DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Easter Bells
by Kate Seymour Maclean

Oh bells of Easter morn, oh solemn sounding bells,
Which fill the hollow cells
Of the blue April air with a most sweet refrain,
Ye fill my heart with pain.
For when, as from a thousand holy altar-fires,
A thousand resonant spires
Sent up the offering--the glad thanksgiving strain--
"The Lord is risen again!"
He went from us who shall return no more, no more!
I say the sad words o'er,
And they are mixed and blent with your triumphant psalm,
Like bitterness and balm,
We stood with him beside the black and silent river,
Cold, cold and soundless ever;
But there our feet were stayed--unloosed our clasping fond,
And he has passed beyond.
And still that solemn hymn, like smoke of sacrifice,
Clomb the blue April skies,
And on our anguish placed its sacramental chrism,
"Behold, the Lord is risen!"
Oh, bells of Easter morn! your mighty voices reach
A deeper depth than speech;
We heard, "Because He liveth they shall live with Him;"
This was our Easter hymn.
And while the slow vibrations swell, and sink, and cease,
They bring divinest peace,
For we commit our best beloved to the dust,
In sure and certain trust.
Hic Vir, Hic Est.
by Charles Stuart Calverley

Often, when o'er tree and turret,
Eve a dying radiance flings,
By that ancient pile I linger
Known familiarly as "King's."
And the ghosts of days departed
Rise, and in my burning breast
All the undergraduate wakens,
And my spirit is at rest.
What, but a revolting fiction,
Seems the actual result
Of the Census's enquiries
Made upon the 15th ult.?
Still my soul is in its boyhood;
Nor of year or changes recks.
Though my scalp is almost hairless,
And my figure grows convex.
Backward moves the kindly dial;
And I'm numbered once again
With those noblest of their species
Called emphatically 'Men':
Loaf, as I have loafed aforetime,
Through the streets, with tranquil mind,
And a long-backed fancy-mongrel
Trailing casually behind:
Past the Senate-house I saunter,
Whistling with an easy grace;
Past the cabbage-stalks that carpet
Still the beefy market-place;
Poising evermore the eye-glass
In the light sarcastic eye,
Lest, by chance, some breezy nursemaid
Pass, without a tribute, by.
Once, an unassuming Freshman,
Through these wilds I wandered on,
Seeing in each house a College,
Under every cap a Don:
Each perambulating infant
Had a magic in its squall,
For my eager eye detected
Senior Wranglers in them all.
By degrees my education
Grew, and I became as others;
Learned to court delirium tremens
By the aid of Bacon Brothers;
Bought me tiny boots of Mortlock,
And colossal prints of Roe;
And ignored the proposition
That both time and money go.
Learned to work the wary dogcart
Artfully through King's Parade;
Dress, and steer a boat, and sport with
Amaryllis in the shade:
Struck, at Brown's, the dashing hazard;
Or (more curious sport than that)
Dropped, at Callaby's, the terrier
Down upon the prisoned rat.
I have stood serene on Fenner's
Ground, indifferent to blisters,
While the Buttress of the period
Bowled me his peculiar twisters:
Sung 'We won't go home till morning';
Striven to part my backhair straight;
Drunk (not lavishly) of Miller's
Old dry wines at 78:-
When within my veins the blood ran,
And the curls were on my brow,
I did, oh ye undergraduates,
Much as ye are doing now.
Wherefore bless ye, O beloved ones:-
Now unto mine inn must I,
Your 'poor moralist,' {51a} betake me,
In my 'solitary fly.'
The Elixir.
by Emma Lazarus

"Oh brew me a potion strong and good!
One golden drop in his wine
Shall charm his sense and fire his blood,
And    bend his will to    mine."
Poor child of passion! ask of me
Elixir of death or sleep,
Or Lethe's stream; but love is free,
And woman must wait and weep.
Music - (Twelve Translations From Charles Baudelaire)
by John Collings Squire, Sir

Oft Music, as it were some moving mighty sea,
Bears me towards my pale
Star: in clear space, or 'neath a vaporous canopy
On-floating, I set sail.
With heaving chest which strains forward, and lungs outblown,
I climb the ridg'd steeps
Of those high-pil'd clouds which 'thwart the night are thrown,
Veiling its starry deeps.
I suffer all the throes, within my quivering form,
Of a great ship in pain,
Now a soft wind, and now the writhings of a storm
Upon the vasty main
Rock me: at other times a death-like calm, the bare
Mirror of my despair.
A Prayer For Grace In Death. Second Reading.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Parmi che spesso.
Ofttimes my great desire doth flatter me
With hope on earth yet many years to stay:
Still Death, the more I love it, day by day
Takes from the life I love so tenderly.
What better time for that dread change could be,
If in our griefs alone to God we pray?
Oh, lead me, Lord, oh, lead me far away
From every thought that lures my soul from Thee!
Yea, if at any hour, through grace of Thine,
The fervent zeal of love and faith that cheer
And fortify the soul, my heart assail.
Since nought achieve these mortal powers of mine,
Plant, like a saint in heaven, that virtue here;
For, lacking Thee, all good must faint and fail.
La Nue
by Alan Seeger

Oft when sweet music undulated round,
Like the full moon out of a perfumed sea
Thine image from the waves of blissful sound
Rose and thy sudden light illumined me.
And in the country, leaf and flower and air
Would alter and the eternal shape emerge;
Because they spoke of thee the fields seemed fair,
And Joy to wait at the horizon's verge.
The little cloud-gaps in the east that filled
Gray afternoons with bits of tenderest blue
Were windows in a palace pearly-silled
That thy voluptuous traits came glimmering through.
And in the city, dominant desire
For which men toil within its prison-bars,
I watched thy white feet moving in the mire
And thy white forehead hid among the stars.
Mystical, feminine, provoking, nude,
Radiant there with rosy arms outspread,
Sum of fulfillment, sovereign attitude,
Sensual with laughing lips and thrown-back head,
Draped in the rainbow on the summer hills,
Hidden in sea-mist down the hot coast-line,
Couched on the clouds that fiery sunset fills,
Blessed, remote, impersonal, divine;
The gold all color and grace are folded o'er,
The warmth all beauty and tenderness embower, - 
Thou quiverest at Nature's perfumed core,
The pistil of a myriad-petalled flower.
Round thee revolves, illimitably wide,
The world's desire, as stars around their pole.
Round thee all earthly loveliness beside
Is but the radiate, infinite aureole.
Thou art the poem on the cosmic page - 
In rubric written on its golden ground - 
That Nature paints her flowers and foliage
And rich-illumined commentary round.
Thou art the rose that the world's smiles and tears
Hover about like butterflies and bees.
Thou art the theme the music of the spheres
Echoes in endless, variant harmonies.
Thou art the idol in the altar-niche
Faced by Love's congregated worshippers,
Thou art the holy sacrament round which
The vast cathedral is the universe.
Thou art the secret in the crystal where,
For the last light upon the mystery Man,
In his lone tower and ultimate despair,
Searched the gray-bearded Zoroastrian.
And soft and warm as in the magic sphere,
Deep-orbed as in its erubescent fire,
So in my heart thine image would appear,
Curled round with the red flames of my desire.
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet LXI
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

Oft with true sighs, oft with vncalled teares,
Now with slow words, now with dumbe eloquence,
I Stellas eyes assaid, inuade her eares;
But this, at last, is her sweet breath'd defence:
That who indeed in-felt affection beares,
So captiues to his Saint both soule and sence,
That, wholly hers, all selfenesse he forbeares,
Then his desires he learnes, his liues course thence.
Now, since her chast mind hates this loue in me,
With chastned mind I straight must shew that she
Shall quickly me from what she hates remoue.
O Doctor Cupid, thou for me reply;
Driu'n else to graunt, by Angels Sophistrie,
That I loue not without I leaue to loue.
Street Cries.
by Sidney Lanier

Oft seems the Time a market-town
Where many merchant-spirits meet
Who up and down and up and down
Cry out along the street
Their needs, as wares; one THUS, one SO:
Till all the ways are full of sound:
- But still come rain, and sun, and snow,
And still the world goes round.
A Little Picture.
by James Barron Hope

Oft when pacing thro' the long and dim
Dark gallery of the Past, I pause before
A picture of which this is a copy - 
Wretched at best.
How fair she look'd, standing a-tiptoe there,
Pois'd daintily upon her little feet!
The slanting sunset falling thro' the leaves
In golden glory on her smiling face,
Upturn'd towards the blushing roses; while
The breeze that came up from the river's brink,
Shook all their clusters over her fair face;
And sported with her robe, until methought,
That she stood there clad wondrously indeed!
In perfume and in music: for her dress
Made a low, rippling sound, like little waves
That break at midnight on the tawny sands - 
While all the evening air of roses whisper'd.
Over her face a rich, warm blush spread slowly,
And she laughed, a low, sweet, mellow laugh
To see the branches still evade her hands - 
Her small white hands which seem'd indeed as if
Made only thus to gather roses.
Then with face
All flushed and smiling she did nod to me
Asking my help to gather them for her:
And so, I bent the heavy clusters down,
Show'ring the rose-leaves o'er her neck and face;
Then carefully she plucked the very fairest one,
And court'seying playfully gave it to me - 
Show'd me her finger-tip, pricked by a thorn,
And when I would have kiss'd it, shook her head,
Kiss'd it herself, and mock'd me with a smile!
The rose she gave me sleeps between the leaves
Of an old poet where its sight oft brings
That summer evening back again to me.
Lucy Gray
by William Wordsworth

Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray,
And when I cross'd the Wild,
I chanc'd to see at break of day
The solitary Child.
No Mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wild Moor,
The sweetest Thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!
You yet may spy the Fawn at play,
The Hare upon the Green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.
"To-night will be a stormy night,
You to the Town must go,
And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your Mother thro' the snow."
"That, Father! will I gladly do;
'Tis scarcely afternoon,
The Minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the Moon."
At this the Father rais'd his hook
And snapp'd a faggot-band;
He plied his work, and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand.
Not blither is the mountain roe,
With many a wanton stroke
Her feet disperse, the powd'ry snow
That rises up like smoke.
The storm came on before its time,
She wander'd up and down,
And many a hill did Lucy climb
But never reach'd the Town.
The wretched Parents all that night
Went shouting far and wide;
But there was neither sound nor sight
To serve them for a guide.
At day-break on a hill they stood
That overlook'd the Moor;
And thence they saw the Bridge of Wood
A furlong from their door.
And now they homeward turn'd, and cry'd
"In Heaven we all shall meet!"
When in the snow the Mother spied
The print of Lucy's feet.
Then downward from the steep hill's edge
They track'd the footmarks small;
And through the broken hawthorn-hedge,
And by the long stone-wall;
And then an open field they cross'd,
The marks were still the same;
They track'd them on, nor ever lost,
And to the Bridge they came.
They follow'd from the snowy bank
The footmarks, one by one,
Into the middle of the plank,
And further there were none.
Yet some maintain that to this day
She is a living Child,
That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome Wild.
O'er rough and smooth she trips along,
And never looks behind;
And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.
Solitude, Or Lucy Gray
by William Wordsworth

Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.
No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,
The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!
You yet may spy the fawn at play,
The hare upon the green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.
"To-night will be a stormy night
You to the town must go;
And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your mother through the snow."
"That, Father! will I gladly do:
'Tis scarcely afternoon
The minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the moon!"
At this the Father raised his hook,
And snapped a faggot-band;
He plied his work; and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand.
Not blither is the mountain roe:
With many a wanton stroke
Her feet disperse the powdery snow,
That rises up like smoke.
The storm came on before its time:
She wandered up and down;
And many a hill did Lucy climb:
But never reached the town.
The wretched parents all that night
Went shouting far and wide;
But there was neither sound nor sight
To serve them for a guide.
At day-break on a hill they stood
That overlooked the moor;
And thence they saw the bridge of wood,
A furlong from their door.
They wept and, turning homeward, cried,
"In heaven we all shall meet;"
When in the snow the mother spied
The print of Lucy's feet.
Then downwards from the steep hill's edge
They tracked the footmarks small;
And through the broken hawthorn hedge,
And by the long stone-wall;
And then an open field they crossed:
The marks were still the same;
They tracked them on, nor ever lost;
And to the bridge they came.
They followed from the snowy bank
Those footmarks, one by one,
Into the middle of the plank;
And further there were none!
Yet some maintain that to this day
She is a living child;
That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.
O'er rough and smooth she trips along,
And never looks behind;
And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.
Sound And Sights
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
Often, when I wake at night,
I can hear the strangest sounds,
Stealthy noises, left and right,
As of some one going his rounds:
On the stairs there comes a crack
As if some one mounted there;
Then the door creaks; and the back
Settles of the rocking-chair,
As if some one had sat down.
Then I get up in my gown;
Run to mother; hide my head;
Snuggle down by her in bed.
And she says to me, "My dear,
There is nothing here to fear:
All the noises that you hear
Are the old house and the weather,
Dry old weather,
Having a little talk together.
You just heard the old house stretching,
Waking up to have a chat:
Seems to me that it is catching.
Don't wake up again for that."
II.
And again I wake at night,
And can see the queerest things:
In the gas-jet's lowered light,
The tall mantle with its rings
And its mirror seems a face
With a monster eye and nose
And a mouth, the fireplace,
Making faces at me. Those
Chairs against the wall move out,
Limping, as if lame with gout:
And I'm scared as scared can be,
Call, till father comes to me.
And he says, "There's nothing there;
Nothing that could hurt or scare.
And that mantle and that chair
Guess that they were only courting,
Queerly courting,
While the other was cavorting.
You just saw what these were thinking;
Longing there to hug and kiss:
Seems to me you caught them winking.
But don't wake again for this."
Golden Eyes
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

Oh Amber Eyes, oh Golden Eyes!
Oh Eyes so softly gay!
Wherein swift fancies fall and rise,
Grow dark and fade away.
Eyes like a little limpid pool
That holds a sunset sky,
While on its surface, calm and cool,
Blue water lilies lie.
Oh Tender Eyes, oh Wistful Eyes,
You smiled on me one day,
And all my life, in glad surprise,
Leapt up and pleaded "Stay!"
Alas, oh cruel, starlike eyes,
So grave and yet so gay,
You went to lighten other skies,
Smiled once and passed away.
Oh, you whom I name "Golden Eyes,"
Perhaps I used to know
Your beauty under other skies
In lives lived long ago.
Perhaps I rowed with galley slaves,
Whose labour never ceased,
To bring across Phoenician waves
Your treasure from the East.
Maybe you were an Emperor then
And I a favourite slave;
Some youth, whom from the lions' den
You vainly tried to save!
Maybe I reigned, a mighty King,
The early nations knew,
And you were some slight captive thing,
Some maiden whom I slew.
Perhaps, adrift on desert shores
Beside some shipwrecked prow,
I gladly gave my life for yours.
Would I might give it now!
Or on some sacrificial stone
Strange Gods we satisfied,
Perhaps you stooped and left a throne
To kiss me ere I died.
Perhaps, still further back than this,
In times ere men were men,
You granted me a moment's bliss
In some dark desert den,
When, with your amber eyes alight
With iridescent flame,
And fierce desire for love's delight,
Towards my lair you came
Ah laughing, ever-brilliant eyes,
These things men may not know,
But something in your radiance lies,
That, centuries ago,
Lit up my life in one wild blaze
Of infinite desire
To revel in your golden rays,
Or in your light expire.
If this, oh Strange Ringed Eyes, be true,
That through all changing lives
This longing love I have for you
Eternally survives,
May I not sometimes dare to dream
In some far time to be
Your softly golden eyes may gleam
Responsively on me?
Ah gentle, subtly changing eyes,
You smiled on me one day,
And all my life in glad surprise
Leaped up, imploring "Stay!"
Alas, alas, oh Golden Eyes,
So cruel and so gay,
You went to shine in other skies,
Smiled once and passed away.
Amour 10
by Michael Drayton

Oft taking pen in hand, with words to cast my woes,
Beginning to account the sum of all my cares,
I well perceiue my griefe innumerable growes,
And still in reckonings rise more millions of dispayres.
And thus, deuiding of my fatall howres,
The payments of my loue I read, and reading crosse,
And in substracting set my sweets vnto my sowres;
Th' average of my ioyes directs me to my losse.
And thus mine eyes, a debtor to thine eye,
Who by extortion gaineth all theyr lookes,
My hart hath payd such grieuous vsury,
That all her wealth lyes in thy Beauties bookes;
And all is thine which hath been due to mee,
And I a Banckrupt, quite vndone by thee.
Memories
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Oft I remember those whom I have known
In other days, to whom my heart was led
As by a magnet, and who are not dead,
But absent, and their memories overgrown
With other thoughts and troubles of my own,
As graves with grasses are, and at their head
The stone with moss and lichens so o'erspread,
Nothing is legible but the name alone.
And is it so with them?    After long years,
Do they remember me in the same way,
And is the memory pleasant as to me?
I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears?
Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay,
And yet the root perennial may be.
By A Grave
by Arthur Sherburne Hardy

Oft have I stood within the carven door
Of some cathedral at the close of the day,
And seen its softened splendors fade away
From lucent pane and tessellated floor,
As if a parting guest who comes no more, 
Till over all silence and blackness lay,
Then rose sweet murmurings of them that pray,
And shone the altar lamps unseen before,
So, Dear, as here I stand with thee alone,
The voices of the world sound faint and far,
The glare and glory of the moon grow dim,
And in the stillness, what I had not known,
I know, a light, pure shining as a star,
A song, uprising like a holy hymn.
Amor Intellectualis
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Oft have we trod the vales of Castaly
And heard sweet notes of sylvan music blown
From antique reeds to common folk unknown:
And often launched our bark upon that sea
Which the nine Muses hold in empery,
And ploughed free furrows through the wave and foam,
Nor spread reluctant sail for more safe home
Till we had freighted well our argosy.
Of which despoiled treasures these remain,
Sordello's passion, and the honeyed line
Of young Endymion, lordly Tamburlaine
Driving his pampered jades, and more than these,
The seven-fold vision of the Florentine,
And grave-browed Milton's solemn harmonies.
To Lady Jersey. On Being Asked To Write Something In Her Album.
by Thomas Moore

Written at Middleton.
Oh albums, albums, how I dread
Your everlasting scrap and scrawl!
How often wish that from the dead
Old Omar would pop forth his head,
And make a bonfire of you all!
So might I 'scape the spinster band,
The blushless blues, who, day and night,
Like duns in doorways, take their stand,
To waylay bards, with book in hand,
Crying for ever, "Write, sir, write!"
So might I shun the shame and pain,
That o'er me at this instant come,
When Beauty, seeking Wit in vain,
Knocks at the portal of my brain,
And gets, for answer, "Not at home!"
November, 1828.
Thoughts On The Present Government Of Ireland.
by Thomas Moore

Oft have I seen, in gay, equestrian pride,
Some well-rouged youth round Astley's Circus ride
Two stately steeds--standing, with graceful straddle,
Like him of Rhodes, with foot on either saddle,
While to soft tunes--some jigs and some andantes--
He steers around his light-paced Rosinantes.
So rides along, with canter smooth and pleasant,
That horseman bold, Lord Anglesea, at present;--
Papist and Protestant the coursers twain,
That lend their necks to his impartial rein,
And round the ring--each honored, as they go,
With equal pressure from his gracious toe--
To the old medley tune, half "Patrick's Day"
And half "Boyne Water," take their cantering way,
While Peel, the showman in the middle, cracks
His long-lasht whip to cheer the doubtful hacks.
Ah, ticklish trial of equestrian art!
How blest, if neither steed would bolt or start;--
If Protestant's old restive tricks were gone,
And Papist's winkers could be still kept on!
But no, false hopes--not even the great Ducrow
'Twixt two such steeds could 'scape an overthrow:
If solar hacks played Pha'ton a trick,
What hope, alas, from hackneys lunatic?
If once my Lord his graceful balance loses,
Or fails to keep each foot where each horse chooses;
If Peel but gives one extra touch of whip
To Papist's tail or Protestant's ear-tip--
That instant ends their glorious horsmanship!
Off bolt the severed steeds, for mischief free.
And down between them plumps Lord Anglesea!
Decay Of Piety
by William Wordsworth

Oft have I seen, ere Time had ploughed my cheek,
Matrons and Sires who, punctual to the call
Of their loved Church, on fast or festival
Through the long year the house of Prayer would seek:
By Christmas snows, by visitation bleak
Of Easter winds, unscared, from hut or hall
They came to lowly bench or sculptured stall,
But with one fervour of devotion meek.
I see the places where they once were known,
And ask, surrounded even by kneeling crowds,
Is ancient Piety for ever flown?
Alas! even then they seemed like fleecy clouds
That, struggling through the western sky, have won
Their pensive light from a departed sun!
Cross-Roads
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

Oft, as he jogs along the Winding-Way,
Occasion comes for Every Man to say,--
"This Road?--or That?" and as he chooses them,
So shall his journey end in Night or Day.
The Albatross
by Charles Baudelaire

Often, to amuse themselves, the crew of the ship
Would fell an albatross, the largest of sea birds,
Indolent companions of their trip
As they slide across the deep sea's bitters.
Scarcely had they dropped to the plank
Than these blue kings, maladroit and ashamed
Let their great white wings sink
Like an oar dragging under the water's plane.
The winged visitor, so awkward and weak!
So recently beautiful, now comic and ugly!
One sailor grinds a pipe into his beak,
Another, limping, mimics the infirm bird that once could fly.
The poet is like the prince of the clouds
Who haunts the storm and laughs at lightning.
He's exiled to the ground and its hooting crowds;
His giant wings prevent him from walking.
To Eleonora Duse I
by Sara Teasdale

Oh beauty that is filled so full of tears,
Where every passing anguish left its trace,
I pray you grant to me this depth of grace:
That I may see before it disappears,
Blown through the gateway of our hopes and fears
To death's insatiable last embrace,
The glory and the sadness of your face,
Its longing unappeased through all the years.
No bitterness beneath your sorrow clings;
Within the wild dark falling of your hair
There lies a strength that ever soars and sings;
Your mouth's mute weariness is not despair.
Perhaps among us craven earth-born things
God loves its silence better than a prayer.