DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
You That Were
by John Frederick Freeman

You that were
Half my life ere life was mine;
You that on my shape the sign
Set of yours;
You that my young lips did kiss
When your kiss summed up my bliss....
Ah, once more
You to kiss were all my bliss!
You whom I
Could forget--strange, could forget
Even for days (ah, now the fret
Of my grief!);
You who loved me though forgot;
Welcomed still, reproaching not....
Ah, that now
That forgetting were forgot!
You that now
On my shoulder as I go
Put your hand that wounds me so;
You that brush
Yet my lips with that one last
Kiss that bitters all things past....
How shall I
Yet endure that kiss the last?
You that are
Where the feet of my blind grief
Find you not, nor find relief;
You that are
Where my thought flying after you
Broken falls and flies anew,
Now you're gone
My love accusing aches for you.
March 4, 1911.
Satires Of Circumstances In Fifteen Glimpses - VI In The Cemetery
by Thomas Hardy

"You see those mothers squabbling there?"
Remarks the man of the cemetery.
One says in tears, ''Tis mine lies here!'
Another, 'Nay, mine, you Pharisee!'
Another, 'How dare you move my flowers
And put your own on this grave of ours!'
But all their children were laid therein
At different times, like sprats in a tin.
"And then the main drain had to cross,
And we moved the lot some nights ago,
And packed them away in the general foss
With hundreds more. But their folks don't know,
And as well cry over a new-laid drain
As anything else, to ease your pain!"
You Smiled, You Spoke, And I Believed
by Walter Savage Landor

You smiled, you spoke, and I believed,
By every word and smile deceived.
Another man would hope no more;
Nor hope I what I hoped before:
But let not this last wish be vain;
Deceive, deceive me once again!
The Union
by Alfred Noyes

(1917)
You that have gathered together the sons of all races,
And welded them into one,
Lifting the torch of your Freedom on hungering faces
That sailed to the setting sun;
You that have made of mankind in your own proud regions
The music of man to be,
How should the old earth sing of you, now, as your legions
Rise to set all men free?
How should the singer that knew the proud vision and loved it,
In the days when not all men knew,
Gaze through his tears, on the light, now the world has approved it;
Or dream, when the dream comes true?
How should he sing when the Spirit of Freedom in thunder
Speaks, and the wine-press is red;
And the sea-winds are loud with the chains that are broken asunder
And nations that rise from the dead?
Flag of the sky, proud flag of that wide communion,
Too mighty for thought to scan;
Flag of the many in one, and that last world-union
That kingdom of God in man;
Ours was a dream, in the night, of that last federation,
But yours is the glory unfurled--
The marshalled nations and stars that shall make one nation
One singing star of the world.
Out Of Reach?
by James Whitcomb Riley

You think them "out of reach," your dead?
Nay, by my own dead, I deny
Your "out of reach." - Be comforted:
'Tis not so far to die.
O by their dear remembered smiles
And outheld hands and welcoming speech,
They wait for us, thousands of miles
This side of "out-of-reach."
The Spur
by William Butler Yeats

You think it horrible that lust and rage
Should dance attention upon my old age;
They were not such a plague when I was young;
What else have I to spur me into song?
Houses Of Dreams
by Sara Teasdale

You took my empty dreams
And filled them every one
With tenderness and nobleness,
April and the sun.
The old empty dreams
Where my thoughts would throng
Are far too full of happiness
To even hold a song.
Oh, the empty dreams were dim
And the empty dreams were wide,
They were sweet and shadowy houses
Where my thoughts could hide.
But you took my dreams away
And you made them all come true,
My thoughts have no place now to play,
And nothing now to do.
Upon One Who Said She Was Always Young.
by Robert Herrick

You say you're young; but when your teeth are told
To be but three, black-ey'd, we'll think you old.
The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - A Prophecy Of Judgment. No. 2. The Doom Of The Impious.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

La scuola inimicissima.
You sect most adverse to the good and true,
Degenerate from your origin divine,
Pastured on lies and shadows by the line
Of Thais, Sinon, Judas, Homer! You,
Thus saith the Spirit, when the retinue
Of saints with Christ returns on earth to shine,
When the fifth angel's vial pours condign
Vengeance with awful ire and torments due,--
You shall be girt with gloom; your lips profane,
Disloyal tongues, and savage teeth shall grind
And gnash with fury fell and anger vain:
In Malebolge your damned souls confined
On fiery marle, for increment of pain,
Shall see the saved rejoice with mirth of mind.
To A Fish
by James Henry Leigh Hunt

You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced,
Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea,
Gulping salt-water everlastingly,
Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced,
And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste;
And you, all shapes beside, that fishy be,--
Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry,
Legless, unloving, infamously chaste:--
O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights,
What is't ye do? What life lead? eh, dull goggles?
How do ye vary your vile days and nights?
How pass your Sundays? Are ye still but joggles
In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes, and bites,
And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles?
The Child And The Sage
by Thomas Hardy

You say, O Sage, when weather-checked,
"I have been favoured so
With cloudless skies, I must expect
This dash of rain or snow."
"Since health has been my lot," you say,
"So many months of late,
I must not chafe that one short day
Of sickness mars my state."
You say, "Such bliss has been my share
From Love's unbroken smile,
It is but reason I should bear
A cross therein awhile."
And thus you do not count upon
Continuance of joy;
But, when at ease, expect anon
A burden of annoy.
But, Sage this Earth why not a place
Where no reprisals reign,
Where never a spell of pleasantness
Makes reasonable a pain?
December 21, 1908.
Love In Spain
by Richard Le Gallienne

You shall not dare to drink this cup,
Yet fear this other I hold up - 
Sings Love in Spain:
One brimming deep with woman's breath - 
This other moon-lit cup is Death;
Drink one, drink twain.
No sippers we of ladies' lips,
Toyers of amorous finger tips,
Are we in Spain.
Terrible like a bright sweet sword,
And little tender is the Lord
Of Love in Spain.
His song a tiger-throated thing, - 
A crouch, a cry, a frightened string;
Death the refrain.
Scarlet and lightning are its words,
There is no room in it for birds
And flowers in Spain.
A flash, and mouth is lost on mouth,
And life on life; so in the South
The cup we drain.
We do not dream and hesitate
About its brim; we fear not Fate
That love in Spain.
And ah! come hear the reason why - 
There are no girls beneath the sky
Like those of Spain.
All other women scarcely seem
More than pale women in a dream
By ours of Spain.
Ah! who aright shall tell their praise, - 
Their subtle, soft, imperious ways,
Their high disdain.
Golden as bars of Spanish gold,
Hot as the sun, as the moon cold,
The girls of Spain.
Their faces as magnolias white,
Their hair the soul of summer night,
Soft as soft rain;
And swift as the steel blade that flies
Into a coward's heart their eyes,
Then soft again.
Under their little languid feet,
That carry such a world of sweet,
My heart lies slain.
Girls North and South, and East and West,
But fairer far than all the rest
The girls of Spain.
Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - LVII
by Alfred Edward Housman

You smile upon your friend to-day,
To-day his ills are over;
You hearken to the lover's say,
And happy is the lover.
'Tis late to hearken, late to smile,
But better late than never:
I shall have lived a little while
Before I die for ever.
To A Maid.
by Robert Herrick

You say, you love me! that I thus must prove:
It that you lie, then I will swear you love.
To A Poet
by William Butler Yeats

You say, as I have often given tongue
In praise of what another's said or sung,
'Twere politic to do the like by these;
But have you known a dog to praise his fleas?
To A Contemner Of The Past
by Richard Le Gallienne

You that would break with the Past,
Why with so rude a gesture take your leave?
None hinders, go your way; but wherefore cast
Contempt and boorish scorn
Upon the womb from which even you were born?
Begone in peace! Forbear to flout and grieve,
Vulgar iconoclast,
Those of a faith you cannot comprehend,
To whom the Past is as a lovely friend
Nobly grown old, yet nobly ever young;
The temple and the treasure-house of Time,
With gains immortal stored
Of dream and deed and song,
Since man from chaos first began to climb,
His lonely soul for sword.
O base and trivial tongue
That dares to mock this solemn heritage,
And foul this sacred page!
Sorry the future that hath you for sire!
And happy we who yet
Can bear the golden chimes from tower and spire
In the old heaven set,
And link our hands and hearts with the great dead
That lived with God for friend,
And drew strange sustenance from overhead,
And knew a bright beginning in life's end;
For all their earthly days
Were filled with meaning deeper than the hour.
Leave us our simple faith in star and flower,
And all our simple ways
Of prayer and praise,
And ancient virtues of humility,
Honour and reverence and the bended knee,
Old tenderness and gracious courtesies,
From Time so hardly won:
But you that no more have content in these,
From out our sanctuaries
Begone - and gladly gone!
Rivulose
by A. R. Ammons

You think the ridge hills flowing, breaking
with ups and downs will, though,
building constancy into the black foreground
for each sunset, hold on to you, if dreams
wander, give reality recurrence enough to keep
an image clear, but then you realize, time
going on, that time's residual like the last
ice age's cool still in the rocks, averaged
maybe with the cool of the age before, that
not only are you not being held onto but where
else could time do so well without you,
what is your time where so much time is saved?
The Pessimist
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

You that have snarled through the ages, take your answer and go--
I know your hoary question, the riddle that all men know.
You have weighed the stars in a balance, and grasped the skies in a span:
Take, if you must have answer, the word of a common man.
Deep in my life lies buried one love unhealed, unshriven,
One hunger still shall haunt me--yea, in the streets of heaven;
This is the burden, babbler, this is the curse shall cling,
This is the thing I bring you; this is the pleasant thing.
'Gainst you and all your sages, no joy of mine shall strive,
This one dead self shall shatter the men you call alive.
My grief I send to smite you, no pleasure, no belief,
Lord of the battered grievance, what do you know of grief?
I only know the praises to heaven that one man gave,
That he came on earth for an instant, to stand beside a grave,
The peace of a field of battle, where flowers are born of blood.
I only know one evil that makes the whole world good.
Beneath this single sorrow the globe of moon and sphere
Turns to a single jewel, so bright and brittle and dear
That I dread lest God should drop it, to be dashed into stars below.
You that have snarled through the ages, take your answer and go.
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet XXVIII
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

You that with Allegories curious frame
Of others children changelings vse to make,
With me those pains, for Gods sake, do not take:
I list not dig so deep for brazen fame,
When I say Stella I do meane the same
Princesse of beauty for whose only sake
The raines of Loue I loue, though neuer slake,
And ioy therein, though nations count it shame.
I beg no subiect to vse eloquence,
Nor in hid wayes to guide philosophy:
Looke at my hands for no such quintessence;
But know that I in pure simplicitie
Breathe out the flames which burn within my heart,
Loue onely reading vnto me this arte.
Valentine's Night
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

You shadow and flame,
You interchange,
You death in the game!
Now I gather you up,
Now I put you back
Like a poppy in its cup.
And so, you are a maid
Again, my darling, but new,
Unafraid.
My love, my blossom, a child
Almost! The flower in the bud
Again, undefiled.
And yet, a woman, knowing
All, good, evil, both
In one blossom blowing.
You Thought I Was That Type
by Anna Akhmatova

You thought I was that type:
That you could forget me,
And that I'd plead and weep
And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare,
Or that I'd ask the sorcerers
For some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift:
My precious perfumed handkerchief.
Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul
Vicarious tears or a single glance.
And I swear to you by the garden of the angels,
I swear by the miracle-working icon,
And by the fire and smoke of our nights:
I will never come back to you.
Nursery Rhyme. CXXXVI. Songs.
by Unknown

You shall have an apple,
You shall have a plum,
You shall have a rattle-basket,
When your dad comes home.
On Looking Up By Chance At The Constellations
by Robert Lee Frost

You'll wait a long, long time for anything much
To happen in heaven beyond the floats of cloud
And the Northern Lights that run like tingling nerves.
The sun and moon get crossed, but they never touch,
Nor strike out fire from each other nor crash out loud.
The planets seem to interfere in their curves
But nothing ever happens, no harm is done.
We may as well go patiently on with our life,
And look elsewhere than to stars and moon and sun
For the shocks and changes we need to keep us sane.
It is true the longest drouth will end in rain,
The longest peace in China will end in strife.
Still it wouldn't reward the watcher to stay awake
In hopes of seeing the calm of heaven break
On his particular time and personal sight.
That calm seems certainly safe to last to-night.
L'Envoi (Songs of a Sourdough)
by Robert William Service

You who have lived in the Land,
You who have trusted the trail;
You who are strong to withstand,
You who are swift to assail;
Songs have I sung to beguile,
Vintage of desperate years
Hard as a harlot's smile,
Bitter as unshed tears.
Little of joy or mirth,
Little of ease I sing;
Sagas of men of earth,
Humanly suffering,
Such as you all have done;
Savagely faring forth,
Sons of the midnight sun,
Argonauts of the North.
Far in the land God forgot
Glimmers the lure of your trail;
Still in your lust are you taught
Even to win is to fail.
Still must you follow and fight
Under the vampire wing;
There in the long, long night
Hoping and vanquishing.
Husbandmen of the Wild,
Reaping a barren gain;
Scourged by desire, reconciled
Unto disaster and pain;
These my songs are for you,
You who are seared with the brand:
God knows I have tried to be true;
Please God you will understand.
Chorus From 'Lincoln'
by John Drinkwater

You who have gone gathering
Cornflowers and meadowsweet,
Heard the hazels glancing down
On September eves,
Seen the homeward rooks on wing
Over fields of golden wheat,
And the silver cups that crown
Water-lily leaves;
You who know the tenderness
Of old men at eve-tide,
Coming from the hedgerows,
Coming from the plough,
And the wandering caress
Of winds upon the woodside,
When the crying yaffle goes
Underneath the bough;
You who mark the flowing
Of sap upon the May-time,
And the waters welling
From the watershed,
You who count the growing
Of harvest and hay-time,
Knowing these the telling
Of your daily bread;
You who cherish courtesy
With your fellows at your gate,
And about your hearthstone sit
Under love's decrees,
You who know that death will be
Speaking with you soon or late,
Kinsmen, what is mother-wit
But the light of these?
Knowing these, what is there more
For learning in your little years?
Are not these all gospels bright
Shining on your day?
How then shall your hearts be sore
With envy and her brood of fears,
How forget the words of light
From the mountain-way ...
Blessed are the merciful ...
Does not every threshold seek
Meadows and the flight of birds
For compassion still?
Blessed are the merciful ...
Are we pilgrims yet to speak
Out of Olivet the words
Of knowledge and good-will?
With The Seasons.
by Madison Julius Cawein

I
You will not love me, sweet.
When this fair year is past;
Or love now at my feet
At others' feet be cast.
You will not love me, sweet,
When this fair year is past.
II
Now 'tis the Springtide, dear,
The crocus cups hold flame
Brimmed to the pregnant year.
Who crimsons as with shame.
Now 'tis the Springtide, dear,
The crocus cups hold flame.
III
Ah, heart, the Summer's queen,
At her brown throat one rose;
The poppies now are seen
With seed-pods thrust in rows.
Dear heart, the Summer's queen,
At her brown throat one rose.
IV
Now Autumn reigns, a prince
Fierce, gipsy-dark; live gold
Weighs down the fruited quince,
The last chilled violet's told.
The Autumn reigns, a prince,
A despot crowned with gold.
V
Alas! rude Winter's king,
Snow-driven from chin to head;
No wild birds pipe and sing,
The wild winds sing instead.
Ah me! rude Winter's king,
Snow-driven from chin to head.
VI
Weep now, you once who smiled,
Sweet hope that had few fears!
And this the end, my child! - 
Thyself, my shame and tears!
Weep now, you once who smiled,
Sweet hope, that had few fears!
Shit List; Or, Omnium-gatherum Of Diversity Into Unity
by A. R. Ammons

You'll rejoice at how many kinds of shit there are:
gosling shit (which J. Williams said something
was as green as), fish shit (the generality), trout
shit, rainbow trout shit (for the nice), mullet shit,
sand dab shit, casual sloth shit, elephant shit
(awesome as process or payload), wildebeest shit,
horse shit (a favorite), caterpillar shit (so many dark
kinds, neatly pelleted as mint seed), baby rhinoceros
shit, splashy jaybird shit, mockingbird shit
(dive-bombed with the aim of song), robin shit that
oozes white down lawnchairs or down roots under roosts,
chicken shit and chicken mite shit, pelican shit, gannet
shit (wholesome guano), fly shit (periodic), cockatoo
shit, dog shit (past catalog or assimilation),
cricket shit, elk (high plains) shit, and
tiny scribbled little shrew shit, whale shit (what
a sight, deep assumption), mandril shit (blazing
blast off), weasel shit (wiles' waste), gazelle shit,
magpie shit (total protein), tiger shit (too acid
to contemplate), moral eel and manta ray shit, eerie
shark shit, earthworm shit (a soilure), crab shit,
wolf shit upon the germicidal ice, snake shit, giraffe
shit that accelerates, secretary bird shit, turtle
shit suspension invites, remora shit slightly in
advance of the shark shit, hornet shit (difficult to
assess), camel shit that slaps the ghastly dry
siliceous, frog shit, beetle shit, bat shit (the
marmoreal), contemptible cat shit, penguin shit,
hermit crab shit, prairie hen shit, cougar shit, eagle
shit (high totem stuff), buffalo shit (hardly less
lofty), otter shit, beaver shit (from the animal of
alluvial dreams), a vast ordure is a broken down
cloaca'macaw shit, alligator shit (that floats the Nile
along), louse shit, macaque, koala, and coati shit,
antelope shit, chuck-will's-widow shit, alpaca shit
(very high stuff), gooney bird shit, chigger shit, bull
shit (the classic), caribou shit, rasbora, python, and
razorbill shit, scorpion shit, man shit, laswing
fly larva shit, chipmunk shit, other-worldly wallaby
shit, gopher shit (or broke), platypus shit, aardvark
shit, spider shit, kangaroo and peccary shit, guanaco
shit, dolphin shit, aphid shit, baboon shit (that leopards
induce), albatross shit, red-headed woodpecker (nine
inches long) shit, tern shit, hedgehog shit, panda shit,
seahorse shit, and the shit of the wasteful gallinule.
The Book Of Joyous Children Gratefully And Affectionately Inscribed To Joel Chandler Harris
by James Whitcomb Riley

You who to the rounded prime
Of a life of toil and stress,
Still have kept the morning-time
Of glad youth in heart and spirit,
So your laugh, as children hear it,
Seems their own, no less, - 
Take this book of childish rhyme - 
The Book of Joyous Children.
Their first happiness on earth
Here is echoed - their first glee:
Rich, in sooth, the volume's worth - 
Not in classic lore, but rich in
The child-sagas of the kitchen; - 
Therefore, take from me
To your heart of childish mirth
The Book of Joyous Children.
To A Historian
by Walt Whitman

You who celebrate bygones!
Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the life that has exhibited itself;
Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates, rulers and priests;
I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself, in his own rights,
Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself, (the great pride of man in himself;)
Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be,
I project the history of the future.
The Briny Grave
by Henry Lawson

You wonder why so many would be buried in the sea,
In this world of froth and bubble,
But I don't wonder, for it seems to me
That it saves such a lot of trouble.
And there ain't no undertaker,
Oh! there ain't no order that your friends can give
On the quiet to the coffin-maker,
To a gimcrack coffin-maker,
They make no differ twixt the absentee swell
And the clerk that cut from a 'shortage',
Oh! there ain't no pauper funer-el,
And there ain't no 'impressive cortege.'
It may be a chap from the for'ard crowd,
Or a member of the British Peerage,
But they sew his nibs in a canvas shroud
Just the same as the bloke from the steerage,
As that poor bloke from the steerage.
There ain't no need for a gravedigger there,
For you dig your own grave! Lord love yer!
And there ain't no use for a headstone fair
When the waters close above yer!
The little headstone where they come to weep,
May be right for the land's dry-rotters,
But you rest just as sound when you're anchored deep
With the pigiron at your trotters,
(Our fathers had iron at their trotters).
The sea is democratic the wide world round,
And it don't give a hang for no man,
There ain't no Church of England burial ground,
Nor yet there ain't no Roman.
Orthodox and het'rodox by wreck-strewn cliffs,
At peace in the stormiest weather,
Might bob up and down like two brother 'stiffs,'
And rest in one shark together,
And mix up their bones together.
The bare-headed skipper is as good any day
As an authorised shifter of sin is,
And the tear of shipmate is better anyway
Than the tear of the next-of-kin is.
It saves your friends, and it fills your needs,
It is best when all is reckoned,
And she can't come there in her widder weeds,
With her eyes on a likely second,
And a spot for the likely second.
The Next War
by Robert von Ranke Graves

You young friskies who today
Jump and fight in Father's hay
With bows and arrows and wooden spears,
Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers,
Happy though these hours you spend,
Have they warned you how games end?
Boys, from the first time you prod
And thrust with spears of curtain-rod,
From the first time you tear and slash
Your long-bows from the garden ash,
Or fit your shaft with a blue jay feather,
Binding the split tops together,
From that same hour by fate you're bound
As champions of this stony ground,
Loyal and true in everything,
To serve your Army and your King,
Prepared to starve and sweat and die
Under some fierce foreign sky,
If only to keep safe those joys
That belong to British boys,
To keep young Prussians from the soft
Scented hay of father's loft,
And stop young Slavs from cutting bows
And bendy spears from Welsh hedgerows.
Another War soon gets begun,
A dirtier, a more glorious one;
Then, boys, you'll have to play, all in;
It's the cruellest team will win.
So hold your nose against the stink
And never stop too long to think.
Wars don't change except in name;
The next one must go just the same,
And new foul tricks unguessed before
Will win and justify this War.
Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage
Once more with pomp and greed and rage;
Courtly ministers will stop
At home and fight to the last drop;
By the million men will die
In some new horrible agony;
And children here will thrust and poke,
Shoot and die, and laugh at the joke,
With bows and arrows and wooden spears,
Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers.