OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems/The Desecration of the Han Tombs

THE DESECRATION OF THE HAN TOMBS
By Chang Tsai [third century A. D.]
At Pei-mang how they rise to Heaven,
Those high mounds, four or five in the fields!
What men lie buried under these tombs?
All of them were Lords of the Han world.
"Kung" and "Wēn" gaze across at each other:
The Yüan mound is all grown over with weeds.
When the dynasty was falling, tumult and disorder arose, Thieves and robbers roamed like wild beasts.
Of earth they have carried away more than one handful,
They have gone into vaults and opened the secret doors.
Jewelléd scabbards lie twisted and defaced:
The stones that were set in them, thieves have carried away.
The ancestral temples are hummocks in the ground:
The walls that went round them are all levelled flat.
Over everything the tangled thorns are growing:
A herd-boy pushes through them up the path.
Down in the thorns rabbits have made their burrows:
The weeds and thistles will never be cleared away.
Over the tombs the ploughshare will be driven
And peasants will have their fields and orchards there.
They that were once lords of a thousand hosts
Are now become the dust of the hills and ridges. I think of What Yün-mēn said
And am sorely grieved at the thought of "then" and "now."
* ↑ Names of two tombs.
* ↑ In the early days of the dynasty a man stole a handful of earth from the imperial tombs, and was executed by the police. The emperor was furious at the lightness of the punishment.
* ↑ Yün-mēn said to Mēng Ch'ang-chün [died 279 B.C.], "Does it not grieve you to think that after a hundred years this terrace will be cast down and this pond cleared away?" Mēng Ch'ang-chün wept.
# A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems/The Eastern Gate

THE EASTERN GATE
Anon. [first century B. C.]
A poor man determines to go out into the world and make his fortune. His wife tries to detain him.
I went out at the eastern gate: I never thought to return.
But I came back to the gate with my heart full of sorrow.
There was not a peck of rice in the bin:
There was not a coat hanging on the pegs.
So I took my sword and went towards the gate.
My wife and child clutched at my coat and wept:
"Some people want to be rich and grand:
I only want to share my porridge with you.
Above, we have the blue waves of the sky:
Below, the yellow face of this little child" "Dear wife, I cannot stay.
Soon it will be too late.
When one is growing old
One cannot put things off."
# A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems/The Curtain of the Wedding Bed

THE CURTAIN OF THE WEDDING BED
By Liu Hsün's wife [third century A. D.].
After she had been married to him for a long while, General Liu Hsün sent his wife back to her home, because he had fallen in love with a girl of the Ssu-ma family.
Flap, flap, you curtain in front of our bed! I hung you there to screen us from the light of day. I brought you with me when I left my father's house; Now I am taking you back with me again. I will fold you up and lay you flat in your box. Curtain — shall I ever take you out again?
# A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems/Love and Scorn

Previously printed in The Athenæum, January 6th, 1883, p. 16.
LOVE AND SCORN.
i.
Immortal that shouldst be, though all else end,
In plighted hearts of fearless friend with friend,
Whose hand may curb or clip thy plume-plucked wings?
Not grief's nor time's: though these be lords and kings
Crowned, and their yoke bid vassal passions bend,
They may not pierce the spirit of sense, or blend
Quick poison with the soul's live watersprings.
The true clear heart whose core is manful trust
Fears not that very death may turn to dust Love lit therein as toward a brother born,
If one touch make not all its fine gold rust,
If one breath blight not all its glad ripe corn,
And all its fire be turned to fire of scorn.
ii.
By keen experience of a trustless heart,
Bears burning in her new-born hand the dart
Wherewith love dies heart-stricken, and the roof Falls of his palace, and the storied woof
Long woven of many a year with life's whole art Is rent like any rotten weed apart,
And hardly with reluctant eyes aloof
Cold memory guards one relic scarce exempt
Yet from the fierce corrosion of contempt,
And hardly saved by pity. Woe are we
That once we loved, and love not; but we know
The ghost of love, surviving yet in show,
Where scorn has passed, is vain as grief must be.
iii.
Strong child of righteous judgment, whom with grief The rent heart bears, and wins not yet relief,
Seeing of its pain so dire a portent born,
Must thou not spare one sheaf of all the corn,
One doit of all the treasure? not one sheaf,
Not one poor doit of all? not one dead leaf
Of all that fell and left behind a thorn?
Is man so strong that one should scorn another?
Is any as God, not made of mortal mother,
That love should turn in him to gall and flame?
Nay: but the true is not the false heart's brother: Love cannot love disloyalty: the name
That else it wears is love no more, but shame.
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# A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems/On the Bicentenary of Corneille

ON THE BICENTENARY OF CORNEILLE.
CELEBRATED UNDER THE PRESIDENCY OF VICTOR HUGO.
Scarce two hundred years are gone, and the world is past away
As a noise of brawling wind, as a flash of breaking foam,
That beheld the singer born who raised up the dead of Rome;
And a mightier now than he bids him too rise up to-day.
All the dim great age is dust, and its king is tombless clay,
But its loftier laurel green as in living eyes it clomb,
And his memory whom it crowned hath his people's heart for home,
And the shade across it falls of a lordlier-flowering bay.
Stately shapes about the tomb of their mighty maker pace,
Heads of high-plumed Spaniards shine, souls revive of Roman race, Sound of arms and words of wail through the glowing darkness rise,
Speech of hearts heroic rings forth of lips that know not breath,
And the light of thoughts august fills the pride of kindling eyes
Whence of yore the spell of song drove the shadow of darkling death.
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# A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems/Maytime in Midwinter

Previously printed, under the tentative title "Thanksgiving", in Home Chimes, June 14th, 1884, p. 331.
MAYTIME IN MIDWINTER.
A new year gleams on us, tearful
And troubled and smiling dim
As the smile on a lip still fearful,
As glances of eyes that swim:
But the bird of my heart makes cheerful
The days that are bright for him.
Child, how may a man's love merit
The grace you shed as you stand,
The gift that is yours to inherit?
Through you are the bleak days bland; Your voice is a light to my spirit;
You bring the sun in your hand.
The year's wing shows not a feather
As yet of the plumes to be;
Yet here in the shrill grey weather
The spring's self stands at my knee,
And laughs as we commune together,
And lightens the world we see.
The rains are as dews for the christening
Of dawns that the nights benumb: The spring's voice answers me listening
For speech of a child to come,
While promise of music is glistening On lips that delight keeps dumb.
The mists and the storms receding At sight of you smile and die: Your eyes held wide on me reading Shed summer across the sky: Your heart shines clear for me, heeding No more of the world than I.
The world, what is it to you, dear, And me, if its face be grey, And the new-born year be a shrewd year For flowers that the fierce winds fray? You smile, and the sky seems blue, dear; You laugh, and the month turns May.
Love cares not for care, he has daffed her
Aside as a mate for guile:
The sight that my soul yearns after
Feeds full my sense for awhile; Your sweet little sun-faced laughter,
Your good little glad grave smile.
Your hands through the bookshelves flutter;
Scott, Shakespeare, Dickens, are caught;
Blake's visions, that lighten and mutter;
Molière—and his smile has nought
Left on it of sorrow, to utter
The secret things of his thought.
No grim thing written or graven
But grows, if you gaze on it, bright;
A lark's note rings from the raven,
And tragedy's robe turns white;
And shipwrecks drift into haven;
And darkness laughs, and is light.
Grief seems but a vision of madness;
Life's key-note peals from above
With nought in it more of sadness
Than broods on the heart of a dove:
At sight of you, thought grows gladness,
And life, through love of you, love.
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# A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems/Lines on the Monument of Giuseppe Mazzini

LINES ON THE MONUMENT OF GIUSEPPE MAZZINI.
Italia, mother of the souls of men,
Mother divine,
Of all that served thee best with sword or pen,
All sons of thine,
Thou knowest that here the likeness of the best
Before thee stands;
The head most high, the heart found faithfullest,
The purest hands.
Above the fume and foam of time that flits,
The soul, we know, Now sits on high where Alighieri sits
With Angelo.
Not his own heavenly tongue hath heavenly speech
Enough to say
What this man was, whose praise no thought may reach,
No words can weigh.
Since man's first mother brought to mortal birth
Her first-born son,
Such grace befell not ever man on earth
As crowns this one.
Of God nor man was ever this thing said,
That he could give
Life back to her who gave him, whence his dead
Mother might live.
But this man found his mother dead and slain,
With fast sealed eyes,
And bade the dead rise up and live again,
And she did rise.
And all the world was bright with her through him:
But dark with strife, Like heaven's own sun that storming clouds bedim,
Was all his life.
Life and the clouds are vanished: hate and fear
Have had their span
Of time to hurt, and are not: he is here,
The sunlike man.
City superb that hadst Columbus first
For sovereign son,
Be prouder that thy breast hath later nurst
This mightier one.
Glory be his for ever, while his land
Lives and is free,
As with controlling breath and sovereign hand
He bade her be.
Earth shows to heaven the names by thousands told
That crown her fame,
But highest of all that heaven and earth behold
Mazzini's name.
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# A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems/Louis Blanc

Previously printed in The Fortnightly Review, June 1883, pp. 765-766.
LOUIS BLANC.
three sonnets to his memory.
i.
The bright grave brow whereon dark fortune's blast
Might blow, but might not bend it, nor o'ercast,
Save for one fierce fleet hour of shame, the skies
Thrilled with warm dreams of worthier days to rise
And end the whole world's winter; here at last,
If death be death, have passed into the past;
If death be life, live, though their semblance dies.
Hope and high faith inviolate of distrust
Shone strong as life inviolate of the grave Through each bright word and lineament serene.
Most loving righteousness and love most just
Crowned, as day crowns the dawn-enkindled wave,
With visible aureole thine unfaltering mien.
ii.
And shod with thunders of reverberate years,
Have filled with light and sound of hopes and fears
The space of many a season, since I had Grace of good hap to make my spirit glad,
Once communing with thine: and memory hears
The bright voice yet that then rejoiced mine ears,
Sees yet the light of eyes that spake, and bade
Fear not, but hope, though then time's heart were weak
And heaven by hell shade-stricken, and the range Of high-born hope made questionable and strange
As twilight trembling till the sunlight speak.
Thou sawest the sunrise and the storm in one
Break: seest thou now the storm-compelling sun?
iii.
Surely thou canst not choose, O soul, but see
The days whose dayspring was beheld of thee
Ere eyes less pure might have their hope's desire,
Beholding life in heaven again respire
Where men saw nought that was or was to be,
Save only death imperial. Thou and he
Who has the heart of all men's hearts for lyre,
Ye twain, being great of spirit as time is great,
And sure of sight as truth's own heavenward eye, Beheld the forms of forces passing by
And certitude of equal-balanced fate,
Whose breath forefelt makes darkness palpitate,
And knew that light should live and darkness die.
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# A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems/Pelagius

PELAGIUS.
i.
That reared him when the bright south world was black With fume of creeds more foul than hell's own rack, Still darkening more love's face with loveless art Since Paul, faith's fervent Antichrist, of heart Heroic, haled the world vehemently back From Christ's pure path on dire Jehovah's track, And said to dark Elisha's Lord, "Thou art." But one whose soul had put the raiment on Of love that Jesus left with James and John Withstood that Lord whose seals of love were lies, Seeing what we see—how, touched by Truth's bright rod, The fiend whom Jews and Africans called God Feels his own hell take hold on him, and dies.
ii.
And no such pearl in any gulf the sea,
As any babe on any mother's knee.
But all things blessed of men by saints are banned: God gives them grace to read and understand
The palimpsest of evil, writ where we, Poor fools and lovers but of love, can see
Nought save a blessing signed by Love's own hand.
The smile that opens heaven on us for them
Hath sin's transmitted birthmark hid therein:
The kiss it craves calls down from heaven a rod.
If innocence be sin that Gods condemn,
Praise we the men who so being born in sin
First dared the doom and broke the bonds of God.
iii.
Let there be hell, and there was hell—on earth. But not for that may men forget their worth—
Nay, but much more remember them—who led
The living first from dwellings of the dead,
And rent the cerecloths that were wont to engirth
Souls wrapped and swathed and swaddled from their birth
With lies that bound them fast from heel to head.
Among the tombs when wise men all their lives
Dwelt, and cried out, and cut themselves with knives,
These men, being foolish, and of saints abhorred
Beheld in heaven the sun by saints reviled, Love, and on earth one everlasting Lord
In every likeness of a little child.
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# A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems/On the Death of Richard Doyle

Previously printed in The Athenæum, December 29th, 1883, p. 865.
ON THE DEATH OF RICHARD DOYLE.
A light of blameless laughter, fancy-bred,
Soft-souled and glad and kind as love or sleep,
Fades, and sweet mirth's own eyes are fain to weep
Because her blithe and gentlest bird is dead.
Weep, elves and fairies all, that never shed
Tear yet for mortal mourning: you that keep
The doors of dreams whence nought of ill may creep,
Mourn once for one whose lips your honey fed.
Let waters of the Golden River steep
The rose-roots whence his grave blooms rosy-red, And murmuring of Hyblæan hives be deep
About the summer silence of its bed,
And nought less gracious than a violet peep
Between the grass grown greener round his head.
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# A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems/The Twilight of the Lords

THE TWILIGHT OF THE LORDS.
i.
Whence the whole air vibrates now to the clash of words like swords— 'Let us break their bonds in sunder, and cast away their cords; Long enough the world has mocked us, and marvelled to behold How the grown man bears the curb whence his boyhood was controlled'? Nay, but hearken: surer counsel more sober speech affords:
'Is the past not all inscribed with the praises of our Lords?
Is the memory dead of deeds done of yore, the love grown cold
That should bind our hearts to trust in their counsels wise and bold?
These that stand against you now, senseless crowds and heartless hordes, Are not these the sons of men that withstood your kings of old?
Theirs it is to bind and loose; theirs the key that knows the wards, Theirs the staff to lead or smite; yours, the spades and ploughs and hods:
Theirs to hear and yours to cry, Power is yours, O Lords our Gods.'
ii.
Wouldst thou fain have all thy sons sons of thine indeed, and free?
Nay, but then no more at all as thou hast been shalt thou be:
Needs must many dwell in darkness, that some may look on light;
Needs must poor men brook the wrong that ensures the rich man's right.
How shall kings and lords be worshipped, if no man bow the knee? How, if no man worship these, may thy praise endure with thee?
How, except thou trust in these, shall thy name not lose its might?
These have had their will of thee since the Norman came to smite:
Sires on grandsires, even as wave after wave along the sea,
Sons on sires have followed, steadfast as clouds or hours in flight.
Time alone hath power to say, time alone hath eyes to see,
If your walls of rule be built but of clay-compacted sods,
If your place of old shall know you no more, O Lords our Gods.
iii.
Set your house in order: is it not builded on the sand? Set your house in order, seeing the night is hard at hand.
As the twilight of the Gods in the northern dream of fate
Is this hour that comes against you, albeit this hour come late.
Ye whom Time and Truth bade heed, and ye would not understand,
Now an axe draws nigh the tree overshadowing all the land,
And its edge of doom is set to the root of all your state.
Light is more than darkness now, faith than fear and hope than hate;
And what morning wills, behold, all the night shall not withstand.
Rods of office, helms of rule, staffs of wise men, crowns of great,
While the people willed, ye bare; now their hopes and hearts expand, Time with silent foot makes dust of your broken crowns and rods,
And the lordship of your godhead is gone, O Lords our Gods.
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# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Piano

From volume 2 of the work.
[ J. A. F. M. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Pibroch

From volume 2 of the work.
​PIBROCH (Gaelic Piobaireachd, a pipe tune). A series of variations for the bagpipe, founded on a theme called the urlar. Pibrochs are the highest form of bagpipe music, and are often very difficult to execute properly. The variations, generally three or four in number, increase in difficulty and speed, until the composition concludes with a creanluidh, or quick movement. Like all bagpipe music, pibrochs are not written in any proper scale, and it is impossible to note ​them down correctly for any other instrument, owing to the peculiarly imperfect tuning of the bagpipe, and particularly owing to the presence of an extra note between F and F♯, a peculiarity which is also found in the Alpenhorn. [See Bagpipe and Ranz des Vaches.] Pibrochs are generally of a warlike character, including marches and dirges; they often bear the names of various historical and legendary events. Thus 'The Raid of Kilchrist' is ascribed to Macdonald of Glengarry's piper, who composed and performed this pibroch in the year 1603, during the burning of a church with its whole congregation; and the specimen of which a portion is given below—'Failte Phroinsa,' the Prince's Salute—was composed by John MacIntyre, piper to Menzies of Menzies, on the landing of the Pretender in 1715. It must not however be supposed that the music is always contemporary with the events which the pibrochs commemorate; for although many of them are undoubtedly of considerable antiquity, yet the names of old pibrochs which have been lost are often transferred to new compositions. There are not many collections of Highland music, but the best are those by Patrick Macdonald (of Kilmore), Donald Macdonald, and Mackay. The following is the first part of the urlar of a pibroch, and is interesting, as showing the 'warblers' or gracenotes in which good pipers excel. It must be remembered that the note represented by F is rather sharper in the bagpipe.
[ W. B. S. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Piatti

From volume 2 of the work.
[ V. de P. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Piatti, Alfredo

From volume 2 of the work.
​PIATTI, Alfredo, violoncellist, was born at Bergamo Jan. 1822 [App. p.749 "Jan. 8"]. His father was first violin in the orchestra and 'chapel' of that town (not a singer as stated by Fétis). In his earliest youth Piatti had the advantage of the instruction of his grand uncle Zanetti, an excellent musician and performer; and he began playing in the orchestra at the age of seven. On Zanetti's death he was accepted at the Milan Conservatoire in 1832, studied under Merighi, and made his public appearance as a solo performer in 1837.
In 1844 Piatti came to England, where he has since resided during the musical season. He made his first appearance at a concert of the Philharmonic Society on June 24, 1844, in a concertino by Kummer, his performance of which at once established his claim to be ranked as an artist of extraordinary excellence.
It is of interest to mention that at this same concert Mendelssohn played Beethoven's PF. Concerto in G immediately before Piatti appeared; in spite of which the young violoncellist obtained an unqualified success. Mendelssohn played with him several times in private during this visit, and is said to have completed the first movement of a concerto for violoncello and orchestra for him. The MS. however, has not been found. [See Mendelssohn, ii. 285 a.] The instrument (Nicolas Amati) he then used had been presented to him by Liszt. The 'Times' thus spoke of his first appearance. 'Piatti is a masterly player on the violoncello. In tone, which foreign artists generally want, he is equal to Lindley in his best days; his execution is rapid, diversified, and certain, and a false note never by any chance is to be heard.'
This criticism has been more than justified by Piatti's career, so well known to the musical world of England, and it is not too much to say that he has a reputation surpassed by that of no other musical artist. With an absolute command over all the technical difficulties of his instrument Piatti combines a faultless intonation and a rare purity of tone which, without any apparent exertion, never fails to sufficiently assert itself in the most delicate passages, while the exquisite taste with which he 'phrases' invests the simplest melody with infinite charm. Ever since their commencement in 1859 he has held the post of violoncellist at the well-known Monday and Saturday Popular Concerts, and has perhaps contributed as much as any artist to their deserved success.
[ T. P. H. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Piano-Violin

From volume 2 of the work.
​PIANO-VIOLIN (Fr. Violin Quatuor; Germ. Geigenwerk). Schroeter, the German claimant to the invention of the pianoforte, refers in an autobiographical sketch to a 'Geigenwerk,' that is fiddle-work, from Nuremberg, which partly solved the problem of a keyed instrument capable of more expression than the clavichord; but the trouble of working ​the treadles—like a weaver's, as he said—was too great a drawback to its use. This must have been the 'Nürnbergisch Gambenwerk' of Hans Haydn, organist to the church of St. Sebald, who made, about 1610, a harpsichord-shaped instrument, strung with catgut. The strings were beneath the soundboard, and were acted upon by rollers covered with rosined parchment. The rollers were set in motion by a wheel, and by pressure of keys came in contact with the strings. The tone was capable of increase and diminution, and resembled in timbre that of the Viol di Gamba—whence the name 'Gambenwerk.' The original idea exists in the Hurdy Gurdy.
A tolerably long list of similar experiments in France, Germany, and even Russia, is to be found in Welcker's 'Der Clavierbau' (Frankfort, 1870), p. 163, etc. It appears that Chladni much favoured the idea of a piano violin, and under his auspices one was made in 1795 by von Mayer of Gorlitz. The form was that of a grand piano; each key acted upon a catgut string, and as many hairs as there are in a violin bow were adjusted in a frame for each string, a pedal setting them in motion. All these attempts however failed to produce a useful instrument, from the impossibility of playing with rapidity: slow movements alone being insufficient to satisfy either player or hearer.
[ A. J. H. ]