea,
List'ning, delighted, hum of passing bee,
And curious pausing on the blossom's head;
And mark the spider at his labour free,
Spinning from bent to bent his silken thread;
And lab'ring ants, by careful nature led
To make the most of summer's plenteous stay;
And lady-cow, beneath its leafy shed,
Call'd, when I mix'd with children, "clock-a-clay,"
Pruning its red wings on its pleasing bed,
Glad like myself to shun the heat of day.
Town
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

LONDON
Used to wear her lights splendidly,
Flinging her shawl-fringe over the River,
Tassels in abandon.
And up in the sky
A two-eyed clock, like an owl
Solemnly used to approve, chime, chiming,
Approval, goggle-eyed fowl.
There are no gleams on the River,
No goggling clock;
No sound from St. Stephen's;
No lamp-fringed frock.
Instead,
Darkness, and skin-wrapped
Fleet, hurrying limbs,
Soft-footed dead.
London
Original, wolf-wrapped
In pelts of wolves, all her luminous
Garments gone.
London, with hair
Like a forest darkness, like a marsh
Of rushes, ere the Romans
Broke in her lair.
It is well
That London, lair of sudden
Male and female darknesses
Has broken her spell.
Poe
by Madison Julius Cawein

Upon the summit of his Century
He reared a Palace of enduring Art,
From whose wild windows never more depart
Beauty's pale light and starry fantasy:
Within is music, sobbing ceaselessly;
And phantom terror, spectres of the heart
And ghosts of grief and love that ever start
From haunted places, fleeing what none may see.
Around its towers the bird, that never dies,
Circles; the tempest beats with black alarm
On one red window where, beyond the storm,
The Lord of that high Palace dreams and sighs,
His Soul, with its Despair, a kingly form,
And Death with infinite pity in his eyes.
The Rude Rat And The Unostentatious Oyster
by Guy Wetmore Carryl

Upon the shore, a mile or more
From traffic and confusion,
An oyster dwelt, because he felt
A longing for seclusion;
Said he: "I love the stillness of
This spot. It's like a cloister."
(These words I quote because, you note,
They rhyme so well with oyster.)
A prying rat, believing that
She needed change of diet,
In search of such disturbed this much-
To-be-desired quiet.
To say the least, this tactless beast
Was apt to rudely roister:
She tapped his shell, and called him--well,
A name that hurt the oyster.
"I see," she cried, "you're open wide,
And, searching for a reason,
September's here, and so it's clear
That oysters are in season."
She smiled a smile that showed this style
Of badinage rejoiced her,
Advanced a pace with easy grace,
And sniffed the silent oyster.
The latter's pride was sorely tried,
He thought of what he could say,
Reflected what the common lot
Of vulgar molluscs would say;
Then caught his breath, grew pale as death,
And, as his brow turned moister,
Began to close, and nipped her nose!
Superb, dramatic oyster!
We note with joy that oi polloi,
Whom maidens bite the thumb at,
Are apt to try some weak reply
To things they should be dumb at.
THE MORAL, then, for crafty men
Is: When a maid has voiced her
Contemptuous heart, don't think you're smart,
But shut up--like the oyster.
The Linnet
by Walter De La Mare

Upon this leafy bush
With thorns and roses in it,
Flutters a thing of light,
A twittering linnet.
And all the throbbing world
Of dew and sun and air
By this small parcel of life
Is made more fair;
As if each bramble-spray
And mounded gold-wreathed furze,
Harebell and little thyme,
Were only hers;
As if this beauty and grace
Did to one bird belong,
And, at a flutter of wing,
Might vanish in song.
On The Rhine
by Matthew Arnold

Vain is the effort to forget.
Some day I shall be cold, I know,
As is the eternal moon-lit snow
Of the high Alps, to which I go:
But ah, not yet! not yet!
Vain is the agony of grief.
'Tis true, indeed, an iron knot
Ties straitly up from mine thy lot,
And were it snapt, thou lov'st me not!
But is despair relief?
Awhile let me with thought have done;
And as this brimm'd unwrinkled Rhine
And that far purple mountain line
Lie sweetly in the look divine
Of the slow-sinking sun;
So let me lie, and calm as they
Let beam upon my inward view
Those eyes of deep, soft, lucent hue,
Eyes too expressive to be blue,
Too lovely to be grey.
Ah Quiet, all things feel thy balm!
Those blue hills too, this river's flow,
Were restless once, but long ago.
Tam'd is their turbulent youthful glow:
Their joy is in their calm.
Lament XIII
by Jan Kochanowski

Ursula, winsome child, I would that I
Had never had thee if thou wert to die
So early. For with lasting grief I pay,
Now thou hast left me, for thy sweet, brief stay.
Thou didst delude me like a dream by night
That shines in golden fullness on the sight,
Then vanishes, and to the man awake
Leaves only of its treasures much heartbreak.
So hast thou done to me, beloved cheat:
Thou madest with high hope my heart to beat
And then didst hurry off and bear with thee
All of the gladness thou once gavest me.
'Tis half my heart I lack through this thy taking
And what is left is good for naught but aching.
Stonecutters, set me up a carven stone
And let this sad inscription run thereon:
Ursula Kochanowski lieth here,
Her father's sorrow and her father's dear;
For heedless Death hath acted here crisscross:
She should have mourned my death, not I her loss.
True Enjoyment.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

VAINLY wouldst thou, to gain a heart,
Heap up a maiden's lap with gold;
The joys of love thou must impart,
Wouldst thou e'er see those joys unfold.
The voices of the throng gold buys,
No single heart 'twill win for thee;
Wouldst thou a maiden make thy prize,
Thyself alone the bribe must be.
If by no sacred tie thou'rt bound,
Oh youth, thou must thyself restrain!
Well may true liberty be found,
Tho' man may seem to wear a chain.
Let one alone inflame thee e'er,
And if her heart with love o'erflows,
Let tenderness unite you there,
If duty's self no fetter knows.
First feel, oh youth! A girl then find
Worthy thy choice, let her choose thee,
In body fair, and fair in mind,
And then thou wilt be blessed, like me.
I who have made this art mine own,
A girl have chosen such as this
The blessing of the priest alone
Is wanting to complete our bliss.
Nought but my rapture is her guide,
Only for me she cares to please, 
Ne'er wanton save when by my side,
And modest when the world she sees;
That time our glow may never chill,
She yields no right through frailty;
Her favour is a favour still,
And I must ever grateful be.
Yet I'm content, and full of joy,
If she'll but grant her smile so sweet,
Or if at table she'll employ,
To pillow hers, her lover's feet,
Give me the apple that she bit,
The glass from which she drank, bestow,
And when my kiss so orders it,
Her bosom, veil'd till then, will show.
And when she wills of love to speak,
In fond and silent hours of bliss,
Words from her mouth are all I seek,
Nought else I crave, not e'en a kiss.
With what a soul her mind is fraught,
Wreath'd round with charms unceasingly!
She's perfect, and she fails in nought
Save in her deigning to love me.
My rev'rence throws me at her feet,
My longing throws me on her breast;
This, youth, is rapture true and sweet,
Be wise, thus seeking to be blest.
When death shall take thee from her side,
To join the angelic choir above,
In heaven's bright mansions to abide, 
No diff'rence at the change thoult prove.
Attainment
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Use all your hidden forces.    Do not miss
The purpose of this life, and do not wait
For circumstance to mould or change your fate;
In your own self lies Destiny.    Let this
Vast truth cast out all fear, all prejudice,
All hesitation.    Know that you are great,
Great with divinity.    So dominate
Environment, and enter into bliss.
Love largely and hate nothing.    Hold no aim
That does not chord with universal good.
Hear what the voices of the Silence say - 
All joys are yours if you put forth your claim.
Once let the spiritual laws be understood,
Material things must answer and obey.
Vain Transient World.
by W. M. MacKeracher

Vain transient World, what charms are thine?
And what do mortals in thee see,
That they should worship at thy shrine,
And sacrifice their all to thee?
Thy brightest gifts, thy happiest hours
Fly past on pinions of the wind;
They fade like blooms upon the flowers,
And leave a painful want behind.
Thou art a road, though not of space,
Which rich and poor alike must tread;
Thy starting point we cannot trace,
Thine end - the country of the dead.
A pathway paved with want and woe,
With pleasures painful, incomplete;
Like stones upon the way below,
Which wound the weary pilgrim's feet.
Thou'rt hedged with visions of despair,
With words of hate, with looks of scorn;
Like wayside thorns which pierce and tear
The fainting traveller weak and worn.
Relentless odium's bitter ill,
Cold disregard thy ways infest;
Like wintry blasts that chill and kill
The very heart within the breast.
Unanointed.
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
Upon the Siren-haunted seas, between Fate's mythic shores,
Within a world of moon and mist, where dusk and daylight wed,
I see a phantom galley and its hull is banked with oars,
With ghostly oars that move to song, a song of dreams long dead:
"Oh, we are sick of rowing here!
With toil our arms are numb;
With smiting year on weary year
Salt-furrows of the foam:
Our journey's end is never near,
And will no nearer come
Beyond our reach the shores appear
Of far Elysium."
II.
Within a land of cataracts and mountains old and sand,
Beneath whose heavens ruins rise, o'er which the stars burn red,
I see a spectral cavalcade with crucifix in hand
And shadowy armor march and sing, a song of dreams long dead:
"Oh, we are weary marching on!
Our limbs are travel-worn;
With cross and sword from dawn to dawn
We wend with raiment torn:
The leagues to go, the leagues we've gone
Are sand and rock and thorn
The way is long to Avalon
Beyond the deeps of morn."
III.
They are the curs'd! the souls who yearn and evermore pursue
The vision of a vain desire, a splendor far ahead;
To whom God gives the poet's dream without the grasp to do,
The artist's hope without the scope between the quick and dead:
I, too, am weary toiling where
The winds and waters beat;
When shall I ease the oar I bear
And rest my tired feet?
When will the white moons cease to glare,
The red suns veil their heat?
And from the heights blow sweet the air
Of Love's divine retreat?
Extreme Unction
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

Upon the eyes, the lips, the feet,
On all the passages of sense,
The atoning oil is spread with sweet
Renewal of lost innocence.
The feet, that lately ran so fast
To meet desire, are soothly sealed;
The eyes, that were so often cast
On vanity, are touched and healed.
From troublous sights and sounds set free;
In such a twilight hour of breath,
Shall one retrace his life, or see,
Through shadows, the true face of death?
Vials of mercy! Sacring oils!
I know not where nor when I come,
Nor through what wanderings and toils,
To crave of you Viaticum.
Yet, when the walls of flesh grow weak,
In such an hour, it well may be,
Through mist and darkness, light will break,
And each anointed sense will see.
Upon Ursley.
by Robert Herrick

Ursley, she thinks those velvet patches grace
The candid temples of her comely face;
But he will say, whoe'er those circlets seeth,
They be but signs of Ursley's hollow teeth.
The Nixes' Song.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Vague, vague 'neath darkling waves,
With emerald-curving caves
For the arched skies,
Red-walled with dark dull gold
The Nixes' city old
Deep-glimmering lies.
And thro' the long green nights the spangling spars
Twinkle like milky stars.
Where the wind-ripple plays
On tufts of dipping sprays
Sparkling we rock;
With blooming fingers bare
Comb down our golden hair
In many a lock;
While, poured o'er naked ease of cool, moist limbs,
An amber glamour swims.
Or in the middle night
When cold damp fire-flies light
Pale flitting brands
Down all the woodland aisles,
With swift mysterious smiles
Link we white hands,
And where the moonlight haunts the drowsy lake
Bask in its silver wake.
Come join, come join our dance
While the warm starbeams glance,
And the kind moon
Spills all her flowers of light
At the dark feet of Night,
And soon, full soon,
Thou'lt sleep in shadowy halls where dim and cold
Our city's walled with gold.