OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Laughter in the Senate

Sidney Lanier composed this poem in 1868. Along with “The Raven Days” and “Our Hills”, this poem is Lanier’s lament for the devastated land and people of the South in those desperate times following the American Civil War.
In the South lies a lonesome, hungry Land; He huddles his rags with a cripple’s hand; He mutters, prone on the barren sand,  What time his heart is breaking.
He lifts his bare head from the ground; He listens through the gloom around: The winds have brought him a strange sound  Of distant merrymaking.
Comes now the Peace so long delayed? Is it the cheerful voice of Aid? Begins the time his heart has prayed,  When men may reap and sow?
Ah, God! Back to the cold earth’s breast! The sages chuckle o’er their jest; Must they, to give a people rest,  Their dainty wit forego?
The tyrants sit in a stately hall; They jibe at a wretched people’s fall; The tyrants forget how fresh is the pall  Over their dead and ours.
Look how the senators ape the clown, And don the motley and hide the gown, But yonder a fast-rising frown  On the people’s forehead lowers.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse
# Laura

* Search for titles containing or beginning with: "Laura."
* sister projects: Wikipedia article, Wikidata item.
This is a disambiguation page. It lists works that share the same title. If an article link referred you here, please consider editing it to point directly to the intended page.
* Laura, a short story by Saki.
* Laura, a poem by Lydia Sigourney.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 141

To MRS. R. BUTLER.
OBSERVATORY, ARMAGH, Sept. 15, 1844.
As well and as happy as the day is short—too short here for all that is to be seen, felt, heard, and understood. It is more delightful to me than I can express, but you can understand how delightful it is to see Lucy so happy and to see her mother see it all. I sleep in the same room with her, and fine talking we have, and we care not who hears us, we say no harm of anybody, we have none to say.
Lucy has certainly made good use of her time and so improved the house I should hardly have known it. In the dining-room is a fine picture of Dr. Robinson when a boy, full of genius and romance, seated on a rock. It is admirable and delicious to see how well and how completely Lucy has turned her mind to all that can make her house and houseband, and all belonging to him, happy and comfortable—omitting none of those smaller creature comforts which, if not essential, are very desirable for all human creatures learned or unlearned.
Robinson at home is not less wonderful and more agreeable even than Robinson abroad,—his abondance in literature equal to Macintosh,—in science you know out of sight superior to anybody. In home life his amiable qualities and amicable temper appear to the greatest advantage, and I cannot say too much about the young people's kind and affectionate manner to Lucy.
The Primate and the Lady Beresfords were so kind and gracious as to come to see us; and I have enjoyed a very agreeable luncheon-dinner at Caledon. Lady Caledon is a real person, doing a great deal of good sensibly. Lord Caledon gave me a history of his life in the backwoods of America, and gave me a piece of pemmican, and I enclose a bit, and I hope it will not have greased everything! and when I said that after a youth in the backwoods it was well to have such a place as Caledon to fall back upon, there was a glance at his mother that spoke volumes.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Aug. 7, 1845.
How characteristic Joanna Baillie's letter is, so perfectly simple, dignified, and touching.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Lord John George Beresford, Archbishop of Armagh.
* ↑ James Du Pre, third Earl of Caledon, was then unmarried. His mother, Catherine, daughter of the third Earl of Hardwicke, lived with him when he was in Ireland.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 142

To MISS MARGARET RUXTON.
August 7, 1845.
No pen or hand but my own shall answer your most affectionate letter, my dear own Margaret, or welcome you again to your native country—damp as it is—warm and comfortable with good old,—and young, friends—and young, for your young friends Mary Anne and Charlotte were heartily glad to see you. As to the old, I will yield to no mortal living. In the first place is the plain immovable fact that I am the OLDEST friend you have living, and as to actual knowledge of you I defy any one to match me, ever since you were an infant at Foxhall, and through the Black Castle cottage times with dear Sophy and all. What changes and chances, and ups and downs, we have seen together!
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 143

To MISS MARGARET RUXTON.
TRIM, March 1, 1846.
Pakenham and Christina arrived here in excellent time, charmed with their kind reception at Black Castle. From the first moment I set eyes and ears upon Christina I liked her,—it seemed to me as if she was not a new bride coming a stranger amongst us, but one of the family fitting at once into her place as a part of a joining map that had been wanting and is now happily found.

## Footnotes

* ↑ In February, Pakenham Edgeworth had married Christina, daughter of Dr. Hugh Macpherson of Aberdeen.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 149

MARIA EDGEWORTH to MISS MARGARET RUXTON.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Oct. 27, 1847.
I have heard it said that no one should begin a letter with I, but methinks this must be the dictum of some hypocritical body, or of somebody who thinks more of themselves than they dare let appear. I am so full of my own little self, that I am confident you, my dear Margaret, will not think the worse of me for beginning with "I am very well;" and I am a miracle of prudence and a model of virtue to sick and well—with good looking-after understood. So I stayed in bed yesterday morning, and roses and myrtles and white satin ribbon covered my bed, to tie up a bouquet for a bride, very well wrapped up in my labada. You don't know what a labada is: Harriet will tell you. This nosegay was to be presented to the bride by little Mary, as Rosa was asked to the wedding, and was to take Mary with her. But who is the bride? you will ask, and ask you may; but you will not be a bit the wiser when I tell you—Miss Thompson. Now your heads go to Clonfin, or to Thompsons near Dublin, or in the County of Meath. This is one you never heard of—at Mr. Armstrong's, of Moydow; and she was married yesterday to the eldest son of Baron Greene.
At the breakfast, when Mr. Armstrong was to reply to the speech of the bridegroom, who had expressed his gratitude to him as the uncle who had brought her up, the old man attempted to speak; but when he rose he could only pronounce the words, "My child."
Mary, after the breakfast, walked gracefully up to the bride and said, "My Aunt Maria begged me to present this to you. The rose is called Maria Leonida, her own name is Maria; and she hopes you will be very happy." I was delighted.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 144

To LADY BEAUFORT.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, May 31, 1846.
I hope, dear Honora, that the rhododendrons will not exhaust themselves; at this moment yours opposite the library window are in the most beautiful profuse blow you can conceive, and at the end of my garden indescribably beautiful, and scarlet thorn beside. The peony tree has happily survived its removal, and is covered with flowers.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 147

To LADY BEAUFORT.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, May 8, 1847.
Most heartily do I rejoice that we may hope that you may be able to come; I do not say come with Fanny, for that might hurry and hazard you, but in the days of harvest home, if harvest home does ever come again to our poor country, and you will rejoice with us in the brightened day.
I cannot answer your Admiral's question as to the number of deaths caused by the famine. I believe that no one can form a just estimate. In different districts the estimates and assertions are widely different, and the priests keep no registry. Mr. Tuite, who was here yesterday, told us that in the House of Commons the contradictory statements of the Irish members astonished and grieved him, as he knew the bad effect it would have in diminishing their credit with the English. Two hundred and fifty thousand is the report of the Police up to April. Mr. Tuite thought a third more deaths than usual had been in his neighbourhood. My mother and Mr. Powell say that the increase of deaths above ordinary times has not in this parish been as much as one-third.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 15

To MRS. EDGEWORTH.
WYCOMBE ABBEY, Oct. 30, 1821.
We spent two days instead of one at Smethwick. Nothing could be kinder than the Moilliets were to us; nevertheless, as dearest friends must part, we parted from them, and had a delightful drive to Woodstock. Fanny and Harriet will tell you of Blenheim; they were pleased, and you may be sure I was happy. At Oxford by twelve: found letter from Lord Carrington—most punctual of men—appointing the 29th. But no letter from Mr. Russell: sent the porter with note to him: "Mr. Russell gone to see his brother at the Charter-house." Porter trudged again with two notes, one to Tom Beddoes—"not come up this term:" another note to Mr. Biddulph—most civil and best of College cicerones—arrived almost as soon as the porter returned with his "very happy;" and he walked us about to all those halls and gardens which we had not seen before. Balliol and University gardens beautiful: at Corpus Christi beautiful altar-piece. Rested at Mr. Biddulph's most comfortable rooms at Maudlin: we went to Evening Service in the chapel: going in from daylight, chapel lighted with many candles: dim light through brown saints in the windows: chanting good, anthem very fine: two of the finest voices I ever heard, one of a young boy. Good tea at Tetsworth: amused ourselves next morning reading like ladies, and watching from our gazabo window the arrival and departure of twelve stage-coaches, any one of which would have been a study for Wilkie, besides the rubbing down of a horse with a besom: at first we thought the horse would have been affronted—no, quite agreeable. The dried flakes of yellow mud, first besomed and then brushed, raised such a dust, that in the dust, man and horse were lost.
Arrived here just at dressing-time. Lord Carrington had asked the Lushingtons and Dr. Holland—can't come. Count and Countess Ludolf expected to-morrow: he is ambassador from Sicily. Fanny says you and she met them at Lady Davy's.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Her nephew
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 145

To MRS. R. BUTLER.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, June 24, 1846.
I must try your patience a bit more in a most thorny affair——How "thorny"?
You will never know till a box arrives by the coach, Edward being under orders to convey it to Granard in the gig. Why Edward? Why in the gig? Because the box is too heavy for Mick Dolan or any other gossoon to carry. "And what can be in it?" Wait till you see,—and I hope you may only see and not feel. Citoyenne, n'y touchez pas. Vegetable, animal, or mineral? Four-and-twenty questions might be spent upon it, and you would be none the wiser.
Now to be plain, the box contains "the old man's head;" now you know. Cacti sent to me by Sir William Hooker; your mother has not room for more than two, which she kept. Thunderstorm and hail-shower, half-past eleven. *** The death of Maria Edgeworth's half-brother Francis on 12th October 1846 was a great grief to the family. The same autumn saw the beginning of the Irish famine.
# Leaves of Grass (1882)/Autumn Rivulets/You Felons on Trial in Courts

YOU FELONS ON TRIAL IN COURTS.
You felons on trial in courts, You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain'd and handcuff'd with iron, Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison? Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain'd with iron, or my ankles with iron?
You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs or obscene in your rooms, Who am I that I should call you more obscene than myself?
​O culpable! I acknowledge—I exposé! (O admirers, praise not me—compliment not me—you make me wince, I see what you do not—I know what you do not.)
Inside these breast-bones I lie smutch'd and choked, Beneath this face that appears so impassive hell's tides continually run, Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me, I walk with delinquents with passionate love, I feel I am of them—I belong to those convicts and prostitutes myself, And henceforth I will not deny them—for how can I deny myself?
# Leaves of Grass (1882)/Birds of Passage/France the 18th Year of These States

FRANCE,
The 18th Year of these States.
A great year and place, A harsh discordant natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother's heart closer than any yet.
I walked the shores of my Eastern sea, Heard over the waves the little voice, Saw the divine infant where she woke mournfully wailing, amid the roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling buildings, Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running, nor from the single corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne away in the tumbrils, Was not so desperate at the battues of death—was not so shock'd at the repeated fusillades of the guns.
Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution? Could I wish humanity different? Could I wish the people made of wood and stone? Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?
O Liberty! O mate for me! Here too the blaze, the grape-shot and the axe, in reserve, to fetch them out in case of need, Here too, though long represt, can never be destroy'd, Here too could rise at last murdering and ecstatic, Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.
Hence I sign this salute over the sea, And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism, ​But remember the little voice that I heard wailing, and wait with perfect trust, no matter how long, And from to-day sad and cogent I maintain the bequeath'd cause, as for all lands, And I send these words to Paris with my love, And I guess some chansonniers there will understand them, For I guess there is latent music yet in France, floods of it, O I hear aheady the bustle of instruments, they will soon be drowning all that would interrupt them, O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march, It reaches hither, it swells me to joyful madness, I will run transpose it in words, to justify it, I will yet sing a song for you ma femme.
# Leaves of Grass (1882)/Birds of Passage/Year of Meteors (1858-60)

YEAR OF METEORS.
(1859–60.)
I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs, I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad, I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the scaffold in Virginia, (I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch'd, I stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but trembling with age and your unheal'd wounds you mounted the scaffold;) ​I would sing in my copious song your census returns of the States, The tables of population and products, I would sing of your ships and their cargoes, The proud black ships of Manhattan arriving, some fill'd with immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold, Songs thereof would I sing, to all that hitherward comes would I welcome give, And you would I sing, fair stripling! welcome to you from me, young prince of England! (Remember you surging Manhattan's crowds as you pass'd with your cortege of nobles? There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attachment;) Nor forget I to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my bay, Well-shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she was 600 feet long, Her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I forget not to sing; Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in heaven, Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting over our heads, (A moment, a moment long it sail'd its balls of unearthly light over our heads, Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;) Of such, and fitful as they, I sing—with gleams from them would I gleam and patch these chants, Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good—year of forebodings! Year of comets and meteors transient and strange—lo! even here one equally transient and strange! As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this chant, What am I myself but one of your meteors?
# Leaves of Grass (1882)/Birds of Passage/With Antecedents

WITH ANTECEDENTS.
1
With antecedents, With my fathers and mothers and the accumulations of past ages, With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am, With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome, With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb and the Saxon, ​With antique maritime ventures, laws, artisanship, wars and journeys, With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle, With the sale of slaves, with enthusiasts, with the troubadour, the crusader, and the monk, With those old continents whence we have come to this new continent, With the fading kingdoms and kings over there, With the fading religions and priests, With the small shores we look back to from our own large and present shores, With countless years drawing themselves onward and arrived at these years, You and me arrived—America arrived and making this year, This year! sending itself ahead countless years to come.
2
O but it is not the years—it is I, it is You, We touch all laws and tally all antecedents, We are the skald, the oracle, the monk and the knight, we easily include them and more, We stand amid time beginningless and endless, we stand amid evil and good, All swings around us, there is as much darkness as light, The very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us, Its sun, and its again, all swing around us.
As for me, (torn, stormy, amid these vehement days,) I have the idea of all, and am all and believe in all, I believe materialism is true and spiritualism is true, I reject no part.
(Have I forgotten any part? any thing in the past? Come to me whoever and whatever, till I give you recognition.)
I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews, I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god, I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception, I assert that all past days were what they must have been, And that they could no-how have been better than they were, And that to-day is what it must be, and that America is, And that to-day and America could no-how be better than they are.
3
In the name of these States and in your and my name, the Past, And in the name of these States and in your and my name, the Present time.
I know that the past was great and the future will be great, And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time, (For the sake of him I typify, for the common average man's sake, your sake if you are he,) And that where I am or you are this present day, there is the centre of all days, all races, And there is the meaning to us of all that has ever come of races and days, or ever will come.
# Leaves of Grass (1882)/Birds of Passage

* Song of the Universal
* Pioneers! O Pioneers!
* To You
* France the 18th Year of These States
* Myself and Mine
* Year of Meteors (1858-60)
* With Antecedents
# Leaves of Grass (1882)/Birds of Passage/Myself and Mine

MYSELF AND MINE.
To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a boat, to manage horses, to beget superb children, To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common people, And to hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea.
Not for an embroiderer, (There will always be plenty of embroiderers, I welcome them also,) But for the fibre of things and for inherent men and women.
Not to chisel ornaments, But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous supreme Gods, that the States may realize them walking and talking.
Let me have my own way, Let others promulge the laws, I will make no account of the laws, Let others praise eminent men and hold up peace, I hold up agitation and conflict, I praise no eminent man, I rebuke to his face the one that was thought most worthy.
(Who are you? and what are you secretly guilty of all your life? Will you turn aside all your life? will you grub and chatter all your life? And who are you, blabbing by rote, years, pages, languages, reminiscences, ​Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak properly a single word?)
Let others finish specimens, I never finish specimens, I start them by exhaustless laws as Nature does, fresh and modern continually.
I give nothing as duties, What others give as duties I give as living impulses, (Shall I give the heart's action as a duty?)
Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse unanswerable questions, Who are they I see and touch, and what about them? What about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender directions and indirections?
I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but listen to my enemies, as I myself do, I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot expound myself, I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me, I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free.
After me, vista! I see life is not short, but immeasurably long, I henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower, Every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries.
I must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth, I perceive I have no time to lose.