DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Art's Discipline
by Robert Fuller Murray

Long since I came into the school of Art,
A child in works, but not a child in heart.
Slowly I learn, by her instruction mild,
To be in works a man, in heart a child.
To A Friend.
by Robert Herrick

Look in my book, and herein see
Life endless signed to thee and me.
We o'er the tombs and fates shall fly;
While other generations die.
The Masquerade
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Look in the eyes of trouble with a smile,
Extend your hand and do not be afraid.
'Tis but a friend who comes to masquerade.
And test your faith and courage for awhile.
Fly, and he follows fast with threat and jeer.
Shrink, and he deals hard blow on stinging blow,
But bid him welcome as a friend, and lo!
The jest is off - the masque will disappear.
Longlegs
by Walter De La Mare

Longlegs - he yelled "Coo-ee!"
And all across the combe
Shrill and shrill it rang - rang through
The clear green gloom.
Fairies there were a-spinning,
And a white tree-maid
Lifted her eyes, and listened
In her rain-sweet glade.
Bunnie to bunnie stamped; old Wat
Chin-deep in bracken sate;
A throstle piped, "I'm by, I'm by!"
Clear to his timid mate.
And there was Longlegs straddling,
And hearkening was he,
To distant Echo thrilling back
A thin "Coo-ee!"
To ..........
by William Wordsworth

Look at the fate of summer flowers,
Which blow at daybreak, droop e'er evensong;
And, grieved for their brief date, confess that ours,
Measured by what we are and ought to be,
Measured by all that, trembling, we foresee,
Is not so long!
If human Life do pass away,
Perishing yet more swiftly than the flower,
If we are creatures of a 'winter's' day;
What space hath Virgin's beauty to disclose
Her sweets, and triumph o'er the breathing rose?
Not even an hour!
The deepest grove whose foliage hid
The happiest lovers Arcady might boast,
Could not the entrance of this thought forbid:
O be thou wise as they, soul-gifted Maid!
Nor rate too high what must so quickly fade,
So soon be lost.
Then shall love teach some virtuous Youth
"To draw, out of the object of his eyes,"
The while on thee they gaze in simple truth,
Hues more exalted, "a refined Form,"
That dreads not age, nor suffers from the worm,
And never dies.
The Starlight Night
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare! - 
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.
Buy then! bid then! - What? - Prayer, patience, alms, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.
Upon Sappho.
by Robert Herrick

Look upon Sappho's lip, and you will swear
There is a love-like leaven rising there.
I Wonder What It Feels Like To Be Drowned?
by Robert von Ranke Graves

Look at my knees,
That island rising from the steamy seas!
The candles a tall lightship; my two hands
Are boats and barges anchored to the sands,
With mighty cliffs all round;
They're full of wine and riches from far lands....
I wonder what it feels like to be drowned?
I can make caves,
By lifting up the island and huge waves
And storms, and then with head and ears well under
Blow bubbles with a monstrous roar like thunder,
A bull-of-Bashan sound.
The seas run high and the boats split asunder....
I wonder what it feels like to be drowned?
The thin soap slips
And slithers like a shark under the ships.
My toes are on the soap-dish, that's the effect
Of my huge storms; an iron steamer's wrecked.
The soap slides round and round;
He's biting the old sailors, I expect....
I wonder what it feels like to be drowned?
The Lost Soul
by George MacDonald

Look! look there!
Send your eyes across the gray
By my finger-point away
Through the vaporous, fumy air.
Beyond the air, you see the dark?
Beyond the dark, the dawning day?
On its horizon, pray you, mark
Something like a ruined heap
Of worlds half-uncreated, that go back:
Down all the grades through which they rose
Up to harmonious life and law's repose,
Back, slow, to the awful deep
Of nothingness, mere being's lack:
On its surface, lone and bare,
Shapeless as a dumb despair,
Formless, nameless, something lies:
Can the vision in your eyes
Its idea recognize?
'Tis a poor lost soul, alack!--
Half he lived some ages back;
But, with hardly opened eyes,
Thinking him already wise,
Down he sat and wrote a book;
Drew his life into a nook;
Out of it would not arise
To peruse the letters dim,
Graven dark on his own walls;
Those, he judged, were chance-led scrawls,
Or at best no use to him.
A lamp was there for reading these;
This he trimmed, sitting at ease,
For its aid to write his book,
Never at his walls to look--
Trimmed and trimmed to one faint spark
Which went out, and left him dark.--
I will try if he can hear
Spirit words with spirit ear!
Motionless thing! who once,
Like him who cries to thee,
Hadst thy place with thy shining peers,
Thy changeful place in the changeless dance
Issuing ever in radiance
From the doors of the far eternity,
With feet that glitter and glide and glance
To the music-law that binds the free,
And sets the captive at liberty--
To the clang of the crystal spheres!
O heart for love! O thirst to drink
From the wells that feed the sea!
O hands of truth, a human link
'Twixt mine and the Father's knee!
O eyes to see! O soul to think!
O life, the brother of me!
Has Infinitude sucked back all
The individual life it gave?
Boots it nothing to cry and call?
Is thy form an empty grave?
It heareth not, brothers, the terrible thing!
Sounds no sense to its ear will bring!
Let us away, 'tis no use to tarry;
Love no light to its heart will carry!
Sting it with words, it will never shrink;
It will not repent, it cannot think!
Hath God forgotten it, alas!
Lost in eternity's lumber-room?
Will the wind of his breathing never pass
Over it through the insensate gloom?
Like a frost-killed bud on a tombstone curled,
Crumbling it lies on its crumbling world,
Sightless and deaf, with never a cry,
In the hell of its own vacuity!
See, see yon angel crossing our flight
Where the thunder vapours loom,
From his upcast pinions flashing the light
Of some outbreaking doom!
Up, brothers! away! a storm is nigh!
Smite we the wing up a steeper sky!
What matters the hail or the clashing winds,
The thunder that buffets, the lightning that blinds!
We know by the tempest we do not lie
Dead in the pits of eternity!
The Sonnets III - Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
by William Shakespeare

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb,
Of his self-love to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
But if thou live, remember'd not to be,
Die single and thine image dies with thee.
Look Down, Fair Moon
by Walt Whitman

Look down, fair moon, and bathe this scene;
Pour softly down night's nimbus floods, on faces ghastly, swollen, purple;
On the dead, on their backs, with their arms toss'd wide,
Pour down your unstinted nimbus, sacred moon.
Longing.
by Emma Lazarus

Look westward o'er the steaming rain-washed slopes,
Now satisfied with sunshine, and behold
Those lustrous clouds, as glorious as our hopes,
Softened with feathery fleece of downy gold,
In all fantastic, huddled shapes uprolled,
Floating like dreams, and melting silently,
In the blue upper regions of pure sky.
The eye is filled with beauty, and the heart
Rejoiced with sense of life and peace renewed;
And yet at such an hour as this, upstart
Vague myriad longing, restless, unsubdued,
And causeless tears from melancholy mood,
Strange discontent with earth's and nature's best,
Desires and yearnings that may find no rest.
Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - XV
by Alfred Edward Housman

Look not in my eyes, for fear
They mirror true the sight I see,
And there you find your face too clear
And love it and be lost like me.
One the long nights through must lie
Spent in star-defeated sighs,
But why should you as well as I
Perish? gaze not in my eyes.
A Grecian lad, as I hear tell,
One that many loved in vain,
Looked into a forest well
And never looked away again.
There, when the turf in springtime flowers,
With downward eye and gazes sad,
Stands amid the glancing showers
A jonquil, not a Grecian lad.
The Musical Box.
by Thomas Moore

"Look here," said Rose, with laughing eyes,
"Within this box, by magic hid,
"A tuneful Sprite imprisoned lies,
"Who sings to me whene'er he's bid.
"Tho' roving once his voice and wing,
"He'll now lie still the whole day long;
"Till thus I touch the magic spring--
"Then hark, how sweet and blithe his song!"
(A symphony.)
"Ah, Rose," I cried, "the poet's lay
"Must ne'er even Beauty's slave become;
"Thro' earth and air his song may stray,
"If all the while his heart's at home.
"And tho' in freedom's air he dwell,
"Nor bond nor chain his spirit knows,
"Touch but the spring thou knowst so well,
"And--hark, how sweet the love-song flows!"
(A symphony.)
Thus pleaded I for freedom's right;
But when young Beauty takes the field,
And wise men seek defence in flight,
The doom of poets is to yield.
No more my heart the enchantress braves,
I'm now in Beauty's prison hid;
The Sprite and I are fellow slaves,
And I, too, sing whene'er I'm bid.
To Charlotte Cushman.
by Sidney Lanier

Look where a three-point star shall weave his beam
Into the slumb'rous tissue of some stream,
Till his bright self o'er his bright copy seem
Fulfillment dropping on a come-true dream;
So in this night of art thy soul doth show
Her excellent double in the steadfast flow
Of wishing love that through men's hearts doth go:
At once thou shin'st above and shin'st below.
E'en when thou strivest there within Art's sky
(Each star must o'er a strenuous orbit fly),
Full calm thine image in our love doth lie,
A Motion glassed in a Tranquillity.
So triple-rayed, thou mov'st, yet stay'st, serene -
Art's artist, Love's dear woman, Fame's good queen!
Baltimore, 1875.
The Swan. (From The Villager's Verse-Book.)
by William Lisle Bowles

Look at the swan! how still he goes!
His neck and breast like silver gleam;
He seems majestic as he rows;
The glory of the lonely stream.
There is a glory in the war,
A glory when the warrior wears
(His visage marked with many a scar)
The laurel wet with human tears.
Such scenes no glory can impart,
With trumps, and drums, and noises rude,
Like that which fills his silent heart
Who walks with God in quietude.
The Peasants. [67]
by Friedrich Schiller

Look outside, good friend, I pray!
Two whole mortal hours
Dogs and I've out here to-day
Waited, by the powers!
Rain comes down as from a spout,
Doomsday-storms rage round about,
Dripping are my hose;
Drenched are coat and mantle too,
Coat and mantle, both just new,
Wretched plight, heaven knows!
Pretty stir's abroad to-day;
Look outside, good friend, I pray!
Ay, the devil! look outside!
Out is blown my lamp,
Gloom and night the heavens now hide,
Moon and stars decamp.
Stumbling over stock and stone,
Jerkin, coat, I've torn, ochone!
Let me pity beg
Hedges, bushes, all around,
Here a ditch, and there a mound,
Breaking arm and leg.
Gloom and night the heavens now hide
Ay, the devil! look outside!
Ay, the deuce, then look outside!
Listen to my prayer!
Praying, singing, I have tried,
Wouldst thou have me swear?
I shall be a steaming mass,
Freeze to rock and stone, alas!
If I don't remove.
All this, love, I owe to thee,
Winter-bumps thou'lt make for me,
Thou confounded love!
Cold and gloom spread far and wide!
Ay, the deuce! then look outside!
Thousand thunders! what's this now
From the window shoots?
Oh, thou witch! 'Tis dirt, I vow,
That my head salutes!
Rain, frost, hunger, tempests wild,
Bear I for the devil's child,
Now I'm vexed full sore.
Worse and worse 'tis! I'll begone.
Pray be quick, thou Evil One!
I'll remain no more.
Pretty tumult there's outside!
Fare thee well I'll homeward stride.
Long, Too Long, O Land!
by Walt Whitman

Long, too long, O land,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful, you learn'd from joys and prosperity only;
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish--advancing, grappling with direst fate, and recoiling not;
And now to conceive, and show to the world, what your children en-masse really are;
(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)
Fireflies In The Corn
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

She speaks.
Look at the little darlings in the corn!
The rye is taller than you, who think yourself
So high and mighty: look how the heads are borne
Dark and proud on the sky, like a number of knights
Passing with spears and pennants and manly scorn.
Knights indeed! - much knight I know will ride
With his head held high-serene against the sky!
Limping and following rather at my side
Moaning for me to love him! - Oh darling rye
How I adore you for your simple pride!
And the dear, dear fireflies wafting in between
And over the swaying corn-stalks, just above
All the dark-feathered helmets, like little green
Stars come low and wandering here for love
Of these dark knights, shedding their delicate sheen!
I thank you I do, you happy creatures, you dears
Riding the air, and carrying all the time
Your little lanterns behind you! Ah, it cheers
My soul to see you settling and trying to climb
The corn-stalks, tipping with fire the spears.
All over the dim corn's motion, against the blue
Dark sky of night, a wandering glitter, a swarm
Of questing brilliant souls going out with their true
Proud knights to battle! Sweet, how I warm
My poor, my perished soul with the sight of you!
Look Now On That Adventurer Who Hath Paid
by William Wordsworth

Look now on that Adventurer who hath paid
His vows to Fortune; who, in cruel slight
Of virtuous hope, of liberty, and right,
Hath followed wheresoe'er a way was made
By the blind Goddess, ruthless, undismayed;
And so hath gained at length a prosperous height,
Round which the elements of worldly might
Beneath his haughty feet, like clouds, are laid.
O joyless power that stands by lawless force!
Curses are 'his' dire portion, scorn, and hate,
Internal darkness and unquiet breath;
And, if old judgments keep their sacred course,
Him from that height shall Heaven precipitate
By violent and ignominious death.
Miscellaneous Sonnets, 1842 - VI - Concluded
by William Wordsworth

Long-favoured England! be not thou misled
By monstrous theories of alien growth,
Lest alien frenzy seize thee, waxing wroth,
Self-smitten till thy garments reek dyed red
With thy own blood, which tears in torrents shed
Fail to wash out, tears flowing ere thy troth
Be plighted, not to ease but sullen sloth,
Or wan despair the ghost of false hope fled
Into a shameful grave. Among thy youth,
My Country! if such warning be held dear,
Then shall a Veteran's heart be thrilled with joy,
One who would gather from eternal truth,
For time and season, rules that work to cheer
Not scourge, to save the People not destroy.
Longlegs
by Walter De La Mare

Longlegs - he yelled 'Coo-ee!'
And all across the combe
Shrill and shrill it rang - rang through
The clear green gloom.
Fairies there were a-spinning,
And a white tree-maid
Lifted her eyes, and listened
In her rain-sweet glade.
Bunnie to bunnie stamped; old Wat
Chin-deep in bracken sate;
A throstle piped, 'I'm by, I'm by!'
Clear to his timid mate.
And there was Longlegs, straddling,
And hearkening was he,
To distant Echo thrilling back
A thin 'Coo-ee!'
An Evening Song.
by Sidney Lanier

Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands,
And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea,
How long they kiss in sight of all the lands.
Ah! longer, longer, we.
Now in the sea's red vintage melts the sun,
As Egypt's pearl dissolved in rosy wine,
And Cleopatra night drinks all. 'Tis done,
Love, lay thine hand in mine.
Come forth, sweet stars, and comfort heaven's heart;
Glimmer, ye waves, round else unlighted sands.
O night! divorce our sun and sky apart
Never our lips, our hands.
1876.
The Two Shakespeare Tercentenaries: Of Birth, 1864: Of Death, 1916.
by Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell

TO SHAKESPEARE
Longer than thine, than thine,
Is now my time of life; and thus thy years
Seem to be clasped and harboured within mine.
O how ignoble this my clasp appears!
Thy unprophetic birth,
Thy darkling death: living I might have seen
That cradle, marked those labours, closed that earth.
O first, O last, O infinite between!
Now that my life has shared
Thy dedicated date, O mortal, twice,
To what all-vain embrace shall be compared
My lean enclosure of thy paradise?
To ignorant arms that fold
A poet to a foolish breast?    The Line,
That is not, with the world within its hold?
So, days with days, my days encompass thine.
Child, Stripling, Man-the sod.
Might I talk little language to thee, pore
On thy last silence?    O thou city of God,
My waste lies after thee, and lies before.
The Rainbow.
by Robert Herrick

Look how the rainbow doth appear
But in one only hemisphere;
So likewise after our decease
No more is seen the arch of peace.
That cov'nant's here, the under-bow,
That nothing shoots but war and woe.
False Poets And True. - To Wordsworth.
by Thomas Hood

Look how the lark soars upward and is gone,
Turning a spirit as he nears the sky!
His voice is heard, but body there is none
To fix the vague excursions of the eye.
So, poets' songs are with us, tho' they die
Obscured, and hid by death's oblivious shroud,
And Earth inherits the rich melody
Like raining music from the morning cloud.
Yet, few there be who pipe so sweet and loud
Their voices reach us through the lapse of space:
The noisy day is deafen'd by a crowd
Of undistinguished birds, a twittering race;
But only lark and nightingale forlorn
Fill up the silences of night and morn.
Look Back On Time With Kindly Eyes,
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Look back on time with kindly eyes,
He doubtless did his best;
How softly sinks his trembling sun
In human nature's west!
Look You, I'll Go Pray
by Vachel Lindsay

Look you, I'll go pray,
My shame is crying,
My soul is gray and faint,
My faith is dying.
Look you, I'll go pray - 
"Sweet Mary, make me clean,
Thou rainstorm of the soul,
Thou wine from worlds unseen."
On Chloris Being Ill.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "Ay wakin', O."
I.
Long, long the night,
Heavy comes the morrow,
While my soul's delight
Is on her bed of sorrow.
Can I cease to care?
Can I cease to languish?
While my darling fair
Is on the couch of anguish?
II.
Every hope is fled,
Every fear is terror;
Slumber even I dread,
Every dream is horror.
III.
Hear me, Pow'rs divine!
Oh, in pity hear me!
Take aught else of mine,
But my Chloris spare me!
Long, long the night,
Heavy comes the morrow,
While my soul's delight
Is on her bed of sorrow.
Chantrey's Sleeping Children.
by William Lisle Bowles

Look at those sleeping children; softly tread,
Lest thou do mar their dream, and come not nigh
Till their fond mother, with a kiss, shall cry,
'Tis morn, awake! awake! Ah! they are dead!
Yet folded in each other's arms they lie,
So still - oh, look! so still and smilingly,
So breathing and so beautiful, they seem,
As if to die in youth were but to dream
Of spring and flowers! Of flowers? Yet nearer stand - 
There is a lily in one little hand,
Broken, but not faded yet,
As if its cup with tears were wet.
So sleeps that child, not faded, though in death,
And seeming still to hear her sister's breath,
As when she first did lay her head to rest
Gently on that sister's breast,
And kissed her ere she fell asleep!
The archangel's trump alone shall wake that slumber deep.
Take up those flowers that fell
From the dead hand, and sigh a long farewell!
Your spirits rest in bliss!
Yet ere with parting prayers we say,
Farewell for ever to the insensate clay,
Poor maid, those pale lips we will kiss!
Ah! 'tis cold marble! Artist, who hast wrought
This work of nature, feeling, and of thought;
Thine, Chantrey, be the fame
That joins to immortality thy name.
For these sweet children that so sculptured rest - 
A sister's head upon a sister's breast - 
Age after age shall pass away,
Nor shall their beauty fade, their forms decay.
For here is no corruption; the cold worm
Can never prey upon that beauteous form:
This smile of death that fades not, shall engage
The deep affections of each distant age!
Mothers, till ruin the round world hath rent,
Shall gaze with tears upon the monument!
And fathers sigh, with half-suspended breath:
How sweetly sleep the innocent in death!
July 2, 1826.
Look From Thy Lattice, Love.
by George Pope Morris

Look from thy lattice, love--
Listen to me!
The cool, balmy breeze
Is abroad on the sea!
The moon, like a queen,
Roams her realms above,
And naught is awake
But the spirit of love.
Ere morn's golden light
Tips the hills with its ray,
Away o'er the waters--
Away and away!
Then look from thy lattice, love--
Listen to me.
While the moon lights the sky,
And the breeze curls the sea!
Look from thy lattice, love--
Listen to me!
In the voyage of life,
Love our pilot will be!
He'll sit at the helm
Wherever we rove,
And steer by the load-star
He kindled above!
His gem-girdled shallop
Will cut the bright spray,
Or skim, like a bird,
O'er the waters away!
Then look from thy lattice, love--
Listen to me,
While the moon lights the sky,
And the breeze curls the sea!
Sonnet. On Receiving A Gift.
by Thomas Hood

Look how the golden ocean shines above
Its pebbly stones, and magnifies their girth;
So does the bright and blessed light of Love
Its own things glorify, and raise their worth.
As weeds seem flowers beneath the flattering brine,
And stones like gems, and gems as gems indeed,
Ev'n so our tokens shine; nay, they outshine
Pebbles and pearls, and gems and coral weed;
For where be ocean waves but half so clear,
So calmly constant, and so kindly warm,
As Love's most mild and glowing atmosphere,
That hath no dregs to be upturn'd by storm?
Thus, sweet, thy gracious gifts are gifts of price,
And more than gold to doting Avarice.
Try Again.
by John Hartley

Look around and see the great men
Who have risen from the poor
Some are judges, some are statesmen,
Ther's a chance for you I'm sure.
Don't give in because you're weary,
Pleasure oft is bought by pain;
If unlucky, still be cheery,
Up and at it! try again.