OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) from Flowers of Loveliness, 1838/The Laurel

* THE LAUREL
* Artist F. CorbauxEngraver B. Holl
From The New Yorker, 23rd December 1837, page 629
From the Flowers of Loveliness for 1838.
THE LAUREL.(*)
'Fling down the Laurel from her golden hair;  A woman's brow:—what doth the laurel there?'
Not to the silent bitterness of tears  Do I commit, oh, false one! thy requiting; My measured moments shall be paid by years  Of long avenging on thy faithless slighting.
I call upon the boon that nature gave,  Ere my young spirit knew its own possessing; And, from the fire that has consumed me, crave  The cold, stern power that knows its own redressing.
Love was my element: e'en as the bird  Knows the soft air that swells around its pinion, Sweet thoughts and eager ones my spirit stirred,  Whose only influence was the heart's dominion.
They were but shadows of a deeper power,  For life is ominous, itself revealing By the faint likeness of the coming hour,  Felt ere it vivify to actual feeling.
But from that fated hour is no return;  Life has grown actual—we have done with dreaming; It is a bitter truth at last to learn  That all we once believed was only seeming.
Thou who hast taught me this! upon thy head  Be all the evils thou hast round thee scattered; Through thee the light that led me on is dead—  My wreath is in the dust—my lute is shattered.
I could forgive each miserable night  When I have waked, for that I dreaded sleeping; I knew that I should dream—my fevered sight  Would bring the image I afar was keeping.
Alas, the weary hours! when I have asked  The faint cold stars, amid the darkness shining. Why is mortality so overtasked?—  Why am I grown familiar with repining?—
Then comes the weary day, that would but bring  Impatient wishes that it were to-morrow; While every new and every usual thing,  Seemed but to irritate the hidden sorrow.
And this I owe to thee, to whom I brought  A love that was half fondness, half devotion; Alas, the glorious triumphs of high thought  Are now subdued by passionate emotion.
Upon my silent lute there is no song;  I sit and grieve above my power departed; To others let the laurel-wreath belong;  I only know that I am broken-hearted.
Enough yet lingers of the broken spell  To show that once it was a thing enchanted; I leave my spirit to the low sweet shell  By whose far music shall thy soul be haunted.
A thousand songs of mine are on the air,  And they shall breathe my memory, and mine only, Startling thy soul with hopes no longer fair,  And love that will but rise to leave thee lonely.
Immortal is the gift that I inherit:—  Eternal is the loveliness of verse; My heart thou may'st destroy, but not my spirit,  And that shall linger round thee like a curse.
Farewell the lute, that I no more shall waken!  Its music will be murmured after me; Farewell the laurel that I have forsaken!  And, last, farewell, oh, my false love, to thee!L. E. L.
(* Illustration—a poetess, deserted by her lover, plucking the laurel from her hair.)
# Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) from Flowers of Loveliness, 1838/The Marvel of Peru

* MARVEL OF PERU
* Artist K. MeadowsEngraved by J. Cochran
From the New Yorker, 8th September, 1838, page 389
THE MARVEL OF PERU.
A radiant beauty of the lovely South,  As languid as her valley's scented gale; The rose hath only place on that sweet mouth—  A rose it is, but the soft cheek is pale.
Her large dark eyes are like a summer night,  Before the moon's soft crescent shines above; Filled with a tender, yet a shadowy light,  Whose silence is the eloquence of Love.
She dwelleth like a lone and fairy flower,  That hath its home in some enchanted soil; What knoweth she of life's more troubled hour—  Our northern lot of hurry, care and toil?
Half slave, half idol, she is kept apart;  Her palace-prison is a veiled shrine; Enough for her the sweet world of the heart;  Ah! little hath the ladye to resign!
Listless she dreams the sultry noon away,  The painted fan just stirs her raven hair; The silken curtains yield a shadowy day,  That makes the pale, fair beauty seem more fair.
Faint are the colours in that darkened room;  When the wind lifts the curtain's crimson fold, Amid a rich obscurity of gloom  Are seen the rainbow gems, the carved gold.
And on a table near, a little flower  Droops in a vase as white as sculptured snow; It was her favourite in her childhood's bower,  The Marvel of Peru;—she loves it now.
The perfumed atmosphere around is filled  With many odors—summer's scented spoil: The fragrant waters from sweet woods distilled,  Spices, and cinnamon, and precious oil.
Oh, life of pleasant languor and repose!  Like some frail plant that languishes at noon; The dark-eyed beauty need not envy those  To whom such charmed lot were earth's best boon.
What is the world we live in but a strife  Of vanity and envy, hate and fear? That what we so miscall our social life
 Is one great error—sullen, vast and drear.
A happier lot is Woman’s thus confined  To one deep love, and one sweet solitude; Oh! what availeth to awake the mind,  Whose higher struggles are so soon subdued?
# Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) from Flowers of Loveliness, 1838/The Night-Blowing Convolvulus

* WHITE ROSE & NIGHT CONVOLVULUS
* Artist Eliza SharpeEngraver G. Adcock
From The New Yorker, 16th December 1837, page 612
THE NIGHT-BLOWING CONVOLVULUS.
BY L. E. L.
Not to the sunny hours  That waken other flowers, Dost thou fling forth the odour of thy sighing  But in the time of gloom,  Is yielded thy perfume, Like Love, that lives when all beside is dying.
 Mournful the chamber where  Thou dost embalm the air! Familiar long with watching and with weeping,  An anxious circle gaze  Upon the moonlit rays, Amid the tranquil waves of ocean sleeping.
 Far on the waters wild;  Far from his wife and child, For his sake, reckless on their quiet pillow;  More restless than his own,  He who is careless thrown, Where sweeps the southern wind, where swells the billow.
 Long have they watched and wept,  And bitter reckoning kept Of days, alas! that seem to have no ending;  The hourly prayer unwon,  They see the setting sun Upon some unbroken sea descending.
 To every passing cloud  A fancy is allowed; It is the fair ship, through the water springing!  Ah, no! not yet the gale  Expands her homeward sail! Him whom they have so long expected bringing.
He would not know his child!  It was an infant smiled, Unconscious of his sorrowful caressing;  From the red lip was heard  No small familiar word; Now, the fair boy can ask his father’s blessing.
 The mother wears no more  The smile and blush she wore In the glad days when they were last together:  Her brow is wan with fears;  Her eyes are dim with tears; Her cheek has changed with every change of weather.
 Alas! her love has grown  Too anxious, and too prone To trouble with its passionate emotion!  Upon her dreams at night,  Come visions of affright— All the tumultuous perils of the ocean.
 When these dark thoughts prevail,  What hope can then avail, But that which riseth amid prayer to heaven?  Upon the gloomy hour,  Like thy soft breath, sweet flower, Whose odours are alone to midnight given.
* ↑ Landon's original spelling, odor in the American version
* ↑ Landon's original spelling, odors in the American version
# Poems by Isaac Rosenberg/Sleep

SLEEP
Godhead's lip hangs When our pulses have no golden tremors, And his whips are flicked by mice And all star-amorous things.
Drops, drops of shivering quiet Filter under my lids. Now only am I powerful. What though the cunning gods outwit us here In daytime and in playtime, Surely they feel the gyves we lay on them In our sleep.
O, subtle gods lying hidden! O, gods with your oblique eyes! Your elbows in the dawn, and wrists Bright with the afternoon, Do you not shake when a mortal slides Into your own unvexed peace?
When a moving stillness breaks over your knees (An emanation of piled æons' pressures), From our bodies flat and straight, And your limbs are locked, Futilely gods', And shut your sinister essences?
# Poems by Isaac Rosenberg/Soldier: Twentieth Century

SOLDIER: TWENTIETH CENTURY
I love you, great new Titan! Am I not you? Napoleon and Cæsar Out of you grew.
Out of unthinkable torture, Eyes kissed by death, Won back to the world again, Lost and won in a breath,
Cruel men are made immortal. Out of your pain born, They have stolen the sun's power With their feet on your shoulders worn.
Let them shrink from your girth, That has outgrown the pallid days When you slept like Circe's swine Or a word in the brain's ways.
# Poems by Isaac Rosenberg/Of Any Old Man

OF ANY OLD MAN
Wreck not the ageing heart of quietness With alien uproar and rude jolly cries, Which (satyr-like to a mild maiden's pride) Ripen not wisdom but a large recoil; Give them their withered peace, their trial grave, Their past youth's three-scored shadowy effigy. Mock them not with your ripened turbulence, Their frost-mailed petulance with your torrid wrath, When, edging your boisterous thunders, shivers one word (Pap to their senile sneering, drug to truth, The feigned rampart of bleak ignorance) "Experience"—crown of naked majesties, That tells us naught we know not, but confirms. O think, you reverend shadowy austere, Your Christ's youth was not ended when he died.
# Poems by Isaac Rosenberg/On a Lady Singing

ON A LADY SINGING
She bade us listen to the singing lark In tones far sweeter than its own: For fear that she should cease and leave us dark We built the bird a feigned throne, Shrined in her gracious glory-giving ways From sceptred hands of starred humility— Praising herself the more in giving praise To music less than she.
# Poems by Isaac Rosenberg/Returning, we hear the Larks

RETURNING, WE HEAR THE LARKS
Sombre the night is:
And, though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lurks there.
Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
This poison-blasted track opens on our camp—
On a little safe sleep.
But hark! Joy—joy—strange joy.
Lo! Heights of night ringing with unseen larks:
Music showering on our upturned listening faces.
Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song— But song only dropped, Like a blind man's dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides;
Like a girl's dark hair, for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.
# Poems by Isaac Rosenberg/Marching

MARCHING
(as seen from the left file).
My eyes catch ruddy necks
Sturdily pressed back—
All a red-brick moving glint.
Like flaming pendulums, hands
Swing across the khaki—
Mustard-coloured khaki—
To the automatic feet.
We husband the ancient glory
In these bared necks and hands.
Not broke is the forge of Mars;
But a subtler brain beats iron
To shoe the hoofs of death
(Who paws dynamic air now).
Blind fingers loose an iron cloud
To rain immortal darkness
On strong eyes.
# Poems by Isaac Rosenberg/My Days

MY DAYS
My days are but the tombs of buried hours; Which tombs are hidden in the piled years; But from the mounds there spring up many flowers, Whose beauty well repays their cost of tears. Time, like a sexton, pileth mould on mould, Minutes on minutes till the tombs are high; Hut from the dust there fall some grains of gold, And the dead corpse leaves what will never die— It may be but a thought, the nursling seed Of many thoughts, of many a high desire; Some little act that stirs a noble deed, Like breath rekindling a smouldering fire: They only live who have not lived in vain, For in their works their life returns again.
# Poems by Isaac Rosenberg/O, In a World of Men and Women

O, IN A WORLD OF MEN AND WOMEN
O, in a world of men and women, Where all things seemed so strange to me, And speech the common world called human For me was a vain mimicry,
I thought—O, am I one in sorrow? Or is the world more quick to hide Their pain with raiment that they borrow From pleasure in the house of pride?
O joy of mine, O longed-for stranger, How I would greet you if you came: In the world's joys I've been a ranger, In my world sorrow is their name.
# Poems by Isaac Rosenberg/On Receiving the First News of the War

ON RECEIVING THE FIRST NEWS OF THE WAR
Snow is a strange white word; No ice or frost Has asked of bud or bird For Winter's cost.
Yet ice and frost and snow From earth to sky This Summer land doth know; No man knows why.
In all men's hearts it is: Some spirit old Hath turned with malign kiss Our lives to mould.
Red fangs have torn His face, God's blood is shed: He mourns from His lone place His children dead.
O ancient crimson curse!
Corrode, consume;
Give back this universe
Its pristine bloom.
Cape Town, 1914.
# Persian Letters/Letter 92
#### Letter 92

Usbek to Rustan, at Ispahan
THERE has appeared here a person who burlesques the part of Persian ambassador, and insolently makes sport of the two greatest kings in the world. He bears to the French monarch presents which ours would not offer to a king of Irimetta or of Georgia; and by his wretched avarice, he has disgraced the majesty of two empires.
He has brought ridicule upon himself before a people who pretend to be the most polished in Europe; and he has caused it to be said in the west that the king of kings reigns over none but savages.
He has received honours which he would apparently have been glad to decline; and, as if the court of French had had the grandeur of the court of Persia more at heart than he, it forced him to appear with dignity before a people who scorn him.
Say nothing of this at Ispahan: spare the head of an unhappy wretch. I would not have our ministers punish him for their own imprudence, and for the unworthy choice which they made.
Paris, the last day of the second moon of Gemmadi, 1715.
# Persian Letters/Letter 93
#### Letter 93

Usbek to Rhedi, at Venice
THE monarch who reigned so long is no more. He made people talk much about him during his life; everybody is silent at his death. Firm and courageous at the last moment, he seemed to yield only to destiny. Thus died the great Shah Abbas after filling the whole earth with his name.
Do not imagine that this great event has given rise to none but moral reflections. Every one considered his own affairs and how to take advantage of the change. The king, great-grandson of the late monarch, being only five years old, a prince, his uncle, has been declared regent of the kingdom.
The late king left a will which limits the power of the regent. This clever prince went to the Parliament, and having laid before them all the rights he has by birth, made them break the arrangements of the late monarch, who, wishing to survive himself, seemed to lay claim to govern after his death.
Parliaments are like those ruins which are trampled under foot, but which always recall the idea of some temple famous on account of the ancient religion of the people. They hardly interfere now except in matters of law; and their authority will continue to decrease unless some unforeseen event restores them to life and strength. The common fate has overtaken these great bodies; they have yielded to time which destroys everything, to moral corruption which weakens everything, and to absolute power which overbears everything.
But the regent, anxious to secure the favour of the people, appeared at first to respect this shadow of public freedom; and, as if he had intended to lift from the ground the temple and the idol, he was willing that the parliament should be regarded as the prop of the monarchy, and the foundation of all legitimate authority.
Paris, the 4th of the moon of Rhegeb, 1715.
# Persian Letters/Letter 94
#### Letter 94

Usbek to his brother, Santon at the Monastery of Casbin
I HUMBLE myself in the dust before you, holy Santon; your footprints are to me as the apple of my eye. Your holiness is so great that it seems as if you had the heart of our sacred Prophet: your austerities astonish Heaven itself; the highest angels have watched you from the skies, and have said, “How is he still on earth, since his spirit is with us, and flies about the throne which the clouds bear up?”
How then should I not honour you, I who have learned from our doctors that dervishes, even though infidels, have always a character of holiness which makes them venerable in the eyes of true believers; and that God has chosen for Himself, in every corner of the earth, souls purer than the rest, whom He has separated from the impious world, that their mortifications and their fervent prayers may suspend His wrath, ready to fall upon so many rebel nations?
Christians narrate wonders of their first santons who took refuge by thousands in the dreadful desert of the Thebaid, and whose chiefs were Paul, Antony, and Pacomus. If what is told of them be true, their lives are as full of marvels as those of our most sacred Imans. They sometimes spent ten whole years without seeing a single soul; but they dwelt night and day with demons; they were ceaselessly tormented by these evil spirits, who haunted their bed, and sat down with them at meat; there was no refuge from them. If all this is true, reverend Santon, it must be confessed that nobody ever lived in more disagreeable company.
The more sensible Christians regard all these stories as a very natural allegory, which may be of use in making us realise the wretchedness of our condition as human beings. We search in vain for a state of repose in the desert; temptations follow us everywhere: our passions, symbolised by the demons, never quit us altogether; those monsters of the heart, those illusions of the mind, those vain phantoms of error and falsehood, haunt us continually to mislead us, and attack us even in our fasts and our hair-cloths, that is to say, even in our strongholds.
As for me, reverend Santon, I know that God’s messenger has chained Satan, and flung him headlong into the abyss; He has purified the earth, formerly filled with his power, and has made it worthy of the abode of angels and prophets.
Paris, the 9th of the moon of Chahban, 1715.
# Persian Letters/Letter 87
#### Letter 87

Rica to * * *
IT seems that every member of a family in this country controls his own actions. The authority exercised by a husband over his wife, a father over his children, a master over his slaves, is merely nominal. The law interferes in all differences; and you may be certain that it is always against the jealous husband, the sorrowing father, the exasperated master.
The other day I visited the place where justice is administered. Before getting there, I had to run the gauntlet of a crowd of young shopwomen who press you to buy in a most seductive manner. At first, the sight is sufficiently amusing; but it becomes dismal when one enters the great halls, where all the people wear dresses even more solemn than their faces. At last one comes to the sacred place where all the secrets of families are revealed and the most hidden actions brought to light.
Here a modest girl comes to confess the torments of a virginity too long preserved, her struggles and her painful resistance; she is so little proud of her victory that she is always on the verge of accepting defeat; and, in order that her father may no longer be ignorant of her wants, she exposes them to everybody.
Then some shameless woman appears to publish the injuries she has done her husband, as a reason for a separation.
With equal modesty another comes to declare that she is tired of wearing the title, without enjoying the rights of a wife; she reveals the hidden mysteries of the marriage night; she wishes to be examined by the most skilful experts, and prays for a decision re-establishing her in all the rights of virginity. Some even dare to challenge their husbands, and demand from them a public contest which the presence of witnesses renders so difficult; a test as disgraceful for the wife who passes it, as for the husband who fails to stand it.
A great number of young women, ravished or seduced, represent the men as being much worse than they are. This court resounds with love; nothing is talked of but enraged fathers, deluded daughters, faithless lovers, afflicted husbands.
According to the law which here holds sway, every infant born in wedlock is considered the husband’s; should he have good reasons to believe it not his, the law believes it for him, and relieves him of his scruples and of the necessity for inquiry.
In this tribunal judgment goes by the majority; but it is said that experience teaches that it would be wiser to follow the decision of the minority; which is natural enough, for there are very few just minds, and plenty of ill-balanced ones, as all the world knows.
Paris, the 1st of the second moon of Gemmadi, 1715.
# Persian Letters/Letter 88
#### Letter 88

Rica to * * *
MAN, they say, is a social animal. In this matter a Frenchman appears to me to be more of a man than any other; he is the man par excellence, for he seems to be intended solely for society.
But I have noticed among them some who are not only sociable, but are themselves society itself. They multiply themselves at every corner; they people in an instant the four quarters of a city; a hundred such men make more appearance than two thousand citizens; a stranger would think that they might repair the ravages of plague and famine. It is debated in the schools whether a body can be in more than one place at once; they are a proof of that which philosophers call in question.
They are always in a hurry, because they are engaged in the important business of asking every one they meet whither they are going, and whence they come.
It can never be driven out of their heads that it is a part of good breeding to visit the public every day individually, without counting the wholesale visits which they make to places of general resort, which being much too brief a method is reckoned as nothing in the rules of their etiquette.
Their knocking harasses the doors of the houses more than the winds and the storms. If one were to examine the lists of all the porters, their names would be found daily mutilated in a thousand different ways in Swiss writing. They pass their lives in going to funerals, in expressions of condolence, or in marriage congratulations. The king never confers a favour on any of his subjects, without putting these gentry to the expense of a carriage to go and express their delight. At last, tired out, they return home, and rest themselves to be able to resume next day their laborious functions.
The other day one of them died of weariness; and they put this epitaph on his tomb: “Here rests one who never rested before. He assisted at five hundred and thirty funerals. He made merry at the births of two thousand six hundred and eighty children. He wished his friends joy, always varying the phrase, upon pensions amounting to two million six hundred thousand lives; in town he walked nine thousand six hundred furlongs, in the country thirty-six furlongs. His conversation was pleasing; he had a ready-made stock of three hundred and sixty-five stories; he was acquainted also from his youth with a hundred and eighteen apophthegms derived from the ancients, which he employed on special occasions. He died at last in the sixtieth year of his age. I say no more, stranger; for how could I ever have done telling you all that he did and all that he saw?”
Paris, the 3rd of the second moon of Gemmadi, 1715.