DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Poem: At Verona
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

How steep the stairs within Kings' houses are
For exile-wearied feet as mine to tread,
And O how salt and bitter is the bread
Which falls from this Hound's table, better far
That I had died in the red ways of war,
Or that the gate of Florence bare my head,
Than to live thus, by all things comraded
Which seek the essence of my soul to mar.
'Curse God and die: what better hope than this?
He hath forgotten thee in all the bliss
Of his gold city, and eternal day'
Nay peace: behind my prison's blinded bars
I do possess what none can take away
My love, and all the glory of the stars.
Summer Tints.
by John Clare

How sweet I've wander'd bosom-deep in grain,
When Summer's mellowing pencil sweeps his shade
Of ripening tinges o'er the checquer'd plain:
Light tawny oat-lands with a yellow blade;
And bearded corn, like armies on parade;
Beans lightly scorch'd, that still preserve their green;
And nodding lands of wheat in bleachy brown;
And streaking banks, where many a maid and clown
Contrast a sweetness to the rural scene,--
Forming the little haycocks up and down:
While o'er the face of nature softly swept
The ling'ring wind, mixing the brown and green
So sweet, that shepherds from their bowers have crept,
And stood delighted musing o'er the scene.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part II. - I - How Soon, Alas!
by William Wordsworth

Part II. To the close of the Troubles in the Reign of Charles I
How soon, alas! did Man, created pure
By Angels guarded, deviate from the line
Prescribed to duty: woeful forfeiture
He made by willful breach of law divine.
With like perverseness did the Church abjure
Obedience to her Lord, and haste to twine,
'Mid Heaven-born flowers that shall for aye endure,
Weeds on whose front the world had fixed her sign.
O Man, if with thy trials thus it fares,
If good can smooth the way to evil choice,
From all rash censure be the mind kept free;
He only judges right who weighs, compares,
And in the sternest sentence which his voice
Pronounces, ne'er abandons Charity.
Copying Architecture In An Old Minster (Wimborne)
by Thomas Hardy

How smartly the quarters of the hour march by
That the jack-o'-clock never forgets;
Ding-dong; and before I have traced a cusp's eye,
Or got the true twist of the ogee over,
A double ding-dong ricochetts.
Just so did he clang here before I came,
And so will he clang when I'm gone
Through the Minster's cavernous hollows - the same
Tale of hours never more to be will he deliver
To the speechless midnight and dawn!
I grow to conceive it a call to ghosts,
Whose mould lies below and around.
Yes; the next "Come, come," draws them out from their posts,
And they gather, and one shade appears, and another,
As the eve-damps creep from the ground.
See - a Courtenay stands by his quatre-foiled tomb,
And a Duke and his Duchess near;
And one Sir Edmund in columned gloom,
And a Saxon king by the presbytery chamber;
And shapes unknown in the rear.
Maybe they have met for a parle on some plan
To better ail-stricken mankind;
I catch their cheepings, though thinner than
The overhead creak of a passager's pinion
When leaving land behind.
Or perhaps they speak to the yet unborn,
And caution them not to come
To a world so ancient and trouble-torn,
Of foiled intents, vain lovingkindness,
And ardours chilled and numb.
They waste to fog as I stir and stand,
And move from the arched recess,
And pick up the drawing that slipped from my hand,
And feel for the pencil I dropped in the cranny
In a moment's forgetfulness.
Sonnet XI.
by Anna Seward

How sweet to rove, from summer sun-beams veil'd,
In gloomy dingles; or to trace the tide
Of wandering brooks, their pebbly beds that chide;
To feel the west-wind cool refreshment yield,
That comes soft creeping o'er the flowery field,
And shadow'd waters; in whose bushy side
The Mountain-Bees their fragrant treasure hide
Murmuring; and sings the lonely Thrush conceal'd! - 
Then, Ceremony, in thy gilded halls,
Where forc'd and frivolous the themes arise,
With bow and smile unmeaning, O! how palls
At thee, and thine, my sense! - how oft it sighs
For leisure, wood-lanes, dells, and water-falls;
And feels th' untemper'd heat of sultry skies!
The Bells, Ostend.
by William Lisle Bowles

How sweet the tuneful bells' responsive peal!
As when, at opening morn, the fragrant breeze
Breathes on the trembling sense of pale disease,
So piercing to my heart their force I feel!
And hark! with lessening cadence now they fall!
And now, along the white and level tide,
They fling their melancholy music wide;
Bidding me many a tender thought recall
Of summer-days, and those delightful years
When from an ancient tower, in life's fair prime,
The mournful magic of their mingling chime
First waked my wondering childhood into tears!
But seeming now, when all those days are o'er,
The sounds of joy once heard, and heard no more.
In Memoriam. - Mrs. Helen Tyler Beach,
by Lydia Howard Sigourney

Wife of Mr. C. N. BEACH, died at Philadelphia, July 30th, 1860.
How strange that One who yesterday
Shed radiance round her sphere,
Thus, in the prime of life and health,
Should slumber on the bier.
How sad that One who cheer'd her home
With love's unvarying grace,
Should leave at hearth-stone and at board
Nought save a vacant place.
The beaming hope that bright and fair
Around her cradle shone,
Made cloudless progress year by year,
With lustre all its own,
While still unselfish and serene
Her daily course she drew,
To every generous impulse warm
To every duty true:
Yet all these pure and hallowed charms
To favor'd mortals given,
That make their loss to earth so great,
Enhance the gain of Heaven.
How Still The Bells In Steeples Stand,
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

How still the bells in steeples stand,
Till, swollen with the sky,
They leap upon their silver feet
In frantic melody!
How Sweet It Is, When Mother Fancies Frocks
by William Wordsworth

How sweet it is, when mother Fancy rocks
The wayward brain, to saunter through a wood!
An old place, full of many a lovely brood,
Tall trees, green arbours, and ground-flowers in flocks;
And wild rose tip-toe upon hawthorn stocks,
Like a bold Girl, who plays her agile pranks
At Wakes and Fairs with wandering Mountebanks,
When she stands cresting the Clown's head, and mocks
The crowd beneath her. Verily I think,
Such place to me is sometimes like a dream
Or map of the whole world: thoughts, link by link,
Enter through ears and eyesight, with such gleam
Of all things, that at last in fear I shrink,
And leap at once from the delicious stream.
How Sweet It Were
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each other's whisper'd speech;
Eating the Lotos day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly 
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory
With those old faces of our infancy
Heap'd over with a mound of grass,
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!
Avenue In Savernake Forest
by William Lisle Bowles

How soothing sound the gentle airs that move
The innumerable leaves, high overhead,
When autumn first, from the long avenue,
That lifts its arching height of ancient shade,
Steals here and there a leaf!
Within the gloom,
In partial sunshine white, some trunks appear,
Studding the glens of fern; in solemn shade
Some mingle their dark branches, but yet all,
All make a sad sweet music, as they move,
Not undelightful to a stranger's heart.
They seem to say, in accents audible,
Farewell to summer, and farewell the strains
Of many a lithe and feathered chorister,
That through the depth of these incumbent woods
Made the long summer gladsome.
I have heard
To the deep-mingling sounds of organs clear,
(When slow the choral anthem rose beneath),
The glimmering minster, through its pillared aisles,
Echo; but not more sweet the vaulted roof
Rang to those linked harmonies, than here
The high wood answers to the lightest breath
Of nature.
Oh, may such sweet music steal,
Soothing the cares of venerable age,[1]
From public toil retired: may it awake,
As, still and slow, the sun of life declines,
Remembrances, not mournful, but most sweet;
May it, as oft beneath the sylvan shade
Their honoured owner strays, come like the sound
Of distant seraph harps, yet speaking clear!
How poor is every sound of earthly things,
When heaven's own music waits the just and pure!
How Solemn As One By One
by Walt Whitman

How solemn, as one by one,
As the ranks returning, all worn and sweaty--as the men file by where I stand;
As the faces, the masks appear--as I glance at the faces, studying the masks;
(As I glance upward out of this page, studying you, dear friend, whoever you are;)
How solemn the thought of my whispering soul, to each in the ranks, and to you;
I see behind each mask, that wonder, a kindred soul;
O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend,
Nor the bayonet stab what you really are:
The soul! yourself I see, great as any, good as the best,
Waiting, secure and content, which the bullet could never kill,
Nor the bayonet stab, O friend!
Flowers In Winter
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Painted Upon a Porte Livre.
How strange to greet, this frosty morn,
In graceful counterfeit of flowers,
These children of the meadows, born
Of sunshine and of showers!
How well the conscious wood retains
The pictures of its flower-sown home,
The lights and shades, the purple stains,
And golden hues of bloom!
It was a happy thought to bring
To the dark season's frost and rime
This painted memory of spring,
This dream of summer-time.
Our hearts are lighter for its sake,
Our fancy's age renews its youth,
And dim-remembered fictions take
The guise of, present truth.
A wizard of the Merrimac,
So old ancestral legends say,
Could call green leaf and blossom back
To frosted stem and spray.
The dry logs of the cottage wall,
Beneath his touch, put out their leaves
The clay-bound swallow, at his call,
Played round the icy eaves.
The settler saw his oaken flail
Take bud, and bloom before his eyes;
From frozen pools he saw the pale,
Sweet summer lilies rise.
To their old homes, by man profaned,
Came the sad dryads, exiled long,
And through their leafy tongues complained
Of household use and wrong.
The beechen platter sprouted wild,
The pipkin wore its old-time green
The cradle o'er the sleeping child
Became a leafy screen.
Haply our gentle friend hath met,
While wandering in her sylvan quest,
Haunting his native woodlands yet,
That Druid of the West;
And, while the dew on leaf and flower
Glistened in moonlight clear and still,
Learned the dusk wizard's spell of power,
And caught his trick of skill.
But welcome, be it new or old,
The gift which makes the day more bright,
And paints, upon the ground of cold
And darkness, warmth and light.
Without is neither gold nor green;
Within, for birds, the birch-logs sing;
Yet, summer-like, we sit between
The autumn and the spring.
The one, with bridal blush of rose,
And sweetest breath of woodland balm,
And one whose matron lips unclose
In smiles of saintly calm.
Fill soft and deep, O winter snow!
The sweet azalea's oaken dells,
And hide the bank where roses blow,
And swing the azure bells!
O'erlay the amber violet's leaves,
The purple aster's brookside home,
Guard all the flowers her pencil gives
A life beyond their bloom.
And she, when spring comes round again,
By greening slope and singing flood
Shall wander, seeking, not in vain,
Her darlings of the wood.
To A Friend
by John Greenleaf Whittier

On her return from Europe.
How smiled the land of France
Under thy blue eye's glance,
Light-hearted rover
Old walls of chateaux gray,
Towers of an early day,
Which the Three Colors play
Flauntingly over.
Now midst the brilliant train
Thronging the banks of Seine
Now midst the splendor
Of the wild Alpine range,
Waking with change on change
Thoughts in thy young heart strange,
Lovely, and tender.
Vales, soft Elysian,
Like those in the vision
Of Mirza, when, dreaming,
He saw the long hollow dell,
Touched by the prophet's spell,
Into an ocean swell
With its isles teeming.
Cliffs wrapped in snows of years,
Splintering with icy spears
Autumn's blue heaven
Loose rock and frozen slide,
Hung on the mountain-side,
Waiting their hour to glide
Downward, storm-driven!
Rhine-stream, by castle old,
Baron's and robber's hold,
Peacefully flowing;
Sweeping through vineyards green,
Or where the cliffs are seen
O'er the broad wave between
Grim shadows throwing.
Or, where St. Peter's dome
Swells o'er eternal Rome,
Vast, dim, and solemn;
Hymns ever chanting low,
Censers swung to and fro,
Sable stoles sweeping slow
Cornice and column!
Oh, as from each and all
Will there not voices call
Evermore back again?
In the mind's gallery
Wilt thou not always see
Dim phantoms beckon thee
O'er that old track again?
New forms thy presence haunt,
New voices softly chant,
New faces greet thee!
Pilgrims from many a shrine
Hallowed by poet's line,
At memory's magic sign,
Rising to meet thee.
And when such visions come
Unto thy olden home,
Will they not waken
Deep thoughts of Him whose hand
Led thee o'er sea and land
Back to the household band
Whence thou wast taken?
While, at the sunset time,
Swells the cathedral's chime,
Yet, in thy dreaming,
While to thy spirit's eye
Yet the vast mountains lie
Piled in the Switzer's sky,
Icy and gleaming:
Prompter of silent prayer,
Be the wild picture there
In the mind's chamber,
And, through each coming day
Him who, as staff and stay,
Watched o'er thy wandering way,
Freshly remember.
So, when the call shall be
Soon or late unto thee,
As to all given,
Still may that picture live,
All its fair forms survive,
And to thy spirit give
Gladness in Heaven
The Sonnets XCV - How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
by William Shakespeare

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
O! in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose.
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise;
Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.
O! what a mansion have those vices got
Which for their habitation chose out thee,
Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot
And all things turns to fair that eyes can see!
Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege;
The hardest knife ill-us'd doth lose his edge.
May-Noon.
by John Clare

How sweet it is, when suns get warmly high,
In the mid-noon, as May's first cowslip springs,
And the young cuckoo his soft ditty sings,
To wander out, and take a book; and lie
'Neath some low pasture-bush, by guggling springs
That shake the sprouting flag as crimpling by;
Or where the sunshine freckles on the eye
Through the half-clothed branches in the woods;
Where airy leaves of woodbines, scrambling nigh,
Are earliest venturers to unfold their buds;
And little rippling runnels curl their floods,
Bathing the primrose-peep, and strawberry wild,
And cuckoo-flowers just creeping from their hoods,
With the sweet season, like their bard, beguil'd.
The Jewish Cemetery At Newport
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

How strange it seems!    These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
At rest in all this moving up and down!
The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep
Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath,
While underneath such leafy tents they keep
The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.
And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,
That pave with level flags their burial-place,
Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down
And broken by Moses at the mountain's base.
The very names recorded here are strange,
Of foreign accent, and of different climes;
Alvares and Rivera interchange
With Abraham and Jacob of old times.
"Blessed be God! for he created Death!"
The mourners said, "and Death is rest and peace";
Then added, in the certainty of faith,
"And giveth Life that never more shall cease."
Closed are the portals of their Synagogue,
No Psalms of David now the silence break,
No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue
In the grand dialect the Prophets spake.
Gone are the living, but the dead remain,
And not neglected; for a hand unseen,
Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain,
Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.
How came they here?    What burst of Christian hate,
What persecution, merciless and blind,
Drove o'er the sea--that desert desolate--
These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?
They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure,
Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire;
Taught in the school of patience to endure
The life of anguish and the death of fire.
All their lives long, with the unleavened bread
And bitter herbs of exile and its fears,
The wasting famine of the heart they fed,
And slaked its thirst with marah of their tears.
Anathema maranatha! was the cry
That rang from town to town, from street to street;
At every gate the accursed Mordecai
Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet.
Pride and humiliation hand in hand
Walked with them through the world where'er they went;
Trampled and beaten were they as the sand,
And yet unshaken as the continent.
For in the background figures vague and vast
Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime,
And all the great traditions of the Past
They saw reflected in the coming time.
And thus for ever with reverted look
The mystic volume of the world they read,
Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,
Till life became a Legend of the Dead.
But ah! what once has been shall be no more!
The groaning earth in travail and in pain
Brings forth its races, but does not restore,
And the dead nations never rise again.
On The Sight Of Spring.
by John Clare

How sweet it us'd to be, when April first
Unclos'd the arum-leaves, and into view
Its ear-like spindling flowers their cases burst,
Beting'd with yellowish white or lushy hue:
Though manhood now with such has small to do,
Yet I remember what delight was mine
When on my Sunday walks I us'd to go,
Flower-gathering tribes in childish bliss to join;
Peeping and searching hedge-row side or woods,
When thorns stain green with slow unclosing buds.
Ah, how delighted, humming on the time
Some nameless song or tale, I sought the flowers;
Some rushy dyke to jump, or brink to climb,
Ere I obtain'd them; while from hasty showers
Oft under trees we nestled in a ring,
Culling our "lords and ladies."--O ye hours!
I never see the broad-leav'd arum spring
Stained with spots of jet; I never see
Those dear delights which April still does bring,
But memory's tongue repeats it all to me.
I view her pictures with an anxious eye,
I hear her stories with a pleasing pain:
Youth's wither'd flowers, alas! ye make me sigh,
To think in me ye'll never bloom again.
An Angel In The House
by James Henry Leigh Hunt

How sweet it were, if without feeble fright,
Or dying of the dreadful beauteous sight,
An angel came to us, and we could bear
To see him issue from the silent air
At evening in our room, and bend on ours
His divine eyes, and bring us from his bowers
News of dear friends, and children who have never
Been dead indeed,'as we shall know forever.
Alas! we think not what we daily see
About our hearths,'angels that are to be,
Or may be if they will, and we prepare
Their souls and ours to meet in happy air;'
A child, a friend, a wife whose soft heart sings
In unison with ours, breeding its future wings.
The Italian Renaissance.
by Margaret Steele Anderson

How splendid and how vain in thee
The ancient quest, Italy!
Too strange that wreath, too strangely worn,
Apollo's laurel, Christ's red thorn!
Echo.
by Thomas Moore

How sweet the answer Echo makes
To music at night,
When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes,
And far away, o'er lawns and lakes,
Goes answering light.
Yet Love hath echoes truer far,
And far more sweet,
Than e'er beneath the moonlight star,
Of horn or lute, or soft guitar,
The songs repeat.
'Tis when the sigh, in youth sincere,
And only then,--
The sigh that's breath'd for one to hear,
Is by that one, that only dear,
Breathed back again!
The Shepherd
by William Blake

How sweet is the Shepherd's sweet lot!
From the morn to the evening he stays;
He shall follow his sheep all the day,
And his tongue shall be filled with praise.
For he hears the lambs' innocent call,
And he hears the ewes' tender reply;
He is watching while they are in peace,
For they know when their Shepherd is nigh.
The Shepherd's Daughter
by John Clare

How sweet is every lengthening day,
And every change of weather,
When Summer comes, on skies blue grey,
And brings her hosts together,
Her flocks of birds, her crowds of flowers,
Her sunny-shining water!
I dearly love the woodbine bowers,
That hide the Shepherd's Daughter--
In gown of green or brown or blue,
The Shepherd's Daughter, leal and true.
How bonny is her lily breast!
How sweet her rosy face!
She'd give my aching bosom rest,
Where love would find its place.
While earth is green, and skies are blue,
And sunshine gilds the water,
While Summer's sweet and Nature true,
I'll love the Shepherd's Daughter--
Her nut brown hair, her clear bright eye,
My daily thought, my only joy.
She's such a simple, sweet young thing,
Dressed in her country costume.
My wits had used to know the Spring,
Till I saw, and loved, and lost 'em.
How quietly the lily lies
Upon the deepest water!
How sweet to me the Summer skies!
And so's the Shepherd's Daughter--
With lily breast and rosy face
The sweetest maid in any place.
My singing bird, my bonny flower,
How dearly could I love thee!
To sit with thee one pleasant hour,
If thou would'st but approve me!
I swear by lilies white and yellow,
That flower on deepest water,
Would'st thou but make me happy fellow,
I'd wed the Shepherd's Daughter!
By all that's on the earth or water,
I more than love the Shepherd's Daughter.
Lines On A Poet.
by George Pope Morris

How sweet the cadence of his lyre!
What melody of words!
They strike a pulse within the heart
Like songs of forest-birds,
Or tinkling of the shepherd's bell
Among the mountain-herds.
His mind's a cultured garden,
Where Nature's hand has sown
The flower-seeds of poesy--
And they have freshly grown,
Imbued with beauty and perfume
To other plants unknown.
A bright career's before him--
All tongues pronounce his praise;
All hearts his inspiration feel,
And will in after-days;
For genius breathes in every line
Of his soul-thrilling lays.
A nameless grace is round him--
A something, too refined
To be described, yet must be felt
By all of human kind--
An emanation of the soul,
That can not be defined.
Then blessings on the minstrel--
His faults let others scan:
There may be spots upon the sun,
Which those may view who can;
I see them not--yet know him well
A POET AND A MAN.
Victory.
by Emma Lazarus

How strange, in some brief interval of rest,
Backward to look on her far-stretching past.
To see how much is conquered and repressed,
How much is gained in victory at last!
The shadow is not lifted, - but her faith,
Strong from life's miracles, now turns toward death.
Though much be dark where once rare splendor shone,
Yet the new light has touched high peaks unguessed
In her gold, mist-bathed dawn, and one by one
New outlooks loom from many a mountain crest.
She breathes a loftier, purer atmosphere,
And life's entangled paths grow straight and clear.
Nor will Death prove an all-unwelcome guest;
The struggle has been toilsome to this end,
Sleep will be sweet, and after labor rest,
And all will be atoned with him to friend.
Much must be reconciled, much justified,
And yet she feels she will be satisfied.