DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Rain In Summer
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!
The sick man from his chamber looks
At the twisted brooks;
He can feel the cool
Breath of each little pool;
His fevered brain
Grows calm again,
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.
From the neighboring school
Come the boys,
With more than their wonted noise
And commotion;
And down the wet streets
Sail their mimic fleets,
Till the treacherous pool
Ingulfs them in its whirling
And turbulent ocean.
In the country, on every side,
Where far and wide,
Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide,
Stretches the plain,
To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!
In the furrowed land
The toilsome and patient oxen stand;
Lifting the yoke encumbered head,
With their dilated nostrils spread,
They silently inhale
The clover-scented gale,
And the vapors that arise
From the well-watered and smoking soil.
For this rest in the furrow after toil
Their large and lustrous eyes
Seem to thank the Lord,
More than man's spoken word.
Near at hand,
From under the sheltering trees,
The farmer sees
His pastures, and his fields of grain,
As they bend their tops
To the numberless beating drops
Of the incessant rain.
He counts it as no sin
That he sees therein
Only his own thrift and gain.
These, and far more than these,
The Poet sees!
He can behold
Aquarius old
Walking the fenceless fields of air;
And from each ample fold
Of the clouds about him rolled
Scattering everywhere
The showery rain,
As the farmer scatters his grain.
He can behold
Things manifold
That have not yet been wholly told,--
Have not been wholly sung nor said.
For his thought, that never stops,
Follows the water-drops
Down to the graves of the dead,
Down through chasms and gulfs profound,
To the dreary fountain-head
Of lakes and rivers under ground;
And sees them, when the rain is done,
On the bridge of colors seven
Climbing up once more to heaven,
Opposite the setting sun.
Thus the Seer,
With vision clear,
Sees forms appear and disappear,
In the perpetual round of strange,
Mysterious change
From birth to death, from death to birth,
From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth;
Till glimpses more sublime
Of things, unseen before,
Unto his wondering eyes reveal
The Universe, as an immeasurable wheel
Turning forevermore
In the rapid and rushing river of Time.
Up The Nepigon.
by Pamela S. Vining, (J. C. Yule)

How beautiful, how beautiful,
Beneath the morning sky,
In bridal veil of snowy mist,
These dreamy headlands lie!
How beautiful, in soft repose,
Upon the water's breast,
Steeped in the sunlight's golden calm,
These fairy islets rest!
A Sabbath hush enfolds the hills,
And broods upon the deep
Whose music every hollow fills,
And climbs each rocky steep,
Now low and soft like love's own sigh,
Now faint and far away,
Now plaining to the answering pines,
With melancholy lay.
Like white-winged birds, through azure depths,
Above the restless tide,
With snowy plume and golden crest,
The fleecy cloudlets glide;
Their dancing shadows fleck the deep,
Or flit above the green
Of emerald islands fast asleep
'Neath tranquil skies serene.
I watch the sunshine and the shade,
The sparkle and the gleam,
Till past and present seem to fade,
And life becomes a dream - 
A fairy, fancy-tinted dream,
A sun-bright; summer rest,
In which I glide through shade and gleam
Past islands of the blest
How beautiful! "How beautiful!"
The quiet hills reply,
And each responsive cliff gives back
Its answer to the sky; - 
"How beautiful!" the waves repeat,
And every cloudlet smiles,
And writes its answer on the green
Of countless summer isles.
'Tis past - this first, last, only look! - 
And now, away, away,
To bear alone in Memory's book
The sunshine of to-day;
Yet oft, 'neath other skies than these,
With other scenes in view,
O isles of beauty, sunny seas,
I shall remember you!
The Coquette.
by Marietta Holley

How can I be to blame?
Is it my fault I am fair?
I did not fashion my features,
Or brush the gold in my hair;
Because my eyes are so blue and bright,
Must I never look up from the ground,
But put out with my eyelids' snow their light,
Lest some foolish heart they should wound?
How can I be in fault?
I am sure where hearts are so few,
It is difficult to discern
The diamonds of paste from the true;
I thought him like all the rest,
Skilful in playing his part;
As careful at cards or at chess,
As winning a woman's heart.
I am sure it is nothing wrong,
Nothing to think of - and yet
I know I lured him with glance and song,
Into my shining net;
Provokingly cold at first he seemed,
Like crystal to smiles and sighs,
But at last he felt the magic that gleamed
In my dreamy violet eyes.
And I led him on and on,
Farther, in truth, than I strove,
For he frightened me with the earnestness
And violence of his love;
These calm-eyed men deceive - 
Had I known the man had a heart,
I would have paused, I would, I believe,
Have acted a different part.
In his royal indignation
He uttered some wholesome truth - 
He almost roused the emotion
That died in my innocent youth;
Emotion that lived when life was new,
Ere that man my pathway crossed,
Who played me a game untrue,
When I staked all my love, and lost.
Oh for a saintly beauty,
What efforts my soul did make;
I thought all goodness and purity
Were possible for his sake;
The world seemed born anew, my life
Such holy meaning wore,
I fancy so fair and fond a dream
Never fell into ruins before.
He toyed with my fresh affection
As he breathed the country air,
To refresh him after a season
Of fashion, and falsehood, and glare;
Had he not slain my tenderness,
Had my life been more sweet,
I might have known nobler happiness
Than to humble men to my feet.
But now I love to lure them on,
To make them slaves to my gaze,
Like serfs to a conqueror's chariot,
Like moths to a candle-blaze.
I melt most royally time, the pearl,
And quaff the cup like a queen,
And forget in the dizzy tumult and whirl,
The woman I might have been.
Sonnet V.
by Fernando Ant'nio Nogueira Pessoa

How can I think, or edge my thoughts to action,
When the miserly press of each day's need
Aches to a narrowness of spilled distraction
My soul appalled at the world's work's time-greed?
How can I pause my thoughts upon the task
My soul was born to think that it must do
When every moment has a thought to ask
To fit the immediate craving of its cue?
The coin I'd heap for marrying my Muse
And build our home i'th' greater Time-to-be
Becomes dissolved by needs of each day's use
And I feel beggared of infinity,
Like a true-Christian sinner, each day flesh-driven
By his own act to forfeit his wished heaven.
Mary's Evening Sigh
by Robert Bloomfield

How bright with pearl the western sky!
How glorious far and wide,
Yon lines of golden clouds that lie
So peaceful side by side!
Their deep'ning tints, the arch of light,
All eyes with rapture see;
E'en while I sigh I bless the sight
That lures my love from me.
Green hill, that shad'st the valley here,
Thou bear'st upon thy brow
The only wealth to Mary dear,
And all she'll ever know.
There, in the crimson light I see,
Above thy summit rise,
My Edward's form, he looks to me
A statue in the skies.
Descend my love, the hour is come,
Why linger on the hill?
The sun hath left my quiet home,
But thou canst see him still;
Yet why a lonely wanderer stray,
Alone the joy pursue?
The glories of the closing day
Can charm thy Mary too.
Dear Edward, when we stroll'd along
Beneath the waving corn,
And both confess'd the power of song,
And bless'd the dewy morn;
Your eye o'erflow'd, "How sweet," you cried.
(My presence then could move)
"How sweet, with Mary by my side,
"To gaze and talk of love"
Thou art not false! that cannot be;
Yet I my rivals deem
Each woodland charm, the moss, the tree,
The silence, and the stream;
Whate'er my love, detains thee now,
I'll yet forgive thy stay;
But with to-morrow's dawn come thou,
We'll brush the dews away.
Sonnet. Written In A Volume Of Shakspeare.
by Thomas Hood

How bravely Autumn paints upon the sky
The gorgeous fame of Summer which is fled!
Hues of all flow'rs, that in their ashes lie,
Trophied in that fair light whereon they fed, - 
Tulip, and hyacinth, and sweet rose red, - 
Like exhalations from the leafy mould,
Look here how honor glorifies the dead,
And warms their scutcheons with a glance of gold! - 
Such is the memory of poets old,
Who on Parnassus' hill have bloom'd elate;
Now they are laid under their marbles cold,
And turned to clay, whereof they were create;
But god Apollo hath them all enroll'd,
And blazon'd on the very clouds of Fate!
The Best State.
by Friedrich Schiller

"How can I know the best state?"
In the way that thou know'st the best woman;
Namely, my friend, that the world ever is silent of both.
Jupiter And The Passenger.
by Jean de La Fontaine

[1]
How danger would the gods enrich,
If we the vows remember'd which
It drives us to! But, danger past,
Kind Providence is paid the last.
No earthly debt is treated so.
'Now, Jove,' the wretch exclaims, 'will wait;
He sends no sheriff to one's gate,
Like creditors below;'
But, let me ask the dolt,
What means the thunderbolt?
A passenger, endanger'd by the sea,
Had vow'd a hundred oxen good
To him who quell'd old Terra's brood.
He had not one: as well might he
Have vow'd a hundred elephants.
Arrived on shore, his good intents
Were dwindled to the smoke which rose
An offering merely for the nose,
From half a dozen beefless bones.
'Great Jove,' said he, 'behold my vow!
The fumes of beef thou breathest now
Are all thy godship ever owns:
From debt I therefore stand acquitted.'
With seeming smile, the god submitted,
But not long after caught him well,
By sending him a dream, to tell
Of treasure hid. Off ran the liar,
As if to quench a house on fire,
And on a band of robbers fell.
As but a crown he had that day,
He promised them of sterling gold
A hundred talents truly told;
Directing where conceal'd they lay,
In such a village on their way.
The rogues so much the tale suspected,
Said one, 'If we should suffer you to,
You'd cheaply get us all detected;
Go, then, and bear your gold to Pluto.'
Sonnets From The Portuguese XLIII
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
In Warehouse And Office.
by W. M. MacKeracher

How can the man whose uneventful days,
Each like the other, are obscurely spent
Amid the mill's dead products, keep his gaze
Upon a lofty goal serenely bent?
Or he who sedulously tells and groups
Their minted shadows with deft finger-tips?
Or who above the shadow's shadow stoops,
And dips his pen and writes, and writes and dips?
How can he? Yet some such have been and are,
Prophets and seers in deed, if not in word,
And poets of a faery land afar,
By incommunicable music stirred;
Feasting the soul apart with what it craves,
Their occupation's masters, not its slaves.
The Artist And His Work.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Com' esser, donna, pu'.
How can that be, lady, which all men learn
By long experience? Shapes that seem alive,
Wrought in hard mountain marble, will survive
Their maker, whom the years to dust return!
Thus to effect cause yields. Art hath her turn,
And triumphs over Nature. I, who strive
With Sculpture, know this well; her wonders live
In spite of time and death, those tyrants stern.
So I can give long life to both of us
In either way, by colour or by stone,
Making the semblance of thy face and mine.
Centuries hence when both are buried, thus
Thy beauty and my sadness shall be shown,
And men shall say, 'For her 'twas wise to pine.'
Christmas.
by Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey)

How did they keep his birthday then,
The little fair Christ, so long ago?
O, many there were to be housed and fed,
And there was no place in the inn, they said,
So into the manger the Christ must go,
To lodge with the cattle and not with men.
The ox and the ass they munched their hay
They munched and they slumbered, wondering not,
And out in the midnight cold and blue
The shepherds slept, and the sheep slept too,
Till the angels' song and the bright star ray
Guided the wise men to the spot.
But only the wise men knelt and praised,
And only the shepherds came to see,
And the rest of the world cared not at all
For the little Christ in the oxen's stall;
And we are angry and amazed
That such a dull, hard thing should be!
How do we keep his birthday now?
We ring the bells and we raise the strain,
We hang up garland, everywhere
And bid the tapers, twinkle fair,
And feast and frolic--and then we go
Back to the Mine old lives again.
Are we so better, then, than they
Who failed the new-born Christ to see?
To them a helpless babe,--to us
He shines a Saviour glorious,
Our Lord, our Friend, our All--yet we
Are half asleep this Christmas day.
Monody, On A Lady Famed For Her Caprice.
by Robert Burns

How cold is that bosom which folly once fired,
How pale is that cheek where the rouge lately glisten'd!
How silent that tongue which the echoes oft tired,
How dull is that ear which to flattery so listen'd!
If sorrow and anguish their exit await,
From friendship and dearest affection remov'd;
How doubly severer, Maria, thy fate,
Thou diest unwept as thou livedst unlov'd.
Loves, Graces, and Virtues, I call not on you;
So shy, grave, and distant, ye shed not a tear:
But come, all ye offspring of Folly so true,
And flowers let us cull for Maria's cold bier.
We'll search through the garden for each silly flower,
We'll roam through the forest for each idle weed;
But chiefly the nettle, so typical, shower,
For none e'er approach'd her but rued the rash deed.
We'll sculpture the marble, we'll measure the lay;
Here Vanity strums on her idiot lyre;
There keen indignation shall dart on her prey,
Which spurning Contempt shall redeem from his ire.
*             *             *             *             *
The Epitaph.
Here lies, now a prey to insulting neglect,
What once was a butterfly, gay in life's beam:
Want only of wisdom denied her respect,
Want only of goodness denied her esteem
*             *             *             *             *
The Second Flood
by John Frederick Freeman

How could I know, how could I guess
That here was your great happiness--
In mine? And how could I know
Your love infinite must grow?
Suddenly at dawn I wake
To see the cruse of colour break
Over the East, and then the gray
Creep up with light of common day ...
No, no, no! again that bright
Flashing, flushing, flooding light
Leading on day, until I ache
With love to see the dark world wake.
O, with such second flood your love
Painted my earth and heaven above,
With such wild magnificence
As bruised my heart in every sense,
In every nerve. Was ever man
Fit this renewed love to sustain?
Now in these days when Autumn's leaf
Is red and gold, and for a brief
Day the earth flowers ere it dies,
What if Spring came with new surprise,
Came ere the aspen shivered bare
Or the beech coins glittered in cold air,
Before the rough wind the maple stripped
And this bare moon on bare boughs stepped!
Vain thought--O, yet not wholly vain:
Even to me Love has come again,
Moving from your quick breast where he
Fluttered in his wondering infancy.
Jugurtha
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

How cold are thy baths, Apollo!
Cried the African monarch, the splendid,
As down to his death in the hollow
Dark dungeons of Rome he descended,
Uncrowned, unthroned, unattended;
How cold are thy baths, Apollo!
How cold are thy baths, Apollo!
Cried the Poet, unknown, unbefriended,
As the vision, that lured him to follow,
With the mist and the darkness blended,
And the dream of his life was ended;
How cold are thy baths, Apollo!
The Stars' Accusal
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

How can the makers of unrighteous wars
Stand the accusal of the watchful stars?
To stand--
A dust-speck, facing the infinitudes
Of Thine unfathomable dome, a night like this,--
To stand full-face to Thy High Majesties,
Thy myriad worlds in solemn watchfulness,--
Watching, watching, watching all below,
And man in all his wilfulness for woe!
--Dear Lord, one wonders that Thou bearest still
With man on whom Thou didst such grace bestow,
And with his wilful faculty for woe!
Those sleepless sentinels!    They may be worlds
All peopled like our own.    But, as I stand,
They are to me the myriad eyes of God,--
Watching, watching, watching all below,
And man in all his wilfulness for woe.
And then--to think
What those same piercing eyes look down upon
Elsewhere on this fair earth that Thou hast made!--
Watching, watching, watching all below,
And man in all his wilfulness for woe.
--On all the desolations he hath wrought,
--On all the passioned hatreds he hath taught,
--On all Thy great hopes he hath brought to nought;--
--Man rending man with ruthless bitterness,
--Blasting Thine image into nothingness,
--Hounding Thy innocents to awful deaths,
And worse than deaths!    Happy the dead, who sped
Before the torturers their lust had fed!
--On Thy Christ crucified afresh each day,
--On all the horrors of War's grim red way.
And ever, in Thy solemn midnight skies,
Those myriad, sleepless, vast accusing eyes,--
Watching, watching, watching all below,
And man in all his wilfulness for woe.
Dear Lord!--
When in our troubled hearts we ponder this,
We can but wonder at Thy wrath delayed,--
We can but wonder that Thy hand is stayed,--
We can but wonder at Thy sufferance
Of man, whom Thou in Thine own image made,
When he that image doth so sore degrade!
If Thou shouldst blot us out without a word,
Our stricken souls must say we had incurred
Just punishment.
Warnings we lacked not, warnings oft and clear,
But in our arrogance we gave no ear
To Thine admonishment.
And yet,--and yet!    O Lord, we humbly pray,--
Put back again Thy righteous Judgment Day!
Have patience with us yet a while, until
Through these our sufferings we learn Thy Will.
How Cruel Are The Parents.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "John Anderson, my jo."
I.
How cruel are the parents
Who riches only prize,
And, to the wealthy booby,
Poor woman sacrifice!
Meanwhile the hapless daughter
Has but a choice of strife;
To shun a tyrant father's hate,
Become a wretched wife.
II.
The ravening hawk pursuing,
The trembling dove thus flies,
To shun impelling ruin
Awhile her pinions tries:
Till of escape despairing,
No shelter or retreat,
She trusts the ruthless falconer,
And drops beneath his feet!
A Man's Reverie
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

How cold the old porch seems.    A dreary chill
Creeps upward from the river at twilight,
And yet, I like to linger here at night,
And dream the summer tarries with us still.
The summer and the summer guests, or guest.
(Men rarely dream in plurals.)    Over there
Beyond the pillars, stands the rustic chair,
As bare and empty as a robin's nest.
No pretty head reclines its golden bands
Against the back.    No playful winds disclose
Distracting glimpses of embroidered hose:
No palm leaf waves in dainty, dangerous hands.
How cold it is!    That star up yonder gleams
A white ice sickle from the heavenly eaves.
That bleak wind from the river sighs and grieves,
Perchance o'er some poor fellow's broken dreams.
Come in, and shut the door, and leave that star
To watch above the lonely portico.
Summer and summer guests and dreams must go.
Well, Fate was kind to leave me my cigar.
Lady M----ve (Sketches In The Exhibition, 1805)
by William Lisle Bowles

How clear a strife of light and shade is spread!
The face how touched with nature's loveliest red!
The eye, how eloquent, and yet how meek!
The glow subdued, yet mantling on thy cheek!
M----ve! I mark alone thy beauteous face,
But all is nature, dignity, and grace!
Thoughts On The Shape Of The Human Body
by Rupert Brooke

How can we find? how can we rest? how can
We, being gods, win joy, or peace, being man?
We, the gaunt zanies of a witless Fate,
Who love the unloving and lover hate,
Forget the moment ere the moment slips,
Kiss with blind lips that seek beyond the lips,
Who want, and know not what we want, and cry
With crooked mouths for Heaven, and throw it by.
Love's for completeness! No perfection grows
'Twixt leg, and arm, elbow, and ear, and nose,
And joint, and socket; but unsatisfied
Sprawling desires, shapeless, perverse, denied.
Finger with finger wreathes; we love, and gape,
Fantastic shape to mazed fantastic shape,
Straggling, irregular, perplexed, embossed,
Grotesquely twined, extravagantly lost
By crescive paths and strange protuberant ways
From sanity and from wholeness and from grace.
How can love triumph, how can solace be,
Where fever turns toward fever, knee toward knee?
Could we but fill to harmony, and dwell
Simple as our thought and as perfectible,
Rise disentangled from humanity
Strange whole and new into simplicity,
Grow to a radiant round love, and bear
Unfluctuant passion for some perfect sphere,
Love moon to moon unquestioning, and be
Like the star Lunisequa, steadfastly
Following the round clear orb of her delight,
Patiently ever, through the eternal night!
April Night
by Archibald Lampman

How deep the April night is in its noon,
The hopeful, solemn, many-murmured night!
The earth lies hushed with expectation; bright
Above the world's dark border burns the moon,
Yellow and large; from forest floorways, strewn
With flowers, and fields that tingle with new birth,
The moist smell of the unimprisoned earth
Comes up, a sigh, a haunting promise. Soon,
Ah, soon, the teeming triumph! At my feet
The river with its stately sweep and wheel
Moves on slow-motioned, luminous, grey like steel.
From fields far off whose watery hollows gleam,
Aye with blown throats that make the long hours sweet,
The sleepless toads are murmuring in their dream.
Der Mann Im Keller
by Eugene Field

How cool and fair this cellar where
My throne a dusky cask is;
To do no thing but just to sing
And drown the time my task is.
The cooper he's
Resolved to please,
And, answering to my winking,
He fills me up
Cup after cup
For drinking, drinking, drinking.
Begrudge me not
This cosy spot
In which I am reclining--
Why, who would burst
With envious thirst,
When he can live by wining.
A roseate hue seems to imbue
The world on which I'm blinking;
My fellow-men--I love them when
I'm drinking, drinking, drinking.
And yet I think, the more I drink,
It's more and more I pine for--
Oh, such as I (forever dry)
God made this land of Rhine for;
And there is bliss
In knowing this,
As to the floor I'm sinking:
I've wronged no man
And never can
While drinking, drinking, drinking.
How Dear To Me The Hour.
by Thomas Moore

How dear to me the hour when daylight dies,
And sunbeams melt along the silent sea,
For then sweet dreams of other days arise,
And memory breathes her vesper sigh to thee.
And, as I watch the line of light, that plays
Along the smooth wave toward the burning west,
I long to tread that golden path of rays,
And think 'twould lead to some bright isle of rest.
Medusa
by Oliver Herford

How did Medusa do her hair?
The question fills me with despair.
It must have caused her sore distress
That head of curling snakes to dress.
Whenever after endless toil
She coaxed it finally to coil,
The music of a Passing Band
Would cause each separate hair to stand
On end and sway and writhe and spit,--
She couldn't "do a thing with it."
And, being woman and aware
Of such disaster to her hair,
What could she do but petrify
All whom she met, with freezing eye?