DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Runaway.
by Thomas Gent

Ah! who is he by Cynthia's gleam
Discern'd, the statue of distress:
Weeping beside the willow'd stream
That bathes the woodland wilderness?
Why talks he to the idle air?
Why, listless, at his length reclin'd,
Heaves he the groan of deep despair,
Responsive to the midnight wind?
Speak, gentle shepherd! tell me why?
Sir! he has lost his wife, they say 
Of what disorder did she die?
Lord, sir! of none she ran away.
A Greek Lyrist Sings Of Apollo.
by Margaret Steele Anderson

Ah, it was he I heard at early dawn,
From the high hilltop and the dew-wet hollow,
While I was yet as tender as a fawn.
Calling me, "Follow!"
And it was he who spoke at sultry noon,
By the bright pool, when Dian was away:
"Frail is your harp as is the crescent moon,
Yet shall you play!"
Still do I hear that calling, Apollo!
Though it is far, and failing is the light:
"Lo, you are spent, but you shall rise and follow
Into the night!"
To Bianca.
by Robert Herrick

Ah, Bianca! now I see
It is noon and past with me:
In a while it will strike one;
Then, Bianca, I am gone.
Some effusions let me have
Offer'd on my holy grave;
Then, Bianca, let me rest
With my face towards the East.
Two Moods
by Arthur Hugh Clough

Ah, blame him not because he's gay!
That he should smile, and jest, and play
But shows how lightly he can bear,
How well forget that load which, where
Thought is, is with it, and howe'er
Dissembled, or indeed forgot,
Still is a load, and ceases not.
This aged earth that each new spring
Comes forth so young, so ravishing
In summer robes for all to see,
Of flower, and leaf, and bloomy tree,
For all her scarlet, gold, and green,
Fails not to keep within unseen
That inner purpose and that force
Which on the untiring orbit's course
Around the sun, amidst the spheres
Still bears her thro' the eternal years.
Ah, blame the flowers and fruits of May,
And then blame him because he's gay.
Ah, blame him not, for not being gay,
Because an hundred times a day
He doth not currently repay
Sweet words with ready words as sweet,
And for each smile a smile repeat.
To mute submissiveness confined,
Blame not, if once or twice the mind
Its pent-up indignation wreak
In scowling brow and flushing cheek,
And smiles curled back as soon as born,
To dire significance of scorn.
Nor blame if once, and once again
He wring the hearts of milder men,
If slights, the worse if undesigned,
Should seem unbrotherly, unkind;
For though tree wave, and blossom blow
Above, earth hides a fire below;
Her seas the starry laws obey,
And she from her own ordered way,
Swerves not, because it dims the day
Or changes verdure to decay.
Ah, blame the great world on its way,
And then blame him for not being gay.
Lonely Airs
by John Frederick Freeman

Ah, bird singing late in the gloam
While the evening shadow thickens,
And the dizzy bat-wings roam,
And the faint starlight quickens;
And her bud eve's primrose bares
Before night's cold fingers come:
Thine are such lonely airs,
Bird singing late in the gloam!
Deficiency.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Ah, God! were I away, away,
By woodland-belted hills!
There might be more in Thy bright day
Than my poor spirit thrills.
The elder coppice, banks of blooms,
The spice-wood brush, the field
Of tumbled clover, and perfumes
Hot, weedy pastures yield.
The old rail-fence whose angles hold
Bright briar and sassafras,
Sweet priceless wild flowers blue and gold
Starred through the moss and grass.
The ragged path that winds unto
Lone cow-behaunted nooks,
Through brambles to the shade and dew
Of rocks and woody brooks.
To see the minnows turn and gleam
White sparkling bellies, all
Shoot in gray schools adown the stream
Let but a dead leaf fall.
The buoyant pleasure and delight
Of floating feathered seeds.
Capricious wanderers soft and white
Born of silk-bearing weeds.
Ah, God! were I away, away,
Among wild woods and birds!
There were more soul within Thy day
Than one might bless with words.
To ----
by Henry Kendall

Ah, often do I wait and watch,
And look up, straining through the Real
With longing eyes, my friend, to catch
Faint glimpses of your white Ideal.
I know she loved to rest her feet
By slumbrous seas and hidden strand;
But mostly hints of her I meet
On moony spots of mountain land.
I've never reached her shining place,
And only cross at times a gleam;
As one might pass a fleeting face
Just on the outside of a Dream.
But you may climb, her happy Choice!
She knows your step, the maiden true,
And ever when she hears your voice,
She turns and sits and waits for you.
How sweet to rest on breezy crest
With such a Love, what time the Morn
Looks from his halls of rosy rest,
Across green miles of gleaming corn!
How sweet to find a leafy nook,
When bees are out, and Day burns mute,
Where you may hear a passion'd brook
Play past you, like a mellow flute!
Or, turning from the sunken sun,
On fields of dim delight to lie
To close your eyes and muse upon
The twilight's strange divinity!
Or through the Night's mysterious noon,
While Sound lies hushed among the trees,
To sit and watch a mirror'd moon
Float over silver-sleeping seas!
Oh, vain regret! why should I stay
To think and dream of joys unknown?
You walk with her from day to day,
I faint afar off and alone.
A Ballad Of London - (To H. W. Massinsham)
by Richard Le Gallienne

Ah, London! London! our delight,
Great flower that opens but at night,
Great City of the Midnight Sun,
Whose day begins when day is done.
Lamp after lamp against the sky
Opens a sudden beaming eye,
Leaping alight on either hand,
The iron lilies of the Strand.
Like dragonflies, the hansoms hover,
With jewelled eyes, to catch the lover;
The streets are full of lights and loves,
Soft gowns, and flutter of soiled doves.
The human moths about the light
Dash and cling close in dazed delight,
And burn and laugh, the world and wife,
For this is London, this is life!
Upon thy petals butterflies,
But at thy root, some say, there lies
A world of weeping trodden things,
Poor worms that have not eyes or wings.
From out corruption of their woe
Springs this bright flower that charms us so,
Men die and rot deep out of sight
To keep this jungle-flower bright.
Paris and London, World-Flowers twain
Wherewith the World-Tree blooms again,
Since Time hath gathered Babylon,
And withered Rome still withers on.
Sidon and Tyre were such as ye,
How bright they shone upon the Tree!
But Time hath gathered, both are gone,
And no man sails to Babylon.
Ah, London! London! our delight,
For thee, too, the eternal night,
And Circe Paris hath no charm
To stay Time's unrelenting arm.
Time and his moths shall eat up all.
Your chiming towers proud and tall
He shall most utterly abase,
And set a desert in their place.
The Jungle Flower
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

Ah, the cool silence of the shaded hours,
The scent and colour of the jungle flowers!
Thou art one of the jungle flowers, strange and fierce and fair,
Palest amber, perfect lines, and scented with champa flower.
Lie back and frame thy face in the gloom of thy loosened hair;
Sweet thou art and loved - ay, loved - for an hour.
But thought flies far, ah, far, to another breast,
Whose whiteness breaks to the rose of a twin pink flower,
Where wind the azure veins that my lips caressed
When Fate was gentle to me for a too-brief hour.
There is my spirit's home and my soul's abode,
The rest are only inns on the traveller's road.
The Lay Of Poor Louise
by Walter Scott (Sir)

Ah, poor Louise! the livelong day
She roams from cot to castle gay;
And still her voice and viol say,
Ah, maids, beware the woodland way,
Think on Louise.
Ah, poor Louise! The sun was high,
It smirch'd her cheek, it dimm'd her eye,
The woodland walk was cool and nigh,
Where birds with chiming streamlets vie
To cheer Louise.
Ah, poor Louise! The savage bear
Made ne'er that lovely grove his lair;
The wolves molest not paths so fair,
But better far had such been there
For poor Louise.
Ah, poor Louise! In woody wold
She met a huntsman fair and bold;
His baldric was of silk and gold,
And many a witching tale he told
To poor Louise.
Ah, poor Louise! Small cause to pine
Hadst thou for treasures of the mine;
For peace of mind that gift divine,
And spotless innocence, were thine,
Ah, poor Louise!
Ah, poor Louise! Thy treasure's reft!
I know not if by force or theft,
Or part by violence, part by gift;
But misery is all that's left
To poor Louise.
Let poor Louise some succour have!
She will not long your bounty crave,
Or tire the gay with warning stave,
For Heaven has grace, and earth a grave,
Poor poor Louise.
Hereafter.
by John Clare

Ah, when this world and I have shaken hands,
And all the frowns of this sad life got through,
When from pale Care and Sorrow's dismal lands
I turn a welcome and a wish'd adieu;
How blest and happy, to eternal day,
To endless happiness without a pain,
Will my poor weary spirit sail away,
That long long look'd for "better place" to gain:
How sweet the scenes will open on her eye,
Where no more troubles, no more cares annoy;
All the sharp troubles of this life torn by,
And safely moor'd in heaven's eternal joy:
Sweet will it seem to Fate's oppressed worm,
As trembling Sunbeams creeping from the storm.
Peace
by William Butler Yeats

Ah, that Time could touch a form
That could show what Homer's age
Bred to be a hero's wage.
'Were not all her life but storm,
Would not painters paint a form
Of such noble lines' I said,
'Such a delicate high head,
All that sternness amid charm,
All that sweetness amid strength?'
Ah, but peace that comes at length,
Came when Time had touched her form.
The First Wife
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

Ah, my lord, are the tidings true,
That thy mother's jewels are shapen anew?
I hear that a bride has chosen been,
The stars consulted, the parents seen.
Had I been childless, had never there smiled
The brilliant eyes from the face of a child,
Then at least I had understood
This thing they tell me thou findest good.
But I have been down to the River of Death,
With painful footsteps and shuddering breath,
Seven times; thou hast daughters three,
And four young sons who are fair as thee.
I am not unlovely, over my head
Not twenty summers as yet have sped.
'T is eleven years since my opening life
Was given to thee by my father's wife.
Ah, those days - They were lovely to me,
When little and shy I waited for thee.
Till I locked my arms round my lover above,
A child in form but a woman in love.
And I bore thy sons, as a woman should,
Year by year, as is meet and good.
Thy mother was ever content with me - 
And Oh, Beloved, I worshipped thee!
And now it's over; alas, my lord,
Better I felt thy sharpest sword.
I hear she is youthful and fair as I
When I came to thee in the days gone by.
Her breasts are firmer; this bosom slips
Somewhat, weighted by children's lips.
But they were thy children.    Oh, lord my king,
Ah, why hast thy heart devised this thing ?
I am not as the women of this thy land,
Meek and timid, broken to hand.
From the distant North I was given to thee,
Whose daughters are passionate, fierce and free,
I could not dwell by a rival's side,
I seek a bridegroom, as thou a bride.
The night she yieldeth her youth to thee,
Death shall take his pleasure in me.
At Broad Ripple.
by James Whitcomb Riley

Ah, Luxury! Beyond the heat
And dust of town, with dangling feet,
Astride the rock below the dam,
In the cool shadows where the calm
Rests on the stream again, and all
Is silent save the waterfall, -
bait my hook and cast my line,
And feel the best of life is mine.
No high ambition may I claim -
angle not for lordly game
Of trout, or bass, or wary bream -
black perch reaches the extreme
Of my desires; and "goggle-eyes"
Are not a thing that I despise;
A sunfish, or a "chub," or "cat" -
A "silver-side" - yea, even that!
In eloquent tranquility
The waters lisp and talk to me.
Sometimes, far out, the surface breaks,
As some proud bass an instant shakes
His glittering armor in the sun,
And romping ripples, one by one,
Come dallying across the space
Where undulates my smiling face.
The river's story flowing by,
Forever sweet to ear and eye,
Forever tenderly begun -
Forever new and never done.
Thus lulled and sheltered in a shade
Where never feverish cares invade,
I bait my hook and cast my line,
And feel the best of life is mine.
Spring On The Hills
by Madison Julius Cawein

Ah, shall I follow, on the hills,
The Spring, as wild wings follow?
Where wild-plum trees make wan the hills,
Crabapple trees the hollow,
Haunts of the bee and swallow?
In redbud brakes and flowery
Acclivities of berry;
In dogwood dingles, showery
With white, where wrens make merry?
Or drifts of swarming cherry?
In valleys of wild strawberries,
And of the clumped May-apple;
Or cloudlike trees of haw-berries,
With which the south winds grapple,
That brook and byway dapple?
With eyes of far forgetfulness,
Like some wild wood-thing's daughter,
Whose feet are beelike fretfulness,
To see her run like water
Through boughs that slipped or caught her.
O Spring, to seek, yet find you not!
To search, yet never win you!
To glimpse, to touch, but bind you not!
To lose, and still continue,
All sweet evasion in you!
In pearly, peach-blush distances
You gleam; the woods are braided
Of myths; of dream-existences...
There, where the brook is shaded,
A sudden splendor faded.
O presence, like the primrose's,
Again I feel your power!
With rainy scents of dim roses,
Like some elusive flower,
Who led me for an hour!
Australian Engineers
by Henry Lawson

Ah, well! but the case seems hopeless, and the pen might write in vain;
The people gabble of old things over and over again.
For the sake of the sleek importer we slave with the pick and the shears,
While hundreds of boys in Australia long to be engineers.
A new generation has risen under Australian skies,
Boys with the light of genius deep in their dreamy eyes, 
Not as of artists or poets with their vain imaginings,
But born to be thinkers and doers, and makers of wonderful things.
Born to be builders of vessels in the Harbours of Waste and Loss,
That shall carry our goods to the nations, flying the Southern Cross;
And fleets that shall guard our seaboard, while the East is backed by the Jews, 
Under Australian captains, and manned by Australian crews.
Boys who are slight and quiet, but boys who are strong and true,
Dreaming of great inventions, always of something new;
With brains untrammelled by training, but quick where reason directs, 
Boys with imagination and keen, strong intellects.
They long for the crank and the belting, the gear and the whirring wheel,
The stamp of the giant hammer, the glint of the polished steel,
For the mould, and the vice, and the turning-lathe, they are boys who long for the keys
To the doors of the world's mechanics and science's mysteries.
They would be makers of fabrics, of cloth for the continents, 
Makers of mighty engines and delicate instruments,
It is they who would set fair cities on the western plains far out,
They who would garden the deserts, it is they who would conquer the drought!
They see the dykes to the skyline, where a dust-waste blazes to-day,
And they hear the lap of the waters on the miles of sand and clay;
They see the rainfall increasing, and the bountiful sweeps of grass,
And all the year on the rivers long strings of their barges pass.
But still are the steamers loading with our timber and wood and gold,
To return with the costly shoddy stacked high in the foreign hold,
With cardboard boots for our leather, and Brum-magem goods and slops
For thin, white-faced Australians to sell in our sordid shops.
Sonnet V. To A Friend, Who Thinks Sensibility A Misfortune.
by Anna Seward

Ah, thankless! canst thou envy him who gains
The Stoic's cold and indurate repose?
Thou! with thy lively sense of bliss and woes! - 
From a false balance of life's joys and pains
Thou deem'st him happy. - Plac'd 'mid fair domains,
Where full the river down the valley flows,
As wisely might'st thou wish thy home had rose
On the parch'd surface of unwater'd plains,
For that, when long the heavy rain descends,
Bursts over guardian banks their whelming tide! - 
Seldom the wild and wasteful Flood extends,
But, spreading plenty, verdure, beauty wide,
The cool translucent Stream perpetual bends,
And laughs the Vale as the bright waters glide.
A Legacy.
by Henry Austin Dobson

Ah, Postumus, we all must go:
This keen North-Easter nips my shoulder;
My strength begins to fail; I know
You find me older;
I've made my Will. Dear, faithful friend--
My Muse's friend and not my purse's!
Who still would hear and still commend
My tedious verses,
How will you live--of these deprived?
I've learned your candid soul. The venal,--
The sordid friend had scarce survived
A test so penal;
But you--Nay, nay, 'tis so. The rest
Are not as you: you hide your merit;
You, more than all, deserve the best
True friends inherit;--
Not gold,--that hearts like yours despise;
Not "spacious dirt" (your own expression),
No; but the rarer, dearer prize--
The Life's Confession!
You catch my thought? What! Can't you guess?
You, you alone, admired my Cantos;--
I've left you, P., my whole MS.,
In three portmanteaus!
Bitterness Of Death
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

I
Ah, stern, cold man,
How can you lie so relentless hard
While I wash you with weeping water!
Do you set your face against the daughter
Of life? Can you never discard
Your curt pride's ban?
You masquerader!
How can you shame to act this part
Of unswerving indifference to me?
You want at last, ah me!
To break my heart
Evader!
You know your mouth
Was always sooner to soften
Even than your eyes.
Now shut it lies
Relentless, however often
I kiss it in drouth.
It has no breath
Nor any relaxing. Where,
Where are you, what have you done?
What is this mouth of stone?
How did you dare
Take cover in death!
II
Once you could see,
The white moon show like a breast revealed
By the slipping shawl of stars.
Could see the small stars tremble
As the heart beneath did wield
Systole, diastole.
All the lovely macrocosm
Was woman once to you,
Bride to your groom.
No tree in bloom
But it leaned you a new
White bosom.
And always and ever
Soft as a summering tree
Unfolds from the sky, for your good,
Unfolded womanhood;
Shedding you down as a tree
Sheds its flowers on a river.
I saw your brows
Set like rocks beside a sea of gloom,
And I shed my very soul down into your thought;
Like flowers I fell, to be caught
On the comforted pool, like bloom
That leaves the boughs.
III
Oh, masquerader,
With a hard face white-enamelled,
What are you now?
Do you care no longer how
My heart is trammelled,
Evader?
Is this you, after all,
Metallic, obdurate
With bowels of steel?
Did you never feel? -
Cold, insensate,
Mechanical!
Ah, no! - you multiform,
You that I loved, you wonderful,
You who darkened and shone,
You were many men in one;
But never this null
This never-warm!
Is this the sum of you?
Is it all nought?
Cold, metal-cold?
Are you all told
Here, iron-wrought?
Is this what's become of you?
The Dedication
by Madison Julius Cawein

Ah, not for us the Heavens that hold
GOD'S message of Promethean fire!
The Flame that fell on bards of old
To hallow and inspire.
Yet let the Soul dream on and dare
No less SONG'S height that these possess:
We can but fail; and may prepare
The way to some success.
To Laura In Death. Sonnet LXXXIX.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Deh porgi mano all' affannato ingegno.
HE BEGS LOVE TO ASSIST HIM, THAT HE MAY WORTHILY CELEBRATE HER.
Ah, Love! some succour to my weak mind deign,
Lend to my frail and weary style thine aid,
To sing of her who is immortal made,
A citizen of the celestial reign.
And grant, Lord, that my verse the height may gain
Of her great praises, else in vain essay'd,
Whose peer in worth or beauty never stay'd
In this our world, unworthy to retain.
Love answers: "In myself and Heaven what lay,
By conversation pure and counsel wise,
All was in her whom death has snatch'd away.
Since the first morn when Adam oped his eyes,
Like form was ne'er--suffice it this to say,
Write down with tears what scarce I tell for sighs."
MACGREGOR.
Rondeau
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

Ah, Manon, say, why is it we
Are one and all so fain of thee?
Thy rich red beauty debonnaire
In very truth is not more fair,
Than the shy grace and purity
That clothe the maiden maidenly;
Her gray eyes shine more tenderly
And not less bright than thine her hair;
Ah, Manon, say!
Expound, I pray, the mystery
Why wine-stained lip and languid eye,
And most unsaintly Maenad air,
Should move us more than all the rare
White roses of virginity?
Ah, Manon, say!
A Love Song
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Ah, love, my love is like a cry in the night,
A long, loud cry to the empty sky,
The cry of a man alone in the desert,
With hands uplifted, with parching lips,
Oh, rescue me, rescue me,
Thy form to mine arms,
The dew of thy lips to my mouth,
Dost thou hear me?--my call thro' the night?
Darling, I hear thee and answer,
Thy fountain am I,
All of the love of my soul will I bring to thee,
All of the pains of my being shall wring to thee,
Deep and forever the song of my loving shall sing to thee,
Ever and ever thro' day and thro' night shall I cling to thee.
Hearest thou the answer?
Darling, I come, I come.
In Praise of Songs that Die
by Vachel Lindsay

After having read a Great Deal of Good Current Poetry in the Magazines and Newspapers
Ah, they are passing, passing by,
Wonderful songs, but born to die!
Cries from the infinite human seas,
Waves thrice-winged with harmonies.
Here I stand on a pier in the foam
Seeing the songs to the beach go home,
Dying in sand while the tide flows back,
As it flowed of old in its fated track.
Oh, hurrying tide that will not hear
Your own foam-children dying near:
Is there no refuge-house of song,
No home, no haven where songs belong?
Oh, precious hymns that come and go!
You perish, and I love you so!
Stanzas To Love
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

Ah, poor Love, why dost thou live,
Thus to see thy service lost;
If she will no comfort give,
Make an end, yield up the ghost!
That she may, at length, approve
That she hardly long believed,
That the heart will die for love
That is not in time relieved.
Oh, that ever I was born
Service so to be refused;
Faithful love to be forborn!
Never love was so abused.
But, sweet Love, be still awhile;
She that hurt thee, Love, may heal thee;
Sweet!    I see within her smile
More than reason can reveal thee.
For, though she be rich and fair,
Yet she is both wise and kind,
And, therefore, do thou not despair
But thy faith may fancy find.
Yet, although she be a queen
That may such a snake despise,
Yet, with silence all unseen,
Run, and hide thee in her eyes:
Where if she will let thee die,
Yet at latest gasp of breath,
Say that in a lady's eye
Love both took his life and death.
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
by John Keats

1.
Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
2.
Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
So haggard and so woe-begone
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.
3.
I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
4.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful, a faery's child:
Her hair was long, her foot was ligh,
And her eyes were wild.
5.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery's song.
6.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
7.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said,
"I love thee true!"
8.
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she gazed and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild, sad eyes
So kissed to sleep.
9.
And there we slumbered on the moss,
And there I dreamed, ah! woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dreamed
On the cold hill side.
10.
I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cried "La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!"
11.
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill side.
12.
And that is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.