DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
In Memoriam. - Mr. David F. Robinson,
by Lydia Howard Sigourney

Died at Hartford, January 26th, 1862, aged 61.
We did not think it would be so;--
We kept
The hope-lamp trimm'd and burning. Day by day
There came reports to cheer us;--and we thought
God in his goodness would not take away
So soon, another of that wasting band
Of worthies, whose example in our midst,
Precious and prized, we knew not how to spare.
These were our thoughts and prayers;--
But He who reigns
Above the clouds had different purposes.
*     *     *     *     *
On the low pillow where so late he mourn'd
His gifted first-born, in the prime of days,
Circled by all that makes life beautiful
And full of joy, his honored head is laid,--
The Sire and Son,--ne'er to be sunder'd more.
Yet his unblemish'd memory still survives,
And walks among us;--the upright intent,--
Firmness that conquer'd obstacles,--the zeal
For public good,--the warmth of charity,
And piety, that gave unwithering root
To every virtue.
Of the pleasant home
Where his most fond affections shed their balm
And found response,--now in its deep eclipse
And desolate, it is not ours to speak;
Nor by a powerless sympathy invade
The sacredness of grief.
'Twere fitter far
For faith to contemplate that glorious Home
Which knows no change, and lose itself in praise
Of Him, who to His faithful followers gives
Such blessed passport o'er the flood of Death,
That "where He is, there shall His servant be."
Forty Years After
by H. H. Porter,

We climbed to the top of Goat Point hill,
Sweet Kitty, my sweetheart, and I;
And watched the moon make stars on the waves,
And the dim white ships go by,
While a throne we made on a rough stone wall,
And the king and the queen were we;
And I sat with my arm about Kitty,
And she with her arm about me.
The water was mad in the moonlight,
And the sand like gold where it shone,
And our hearts kept time to its music,
As we sat in the splendour alone.
And Kitty's dear eyes twinkled brightly,
And Kitty's brown hair blew so free,
While I sat with my arm about Kitty,
And she with her arm about me.
Last night we drove in our carriage,
To the wall at the top of the hill;
And though we're forty years older,
We're children and sweethearts still.
And we talked again of that moonlight
That danced so mad on the sea,
When I sat with my arm about Kitty,
And she with her arm about me.
The throne on the wall was still standing,
But we sat in the carriage last night,
For a wall is too high for old people
Whose foreheads have linings of white.
And Kitty's waist measure is forty,
While mine is full fifty and three,
So I can't get my arm about Kitty,
Nor can she get both hers around me.
Processionals
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

NORTH
We come from the gloom of the shadowy trail
Out away on the fringe of the Night,
Where no man could tell, when the darkness fell,
If his eyes would behold the light.
To--the--Night,--
To--the--Night,--
To the darkness and the sorrow of the Night,--
Came--the--Light,
Came--the--Light,
Came the Wonder and the Glory of the Light.
There are wanderers still, without ever a guide,
Out there on the fringe of the Night,
They are bond and blind,--to their darkness resigned,
With never a wish for the Light.
To--their--Night,--
To--their--Night,--
To the darkness and the sorrow of their Night,
Take--the--Light!
Take--the--Light!
Take the Wonder and the Glory of the Light!
SOUTH
We come from the land of the blazing sun,
From the land that was blacker than night,--
From the white-hot sand of the Great Dark Land,
Where Might was the only Right.
To--the--Night,--
To--the--Night,--
To the darkness and the sorrow of the Night,
Came--the--Light,
Came--the--Light,
Came the Wonder and the Glory of the Light.
There are sorrows still, there is darkness still,
There are still gross wrongs to set right;
There are grim black stains, there are peoples in chains,
To be loosed from the grip of the Night.
To--their--Night,--
To--their--Night,--
To the darkness and the sorrow of their Night,
Take--the--Light!
Take--the--Light!
Take the Wonder and the Glory of the Light!
EAST
We come from the East, from the glowing East,
Where the Past, with its hand of ice,
Still reaches across through its ages of loss,
And still holds the land like a vice.
To--the--Night,--
To--the--Night,--
To the darkness and the sorrow of the Night,--
Came--the--Light,
Came--the--Light,
Came the Wonder and the Glory of the Light.
O, the sorrowful ones of the caste-bound lands,
How they long for the wider way!
How they sigh in the gloom of their close-barred tomb
For the Light of the Coming Day!
To--their--Night,--
To--their--Night,--
To the darkness and the sorrow of their Night,
Take--the--Light,
Take--the--Light!
Take the Wonder and the Glory of the Light!
WEST
We come from the Isles, from the Western Isles,
From the isles of the sunny seas,--
Where the smiles and the wiles, with which Nature beguiles,
Are but shrouds for her tragedies.
To--the--Night,--
To--the--Night,--
To the darkness and the sorrow of the Night,--
Came--the--Light,
Came--the--Light,
Came the Wonder and the Glory of the Light.
There is Darkness more deadly than Death itself,
There is Blindness beyond that of sight.
There are souls fast bound in the depths profound
Of unconscious and heedless Night.
To--their--Night,--
To--their--Night,--
To the darkness and the sorrow of their Night,
Take--the--Light!
Take--the--Light!
Take the Wonder and the Glory of the Light!
The Kansas Emigrants
by John Greenleaf Whittier

We cross the prairie as of old
The pilgrims crossed the sea,
To make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!
We go to rear a wall of men
On Freedom's southern line,
And plant beside the cotton-tree
The rugged Northern pine!
We're flowing from our native hills
As our free rivers flow;
The blessing of our Mother-land
Is on us as we go.
We go to plant her common schools,
On distant prairie swells,
And give the Sabbaths of the wild
The music of her bells.
Upbearing, like the Ark of old,
The Bible in our van,
We go to test the truth of God
Against the fraud of man.
No pause, nor rest, save where the streams
That feed the Kansas run,
Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon
Shall flout the setting sun!
We'll tread the prairie as of old
Our fathers sailed the sea,
And make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!
The Swagman's Rest
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

We buried old Bob where the bloodwoods wave
At the foot of the Eaglehawk;
We fashioned a cross on the old man's grave
For fear that his ghost might walk;
We carved his name on a bloodwood tree
With the date of his sad decease
And in place of "Died from effects of spree"
We wrote "May he rest in peace".
For Bob was known on the Overland,
A regular old bush wag,
Tramping along in the dust and sand,
Humping his well-worn swag.
He would camp for days in the river-bed,
And loiter and "fish for whales".
"I'm into the swagman's yard," he said.
"And I never shall find the rails."
But he found the rails on that summer night
For a better place, or worse,
As we watched by turns in the flickering light
With an old black gin for nurse.
The breeze came in with the scent of pine,
The river sounded clear,
When a change came on, and we saw the sign
That told us the end was near.
He spoke in a cultured voice and low,
"I fancy they've 'sent the route';
I once was an army man, you know,
Though now I'm a drunken brute;
But bury me out where the bloodwoods wave,
And, if ever you're fairly stuck,
Just take and shovel me out of the grave
And, maybe, I'll bring you luck.
"For I've always heard," here his voice grew weak,
His strength was well-nigh sped,
He gasped and struggled and tried to speak,
Then fell in a moment, dead.
Thus ended a wasted life and hard,
Of energies misapplied,
Old Bob was out of the "swagman's yard"
And over the Great Divide.
*             *             *             *             *             *
The drought came down on the field and flock,
And never a raindrop fell,
Though the tortured moans of the starving stock
Might soften a fiend from hell.
And we thought of the hint that the swagman gave
When he went to the Great Unseen,
We shoveled the skeleton out of the grave
To see what his hint might mean.
We dug where the cross and the grave posts were,
We shoveled away the mould,
When sudden a vein of quartz lay bare
All gleaming with yellow gold.
'Twas a reef with never a fault nor baulk
That ran from the range's crest,
And the richest mine on the Eaglehawk
Is known as "The Swagman's Rest".
Lines Sent To Thomas Conant Of Oshawa, A Writer Of Canadian Sketches
by James McIntyre

We do greet thee Thomas Conant,
You truthful paint Canadian charms,
And you are the great exponent
Of beauties of her woods and farms.
You give fine sketch of bird and fowl,
Of the blue jay and the plover,
And of great white Canadian owl,
All proves of nature you're a lover.
The Drovers In Reply
by Edward Dyson

We are wondering why those fellows who are writing cheerful ditties
Of the rosy times out droving, and the dust and death of cities,
Do not leave the dreary office, ask a drover for a billet,
And enjoy 'the views,' 'the campfires,' and 'the freedom' while they fill it.
If it's fun to travel cattle or to picnic with merinoes,
Well the drover doesn't see it, few poetic raptures he knows.
As for sleeping on the plains beneath 'the pale moon' always seen there,
That is most appreciated by the man who's never been there.
And the 'balmy air,' the horses, and the 'wondrous constellations,'
The 'possum-rugs, and billies, and the tough and musty rations,
It's strange they only please the swell in urban streets residing,
Where the trams are always handy if he has a taste for riding.
We have travelled far with cattle for the very best of reasons, 
For a living, we've gone droving in all latitudes and seasons,
But have never had a mate content with pleasures of this kidney,
And who wouldn't change his blisses for a flutter down in Sydney.
Night watches are delightful when the stars are really splendid
To the sentimental stranger, but his joy is quickly ended
When the rain comes down in sluice-heads, or the cutting hailstones pelter,
And the sheep drift with the blizzard, and the horses bolt for shelter.
Don't imagine we are soured, but it's peculiarly annoying
To be told by city writers of the pleasures we're enjoying,
When perhaps we've nothing better than some fluky water handy,
Whilst the scribes in showy bar-rooms take iced seltzer with their brandy.
The dust in town is nothing to the dust the drover curses,
And the dust a drover swallows, and the awful thirst he nurses
When he's on the hard macadam, where the wethers cannot browse, and
The sirocco drives right at him, and he follows twenty thousand.
This droving on the plain is really charming when the weather
Isn't hot enough to curl the soles right off your upper leather,
Or so cold that when the morning wind comes hissing through the grasses
You can feel it cut your eyelids like a whip-lash as it passes.
There are bull-ants in the blankets, wicked horses, cramps, and 'skeeters,'
And a drinking boss like Halligan, or one like Humpy Peters,
Who is mean about the rations, and a flowing stream of curses
From the break of day to camping, through good fortune and reverses.
Yes, we wonder why the fellows who are building chipper ditties
Of the rosy times out droving and the dust and death of cities,
Do not quit the stuffy office, ask old Peters for a billet,
And enjoy the stars, the camp-fires, and the freedom while they fill it.
The Turkey And The Ant.
by John Gay

We blame the mote that dims the eye
Of other men, whose faults we spy;
But we ignore the beam that lies
With stronger strain in one's own eyes.
A turkey, who grew dull at home,
Resolved in the wild woods to roam;
Wearied she was of barn-door food,
Therefore she chuckled round her brood,
And said, "My little ones, now follow;
We'll go and dine in yonder hollow."
They first upon an ant-hill fell - 
Myriads of negro-ants, pell-mell - 
"O gobble, gobble - here's a treat!
Emmets are most delicious meat;
Spare not, spare not. How blest were we,
Could we here live from poulterers free!
Accurs'd man on turkeys preys,
Christmas to us no holy-days;
When with the oyster-sauce and chine
We roast that aldermen may dine.
They call us 'alderman in chains,'
With sausages - the stupid swains!
Ah! gluttony is sure the first
Of all the seven sins - the worst!
I'd choke mankind, had I the power,
From peasant's hut to lordly bower."
An ant, who on a neighbouring beech
Had climbed the trunk beyond her reach,
Thus said to her: "You turkey-hen,
What right have you to rail on men?
You nor compunction know nor feel,
But gobble nations at a meal!"
The Voiceless
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

We count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,
But o'er their silent sister's breast
The wild-flowers who will stoop to number?
A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them: - 
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
Nay, grieve not for the dead alone
Whose song has told their hearts' sad story, - 
Weep for the voiceless, who have known
The cross without the crown of glory
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep
O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow,
But where the glistening night-dews weep
On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow.
O hearts that break and give no sign
Save whitening lip and fading tresses,
Till Death pours out his longed-for wine
Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses, - 
If singing breath or echoing chord
To every hidden pang were given,
What endless melodies were poured,
As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven!
The Spirits For Good
by Henry Lawson

We come with peace and reason,
We come with love and light,
To banish black self-treason
And everlasting night.
We know no god nor devil,
We neither drive nor lead,
We come to banish evil
In thought as well as deed.
And this our grandest mission,
And this our purest worth;
To banish superstition,
The blackest curse on earth.
We come to pass no sentence,
For ours is not the power,
The coward's vain repentance
But wastes the waiting hour.
'Tis not for us to lengthen
The years of wasted lives;
We come to help and strengthen
The goodness that survives.
We promise nought hereafter,
We cannot conquer pain,
But work, and rest, and laughter,
Will soothe the tortured brain.
That which is lost, we cannot
Restore to any one,
But Truth and Right must triumph,
And Justice must be done!
We come in many guises;
But every one is plain
To each pure thought that rises
Again and yet again.
We are ourselves and human,
And ours our destiny;
The souls of Man and Woman
Divorced by Vanity.
In Memoriam George Warrington Steevens
by William Ernest Henley

London, December 10, 1869.
Ladysmith, January 15, 1900.
We cheered you forth - brilliant and kind and brave.
Under your country's triumphing flag you fell.
It floats, true Heart, over no dearer grave - 
Brave and brilliant and kind, hail and farewell!
Listen
by Abram Joseph Ryan

We borrow,
In our sorrow,
From the sun of some to-morrow
Half the light that gilds to-day;
And the splendor
Flashes tender
O'er hope's footsteps to defend her
From the fears that haunt the way.
We never
Here can sever
Any now from the forever
Interclasping near and far!
For each minute
Holds within it
All the hours of the infinite,
As one sky holds every star.
The Old Camp-Oven
by Edward Dyson

We don't keep a grand piano in our hut beside the creek,
And I'm pretty certain Hannah couldn't bang it, anyhow,
But we've got one box of music, and I'd rather hear its squeak
Than the daisiest cantata that's been fashioned up to now.
It's an old camp-oven merely, with a handle made of wire,
But no organ built could nearly compensate to me for it
When I come off graft and find it playing tunes before the fire,
And I'm feeling sort of vacant, but just wonder fully fit.
In its sizzle, sizzle, sizzle,
There's a thousand little airs,
And no man can sit and grizzle
'Bout his troubles and his cares
While the flames are gaily winding,
And the tea is down to brew,
And the old camp-oven's grinding
All the reels he ever knew.
When the wet winds meet and whip me in the early winter nights,
And the hissing hailstones clip me all the way across the flat,
As I battle for'ards, water-logged, toward the beckoning lights,
There is always there a welcome to console a chap for that.
For my little wife is beaming brisk and bright beside the lamp,
And the old camp-oven's going. Gosh! I feel just like a kid
As I peel and sluice so slippy, and I hear the storm winds vamp
To the singing of the oven when the missus lifts the lid.
There's a sizzle and a splutter
And a whirr of many harps;
Where's the instrument can utter
Such a maze of flats and sharps?
Not for me the great creations
When the old camp-oven plays
'Home Sweet Home,' with variations,
At the end of working days.
In the evenings dim and hazy, stretched outside along a butt,
Feeling reasonably lazy, blowing clouds that curl and climb,
I can hear the old camp-oven on the logs before the hut
Ripping out a mellow chorus that just suits the place and time.
If we strike it in the ranges, or The Windmill turns out well,
I suppose there'll be some changes, and I'll want to make things gee;
But the time will never happen when I'll be so steep a swell
That the old camp-oven's measure won't be melody to me.
'Neath its bubble, bubble, bubble,
There's the lilt of jigs and reels;
All the common kind of trouble
That the horney-handed feels
Is wiped out in half a minute
By the restfulness it brings,
And the peaceful rapture in it
When the old camp-oven sings
Indignation Of A High-Minded Spaniard
by William Wordsworth

We can endure that He should waste our lands,
Despoil our temples, and by sword and flame
Return us to the dust from which we came;
Such food a Tyrant's appetite demands:
And we can brook the thought that by his hands
Spain may be overpowered, and he possess,
For his delight, a solemn wilderness
Where all the brave lie dead. But, when of bands
Which he will break for us he dares to speak,
Of benefits, and of a future day
When our enlightened minds shall bless his sway;
'Then', the strained heart of fortitude proves weak;
Our groans, our blushes, our pale cheeks declare
That he has power to inflict what we lack strength to bear.
Dirge
by Herman Melville

We drop our dead in the sea,
The bottomless, bottomless sea;
Each bubble a hollow sigh,
As it sinks forever and aye.
We drop our dead in the sea,--
The dead reek not of aught;
We drop our dead in the sea,--
The sea ne'er gives it a thought.
Sink, sink, oh corpse, still sink,
Far down in the bottomless sea,
Where the unknown forms do prowl,
Down, down in the bottomless sea.
'Tis night above, and night all round,
And night will it be with thee;
As thou sinkest, and sinkest for aye,
Deeper down in the bottomless sea.
Builders Of Ruins
by Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell

We build with strength the deep tower-wall
That shall be shattered thus and thus.
And fair and great are court and hall,
But how fair-this is not for us,
Who know the lack that lurks in all.
We know, we know how all too bright
The hues are that our painting wears,
And how the marble gleams too white;-
We speak in unknown tongues, the years
Interpret everything aright,
And crown with weeds our pride of towers,
And warm our marble through with sun,
And break our pavements through with flowers,
With an Amen when all is done,
Knowing these perfect things of ours.
O days, we ponder, left alone,
Like children in their lonely hour,
And in our secrets keep your own,
As seeds the colour of the flower.
To-day they are not all unknown,
The stars that 'twixt the rise and fall,
Like relic-seers, shall one by one
Stand musing o'er our empty hall;
And setting moons shall brood upon
The frescoes of our inward wall.
And when some midsummer shall be,
Hither will come some little one
(Dusty with bloom of flowers is he),
Sit on a ruin i' the late long sun,
And think, one foot upon his knee.
And where they wrought, these lives of ours,
So many-worded, many-souled,
A North-west wind will take the towers,
And dark with colour, sunny and cold,
Will range alone among the flowers.
And here or there, at our desire,
The little clamorous owl shall sit
Through her still time; and we aspire
To make a law (and know not it)
Unto the life of a wild briar.
Our purpose is distinct and dear,
Though from our open eyes 'tis hidden.
Thou, Time-to-come, shalt make it clear,
Undoing our work; we are children chidden
With pity and smiles of many a year.
Who shall allot the praise, and guess
What part is yours and what is ours?-
O years that certainly will bless
Our flowers with fruits, our seeds with flowers,
With ruin all our perfectness.
Be patient, Time, of our delays,
Too happy hopes, and wasted fears,
Our faithful ways, our wilful ways,
Solace our labours, O our seers
The seasons, and our bards the days;
And make our pause and silence brim
With the shrill children's play, and sweets
Of those pathetic flowers and dim,
Of those eternal flowers my Keats
Dying felt growing over him.
Verses Written On A Window Of The Inn At Carron.
by Robert Burns

We came na here to view your warks
In hopes to be mair wise,
But only, lest we gang to hell,
It may be nae surprise:
For whan we tirl'd at your door,
Your porter dought na hear us;
Sae may, shou'd we to hell's yetts come
Your billy Satan sair us!
The Hawk's Nest
by Bret Harte (Francis)

We checked our pace, the red road sharply rounding;
We heard the troubled flow
Of the dark olive depths of pines resounding
A thousand feet below.
Above the tumult of the canyon lifted,
The gray hawk breathless hung,
Or on the hill a winged shadow drifted
Where furze and thorn-bush clung;
Or where half-way the mountain side was furrowed
With many a seam and scar;
Or some abandoned tunnel dimly burrowed,
A mole-hill seen so far.
We looked in silence down across the distant
Unfathomable reach:
A silence broken by the guide's consistent
And realistic speech.
'Walker of Murphy's blew a hole through Peters
For telling him he lied;
Then up and dusted out of South Hornitos
Across the Long Divide.
'We ran him out of Strong's, and up through Eden,
And 'cross the ford below,
And up this canyon (Peters' brother leadin'),
And me and Clark and Joe.
'He fou't us game: somehow I disremember
Jest how the thing kem round;
Some say 'twas wadding, some a scattered ember
From fires on the ground.
'But in one minute all the hill below him
Was just one sheet of flame;
Guardin' the crest, Sam Clark and I called to him,
And, well, the dog was game!
'He made no sign: the fires of hell were round him,
The pit of hell below.
We sat and waited, but we never found him;
And then we turned to go.
'And then you see that rock that's grown so bristly
With chapparal and tan
Suthin crep' out: it might hev been a grizzly
It might hev been a man;
'Suthin that howled, and gnashed its teeth, and shouted
In smoke and dust and flame;
Suthin that sprang into the depths about it,
Grizzly or man, but game!
'That's all! Well, yes, it does look rather risky,
And kinder makes one queer
And dizzy looking down. A drop of whiskey
Ain't a bad thing right here!'
Anacreon
by Victor James Daley

We bought a volume of Anacreon,
Defaced, mishandled, little to admire,
And yet its rusty clasps kept guard upon
The sweetest songs, the songs of young desire
Like that great song once sung by Solomon.
My sweetheart's cheeks were peonies on fire:
We saw by the bright message of his eyes
That Eros served us in bookseller's guise.
I keep the volume still, but She has gone . . .
Ah, for the poetry in Paradise!
There's Honey still and Roses on the earth,
And lips to kiss, and jugs to drain with mirth;
And lovers walk in pairs: but She has gone . . .
Anacreon! Anacreon!