DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
To Laura In Death. Sonnet LXVII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Lasciato hai, Morte, senza sole il mondo.
HER TRUE WORTH WAS KNOWN ONLY TO HIM AND TO HEAVEN.
Death, thou the world, since that dire arrow sped,
Sunless and cold hast left; Love weak and blind;
Beauty and grace their brilliance have resign'd,
And from my heavy heart all joy is fled;
Honour is sunk, and softness banish'd.
I weep alone the woes which all my kind
Should weep--for virtue's fairest flower has pined
Beneath thy touch: what second blooms instead?
Let earth, sea, air, with common wail bemoan
Man's hapless race; which now, since Laura died,
A flowerless mead, a gemless ring appears.
The world possess'd, nor knew her worth, till flown!
I knew it well, who here in grief abide;
And heaven too knows, which decks its forehead with my tears.
WRANGHAM.
Thou, Death, hast left this world's dark cheerless way
Without a sun: Love blind and stripp'd of arms;
Left mirth despoil'd; beauty bereaved of charms;
And me self-wearied, to myself a prey;
Left vanish'd, sunk, whate'er was courteous, gay:
I only weep, yet all must feel alarms:
If beauty's bud the hand of rapine harms
It dies, and not a second views the day!
Let air, earth, ocean weep for human kind;
For human kind, deprived of Laura, seems
A flowerless mead, a ring whose gem is lost.
None knew her worth while to this orb confined,
Save me her bard, whose sorrow ceaseless streams,
And heaven, that's made more beauteous at my cost.
NOTT.
A Roundel From the French of Villon
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Death, I would plead against thy wrong,
Who hast reft me of my love, my wife,
And art not satiate yet with strife,
But needs wilt hold me lingering long.
No strength since then has kept me strong:
But what could hurt thee in her life,
Death?
Twain we were, and our hearts one song,
One heart: if that be dead, thy knife
Hath cut me off alive from life,
Dead as the carver's figured throng,
Death!
I Know Not
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Death!    I know not what room you are abiding in,
But I will go my way,
Rejoicing day by day,
Nor will I flee or stay
For fear I tread the path you may be hiding in.
Death!    I know not, if my small barque be nearing you;
But if you are at sea,
Still there my sails float free;
'What is to be will be.'
Nor will I mar the happy voyage by fearing you.
Death!    I know not, what hour or spot you wait for me;
My days untroubled flow,
Just trusting on, I go,
For oh, I know, I know,
Death is but Life that holds some glad new fate for me.
The Stirrup-Cup.
by Sidney Lanier

Death, thou'rt a cordial old and rare:
Look how compounded, with what care!
Time got his wrinkles reaping thee
Sweet herbs from all antiquity.
David to thy distillage went,
Keats, and Gotama excellent,
Omar Khayyam, and Chaucer bright,
And Shakespeare for a king-delight.
Then, Time, let not a drop be spilt:
Hand me the cup whene'er thou wilt;
'Tis thy rich stirrup-cup to me;
I'll drink it down right smilingly.
Tampa, Florida, 1877.
The Ballad of Melicertes
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

In Memory of Theodore de Banville
Death, a light outshining life, bids heaven resume
Star by star the souls whose light made earth divine.
Death, a night outshining day, sees burn and bloom
Flower by flower, and sun by sun, the fames that shine
Deathless, higher than life beheld their sovereign sign.
Dead Simonides of Ceos, late restored,
Given again of God, again by man deplored,
Shone but yestereve, a glory frail as breath.
Frail? But fame's breath quickens, kindles, keeps in ward,
Life so sweet as this that dies and casts off death.
Mother's love, and rapture of the sea, whose womb
Breeds eternal life of joy that stings like brine,
Pride of song, and joy to dare the singer's doom,
Sorrow soft as sleep and laughter bright as wine,
Flushed and filled with fragrant fire his lyric line.
As the sea-shell utters, like a stricken chord,
Music uttering all the sea's within it stored,
Poet well-beloved, whose praise our sorrow saith,
So thy songs retain thy soul, and so record
Life so sweet as this that dies and casts off death.
Side by side we mourned at Gautier's golden tomb:
Here in spirit now I stand and mourn at thine.
Yet no breath of death strikes thence, no shadow of gloom,
Only light more bright than gold of the inmost mine,
Only steam of incense warm from love's own shrine.
Not the darkling stream, the sundering Stygian ford,
Not the hour that smites and severs as a sword,
Not the night subduing light that perisheth,
Smite, subdue, divide from us by doom abhorred,
Life so sweet as this that dies and casts off death.
Prince of song more sweet than honey, lyric lord,
Not thy France here only mourns a light adored,
One whose love-lit fame the world inheriteth.
Strangers too, now brethren, hail with heart's accord
Life so sweet as this that dies and casts off death.
Death.
by Emily Bronte

Death! that struck when I was most confiding.
In my certain faith of joy to be,
Strike again, Time's withered branch dividing
From the fresh root of Eternity!
Leaves, upon Time's branch, were growing brightly,
Full of sap, and full of silver dew;
Birds beneath its shelter gathered nightly;
Daily round its flowers the wild bees flew.
Sorrow passed, and plucked the golden blossom;
Guilt stripped off the foliage in its pride
But, within its parent's kindly bosom,
Flowed for ever Life's restoring tide.
Little mourned I for the parted gladness,
For the vacant nest and silent song,
Hope was there, and laughed me out of sadness;
Whispering, "Winter will not linger long!"
And, behold! with tenfold increase blessing,
Spring adorned the beauty-burdened spray;
Wind and rain and fervent heat, caressing,
Lavished glory on that second May!
High it rose, no winged grief could sweep it;
Sin was scared to distance with its shine;
Love, and its own life, had power to keep it
From all wrong, from every blight but thine!
Cruel Death! The young leaves droop and languish;
Evening's gentle air may still restore,
No! the morning sunshine mocks my anguish-
Time, for me, must never blossom more!
Strike it down, that other boughs may flourish
Where that perished sapling used to be;
Thus, at least, its mouldering corpse will nourish
That from which it sprung, Eternity.
A Dialogue
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

I.
Death, if thou wilt, fain would I plead with thee:
Canst thou not spare, of all our hopes have built,
One shelter where our spirits fain would be,
Death, if thou wilt?
No dome with suns and dews impearled and gilt,
Imperial:    but some roof of wildwood tree,
Too mean for sceptre's heft or swordblade's hilt.
Some low sweet roof where love might live, set free
From change and fear and dreams of grief or guilt;
Canst thou not leave life even thus much to see,
Death, if thou wilt?
II.
Man, what art thou to speak and plead with me?
What knowest thou of my workings, where and how
What things I fashion?    Nay, behold and see,
Man, what art thou?
Thy fruits of life, and blossoms of thy bough,
What are they but my seedlings?    Earth and sea
Bear nought but when I breathe on it must bow.
Bow thou too down before me:    though thou be
Great, all the pride shall fade from off thy brow,
When Time and strong Oblivion ask of thee,
Man, what art thou?
III.
Death, if thou be or be not, as was said,
Immortal; if thou make us nought, or we
Survive:    thy power is made but of our dread,
Death, if thou be.
Thy might is made out of our fear of thee:
Who fears thee not, hath plucked from off thine head
The crown of cloud that darkens earth and sea.
Earth, sea, and sky, as rain or vapour shed,
Shall vanish; all the shows of them shall flee:
Then shall we know full surely, quick or dead,
Death, if thou be.
The Dwelling-Place
by Walter De La Mare

Deep in a forest where the kestrel screamed,
Beside a lake of water, clear as glass,
The time-worn windows of a stone house gleamed,
Named only 'Alas.'
Yet happy as the wild birds in the glades
Of that green forest, thridding the still air
With low continued heedless serenades,
Its heedless people were.
The throbbing chords of violin and lute,
The lustre of lean tapers in dark eyes,
Fair colours, beauteous flowers, dainty fruit
Made earth seem Paradise
To them that dwelt within this lonely house:
Like children of the gods in lasting peace,
They ate, sang, danced, as if each day's carouse
Need never pause, nor cease.
Some might cry, Vanity! to a weeping lyre,
Some in that deep pool mock their longings vain,
Came yet at last long silence to the wire,
And dark did dark remain.
Some to the hunt would wend, with hound and horn,
And clash of silver, beauty, bravery, pride,
Heeding not one who on white horse upborne
With soundless hoofs did ride.
Dreamers there were who watched the hours away
Beside a fountain's foam. And in the sweet
Of phantom evening, 'neath the night-bird's lay,
Did loved with loved-one meet.
All, all were children, for, the long day done,
They barred the heavy door 'gainst lightfoot fear;
And few words spake though one known face was gone,
Yet still seemed hovering near.
They heaped the bright fire higher; poured dark wine;
And in long revelry dazed the questioning eye;
Curtained three-fold the heart-dismaying shine
Of midnight streaming by.
They shut the dark out from the painted wall,
With candles dared the shadow at the door,
Sang down the faint reiterated call
Of those who came no more.
Yet clear above that portal plain was writ,
Confronting each at length alone to pass
Out of its beauty into night star-lit,
That worn 'Alas!'
Sorrow. A Quatrain.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Death takes her hand and leads her through the waste
Of her own soul, wherein she hears the voice
Of lost Love's tears, and, famishing, can but taste
The dead-sea fruit of Life's remembered joys.
To Death.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Death! where is thy victory?
To triumph whilst I die,
To triumph whilst thine ebon wing
Enfolds my shuddering soul?
O Death! where is thy sting?
Not when the tides of murder roll,
When nations groan, that kings may bask in bliss,
Death! canst thou boast a victory such as this -
When in his hour of pomp and power
His blow the mightiest murderer gave,
Mid Nature's cries the sacrifice
Of millions to glut the grave;
When sunk the Tyrant Desolation's slave;
Or Freedom's life-blood streamed upon thy shrine;
Stern Tyrant, couldst thou boast a victory such as mine?
To know in dissolution's void
That mortals' baubles sunk decay;
That everything, but Love, destroyed
Must perish with its kindred clay, -
Perish Ambition's crown,
Perish her sceptred sway:
From Death's pale front fades Pride's fastidious frown.
In Death's damp vault the lurid fires decay,
That Envy lights at heaven-born Virtue's beam -
That all the cares subside,
Which lurk beneath the tide
Of life's unquiet stream; -
Yes! this is victory!
And on yon rock, whose dark form glooms the sky,
To stretch these pale limbs, when the soul is fled;
To baffle the lean passions of their prey,
To sleep within the palace of the dead!
Oh! not the King, around whose dazzling throne
His countless courtiers mock the words they say,
Triumphs amid the bud of glory blown,
As I in this cold bed, and faint expiring groan!
Tremble, ye proud, whose grandeur mocks the woe
Which props the column of unnatural state!
You the plainings, faint and low,
From Misery's tortured soul that flow,
Shall usher to your fate.
Tremble, ye conquerors, at whose fell command
The war-fiend riots o'er a peaceful land!
You Desolation's gory throng
Shall bear from Victory along
To that mysterious strand.
Death Stands Above Me
by Walter Savage Landor

Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.
The Home Of Death
by George MacDonald

"Death, whaur do ye bide, auld Death?"
"I bide in ilka breath,"
Quo' Death;
"No i' the pyramids,
No whaur the wormie rids
'Neth coffin-lids;
I bidena whaur life has been,
An' whaur's nae mair to be dune."
"Death, whaur do ye bide, auld Death?"
"Wi' the leevin, to dee 'at are laith,"
Quo' Death;
"Wi' the man an' the wife
'At loo like life,
Bot strife;
Wi' the bairns 'at hing to their mither,
Wi' a' 'at loo ane anither."
"Death, whaur do ye bide, auld Death?"
"Abune an' aboot an' aneth,"
Quo' Death;
"But o' a' the airts
An' o' a' the pairts,
In herts--
Whan the tane to the tither says, Na,
An' the north win' begins to blaw."
Death Undreaded
by Walter Savage Landor

Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.
Masks
by Madison Julius Cawein

Death rides black-masked to-night; and through the land
Madness beside him brandishes a torch.
The peaceful farmhouse with its vine-wreathed porch
Lies in their way. Death lifts a bony hand
And knocks, and Madness makes a wild demand
Of fierce Defiance: then the night's deep arch
Reverberates, and under beech and latch
A dead face stares; shot where one took his stand.
Then down the night wild hoofs; the darkness beats;
And like a torrent through the startled town
Destruction sweeps; high overhead a flame;
And Violence that shoots amid the streets.
A piercing whistle: one who gallops down:
And Death and Madness go the way they came.
Song.
by Sophie M. (Almon) Hensley

Deep in the green bracken lying,
Close by the welcoming sea,
Dream I, and let all my dreaming
Drift as it will, Love, to thee.
Sated with splendid caresses
Showered by the sun in his pride,
Scorched by his passionate kisses
Languidly ebbs the tide.
To Laura In Death. Sonnet XV.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Discolorato hai, Morte, il pi' bel volto.
HER PRESENCE IN VISIONS IS HIS ONLY CONSOLATION.
Death, thou of fairest face hast 'reft the hue,
And quench'd in deep thick night the brightest eyes,
And loosed from all its tenderest, closest ties
A spirit to faith and ardent virtue true.
In one short hour to all my bliss adieu!
Hush'd are those accents worthy of the skies,
Unearthly sounds, whose loss awakes my sighs;
And all I hear is grief, and all I view.
Yet oft, to soothe this lone and anguish'd heart,
By pity led, she comes my couch to seek,
Nor find I other solace here below:
And if her thrilling tones my strain could speak
And look divine, with Love's enkindling dart
Not man's sad breast alone, but fiercest beasts should glow.
WRANGHAM.
Thou hast despoil'd the fairest face e'er seen--
Thou hast extinguish'd, Death, the brightest eyes,
And snapp'd the cord in sunder of the ties
Which bound that spirit brilliantly serene:
In one short moment all I love has been
Torn from me, and dark silence now supplies
Those gentle tones; my heart, which bursts with sighs,
Nor sight nor sound from weariness can screen:
Yet doth my lady, by compassion led,
Return to solace my unfailing woe;
Earth yields no other balm:--oh! could I tell
How bright she seems, and how her accents flow,
Not unto man alone Love's flames would spread,
But even bears and tigers share the spell.
WROTTESLEY.
The Charcoal-Burner's Hut
by Madison Julius Cawein

Deep in a valley, green with ancient beech,
And wandered through of one small, silent stream,
Whose bear-grassed banks bristled with brush and burr,
Tick-trefoil and the thorny marigold,
Bush-clover and the wahoo, hung with pods,
And mass on mass of bugled jewelweed,
Horsemint and doddered ragweed, dense, unkempt,
I came upon a charcoal-burner's hut,
Abandoned and forgotten long ago;
His hut and weedy pit, where once the wood
Smouldered both day and night like some wild forge,
A wildwood forge, glaring as wild-cat eyes.
A mossy roof, black, fallen in decay,
And rotting logs, exuding sickly mold
And livid fungi, and the tottering wreck,
Rude remnants, of a chimney, clay and sticks,
Were all that now remained to say that once,
In time not so remote, one labored here,
Labored and lived, his world bound by these woods:
A solitary soul whose life was toil,
Toil, grimy and unlovely: sad, recluse,
A life, perhaps, that here went out alone,
Alone and unlamented.
Lost forever,
Haply, somewhere, in some far wilder spot,
Far in the forest, lone as was his life,
A grave, an isolated grave, may mark,
Tangled with cat-brier and the strawberry-bush,
The place he lies in; undistinguishable
From the surrounding forest where the lynx
Whines in the moonlight and the she-fox whelps.
A life as some wood-fungus now forgotten:
The Indian-pipe, or ghost-flower, here that rises
And slowly rots away in autumn rains.
Or, it may be, a comrade carved a line
Of date and death on some old trunk of tree,
Whose letters long ago th' erasing rust
Of moss and gradual growth of drowsy years
Slowly obliterated: or, may be,
The rock, all rudely lettered, like his life,
Set up above him by some kindly hand,
A tree's great, grasping roots have overthrown,
Where lichens long ago effaced his name.
The Shroud
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Death, I say, my heart is bowed
Unto thine,--O mother!
This red gown will make a shroud
Good as any other!
(I, that would not wait to wear
My own bridal things,
In a dress dark as my hair
Made my answerings.
I, to-night, that till he came
Could not, could not wait,
In a gown as bright as flame
Held for them the gate.)
Death, I say, my heart is bowed
Unto thine,--O mother!
This red gown will make a shroud
Good as any other!
The Two Good Sisters
by Charles Baudelaire

Debauch and Death are a fine, healthy pair
Of girls, whose love is prodigal and free.
Their virgin wombs, beneath the rags they wear,
Are barren, though they labour constantly.
To the arch poet, foe of families,
Hell's favourite, a cut-rate whore at court,
Brothels and tombs show in dark galleries
A bed never frequented by remorse.
And coffin, alcove, rich in blasphemy,
As two good sisters would, offer as treats
Terrible pleasures, horrifying sweets.
Debauch, when will your clutches bury me? a rival
Death, will you be coming now
To graft black cypress to her myrtle bough?
Love
by Dora Sigerson Shorter

Deep in the moving depths
Of yellow wine,
I swore I'd drown your face,
O love of mine;
All clad in yellow hue,
So fair to see,
You crouched within my cup
And laughed at me.
Twice o'er a learned page
I turned and tossed,
For would I not forget
The love I lost.
All stern and robed in gloom,
You read it too,
I could not see the words-
Saw only you.
Within the hungry chase
I thought to kill
You, love, who haunted thus
Without my will,
But in the gentle gaze
Of fawn and deer,
Your eyes disarmed my hand,
And shook my spear.
Beneath a maid's dark lash
I swore you'd drown,
Sink in the laughing blue-
Give in, go down:
But no! you bath'd there
Right joyously,
And from her liquid eyes
You laughed at me.
Memorials.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Death sets a thing significant
The eye had hurried by,
Except a perished creature
Entreat us tenderly
To ponder little workmanships
In crayon or in wool,
With "This was last her fingers did,"
Industrious until
The thimble weighed too heavy,
The stitches stopped themselves,
And then 't was put among the dust
Upon the closet shelves.
A book I have, a friend gave,
Whose pencil, here and there,
Had notched the place that pleased him, --
At rest his fingers are.
Now, when I read, I read not,
For interrupting tears
Obliterate the etchings
Too costly for repairs.
Unexpressed
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Deep in my heart that aches with the repression,
And strives with plenitude of bitter pain,
There lives a thought that clamors for expression,
And spends its undelivered force in vain.
What boots it that some other may have thought it?
The right of thoughts' expression is divine;
The price of pain I pay for it has bought it,
I care not who lays claim to it--'t is mine!
And yet not mine until it be delivered;
The manner of its birth shall prove the test.
Alas, alas, my rock of pride is shivered--
I beat my brow--the thought still unexpressed.
The Willow Water
by Madison Julius Cawein

Deep in the hollow wood he found a way
Winding unto a water, dim and gray,
Grayer and dimmer than the break of day;
By which a wildrose blossomed; flower on flower
Leaning above its image hour on hour,
Musing, it seemed, on its own loveliness,
And longing with sweet longing to express
Some thought to its reflection.
Dropping now
Bee-shaken pollen from th' o'erburdened bough,
And now a petal, delicate as a blush,
It seemed to sigh or whisper to the hush
The dreams, the myths and marvels it had seen
Tip-toeing dimly through the woodland green:
Faint shapes of fragrance; forms like flowers, that go
Footing the moss; or, shouldered with moonbeam glow,
Through starlit waves oaring an arm of snow.
He sat him down and gazed into the pool:
And as he gazed, two petals, silken cool,
Fell, soft as starbeams fall that arrow through
The fern-hung trembling of a drop of dew;
And, pearly-placid, on the water lay,
Two curves of languid ruby, where, rose-gray,
The shadow of a willow dimmed the stream.
And suddenly he saw or did he dream
He saw? the rose-leaves change to rosy lips,
A laughing crimson. And, with silvery hips,
And eyes of luminous emerald, full of sleep
And all the stillness of the under deep,
The shadow of the tree become a girl,
A shadowy girl, who shook from many a curl
Faint, tangled glimmerings of shell and pearl.
A girl who called him, beckoned him to come,
Waving a hand whiter than moonlit foam,
And pointing, minnowy fingered, to her home
A bubble, rainbow-built, beneath the wave,
Dim-domed, and murmurous as the deep-sea cave,
Columned of coral and of grottoed foam,
Where the pale mermaids never cease to comb
Their weed-green hair with fingers crystal-cold,
Sighing forever 'round the Sea King old
Throned. on his throne of shell and ribb'd gold.
Laughing, she lured him, lipped like some wild rose;
Bidding him follow; come to her; repose
Upon her bosom and forever dream
Lulled by the wandering whisper of the stream.
But him mortality weighed heavily on
And earthly love: and, sorrowful and wan,
He shook his head, motioning, "I cannot rise";
But still he felt the magic of her eyes
Drawing him to her; felt her hands of foam
Around his heart; her lips, that bade him come
With smiling witchery, and with laughing looks
Like those that lured us in the fairy books
Our childhood dreamed on.
Then, as suddenly,
A wind, it seemed, from no where he could see,
Wrinkled the water; ruffled its smooth glass;
And there again, behold! when it did pass
The rose-leaves lay and shadow, dimly seen;
The willow's shadow, and no thing between.
Carnot
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Death, winged with fire of hate from deathless hell
Wherein the souls of anarchs hiss and die,
With stroke as dire has cloven a heart as high
As twice beyond the wide sea's westward swell
The living lust of death had power to quell
Through ministry of murderous hands whereby
Dark fate bade Lincoln's head and Garfield's lie
Low even as his who bids his France farewell.
France, now no heart that would not weep with thee
Loved ever faith or freedom. From thy hand
The staff of state is broken: hope, unmanned
With anguish, doubts if freedom's self be free.
The snake-souled anarch's fang strikes all the land
Cold, and all hearts unsundered by the sea.
Fate
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Deep in the man sits fast his fate
To mould his fortunes, mean or great:
Unknown to Cromwell as to me
Was Cromwell's measure or degree;
Unknown to him as to his horse,
If he than his groom be better or worse.
He works, plots, fights, in rude affairs,
With squires, lords, kings, his craft compares,
Till late he learned, through doubt and fear,
Broad England harbored not his peer:
Obeying time, the last to own
The Genius from its cloudy throne.
For the prevision is allied
Unto the thing so signified;
Or say, the foresight that awaits
Is the same Genius that creates.
The Winter Moon
by Madison Julius Cawein

Deep in the dell I watched her as she rose,
A face of icy fire, o'er the hills;
With snow-sad eyes to freeze the forest rills,
And snow-sad feet to bleach the meadow snows:
Pale as some young witch who, a-listening, goes
To her first meeting with the Fiend; whose fears
Fix demon eyes behind each bush she nears;
Stops, yet must on, fearful of following foes.
And so I chased her, startled in the wood,
Like a discovered Oread, who flies
The Faun who found her sleeping, each nude limb
Glittering betrayal through the solitude;
Till in a frosty cloud I saw her swim,
Like a drowned face, a blur beneath the ice.