OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Persian Letters/Letter 84
#### Letter 84

Usbek to Rhedi, at Venice
IF there is a God, my dear Rhedi, HE must of necessity be just; because, if He were not so, He would be the worst and most imperfect of all beings.
Justice is a true relation existing between two things; a relation which is always the same, whoever contemplates it, whether it be God, or an angel, or lastly, man himself.
It is true that men do not always perceive these relations: often indeed, when they do perceive them, they turn aside from them, their own interest being always that which they perceive most clearly. Justice cries aloud; but her voice is hardly heard in the tumult of the passions.
Men act unjustly, because it is their interest to do so, and because they prefer their own satisfaction to that of others. They act always to secure some advantage to themselves: no one is a villain gratis; there is always a determining motive, and that motive is always an interested one.
But it is not possible that God should ever commit an injustice. As soon as we grant that He perceives what is right, it becomes necessary that He should follow it: were it no so, as He has no need of anything and is sufficient to Himself, He would be the most wicked of all beings, having no motive for wickedness.
And so, even if there were no God, we ought to love righteousness; that is to say, we should endeavour to resemble that Being of whom we have so lofty an idea, and who, if He did exist, would of necessity be righteous. Freed as we would be from the yoke of religion, we would still be bound by that of justice.
Here you have, Rhedi, that which makes me believe that justice is eternal and independent of human conditions. And, if it were dependent on them, it would be a truth so terrible that we would be compelled to hide it from ourselves.
We are surrounded by men stronger than ourselves; they can injure us in a thousand different ways, and with impunity three times out of four: what a satisfaction it is for us to know that there is in the heart of all men, an innate principle which fights in our favour, and shields us from their attempts!
Without that we would be in continual terror; we would move among men as among lions; and we would never feel sure for an instant of our property, our honour, and our lives.
All these considerations incense me against those doctors who represent God as a being who makes a tyrannical use of His power; who make Him act in a manner which we would ourselves eschew for fear of offending Him; who charge Him with all the imperfections which He punishes in us; and who, in their inconsistency, represent Him, now as a malicious being, and now as a being who hates evil and punishes it.
When a man examines himself, what a satisfaction for him it is to find that he has a righteous heart! That delight, austere as it is, should ravish him: he perceives that he is a being as far above those who have it not, as he is above tigers and bears. Yes, Rhedi, were I sure of following always and inviolably that idea of righteousness which I have before my eyes, I would believe myself the best of men.
Paris, the 1st of the first moon of Gemmadi, 1715.
# Persian Letters/Letter 8
#### Letter 8

Usbek to his friend Rustan, at Ispahan
I got your letter at Erzeroum, where I am now. I was quite certain that my departure would cause some stir, but that gives me no trouble: which would you have me obey--the petty maxims that guide my enemies, or the dictates of my own free soul?
From my earliest youth I have been a courtier; and yet I make bold to say that my heart has remained uncorrupted: indeed, I conceived the grand idea of daring to be virtuous even at court. From the moment I recognised vice, I withdrew from it; afterwards, when I approached it, it was only to unmask it. I carried my veracity even to the foot of the throne, and spoke a language never heard there before; I disconcerted flattery, amazing at the same time the idol and its worshippers.
But when I saw that my sincerity had made me enemies, and had brought upon me the jealousy of the ministers, I determined to forsake a corrupt court in which my unseconded virtue could no longer maintain me. I feigned a mighty interest in science; and, by dint of pretending, soon became really attached to it. I ceased to be a man of affairs, and retired to a house in the country. But even here persecution followed me: the malice of my enemies almost deprived me of the means of protecting myself. Information received in secret led me to consider my position seriously: I resolved to leave my native land, and my withdrawal from court supplied a plausible excuse. I waited on the king; I emphasised the great desire I had to acquaint myself with the sciences of the west, and hinted that my travels might even be of service to him. I found favour in the king's sight; I set out, and snatched from my enemies their expected victim.
Here, Rustan, you have the true motive of my journey. Let them talk in Ispahan; say nothing in my defence except to my friends. Leave the evil-disposed to their misconstructions; I would be too happy if that were the only harm they could do me.
They discuss me at present; perhaps I shall soon be forgotten, and my friends...But no, I will not, Rustan, resign myself to these sad thoughts: I will always be dear to them; I rely upon their faithfulness as upon yours.
Erzeroum, the 20th of the second moon of Gemmadi, 1711.
# Persian Letters/Letter 80
#### Letter 80

The chief black Eunuch to Usbek, at Paris
YESTERDAY some Armenians brought to the seraglio a young Circassian slave whom they wished to sell. I made her enter the secret apartments; I undressed her, I examined her with eyes of a judge; and the more I examined, the more beauties I found. A virginal shame seemed anxious to hide them from my view: I saw how much it cost her to obey: she blushed upon beholding herself naked, even before me, exempt, as I am from the passions which can alarm decency, and entirely delivered from the dominion of the sex—the servant of modesty in the freest actions, looking only with the chastest glance, and capable of inspiring nothing but innocence.
From the moment I judged her worthy of you, I cast down my eyes, and threw over her a scarlet cloak; I placed a ring of gold upon her finger, I prostrated myself at her feet, I adored her as the queen of your heart. I paid the Armenians, and hid her from every eye. Happy Usbek! You possess more beauties than all the palaces of the east enclose. What a pleasure to find on your return whatever Persia has that is most ravishing, and to see in your seraglio all the graces reborn as fast as time and possession work their destruction!
The Seraglio at Fatme, the 1st of the first moon of Rebiab, 1715.
# Poems (Shore)/Beatrice of Swabia

BEATRICE OF SWABIA
SCENE I
Her next subject was chosen from the story of the Sicilian Vespers; it was the rescue of Manfred's young daughter from the hands of Charles of Anjou.
Ruggiero the fisher noble has swum to shore, his boat having foundered in a storm and, lying exhausted on the rock of Castel dell' Uovo, hears in a trance the voice of Beatrice (the imprisoned daughter of Manfred) singing from within the castle, inaudible to others.
Then follows the battle of the Bay of Naples, in which Loria, commanding the Sicilian fleet, entirely defeats the French, and takes captive ​Charles the Lame, Prince of Salerno, eldest son of Charles of Anjou. His young wife, witnessing the scene from the Castello dell' Uovo, is joined there by the Cardinal Gherardo, both in great dismay, as Loria has threatened the life of the Prince unless the captive Beatrice is instantly surrendered.
The interview takes place, and the Princess ​of Salerno, still more terrified, recounts it to the Cardinal, saying:
Beatrice, conveyed by a boat from the French fleet, is transferred to the Sicilian, and approaches Palermo.
Beatrice has landed and, entering the palace, says to her attendants:
As they advance from the Court into a suite of Palace rooms, Beatrice exclaims:
After "Beatrice of Swabia," which was composed several years later than "Pedro the Cruel," we may place some single scenes, or parts of scenes, evidently intended for projected dramas, of various and uncertain dates.
* ↑ For this subject, indeed, one whole period, she had carefully studied various authorities, especially Amari's "Guerra del Vespro Siciliano."
* ↑ Cassaro
# Poems (Shore)/Cola di Rienzi

PART I
EARLY POEMS
# Poems (Shore)/Elegies

PART II
POEMS ALREADY PUBLISHED
* ↑ A French artist whom he once met in a Paris salon soon after his return from Australia, observed to his sister that "among all the strange birds he had seen there in the woods, there were none with eyes so bright as his."
* ↑ See "Two Months on the Tobique."
# Poems (Commelin)/To Mrs. E. T. Brockway

(Read at the luncheon tendered to Mrs. Brockway, on her retirement from office, April, 1886.)
# Poems (Commelin)/To Mrs. Wing

(Read at the luncheon of the Brooklyn Woman's Club, April, 1887.)
# Popular Science Monthly/Volume 45/May 1894/Obituary Notes

Layout 4
Dr. D. Scott Moncrieff, of Harvard University, died in Eastern Siberia in August, 1893, while on a journey of exploration and ethnological research. He left a Gilyuk village, near the mouth of the Amur River, for a sail in an open boat on the 11th, and his body was found two weeks afterward on the coast of Sakhalin.
# Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/Song

SONG
Stranger, we challenge thee, Say, if you meet her, Sweet mouth or sweet eyes, Which is the sweeter?
Which softer falls— Tell if you know— Snow upon water Or snow upon snow?
# Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/The Chastisement of Pride

THE CHASTISEMENT OF PRIDE
In those old times wherein Theology Flourished with greater sap and energy, A celebrated doctor—so they say— Having stirred many careless hearts one day Down to their dullest depths, and having shown Strange pathways leading to the heavenly throne— Tracks he himself had never journeyed on (Whereby maybe pure spirits alone had gone)— Frenzied and swollen by the devilish pride, Like to a man who has climbed too high, outcried: "Ah, little Jesus, I have lifted thee! But had I willed to assault thy dignity, Thy shame had matched they present fame, and lo! Thou wouldst be but a wretched embryo!"
Straightway his reason left him; that keen mind, Sunbright before, was darkened and made blind; All chaos whirled within that intellect Erewhile a shrine with all fair gems bedeckt, Beneath whose roof such pomp had shone so bright; He was possessed by silence and thick night As is a cellar when its key is lost. . . . .
Thenceforth he was a brute beast; when he crossed The fields at times, not seeing any thing, Knowing not if 'twere winter or green spring, Useless, repulsive, vile, he made a mock For infants, a mere children's laughing-stock.
# Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/The Enemy

THE ENEMY
Naught but a long blind tempest was my youth, Sun-shot at times; the thunder and the rain Have worked their havock with so little ruth That in my garden few red fruits remain.
Now have I reached the autumn of my thought, And shovel and pick must use some soil to save From out the ruins that the rain hath wrought Where all around great pits gape like the grave.
Who knows if these last flowers of my dreams Shall find beneath this naked strand that streams The mystic substance which their strength imparts?
O misery! misery! Time eats our lives, And that dark Enemy who gnaws our hearts Grows by the blood he sucks from us, and thrives.
# Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/The Alchemy of Grief

THE ALCHEMY OF GRIEF
One, Nature! burns and makes thee bright, One gives thee weeds to mourn withal; And what to one is burial Is to the other life and light.
The unknown Hermes who assists And alway fills my heart with fear, Makes the mighty Midas’ peer The saddest of the alchemists.
Through him I make gold changeable To dross, and paradise to hell; Clouds for its corpse-cloths I descry.
A stark dead body I love well, And in the gleaming fields on high I build immense sarcophagi.
# Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/The Burial of an Accursed Poet

THE BURIAL OF AN ACCURSED POET
If haply one dark, dreary night Some charitable soul appear And ’neath old rubble stow from sight The body that you held so dear–
What time the chaste stars veil their eyes, Drowsy and fain for slumber, there Spiders shall weave their traceries, Vipers their spotted young shall bear.
Above your doomed head you will hear Each night throughout the heavy year The lean wolves’ melancholy cries,
Famished hags’ howlings for a crust, Lewd pastimes of old men who lust, And scoundrels’ dark conspiracies.
# Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/The Cats

THE CATS
The lover and the stern philosopher Both love, in their ripe time, the confident Soft cats, the house’s chiefest ornament, Who like themselves are cold and seldom stir.
Of knowledge and of pleasure amorous, Silence they seek and Darkness’ fell domain; Had not their proud souls scorned to brook his rein, They would have made grim steeds for Erebus.
Pensive they rest in noble attitudes Like great stretched sphinxes in vast solitudes Which seem to sleep wrapt in an endless dream;
Their fruitful loins are full of sparks divine, And gleams of gold within their pupils shine As ’twere within the shadow of a stream.
# Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/The Cracked Bell

THE CRACKED BELL
’Tis bitter-sweet, when winter nights are long, To watch, beside the flames which smoke and twist, The distant memories which slowly throng, Brought by the chime soft-singing through the mist.
Happy the sturdy, vigorous-throated bell Who, spite of age alert and confident, Cries hourly, like some strong old sentinel Flinging the ready challenge from his tent.
For me, my soul is cracked; when, sick with care, She strives with songs to people the cold air It happens often that her feeble cries
Mock the harsh rattle of a man who lies Wounded, forgotten, ’neath a mound of slain And dies, pinned fast, writhing his limbs in vain.
# Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/Sonnet

SONNET
What wilt thou say, poor lonely soul, to-night? What wilt thou say, erst withered heart of mine, To the most kind, most beautiful, most bright, Who hath renewed thee with her glance divine?
Put we our pride to singing of her praise! Happy the thralls who know her gentle yoke, Angelic perfume floats along her ways, And she hath clad us in a shining cloak!
Out in the night and in the solitude Out in the street and in the multitude Her phantom dances torch-like in the air;
And sometimes speaks she: “Beauty, thou shalt choose Thine only love, for love of me who am fair; I am Madonna, Guardian-Angel, Muse!”
# Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/Spleen

SPLEEN
When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid Upon the spirit aching for the light, And all the wide horizon’s line is hid By a black day sadder than any night;
When the changed earth is but a dungeon dank Where batlike Hope goes blindly fluttering And, striking wall and roof and mouldered plank, Bruises his tender head and timid wing;
When like grim prison-bars stretch down the thin, Straight, rigid pillars of the endless rain, And the dumb throngs of infamous spiders spin Their meshes in the caverns of the brain;—
Suddenly, bells leap forth into the air, Hurling a hideous uproar to the sky As 'twere a band of homeless spirits who fare Through the strange heavens, wailing stubbornly.
And hearses, without drum or instrument, File slowly through my soul; crushed, sorrowful, Weeps Hope, and Grief, fierce and omnipotent, Plants his black banner on my drooping skull.
# Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/The Blind

THE BLIND
Look at them, Soul! They are horrible. Lo! there, Like shrunk dwarfs, vaguely ludicrous; yet they keep An aspect strange as those who walk in sleep, Rolling their darkened orbs one knows not where.
Their eyes, from which the godlike spark has flown, Stare upward at the sky as though to see Some far thing; never hang they dreamily Those eyes toward the barren pavement-stone.
Thus cross they the illimitable dark, That brother of eternal silence. Mark! O frenzied city, as thou roarest by.
Drunk with thy song and laughter, I too stray With crawling feet! but ask, more dull than they, “What seek they, all these blind men, in the sky?”
# Poems (Trask)/The Sentinel

IN TIME OF WAR.
# Poems of Experience/The Radiant Christ

I
Arise, O master artist of the age, And paint the picture which at once shall be Immortal art and bless’d prophecy. The bruiséd vision of the world assuage; To earth’s dark book add one illumined page, So scintillant with truth, that all who see Shall break from superstition and stand free. Now let this wondrous work thy hand engage. The mortal sorrow of the Nazarene, Too long has been faith’s symbol and its sign; Too long a dying Saviour has sufficed. Give us the glowing emblem which shall mean Mankind awakened to the Self Divine; The living emblem of the Radiant Christ.
II
Too long the crucifix on Calvary’s height Has cast its shadow on the human heart. Let now Religion’s great co-worker Art, Limn on the background of departing night, The shining Face all palpitant with light, And God’s true message to the world impart. Go tell each toiler in the home and mart, ‘Lo, Christ is with ye, if ye seek aright.’ The world forgets the vital word Christ taught; The only word the world has need to know: The answer to creation’s problem - Love. The world remembers what the Christ forgot; His cross of anguish and His death of woe; Release the martyr, and the Cross remove!
III
For now the former things have passed away, And man, forgetting that which lies behind, And ever pressing forward, seeks to find The prize of his high calling. Send a ray From art’s bright sun to fortify the day, And blaze the trail to every mortal mind. The new religion lies in being kind; Faith stands and works, where once it knelt to pray; Faith counts its gain, where once it reckoned loss; Ascending paths its patient feet have trod; Man looks within, and finds salvation there. Release the suffering Saviour from the Cross, And give the waiting world its Radiant God.
# Poems of Experience/Time's Defeat

Time has made conquest of so many things That once were mine. Swift-footed, eager youth That ran to meet the years; bold brigand health, That broke all laws of reason unafraid, And laughed at talk of punishment.
Close ties of blood and friendship, joy of life, Which reads its music in the major key And will not listen to a minor strain - These things and many more are spoils of time.
Yet as a conqueror who only storms The outposts of a town, and finds the fort Too strong to be assailed, so time retreats And knows his impotence. He cannot take
My three great jewels from the crown of life: Love, sympathy, and faith; and year on year He sees them grow in lustre and in worth, And glowers by me, plucking at his beard, And dragging, as he goes, a useless scythe.
Once in the dark he plotted with his friend Grim Death, to steal my treasures. Death replied: ‘They are immortal, and beyond thy reach, I could but set them in another sphere, To shine with greater lustre.’
 Time and Death Passed on together, knowing their defeat; And I am singing by the road of life.
# Poems of Experience/The Trip to Mars

Oh! by and by we shall hear the cry,  ‘This is the way to Mars.’ Come take a trip, on the morning Ship;  It sails by the Isle of Stars.
‘A glorious view of planets new  We promise by night and day. Past dying suns our good ship runs,  And we pause at the Milky Way.’
I am almost sure we will take that tour  Together, my dear, my dear. For, ever have we, by land and sea,  Gone journeying far and near.
Out over the deep - o’er mountain steep,  We have travelled mile on mile; And to sail away to the Martian Bay,  Oh! that were a trip worth while.
Our ship will race through seas of space  Up into the Realms of Light, Till the whirling ball of the earth grows small,  And is utterly lost to sight.
Through the nebulous spawn where planets are born,  We shall pass with sails well furled, And with eager eyes we will scan the skies,  For the sights of a new-made world.
From the derelict barque of a sun gone dark,  Adrift on our fair ship’s path, A beacon star shall guide us afar,  And far from the comet’s wrath.
Oh! many a start of pulse and heart  We have felt at the sights of land. But what would we do if the dream came true,  And we sighted the Martian strand?
So, if some day you come and say,  They are sailing to Mars, I hear. I want you to know I am ready to go, -  All ready, my dear, my dear.
# Poems of Experience/The Tower-room

There is a room serene and fair, All palpitant with light and air; Free from the dust, world’s noise and fuss - God’s Tower-room in each of us.
Oh! many a stair our feet must press, And climb from self to selflessness, Before we reach that radiant room Above the discord and the gloom.
So many, many stairs to climb, But mount them gently - take your time; Rise leisurely, nor strive to run - Not so the mightiest feats are done.
Well doing of the little things: Repression of the word that stings; The tempest of the mind made still By victory of the God-like will.
The hated task performed in love - All these are stairs that wind above The things that trouble and annoy, Up to the Tower-room of joy.
Rise leisurely; the stairs once trod Reveal the mountain peaks of God; And from its upper room the soul Sees all, in one united whole.
# Poems of Experience/The Voices of the City

The voices of the city - merged and swelled Into a mighty dissonance of sound, And from the medley rose these broken strains In changing time and ever-changing keys.
I
Pleasure seekers, silken clad,  Led by cherub Day, Ours the duty to be glad,  Ours the toil of play.
Sleep has bound the commonplace,  Pleasure rules the dawn. Small hours set the merry pace  And we follow on.
We must use the joys of earth,  All its cares we’ll keep; Night was made for youth and mirth,  Day was made for sleep.
Time has cut his beard, and lo!  He is but a boy, Singing, on with him we go,  Ah! but life is joy.
II
We are the vendors of beauty,  We the purveyors for hell; The carnal bliss of a purchased kiss  And the pleasures that blight, we sell. God pity us; God pity the world.
We are the sad race-victims  Of the misused force in man, Of the great white flame burned black with shame  And lost to the primal plan. God pity us; God pity the world.
We are the Purpose of Being  Gone wrong in the thought of the world. The torch for its hand made a danger brand  And into the darkness hurled. God pity us; God pity the world.
III
We are the toilers in the realm of night (Long, long the hours of night), We are the human lever, wheel, and bolt, That keeps the civic vehicle from jolt, And jar upon the shining track of day  (The unremembered day).
We sleep away the sunlit hours of life (Unsatisfied, sad life), We wake in shadow and we rise in gloom. False as a wanton’s artificial bloom Is that made light we labour in till dawn  (The lonely, laggard dawn).
Like visions half remembered in a dream (A strange and broken dream) Our children’s faces, seen but while they sleep, Within our hearts these weary hours we keep. We are the toilers in the realm of night  (Long, long the hours of night).
CHORUS
We are hope and faith and sorrow, We are peace and pain and passion, We are ardent lovers kissing, We are happy mothers crooning, We are rosy children dreaming, We are honest labour sleeping, We are wholesome pleasure laughing, We are wakeful riches feasting, We are lifted spirits praying, We the voices of the city.
Out of the medley rose these broken strains, In changing time and ever-changing keys.