DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Sleep.
by Archibald Lampman

If any man, with sleepless care oppressed,
On many a night had risen, and addressed
His hand to make him out of joy and moan
An image of sweet sleep in carven stone,
Light touch by touch, in weary moments planned,
He would have wrought her with a patient hand,
Not like her brother death, with massive limb
And dreamless brow, unstartled, changeless, dim,
But very fair, though fitful and afraid,
More sweet and slight than any mortal maid.
Her hair he would have carved a mantle smooth
Down to her tender feet to wrap and soothe
All fevers in, yet barb'd here and there
With many a hidden sting of restless care;
Her brow most quiet, thick with opiate rest,
Yet watchfully lined, as if some hovering guest
Of noiseless doubt were there; so too her eyes
His light hand would have carved in cunning wise
Broad with all languor of the drowsy South,
Most beautiful, but held askance; her mouth
More soft and round than any rose half-spread,
Yet ever twisted with some nervous dread.
He would have made her with one marble foot,
Frail as a snow-white feather, forward put,
Bearing sweet medicine for all distress,
Smooth languor and unstrung forgetfulness;
The other held a little back for dread;
One slender moonpale hand held forth to shed
Soft slumber dripping from its pearly tip
Into wide eyes; the other on her lip.
So in the watches of his sleepless care
The cunning artist would have wrought her fair;
Shy goddess, at keen seeking most afraid
Yet often coming, when we least have prayed.
Cadland,[1] Southampton River.
by William Lisle Bowles

If ever sea-maid, from her coral cave,
Beneath the hum of the great surge, has loved
To pass delighted from her green abode,
And, seated on a summer bank, to sing
No earthly music; in a spot like this,
The bard might feign he heard her, as she dried
Her golden hair, yet dripping from the main,
In the slant sunbeam.
So the pensive bard
Might image, warmed by this enchanting scene,
The ideal form; but though such things are not,
He who has ever felt a thought refined;
He who has wandered on the sea of life,
Forming delightful visions of a home
Of beauty and repose; he who has loved,
With filial warmth his country, will not pass
Without a look of more than tenderness
On all the scene; from where the pensile birch
Bends on the bank, amid the clustered group
Of the dark hollies; to the woody shore
That steals diminished, to the distant spires
Of Hampton, crowning the long lucid wave.
White in the sun, beneath the forest-shade,
Full shines the frequent sail, like Vanity,
As she goes onward in her glittering trim,
Amid the glances of life's transient morn,
Calling on all to view her!
Vectis[2] there,
That slopes its greensward to the lambent wave,
And shows through softest haze its woods and domes,
With gray St Catherine's[3] creeping to the sky,
Seems like a modest maid, who charms the more
Concealing half her beauties.
To the East,
Proud, yet complacent, on its subject realm,
With masts innumerable thronged, and hulls
Seen indistinct, but formidable, mark
Albion's vast fleet, that, like the impatient storm,
Waits but the word to thunder and flash death
On him who dares approach to violate
The shores and living scenes that smile secure
Beneath its dragon-watch!
Long may they smile!
And long, majestic Albion (while the sound
From East to West, from Albis[4] to the Po,
Of dark contention hurtles), may'st thou rest,
As calm and beautiful this sylvan scene
Looks on the refluent wave that steals below.
Amour 17
by Michael Drayton

If euer wonder could report a wonder,
Or tongue of wonder worth could tell a wonder thought,
Or euer ioy expresse what perfect ioy hath taught,
Then wonder, tongue, then ioy, might wel report a wonder.
Could all conceite conclude, which past conceit admireth,
Or could mine eye but ayme her obiects past perfection,
My words might imitate my deerest thoughts direction,
And my soule then obtaine which so my soule desireth.
Were not Inuention stauld, treading Inuentions maze,
Or my swift-winged Muse tyred by too hie flying;
Did not perfection still on her perfection gaze,
Whilst Loue (my Phoenix bird) in her owne flame is dying,
Inuention and my Muse, perfection and her loue,
Should teach the world to know the wonder that I proue.
After The Death Of Vittoria Colonna. A Wasted Brand.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Qual maraviglia '.
If being near the fire I burned with it,
Now that its flame is quenched and doth not show,
What wonder if I waste within and glow,
Dwindling away to cinders bit by bit?
While still it burned, I saw so brightly lit
That splendour whence I drew my grievous woe,
That from its sight alone could pleasure flow,
And death and torment both seemed exquisite.
But now that heaven hath robbed me of the blaze
Of that great fire which burned and nourished me,
A coal that smoulders 'neath the ash am I.
Unless Love furnish wood fresh flames to raise,
I shall expire with not one spark to see,
So quickly into embers do I die!
To His Lute
by Eugene Field

If ever in the sylvan shade
A song immortal we have made,
Come now, O lute, I prithee come,
Inspire a song of Latium!
A Lesbian first thy glories proved;
In arms and in repose he loved
To sweep thy dulcet strings, and raise
His voice in Love's and Liber's praise.
The Muses, too, and him who clings
To Mother Venus' apron-strings,
And Lycus beautiful, he sung
In those old days when you were young.
O shell, that art the ornament
Of Phoebus, bringing sweet content
To Jove, and soothing troubles all,--
Come and requite me, when I call!
Hap
by Thomas Hardy

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"
Then would I bear, and clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.
But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
- Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
1866.
When Lost.
by John Hartley

If at hooam yo have to tew,
Though yor comforts may be few,
An yo think yore lot is hard, and yor prospects bad;
Yo may swear ther's nowt gooas reight,
Wi' yor friends an wi' yor meyt,
But yo'll nivver know ther vally till j'o've lost em, lad.
Though yo've but a humble cot,
An yore share's a seedy lot;
Though yo goa to bed i'th dumps, an get up i'th mornin mad,
Yet yo'll find its mich moor wise,
What yo have to fondly prize,
For yo'll nivver know ther vally till yo've lost em, lad.
Begin And Beguile
by Paul Cameron Brown

If brains be gables & minds, say, the shutters
in a derelict New England Mansion
then intuition is in the
eaves & casements
the well-springs seeping into turrets & cupolas
of all other nether spaces.
These big, wide entrances are ourselves in all their splendor,
notwithstanding the Winchester Mansions
or Vanderbilt Estates where our
very personalities are laid bare
see antics give rise to attics
feed in onto themselves
where the Astor's of our alter-egos
are resplendent in rich pride of self
longing to manifest in lavish architecture
so redolent of wealth
yet see-sawing in, squabbling
their thread-bare servant quarters
where murderous passions
bare dingy walls and where stained,
yellowing wallpaper is harbinger to
further heart-felt quarrels &
what is unspeakable, gilded and more.
Manifold and many, recant and lament. Repent.
Amour 38
by Michael Drayton

If chaste and pure deuotion of my youth,
Or glorie of my Aprill-springing yeeres,
Vnfained loue in naked simple truth,
A thousand vowes, a thousand sighes and teares;
Or if a world of faithful seruice done,
Words, thoughts, and deeds deuoted to her honor,
Or eyes that haue beheld her as theyr sunne,
With admiration euer looking on her:
A lyfe that neuer ioyd but in her loue,
A soule that euer hath ador'd her name,
A fayth that time nor fortune could not moue,
A Muse that vnto heauen hath raised her fame.
Though these, nor these deserue to be imbraced,
Yet, faire vnkinde, too good to be disgraced.
God's Providence.
by Robert Herrick

If all transgressions here should have their pay,
What need there then be of a reckoning day?
If God should punish no sin here of men,
His providence who would not question then?
To God.
by Robert Herrick

If anything delight me for to print
My book, 'tis this: that Thou, my God, art in't.
Beauty's Intolerable Splendour.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Se 'l foco alla bellezza.
If but the fire that lightens in thine eyes
Were equal with their beauty, all the snow
And frost of all the world would melt and glow
Like brands that blaze beneath fierce tropic skies.
But heaven in mercy to our miseries
Dulls and divides the fiery beams that flow
From thy great loveliness, that we may go
Through this stern mortal life in tranquil wise.
Thus beauty burns not with consuming rage;
For so much only of the heavenly light
Inflames our love as finds a fervent heart.
This is my case, lady, in sad old age:
If seeing thee, I do not die outright,
'Tis that I feel thy beauty but in part.
A Year After
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

If blood throbs yet in this that was thy face,
O thou whose soul was full of devil's faith,
If in thy flesh the worm's bite slackeneth
In some acute red pause of iron days,
Arise now, gird thee, get thee on thy ways,
Breathe off the worm that crawls and fears not breath;
King, it may be thou shalt prevail on death;
King, it may be thy soul shall find out grace.
O spirit that hast eased the place of Cain,
Weep now and howl, yea weep now sore; for this
That was thy kingdom hath spat out its king.
Wilt thou plead now with God? behold again,
Thy prayer for thy son's sake is turned to a hiss,
Thy mouth to a snake's whose slime outlives the sting,
The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - The Resurrection.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Se sol sei ore.
If Christ was only six hours crucified
After few years of toil and misery,
Which for mankind He suffered willingly,
While heaven was won for ever when He died;
Why should He still be shown on every side,
Painted and preached, in nought but agony,
Whose pains were light matched with His victory,
When the world's power to harm Him was defied?
Why rather speak and write not of the realm
He rules in heaven, and soon will bring below
Unto the praise and glory of His name?
Ah foolish crowd! This world's thick vapours whelm
Your eyes unworthy of that glorious show,
Blind to His splendour, bent upon His shame.
Ode To Evening
by William Collins

If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own solemn springs,
Thy springs, and dying gales,
O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,
With brede ethereal wove,
O'erhang his wavy bed:
Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat
With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing,
Or where the beetle winds
His small but sullen horn,
As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum:
Now teach me, maid composed,
To breathe some softened strain,
Whose numbers stealing through thy dark'ning vale
May not unseemly with its stillness suit,
As, musing slow, I hail
Thy genial loved return!
For when thy folding-star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant hours, and elves
Who slept in buds the day,
And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge
And sheds the fresh'ning dew, and lovelier still,
The pensive pleasures sweet
Prepare thy shadowy car.
Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene,
Or find some ruin 'midst its dreary dells,
Whose walls more awful nod
By thy religious gleams.
Or if chill blust'ring winds or driving rain
Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut
That from the mountain's side
Views wilds and swelling floods
And hamlets brown and dim-discovered spires,
And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all
Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil.
While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont,
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve;
While Summer loves to sport
Beneath thy lingering light;
While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves;
Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air,
Affrights thy shrinking train
And rudely rends thy robes;
So long, regardful of thy quiet rule,
Shall fancy, friendship, science, smiling peace,
Thy gentlest influence own,
And love thy favourite name!
Living Room
by Paul Cameron Brown

If anatomy were a contact sport,
the stomach would be a football
'stomac, hammock
sagging . . . .
the container of riotous living
pried loose.
And the head - 
a barrel of nails,
binder-twine
unravelled into knots;
the brain a cauliflower
for flavouring,
precious little else.
Spare the heart
its dagger pleasure
inveighed from the start.
If.
by Hattie Howard

If all the sermons good men preach
And all the precepts that they teach
Were gathered into one
Unbroken line of silver speech,
The shining filament might reach
From earth unto the sun.
If all the stories ever told
By wild romancers, young or old,
Into a thread were drawn,
And from its cable coil unrolled,
'Twould span those misty hills of gold
That heaven seems resting on.
If every folly, every freak,
From day to day, from week to week,
Is written in "The Book,"
With all the idle words we speak,
Would it not crimson many a cheek
Upon the page to look?
If all the good deeds that we do
From honest motives pure and true
Shall there recorded be,
Known unto God and angels too,
Is it not sad they are so few
And wrought so charily?
My Ships
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

If all the ships I have at sea
Should come a-sailing home to me,
Ah, well! the harbour could not hold
So many sails as there would be
If all my ships came in from sea.
If half my ships came home from sea,
And brought their precious freight to me,
Ah, well!    I should have wealth as great
As any king who sits in state - 
So rich the treasures that would be
In half my ships now out at sea.
If just one ship I have at sea
Should come a-sailing home to me,
Ah, well! the storm-clouds then might frown
For if the others all went down,
Still rich and proud and glad I'd be
If that one ship came back to me.
If that one ship went down at sea,
And all the others came to me,
Weighed down with gems and wealth untold,
With glory, honours, riches, gold,
The poorest soul on earth I'd be
If that one ship came not to me.
O skies, be calm!    O winds, blow free - 
Blow all my ships safe home to me!
But if thou sendest some a-wrack,
To never more come sailing back,
Send any - all that skim the sea,
But bring my love-ship home to me.
A Woman Homer sung
by William Butler Yeats

If any man drew near
When I was young,
I thought, 'He holds her dear,'
And shook with hate and fear.
But oh, 'twas bitter wrong
If he could pass her by
With an indifferent eye.
Whereon I wrote and wrought,
And now, being gray,
I dream that I have brought
To such a pitch my thought
That coming time can say,
'He shadowed in a glass
What thing her body was.'
For she had fiery blood
When I was young,
And trod so sweetly proud
As 'twere upon a cloud,
A woman Homer sung,
That life and letters seem
But an heroic dream.
Human Life
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If dead, we cease to be; if total gloom
Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare
As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom,
Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
But are their whole of being! If the breath
Be Life itself, and not its task and tent,
If even a soul like Milton's can know death;
O Man! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant,
Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes!
Surplus of Nature's dread activity,
Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase,
Retreating slow, with meditative pause,
She formed with restless hands unconsciously.
Blank accident! nothing's anomaly!
If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,
Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears,
The counter-weights! Thy laughter and thy tears
Mean but themselves, each fittest to create
And to repay the other! Why rejoices
Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good?
Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood?
Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices,
Image of Image, Ghost of Ghostly Elf,
That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold?
Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold
These costless shadows of thy shadowy self?
Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun!
Thou hast no reason why ! Thou canst have none;
Thy being's being is contradiction.
An Answer.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

If all the year was summer time,
And all the aim of life
Was just to lilt on like a rhyme,
Then I would be your wife.
If all the days were August days,
And crowned with golden weather,
How happy then through green-clad ways
We two could stray together!
If all the nights were moonlit nights,
And we had naught to do
But just to sit and plan delights,
Then I would wed with you.
If life was all a summer fete,
Its soberest pace the "glide,"
Then I would choose you for my mate,
And keep you at my side.
But winter makes full half the year,
And labor half of life,
And all the laughter and good cheer
Give place to wearing strife.
Days will grow cold, and moons wax old.
And then a heart that's true
Is better far than grace or gold - 
And so, my love, adieu!
I cannot wed with you.
If Anybody's Friend Be Dead,
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

If anybody's friend be dead,
It 's sharpest of the theme
The thinking how they walked alive,
At such and such a time.
Their costume, of a Sunday,
Some manner of the hair, --
A prank nobody knew but them,
Lost, in the sepulchre.
How warm they were on such a day:
You almost feel the date,
So short way off it seems; and now,
They 're centuries from that.
How pleased they were at what you said;
You try to touch the smile,
And dip your fingers in the frost:
When was it, can you tell,
You asked the company to tea,
Acquaintance, just a few,
And chatted close with this grand thing
That don't remember you?
Past bows and invitations,
Past interview, and vow,
Past what ourselves can estimate, --
That makes the quick of woe!
The Salt of the Earth
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

If childhood were not in the world,
But only men and women grown;
No baby-locks in tendrils curled,
No baby-blossoms blown;
Though men were stronger, women fairer,
And nearer all delights in reach,
And verse and music uttered rarer
Tones of more godlike speech;
Though the utmost life of life's best hours
Found, as it cannot now find, words;
Though desert sands were sweet as flowers
And flowers could sing like birds,
But children never heard them, never
They felt a child's foot leap and run:
This were a drearier star than ever
Yet looked upon the sun.
Love-Song
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

If Death should claim me for her own to-day,
And softly I should falter from your side,
Oh, tell me, loved one, would my memory stay,
And would my image in your heart abide?
Or should I be as some forgotten dream,
That lives its little space, then fades entire?
Should Time send o'er you its relentless stream,
To cool your heart, and quench for aye love's fire?
I would not for the world, love, give you pain,
Or ever compass what would cause you grief;
And, oh, how well I know that tears are vain!
But love is sweet, my dear, and life is brief;
So if some day before you I should go
Beyond the sound and sight of song and sea,
'T would give my spirit stronger wings to know
That you remembered still and wept for me.
Horace To His Lute.
by Eugene Field

If ever in the sylvan shade
A song immortal we have made,
Come now, O lute, I pri' thee come--
Inspire a song of Latium.
A Lesbian first thy glories proved--
In arms and in repose he loved
To sweep thy dulcet strings and raise
His voice in Love's and Liber's praise;
The Muses, too, and him who clings
To Mother Venus' apron-strings,
And Lycus beautiful, he sung
In those old days when you were young.
O shell, that art the ornament
Of Phoebus, bringing sweet content
To Jove, and soothing troubles all--
Come and requite me, when I call!
Cacoethes Scribendi
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

If all the trees in all the woods were men;
And each and every blade of grass a pen;
If every leaf on every shrub and tree
Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea
Were changed to ink, and all earth's living tribes
Had nothing else to do but act as scribes,
And for ten thousand ages, day and night,
The human race should write, and write, and write,
Till all the pens and paper were used up,
And the huge inkstand was an empty cup,
Still would the scribblers clustered round its brink
Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink.
Lines On The Death Of Joseph Atkinson, Esq., Of Dublin.
by Thomas Moore

If ever life was prosperously cast,
If ever life was like the lengthened flow
Of some sweet music, sweetness to the last,
'Twas his who, mourned by many, sleeps below.
The sunny temper, bright where all is strife.
The simple heart above all worldly wiles;
Light wit that plays along the calm of life,
And stirs its languid surface into smiles;
Pure charity that comes not in a shower,
Sudden and loud, oppressing what it feeds,
But, like the dew, with gradual silent power,
Felt in the bloom it leaves along the meads;
The happy grateful spirit, that improves
And brightens every gift by fortune given;
That, wander where it will with those it loves,
Makes every place a home, and home a heaven:
All these were his.--Oh, thou who read'st this stone,
When for thyself, thy children, to the sky
Thou humbly prayest, ask this boon alone,
That ye like him may live, like him may die!
Erring In Company
by Franklin Pierce Adams

"If I have erred, I err in company with Abraham Lincoln."
- Theodore Roosevelt.
If e'er my rhyming be at fault,
If e'er I chance to scribble dope,
If that my metre ever halt,
I err in company with Pope.
An that my grammar go awry,
An that my English be askew,
Sooth, I can prove an alibi - 
The Bard of Avon did it too.
If often toward the bottled grape
My errant fancy fondly turns,
Remember, leering jackanape,
I err in company with Burns.
If now and then I sigh "Mine own!"
Unto another's wedded wife,
Remember, I am not alone - 
Hast ever read Lord Byron's Life?
If frequently I fret and fume,
And absolutely will not smile,
I err in company with Hume,
Old Socrates and T. Carlyle.
If e'er I fail in etiquette,
And foozle on The Proper Stuff
Regarding manners, don't forget
A. Tennyson's were pretty tough.
Eke if I err upon the side
Of talking overmuch of Me,
I err, it cannot be denied,
In most illustrious company.
Franklin P. Adams.
Nursery Rhyme. CCCLXVII. Paradoxes.
by Unknown

If all the world was apple-pie,
And all the sea was ink,
And all the trees were bread and cheese,
What should we have for drink?
Little Minnie.
by Nora Pembroke (Margaret Moran Dixon McDougall)

Is it well with the child? and she answered, it is well.
If earth's weariness for rest is changed,
Rest on the far off shore,
If earth's sighing's changed for singing
Psalms of praise for evermore.
And the bed of pain for roaming free,
Beneath the living trees,
Whose leaves of healing wither not
In any earthly breeze.
And to mix with those who, robed and crowned,
Walk by the crystal sea;
To gather with the other lambs
Beside the Saviour's knee.
We will keenly miss our absent child;
Lonely tears our loss will tell,
But His voice says, "It is well with her,
We answer, "It is well."
It is well to know that safely home
Is this our dearest one;
To know she's with the children fair
Gathered around the throne,
'Tis no light thing that God has stooped
Our dear one home to bring,
From weariness and painfulness
To the presence of the King.
Let weeping and rejoicing,
Mingled, our sorrow tell;
We are lonely, oh our Father
But Thou knowest it is well.