DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Indolence. [1]
by James Barron Hope

I turn aside; and, in the pause, might start
As Mem'ry's elbow leans upon Time's Chart,
Which shows, alas! how soon all men must glide
Over meridians on life's ocean tide - 
Meridians showing how both youth and sage
Are sailing northward to the zone of age:
On to an atmosphere of gloom I wist,
Where mariners are lost in melancholy mist.
But gayer thoughts, like spring-tide swallows, dart
Through youth's brave mind and animate its heart.
But Indolence is seen a pallid Ruth - 
A timid gleaner in the fields of youth - 
A wretched gath'rer of the scattered grain
Left by the reapers who have swept the plain;
But with no Boaz standing by the while,
To watch its figure with approving smile.
Lucy III
by William Wordsworth

I travell'd among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.
'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.
Among thy mountains did I feel
The joy of my desire;
And she I cherish'd turn'd her wheel
Beside an English fire.
Thy mornings showed, thy nights conceal'd,
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy's eyes survey'd.
In The Orchard.
by Muriel Stuart

"I thought you loved me."    "No, it was only fun."
"When we stood there, closer than all?"    "Well, the harvest moon
"Was shining and queer in your hair, and it turned my head."
"That made you?"    "Yes."    "Just the moon and the light it made
"Under the tree?"    "Well, your mouth, too."    "Yes, my mouth?"
"And the quiet there that sang like the drum in the booth.
"You shouldn't have danced like that."    "Like what?"    "So close,
"With your head turned up, and the flower in your hair, a rose
"That smelt all warm."    "I loved you.    I thought you knew
"I wouldn't have danced like that with any but you."
"I didn't know.    I thought you knew it was fun."
"I thought it was love you meant."    "Well, it's done."    "Yes, it's done.
"I've seen boys stone a blackbird, and watched them drown
"A kitten ... it clawed at the reeds, and they pushed it down
"Into the pool while it screamed.    Is that fun, too?"
"Well, boys are like that ... Your brothers..."    "Yes, I know.
"But you, so lovely and strong!    Not you!    Not you!"
"They don't understand it's cruel.    It's only a game."
"And are girls fun, too?"    "No, still in a way it's the same.
"It's queer and lovely to have a girl..."    "Go on."
"It makes you mad for a bit to feel she's your own,
"And you laugh and kiss her, and maybe you give her a ring,
"But it's only in fun."    "But I gave you everything."
"Well, you shouldn't have done it.    You know what a fellow thinks
"When a girl does that."    "Yes, he talks of her over his drinks
"And calls her a - "    "Stop that now.    I thought you knew."
"But it wasn't with anyone else.    It was only you."
"How did I know?    I thought you wanted it too.
"I thought you were like the rest.    Well, what's to be done?"
"To be done?"    "Is it all right?"    "Yes."    "Sure?"    "Yes, but why?"
"I don't know.    I thought you were going to cry.
"You said you had something to tell me."    "Yes, I know.
"It wasn't anything really ... I think I'll go."
"Yes, it's late.    There's thunder about, a drop of rain
"Fell on my hand in the dark.    I'll see you again
"At the dance next week.    You're sure that everything's right?"
"Yes."    "Well, I'll be going."    "Kiss me..."    "Good night." ... "Good night."
Stanzas For Music
by William Lisle Bowles

I trust the happy hour will come,
That shall to peace thy breast restore;
And that we two, beloved friend,
Shall one day meet to part no more.
It grieves me most, that parting thus,
All my soul feels I dare not speak;
And when I turn me from thy sight,
The tears in silence wet my cheek.
Yet I look forward to the time,
That shall each wound of sorrow heal;
When I may press thee to my heart,
And tell thee all that now I feel.
Corona Inutilis
by James Lister Cuthbertson

I twined a wreath of heather white
To bind my lady's hair,
And deemed her locks in even light
Would well the burden bear;
But when I saw the tresses brown,
And found the face so fair,
I tore the wreath, and left the crown
Of beauty only there.
Questionings.
by Kate Seymour Maclean

I touch but the things which are near;
The heavens are too high for my reach:
In shadow and symbol and creed,
I discern not the soul from the deed,
Nor the thought hidden under, from speech;
And the thing which I know not I fear.
I dare not despair nor despond,
Though I grope in the dark for the dawn:
Birth and laughter, and bubbles of breath,
And tears, and the blank void of death,
Round each its penumbra is drawn,--
I touch them,--I see not beyond.
What voice speaking solemn and slow,
Before the beginning for me,
From the mouth of the primal First Cause,
Shall teach me the thing that I was,
Shall point out the thing I shall be,
And show me the path that I go?
Were there any that missed me, or sought,
In the cycles and centuries fled.
Ere my soul had a place among men?--
Even so, unremembered again
I shall lie in the dust with the dead,
And my name shall be heard not, nor thought.
Yea rather,--from out the abyss,
Where the stars sit in silence and light,
When the ashes and dust of our world
Are like leaves in their faces up-whirled,--
What orb shall look down through the night,
And take note of the quenching of this?
Yea, beyond--in the heavens of space
Where Jehovah sits, absolute Lord,
Who made out of nothing the whole
Round world, and man's sentient soul--
Will He crush, like a creature abhorred,
What He fashioned with infinite grace
In His own awful image, and made
Quick with the flame of His breath,--
Which He saw and behold it was good?--
Ah man! thou hast waded through blood
And crime down to darkness and death,
Since thou stood'st before Him unafraid.
My life falls away like a flower
Day by day,--dispersed of the wind
Its vague perfume, nor taketh it root,
Ripening seeds for the sower, or fruit
To make me at one with my kind,
And give me my work, and my hour
No creed for my hunger sufficed,
Though I clung to them, each after other,
They slipped from my passionate hold,--
The prophets, the martyrs of old,--
Thy pitying face, Mary Mother,--
Thy thorn-circled forehead, O Christ!
Pilgrim sandalled, the deserts have known
The track of my wandering feet,
Where dead saints and martyrs have trod,
To search for the pure faith of God,
Making life with its bitterness sweet,
And death the white gate to a throne.
O Thou, who the wine-press hast trod,
O sorrowful--stricken--betrayed,--
Thy cross o'er my spirit prevails;
In Thy hands with the print of the nails,
My life with its burdens is laid,--
O Christ--Thou art sole--Thou art God!
Excuse
by Matthew Arnold

I too have suffer'd: yet I know
She is not cold, though she seems so:
She is not cold, she is not light;
But our ignoble souls lack might.
She smiles and smiles, and will not sigh,
While we for hopeless passion die;
Yet she could love, those eyes declare,
Were but men nobler than they are.
Eagerly once her gracious ken
Was turn'd upon the sons of men.
But light the serious visage grew,
She look'd, and smiled, and saw them through.
Our petty souls, our strutting wits,
Our labour'd puny passion-fits,
Ah, may she scorn them still, till we
Scorn them as bitterly as she!
Yet oh, that Fate would let her see
One of some worthier race than we;
One for whose sake she once might prove
How deeply she who scorns can love.
His eyes be like the starry lights,
His voice like sounds of summer nights,
In all his lovely mien let pierce
The magic of the universe.
And she to him will reach her hand,
And gazing in his eyes will, stand,
And know her friend, and weep for glee,
And cry, Long, long I've look'd for thee.,
Then will she weep, with smiles, till then,
Coldly she mocks the sons of men.
Till then her lovely eyes maintain
Their gay, unwavering, deep disdain.
Sonnet
by Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell

I touched the heart that loved me as a player
Touches a lyre; content with my poor skill
No touch save mine knew my beloved (and still
I thought at times: Is there no sweet lost air
Old loves could wake in him, I cannot share?).
Oh, he alone, alone could so fulfil
My thoughts in sound to the measure of my will.
He is gone, and silence takes me unaware.
The songs I knew not he resumes, set free
From my constraining love, alas for me!
His part in our tune goes with him; my part
Is locked in me for ever; I stand as mute
As one with full strong music in his heart
Whose fingers stray upon a shattered lute.
Genieve To Her Lover.
by Marietta Holley

I turn the key in this idle hour
Of an ivory box, and looking, lo - 
See only dust - the dust of a flower;
The waters will ebb, the waters will flow,
And dreams will come, and dreams will go,
Forever.
Oh, friend, if you and I should meet
Beneath the boughs of the bending lime,
Should you in the same low voice repeat
The tender words of the old love rhyme,
It could not bring back the same old time,
Never.
When you laid this rose against my brow,
I was quite unused to the ways of men,
With my trusting heart; I am wiser now,
So I smile, remembering my heart-throbs then,
The dust of a rose cannot blossom again,
Never.
The brow that you praised has colder grown,
And hearts will change, I suppose they must,
A rose to be lasting, should blossom in stone,
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
Dead are the rose, the love, and the trust,
Forever.
In The Old Theatre, Fiesole
by Thomas Hardy

(April, 1887)
I traced the Circus whose gray stones incline
Where Rome and dim Etruria interjoin,
Till came a child who showed an ancient coin
That bore the image of a Constantine.
She lightly passed; nor did she once opine
How, better than all books, she had raised for me
In swift perspective Europe's history
Through the vast years of Caesar's sceptred line.
For in my distant plot of English loam
'Twas but to delve, and straightway there to find
Coins of like impress. As with one half blind
Whom common simples cure, her act flashed home
In that mute moment to my opened mind
The power, the pride, the reach of perished Rome.
Prologue: The Nuts of Knowledge
by George William Russell

FOR BRIAN WHEN HE IS GROWN UP THIS HANDFUL OF THE NUTS OF KNOWLEDGE I HAVE GATHERED ON THE SECRET STREAMS.
I thought, beloved, to have brought to you
A gift of quietness and ease and peace,
Cooling your brow as with the mystic dew
Dropping from twilight trees.
Homeward I go not yet; the darkness grows;
Not mine the voice to still with peace divine:
From the first fount the stream of quiet flows
Through other hearts than mine.
Yet of my night I give to you the stars,
And of my sorrow here the sweetest gains,
And out of hell, beyond its iron bars,
My scorn of all its pains.
The Rose
by Theodosia Garrison

I took the love you gave, Ah, carelessly,
Counting it only as a rose to wear
A little moment on my heart no more,
So many roses had I worn before,
So lightly that I scarce believed them there.
But, Lo! this rose between the dusk and dawn
Hath turned to very flame upon my breast,
A flame that burns the day-long and the night,
A flame of very anguish and delight
That not for any moment yields me rest.
And I am troubled with a strange, new fear,
How would it be if even to your door
I came to cry your pitying one day,
And you should lightly laugh and lightly say,
"That was a rose I gave you--nothing more."
Night Thoughts
by Hanford Lennox Gordon

"Le notte e madre dipensien."
I tumble and toss on my pillow,
As a ship without rudder or spars
Is tumbled and tossed on the billow,
'Neath the glint and the glory of stars.
'Tis midnight and moonlight, and slumber
Has hushed every heart but my own;
O why are these thoughts without number
Sent to me by the man in the moon?
Thoughts of the Here and Hereafter, 
Thoughts all unbidden to come, 
Thoughts that are echoes of laughter 
Thoughts that are ghosts from the tomb, 
Thoughts that are sweet as wild honey, 
Thoughts that are bitter as gall, 
Thoughts to be coined into money, 
Thoughts of no value at all.
Dreams that are tangled like wild-wood,
A hint creeping in like a hare;
Visions of innocent childhood, 
Glimpses of pleasure and care;
Brave thoughts that flash like a saber, 
Cowards that crouch as they come, 
Thoughts of sweet love and sweet labor
In the fields at the old cottage-home.
Visions of maize and of meadow,
Songs of the birds and the brooks,
Glimpses of sunshine and shadow,
Of hills and the vine-covered nooks;
Dreams that were dreams of a lover, 
A face like the blushing of morn, 
Hum of bees and the sweet scent of clover
And a bare-headed girl in the corn.
Hopes that went down in the battle,
Apples that crumbled to dust, 
Manna for rogues, and the rattle
Of hail-storms that fall on the just.
The "shoddy" that lolls in her chariot, 
Maud Muller at work in the grass:
Here a silver-bribed Judas Iscariot, 
There Leonidas dead in the pass.
Commingled the good and the evil;
Sown together the wheat and the tares;
In the heart of the wheat is the weevil;
There is joy in the midst of our cares.
The past, shall we stop to regret it?
What is, shall we falter and fall?
If the envious wrong thee, forget it;
Let thy charity cover them all.
The cock hails the morn, and the rumble
Of wheels is abroad in the streets,
Still I tumble and mumble and grumble
At the fleas in my ears and the sheets;
Mumble and grumble and tumble
Till the buzz of the bees is no more;
In a jumble I mumble and drumble
And tumble off into a snore.
Lady Geraldine's Hardship
by Rudyard Kipling

I turned Heaven knows we women turn too much
To broken reeds, mistaken so for pine
That shame forbids confession a handle I turned
(The wrong one, said the agent afterwards)
And so flung clean across your English street
Through the shrill-tinkling glass of the shop-front-paused,
Artemis mazed 'mid gauds to catch a man,
And piteous baby-caps and christening-gowns,
The worse for being worn on the radiator.
.    .    .    .    .    .    .
My cousin Romney judged me from the bench:
Propounding one sleek forty-shillinged law
That takes no count of the Woman's oversoul.
I should have entered, purred he, by the door,
The man's retort, the open obvious door,
And since I chose not, he--not he could change
The man's rule, not the Woman's, for the case.
Ten pounds or seven days... Just that... I paid!
Sonnet
by Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell

I touched the heart that loved me as a player
Touches a lyre; content with my poor skill
No touch save mine knew my beloved (and still
I thought at times: Is there no sweet lost air
Old loves could wake in him, I cannot share?).
Oh, he alone, alone could so fulfil
My thoughts in sound to the measure of my will.
He is gone, and silence takes me unaware.
The songs I knew not he resumes, set free
From my constraining love, alas for me!
His part in our tune goes with him; my part
Is locked in me for ever; I stand as mute
As one with full strong music in his heart
Whose fingers stray upon a shattered lute.
The Spoken Word
by Paul Cameron Brown

I touch your
face - where strands of whispery hair
dangle your thoughtful gaze through mine.
Clutching,
all the words not said
lie pale and broken
beneath forgery lies.
Eyes, our facial minnows, the mirror
images, flash too brightly
out of the shallows,
out of their stony commitments
towards believing
we cannot agree.
The Wind's Prophecy
by Thomas Hardy

I travel on by barren farms,
And gulls glint out like silver flecks
Against a cloud that speaks of wrecks,
And bellies down with black alarms.
I say: "Thus from my lady's arms
I go; those arms I love the best!"
The wind replies from dip and rise,
"Nay; toward her arms thou journeyest."
A distant verge morosely gray
Appears, while clots of flying foam
Break from its muddy monochrome,
And a light blinks up far away.
I sigh: "My eyes now as all day
Behold her ebon loops of hair!"
Like bursting bonds the wind responds,
"Nay, wait for tresses flashing fair!"
From tides the lofty coastlands screen
Come smitings like the slam of doors,
Or hammerings on hollow floors,
As the swell cleaves through caves unseen.
Say I: "Though broad this wild terrene,
Her city home is matched of none!"
From the hoarse skies the wind replies:
"Thou shouldst have said her sea-bord one."
The all-prevailing clouds exclude
The one quick timorous transient star;
The waves outside where breakers are
Huzza like a mad multitude.
"Where the sun ups it, mist-imbued,"
I cry, "there reigns the star for me!"
The wind outshrieks from points and peaks:
"Here, westward, where it downs, mean ye!"
Yonder the headland, vulturine,
Snores like old Skrymer in his sleep,
And every chasm and every steep
Blackens as wakes each pharos-shine.
"I roam, but one is safely mine,"
I say. "God grant she stay my own!"
Low laughs the wind as if it grinned:
"Thy Love is one thou'st not yet known."
Rewritten from an old copy.
The Pedlar's Song
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

I tramped among the townward throng
A sultry summer's morn:
They mocked me loud, they mocked me long,
They laughed my pack to scorn.
But a likely pedlar holds his peace
Until the reckoning's told:--
Merrily I to market went, tho' songs were all my gold.
At weary noon I left the town,
I left the highway straight,
I climbed the silent, sunlit down
And stood by a castle gate.
Never yet was a house too high
When the pedlar's heart was bold:--
Merrily I to market went, tho' songs were all my gold.
A lady leaned from her window there
And asked my wares to see;
Her voice made rich the summer air,
Richer my soul in me.
She gave me only four little words,
Words of a language old:--
Merrily I from market came, for all my songs were sold.
I Thought, Before My Sunlit Twentieth Year
by Richard Le Gallienne

I thought, before my sunlit twentieth year,
That I knew Love, and Death that goes with it;
And my young broken heart in little songs,
Dew-like, I poured, and waited for my end
Wildly - and waited - being then nineteen.
I walked a little longer on my way,
Alive, 'gainst expectation and desire,
And, being then past twenty, I beheld
The face of all the faces of the world
Dewily opening on its stem for me.
Ah! so it seemed, and, each succeeding year,
Thus hath some woman blossom of the divine
Flowered in my path, and made a frail delay
In my true journey - to my home in thee.
October 27, 1911.
Mute Opinion
by Thomas Hardy

I
I traversed a dominion
Whose spokesmen spake out strong
Their purpose and opinion
Through pulpit, press, and song.
I scarce had means to note there
A large-eyed few, and dumb,
Who thought not as those thought there
That stirred the heat and hum.
II
When, grown a Shade, beholding
That land in lifetime trode,
To learn if its unfolding
Fulfilled its clamoured code,
I saw, in web unbroken,
Its history outwrought
Not as the loud had spoken,
But as the mute had thought.
Retrospection
by William Lisle Bowles

I turn these leaves with thronging thoughts, and say,
Alas! how many friends of youth are dead;
How many visions of fair hope have fled,
Since first, my Muse, we met. So speeds away
Life, and its shadows; yet we sit and sing,
Stretched in the noontide bower, as if the day
Declined not, and we yet might trill our lay
Beneath the pleasant morning's purple wing
That fans us; while aloft the gay clouds shine!
Oh, ere the coming of the long cold night,
Religion, may we bless thy purer light,
That still shall warm us, when the tints decline
O'er earth's dim hemisphere; and sad we gaze
On the vain visions of our passing days!
The Torn Letter
by Thomas Hardy

I
I tore your letter into strips
No bigger than the airy feathers
That ducks preen out in changing weathers
Upon the shifting ripple-tips.
II
In darkness on my bed alone
I seemed to see you in a vision,
And hear you say: "Why this derision
Of one drawn to you, though unknown?"
III
Yes, eve's quick mood had run its course,
The night had cooled my hasty madness;
I suffered a regretful sadness
Which deepened into real remorse.
IV
I thought what pensive patient days
A soul must know of grain so tender,
How much of good must grace the sender
Of such sweet words in such bright phrase.
V
Uprising then, as things unpriced
I sought each fragment, patched and mended;
The midnight whitened ere I had ended
And gathered words I had sacrificed.
VI
But some, alas, of those I threw
Were past my search, destroyed for ever:
They were your name and place; and never
Did I regain those clues to you.
VII
I learnt I had missed, by rash unheed,
My track; that, so the Will decided,
In life, death, we should be divided,
And at the sense I ached indeed.
VIII
That ache for you, born long ago,
Throbs on; I never could outgrow it.
What a revenge, did you but know it!
But that, thank God, you do not know.
I Travelled Among Unknown Men
by William Wordsworth

I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.
'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.
Among thy mountains did I feel
The joy of my desire;
And she I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.
Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy's eyes surveyed.
The Monks Of Basle.
by John Milton Hay

I tore this weed from the rank, dark soil
Where it grew in the monkish time,
I trimmed it close and set it again
In a border of modern rhyme.
I.
Long years ago, when the Devil was loose
And faith was sorely tried,
Three monks of Basle went out to walk
In the quiet eventide.
A breeze as pure as the breath of Heaven
Blew fresh through the cloister-shades,
A sky as glad as the smile of Heaven
Blushed rose o'er the minster-glades.
But scorning the lures of summer and sense,
The monks passed on in their walk;
Their eyes were abased, their senses slept,
Their souls were in their talk.
In the tough grim talk of the monkish days
They hammered and slashed about, -
Dry husks of logic, - old scraps of creed, -
And the cold gray dreams of doubt, -
And whether Just or Justified
Was the Church's mystic Head, -
And whether the Bread was changed to God,
Or God became the Bread.
But of human hearts outside their walls
They never paused to dream,
And they never thought of the love of God
That smiled in the twilight gleam.
II.
As these three monks went bickering on
By the foot of a spreading tree,
Out from its heart of verdurous gloom
A song burst wild and free, -
A wordless carol of life and love,
Of nature free and wild;
And the three monks paused in the evening shade,
Looked up at each other and smiled.
And tender and gay the bird sang on,
And cooed and whistled and trilled,
And the wasteful wealth of life and love
From his happy heart was spilled.
The song had power on the grim old monks
In the light of the rosy skies;
And as they listened the years rolled back,
And tears came into their eyes.
The years rolled back and they were young,
With the hearts and hopes of men,
They plucked the daisies and kissed the girls
Of dear dead summers again.
III.
But the eldest monk soon broke the spell;
"'Tis sin and shame," quoth he,
"To be turned from talk of holy things
By a bird's cry from a tree.
"Perchance the Enemy of Souls
Hath come to tempt us so.
Let us try by the power of the Awful Word
If it be he, or no!"
To Heaven the three monks raised their hands;
"We charge thee, speak!" they said,
"By His dread Name who shall one day come
To judge the quick and the dead, -
"Who art thou?    Speak!"    The bird laughed loud.
"I am the Devil," he said.
The monks on their faces fell, the bird
Away through the twilight sped.
A horror fell on those holy men
(The faithful legends say),
And one by one from the face of the earth
They pined and vanished away.
IV.
So goes the tale of the monkish books,
The moral who runs may read, -
He has no ears for Nature's voice
Whose soul is the slave of creed.
Not all in vain with beauty and love
Has God the world adorned;
And he who Nature scorns and mocks,
By Nature is mocked and scorned.