DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Spanish Guerillas
by William Wordsworth

They seek, are sought; to daily battle led,
Shrink not, though far outnumbered by their Foes,
For they have learnt to open and to close
The ridges of grim war; and at their head
Are captains such as erst their country bred
Or fostered, self-supported chiefs, like those
Whom hardy Rome was fearful to oppose;
Whose desperate shock the Carthaginian fled.
In One who lived unknown a shepherd's life
Redoubted Viriatus breathes again;
And Mina, nourished in the studious shade,
With that great Leader vies, who, sick of strife
And bloodshed, longed in quiet to be laid
In some green island of the western main.
What they say.
by John Hartley

They say 'at its a waste o' brass - a nasty habit too, - 
A thing 'at noa reight-minded chap wod ivver think to do;
Maybe they're reight;
They say it puts one's brains to sleep, an maks a felly daft, - 
Aw've hearken'd to ther doctrins, then aw've lit mi pipe an laft,
At ther consait.
At morn when startin for mi wark, a bit o' bacca's sweet,
An aw raillee should'nt like to be withaat mi pipe at neet,
It comforts me.
An if awm worritted an vext, wi' bothers durin th' day,
Aw tak a wiff, an in a claad, aw puff 'em all away,
An off they flee.
They tell me its a poison, an its bad effects they show;
Aw nivver contradict 'em but aw think its varry slow,
An bad to tell;
They say it leeads to drinkin, an drink leeads to summat war;
But aw know some at nivver smook 'at's getten wrang as far
As me misel.
They say its an example 'at we did'nt owt to set, - 
For owt 'at's nowt young fowk sooin leearn, but dooant soa sooin forget,
That's varry true.
But aw shall be contented, if when comes mi time to dee,
To smook a pipe o' bacca is th' warst thing they've lent throo me:
Aw'st manage throo,
They say it maks one lazy, an time slips by unawares, - 
It may be soa, an if it is, that's noa consarn o' theirs;
Aw work mi share.
If it prevents fowk meddlin wi' th' affairs ov other men,
'Twod happen be as weel, aw think, if they'd to smook thersen; - 
They've time to spare.
But what they say ne'er matters, for aw act upon a plan,
If th' world affooards a pleasure awll enjoy it if aw can,
At morn or neet;
They may praich agean mi bacca, an may looad it wi' abuse,
But aw think its a gooid crayter if its put to a gooid use.
Pass me a leet.
They Told Me
by Walter De La Mare

They told me Pan was dead, but I
Oft marvelled who it was that sang
Down the green valleys languidly
Where the grey elder-thickets hang.
Sometimes I thought it was a bird
My soul had charged with sorcery;
Sometimes it seemed my own heart heard
Inland the sorrow of the sea.
But even where the primrose sets
The seal of her pale loveliness,
I found amid the violets
Tears of an antique bitterness.
Taking His Chance
by Henry Lawson

They stood by the door of the Inn on the Rise;
May Carney looked up in the bushranger's eyes:
`Oh! why did you come?, it was mad of you, Jack;
You know that the troopers are out on your track.'
A laugh and a shake of his obstinate head,
`I wanted a dance, and I'll chance it,' he said.
Some twenty-odd bushmen had come to the `ball',
But Jack from his youth had been known to them all,
And bushmen are soft where a woman is fair,
So the love of May Carney protected him there;
And all the short evening, it seems like romance,
She danced with a bushranger taking his chance.
`Twas midnight, the dancers stood suddenly still,
For hoofs had been heard on the side of the hill!
Ben Duggan, the drover, along the hillside
Came riding as only a bushman can ride.
He sprang from his horse, to the shanty he sped,
`The troopers are down in the gully!' he said.
Quite close to the homestead the troopers were seen.
`Clear out and ride hard for the ranges, Jack Dean!
Be quick!' said May Carney, her hand on her heart,
`We'll bluff them awhile, and 'twill give you a start.'
He lingered a moment, to kiss her, of course,
Then ran to the trees where he'd hobbled his horse.
She ran to the gate, and the troopers were there,
The jingle of hobbles came faint on the air,
Then loudly she screamed: it was only to drown
The treacherous clatter of slip-rails let down.
But troopers are sharp, and she saw at a glance
That someone was taking a desperate chance.
They chased, and they shouted, `Surrender, Jack Dean!'
They called him three times in the name of the Queen.
Then came from the darkness the clicking of locks;
The crack of the rifles was heard in the rocks!
A shriek and a shout, and a rush of pale men,
And there lay the bushranger, chancing it then.
The sergeant dismounted and knelt on the sod,
`Your bushranging's over, make peace, Jack, with God!'
The bushranger laughed, not a word he replied,
But turned to the girl who knelt down by his side.
He gazed in her eyes as she lifted his head:
`Just kiss me, my girl, and, I'll, chance it,' he said.
The Crucifixion
by Henry Lawson

They sunk a post into the ground
Where their leaders bade them stop;
It was a man's height, and they spiked
A crosspiece to the top.
They bound it well with thongs of hide,
To make it firm and good;
Then roughly, with His back to this,
Their enemy they stood.
They held His hands upon the piece,
And they spiked them to the wood.
They mocked Him then, the while He rocked
In agony His head,
With things that He had never done,
And He had never said,
With that which He had never been,
And in His face they spat.
They placed a plank beside the post,
And they spiked His feet to that.
They pelted Him, but not with stones,
Lest He should die too soon;
They stayed to mock His agony
All through the blazing noon.
They did not pelt with stones, lest they
Might kill Him unaware,
But with foul things that lay about
The filthy hovels there.
And this was how they murdered Him
They killed Him in his youth
Because He had been good to men,
Because He told the truth,
Because they did not understand
The things He felt and knew:
He only said the world-old words,
'They know not what they do.'
The flaunting harlots taunted Him;
He only bowed His head,
And prayed for public women then,
While 'Save Thyself!' they said.
They went with soldiers to the camp,
And the rest went by-and-bye,
When they were weary of the sport,
And they left Him there to die.
He lingered yet, for He was strong,
But He shut His blighted eyes,
And shuddered oft, for round Him swarmed
The loathsome desert flies.
His throat was parched, His temples throbbed,
And when He drooped, the pain
That shot from all His wounds tenfold
Would draw Him up again.
Two thieves were nailed beside Him there,
They raved, their wounds they tore,
And though they both were stronger men,
They seemed to suffer more;
And while with agony great beads
Of sweat stood on His brow,
He'd comfort them in words like these:
''Twill soon be ended now.'
His friends had all deserted Him,
They fled in deadly fear
(As friends desert a friend to-day,
Afraid of jibe and sneer):
The same poor human nature now,
As it has ever been,
Small credit to be crucified
Beside a Nazarene.
But when the people in the town
And the drunken soldiers slept,
From some mean huts that stood hard by
Three wretched women crept;
Like thieves, across the stony ground,
They came with stealthy tread,
And they had water in a gourd,
But they found that He was dead.
They brought some still more wretched men,
And O their hearts were good:
In terror, and with pains, they wrenched
The strong spikes from the wood;
They washed His body hurriedly,
For they had lives to save,
And they bore it off and hid it well,
Where none might find his grave.
His name is known where'er the foot
Of Christian man has trod.
They worship in cathedrals now,
They call Him Son of God.
They ask for aid in His dear name
When they suffer care and pain,
And if He came on earth to-day,
They'd murder Him again.
The Frog And The Rat.
by Jean de La Fontaine

[1]
They to bamboozle are inclined,
Saith Merlin,[2] who bamboozled are.
The word, though rather unrefined,
Has yet an energy we ill can spare;
So by its aid I introduce my tale.
A well-fed rat, rotund and hale,
Not knowing either Fast or Lent,
Disporting round a frog-pond went.
A frog approach'd, and, with a friendly greeting,
Invited him to see her at her home,
And pledged a dinner worth his eating, - 
To which the rat was nothing loath to come.
Of words persuasive there was little need:
She spoke, however, of a grateful bath;
Of sports and curious wonders on their path;
Of rarities of flower, and rush, and reed:
One day he would recount with glee
To his assembled progeny
The various beauties of these places,
The customs of the various races,
And laws that sway the realms aquatic,
(She did not mean the hydrostatic!)
One thing alone the rat perplex'd, - 
He was but moderate as a swimmer.
The frog this matter nicely fix'd
By kindly lending him her
Long paw, which with a rush she tied
To his; and off they started, side by side.
Arrived upon the lakelet's brink,
There was but little time to think.
The frog leap'd in, and almost brought her
Bound guest to land beneath the water.
Perfidious breach of law and right!
She meant to have a supper warm
Out of his sleek and dainty form.
Already did her appetite
Dwell on the morsel with delight.
The gods, in anguish, he invokes;
His faithless hostess rudely mocks;
He struggles up, she struggles down.
A kite, that hovers in the air,
Inspecting everything with care,
Now spies the rat belike to drown,
And, with a rapid wing,
Upbears the wretched thing,
The frog, too, dangling by the string!
The joy of such a double haul
Was to the hungry kite not small.
It gave him all that he could wish - 
A double meal of flesh and fish.
The best contrived deceit
Can hurt its own contriver,
And perfidy doth often cheat
Its author's purse of every stiver.
Travelling
by John Frederick Freeman

They talked of old campaigns, nineteen-fourteen
And Mons and watery Yser, nineteen-fifteen
And Neuve Chapelle, 'sixteen, 'seventeen, 'eighteen
And after. And they grumbled, leaving home,
Then talked of nineteen-nineteen, nineteen-twenty
And after.
Their thoughts wandered, leaving home
Among familiar places and known years;
Anticipating in the river, of time
Rocks, rapids, shallows, idle glazing pools
Mirroring their dark dreams of heaven and earth.
--And then they parted, one to Chatham, one
To Africa, Constantinople one,
One to Cologne; and all to an unknown year,
Nineteen-nineteen perhaps, or another year.
An Old Story.
by George MacDonald

They were parted at last, although
Each was tenderly dear;
As asunder their eyes did go,
When first alone and near.
'Tis an old story this--
A trembling and a sigh,
A gaze in the eyes, a kiss--
Why will it not go by?
The Men Who Stuck To Me
by Henry Lawson

They were men of many nations, they were men of many stations,
They were men in many places, and of high and low degree;
Men of many types and faces, but, alike in all the races,
They were men I met in trouble, and the men who stuck to me.
Some were friends, but most were strangers; some were weary world-wide rangers;
Some in freedom were in prison, and in prison some were free,
Oh, I have a vivid vision of the men I met in prison,
In the craving for tobacco they were men who stuck to me.
Some I never met and never knew their great but vain endeavour,
For my sake! And some were old mates whom I never more may see;
Never heard me, some I talked with; never saw me, some I walked with;
Blind and deaf, and dumb and foreign were the men who stuck to me.
'Yes, I'll stick!' the words most human, be the trouble man or woman;
Stick with money or without it, and whoever you may be;
Right or wrong, in drink or sadness, 'stick' in sanity or madness,
Such as these, the men I stuck to, and the men who stuck to me.
Ah! we see not in our blindness that the world is full of kindness,
Kindness to make full atonement for all evil that there be;
Oh! my life was deadly fateful, but my heart was always grateful,
And I send this song at Christmas to the men who stuck to me.
When The Lid Was On.
by Edwin C. Ranck

They were seated there in silence
Each one busy with a frown,
It was midnight in the city,
And the lid was on the town.
They had all been playing poker
'Mid the rattle of the chink,
When a gloom fell o'er the party,
For they couldn't buy a drink,
But a little fellow whispered
As he held a poker hand,
"Can't we get as drunk on water
As we can upon the land?"
Then we kicked the little rascal,
And we spoke without a frown,
And we anchored safe in harbor
When the lid was on the town.
Man's Place In Nature, Dedicated To Darwin And Huxley
by Unknown

They told him gently he was made
Of nicely tempered mud,
That man no lengthened part had played
Anterior to the Flood.
'Twas all in vain; he heeded not,
Referring plant and worm,
Fish, reptile, ape, and Hottentot,
To one primordial germ.
They asked him whether he could bear
To think his kind allied
To all those brutal forms which were
In structure Pithecoid;
Whether he thought the apes and us
Homologous in form;
He said, "Homo and Pithecus
Came from one common germ."
They called him "atheistical,"
"Sceptic," and "infidel."
They swore his doctrines without fail
Would plunge him into hell.
But he with proofs in no way lame,
Made this deduction firm,
That all organic beings came
From one primordial germ.
That as for the Noachian flood,
'Twas long ago disproved,
That as for man being made of mud,
All by whom truth is loved
Accept as fact what, malgre strife,
Research tends to confirm,
That man, and everything with life,
Came from one common germ.
Cromwell
by Henry Lawson

They took dead Cromwell from his grave,
And stuck his head on high;
The Merry Monarch and his men,
They laughed as they passed by
The common people cheered and jeered,
To England's deep disgrace,
The crowds who'd ne'er have dared to look
Live Cromwell in the face.
He came in England's direst need
With law and fire and sword,
He thrashed her enemies at home
And crushed her foes abroad;
He kept his word by sea and land,
His parliament he schooled,
He made the nations understand
A Man in England ruled!
Van Tromp, with twice the English ships,
And flushed by victory,
A great broom to his masthead bound,
Set sail to sweep the sea.
But England's ruler was a man
Who needed lots of room,
So Blake soon lowered the Dutchman's tone,
And smashed the Dutchman's broom.
He sent a bill to Tuscany
For sixty thousand pounds,
For wrong done to his subjects there,
And merchants in her bounds.
He sent by Debt Collector Blake,
And, you need but be told
That, by the Duke of Tuscany
That bill was paid in gold.
To pirate ports in Africa
He sent a message grim
To have each captured Englishman
Delivered up to him;
And every ship and cargo's worth,
And every boat and gun,
And this, all this, as Dickens says,
'Was gloriously done.'
They'd tortured English prisoners
Who'd sailed the Spanish Main;
So Cromwell sent a little bill
By Admiral Blake to Spain.
To keep his hand in, by the way.
He whipped the Portuguese;
And he made it safe for English ships
To sail the Spanish seas.
The Protestants in Southern lands
Had long been sore oppressed;
They sent their earnest prayers to Noll
To have their wrongs redressed.
He sent a message to the Powers,
In which he told them flat,
All men must praise God as they chose,
Or he would see to that.
And, when he'd hanged the fools at home
And settled foreign rows,
He found the time to potter round
Amongst his pigs and cows.
Of private rows he never spoke,
That grand old Ironsides.
They said a father's strong heart broke
When Cromwell's daughter died.
(They dragged his body from its grave,
His head stuck on a pole,
They threw his wife's and daughter's bones
Into a rubbish hole
To rot with those of two who'd lived
And fought for England's sake,
And each one in his own brave way,
Great Pym, and Admiral Blake.)
From Charles to Charles, throughout the world
Old England's name was high,
And that's a thing no Royalist
Could ever yet deny.
Long shameful years have passed since then,
In spite of England's boast,
But Englishmen were Englishmen,
While Cromwell carved the roast.
And, in my country's hour of need,
For it shall surely come,
While run by fools who'll never heed
The beating of the drum.
While baffled by the fools at home,
And threatened from the sea,
Lord! send a man like Oliver,
And let me live to see.
The Fortitude Of The North
by Herman Melville

Under the Disaster of the Second Manassas
They take no shame for dark defeat
While prizing yet each victory won,
Who fight for the Right through all retreat,
Nor pause until their work is done.
The Cape-of-Storms is proof to every throe;
Vainly against that foreland beat
Wild winds aloft and wilder waves below:
The black cliffs gleam through rents in sleet
When the livid Antarctic storm-clouds glow.
The Coming Era
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

They tell us that the Muse is soon to fly hence,
Leaving the bowers of song that once were dear,
Her robes bequeathing to her sister, Science,
The groves of Pindus for the axe to clear.
Optics will claim the wandering eye of fancy,
Physics will grasp imagination's wings,
Plain fact exorcise fiction's necromancy,
The workshop hammer where the minstrel sings,
No more with laugher at Thalia's frolics
Our eyes shall twinkle till the tears run down,
But in her place the lecturer on hydraulics
Spout forth his watery science to the town.
No more our foolish passions and affections
The tragic Muse with mimic grief shall try,
But, nobler far, a course of vivisections
Teach what it costs a tortured brute to die.
The unearthed monad, long in buried rocks hid,
Shall tell the secret whence our being came;
The chemist show us death is life's black oxide,
Left when the breath no longer fans its flame.
Instead of crack-brained poets in their attics
Filling thin volumes with their flowery talk,
There shall be books of wholesome mathematics;
The tutor with his blackboard and his chalk.
No longer bards with madrigal and sonnet
Shall woo to moonlight walks the ribboned sex,
But side by side the beaver and the bonnet
Stroll, calmly pondering on some problem's x.
The sober bliss of serious calculation
Shall mock the trivial joys that fancy drew,
And, oh, the rapture of a solved equation, - 
One self-same answer on the lips of two!
So speak in solemn tones our youthful sages,
Patient, severe, laborious, slow, exact,
As o'er creation's protoplasmic pages
They browse and munch the thistle crops of fact.
And yet we 've sometimes found it rather pleasant
To dream again the scenes that Shakespeare drew, - 
To walk the hill-side with the Scottish peasant
Among the daisies wet with morning's dew;
To leave awhile the daylight of the real,
Led by the guidance of the master's hand,
For the strange radiance of the far ideal, - 
"The light that never was on sea or land."
Well, Time alone can lift the future's curtain, - 
Science may teach our children all she knows,
But Love will kindle fresh young hearts, 't is certain,
And June will not forget her blushing rose.
And so, in spite of all that Time is bringing, - 
Treasures of truth and miracles of art,
Beauty and Love will keep the poet singing,
And song still live, the science of the heart.
The 'Seabolt's' Volunteers
by Henry Lawson

They towed the Seabolt down the stream,
And through the harbour's mouth;
She spread her wings and sailed away
To seek the sunny South.
But, ah! she met with storm on storm
Ere half her course had run;
And all her masts were torn away,
And all her boats save one.
The good old ship had settled far
Beneath her cargo line,
Her riven sides were drinking deep
The draughts of ocean brine.
There gathered round the only boat
The women pale with fear,
And trembling little ones, who clung
To those who held them dear.
Then spoke the captain, brave and true,
His voice rose o'er the roar;
'The boat will save us all but five,
She cannot float with more!'
And backward from the side he stepped'
(He had been born at sea)
'Now who will seek in ocean's depths
A sailor's grave with me?'
Then up there stepped a merchant stout,
His face was brown and tan:
'I'll volunteer to stay on board,
For I'm an Englishman!'
Then spoke a gallant gentleman,
A lover of romance:
'Remain I for the ladies' sake,
For I'm a son of France!'
And next there spoke a Highlander:
'Go search the wide world round,
You'll find no spot where on the earth
A Scotsman is not found!'
And then there spoke a lad to whom
Killarney's lakes were dear:
'It won't be said that Ireland found
No place of honour here!'
The boat pushed from the vessel's side
Amid the ringing cheers;
And now beneath Old Ocean sleep
The Seabolt's volunteers.
The Sonnets XCIV - They that have power to hurt, and will do none
by William Shakespeare

They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others, but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself, it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.
Our Own
by James Whitcomb Riley

They walk here with us, hand-in-hand;
We gossip, knee-by-knee;
They tell us all that they have planned -
Of all their joys to be, -
And, laughing, leave us: And, to-day,
All desolate we cry
Across wide waves of voiceless graves -
Good-by! Good-by! Good-by!
Willie In Heaven:
by H. P. Nichols

"They tell me in a sunny land
Our Willie is at play;
And with him is a happy band
Of children, good and gay.
"They say their shining robes of white
Are free from spot or stain;
That there, where it is never night,
They feel no grief or pain.
"But Willie shunned the stranger's face,
When he was with us here;
And in that new, though lovely place,
He will be sad, I fear.
"He'll miss me,--though the fields are fair,
His bright eyes will grow dim;
He has no little sister there;
O let me go to him!"
"Our Willie is not sad, my child;
For in that heavenly home
There dwells the blessed Saviour mild,
Who bids the children come.
"He loves them with a purer love,
A holier, than ours;
And leads them in the fields above,
Where spring undying flowers.
"If no ungentle words you speak,
No wicked actions do,
And if, with every day, you seek
To be more kind and true,
"Then, by our darling Willie's side,
And joined in heart and hand,
Forevermore shall you abide,
Among the angel band."
To My Mother.
by Thomas Moore

WRITTEN IN A POCKET BOOK, 1822.
They tell us of an Indian tree,
Which, howsoe'er the sun and sky
May tempt its boughs to wander free,
And shoot and blossom wide and high,
Far better loves to bend its arms
Downward again to that dear earth,
From which the life that, fills and warms
Its grateful being, first had birth.
'Tis thus, tho' wooed by flattering friends,
And fed with fame (if fame it be)
This heart, my own dear mother, bends,
With love's true instinct, back to thee!
Isaiah Beethoven
by Edgar Lee Masters

They told me I had three months to live,
So I crept to Bernadotte,
And sat by the mill for hours and hours
Where the gathered waters deeply moving
Seemed not to move:
O world, that's you!
You are but a widened place in the river
Where Life looks down and we rejoice for her
Mirrored in us, and so we dream And turn away, but when again
We look for the face, behold the low-lands
And blasted cotton-wood trees where we empty
Into the larger stream!
But here by the mill the castled clouds
Mocked themselves in the dizzy water;
And over its agate floor at night
The flame of the moon ran under my eyes
Amid a forest stillness broken
By a flute in a hut on the hill.
At last when I came to lie in bed
Weak and in pain, with the dreams about me,
The soul of the river had entered my soul,
And the gathered power of my soul was moving
So swiftly it seemed to be at rest
Under cities of cloud and under
Spheres of silver and changing worlds - 
Until I saw a flash of trumpets
Above the battlements over Time.