DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Hope.
by Emma Lazarus

Her languid pulses thrill with sudden hope,
That will not be forgot nor cast aside,
And life in statelier vistas seems to ope,
Illimitably lofty, long, and wide.
What doth she know?    She is subdued and mild,
Quiet and docile "as a weaned child."
If grief came in such unimagined wise,
How may joy dawn?    In what undreamed-of hour,
May the light break with splendor of surprise,
Disclosing all the mercy and the power?
A baseless hope, yet vivid, keen, and bright,
As the wild lightning in the starless night.
She knows not whence it came, nor where it passed,
But it revealed, in one brief flash of flame,
A heaven so high, a world so rich and vast,
That, full of meek contrition and mute shame,
In patient silence hopefully withdrawn,
She bows her head, and bides the certain dawn.
Dr. Swift's Answer (Epigram On The Busts)
by Jonathan Swift

Her majesty never shall be my exalter;
And yet she would raise me, I know, by a halter!
A Fickle Woman.
by Eugene Field

Her nature is the sea's, that smiles to-night
A radiant maiden in the moon's soft light;
The unsuspecting seaman sets his sails,
Forgetful of the fury of her gales;
To-morrow, mad with storms, the ocean roars,
And o'er his hapless wreck the flood she pours!
Reciprocity
by George MacDonald

Her mother, Elfie older grown,
One evening, for adieu,
Said, "You'll not mind being left alone,
For God takes care of you!"
In child-way her heart's eye did see
The correlation's node:
"Yes," she said, "God takes care o' me,
An' I take care o' God."
The child and woman were the same,
She changed not, only grew;
'Twixt God and her no shadow came:
The true is always true!
As daughter, sister, promised wife,
Her heart with love did brim:
Now, sure, it brims as full of life,
Hid fourteen years in him!
1892.
Minoan Porcelain
by Aldous Leonard Huxley

Her eyes of bright unwinking glaze
All imperturbable do not
Even make pretences to regard
The justing absence of her stays,
Where many a Tyrian gallipot
Excites desire with spilth of nard.
The bistred rims above the fard
Of cheeks as red as bergamot
Attest that no shamefaced delays
Will clog fulfilment, nor retard
Full payment of the Cyprian's praise
Down to the last remorseful jot.
Hail priestess of we know not what
Strange cult of Mycenean days!
Where And What?
by Madison Julius Cawein

Her ivied towers tall
Old forests belt and bar,
And oh! the West's dim mountain crests
That line the blue afar.
Her gardens face dark cliffs,
That seeth against a sea
As blue and deep as the eyes of Sleep
With saddening mystery.
Red sands roll leagues on leagues
Ribbed of the wind and wave;
The near warm sky bends from on high
The pale brow of a slave.
And when the morning's beams
Lie crushed on crag and bay,
A wail of flutes and soft-strung lutes
O'er the lone land swoons away.
The woods are 'roused from rest,
A scent of earth and brine,
By brake and lake the wild things wake,
And torrents leap and shine.
But she in one gray tower
White-faced knows how he died,
And a murderous scorn on her lips is born
To curse his heart that lied.
She smiles and sorrows not:
"Ah, death! to know," she moans,
"The gluttonous grave of the bitter wave
Laughs loud above his bones!"
She laughs and hating yearns
Out toward the surf's far reach,
Like one in sleep, who, wild to weep,
Hath only moans for speech.
And when the sun had set,
And crocus heavens had fed
Their wan fire soon to a thorn-thin moon,
The flocking stars that led,
A breeze set in from sea
Most odorous with spice,
And streamed among big stars that hung
Thin mists as white as ice.
And then her eyes waxed large
With one last hideous hope,
And her throat she bent toward the firmament,
Star-scattered scope on scope.
The haunted night, that felt
The rapture so accursed,
Shook, loosening one green star that spun
Wild down the dusk and burst.
Fair was her face as Sin's;
"Ah, wretch!" she wailed, "to know
A wormy seat at Death's lean feet
May not undo such woe!
"The devil-wrangling pit
Much dearer than God's deeps
Of serious skies, where thought ne'er dies
And memory never sleeps!
"And dearer far than both,
Than Heaven or Hell, the jest,
The godless lot to rot and rot,
And not be cursed or blessed!"
True Love.
by Charles Sangster

Her love is like the hardy flower
That blooms amid the Alpine snows;
Deep-rooted in an icy bower,
No blast can chill its sweet repose;
But fresh as is the tropic rose,
Drenched in mellowest sunny beams,
It has as sweet delicious dreams
As any flower that grows.
And though an avalanche came down
And robbed it of the light of day,
That which withstood the tempest's frown
In grief would never pine away.
Hope might withhold her feeblest ray,
Within her bosom's snowy tomb
Love still would wear its everbloom,
The gayest of the gay.
At Length.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Her final summer was it,
And yet we guessed it not;
If tenderer industriousness
Pervaded her, we thought
A further force of life
Developed from within, --
When Death lit all the shortness up,
And made the hurry plain.
We wondered at our blindness, --
When nothing was to see
But her Carrara guide-post, --
At our stupidity,
When, duller than our dulness,
The busy darling lay,
So busy was she, finishing,
So leisurely were we!
Now!
by John Charles McNeill

Her brown hair knew no royal crest,
No gems nor jeweled charms,
No roses her bright cheek caressed,
No lilies kissed her arms.
In simple, modest womanhood
Clad, as was meet, in white,
The fairest flower of all, she stood
Amid the softest light.
It had been worth a perilous quest
To see the court she drew,--
My rose, my gem, my royal crest,
My lily moist with dew;
Worth heaven, when, with farewells from each
The gay throng let us be,
To see her turn at last and reach
Her white hands out to me.
In The Gold Room A Harmony
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Her ivory hands on the ivory keys
Strayed in a fitful fantasy,
Like the silver gleam when the poplar trees
Rustle their pale-leaves listlessly,
Or the drifting foam of a restless sea
When the waves show their teeth in the flying breeze.
Her gold hair fell on the wall of gold
Like the delicate gossamer tangles spun
On the burnished disk of the marigold,
Or the sunflower turning to meet the sun
When the gloom of the dark blue night is done,
And the spear of the lily is aureoled.
And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine
Burned like the ruby fire set
In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine,
Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate,
Or the heart of the lotus drenched and wet
With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine.
Margaret.
by Jean Blewett

Her eyes - upon a summer's day
God's skies are not more blue than they.
Her hair - you've seen a sunbeam bold
Made up of just such threads of gold.
Her cheek - the leaf which nearest grows
The dewy heart of June's red rose.
Her mouth - full lipped, and subtly sweet
As briar drowned in summer heat.
Her heart - December's chill and snow - 
Heaven pity me, who love her so!
Ylladmar
by James Whitcomb Riley

Her hair was, oh, so dense a blur
Of darkness, midnight envied her;
And stars grew dimmer in the skies
To see the glory of her eyes;
And all the summer rain of light
That showered from the moon at night
Fell o'er her features as the gloom
Of twilight o'er a lily-bloom.
The crimson fruitage of her lips
Was ripe and lush with sweeter wine
Than burgundy or muscadine
Or vintage that the burgher sips
In some old garden on the Rhine:
And I to taste of it could well
Believe my heart a crucible
Of molten love - and I could feel
The drunken soul within me reel
And rock and stagger till it fell.
And do you wonder that I bowed
Before her splendor as a cloud
Of storm the golden-sandaled sun
Had set his conquering foot upon?
And did she will it, I could lie
In writhing rapture down and die
A death so full of precious pain
I'd waken up to die again.
The Dead Oread
by Madison Julius Cawein

Her heart is still and leaps no more
With holy passion when the breeze,
Her whilom playmate, as before,
Comes with the language of the bees,
Sad songs her mountain cedars sing,
And water-music murmuring.
Her calm white feet, - erst fleet and fast
As Daphne's when a god pursued, - 
No more will dance like sunlight past
The gold-green vistas of the wood,
Where every quailing floweret
Smiled into life where they were set.
Hers were the limbs of living light,
And breasts of snow; as virginal
As mountain drifts; and throat as white
As foam of mountain waterfall;
And hyacinthine curls, that streamed
Like crag-born mists, and gloomed and gleamed.
Her presence breathed such scents as haunt
Moist, mountain dells and solitudes;
Aromas wild as some wild plant
That fills with sweetness all the woods:
And comradeships of stars and skies
Shone in the azure of her eyes.
Her grave be by a mossy rock
Upon the top of some wild hill,
Removed, remote from men who mock
The myths and dreams of life they kill:
Where all of beauty, naught of lust
May guard her solitary dust.
Skin
by Paul Cameron Brown

Her emerald top
phosphorescent candy glow
stick candy,
sno' cane - 
floss like
the mane revealed beneath,
spun hair matted/woven into
icicle lengths & pubis mink.
Her presence as a monk sliding
under a cowl, jet-black velvet
or midnight eye-liner shadow
knotting strands of dark.
She comes on waves - 
candelabra is a name
deft movement of finger
caressing storm, bare legs
shining wet street lamps
decantered ambered wine.
Cigarette floating between lips,
uncharted voyage of the smile
where puffs of smoke
are parrots' wings,
incandescent show-girls
in novelty across the flame.
Virtue
by Walter De La Mare

Her breast is cold; her hands how faint and wan!
And the deep wonder of her starry eyes
Seemingly lost in cloudless Paradise,
And all earth's sorrow out of memory gone.
Yet sings her clear voice unrelenting on
Of loveliest impossibilities;
Though echo only answer her with sighs
Of effort wasted and delights foregone.
Spent, baffled, 'wildered, hated and despised,
Her straggling warriors hasten to defeat;
By wounds distracted, and by night surprised,
Fall where death's darkness and oblivion meet:
Yet, yet: O breast how cold! O hope how far!
Grant my son's ashes lie where these men's are!
An Aristocrat.
by W. M. MacKeracher

Her fair companions she outshone,
As this or that transcendent star
Makes all its sister orbs look wan
And dim and lustreless and far.
Her charm impressed the fleeting glance,
But chiefly the reflective mind;
A century's inheritance,
By carefull'st nurture still refined.
Devotions, manners, hopes that were,
Ideals high, traditions fine,
Were felt to culminate in her,
The efflorescence of her line.
What time and cost conspired to trace
Her lineaments of perfect grace!
Heart's Fountain. (Moods Of Love.)
by George Parsons Lathrop

Her moods are like the fountain's, changing ever,
That spouts aloft a sudden, watery dome,
Only to fall again in shattering foam,
Just where the wedded jets themselves dissever,
And palpitating downward, downward quiver,
Unfolded like a swift ethereal flower,
That sheds white petals in a blinding shower,
And straightway soars anew with blithe endeavor.
The sun may kindle it with healthful fire;
Upon it falls the cloud-gray's leaden load;
At night the stars shall haunt the whirling spire:
Yet these have but a transient garb bestowed.
So her glad life, whate'er the hours impart,
Plays still 'twixt heaven's cope and her own clear heart.
Wandering Willie. (First Version.)
by Robert Burns

I.
Here awa, there awa, wandering Willie,
Now tired with wandering, haud awa hame;
Come to my bosom, my ae only dearie,
And tell me thou bring'st me my Willie the same.
II.
Loud blew the cauld winter winds at our parting;
It was na the blast brought the tear in my e'e;
Now welcome the simmer, and welcome my Willie,
The simmer to nature, my Willie to me.
III.
Ye hurricanes, rest in the cave o' your slumbers!
O how your wild horrors a lover alarms!
Awaken, ye breezes, row gently, ye billows,
And waft my dear laddie ance mair to my arms.
IV.
But if he's forgotten his faithfulest Nannie,
O still flow between us, thou wide roaring main;
May I never see it, may I never trow it,
But, dying, believe that my Willie's my ain.
Fate
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Her planted eye to-day controls,
Is in the morrow most at home,
And sternly calls to being souls
That curse her when they come.
The Hands Of The Betrothed
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

Her tawny eyes are onyx of thoughtlessness,
Hardened they are like gems in ancient modesty;
Yea, and her mouth's prudent and crude caress
Means even less than her many words to me.
Though her kiss betrays me also this, this only
Consolation, that in her lips her blood at climax clips
Two wild, dumb paws in anguish on the lonely
Fruit of my heart, ere down, rebuked, it slips.
I know from her hardened lips that still her heart is
Hungry for me, yet if I put my hand in her breast
She puts me away, like a saleswoman whose mart is
Endangered by the pilferer on his quest.
But her hands are still the woman, the large, strong hands
Heavier than mine, yet like leverets caught in steel
When I hold them; my still soul understands
Their dumb confession of what her sort must feel.
For never her hands come nigh me but they lift
Like heavy birds from the morning stubble, to settle
Upon me like sleeping birds, like birds that shift
Uneasily in their sleep, disturbing my mettle.
How caressingly she lays her hand on my knee,
How strangely she tries to disown it, as it sinks
In my flesh and bone and forages into me,
How it stirs like a subtle stoat, whatever she thinks!
And often I see her clench her fingers tight
And thrust her fists suppressed in the folds of her skirt;
And sometimes, how she grasps her arms with her bright
Big hands, as if surely her arms did hurt.
And I have seen her stand all unaware
Pressing her spread hands over her breasts, as she
Would crush their mounds on her heart, to kill in there
The pain that is her simple ache for me.
Her strong hands take my part, the part of a man
To her; she crushes them into her bosom deep
Where I should lie, and with her own strong span
Closes her arms, that should fold me in sleep.
Ah, and she puts her hands upon the wall,
Presses them there, and kisses her bright hands,
Then lets her black hair loose, the darkness fall
About her from her maiden-folded bands.
And sits in her own dark night of her bitter hair
Dreaming - God knows of what, for to me she's the same
Betrothed young lady who loves me, and takes care
Of her womanly virtue and of my good name.
On Fanny Godwin.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Her voice did quiver as we parted,
Yet knew I not that heart was broken
From which it came, and I departed
Heeding not the words then spoken.
Misery - O Misery,
This world is all too wide for thee.
Upon Her Feet
by Robert Herrick

Her pretty feet
Like snails did creep
A little out, and then,
As if they played at Bo-peep,
Did soon draw in again.
Your Last Drive
by Thomas Hardy

Here by the moorway you returned,
And saw the borough lights ahead
That lit your face all undiscerned
To be in a week the face of the dead,
And you told of the charm of that haloed view
That never again would beam on you.
And on your left you passed the spot
Where eight days later you were to lie,
And be spoken of as one who was not;
Beholding it with a cursory eye
As alien from you, though under its tree
You soon would halt everlastingly.
I drove not with you . . . Yet had I sat
At your side that eve I should not have seen
That the countenance I was glancing at
Had a last-time look in the flickering sheen,
Nor have read the writing upon your face,
"I go hence soon to my resting-place;
"You may miss me then. But I shall not know
How many times you visit me there,
Or what your thoughts are, or if you go
There never at all. And I shall not care.
Should you censure me I shall take no heed
And even your praises I shall not need."
True: never you'll know. And you will not mind.
But shall I then slight you because of such?
Dear ghost, in the past did you ever find
The thought "What profit?" move me much
Yet the fact indeed remains the same,
You are past love, praise, indifference, blame.
December 1912.
Mount Street (The Rocky Road To Dublin)
by James Stephens

Here and there on the wings of night
A fleck of blue and purple light,
A scrap of cloud, a bird, a star,
A comet hurrying afar
On the abyss, and the moon
Standing in her silver shoon.
On the summit of the sky,
Delicate and proud and high,
The silver moon on a silver sea
Spins her silver broidery
While the stars send down a light
Here and there on the wings of night.
To Robert Nichols
by Robert von Ranke Graves

(From Frise on the Somme in February, 1917, in answer to a letter saying: "I am just finishing my 'Faun's Holiday.' I wish you were here to feed him with cherries.")
Here by a snowbound river
In scrapen holes we shiver,
And like old bitterns we
Boom to you plaintively:
Robert how can I rhyme
Verses for your desire, 
Sleek fauns and cherry-time,
Vague music and green trees,
Hot sun and gentle breeze,
England in June attire,
And life born young again,
For your gay goatish brute
Drunk with warm melody
Singing on beds of thyme
With red and rolling eye,
All the Devonian plain,
Lips dark with juicy stain,
Ears hung with bobbing fruit?
Why should I keep him time?
Why in this cold and rime,
Where even to dream is pain?
No, Robert, there's no reason:
Cherries are out of season,
Ice grips at branch and root,
And singing birds are mute.
Epitaph.
by Robert Burns

Here brewer Gabriel's fire's extinct,
And empty all his barrels:
He's blest, if, as he brew'd, he drink,
In upright virtuous morals.
Her Vivien Eyes
by Madison Julius Cawein

Her Vivien eyes, - beware! beware! 
Though they be stars, a deadly snare
They set beneath her night of hair.
Regard them not! lest, drawing near 
As sages once in old Chaldee
Thou shouldst become a worshiper,
And they thy evil destiny.
Her Vivien eyes, - away! away!
Though they be springs, remorseless they
Gleam underneath her brow's bright day.
Turn, turn aside, whate'er the cost!
Lest in their deeps thou lures behold,
Through which thy captive soul were lost,
As was young Hylas once of old.
Her Vivien eyes, - take heed! take heed! 
Though they be bibles, none may read
Therein of God or Holy Creed.
Look, look away! lest thou be cursed,
As Merlin was, romances tell,
And in their sorcerous spells immersed,
Hoping for Heaven thou chance on Hell.
Her strong enchantments failing,
by Alfred Edward Housman

Her strong enchantments failing,
Her towers of fear in wreck,
Her limbecks dried of poisons
And the knife at her neck,
The Queen of air and darkness
Begins to shrill and cry,
'O young man, O my slayer,
To-morrow you shall die.'
O Queen of air and darkness,
I think 'tis truth you say,
And I shall die to-morrow;
But you will die to-day.
O Dear Me!
by Walter De La Mare

Here are crocuses, white, gold, grey!
'O dear me!' says Marjorie May;
Flat as a platter the blackberry blows:
'O dear me!' says Madeleine Rose;
The leaves are fallen, the swallows flown:
'O dear me!' says Humphrey John;
Snow lies thick where all night it fell:
'O dear me!' says Emmanuel.
Crowned.
by Charles Sangster

Her thoughts are sweet glimpses of heaven,
Her life is that heaven brought down;
Oh, never to mortal was given
So rare and bejewelled a crown!
I'll wear it as saints wear the glory
That radiantly clasps them above - 
Oh, dower most fair!
Oh, diadem rare!
Bright crown of her maidenly love.
My heart is a fane of devotion,
My feelings are converts at prayer,
And every thrill of emotion
Makes dearer the crown I would wear.
My soul in its fulness of rapture
Begins its millennial reign,
Life glows like a sun,
Love's zenith is won,
And Joy is sole monarch again.
My noonday of life is as morning,
God's light streams approvingly down;
Uncovered, I wait her adorning,
She comes with the beautiful crown!
I'll wear it as saints wear the glory
That radiantly clasps them above - 
Oh, dower most fair!
Oh, diadem rare!
Bright crown of her maidenly love.
My Lady Of The Beeches
by Madison Julius Cawein

Here among the beeches
Winds and wild perfume,
That the twilight pleaches
Into gleam and gloom,
Build for her a room.
Her whose Beauty cometh,
Misty as the morn,
When the wild-bee hummeth,
At its honey-horn,
In the wayside thorn.
As the wood grows dimmer,
With the drowsy night,
Like a moonbeam glimmer
Here she walks in white,
With a firefly light.
Moths around her flitting,
Like a moth she goes,
Here a moment sitting
By this wilding rose,
With my heart's repose.
Every bud and flower
From her look has caught
Something of that hour
While she stood in thought
Gazing into naught.
Every bough that dances
Has assumed the grace
Of her form; and fancies,
Flashed from eye and face,
Brood about the place.
Every wind that flutters,
Says what is expressed
Of her heart and utters
Sounds of peace and rest
Pulsing in her breast.
And the water, shaken
In its plunge and poise,
To itself has taken
Quiet of her voice,
And restrains its joys.
Would that these could tell me
What and whence she is,
She, who doth enspell me,
Fill my soul with bliss
Of her spirit-kiss.
Though the heart beseech her,
And the soul implore,
Who is it may reach her,
Safe behind the door
Of all woodland lore?
Epilogue.
by Jean de La Fontaine

Here check we our career:
Long books I greatly fear.
I would not quite exhaust my stuff;
The flower of subjects is enough.
To me, the time is come, it seems,
To draw my breath for other themes.
Love, tyrant of my life, commands
That other work be on my hands.
I dare not disobey.
Once more shall Psyche be my lay.
I'm call'd by Damon to portray
Her sorrows and her joys.
I yield: perhaps, while she employs,
My muse will catch a richer glow;
And well if this my labour'd strain
Shall be the last and only pain
Her spouse[1] shall cause me here below.
Pocahontas
by James Barron Hope

Her story, sure, was fashioned out above,
Ere 't was enacted on the scene below!
For 't was a very miracle of love
When from the savage hawk's nest came the dove
With wings of peace to stay the ordered blow - 
The hawk's plumes bloody, but the dove's as snow!
And here my heart oppressed by pleasant tears
Yields to a young girl's half angelic spell - 
Yes, for that maiden like a Saint appears;
She needs no fresco, stone, nor shrine to tell
Her story to the people of this Land - 
Saint of the Wilderness, enthroned amid
The wooded Minster where the Pagan hid!
Pax Vobiscum.
by Madison Julius Cawein

1
Her violets in thine eyes
The Springtide stained I know,
Two bits of mystic skies
On which the green turf lies,
Whereon the violets blow.
2
I know the Summer wrought
From thy sweet heart that rose,
With that faint fragrance fraught,
Its sad poetic thought
Of peace and deep repose.
3
That Autumn, like some god,
From thy delicious hair--
Lost sunlight 'neath the sod
Shot up this golden-rod
To toss it everywhere.
4
That Winter from thy breast
The snowdrop's whiteness stole--
Much kinder than the rest--
Thy innocence confessed,
The pureness of thy soul.
Translations. - A Song Of The Holy Christian Church, From The Twelfth Chapter Of The Apocalypse. (Luther's Song-Book.)
by George MacDonald

Her, the worthy maid, my heart doth hold,
And I shall not forget her.
Praise, honour, virtue of her are told;
Than all I love her better.
I seek her good,
And if I should
Right evil fare,
I do not care:
With that she'll make me merry!
With love and truth that never tire
Glad she will make me very,
And do all my desire.
She wears a crown of pure gold, where
Twelve stars their rays are twining;
Her raiment like the sun is fair,
And bright from far is shining.
Her feet the moon
Are set upon;
She is the bride
By Jesus' side!
She hath sorrow, must be mother
To her fair child, the noble Son,
Of all men lord and brother,
Her king, her crowned one.
That makes the old dragon ramp and roar;
The child he tries to swallow;
His rage is rage and nothing more!
No hurt that rage will follow.
The child up high
Into the sky
Away is heft,
And he is left
On earth, all mad with murder.
The mother all alone is she,
But God will watch and ward her,
And her true Father be.
Another Grace For A Child
by Robert Herrick

Here a little child I stand
Heaving up my either hand;
Cold as paddocks though they be,
Here I lift them up to Thee,
For a benison to fall
On our meat, and on us all. Amen.