DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
My Grave.
by Thomas Osborne Davis

Shall they bury me in the deep,
Where wind-forgetting waters sleep?
Shall they dig a grave for me,
Under the green-wood tree?
Or on the wild heath,
Where the wilder breath
Of the storm doth blow?
Oh, no! oh, no!
Shall they bury me in the Palace Tombs,
Or under the shade of Cathedral domes?
Sweet 'twere to lie on Italy's shore;
Yet not there--nor in Greece, though I love it more,
In the wolf or the vulture my grave shall I find?
Shall my ashes career on the world-seeing wind?
Shall they fling my corpse in the battle mound,
Where coffinless thousands lie under the ground?
Just as they fall they are buried so--
Oh, no! oh, no!
No! on an Irish green hill-side,
On an opening lawn--but not too wide;
For I love the drip of the wetted trees--
I love not the gales, but a gentle breeze
To freshen the turf--put no tombstone there,
But green sods decked with daisies fair;
Nor sods too deep, but so that the dew,
The matted grass-roots may trickle through.
Be my epitaph writ on my country's mind,
"HE SERVED HIS COUNTRY, AND LOVED HIS KIND."
Oh! 'twere merry unto the grave to go,
If one were sure to be buried so.
To The Queen Of My Heart.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

1.
Shall we roam, my love,
To the twilight grove,
When the moon is rising bright;
Oh, I'll whisper there,
In the cool night-air,
What I dare not in broad daylight!
2.
I'll tell thee a part
Of the thoughts that start
To being when thou art nigh;
And thy beauty, more bright
Than the stars' soft light,
Shall seem as a weft from the sky.
3.
When the pale moonbeam
On tower and stream
Sheds a flood of silver sheen,
How I love to gaze
As the cold ray strays
O'er thy face, my heart's throned queen!
4.
Wilt thou roam with me
To the restless sea,
And linger upon the steep,
And list to the flow
Of the waves below
How they toss and roar and leap?
5.
Those boiling waves,
And the storm that raves
At night o'er their foaming crest,
Resemble the strife
That, from earliest life,
The passions have waged in my breast.
6.
Oh, come then, and rove
To the sea or the grove,
When the moon is rising bright;
And I'll whisper there,
In the cool night-air,
What I dare not in broad daylight.
Mary
by Joseph Horatio Chant

She brought her alabaster flask
Well-filled with precious nard;
Nor did she deem the act a task,
Nor look for great reward;
She only thought of His great love,
And felt her gift was small
For Him who left His home above
To suffer death for all.
But her blest Lord more highly prized
The loving heart that gave;
For loveless gifts are e'er despised,
Yet men oft seek to pave
The way that leads to glory land
With deeds devoid of grace;
But only those who love can stand
Approved before His face.
Not This World.
by Margaret Steele Anderson

Shall I not give this world my heart, and well?
If for naught else, for many a miracle
Of the impassioned spring, the rose, the snow?
Nay, by the spring that still must come and go
When thou art dust, by roses that shall blow
Across thy grave, and snows it shall not miss.
Not this world, oh, not this!
Shall I not give this world my heart, who find
Within this world the glories of the mind
That wondrous mind that mounts from earth to God?
Nay, hy the little footways it hath trod,
And smiUs to see, when thou art under sod.
And by its very gaze across the ahyss.
Not this world, oh, not this!
Shall I not give this world my heart, who hold
One figure here above myself, my gold.
My life and hope, my joy and my intent?
Nay, by that form whose strength so soon is spent.
That fragile garment that shall soon he rent.
By lips and eyes the heavy earth shall kiss,
Not this world, oh, not this!
Then this poor world shall not my heart disdain?
Where beauty mocks and springtime comes in vain,
And love grows mute, and wisdom is forgot?
Thou child and thankless! On this little spot
Thy heart hath fed, and shall despise it not;
Yea, shall forget, through many a world of hliss,
Not this world, oh, not this!
Oxford, May 30, 1820
by William Wordsworth

Shame on this faithless heart! that could allow
Such transport, though but for a moment's space;
Not while, to aid the spirit of the place
The crescent moon clove with its glittering prow
The clouds, or night-bird sang from shady bough;
But in plain daylight: She, too, at my side,
Who, with her heart's experience satisfied,
Maintains inviolate its slightest vow!
Sweet Fancy! other gifts must I receive;
Proofs of a higher sovereignty I claim;
Take from 'her' brow the withering flowers of eve,
And to that brow life's morning wreath restore;
Let 'her' be comprehended in the frame
Of these illusions, or they please no more.
Catharina. Addressed To Miss Stapleton (Afterwards Mrs. Courtney).
by William Cowper

She came'she is gone'we have met'
And meet perhaps never again;
The sun of that moment is set,
And seems to have risen in vain.
Catharina has fled like a dream
(So vanishes pleasure, alas!)'
But has left a regret and esteem
That will not so suddenly pass.
The last evening ramble we made,
Catharina, Maria, and I,
Our progress was often delay'd
By the nightingale warbling nigh.
We paused under many a tree,
And much she was charm'd with a tone,
Less sweet to Maria and me,
Who so lately had witness'd her own.
My numbers that day she had sung,
And gave them a grace so divine,
As only her musical tongue
Could infuse into numbers of mine.
The longer I heard, I esteem'd
The work of my fancy the more,
And e'en to myself never seem'd
So tuneful a poet before.
Though the pleasures of London exceed
In number the days of the year,
Catharina, did nothing impede,
Would feel herself happier here;
For the close-woven arches of limes
On the banks of our river, I know,
Are sweeter to her many times
Than aught that the city can show.
So it is when the mind is endued
With a well-judging taste from above,
Then, whether embellish'd or rude,
'Tis nature alone that we love.
The achievements of art may amuse,
May even our wonder excite;
But groves, hills, and valleys diffuse
A lasting, a sacred delight.
Since then in the rural recess
Catharina alone can rejoice,
May it still be her lot to possess
The scene of her sensible choice!
To inhabit a mansion remote
From the clatter of street-pacing steeds,
And by Philomel's annual note
To measure the life that she leads.
With her book, and her voice, and her lyre,
To wing all her moments at home;
And with scenes that new rapture inspire,
As oft as it suits her to roam;
She will have just the life she prefers,
With little to hope or to fear,
And ours would be pleasant as hers,
Might we view her enjoying it here.
Enrica, 1865.
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

She came among us from the South
And made the North her home awhile
Our dimness brightened in her smile,
Our tongue grew sweeter in her mouth.
We chilled beside her liberal glow,
She dwarfed us by her ampler scale,
Her full-blown blossom made us pale,
She summer-like and we like snow.
We Englishwomen, trim, correct,
All minted in the self-same mould,
Warm-hearted but of semblance cold,
All-courteous out of self-respect.
She woman in her natural grace,
Less trammelled she by lore of school,
Courteous by nature not by rule,
Warm-hearted and of cordial face.
So for awhile she made her home
Among us in the rigid North,
She who from Italy came forth
And scaled the Alps and crossed the foam.
But if she found us like our sea,
Of aspect colourless and chill,
Rock-girt; like it she found us still
Deep at our deepest, strong and free.
Going East.
by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

She came from the East a fair, young bride,
With a light and a bounding heart,
To find in the distant West a home
With her husband to make a start.
He builded his cabin far away,
Where the prairie flower bloomed wild;
Her love made lighter all his toil,
And joy and hope around him smiled.
She plied her hands to life's homely tasks,
And helped to build his fortunes up;
While joy and grief, like bitter and sweet,
Were mingled and mixed in her cup.
He sowed in his fields of golden grain,
All the strength of his manly prime;
Nor music of birds, nor brooks, nor bees,
Was as sweet as the dollar's chime.
She toiled and waited through weary years
For the fortune that came at length;
But toil and care and hope deferred,
Had stolen and wasted her strength.
The cabin changed to a stately home,
Rich carpets were hushing her tread;
But light was fading from her eye,
And the bloom from her cheek had fled.
Slower and heavier grew her step,
While his gold and his gains increased;
But his proud domain had not the charm
Of her humble home in the East.
Within her eye was a restless light,
And a yearning that never ceased,
A longing to see the dear old home
She had left in the distant East.
A longing to clasp her mother's hand,
And nestle close to her heart,
And to feel the heavy cares of life
Like the sun-kissed shadows depart.
Her husband was adding field to field,
And new wealth to his golden store;
And little thought the shadow of death
Was entering in at his door.
He had no line to sound the depths
Of her tears repressed and unshed;
Nor dreamed 'mid plenty a human heart
Could be starving, but not for bread.
The hungry heart was stilled at last;
Its restless, baffled yearning ceased.
A lonely man sat by the bier
Of a corpse that was going East.
House
by Robert Browning

Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself?
Do I live in a house you would like to see?
Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf?
'Unlock my heart with a sonnet-key?'
Invite the world, as my betters have done?
'Take notice: this building remains on view,
Its suites of reception every one,
Its private apartment and bedroom too;
'For a ticket, apply to the Publisher.'
No: thanking the public, I must decline.
A peep through my window, if folk prefer;
But, please you, no foot over threshold of mine!
I have mixed with a crowd and heard free talk
In a foreign land where an earthquake chanced
And a house stood gaping, naught to balk
Alan's eye wherever he gazed or glanced.
The whole of the frontage shaven sheer,
The inside gaped: exposed to day,
Right and wrong and common and queer,
Bare, as the palm of your hand, it lay.
The owner? Oh, be had been crushed, no doubt!
'Odd tables and chairs for a man of wealth!
What a parcel of musty old books about!
He smoked, no wonder he lost his health!
'I doubt if he bathed before he dressed.
A brasier? the pagan, he burned perfumes!
You see it is proved, what the neighbors guessed:
His wife and himself had separate rooms.'
Friends, the goodman of the house at least
Kept house to himself till an earthquake came:
'Tis the fall of its frontage permits you feast
On the inside arrangement you praise or blame.
Outside should suffice for evidence
And whoso desires to penetrate
Deeper, must dive by the sprit-sense
No optics like yours, at any rate!
'Hoity-toity! A street to explore,
Your house the exception! 'With this same key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart,' once more!'
Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!
The Story Book Fairy.
by Lizzie Lawson

Shall I sing you a song, not short and not long,
Of a story-book fairy who hides all among
The covers and leaves of your pictures and prints,
And colors them all with such beautiful tints?
First he kisses the girls with the fairest of curls
Then they blush like red roses and each head whirls.
In each little eye drops a bit of blue sky,
And colors each frock with a wonderful dye.
His breathing I ween is the wonderful sheen,
That clothes trees and meadows with loveliest green,
The buttercups bold, it need hardly be told,
Are gilded by him with the finest of gold.
It is he I suppose who paints the red rose,
And the rest of the flowers which every one knows,
And the same red will do (or a similar hue),
For Robin and little Red Riding Hood too.
He's awake it is said when you are abed,
For the picture-book doggies and cats must be fed,
To the picture-book children some stories he'll tell,
And sometimes he'll read them their verses as well.
The moment you open your picture book he
Is away out of sight as quick as can be,
For fairy law says that a fairy must die
The instant he's seen by one human eye.
June.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

She behind yon mountain lives,
Who my love's sweet guerdon gives.
Tell me, mount, how this can be!
Very glass thou seem'st to me,
And I seem to be close by,
For I see her drawing nigh;
Now, because I'm absent, sad,
Now, because she sees me, glad!
Soon between us rise to sight
Valleys cool, with bushes light,
Streams and meadows; next appear
Mills and wheels, the surest token
That a level spot is near,
Plains far-stretching and unbroken.
And so onwards, onwards roam,
To my garden and my home!
But how comes it then to pass?
All this gives no joy, alas! 
I was ravish'd by her sight,
By her eyes so fair and bright,
By her footstep soft and light.
How her peerless charms I praised,
When from head to foot I gazed!
I am here, she's far away, 
I am gone, with her to stay.
If on rugged hills she wander,
If she haste the vale along,
Pinions seem to flutter yonder,
And the air is fill'd with song;
With the glow of youth still playing,
Joyous vigour in each limb,
One in silence is delaying,
She alone 'tis blesses him.
Love, thou art too fair, I ween!
Fairer I have never seen!
From the heart full easily
Blooming flowers are cull'd by thee.
If I think: "Oh, were it so,"
Bone and marrow seen to glow!
If rewarded by her love,
Can I greater rapture prove?
And still fairer is the bride,
When in me she will confide,
When she speaks and lets me know
All her tale of joy and woe.
All her lifetime's history
Now is fully known to me.
Who in child or woman e'er
Soul and body found so fair?
The Shadow
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

Shapeless and grim,
A Shadow dim
O'erhung the ways,
And darkened all my days.
And all who saw,
With bated breath,
Said, "It is Death!"
And I, in weakness
Slipping towards the Night,
In sore affright
Looked up. And lo!--
No Spectre grim,
But just a dim
Sweet face,
A sweet high mother-face,
A face like Christ's Own Mother's face,
Alight with tenderness
And grace.
"Thou art not Death!" I cried;--
For Life's supremest fantasy
Had never thus envisaged Death to me;--
"Thou art not Death, the End!"
In accents winning,
Came the answer,--"Friend,
There is no Death!
I am the Beginning,
--Not the End!"
Sonnet To Ocean.[1]
by Thomas Hood

Shall I rebuke thee, Ocean, my old love,
That once, in rage, with the wild winds at strife,
Thou darest menace my unit of a life,
Sending my clay below, my soul above,
Whilst roar'd thy waves, like lions when they rove
By night, and bound upon their prey by stealth!
Yet didst thou n'er restore my fainting health? - 
Didst thou ne'er murmur gently like the dove?
Nay, dost thou not against my own dear shore
Full break, last link between my land and me? - 
My absent friends talk in thy very roar,
In thy waves' beat their kindly pulse I see,
And, if I must not see my England more,
Next to her soil, my grave be found in thee!
Heine's "Widow Or Daughter?"
by Eugene Field

Shall I woo the one or other?
Both attract me--more's the pity!
Pretty is the widowed mother,
And the daughter, too, is pretty.
When I see that maiden shrinking,
By the gods I swear I'll get 'er!
But anon I fall to thinking
That the mother 'll suit me better!
So, like any idiot ass
Hungry for the fragrant fodder,
Placed between two bales of grass,
Lo, I doubt, delay, and dodder!
Snowfall
by Sara Teasdale

"She can't be unhappy," you said,
"The smiles are like stars in her eyes,
And her laugh is thistledown
Around her low replies."
"Is she unhappy?" you said,
But who has ever known
Another's heartbreak,
All he can know is his own;
And she seems hushed to me,
As hushed as though
Her heart were a hunter's fire
Smothered in snow.
Shall The Harp Then Be Silent.
by Thomas Moore

Shall the Harp then be silent, when he who first gave
To our country a name, is withdrawn from all eyes?
Shall a Minstrel of Erin stand mute by the grave,
Where the first--where the last of her Patriots lies?
No--faint tho' the death-song may fall from his lips,
Tho' his Harp, like his soul, may with shadows be crost,
Yet, yet shall it sound, mid a nation's eclipse,
And proclaim to the world what a star hath been lost;--[1]
What a union of all the affections and powers
By which life is exalted, embellished, refined,
Was embraced in that spirit--whose centre was ours,
While its mighty circumference circled mankind.
Oh, who that loves Erin, or who that can see,
Thro' the waste of her annals, that epoch sublime--
Like a pyramid raised in the desert--where he
And his glory stand out to the eyes of all time;
That one lucid interval, snatched from the gloom
And the madness of ages, when filled with his soul,
A Nation o'erleaped the dark bounds of her doom,
And for one sacred instant, touched Liberty's goal?
Who, that ever hath heard him--hath drank at the source
Of that wonderful eloquence, all Erin's own,
In whose high-thoughted daring, the fire, and the force,
And the yet untamed spring of her spirit are shown?
An eloquence rich, wheresoever its wave
Wandered free and triumphant, with thoughts that shone thro',
As clear as the brook's "stone of lustre," and gave,
With the flash of the gem, its solidity too.
Who, that ever approached him, when free from the crowd,
In a home full of love, he delighted to tread
'Mong the trees which a nation had given, and which bowed,
As if each brought a new civic crown for his head--
Is there one, who hath thus, thro' his orbit of life
But at distance observed him--thro' glory, thro' blame,
In the calm of retreat, in the grandeur of strife,
Whether shining or clouded, still high and the same,--
Oh no, not a heart, that e'er knew him, but mourns
Deep, deep o'er the grave, where such glory is shrined--
O'er a monument Fame will preserve, 'mong the urns
Of the wisest, the bravest, the best of mankind!
From The Upland To The Sea.
by William Morris

Shall we wake one morn of spring,
Glad at heart of everything,
Yet pensive with the thought of eve?
Then the white house shall we leave,
Pass the wind-flowers and the bays,
Through the garth, and go our ways,
Wandering down among the meads
Till our very joyance needs
Rest at last; till we shall come
To that Sun-god's lonely home,
Lonely on the hill-side grey,
Whence the sheep have gone away;
Lonely till the feast-time is,
When with prayer and praise of bliss,
Thither comes the country side.
There awhile shall we abide,
Sitting low down in the porch
By that image with the torch:
Thy one white hand laid upon
The black pillar that was won
From the far-off Indian mine;
And my hand nigh touching thine,
But not touching; and thy gown
Fair with spring-flowers cast adown
From thy bosom and thy brow.
There the south-west wind shall blow
Through thine hair to reach my cheek,
As thou sittest, nor mayst speak,
Nor mayst move the hand I kiss
For the very depth of bliss;
Nay, nor turn thine eyes to me.
Then desire of the great sea
Nigh enow, but all unheard,
In the hearts of us is stirred,
And we rise, we twain at last,
And the daffodils downcast,
Feel thy feet and we are gone
From the lonely Sun-Crowned one.
Then the meads fade at our back,
And the spring day 'gins to lack
That fresh hope that once it had;
But we twain grow yet more glad,
And apart no more may go
When the grassy slope and low
Dieth in the shingly sand:
Then we wander hand in hand
By the edges of the sea,
And I weary more for thee
Than if far apart we were,
With a space of desert drear
'Twixt thy lips and mine, O love!
Ah, my joy, my joy thereof!
Pre-Ordination.
by Madison Julius Cawein

She bewitched me in my childhood,
And the witch's charm is hidden - 
Far beyond the wicked wildwood
I shall find it, I am bidden.
She commands me, she who bound me
With soft sorcery to follow;
In a golden snare who wound me
To her bosom's snowy hollow....
Comes a night-dark stallion sired
Of the wind; a mare his mother
Whom Thessalian madness fired,
And the hurricane his brother.
Then my soul delays no longer:
Though the night around is scowling,
Keenly mount him blacker, stronger
Than the tempest that is howling.
At our ears wild shadows whistle;
Brazen forks the lightning o'er us
Flames; and huge the thunder's missile
Bursts behind us, drags before us.
Over fire-scorched fields of stubble;
Iron forests dark with wonder;
Evil marshes black with trouble;
Nightmare torrents thundering under:
In the thorn that past us races,
Harelipped hags like crows are rocking;
Stunted oaks have dwarf-like faces
Gnarled that leer an impish mocking:
Rocks, in which the storm is hooting,
Thrust a humpbacked murder over;
Bristling heaths, dead thistles shooting,
Raven-haunted gibbets cover:
Each and all are passed, like water
Under-rolled into a cavern,
Till we see the Devil's daughter
Waiting at the Devil's tavern.
And we stay; I drain the beaker
In her hand; the draught is fire;
World-remembrances grow weaker,
And my spirit, one desire.
Course it! course it! Darkness passes
Like an uprolled banner tattered;
Walled before us mountain masses
Rise like centuries unscattered.
And the storm flies ragged. Slowly
Comes a moon of copper-color,
And the evil night grows holy,
Mists the wild ride growing duller.
In the round moon's angry scanning,
Demon-swift cross spider arches
Of the web-thick bridges spanning
Chasms of her kingdom's marches.
We have reached her kingdom, olden
As the sea that sighs its sadness;
Rocks and trees and sands are golden,
And the air a golden gladness.
Shapely ingots are the flowers,
And the waters, amber brightness;
Gold-bright, song-birds in the bowers
Sing with eyes of diamond whiteness.
And she meets me with a chalice
Like the Giamschid ruby burning,
And I drain it without malice,
To her towers of topaz turning.
Many hundred years forgetting
All that's earth: within her power
I possess her: naught regretting
Since each year is as an hour.
By A Child's Bed
by Duncan Campbell Scott

She breath'd deep,
And stepped from out life's stream
Upon the shore of sleep;
And parted from the earthly noise,
Leaving her world of toys,
To dwell a little in a dell of dream.
Then brooding on the love I hold so free,
My fond possessions come to be
Clouded with grief;
These fairy kisses,
This archness innocent,
Sting me with sorrow and disturbed content:
I think of what my portion might have been;
A dearth of blisses,
A famine of delights,
If I had never had what now I value most;
Till all I have seems something I have lost;
A desert underneath the garden shows,
And in a mound of cinders roots the rose.
Here then I linger by the little bed,
Till all my spirit's sphere,
Grows one half brightness and the other dead,
One half all joy, the other vague alarms;
And, holding each the other half in fee,
Floats like the growing moon
That bears implicitly
Her lessening pearl of shadow
Clasped in the crescent silver of her arms.
Shall Love, as the Bridal Wreath, Whither and Die?
by Alfred Castner King

Shall love as the bridal wreath, wither and die?
Or remain ever constant and sure,
As the years of the future pass rapidly by,
And the waves of adversity's tempest roll high,
Ever changeless and fervent endure?
Mistake not the fancy, that lasts but a day,
For the love which eternally thrives;
That sentiment false, is as prone to decay
As the wreath is to fade and to wither away;
And like it, it never revives.
To Electra.
by Robert Herrick

Shall I go to Love and tell,
Thou art all turned icicle?
Shall I say her altars be
Disadorn'd and scorn'd by thee?
O beware! in time submit;
Love has yet no wrathful fit:
If her patience turns to ire,
Love is then consuming fire.
The Problem
by Thomas Hardy

Shall we conceal the Case, or tell it -
We who believe the evidence?
Here and there the watch-towers knell it
With a sullen significance,
Heard of the few who hearken intently and carry an eagerly upstrained sense.
Hearts that are happiest hold not by it;
Better we let, then, the old view reign;
Since there is peace in it, why decry it?
Since there is comfort, why disdain?
Note not the pigment the while that the painting determines humanity's joy and pain!
Upon Shark. Epig.
by Robert Herrick

Shark, when he goes to any public feast,
Eats to one's thinking, of all there, the least.
What saves the master of the house thereby
When if the servants search, they may descry
In his wide codpiece, dinner being done,
Two napkins cramm'd up, and a silver spoon?