DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Persuasion.
by Edward Shanks

Still must your hands withhold your loveliness?
Is your soul jealous of your body still?
The fair white limbs beneath the clouding dress
Are such hard forms as you alone could fill
With life and sweetness.    Such a harmony
Is yours as music and the thought expressed
By the musician: have no rivalry
Between your soul and the shape in which it's drest.
Kisses or words, both sensual, which shall be
The burning symbol of the love we bear?
My art is words, yours song, but still must we
Be mute and songless, seeing how love is fair.
Both our known arts being useless, we must turn
To love himself and his old practice learn.
Crapulous Impression
by Aldous Leonard Huxley

(To J.S.)
Still life, still life ... the high-lights shine
Hard and sharp on the bottles: the wine
Stands firmly solid in the glasses,
Smooth yellow ice, through which there passes
The lamp's bright pencil of down-struck light.
The fruits metallically gleam,
Globey in their heaped-up bowl,
And there are faces against the night
Of the outer room - faces that seem
Part of this still, still life ... they've lost their soul.
And amongst these frozen faces you smiled,
Surprised, surprisingly, like a child:
And out of the frozen welter of sound
Your voice came quietly, quietly.
"What about God?" you said. "I have found
Much to be said for Totality.
All, I take it, is God: God's all - 
This bottle, for instance ..." I recall,
Dimly, that you took God by the neck - 
God-in-the-bottle - and pushed Him across:
But I, without a moment's loss
Moved God-in-the-salt in front and shouted: "Check!"
Revelation
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Still, as of old, in Beavor's Vale,
O man of God! our hope and faith
The Elements and Stars assail,
And the awed spirit holds its breath,
Blown over by a wind of death.
Takes Nature thought for such as we,
What place her human atom fills,
The weed-drift of her careless sea,
The mist on her unheeding hills?
What reeks she of our helpless wills?
Strange god of Force, with fear, not love,
Its trembling worshipper! Can prayer
Reach the shut ear of Fate, or move
Unpitying Energy to spare?
What doth the cosmic Vastness care?
In vain to this dread Unconcern
For the All-Father's love we look;
In vain, in quest of it, we turn
The storied leaves of Nature's book,
The prints her rocky tablets took.
I pray for faith, I long to trust;
I listen with my heart, and hear
A Voice without a sound: "Be just,
Be true, be merciful, revere
The Word within thee: God is near!
"A light to sky and earth unknown
Pales all their lights: a mightier force
Than theirs the powers of Nature own,
And, to its goal as at its source,
His Spirit moves the Universe.
"Believe and trust. Through stars and suns,
Through life and death, through soul and sense,
His wise, paternal purpose runs;
The darkness of His providence
Is star-lit with benign intents."
O joy supreme! I know the Voice,
Like none beside on earth or sea;
Yea, more, O soul of mine, rejoice,
By all that He requires of me,
I know what God himself must be.
No picture to my aid I call,
I shape no image in my prayer;
I only know in Him is all
Of life, light, beauty, everywhere,
Eternal Goodness here and there!
I know He is, and what He is,
Whose one great purpose is the good
Of all. I rest my soul on His
Immortal Love and Fatherhood;
And trust Him, as His children should.
I fear no more. The clouded face
Of Nature smiles; through all her things
Of time and space and sense I trace
The moving of the Spirit's wings,
And hear the song of hope she sings
Anacreontic
by Thomas Oldham

Still, as the fleeting seasons change,
From joy to joy poor mortals range,
And as the year pursues its round,
One pleasure's lost, another found;
Time, urging on his envious course,
Still drives them from their last resource.
So butterflies, when children chase
The gaudy prize with eager pace,
On each fresh flower but just alight,
And, ere they taste, renew their flight.
Thanks to kind Fortune! I possess
A constant source of happiness,
And am not poorly forced to live
On what the seasons please to give.
Let clouds or sunshine vest the pole,
What care I, while I quaff the bowl?
In that secure, I can defy
The changeful temper of the sky.
No weatherglass, or if I be,
Thou, Bacchus! art my Mercury.
Hermes Trismegistus
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As Seleucus narrates, Hermes describes the principles that rank as wholes in two myriads of books; or, as we are informed by Manetho, he perfectly unfolded these principles in three myriads six thousand five hundred and twenty-five volumes. . . .
. . . Our ancestors dedicated the inventions of    their wisdom to this deity, inscribing all their own writings with the name of Hermes.--IAMBLICUS.
Still through Egypt's desert places
Flows the lordly Nile,
From its banks the great stone faces
Gaze with patient smile.
Still the pyramids imperious
Pierce the cloudless skies,
And the Sphinx stares with mysterious,
Solemn, stony eyes.
But where are the old Egyptian
Demi-gods and kings?
Nothing left but an inscription
Graven on stones and rings.
Where are Helios and Hephaestus,
Gods of eldest eld?
Where is Hermes Trismegistus,
Who their secrets held?
Where are now the many hundred
Thousand books he wrote?
By the Thaumaturgists plundered,
Lost in lands remote;
In oblivion sunk forever,
As when o'er the land
Blows a storm-wind, in the river
Sinks the scattered sand.
Something unsubstantial, ghostly,
Seems this Theurgist,
In deep meditation mostly
Wrapped, as in a mist.
Vague, phantasmal, and unreal
To our thought he seems,
Walking in a world ideal,
In a land of dreams.
Was he one, or many, merging
Name and fame in one,
Like a stream, to which, converging
Many streamlets run?
Till, with gathered power proceeding,
Ampler sweep it takes,
Downward the sweet waters leading
From unnumbered lakes.
By the Nile I see him wandering,
Pausing now and then,
On the mystic union pondering
Between gods and men;
Half believing, wholly feeling,
With supreme delight,
How the gods, themselves concealing,
Lift men to their height.
Or in Thebes, the hundred-gated,
In the thoroughfare
Breathing, as if consecrated,
A diviner air;
And amid discordant noises,
In the jostling throng,
Hearing far, celestial voices
Of Olympian song.
Who shall call his dreams fallacious?
Who has searched or sought
All the unexplored and spacious
Universe of thought?
Who, in his own skill confiding,
Shall with rule and line
Mark the border-land dividing
Human and divine?
Trismegistus! three times greatest!
How thy name sublime
Has descended to this latest
Progeny of time!
Happy they whose written pages
Perish with their lives,
If amid the crumbling ages
Still their name survives!
Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately
Found I in the vast,
Weed-encumbered sombre, stately,
Grave-yard of the Past;
And a presence moved before me
On that gloomy shore,
As a waft of wind, that o'er me
Breathed, and was no more.
Advice The Best Actor.
by Robert Herrick

Still take advice; though counsels, when they fly
At random, sometimes hit most happily.
Sonnet LXXVIII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Poi che voi ed io pi' volte abbiam provato.
TO A FRIEND, COUNSELLING HIM TO ABANDON EARTHLY PLEASURES.
Still has it been our bitter lot to prove
How hope, or e'er it reach fruition, flies!
Up then to that high good, which never dies,
Lift we the heart--to heaven's pure bliss above.
On earth, as in a tempting mead, we rove,
Where coil'd 'mid flowers the traitor serpent lies;
And, if some casual glimpse delight our eyes,
'Tis but to grieve the soul enthrall'd by Love.
Oh! then, as thou wouldst wish ere life's last day
To taste the sweets of calm unbroken rest,
Tread firm the narrow, shun the beaten way--
Ah! to thy friend too well may be address'd:
"Thou show'st a path, thyself most apt to stray,
Which late thy truant feet, fond youth, have never press'd."
WRANGHAM.
Friend, as we both in confidence complain
To see our ill-placed hopes return in vain,
Let that chief good which must for ever please
Exalt our thought and fix our happiness.
This world as some gay flowery field is spread,
Which hides a serpent in its painted bed,
And most it wounds when most it charms our eyes,
At once the tempter and the paradise.
And would you, then, sweet peace of mind restore,
And in fair calm expect your parting hour,
Leave the mad train, and court the happy few.
Well may it be replied, "O friend, you show
Others the path, from which so often you
Have stray'd, and now stray farther than before."
BASIL KENNET.
Sonnet CCXXI.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Cercato ho sempre solitaria vita.
THINKING ALWAYS OF LAURA, IT PAINS HIM TO REMEMBER WHERE SHE IS LEFT.
Still have I sought a life of solitude;
The streams, the fields, the forests know my mind;
That I might 'scape the sordid and the blind,
Who paths forsake trod by the wise and good:
Fain would I leave, were mine own will pursued,
These Tuscan haunts, and these soft skies behind,
Sorga's thick-wooded hills again to find;
And sing and weep in concert with its flood.
But Fortune, ever my sore enemy,
Compels my steps, where I with sorrow see
Cast my fair treasure in a worthless soil:
Yet less a foe she justly deigns to prove,
For once, to me, to Laura, and to love;
Favouring my song, my passion, with her smile.
NOTT.
Still have I sought a life of solitude--
This know the rivers, and each wood and plain--
That I might 'scape the blind and sordid train
Who from the path have flown of peace and good:
Could I my wish obtain, how vainly would
This cloudless climate woo me to remain;
Sorga's embowering woods I'd seek again,
And sing, weep, wander, by its friendly flood.
But, ah! my fortune, hostile still to me,
Compels me where I must, indignant, find
Amid the mire my fairest treasure thrown:
Yet to my hand, not all unworthy, she
Now proves herself, at least for once, more kind,
Since--but alone to Love and Laura be it known.
MACGREGOR.
A Calendar Of Sonnets - February.
by Helen Hunt Jackson

Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white;
And reigns the winter's pregnant silence still;
No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill,
And willow stems grow daily red and bright.
These are the days when ancients held a rite
Of expiation for the old year's ill,
And prayer to purify the new year's will:
Fit days, ere yet the spring rains blur the sight,
Ere yet the bounding blood grows hot with haste,
And dreaming thoughts grow heavy with a greed
The ardent summer's joy to have and taste;
Fit days, to give to last year's losses heed,
To reckon clear the new life's sterner need;
Fit days, for Feast of Expiation placed!
The Grandmother
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Dors-tu? m're de notre m're.")
[III., 1823.]
"To die - to sleep." - SHAKESPEARE.
Still asleep! We have been since the noon thus alone.
Oh, the hours we have ceased to number!
Wake, grandmother! - speechless say why thou art grown.
Then, thy lips are so cold! - the Madonna of stone
Is like thee in thy holy slumber.
We have watched thee in sleep, we have watched thee at prayer,
But what can now betide thee?
Like thy hours of repose all thy orisons were,
And thy lips would still murmur a blessing whene'er
Thy children stood beside thee.
Now thine eye is unclosed, and thy forehead is bent
O'er the hearth, where ashes smoulder;
And behold, the watch-lamp will be speedily spent.
Art thou vexed? have we done aught amiss? Oh, relent!
But - parent, thy hands grow colder!
Say, with ours wilt thou let us rekindle in thine
The glow that has departed?
Wilt thou sing us some song of the days of lang syne?
Wilt thou tell us some tale, from those volumes divine,
Of the brave and noble-hearted?
Of the dragon who, crouching in forest green glen,
Lies in wait for the unwary - 
Of the maid who was freed by her knight from the den
Of the ogre, whose club was uplifted, but then
Turned aside by the wand of a fairy?
Wilt thou teach us spell-words that protect from all harm,
And thoughts of evil banish?
What goblins the sign of the cross may disarm?
What saint it is good to invoke? and what charm
Can make the demon vanish?
Or unfold to our gaze thy most wonderful book,
So feared by hell and Satan;
At its hermits and martyrs in gold let us look,
At the virgins, and bishops with pastoral crook,
And the hymns and the prayers in Latin.
Oft with legends of angels, who watch o'er the young,
Thy voice was wont to gladden;
Have thy lips yet no language - no wisdom thy tongue?
Oh, see! the light wavers, and sinking, bath flung
On the wall forms that sadden.
Wake! awake! evil spirits perhaps may presume
To haunt thy holy dwelling;
Pale ghosts are, perhaps, stealing into the room - 
Oh, would that the lamp were relit! with the gloom
These fearful thoughts dispelling.
Thou hast told us our parents lie sleeping beneath
The grass, in a churchyard lonely:
Now, thine eyes have no motion, thy mouth has no breath,
And thy limbs are all rigid! Oh, say, Is this death,
Or thy prayer or thy slumber only?
ENVOY.
Sad vigil they kept by that grandmother's chair,
Kind angels hovered o'er them - 
And the dead-bell was tolled in the hamlet - and there,
On the following eve, knelt that innocent pair,
With the missal-book before them.
"FATHER PROUT" (FRANK S. MAHONY).
To Kathleen
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Still must the poet as of old,
In barren attic bleak and cold,
Starve, freeze, and fashion verses to
Such things as flowers and song and you;
Still as of old his being give
In Beauty's name, while she may live,
Beauty that may not die as long
As there are flowers and you and song.
Sonnet CCXVI.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

I' pur ascolto, e non odo novella.
HEARING NO TIDINGS OF HER, HE BEGINS TO DESPAIR.
Still do I wait to hear, in vain still wait,
Of that sweet enemy I love so well:
What now to think or say I cannot tell,
'Twixt hope and fear my feelings fluctuate:
The beautiful are still the marks of fate;
And sure her worth and beauty most excel:
What if her God have call'd her hence, to dwell
Where virtue finds a more congenial state?
If so, she will illuminate that sphere
Even as a sun: but I--'tis done with me!
I then am nothing, have no business here!
O cruel absence! why not let me see
The worst? my little tale is told, I fear,
My scene is closed ere it accomplish'd be.
MOREHEAD.
No tidings yet--I listen, but in vain;
Of her, my beautiful belov'd foe,
What or to think or say I nothing know,
So thrills my heart, my fond hopes so sustain,
Danger to some has in their beauty lain;
Fairer and chaster she than others show;
God haply seeks to snatch from earth below
Virtue's best friend, that heaven a star may gain,
Or rather sun. If what I dread be nigh,
My life, its trials long, its brief repose
Are ended all. O cruel absence! why
Didst thou remove me from the menaced woes?
My short sad story is already done,
And midway in its course my vain race run.
MACGREGOR.
In The Womb
by George William Russell

Still rests the heavy share on the dark soil:
Upon the black mould thick the dew-damp lies:
The horse waits patient: from his lowly toil
The ploughboy to the morning lifts his eyes.
The unbudding hedgerows dark against day's fires
Glitter with gold-lit crystals: on the rim
Over the unregarding city's spires
The lonely beauty shines alone for him.
And day by day the dawn or dark enfolds
And feeds with beauty eyes that cannot see
How in her womb the mighty mother moulds
The infant spirit for eternity.
Faded Leaves
by Matthew Arnold

I
THE RIVER
Still glides the stream, slow drops the boat
Under the rustling poplars' shade;
Silent the swans beside us float
None speaks, none heeds, ah, turn thy head.
Let those arch eyes now softly shine,
That mocking mouth grow sweetly bland:
Ah, let them rest, those eyes, on mine;
On mine let rest that lovely hand.
My pent-up tears oppress my brain,
My heart is swoln with love unsaid:
Ah, let me weep, and tell my pain,
And on thy shoulder rest my head.
Before I die, before the soul,
Which now is mine, must re-attain
Immunity from my control,
And wander round the world again:
Before this teas'd o'erlabour'd heart
For ever leaves its vain employ,
Dead to its deep habitual smart,
And dead to hopes of future joy.
II
TOO LATE
Each on his own strict line we move,
And some find death ere they find love.
So far apart their lives are thrown
From the twin soul that halves their own.
And sometimes, by still harder fate,
The lovers meet, but meet too late.
, Thy heart is mine!, True, true! ah, true!
, Then, love, thy hand!, Ah, no! adieu!
III
SEPARATION
Stop, Not to me, at this bitter departing,
Speak of the sure consolations of Time.
Fresh be the wound, still-renew'd be its smarting,
So but thy image endure in its prime.
But, if the stedfast commandment of Nature
Wills that remembrance should always decay;
If the lov'd form and the deep-cherish'd feature
Must, when unseen, from the soul fade away,
Me let no half-effac'd memories cumber!
Fled, fled at once, be all vestige of thee,
Deep be the darkness, and still be the slumber,
Dead be the Past and its phantoms to me!
Then, when we meet, and thy look strays towards me,
Scanning my face and the changes wrought there,,
Who, let me say, is this Stranger regards me,
With the grey eyes, and the lovely brown hair?
IV
ON THE RHINE
Vain is the effort to forget.
Some day I shall be cold, I know,
As is the eternal moon-lit snow
Of the high Alps, to which I go:
But ah, not yet! not yet!
Vain is the agony of grief.
'Tis true, indeed, an iron knot
Ties straitly up from mine thy lot,
And were it snapt, thou lov'st me not!
But is despair relief?
Awhile let me with thought have done;
And as this brimm'd unwrinkled Rhine
And that far purple mountain line
Lie sweetly in the look divine
Of the slow-sinking sun;
So let me lie, and calm as they
Let beam upon my inward view
Those eyes of deep, soft, lucent hue,
Eyes too expressive to be blue,
Too lovely to be grey.
Ah Quiet, all things feel thy balm!
Those blue hills too, this river's flow,
Were restless once, but long ago.
Tam'd is their turbulent youthful glow:
Their joy is in their calm.
V
LONGING
Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.
Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!
Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth,
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say, My love! why sufferest thou?
Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.
Rewards
by Robert Herrick

Still to our gains our chief respect is had;
Reward it is that makes us good or bad.
Clerimont's Song
by Ben Jonson

Still to be neat, still to be dressed,
As you were going to a feast;
Still to be powdered, still perfumed;
Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art's hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.
Give me a look, give me a face
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free;
Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than all th' adulteries of art.
They strike mine eyes but not my heart.
Sonnet CXXXIII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

S' io fossi stato fermo alla spelunca.
TO ONE WHO DESIRED LATIN VERSE OF HIM.
Still had I sojourn'd in that Delphic cave
Where young Apollo prophet first became,
Verona, Mantua were not sole in fame,
But Florence, too, her poet now might have:
But since the waters of that spring no more
Enrich my land, needs must that I pursue
Some other planet, and, with sickle new,
Reap from my field of sticks and thorns its store.
Dried is the olive: elsewhere turn'd the stream
Whose source from famed Parnassus was derived.
Whereby of yore it throve in best esteem.
Me fortune thus, or fault perchance, deprived
Of all good fruit--unless eternal Jove
Shower on my head some favour from above.
MACGREGOR.
Lines Written At The Sea-Side In Devonshire, In The Month Of November, When The Ships From Newfoundland Return.
by John Carr (Sir)

Still Summer lingers on these peaceful shores,
Nor yet she quits her rose-erected bow'r;
Tho' oft in many a dew-drop she explores
Her beauties fading in each passing hour!
Tho' Winter's boist'rous child, November, strays
Amid those scenes that wak'd the poet's lyre,
Shakes his green canopy, and loves to raise,
Of sapless leaves, an altar for his sire.
Soon shall his wild and stormy sway be o'er;
These lovely scenes shall feel his shortest reign;
And thou, sweet Summer! charming as before,
Shall but retire to dress thyself again.
Yet Heaven guides, full provident and kind,
With sweet economy, the source of joy,
From grief extracts some comfort for the mind,
And fresh hopes flatter ere the lost annoy.
See where Connubial Love yon rock ascends,
To hail each sail, while fav'ring breezes blow;
There many an hour she o'er the margin bends,
Her bosom trembling like the floods below.
Nearer the ocean's graceful burden glides;
Cleav'd by its prow, the lines of water yield:
While adverse mountains, with protective sides,
The Heav'n-directed wand'ring seaman shield.
The anchor dropp'd, he springs upon the shore,
His wife and children press to meet his kiss;
Half-told, a thousand things they prattle o'er,
And, safe at home, renew their former bliss.
To You
by Walt Whitman

Stranger! if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? 
And why should I not speak to you?
Woman
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Strange are the ways that her feet have trod
Since first she was set in the path of duty,
Finished and fair by the hand of God,
To carry her message of love and beauty.
Delicate creature of light and shade,
She gleamed like an opal, on wide worlds under:
And earth looked up to her half afraid,
While heaven looked down at her, full of wonder.
Flame of the comet and mist of the moon,
And ray of the sun all mingled in her.
And the heart of her asked but a single boon - 
That love should seek her, and find her, and win her.
She grasped the scope of the First Intent
That made her kingdom FOR HER, no other,
And joyfully into her place she went - 
The primal mate, and the primal mother.
Large was that kingdom and vast her sphere,
And lightly she lifted and bore each burden.
Lightly she laughed in the eyes of fear,
For love was her recompense, love her guerdon.
And never in camp, or in cave, or in home,
Rose voice of mother or mate complaining.
And never the foot of her sought to roam,
Till love in the heart of the man seemed waning.
In the broad rich furrows by woman turned
Man, unwitting, set plough and harrow.
For worlds to conquer she had not yearned,
Till he spoke of her feminine sphere as 'narrow.'
The lullaby changed to a martial strain - 
When he took her travail, and song for granted - 
And forth she forged in his own domain - 
Till the strange 'new woman,' the old supplanted.
'Strange' with the glow of a wakened soul,
And 'new' with the purpose of large endeavour,
She turned her face to the higher goal - 
To the higher goal it is turned for ever.
Trade and science and craft and art,
Have opened their doors to the call of woman;
And greater she grows in her greater part,
More tenderly wise, and more sweetly human.
Brave foremothers of freedom's birth
Smile through space on your splendid daughters.
At one with liberty lighting the earth,
Their torches flame o'er the darkest waters.
They lend a lustre to sea and land:
They sweeten the world with their wholesome graces:
As out in the harbour of life they stand
To cheer and welcome the coming races.
Brave forefathers and heroes who fought
Under the flag of the Revolution,
War was the price of the freedom you bought,
But PEACE is the watchword of Evolution.
The progress of woman means progress of peace,
She wars on war, and its hosts alarming;
And her great love battle will never cease,
Till the glory is seen of a world disarming.
The woman wonder with heart of flame,
The coming man of the race will find her.
For petty purpose and narrow aim,
And fault and flaw she will leave behind her.
He grown tender, and she grown wise,
They shall enter the Eden by both created;
The broadened kingdom of Paradise,
And love, and mate, as the first pair mated.