DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Reflections
by George William Russell

How shallow is this mere that gleams!
Its depth of blue is from the skies;
And from a distant sun the dreams
And lovely light within your eyes.
We deem our love so infinite
Because the Lord is everywhere,
And love awakening is made bright
And bathed in that diviner air.
We go on our enchanted way
And deem our hours immortal hours,
Who are but shadow kings that play
With mirrored majesties and powers.
Roman Antiquities - From The Roman Station At Old Penrith
by William Wordsworth

How profitless the relics that we cull,
Troubling the last holds of ambitious Rome,
Unless they chasten fancies that presume
Too high, or idle agitations lull!
Of the world's flatteries if the brain be full,
To have no seat for thought were better doom,
Like this old helmet, or the eyeless skull
Of him who gloried in its nodding plume.
Heaven out of view, our wishes what are they?
Our fond regrets tenacious in their grasp?
The Sage's theory? the Poet's lay?
Mere Fibulae without a robe to clasp;
Obsolete lamps, whose light no time recalls;
Urns without ashes, tearless lacrymals!
Keswick - Sir George Beaumont. (Exhibition, 1807.)
by William Lisle Bowles

How shall I praise thee, Beaumont, whose nice skill
Can mould the soft and shadowy scene at will;
Chastise to harmony each gaudy ray,
Simple, yet grand, the mountain scene display;
The lake where sober evening seems to sleep,
Hills far retiring into umbrage deep;
Blend all with classic, pure, poetic taste,
And strike the more with forms and colours chaste!
Preparation.
by Madison Julius Cawein

How often hope's fair flower blooms richest where
The soul was fertilized with black despair.
A Meditation
by Herman Melville

How often in the years that close,
When truce had stilled the sieging gun,
The soldiers, mounting on their works,
With mutual curious glance have run
From face to face along the fronting show,
And kinsman spied, or friend--even in a foe.
What thoughts conflicting then were shared,
While sacred tenderness perforce
Welled from the heart and wet the eye;
And something of a strange remorse
Rebelled against the sanctioned sin of blood,
And Christian wars of natural brotherhood.
Then stirred the god within the breast--
The witness that is man's at birth;
A deep misgiving undermined
Each plea and subterfuge of earth;
They felt in that rapt pause, with warning rife,
Horror and anguish for the civil strife.
Of North or South they reeked not then,
Warm passion cursed the cause of war:
Can Africa pay back this blood
Spilt on Potomac's shore?
Yet doubts, as pangs, were vain the strife to stay,
And hands that fain had clasped again could slay.
How frequent in the camp was seen
The herald from the hostile one,
A guest and frank companion there
When the proud formal talk was done;
The pipe of peace was smoked even 'mid the war,
And fields in Mexico again fought o'er.
In Western battle long they lay
So near opposed in trench or pit,
That foeman unto foeman called
As men who screened in tavern sit:
"You bravely fight" each to the other said--
"Toss us a biscuit!" o'er the wall it sped.
And pale on those same slopes, a boy--
A stormer, bled in noon-day glare;
No aid the Blue-coats then could bring,
He cried to them who nearest were,
And out there came 'mid howling shot and shell
A daring foe who him befriended well.
Mark the great Captains on both sides,
The soldiers with the broad renown--
They all were messmates on the Hudson's marge,
Beneath one roof they laid them down;
And, free from hate in many an after pass,
Strove as in school-boy rivalry of the class.
A darker side there is; but doubt
In Nature's charity hovers there:
If men for new agreement yearn,
Then old upbraiding best forbear:
"The South's the sinner!" Well, so let it be;
But shall the North sin worse, and stand the Pharisee?
O, now that brave men yield the sword,
Mine be the manful soldier-view;
By how much more they boldly warred,
By so much more is mercy due:
When Vicksburg fell, and the moody files marched out,
Silent the victors stood, scorning to raise a shout.
Guitar Song.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Comment, disaient-ils.")
[XXIII., July 18, 1838.]
How shall we flee sorrow - flee sorrow? said he.
How, how! How shall we flee sorrow - flee sorrow? said he.
How - how - how? answered she.
How shall we see pleasure - see pleasure? said he.
How, how! How shall we see pleasure - see pleasure? said he.
Dream - dream - dream! answered she.
How shall we be happy - be happy? said he.
How, how! How shall we be happy - be happy? said he.
Love - love - love! whispered she.
EVELYN JERROLD
Approach Of Summer
by William Lisle Bowles

How shall I meet thee, Summer, wont to fill
My heart with gladness, when thy pleasant tide
First came, and on the Coomb's romantic side
Was heard the distant cuckoo's hollow bill!
Fresh flowers shall fringe the margin of the stream,
As with the songs of joyance and of hope
The hedge-rows shall ring loud, and on the slope
The poplars sparkle in the passing beam;
The shrubs and laurels that I loved to tend,
Thinking their May-tide fragrance would delight,
With many a peaceful charm, thee, my poor friend,
Shall put forth their green shoots, and cheer the sight!
But I shall mark their hues with sadder eyes,
And weep the more for one who in the cold earth lies!
How Sleep The Brave
by William Collins

How sleep the brave, who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blest!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallow'd mould,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.
By fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There Honour comes, a pilgrim grey,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair
To dwell, a weeping hermit, there!
The Vindictive
by Alfred Noyes

How should we praise those lads of the old Vindictive
Who looked Death straight in the eyes,
Till his gaze fell,
In those red gates of hell?
England, in her proud history, proudly enrolls them,
And the deep night in her remembering skies
With purer glory
Shall blazon their grim story.
There were no throngs to applaud that hushed adventure.
They were one to a thousand on that fierce emprise.
The shores they sought
Were armoured, past all thought.
O, they knew fear, be assured, as the brave must know it,
With youth and its happiness bidding their last good-byes;
Till thoughts, more dear
Than life, cast out all fear.
For if, as we think, they remembered the brown-roofed homesteads,
And the scent of the hawthorn hedges when daylight dies,
Old happy places,
Young eyes and fading faces;
One dream was dearer that night than the best of their boyhood,
One hope more radiant than any their hearts could prize.
The touch of your hand,
The light of your face, England!
So, age to age shall tell how they sailed through the darkness
Where, under those high, austere, implacable stars,
Not one in ten
Might look for a dawn again.
They saw the ferry-boats, Iris and Daffodil, creeping
Darkly as clouds to the shimmering mine-strewn bars,
Flash into light!
Then thunder reddened the night.
The wild white swords of the search-lights blinded and stabbed them,
The sharp black shadows fought in fantastic wars.
Black waves leapt whitening,
Red decks were washed with lightning.
But, under the twelve-inch guns of the black land-batteries
The hacked bright hulk, in a glory of crackling spars,
Moved to her goal
Like an immortal soul;
That, while the raw rent flesh in a furnace is tortured,
Reigns by a law no agony ever can shake,
And shines in power
Above all shocks of the hour.
O, there, while the decks ran blood, and the star-shells lightened
The old broken ship that the enemy never could break,
Swept through the fire
And grappled her heart's desire.
There, on a wreck that blazed with the soul of England,
The lads that died in the dark for England's sake
Knew, as they died,
Nelson was at their side;
Nelson, and all the ghostly fleets of his island,
Fighting beside them there, and the soul of Drake!--
Dreams, as we knew,
Till these lads made them true.
How should we praise you, lads of the old Vindictive,
Who looked death straight in the eyes,
Till his gaze fell
In those red gates of hell?
Success
by Madison Julius Cawein

How some succeed who have least need,
In that they make no effort for!
And pluck, where others pluck a weed,
The burning blossom of a star,
Grown from no earthly seed.
For some shall reap that never sow;
And some shall toil and not attain, - 
What boots it in ourselves to know
Such labor here is not in vain,
When we still see it so!
Solitude.
by Archibald Lampman

How still it is here in the woods. The trees
Stand motionless, as if they did not dare
To stir, lest it should break the spell. The air
Hangs quiet as spaces in a marble frieze.
Even this little brook, that runs at ease,
Whispering and gurgling in its knotted bed,
Seems but to deepen with its curling thread
Of sound the shadowy sun-pierced silences.
Sometimes a hawk screams or a woodpecker
Startles the stillness from its fix'd mood
With his loud careless tap. Sometimes I hear
The dreamy white-throat from some far off tree
Pipe slowly on the listening solitude
His five pure notes succeeding pensively.
How Still, How Happy!
by Emily Bronte

How still, how happy! Those are words
That once would scarce agree together;
I loved the plashing of the surge,
The changing heaven the breezy weather,
More than smooth seas and cloudless skies
And solemn, soothing, softened airs
That in the forest woke no sighs
And from the green spray shook no tears.
How still, how happy! now I feel
Where silence dwells is sweeter far
Than laughing mirth's most joyous swell
However pure its raptures are.
Come, sit down on this sunny stone:
'Tis wintry light o'er flowerless moors,
But sit, for we are all alone
And clear expand heaven's breathless shores.
I could think in the withered grass
Spring's budding wreaths we might discern;
The violet's eye might shyly flash
And young leaves shoot among the fern.
It is but thought, full many a night
The snow shall clothe those hills afar
And storms shall add a drearier blight
And winds shall wage a wilder war,
Before the lark may herald in
Fresh foliage twined with blossoms fair
And summer days again begin
Their glory, haloed crown to wear.
Yet my heart loves December's smile
As much as July's golden beam;
Then let us sit and watch the while
The blue ice curdling on the stream.
Yasmin
by James Elroy Flecker

(A Ghazel)
How splendid in the morning glows the lily: with what grace he throws
His supplication to the rose: do roses nod the head, Yasmin?
But when the silver dove descends I find the little flower of friends
Whose very name that sweetly ends I say when I have said, Yasmin.
The morning light is clear and cold: I dare not in that light behold
A whiter light, a deeper gold, a glory too far shed, Yasmin.
But when the deep red eye of day is level with the lone highway,
And some to Mecca turn to pray, and I toward thy bed, Yasmin;
Or when the wind beneath the moon is drifting like a soul aswoon,
And harping planets talk love's tune with milky wings outspread, Yasmin,
Shower down thy love, O burning bright! For one night or the other night
Will come the Gardener in white, and gathered flowers are dead, Yasmin.
In Hilly-Wood
by John Clare

How sweet to be thus nestling deep in boughs,
Upon an ashen stoven pillowing me;
Faintly are heard the ploughmen at their ploughs,
But not an eye can find its way to see.
The sunbeams scarce molest me with a smile,
So thickly the leafy armies gather round;
And where they do, the breeze blows cool the while,
Their leafy shadows dancing on the ground.
Full many a flower, too, wishing to be seen,
Perks up its head the hiding grass between,--
In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be;
Where all the noises, that on peace intrude,
Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee,
Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude.
At Verona
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

How steep the stairs within King's houses are
For exile-wearied feet as mine to tread,
And O how salt and bitter is the bread
Which falls from this Hound's table, - better far
That I had died in the red ways of war,
Or that the gate of Florence bare my head,
Than to live thus, by all things comraded
Which seek the essence of my soul to mar.
'Curse God and die:    what better hope than this?
He hath forgotten thee in all the bliss
Of his gold city, and eternal day' -
Nay peace:    behind my prison's blinded bars
I do possess what none can take away,
My love and all the glory of the stars.
The Tide Rock
by Charles Kingsley

How sleeps yon rock, whose half-day's bath is done.
With broad blight side beneath the broad bright sun,
Like sea-nymph tired, on cushioned mosses sleeping.
Yet, nearer drawn, beneath her purple tresses
From drooping brows we find her slowly weeping.
So many a wife for cruel man's caresses
Must inly pine and pine, yet outward bear
A gallant front to this world's gaudy glare.
Ilfracombe, 1849.
The Maiden I Love
by John Clare

How sweet are Spring wild flowers! They grow past the counting.
How sweet are the wood-paths that thread through the grove!
But sweeter than all the wild flowers of the mountain
Is the beauty that walks here--the maiden I love.
Her black hair in tangles
The rose briar mangles;
Her lips and soft cheeks,
Where love ever speaks:
O there's nothing so sweet as the maiden I love.
It was down in the wild flowers, among brakes and brambles,
I met the sweet maiden so dear to my eye,
In one of my Sunday morn midsummer rambles,
Among the sweet wild blossoms blooming close by.
Her hair it was coal black,
Hung loose down her back;
In her hand she held posies
Of blooming primroses,
The maiden who passed on the morning of love.
Coal black was her silk hair that shaded white shoulders;
Ruby red were her ripe lips, her cheeks of soft hue;
Her sweet smiles, enchanting the eyes of beholders,
Thrilled my heart as she rambled the wild blossoms through.
Like the pearl, her bright eye;
In trembling delight I
Kissed her cheek, like a rose
In its gentlest repose.
O there's nothing so sweet as the maiden I love!
Christmas Time.
by Freeman Edwin Miller

How sweet the brazen belfries chime
Across the hills and through the dales,
And o'er the breasts of meadowed vales,
Beneath the smiles of Christmas time!
Rough sorrow's thorny fingers grow
As soft and waxen as a child's,
And balmy pleasures o'er the wilds
Chant music to the drifting snow.
Ah, scattered locks that fringe my face,
With wintry wisps of white and gray!
Ah, sad, dimmed eyes that look away
To artless childhood's tender grace!
To-night those years with joys sublime
Steal over me and fill my soul
With lullabies of bliss that roll
The golden glees of Christmas time.
Again I live in wondrous days,
When baby hands with chubby glee
Plucked gladness from the loaded tree
Where loving burdens bent the sprays;
The sunny songs of that sweet clime
Sing softly in my soul again,
Till I forget the ways of men
And laugh and shout at Christmas time.
Angelic joys that died in pain,
Sweet raptures from the days of bliss,
Your loving lips with clinging kiss
Thrill all my heart and soul and brain;
And turning from my weary rhyme
To count my sorrows o'er and o'er,
I'd give my life to know once more
Those wondrous days of Christmas time.
Ring, laughing bells, ring out to-night!
From happy years that now are fled,
You bring the faces of the dead,
And bless me with a deep delight!
Away, away, these thoughts of men,
These toils of mine, that sadness give;
My heart grows young and I would live
My Christmas pleasures o'er again!
Love And War.
by Thomas Osborne Davis

I.
How soft is the moon on Glengariff,
The rocks seem to melt with the light:
Oh! would I were there with dear Fanny,
To tell her that love is as bright;
And nobly the sun of July
O'er the waters of Adragoole shines--
Oh! would that I saw the green banner
Blaze there over conquering lines.
II.
Oh! love is more fair than the moonlight,
And glory more grand than the sun:
And there is no rest for a brave heart,
Till its bride and its laurels are won;
But next to the burst of our banner,
And the smile of dear Fanny, I crave
The moon on the rocks of Glengariff--
The sun upon Adragoole's wave.
An Old Memory
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

How sweet the music sounded
That summer long ago,
When you were by my side, love,
To list its gentle flow.
I saw your eyes a-shining,
I felt your rippling hair,
I kissed your pearly cheek, love,
And had no thought of care.
And gay or sad the music,
With subtle charm replete;
I found in after years, love
'Twas you that made it sweet.
For standing where we heard it,
I hear again the strain;
It wakes my heart, but thrills it
With sad, mysterious pain.
It pulses not so joyous
As when you stood with me,
And hand in hand we listened
To that low melody.
Oh, could the years turn back, love!
Oh, could events be changed
To what they were that time, love,
Before we were estranged;
Wert thou once more a maiden
Whose smile was gold to me;
Were I once more the lover
Whose word was life to thee,--
O God! could all be altered,
The pain, the grief, the strife,
And wert thou--as thou shouldst be--
My true and loyal wife!
But all my tears are idle,
And all my wishes vain.
What once you were to me, love,
You may not be again.
For I, alas! like others,
Have missed my dearest aim.
I asked for love. Oh, mockery!
Fate comes to me with fame!
Songs Of Education: IV. Citizenship
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Form 8889512, Sub-Section Q
How slowly learns the child at school
The names of all the nobs that rule
From Ponsonby to Pennant;
Ere his bewildered mind find rest,
Knowing his host can be a Guest,
His landlord is a Tennant.
He knew not, at the age of three,
What Lord St. Leger next will be
Or what he was before;
A Primrose in the social swim
A Mr. Primrose is to him,
And he is nothing more.
But soon, about the age of ten,
He finds he is a Citizen,
And knows his way about;
Can pause within, or just beyond,
The line 'twixt Mond and Demi-Mond,
'Twixt Getting On--or Out.
The Citizen will take his share
(In every sense) as bull and bear;
Nor need this oral ditty
Invoke the philologic pen
To show you that a Citizen
Means Something in the City.
Thus gains he, with the virile gown,
The fasces and the civic crown,
The forum of the free;
Not more to Rome's high law allied
Is Devonport in all his pride
Or Lipton's self than he.
For he will learn, if he will try,
The deep interior truths whereby
We rule the Commonwealth;
What is the Food-Controller's fee
And whether the Health Ministry
Are in it for their health.
Fragment: Music And Sweet Poetry.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

How sweet it is to sit and read the tales
Of mighty poets and to hear the while
Sweet music, which when the attention fails
Fills the dim pause -
How Sweet I Roam'd
by William Blake

How sweet I roam'd from field to field,
And tasted all the summer's pride
'Til the prince of love beheld
Who in the sunny beams did glide!
He shew'd me lilies for my hair
And blushing roses for my brow;
He led me through his garden fair,
Where all his golden pleasures grow.
With sweet May dews my wings were wet,
And Phoebus fir'd my vocal rage
He caught me in his silken net,
And shut me in his golden cage.
He loves to sit and hear me sing,
Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;
Then stretches out my golden wing,
And mocks my loss of liberty.
In Hilly-Wood.
by John Clare

How Sweet to be thus nestling deep in boughs,
Upon an ashen stoven pillowing me;
Faintly are heard the ploughmen at their ploughs,
But not an eye can find its way to see.
The sunbeams scarce molest me with a smile,
So thick the leafy armies gather round;
And where they do, the breeze blows cool the while,
Their leafy shadows dancing on the ground.
Full many a flower, too, wishing to be seen,
Perks up its head the hiding grass between.--
In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be;
Where all the noises, that on peace intrude,
Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee,
Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude.
How Soon Hath Time
by John Milton

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stoln on his wing my three and twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on wtih full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arrived so near,
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven;
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye.
Bereavement.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

1.
How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner,
As he bends in still grief o'er the hallowed bier,
As enanguished he turns from the laugh of the scorner,
And drops, to Perfection's remembrance, a tear;
When floods of despair down his pale cheek are streaming,
When no blissful hope on his bosom is beaming,
Or, if lulled for awhile, soon he starts from his dreaming,
And finds torn the soft ties to affection so dear.
2.
Ah! when shall day dawn on the night of the grave,
Or summer succeed to the winter of death?
Rest awhile, hapless victim, and Heaven will save
The spirit, that faded away with the breath.
Eternity points in its amaranth bower,
Where no clouds of fate o'er the sweet prospect lower,
Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower,
When woe fades away like the mist of the heath.
Ode Written In The Beginning Of The Year 1746
by William Collins

How sleep the brave, who sink to rest,
By all their country's wishes blest!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallowed mould,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.
By fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There Honour comes, a pilgrim grey,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair
To dwell a weeping hermit there!
Sonnets. VII
by John Milton

How soon hath Time the suttle theef of youth,
Stoln on his wing my three and twentith yeer !
My hasting dayes flie on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th,
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arriv'd so near,
And inward ripenes doth much less appear,
That som more timely-happy spirits indu'th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow.
It shall be still in strictest measure eev'n,
To that same lot, however mean, or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heav'n;
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great task Masters eye.
Only In Dreams
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

How strange are dreams.    Last night I dreamed about you.
All that old bitterness of loss and pain,
The desolation of my lot without you,
The keen regret, all, all came back again.
Again I faced that terrible old sorrow;
Too numb to weep, too cowardly to pray.
Again the blankness of a dread to-morrow
Filled me with sickly terror and dismay.
I woke in tears; but lo! a moment after,
When every vestige of my dream was fled,
I broke the silence of my room with laughter,
To think sleep had revived a thing so dead.
Thank God, that only in the realms of fancy
Can that old sorrow wake again to strife.
No fate is strong enough -no necromancy -
To make it stir one pulse of my calm life.
My heart is light, my lot is blest without you,
Our early sorrows are not what they seem,
Now in my slumber, if I dream about you
I wake to laugh at such an idle dream.
Honey Dripping From The Comb
by James Whitcomb Riley

How slight a thing may set one's fancy drifting
Upon the dead sea of the Past! - A view -
Sometimes an odor - or a rooster lifting
A far-off "Ooh! ooh-ooh!"
And suddenly we find ourselves astray
In some wood's-pasture of the Long Ago -
Or idly dream again upon a day
Of rest we used to know.
I bit an apple but a moment since -
A wilted apple that the worm had spurned. -
Yet hidden in the taste were happy hints
Of good old days returned. -
And so my heart, like some enraptured lute,
Tinkles a tune so tender and complete,
God's blessing must be resting on the fruit -
So bitter, yet so sweet!