DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Sutherland's Grave
by Henry Kendall

All night long the sea out yonder all night long the wailful sea,
Vext of winds and many thunders, seeketh rest unceasingly!
Seeketh rest in dens of tempest, where, like one distraught with pain,
Shouts the wild-eyed sprite, Confusion seeketh rest, and moans in vain:
Ah! but you should hear it calling, calling when the haggard sky
Takes the darks and damps of Winter with the mournful marsh-fowl's cry;
Even while the strong, swift torrents from the rainy ridges come
Leaping down and breaking backwards million-coloured shapes of foam!
Then, and then, the sea out yonder chiefly looketh for the boon
Portioned to the pleasant valleys and the grave sweet summer moon:
Boon of Peace, the still, the saintly spirit of the dew-dells deep 
Yellow dells and hollows haunted by the soft, dim dreams of sleep.
All night long the flying water breaks upon the stubborn rocks 
Ooze-filled forelands burnt and blackened, smit and scarred with lightning shocks;
But above the tender sea-thrift, but beyond the flowering fern,
Runs a little pathway westward pathway quaint with turn on turn 
Westward trending, thus it leads to shelving shores and slopes of mist:
Sleeping shores, and glassy bays of green and gold and amethyst!
There tread gently gently, pilgrim; there with thoughtful eyes look round;
Cross thy breast and bless the silence: lo, the place is holy ground!
Holy ground for ever, stranger! All the quiet silver lights
Dropping from the starry heavens through the soft Australian nights 
Dropping on those lone grave-grasses come serene, unbroken, clear,
Like the love of God the Father, falling, falling, year by year!
Yea, and like a Voice supernal, there the daily wind doth blow
In the leaves above the sailor buried ninety years ago.
To Laura In Death. Sonnet XLVII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Tutta la mia fiorita e verde etade.
JUST WHEN HE MIGHT FAIRLY HOPE SOME RETURN OF AFFECTION, ENVIOUS DEATH CARRIES HER OFF.
All my green years and golden prime of man
Had pass'd away, and with attemper'd sighs
My bosom heaved--ere yet the days arise
When life declines, contracting its brief span.
Already my loved enemy began
To lull suspicion, and in sportive guise,
With timid confidence, though playful, wise,
In gentle mockery my long pains to scan:
The hour was near when Love, at length, may mate
With Chastity; and, by the dear one's side,
The lover's thoughts and words may freely flow:
Death saw, with envy, my too happy state,
E'en its fair promise--and, with fatal pride,
Strode in the midway forth, an arm'd foe!
DACRE.
Now of my life each gay and greener year
Pass'd by, and cooler grew each hour the flame
With which I burn'd: and to that point we came
Whence life descends, as to its end more near;
Now 'gan my lovely foe each virtuous fear
Gently to lay aside, as safe from blame;
And though with saint-like virtue still the same,
Mock'd my sweet pains indeed, but deign'd to hear
Nigh drew the time when Love delights to dwell
With Chastity; and lovers with their mate
Can fearless sit, and all they muse of tell.
Death envied me the joys of such a state;
Nay, e'en the hopes I form'd: and on them fell
E'en in midway, like some arm'd foe in wait.
ANON., OX., 1795.
Song
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

To the tune of a Neapolitan Villanel.
All my sense thy sweetness gained;
Thy fair hair my heart enchained;
My poor reason thy words moved,
So that thee, like heaven, I loved.
Fa, la, la, leridan, dan, dan, dan, deridan:
Dan, dan, dan, deridan, deridan, dei:
While to my mind the outside stood,
For messenger of inward good.
Nor thy sweetness sour is deemed;
Thy hair not worth a hair esteemed;
Reason hath thy words removed,
Finding that but words they proved.
Fa, la, la, leridan, dan, dan, dan, deridan,
Dan, dan, dan, deridan, deridan, dei:
For no fair sign can credit win,
If that the substance fail within.
No more in thy sweetness glory,
For thy knitting hair be sorry;
Use thy words but to bewail thee
That no more thy beams avail thee;
Dan, dan,
Dan, dan,
Lay not thy colours more to view,
Without the picture be found true.
Woe to me, alas, she weepeth!
Fool! in me what folly creepeth?
Was I to blaspheme enraged,
Where my soul I have engaged?
Dan, dan,
Dan, dan,
And wretched I must yield to this;
The fault I blame her chasteness is.
Sweetness! sweetly pardon folly;
Tie me, hair, your captive wholly:
Words!    O words of heavenly knowledge!
Know, my words their faults acknowledge;
Dan, dan,
Dan, dan,
And all my life I will confess,
The less I love, I live the less.
All My Past Life...
by John Wilmot

All my past life is mine no more,
The flying hours are gone,
Like transitory dreams given o'er,
Whose images are kept in store
By memory alone.
What ever is to come is not,
How can it then be mine?
The present moment's all my lot,
And that as fast as it is got,
Phyllis, is wholly thine.
Then talk not of inconstancy,
False hearts, and broken vows,
Ii, by miracle, can be,
This live-long minute true to thee,
'Tis all that heaven allows.
The Soul.
by Charles Sangster

All my mind has sat in state,
Pond'ring on the deathless Soul:
What must be the Perfect Whole,
When the atom is so great!
God!    I fall in spirit down,
Low as Persian to the sun;
All my senses, one by one,
In the stream of Thought must drown.
On the tide of mystery,
Like a waif, I'm seaward borne,
Ever looking for the morn
That will yet interpret Thee,
Opening my blinded eyes,
That have strove to look within,
'Whelmed in clouds of doubt and sin,
Sinking where I dared to rise:
Could I trace one Spirit's flight,
Track it to its final goal,
Know that 'Spirit' meant 'the Soul,'
I must perish in the light.
All in vain I search, and cry:
"What, O Soul, and whence art thou?"
Lower than the earth I bow,
Stricken with the grave reply:
"Wouldst thou ope what God has sealed - 
Sealed in mercy here below?
What is best for man to know,
Shall most surely be revealed!"
Deep on deep of mystery!
Ask the sage, he knows no more
Of the soul's unspoken lore
Than the child upon his knee!
Cannot tell me whence the thought
That is passing through my mind!
Where the mystic soul is shrined,
Wherewith all my life is fraught?
Knows not how the brain conceives
Images almost divine;
Cannot work my mental mine,
Cannot bind my golden sheaves.
Is he wiser, then, than I,
Seeing he can read the stars?
I have rode in fancy's oars
Leagues beyond his farthest sky!
Some old Rabbi, dreaming o'er
The sweet legends of his race,
Ask him for some certain trace
Of the far, eternal shore.
No.    The Talmud page is dark,
Though it burn with quenchless fire,
And the insight must pierce higher,
That would find the vital spark.
O, my Soul! be firm and wait,
Hoping with the zealous few,
Till the Shekinah of the True
Lead thee through the Golden Gate.
The Pass Of The Sierra
by John Greenleaf Whittier

All night above their rocky bed
They saw the stars march slow;
The wild Sierra overhead,
The desert's death below.
The Indian from his lodge of bark,
The gray bear from his den,
Beyond their camp-fire's wall of dark,
Glared on the mountain men.
Still upward turned, with anxious strain,
Their leader's sleepless eye,
Where splinters of the mountain chain
Stood black against the sky.
The night waned slow: at last, a glow,
A gleam of sudden fire,
Shot up behind the walls of snow,
And tipped each icy spire.
"Up, men!" he cried, "yon rocky cone,
To-day, please God, we'll pass,
And look from Winter's frozen throne
On Summer's flowers and grass!"
They set their faces to the blast,
They trod the eternal snow,
And faint, worn, bleeding, hailed at last
The promised land below.
Behind, they saw the snow-cloud tossed
By many an icy horn;
Before, warm valleys, wood-embossed,
And green with vines and corn.
They left the Winter at their backs
To flap his baffled wing,
And downward, with the cataracts,
Leaped to the lap of Spring.
Strong leader of that mountain band,
Another task remains,
To break from Slavery's desert land
A path to Freedom's plains.
The winds are wild, the way is drear,
Yet, flashing through the night,
Lo! icy ridge and rocky spear
Blaze out in morning light!
Rise up, Fr'mont! and go before;
The Hour must have its Man;
Put on the hunting-shirt once more,
And lead in Freedom's van
Daisy's Valentines.
by Henry Austin Dobson

All night through Daisy's sleep, it seems,
Have ceaseless "rat-tats" thundered;
All night through Daisy's rosy dreams
Have devious Postmen blundered,
Delivering letters round her bed,--
Mysterious missives, sealed with red,
And franked of course with due Queen's-head,--
While Daisy lay and wondered.
But now, when chirping birds begin,
And Day puts off the Quaker,--
When Cook renews her morning din,
And rates the cheerful baker,--
She dreams her dream no dream at all,
For, just as pigeons come at call,
Winged letters flutter down, and fall
Around her head, and wake her.
Yes, there they are! With quirk and twist,
And fraudful arts directed;
(Save Grandpapa's dear stiff old "fist,"
Through all disguise detected;)
But which is his,--her young Lothair's,--
Who wooed her on the school-room stairs
With three sweet cakes, and two ripe pears,
In one neat pile collected?
'Tis there, be sure. Though truth to speak,
(If truth may be permitted),
I doubt that young "gift-bearing Greek"
Is scarce for fealty fitted;
For has he not (I grieve to say),
To two loves more, on this same day,
In just this same emblazoned way,
His transient vows transmitted?
He may be true. Yet, Daisy dear,
That even youth grows colder
You'll find is no new thing, I fear;
And when you're somewhat older,
You'll read of one Dardanian boy
Who "wooed with gifts" a maiden coy,--
Then took the morning train to Troy,
In spite of all he'd told her.
But wait. Your time will come. And then,
Obliging Fates, please send her
The bravest thing you have in men,
Sound-hearted, strong, and tender;--
The kind of man, dear Fates, you know,
That feels how shyly Daisies grow,
And what soft things they are, and so
Will spare to spoil or mend her.
Phantom
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

All look and likeness caught from earth
All accident of kin and birth,
Had pass'd away. There was no trace
Of aught on that illumined face,
Uprais'd beneath the rifted stone
But of one spirit all her own;
She, she herself, and only she,
Shone through her body visibly.
One Way Of Love
by Robert Browning

I.
All June I bound the rose in sheaves.
Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves
And strew them where Pauline may pass.
She will not turn aside? Alas!
Let them lie. Suppose they die?
The chance was they might take her eye.
II.
How many a month I strove to suit
These stubborn fingers to the lute!
To-day I venture all I know.
She will not hear my music? So!
Break the string; fold music's wing:
Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!
III.
My whole life long I learned to love.
This hour my utmost art I prove
And speak my passion, Heaven or hell?
She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!
Lose who may, I still can say,
Those who win heaven, blest are they!
The Dragon And The Undying
by Siegfried Loraine Sassoon

All night the flares go up; the Dragon sings
And beats upon the dark with furious wings;
And, stung to rage by his own darting fires,
Reaches with grappling coils from town to town;
He lusts to break the loveliness of spires,
And hurls their martyred music toppling down.
Yet, though the slain are homeless as the breeze,
Vocal are they, like storm-bewilder'd seas.
Their faces are the fair, unshrouded night,
And planets are their eyes, their ageless dreams.
Tenderly stooping earthward from their height,
They wander in the dusk with chanting streams;
And they are dawn-lit trees, with arms up-flung,
To hail the burning heavens they left unsung.
The Last Leap
by Adam Lindsay Gordon

All is over! fleet career,
Dash of greyhound slipping thongs,
Flight of falcon, bound of deer,
Mad hoof-thunder in our rear,
Cold air rushing up our lungs,
Din of many tongues.
Once again, one struggle good,
One vain effort; he must dwell
Near the shifted post, that stood
Where the splinters of the wood,
Lying in the torn tracks, tell
How he struck and fell.
Crest where cold drops beaded cling,
Small ear drooping, nostril full,
Glazing to a scarlet ring,
Flanks and haunches quivering,
Sinews stiff'ning, void and null,
Dumb eyes sorrowful.
Satin coat that seems to shine
Duller now, black braided tress,
That a softer hand than mine
Far away was wont to twine,
That in meadows far from this
Softer lips might kiss.
All is over! this is death,
And I stand to watch thee die,
Brave old horse! with 'bated breath
Hardly drawn through tight-clenched teeth,
Lip indented deep, but eye
Only dull and dry.
Musing on the husk and chaff
Gather'd where life's tares are sown,
Thus I speak, and force a laugh
That is half a sneer and half
An involuntary groan,
In a stifled tone,
'Rest, old friend! thy day, though rife
With its toil, hath ended soon;
We have had our share of strife,
Tumblers in the mask of life,
In the pantomime of noon
Clown and pantaloon.
'With the flash that ends thy pain
Respite and oblivion blest
Come to greet thee. I in vain
Fall: I rise to fall again:
Thou hast fallen to thy rest,
And thy fall is best!'
The School At War
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

All night before the brink of death
In fitful sleep the army lay,
For through the dream that stilled their breath
Too gauntly glared the coming day.
But we, within whose blood there leaps
The fulness of a life as wide
As Avon's water where he sweeps
Seaward at last with Severn's tide,
We heard beyond the desert night
The murmur of the fields we knew,
And our swift souls with one delight
Like homing swallows Northward flew.
We played again the immortal games,
And grappled with the fierce old friends,
And cheered the dead undying names,
And sang the song that never ends;
Till, when the hard, familiar bell
Told that the summer night was late,
Where long ago we said farewell
We said farewell by the old gate.
"O Captains unforgot," they cried,
"Come you again or come no more,
Across the world you keep the pride,
Across the world we mark the score."
The Statues And The Tear
by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

All night a fountain pleads,
Telling her beads,
Her tinkling beads monotonous 'neath the moon;
And where she springs atween,
Two statues lean--
Two Kings, their marble beards with moonlight
strewn.
Till hate had frozen speech,
Each hated each,
Hated and died, and went unto his place:
And still inveterate
They lean and hate
With glare of stone implacable, face to face.
One, who bade set them here
In stone austere,
To both was dear, and did not guess at all:
Yet with her new-wed lord
Walking the sward
Paused, and for two dead friends a tear let fall.
She turn'd and went her way.
Yet in the spray
The shining tear attempts, but cannot lie.
Night-long the fountain drips,
But even slips
Untold that one bead of her rosary:
While they, who know it would
Lie if it could,
Lean on and hate, watching it, eye to eye.
All Last Night
by Lascelles Abercrombie

All last night I had quiet
In a fragrant dream and warm: 
She became my Sabbath,
And round my neck, her arm.
I knew the warmth in my dreaming;
The fragrance, I suppose, 
Was her hair about me,
Or else she wore a rose.
Her hair I think; for likest
Woodruffe 'twas, when Spring 
Loitering down the wet woodways
Treads it sauntering.
No light, nor any speaking;
Fragrant only and warm. 
Enough to know my lodging,
The white Sabbath of her arm.
Where Shall We Land?
by James Whitcomb Riley

"Where shall we land you, sweet?" - Swinburne.
All listlessly we float
Out seaward in the boat
That beareth Love.
Our sails of purest snow
Bend to the blue below
And to the blue above.
Where shall we land?
We drift upon a tide
Shoreless on every side,
Save where the eye
Of Fancy sweeps far lands
Shelved slopingly with sands
Of gold and porphyry.
Where shall we land?
The fairy isles we see,
Loom up so mistily -
So vaguely fair,
We do not care to break
Fresh bubbles in our wake
To bend our course for there.
Where shall we land?
The warm winds of the deep
Have lulled our sails to sleep,
And so we glide
Careless of wave or wind,
Or change of any kind,
Or turn of any tide.
Where shall we land?
We droop our dreamy eyes
Where our reflection lies
Steeped in the sea,
And, in an endless fit
Of languor, smile on it
And its sweet mimicry.
Where shall we land?
"Where shall we land?" God's grace!
I know not any place
So fair as this -
Swung here between the blue
Of sea and sky, with you
To ask me, with a kiss,
"Where shall we land?"
Easter Night
by Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell

All night had shout of men and cry
Of woeful women filled His way;
Until that noon of sombre sky
On Friday, clamour and display
Smote Him; no solitude had He,
No silence, since Gethsemane.
Public was Death; but Power, but Might,
But Life again, but Victory,
Were hushed within the dead of night,
The shutter'd dark, the secrecy.
And all alone, alone, alone
He rose again behind the stone.
The Vale Of Tempe
by Madison Julius Cawein

All night I lay upon the rocks:
And now the dawn comes up this way,
One great star trembling in her locks
Of rosy ray.
I can not tell the things I've seen;
The things I've heard I dare not speak.
The dawn is breaking gold and green
O'er vale and peak.
My soul hath kept its tryst again
With her as once in ages past,
In that lost life, I know not when,
Which was my last.
When she was Dryad, I was Faun,
And lone we loved in Tempe's Vale,
Where once we saw Endymion
Pass passion-pale:
Where once we saw him clasp and meet
Among the pines, with kiss on kiss,
Moon-breasted and most heavenly sweet,
White Artemis.
Where often, Bacchus-borne, we heard
The M'nad shout, wild-revelling;
And filled with witchraft, past all word,
The Limnad sing.
Bloom-bodied 'mid the twilight trees
We saw the Oread, who shone
Fair as a form Praxiteles
Carved out of stone.
And oft, goat-footed, in a glade
We marked the Satyrs dance: and great,
Man-muscled, like the oaks that shade
Dodona's gate.
Fierce Centaurs hoof the torrent's bank
With wind-swept manes, or leap the crag,
While swift, the arrow in its flank,
Swept by the stag.
And, minnow-white, the Naiad there
We watched, foam-shouldered, in her stream
Wringing the moisture from her hair
Of emerald gleam.
We saw the oak unclose and, brown,
Sap-scented, from its door of bark
The Hamadryad's form step down:
Or, crouching dark.
Within the oak's deep heart, we felt
Her eyes that pierced the fibrous gloom;
Her breath, that was the nard we smelt,
The wild perfume.
There is no flower, that opens glad
Soft eyes of dawn and sunset hue,
As fair as the Limoniad
We saw there too:
That flow'r-divinity, rose-born,
Of sunlight and white dew, whose blood
Is fragrance, and whose heart of morn
A crimson bud.
There is no star, that rises white
To tip-toe down the deeps of dusk,
Sweet as the moony Nymphs of Night
With breasts of musk.
We met among the mystery
And hush of forests, where, afar,
We watched their hearts beat glimmeringly,
Each heart a star.
There is no beam, that rays the marge
Of mist that trails from cape to cape,
From panther-haunted gorge to gorge,
Bright as the shape.
Of her, the one Auloniad,
That, born of wind and grassy gleams,
Silvered upon our sight, dim-clad
In foam of streams.
All, all of these I saw again,
Or dreamed I saw, as there, ah me!
Upon the cliffs, above the plain,
In Thessaly.
I lay, while Mount Olympus helmed
Its brow with moon-effulgence deep,
And, far below, vague, overwhelmed
With reedy sleep.
Peneus flowed, and, murmuring, sighed,
Meseemed, for its dead gods, whose ghosts
Through its dark forests seemed to glide
In shadowy hosts.
'Mid whose pale shapes again I spoke
With her, my soul, as I divine,
Dim 'neath some gnarled Olympian oak,
Or Ossan pine.
Till down the slopes of heaven came
Those daughters of the dawn, the Hours,
Clothed on with raiment blue of flame,
And crowned with flowers;
When she, with whom my soul once more
Had trysted limbed of light and air
Whom to my breast, (as oft of yore
In Tempe there.
When she was Dryad, I was Faun,)
I clasped and held, and pressed and kissed,
Within my arms, as broke the dawn,
Became a mist.
The Rapid. St. Lawrence.
by Charles Sangster

All peacefully gliding,
The waters dividing,
The indolent b'tteau moved slowly along,
The rowers, light-hearted,
From sorrow long parted,
Beguiled the dull moments with laughter and song:
"Hurrah for the Rapid! that merrily, merrily
Gambols and leaps on its tortuous way;
Soon we will enter it, cheerily, cheerily,
Pleased with its freshness, and wet with its spray."
More swiftly careering,
The wild Rapid nearing,
They dash down the stream like a terrified steed;
The surges delight them,
No terrors affright them,
Their voices keep pace with their quickening speed:
"Hurrah for the Rapid! that merrily, merrily
Shivers its arrows against us in play;
Now we have entered it, cheerily, cheerily,
Our spirits as light as its feathery spray."
Fast downward they're dashing,
Each fearless eye flashing,
Though danger awaits them on every side;
Yon rock - see it frowning!
They strike - they are drowning!
But downward they speed with the merciless tide;
No voice cheers the Rapid, that angrily, angrily
Shivers their bark in its maddening play;
Gaily they entered it - heedlessly recklessly,
Mingling their lives with its treacherous spray!
An April Dawn.
by Kate Seymour Maclean

All night a slow soft rain,
A shadowy stranger from a cloudy land,
Sighing and sobbing, with unsteady hand
Beat at the lattice, ceased, and beat again,
And fled like some wild startled thing pursued
By demons of the night and solitude,
Returning ever--wistful--timid--fain--
The intermittent rain.
And still the sad hours crept
Within uncounted, the while hopes and fears
Swayed our full hearts, and overflowed in tears
That fell in silence, as she waked or slept,
Still drawing nearer to that unknown shore
Whence foot of mortal cometh nevermore,
And still the rain was as a pulse that kept
Time as the slow hours crept.
The plummet of the night
Sank through the hollow dark that closed us round,
A lamp lit globe of space; outside, the sound
Of rain-drops falling from abysmal height
To vast mysterious depths rose faint and far,
Like a dull muffled echo from some star
Swung, like our own, an orb of tears and light
In the unheeding night.
But when the April dawn
Touched the closed lattice softly, and a bird,
Too early wakened from its sleep, was stirred,
And trilled a sudden note broke off, withdrawn,
She heard and woke. All silently she laid
Her gentle hands in ours, with such a look as made
A rainbow of tears it fell upon,
Caught from another and a heavenlier dawn,
Fixed--trembled--and was gone.
Swung, like our own, an orb of tears and light
In the unheeding night.
But when the April dawn
Touched the closed lattice softly, and a bird,
Too early wakened from its sleep, was stirred,
And trilled a sudden note broke off, withdrawn,
She heard and woke. All silently she laid
Her gentle hands in ours, with such a look as made
A rainbow of tears it fell upon,
Caught from another and a heavenlier dawn,
Fixed--trembled--and was gone.