DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Art
by James Thomson -  (Bysshe Vanolis)

I.
What precious thing are you making fast
In all these silken lines?
And where and to whom will it go at last?
Such subtle knots and twines!
I am tying up all my love in this,
With all its hopes and fears,
With all its anguish and all its bliss,
And its hours as heavy as years.
I am going to send it afar, afar,
To I know not where above;
To that sphere beyond the highest star
Where dwells the soul of my Love.
But in vain, in vain, would I make it fast
With countless subtle twines;
For ever its fire breaks out at last,
And shrivels all the lines.
II.
If you have a carrier-dove
That can fly over land and sea;
And a message for your Love,
'Lady, I love but thee!'
And this dove will never stir
But straight from her to you,
And straight from you to her;
As you know and she knows too.
Will you first ensure, O sage,
Your dove that never tires
With your message in a cage,
Though a cage of golden wires?
Or will you fling your dove
'Fly, darling, without rest,
Over land and sea to my Love,
And fold your wings in her breast'?
III.
Singing is sweet; but be sure of this,
Lips only sing when they cannot kiss.
Did he ever suspire a tender lay
While her presence took his breath away?
Had his fingers been able to toy with her hair
Would they then have written the verses fair?
Had she let his arm steal round her waist
Would the lovely portrait yet be traced?
Since he could not embrace it flushed and warm
He has carved in stone the perfect form.
Who gives the fine report of the feast?
He who got none and enjoyed it least.
Were the wine really slipping down his throat
Would his song of the wine advance a note?
Will you puff out the music that sways the whirl,
Or dance and make love with a pretty girl?
Who shall the great battle-story write?
Not the hero down in the thick of the fight.
Statues and pictures and verse may be grand,
But they are not the Life for which they stand.
The Vagabonds
by Emily Pauline Johnson

What saw you in your flight to-day,
Crows, awinging your homeward way?
Went you far in carrion quest,
Crows, that worry the sunless west?
Thieves and villains, you shameless things!
Black your record as black your wings.
Tell me, birds of the inky hue,
Plunderous rogues - to-day have you
Seen with mischievous, prying eyes
Lands where earlier suns arise?
Saw you a lazy beck between
Trees that shadow its breast in green,
Teased by obstinate stones that lie
Crossing the current tauntingly?
Fields abloom on the farther side
With purpling clover lying wide - 
Saw you there as you circled by,
Vale-environed a cottage lie,
Girt about with emerald bands,
Nestling down in its meadow lands?
Saw you this on your thieving raids?
Speak - you rascally renegades!
Thieved you also away from me
Olden scenes that I long to see?
If, O! crows, you have flown since morn
Over the place where I was born,
Forget will I, how black you were
Since dawn, in feather and character;
Absolve will I, your vagrant band
Ere you enter your slumberland.
Song
by Victor James Daley

What shall a man remember
In days when he is old,
And Life is a dying ember,
And Fame a story told?
Power, that came to leave him?
Wealth, to the wild waves blown?
Fame, that came to deceive him?
Ah, no! Sweet Love alone!
Honour, and Wealth, and Power
May all like dreams depart,
But Love is a fadeless flower
Whose roots are in the heart.
The Leader To Be
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

What shall the leader be in that great day
When we who sleep and dream that we are slaves
Shall wake and know that Liberty is ours?
Mark well that word - not yours, not mine, but ours.
For through the mingling of the separate streams
Of individual protest and desire,
In one united sea of purpose, lies
The course to Freedom.
When Progression takes
Her undisputed right of way, and sinks
The old traditions and conventions where
They may not rise, what shall the leader be?
No mighty warrior skilled in crafts of war,
Sowing earth's fertile furrows with dead men
And staining crimson God's cerulean sea,
To prove his prowess to a shuddering world.
Nor yet a monarch with a silly crown
Perched on an empty head, an in-bred heir
To senseless titles and anemic blood.
No ruler, purchased by the perjured votes
Of striving demagogues whose god is gold.
Not one of these shall lead to Liberty.
The weakness of the world cries out for strength.
The sorrow of the world cries out for hope.
Its suffering cries for kindness.
He who leads
Must then be strong and hopeful as the dawn
That rises unafraid and full of joy
Above the blackness of the darkest night.
He must be kind to every living thing;
Kind as the Krishna, Buddha and the Christ,
And full of love for all created life.
Oh, not in war shall his great prowess lie,
Nor shall he find his pleasure in the chase.
Too great for slaughter, friend of man and beast,
Touching the borders of the Unseen Realms
And bringing down to earth their mystic fires
To light our troubled pathways, wise and kind
And human to the core, so shall he be,
The coming leader of the coming time.
In The Forest Of Love
by Madison Julius Cawein

What sighed the Forest to the nest?
"So young, so old,
Love,
Help me to mold
This life I hold."
What said the bird,
That harked and heard?
"Below, above,
Love, love is best.
Take heed, my Life, and quit thy quest.
The meaning of Love is rest."
So spake the bird.
What cried the Nightwind to the trees?
"Thou dream of Earth,
Love,
Make me of worth
In death and birth!"
What said the wood
Stark-still that stood?
"Below, above,
Give me increase.
Take heed, my Heart! thy sighings cease.
The meaning of Love is peace."
So spake the Wood.
What sobbed the Earth in deep and height?
"O Song of Songs,
Love,
Unloose my thongs,
And right my wrongs!"
What said the Clod,
That dreamed of God?
"Below, above,
Prisoner of Night,
Spirit, lift high thy taper-light!
The meaning of Love is might."
So spake the Clod.
What Soft, Cherubic Creatures
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

What soft, cherubic creatures
These gentlewomen are!
One would as soon assault a plush
Or violate a star.
Such dimity convictions,
A horror so refined
Of freckled human nature,
Of Deity ashamed, --
It's such a common glory,
A fisherman's degree!
Redemption, brittle lady,
Be so, ashamed of thee.
The Ass In The Lion's Skin
by Walter Crane

"What pranks I shall play!" thought the Ass,
"In this skin for a Lion to pass;"
But he left one ear out,
And a hiding, no doubt,
"Lion" had--on the skin of an Ass!
Imposters Generally Forget Something
The Singing-Woman from the Wood's Edge
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?
Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,
What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter?
And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog,
That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog?
And what should be my singing, that was christened at an altar,
But Aves and Credos and Psalms out of the Psalter?
You will see such webs on the wet grass, maybe,
As a pixie-mother weaves for her baby,
You will find such flame at the wave's weedy ebb
As flashes in the meshes of a mer-mother's web,
But there comes to birth no common spawn
From the love of a priest for a leprechaun,
And you never have seen and you never will see
Such things as the things that swaddled me!
After all's said and after all's done,
What should I be but a harlot and a nun?
In through the bushes, on any foggy day,
My Da would come a-swishing of the drops away,
With a prayer for my death and a groan for my birth,
A-mumbling of his beads for all that he was worth.
And there'd sit my Ma, with her knees beneath her chin,
A-looking in his face and a-drinking of it in,
And a-marking in the moss some funny little saying
That would mean just the opposite of all that he was praying!
He taught me the holy-talk of Vesper and of Matin,
He heard me my Greek and he heard me my Latin,
He blessed me and crossed me to keep my soul from evil,
And we watched him out of sight, and we conjured up the devil!
Oh, the things I haven't seen and the things I haven't known.
What with hedges and ditches till after I was grown,
And yanked both ways by my mother and my father,
With a "Which would you better?" and a "Which would you rather?"
With him for a sire and her for a dam,
What should I be but just what I am?
Dirge
by Madison Julius Cawein

What shall her silence keep
Under the sun?
Here, where the willows weep
And waters run;
Here, where she lies asleep,
And all is done.
Lights, when the tree-top swings;
Scents that are sown;
Sounds of the wood-bird's wings;
And the bee's drone:
These be her comfortings
Under the stone.
What shall watch o'er her here
When day is fled?
Here, when the night is near
And skies are red;
Here, where she lieth dear
And young and dead.
Shadows, and winds that spill
Dew; and the tune
Of the wild whippoorwill;
And the white moon;
These be the watchers still
Over her stone.
All Sung
by Richard Le Gallienne

What shall I sing when all is sung,
And every tale is told,
And in the world is nothing young
That was not long since old?
Why should I fret unwilling ears
With old things sung anew,
While voices from the old dead years
Still go on singing too?
A dead man singing of his maid
Makes all my rhymes in vain,
Yet his poor lips must fade and fade,
And mine shall kiss again.
Why should I strive through weary moons
To make my music true?
Only the dead men knew the tunes
The live world dances to.
Simplex Munditiis Or, What Should A Maiden Be?
by Edward Woodley Bowling

[NOTE. - The following lines were written by request, to be read at a Meeting of the "Girls' Friendly Society."]
What should a maiden be?    Pure as the rill,
Ere it has left its first home in the hill;
Thinking no evil, suspecting no guile,
Cherishing nought that can harm or defile.
What should a maiden be?    Honest and true,
Giving to God and to neighbour their due;
Modest and merciful, simple and neat,
Clad in the white robe of innocence sweet.
What should a maiden be?    She should be loath
Lightly to give or receive loving troth;
But when her faith is once plighted, till breath
Leave her, her love should be stronger than death.
What should a maiden be?    Merry, whene'er
Merriment comes with a natural air;
But let not mirth be an every-day guest,
Quietness sits on a maiden the best.
Like a fair lily, sequestered and meek,
She should be sought for, not others should seek;
But, when the wild winds of trouble arise,
She should be calm and courageous and wise,
What should her words be?    Her words should be few,
Honest and genuine, tender and true;
Words that overflow from a pure heart within,
Guiltless of folly, untainted by sin.
What should her dress be?    Not gaudy and vain,
But unaffectedly pretty and plain;
She should remember these few simple words - 
"Fine feathers flourish on foolish young birds."
Where should a maiden be?    Home is the place
Which a fair maid is most fitted to grace;
There should she turn, like a bird to the nest,
There should a maiden be, blessing and blest.
There should she dwell as the handmaid of God,
And if He bid her 'pass under the rod,'
Let her each murmur repining suppress,
Knowing He chasteneth that He may bless.
But if earth's blessings each day He renew,
Let her give glory where glory is due;
Deem every blessing a gift from above,
Given, and designed for a purpose of love,
What will her future be?    If she become
Matron and mother, may God bless her home!
God to the matron all blessings will give,
If as God's maiden the young maiden live.
What will her future be?    If she should die,
Lightly the earth on her ashes will lie;
Softly her body will sleep 'neath the sod,
While her pure spirit is safe with her God.
Trifles
by John Charles McNeill

What shall I bring you, sweet?
A posy prankt with every April hue:
The cloud-white daisy, violet sky-blue,
Shot with the primrose sunshine through and through?
Or shall I bring you, sweet,
Some ancient rhyme of lovers sore beset,
Whose joy is dead, whose sadness lingers yet,
That you may read, and sigh, and soon forget?
What shall I bring you, sweet?
Was ever trifle yet so held amiss
As not to fill love's waiting heart with bliss,
And merit dalliance at a long, long kiss?
The Bells Of San Blas
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What say the Bells of San Blas
To the ships that southward pass
From the harbor of Mazatlan?
To them it is nothing more
Than the sound of surf on the shore,--
Nothing more to master or man.
But to me, a dreamer of dreams,
To whom what is and what seems
Are often one and the same,--
The Bells of San Blas to me
Have a strange, wild melody,
And are something more than a name.
For bells are the voice of the church;
They have tones that touch and search
The hearts of young and old;
One sound to all, yet each
Lends a meaning to their speech,
And the meaning is manifold.
They are a voice of the Past,
Of an age that is fading fast,
Of a power austere and grand,
When the flag of Spain unfurled
Its folds o'er this western world,
And the Priest was lord of the land.
The chapel that once looked down
On the little seaport town
Has crumbled into the dust;
And on oaken beams below
The bells swing to and fro,
And are green with mould and rust.
"Is, then, the old faith dead,"
They say, "and in its stead
Is some new faith proclaimed,
That we are forced to remain
Naked to sun and rain,
Unsheltered and ashamed?
"Once, in our tower aloof,
We rang over wall and roof
Our warnings and our complaints;
And round about us there
The white doves filled the air,
Like the white souls of the saints.
"The saints!    Ah, have they grown
Forgetful of their own?
Are they asleep, or dead,
That open to the sky
Their ruined Missions lie,
No longer tenanted?
"Oh, bring us back once more
The vanished days of yore,
When the world with faith was filled;
Bring back the fervid zeal,
The hearts of fire and steel,
The hands that believe and build.
"Then from our tower again
We will send over land and main
Our voices of command,
Like exiled kings who return
To their thrones, and the people learn
That the Priest is lord of the land!"
O Bells of San Blas in vain
Ye call back the Past again;
The Past is deaf to your prayer!
Out of the shadows of night
The world rolls into light;
It is daybreak everywhere.
Seeds
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

What shall we be like when
We cast this earthly body and attain
To immortality?
What shall we be like then?
Ah, who shall say
What vast expansions shall be ours that day?
What transformations of this house of clay,
To fit the heavenly mansions and the light of day?
Ah, who shall say?
But this we know,--
We drop a seed into the ground,
A tiny, shapeless thing, shrivelled and dry,
And, in the fulness of its time, is seen
A form of peerless beauty, robed and crowned
Beyond the pride of any earthly queen,
Instinct with loveliness, and sweet and rare,
The perfect emblem of its Maker's care.
This from a shrivelled seed?--
--Then may man hope indeed!
For man is but the seed of what he shall be.
When, in the fulness of his perfecting,
He drops the husk and cleaves his upward way,
Through earth's retardings and the clinging clay,
Into the sunshine of God's perfect day.
No fetters then! No bonds of time or space!
But powers as ample as the boundless grace
That suffered man, and death, and yet, in tenderness,
Set wide the door, and passed Himself before--
As He had promised--to prepare a place.
Yea, we may hope!
For we are seeds,
Dropped into earth for heavenly blossoming.
Perchance, when comes the time of harvesting,
His loving care
May find some use for even a humble tare.
We know not what we shall be--only this--
That we shall be made like Him--as He is.
To Apollo. I-31 (From The Odes Of Horace)
by Helen Leah Reed

What prays the poet of enshrined Apollo?
What is he asking for with lifted hands,
Pouring a fresh libation from his flagon? - 
Not fertile crop from rich Sardinian lands, - 
Not the fair herds of sultry, damp Calabria, - 
Not even Indian ivory and gold; - 
Nor meadows that the Liris, silent river,
With sluggish flow has nibbled, as it rolled.
Let those whom Fortune has endowed with vineyards,
With the Calenian knife their grapevines trim,
Let the rich merchant from his golden goblet
Drink wine by Syrian traffic bought for him.
Dear to the very gods he three times yearly,
Yes four times, travels the Atlantic Sea
Unharmed. But I - I feed myself on olives,
Ay, succory and soft mallows are for me.
Let one enjoy sound health and my possessions - 
Son of Latona, grant to me, I pray,
With a sane mind an old age all unsullied,
Nor let my gift - my lyre - be taken away.
Rhymes And Rhythms - XXIV
by William Ernest Henley

(To A. C.)
What should the Trees,
Midsummer-manifold, each one,
Voluminous, a labyrinth of life,
What should such things of bulk and multitude
Yield of their huge, unutterable selves,
To the random importunity of Day,
The blabbing journalist?
Alert to snatch and publish hour by hour
Their greenest hints, their leafiest privacies,
How can he other than endure
The ruminant irony that foists him off
With broad-blown falsehoods, or the obviousness
Of laughter flickering back from shine to shade,
And disappearances of homing birds,
And frolicsome freaks
Of little boughs that frisk with little boughs?
Now, at the word
Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night,
Night of the many secrets, whose effect,
Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread,
Themselves alone may fully apprehend,
They tremble and are changed:
In each, the uncouth individual soul
Looms forth and glooms
Essential, and, their bodily presences
Touched with inordinate significance,
Wearing the darkness like the livery
Of some mysterious and tremendous guild,
They brood, they menace, they appal:
Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wring
Wild hands of warning in the face
Of some inevitable advance of doom:
Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing,
As in some monstrous market-place,
They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime,
In that old speech their forefathers
Learned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heard
The troubled voice of Eve
Naming the wondering folk of Paradise.
Your sense is sealed, or you should hear them tell
The tale of their dim life and all
Its compost of experience: how the Sun
Spreads them their daily feast,
Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine;
Of the old Moon's fitful solicitude
And those mild messages the Stars
Descend in silver silences and dews;
Or what the buxom West,
Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat,
Said, and their leafage laughed;
And how the wet-winged Angel of the Rain
Came whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts of the Year,
The sting of the stirring sap
Under the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring,
Their summer amplitudes of pomp
And rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill,
Embittered housewifery
Of the lean Winter: all such things,
And with them all the goodness of the Master
Whose right hand blesses with increase and life,
Whose left hand honours with decay and death.
So, under the constraint of Night,
These gross and simple creatures,
Each in his scores of rings, which rings are years,
A servant of the Will.
And God, the Craftsman, as He walks
The floor of His workshop, hearkens, full of cheer
In thus accomplishing
The aims of His miraculous artistry.
What Shall I Sing Thee?
by Thomas Moore

TO ----.
What shall I sing thee? Shall I tell
Of that bright hour, remembered well
As tho' it shone but yesterday,
When loitering idly in the ray
Of a spring sun I heard o'er-head,
My name as by some spirit said,
And, looking up, saw two bright eyes
Above me from a casement shine,
Dazzling my mind with such surprise
As they, who sail beyond the Line,
Feel when new stars above them rise;--
And it was thine, the voice that spoke,
Like Ariel's, in the mid-air then;
And thine the eye whose lustre broke--
Never to be forgot again!
What shall I sing thee? Shall I weave
A song of that sweet summer-eve,
(Summer, of which the sunniest part
Was that we, each, had in the heart,)
When thou and I, and one like thee,
In life and beauty, to the sound
Of our own breathless minstrelsy.
Danced till the sunlight faded round,
Ourselves the whole ideal Ball,
Lights, music, company, and all?
Oh, 'tis not in the languid strain
Of lute like mine, whose day is past,
To call up even a dream again
Of the fresh light those moments cast.
Far'far'away
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

What sight so lured him thro' the fields he knew
As where earth's green stole into heaven's own hue,
Far'far'away?
What sound was dearest in his native dells?
The mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells
Far'far'away.
What vague world-whisper, mystic pain or joy,
Thro' those three words would haunt him when a boy,
Far'far'away?
A whisper from his dawn of life? a breath
From some fair dawn beyond the doors of death
Far'far'away?
Far, far, how far? from o'er the gates of Birth,
The faint horizons, all the bounds of earth,
Far'far'away?
What charm in words, a charm no words could give?
O dying words, can Music make you live
Far'far'away?
The Colour
by Thomas Hardy

(The following lines are partly made up, partly remembered from a Wessex folk-rhyme)
"What shall I bring you?
Please will white do
Best for your wearing
The long day through?"
" White is for weddings,
Weddings, weddings,
White is for weddings,
And that won't do."
"What shall I bring you?
Please will red do
Best for your wearing
The long day through?"
" Red is for soldiers,
Soldiers, soldiers,
Red is for soldiers,
And that won't do."
"What shall I bring you?
Please will blue do
Best for your wearing
The long day through?"
" Blue is for sailors,
Sailors, sailors,
Blue is for sailors,
And that won't do.
"What shall I bring you?
Please will green do
Best for your wearing
The long day through?"
" Green is for mayings,
Mayings, mayings,
Green is for mayings,
And that won't do."
"What shall I bring you
Then? Will black do
Best for your wearing
The long day through?"
" Black is for mourning,
Mourning, mourning,
Black is for mourning,
And black will do."
Longing.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What pulls at my heart so?
What tells me to roam?
What drags me and lures me
From chamber and home?
How round the cliffs gather
The clouds high in air!
I fain would go thither,
I fain would be there!
The sociable flight
Of the ravens comes back;
I mingle amongst them,
And follow their track.
Round wall and round mountain
Together we fly;
She tarries below there,
I after her spy.
Then onward she wanders,
My flight I wing soon
To the wood fill'd with bushes,
A bird of sweet tune.
She tarries and hearkens,
And smiling, thinks she:
"How sweetly he's singing!
He's singing to me!"
The heights are illum'd
By the fast setting sun;
The pensive fair maiden
Looks thoughtfully on;
She roams by the streamlet,
O'er meadows she goes,
And darker and darker
The pathway fast grows.
I rise on a sudden,
A glimmering star;
"What glitters above me,
So near and so far?"
And when thou with wonder
Hast gazed on the light,
I fall down before thee,
Entranced by thy sight!
What shall I do
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

What shall I do for the land that bred me,
Her homes and fields that folded and fed me? - 
Be under her banner and live for her honour:
Under her banner I'll live for her honour.
CHORUS. Under her banner live for her honour.
Not the pleasure, the pay, the plunder,
But country and flag, the flag I am under - 
There is the shilling that finds me willing
To follow a banner and fight for honour.
CH. We follow her banner, we fight for her honour.
Call me England's fame's fond lover,
Her fame to keep, her fame to recover.
Spend me or end me what God shall send me,
But under her banner I live for her honour.
CH. Under her banner we march for her honour.
Where is the field I must play the man on?
O welcome there their steel or cannon.
Immortal beauty is death with duty,
If under her banner I fall for her honour.
CH. Under her banner we fall for her honour.