DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
I Saw The Moon Rise Clear. A Finland Love Song.
by Thomas Moore

I saw the moon rise clear
O'er hills and vales of snow
Nor told my fleet reindeer
The track I wished to go.
Yet quick he bounded forth;
For well my reindeer knew
I've but one path on earth--
The path which leads to you.
The gloom that winter cast,
How soon the heart forgets,
When summer brings, at last,
Her sun that never sets!
So dawned my love for you;
So, fixt thro' joy and pain,
Than summer sun more true,
'Twill never set again.
The Angel and the Clown
by Vachel Lindsay

I saw wild domes and bowers
And smoking incense towers
And mad exotic flowers
In Illinois.
Where ragged ditches ran
Now springs of Heaven began
Celestial drink for man
In Illinois.
There stood beside the town
Beneath its incense-crown
An angel and a clown
In Illinois.
He was as Clowns are:
She was snow and star
With eyes that looked afar
In Illinois.
I asked, "How came this place
Of antique Asian grace
Amid our callow race
In Illinois?"
Said Clown and Angel fair:
"By laughter and by prayer,
By casting off all care
In Illinois."
Says
by Walt Whitman

I say whatever tastes sweet to the most perfect person, that is finally right.
I say nourish a great intellect, a great brain;
If I have said anything to the contrary, I hereby retract it.
I say man shall not hold property in man;
I say the least developed person on earth is just as important and sacred to himself or herself, as the most developed person is to himself or herself.
I say where liberty draws not the blood out of slavery, there slavery draws the blood out of liberty,
I say the word of the good old cause in These States, and resound it hence over the world.
I say the human shape or face is so great, it must never be made ridiculous;
I say for ornaments nothing outre can be allowed,
And that anything is most beautiful without ornament,
And that exaggerations will be sternly revenged in your own physiology, and in other persons' physiology also;
And I say that clean-shaped children can be jetted and conceived only where natural forms prevail in public, and the human face and form are never caricatured;
And I say that genius need never more be turned to romances,
(For facts properly told, how mean appear all romances.)
I say the word of lands fearing nothing I will have no other land;
I say discuss all and expose all I am for every topic openly;
I say there can be no salvation for These States without innovators without free tongues, and ears willing to hear the tongues;
And I announce as a glory of These States, that they respectfully listen to propositions, reforms, fresh views and doctrines, from successions of men and women,
Each age with its own growth.
I have said many times that materials and the Soul are great, and that all depends on physique;
Now I reverse what I said, and affirm that all depends on the 'sthetic or intellectual,
And that criticism is great and that refinement is greatest of all;
And I affirm now that the mind governs and that all depends on the mind.
With one man or woman (no matter which one I even pick out the lowest,)
With him or her I now illustrate the whole law;
I say that every right, in politics or what-not, shall be eligible to that one man or woman, on the same terms as any.
Waves
by Madison Julius Cawein

I saw the daughters of the ocean dance
With wind and tide, and heard them on the rocks:
White hands they waved me, tossing sunlit locks,
Green as the light an emerald holds in trance.
Their music bound me as with necromance
Of mermaid beauty, that for ever mocks,
And lured me as destruction lures wild flocks
Of light-led gulls and storm-tossed cormorants.
Nearer my feet they crept: I felt their lips:
Their hands of foam that caught at me, to press,
As once they pressed Leander: and, straightway,
I saw the monster-ending of their hips;
The cruelty hid in their soft caress;
The siren-passion ever more to slay.
Old Boats
by Theodosia Garrison

I saw the old sea captain in his city daughter's house,
Shaved till his chin was pink, and brushed till his hair was flat,
In a broadcloth suit and varnished boots and a collar up to his ears.
(I'd seen him last with a slicker on and a tied down oilskin hat.)
And it happened that I went home last June, and saw in Mallory's yard
The old red dory that sprung a leak a couple of years ago,
Dragged out of good salt water and braced to stand in the grass
And be filled with dirt from stem to stern, where posies and such could grow.
Painted to beat the band, with vines strung over the sides
And red geraniums in the bow,--a boat that was built for water
Made into a flower garden. I looked, but I didn't laugh,
For I thought of the old sea captain living in town with his daughter.
Contrasts
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I see the tall church steeples - 
They reach so far, so far;
But the eyes of my heart see the world's great mart
Where the starving people are.
I hear the church bells ringing
Their chimes on the morning air;
But my soul's sad ear is hurt to hear
The poor man's cry of despair.
Thicker and thicker the churches,
Nearer and nearer the sky - 
But alack for their creeds while the poor man's needs
Grow deeper as years roll by!
The Prairie
by Rudyard Kipling

I see the grass shake in the sun for leagues on either hand,
I see a river loop and run about a treeless land,
An empty plain, a steely pond, a distance diamond-clear,
And low blue naked hills beyond. And what is that to fear?"
"Go softly by that river-side or, when you would depart,
You'll find its every winding tied and knotted round your heart.
Be wary as the seasons pass, or you may ne'er outrun
The wind that sets that yellowed grass a-shiver 'neath the Sun."
I hear the summer storm outblown, the drip of the grateful wheat.
I hear the hard trail telephone a far-off horse's feet.
I hear the horns of Autumn blow to the wild-fowl overhead;
And I hear the hush before the snow. And what is that to dread?"
"Take heed what spell the lightning weaves, what charm the echoes shape,
Or, bound among a million sheaves, your soul shall not escape.
Bar home the door of summer nights lest those high planets drown
The memory of near delights in all the longed-for town."
"What need have I to long or fear? Now, friendly, I behold
My faithful seasons robe the year in silver and in gold.
Now I possess and am possessed of the land where I would be,
And the curve of half Earth's generous breast shall soothe and ravish me!"
Seagulls
by Paul Cameron Brown

I see many thoughts from a window.
Seagulls in the fashion of summer
and leaves as they quit the year.
Sense impressions, if they are this,
are only images
of what we refuse to follow.
Long Island Sound.
by Emma Lazarus

I see it as it looked one afternoon
In August, - by a fresh soft breeze o'erblown.
The swiftness of the tide, the light thereon,
A far-off sail, white as a crescent moon.
The shining waters with pale currents strewn,
The quiet fishing smacks, the Eastern cove,
The semi-circle of its dark, green grove.
The luminous grasses, and the merry sun
In the grave sky; the sparkle far and wide,
Laughter of unseen children, cheerful chirp
Of crickets, and low lisp of rippling tide,
Light summer clouds fantastical as sleep
Changing unnoted while I gazed thereon.
All these fair sounds and sights I made my own.
Shakspeare
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

I see all human wits
Are measured but a few;
Unmeasured still my Shakspeare sits,
Lone as the blessed Jew.
To...
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

I send you here a sort of allegory'
For you will understand it'of a soul,
A sinful soul possess'd of many gifts,
A spacious garden full of flowering weeds,
A glorious devil, large in heart and brain,
That did love beauty only'beauty seen
In all varieties of mould and mind'
And knowledge for its beauty; or if good,
Good only for its beauty, seeing not
That Beauty, Good, and Knowledge are three sisters
That doat upon each other, friends to man,
Living together under the same roof,
And never can be sunder'd without tears.
And he that shuts Love out, in turn shall be
Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie
Howling in outer darkness. Not for this
Was common clay ta'en from the common earth
Moulded by God, and temper'd with the tears
Of angels to the perfect shape of man.
Nursery Rhyme. DXCII. Accumulative Stories.
by Unknown

I sell you the key of the king's garden:
I sell you the string that ties the key, & c.
I sell you the rat that gnawed the string, & c.
I sell you the cat that caught the rat, & c.
I sell you the dog that bit the cat, & c.
Song From Heine
by Thomas Hardy

I scanned her picture dreaming,
Till each dear line and hue
Was imaged, to my seeming,
As if it lived anew.
Her lips began to borrow
Their former wondrous smile;
Her fair eyes, faint with sorrow,
Grew sparkling as erstwhile.
Such tears as often ran not
Ran then, my love, for thee;
And O, believe I cannot
That thou are lost to me!
Arms And The Man. - The Dead Statesman.
by James Barron Hope

I see his Shape who should have led these ranks - 
GARFIELD I see whose presence had evoked
The stormy rapture of a Nation's thanks - 
His chariot stands unyoked!
Unyoked and empty, and the Charioteer
To Fame's expanded arms has headlong rushed
Ending the glories of a grand career,
While all the world stood hushed.
The thunder of his wheels is done, but he
Sustained by patience, fortitude, and grace - 
A Christian Hero - from the struggle free - 
Has won the Christian's race!
His wheel-tracks stop not in the Valley cold
But upward lead, and on, and up, and higher,
Till Hope can realize and Faith behold
His chariot mount in fire!
Therefore, my Countrymen, lift up your hearts!
Therefore, my Countrymen, be not cast down!
He lives with those who well have done their parts,
And God bestowed his crown!
And yet another form to-day I miss; - 
Grigsby the scholar, good, and pure, and wise,
Who now, perchance, from scenes of perfect bliss
Looks down with tender eyes.
Where his great friend, through life great Winthrop stands,
Winthrop, whose gift, in life's departing hours,
Went to the dying Old Virginian's hands
Who died amid those flowers.[1]
Prayers change to blooms, the ancient Rabbins taught;
So his, then, seemed to blossom forth and glow,
As if his supplicating soul had brought
Sandalphon down below.
But, happily, that Winthrop stood to-day,
The patriot, scholar, orator, and sage,
To tell the meaning of this grand array
And vindicate an Age.
That Era's life and meaning his to teach,
To him the parchments, but the shell to me,
His voice the voice of billows on the beach
Wherein we heard the sea.
My voice the voice of some sequestered stream
Which only boasts, as on its waters glide,
That, here and there, it shows a broken gleam
Of pictures on its tide.
To A Lost Love
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

I seek no more to bridge the gulf that lies
Betwixt our separate ways;
For vainly my heart prays,
Hope droops her head and dies;
I see the sad, tired answer in your eyes.
I did not heed, and yet the stars were clear;
Dreaming that love could mate
Lives grown so separate;--
But at the best, my dear,
I see we should not have been very near.
I knew the end before the end was nigh:
The stars have grown so plain;
Vainly I sigh, in vain
For things that come to some,
But unto you and me will never come.
Peace.
by John Clare

I seek for Peace--I care not where 'tis found:
On this rude scene in briars and brambles drest,
If peace dwells here, 'tis consecrated ground,
And owns the power to give my bosom rest;
To soothe the rankling of each bitter wound,
Gall'd by rude Envy's adder-biting jest,
And worldly strife;--ah, I am looking round
For Peace's hermitage, can it be found?--
Surely that breeze that o'er the blue wave curl'd
Did whisper soft, "Thy wanderings here are blest."
How different from the language of the world!
Nor jeers nor taunts in this still spot are given:
Its calm's a balsam to a soul distrest;
And, where Peace smiles, a wilderness is heaven.
Jerusalem: I See The Four-fold Man, The Humanity In Deadly Sleep
by William Blake

I see the Four-fold Man, The Humanity in deadly sleep
And its fallen Emanation, the Spectre and its cruel Shadow.
I see the Past, Present and Future existing all at once
Before me. O Divine Spirit, sustain me on thy wings,
That I may awake Albion from his long and cold repose;
For Bacon and Newton, sheath'd in dismal steel, their terrors hang
Like iron scourges over Albion: reasonings like vast serpents
Infold around my limbs, bruising my minute articulations.
I turn my eyes to the schools and universities of Europe
And there behold the Loom of Locke, whose Woof rages dire,
Wash'd by the Water-wheels of Newton: black the cloth
In heavy wreaths folds over every nation: cruel works
Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic
Moving by compulsion each other, not as those in Eden, which,
Wheel within wheel, in freedom revolve in harmony and peace.
I See Around Me Tombstones Grey
by Emily Bronte

I see around me tombstones grey
Stretching their shadows far away.
Beneath the turf my footsteps tread
Lie low and lone the silent dead,
Beneath the turf, beneath the mould,
Forever dark, forever cold,
And my eyes cannot hold the tears
That memory hoards from vanished years
For Time and Death and Mortal pain
Give wounds that will not heal again,
Let me remember half the woe
I've seen and heard and felt below,
And Heaven itself, so pure and blest,
Could never give my spirit rest,
Sweet land of light! thy children fair
Know nought akin to our despair,
Nor have they felt, nor can they tell
What tenants haunt each mortal cell,
What gloomy guests we hold within,
Torments and madness, tears and sin!
Well, may they live in ectasy
Their long eternity of joy;
At least we would not bring them down
With us to weep, with us to groan,
No, Earth would wish no other sphere
To taste her cup of sufferings drear;
She turns from Heaven with a careless eye
And only mourns that we must die!
Ah mother, what shall comfort thee
In all this boundless misery?
To cheer our eager eyes a while
We see thee smile; how fondly smile!
But who reads not through that tender glow
Thy deep, unutterable woe:
Indeed no dazzling land above
Can cheat thee of thy children's love.
We all, in life's departing shine,
Our last dear longings blend with thine;
And struggle still and strive to trace
With clouded gaze, thy darling face.
We would not leave our native home
For any world beyond the Tomb.
No, rather on thy kindly breast
Let us be laid in lasting rest;
Or waken but to share with thee
A mutual immortality.
Robert Burns
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I see amid the fields of Ayr
A ploughman, who, in foul and fair,
Sings at his task
So clear, we know not if it is
The laverock's song we hear, or his,
Nor care to ask.
For him the ploughing of those fields
A more ethereal harvest yields
Than sheaves of grain;
Songs flush with Purple bloom the rye,
The plover's call, the curlew's cry,
Sing in his brain.
Touched by his hand, the wayside weed
Becomes a flower; the lowliest reed
Beside the stream
Is clothed with beauty; gorse and grass
And heather, where his footsteps pass,
The brighter seem.
He sings of love, whose flame illumes
The darkness of lone cottage rooms;
He feels the force,
The treacherous undertow and stress
Of wayward passions, and no less
The keen remorse.
At moments, wrestling with his fate,
His voice is harsh, but not with hate;
The brushwood, hung
Above the tavern door, lets fall
Its bitter leaf, its drop of gall
Upon his tongue.
But still the music of his song
Rises o'er all elate and strong;
Its master-chords
Are Manhood, Freedom, Brotherhood,
Its discords but an interlude
Between the words.
And then to die so young and leave
Unfinished what he might achieve!
Yet better sure
Is this, than wandering up and down
An old man in a country town,
Infirm and poor.
For now he haunts his native land
As an immortal youth; his hand
Guides every plough;
He sits beside each ingle-nook,
His voice is in each rushing brook,
Each rustling bough.
His presence haunts this room to-night,
A form of mingled mist and light
From that far coast.
Welcome beneath this roof of mine!
Welcome! this vacant chair is thine,
Dear guest and ghost!
Resolution
by Victoria Mary Sackville-West

I see the work of others, and my heart
Sinks as my own achievement I compare.
I will not be irresolute, nor despair,
But battle strongly for my struggling art
Convinced against conviction that my part
Equally with my masters I can bear;
Although their monuments are very fair,
Enriched with statues, and I stand apart
And gaze upon my little heap of stones
Which I was given to build with, very few
As yet laid into place, but I will lay
Blind to these marble monuments and thrones,
Building as though I confidently knew
My ultimate end,, a stone in place each day.
Contrasts
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I see the tall church steeples,
They reach so far, so far,
But the eyes of my heart see the world's great mart,
Where the starving people are.
I hear the church bells ringing
Their chimes on the morning air;
But my soul's sad ear is hurt to hear
The poor man's cry of despair.
Thicker and thicker the churches,
Nearer and nearer the sky
But alack for their creeds while the poor man's needs
Grow deeper as years roll by.
The Unborn
by Edward Dyson

I see grim War, a bestial thing,
with swinish tusks to tear;
Upon his back the vampires cling,
Thin vipers twine among his hair,
The tiger's greed is in his jowl,
His eye is red with bloody tears,
And every obscene beast and fowl
From out his leprous visage leers.
In glowing pride fell fiends arise,
And, trampled, God the Father lies.
Not God alone the Demon slays;
The hills that swell to Heaven drip
With ooze of murdered men; for days
The dead drift with the drifting ship,
And far as eye may see the plain
Is cumbered deep with slaughtered ones,
Contorted to the shape of pain,
Dissolving 'neath the callous suns,
And driven in his foetid breath
Still ply the harvesters of Death.
He sits astride an engine dread,
And at his touch the awful ball
Across the quaking world is sped,
I see a million creatures fall.
Beyond the soldiers on the hill,
The mother by her bassinet.
The bolt its mission must fulfill,
And in the years that are not yet
Creation by the blow is shorn
Of dimpled hosts of babes unborn!
The Charter Oak.
by Hattie Howard

I seem to see the old tree stand,
Its sturdy, giant form
A spectacle remembered, and
A pilgrim-shrine for all the land
Before it met the storm.
Unnumbered gales the tree defied;
It towered like a king
Above his courtiers, reaching wide,
And sheltering scions at its side
As with protecting wing.
Revered as one among the trees
To mark the seasons born,
To watchful aborigines
It told by leafy indices
The time of planting corn.
The landmark of the past is gone,
Its site is overgrown;
A mansion overlooks the lawn
Where history is traced upon
A parapet of stone.
Shall e'er Connecticut forget
What unto it we owe - 
How Wadsworth coped with Andros' threat,
And tyranny, in council met,
Outwitted years ago?
Aye, but it rouses loyal spunk
To think of that old tree!
Its stately stem, its spacious trunk
By Nature robbed of pith and punk
To guard our liberty.
But of the oak long-perished, why
Is earth forever full?
For, like the loaf and fish supply,
Its stock of fiber, tough and dry,
Seems inexhaustible.
Rare souvenirs the stranger sees - 
Who never sees a joke - 
And innocently dreams that these,
From knotty, gnarly, scraggy trees,
Were once the Charter Oak!
A Procession Of Dead Days
by Thomas Hardy

I see the ghost of a perished day;
I know his face, and the feel of his dawn:
'Twas he who took me far away
To a spot strange and gray:
Look at me, Day, and then pass on,
But come again: yes, come anon!
Enters another into view;
His features are not cold or white,
But rosy as a vein seen through:
Too soon he smiles adieu.
Adieu, O ghost-day of delight;
But come and grace my dying sight.
Enters the day that brought the kiss:
He brought it in his foggy hand
To where the mumbling river is,
And the high clematis;
It lent new colour to the land,
And all the boy within me manned.
Ah, this one. Yes, I know his name,
He is the day that wrought a shine
Even on a precinct common and tame,
As 'twere of purposed aim.
He shows him as a rainbow sign
Of promise made to me and mine.
The next stands forth in his morning clothes,
And yet, despite their misty blue,
They mark no sombre custom-growths
That joyous living loathes,
But a meteor act, that left in its queue
A train of sparks my lifetime through.
I almost tremble at his nod -
This next in train who looks at me
As I were slave, and he were god
Wielding an iron rod.
I close my eyes; yet still is he
In front there, looking mastery.
In the similitude of a nurse
The phantom of the next one comes:
I did not know what better or worse
Chancings might bless or curse
When his original glossed the thrums
Of ivy, bringing that which numbs.
Yes; trees were turning in their sleep
Upon their windy pillows of gray
When he stole in. Silent his creep
On the grassed eastern steep . . .
I shall not soon forget that day,
And what his third hour took away!
The Meeting.
by Friedrich Schiller

I see her still - by her fair train surrounded,
The fairest of them all, she took her place;
Afar I stood, by her bright charms confounded,
For, oh! they dazzled with their heavenly grace.
With awe my soul was filled - with bliss unbounded,
While gazing on her softly radiant face;
But soon, as if up-borne on wings of fire,
My fingers 'gan to sweep the sounding lyre.
The thoughts that rushed across me in that hour,
The words I sang, I'd fain once more invoke;
Within, I felt a new-awakened power,
That each emotion of my bosom spoke.
My soul, long time enchained in sloth's dull bower,
Through all its fetters now triumphant broke,
And brought to light unknown, harmonious numbers,
Which in its deepest depths, had lived in slumbers.
And when the chords had ceased their gentle sighing,
And when my soul rejoined its mortal frame,
I looked upon her face and saw love vieing,
In every feature, with her maiden shame.
And soon my ravished heart seemed heavenward flying,
When her soft whisper o'er my senses came.
The blissful seraphs' choral strains alone
Can glad mine ear again with that sweet tone,
Of that fond heart, which, pining silently,
Ne'er ventures to express its feelings lowly,
The real and modest worth is known to me - 
'Gainst cruel fate I'll guard its cause so holy.
Most blest of all, the meek one's lot shall be - 
Love's flowers by love's own hand are gathered solely - 
The fairest prize to that fond heart is due,
That feels it, and that beats responsive, too!
Sonnets From The Portuguese XXX
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I see thine image through my tears to-night,
And yet to-day I saw thee smiling. How
Refer the cause? Belov'd, is it thou
Or I, who makes me sad? The acolyte
Amid the chanted joy and thankful rite
May so fall flat, with pale insensate brow,
On the altar-stair. I hear thy voice and vow,
Perplexed, uncertain, since thou art out of sight,
As he, in his swooning ears, the choir's amen.
Belov'd, dost thou love? or did I see all
The glory as I dreamed, and fainted when
Too vehement light dilated my ideal,
For my soul's eyes? Will that light come again,
As now these tears come, falling hot and real?
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet LXXXV
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

I see the house, (my heart thy selfe containe!)
Beware full sailes drowne not thy tottring barge,
Least ioy, by nature apt sprites to enlarge,
Thee to thy wracke beyond thy limits straine;
Nor do like Lords whose weake confused braine
Not 'pointing to fit folkes each vndercharge,
While euerie office themselues will discharge,
With doing all, leaue nothing done but paine.
But giue apt seruants their due place: let eyes
See beauties totall summe summ'd in her face;
Let eares heare speach which wit to wonder ties;
Let breath sucke vp those sweetes; let armes embrace
The globe of weale, lips Loues indentures make;
Thou but of all the kingly tribute take.