DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Not So Much
by Paul Cameron Brown

I evaded capture today
with only a handful of dust
to escape that Old Sandman Death.
Certainly, those maroon berries,
so large & luscious,
crowded on their fat stems
had something to do with it
as did the ground fog
leaving its burrow as so many boll-weevils
their crowded nests.
And there might be something to the fact
the moonlight sat
fat & confidant in the night sky
as surely
as my head rests on this pillow
and the poem invites itself
into my lair of thoughts,
much as nestlings charge the
entrance to the runway
of a tree.
I walked flat out
in an instance
as standing urine
held its own stench
and the grim splash within the pond
dead center in the wilderness
underscores the tone of this warning.
One thought encapsulates wonder
though suggestive evil hides
leaden leaves buried in lake mud
down the corner eaves of someone's
fire hydrant mind.
When you pray for someone
an Angel sits on their shoulder,
when that same someone hates you
does that Angel die of grief?
Serendipity is a flower
and those clouds
re-arranging the breeze
harbingers of forbidden things
not so much like these boulders
use hand-held scissors to open twilight
and watch this fading light ebb forth
tip-I-toe like a bird
squeezed thru an opening
in its cage.
Aedh Tells Of A Valley Full Of Lovers
by William Butler Yeats

I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs,
For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood;
And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood
With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes:
I cried in my dream 'O women bid the young men lay
'Their heads on your knees, and drown their eyes with your hair,
'Or remembering hers they will find no other face fair
'Till all the valleys of the world have been withered away.'
The Vine
by Robert Herrick

I dreamed this mortal part of mine
Was metamorphosed to a vine,
Which, crawling one and every way,
Enthralled my dainty Lucia.
Methought, her long small legs and thighs
I with my tendrils did surprise:
Her belly, buttocks, and her waist
By my soft nervelets were embraced
About her head I writhing hung
And with rich clusters (hid among
The leaves) her temples I behung,
So that my Lucia seemed to me
Young Bacchus ravished by his tree.
My curls about her neck did crawl,
And arms and hands they did enthrall,
So that she could not freely stir
(All parts there made one prisoner).
But when I crept with leaves to hide
Those parts which maids keep unespied,
Such fleeting pleasures there I took
That with the fancy i awoke,
And found (ah me!) this flesh of mine
More like a stock than like a vine.
Fragment: 'I Faint, I Perish With My Love!'.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I faint, I perish with my love! I grow
Frail as a cloud whose [splendours] pale
Under the evening's ever-changing glow:
I die like mist upon the gale,
And like a wave under the calm I fail.
Autumn
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

I dwell alone - I dwell alone, alone,
Whilst full my river flows down to the sea,
Gilded with flashing boats
That bring no friend to me:
O love-songs, gurgling from a hundred throats,
O love-pangs, let me be.
Fair fall the freighted boats which gold and stone
And spices bear to sea:
Slim, gleaming maidens swell their mellow notes,
Love-promising, entreating - 
Ah! sweet, but fleeting - 
Beneath the shivering, snow-white sails.
Hush! the wind flags and fails - 
Hush! they will lie becalmed in sight of strand - 
Sight of my strand, where I do dwell alone;
Their songs wake singing echoes in my land - 
They cannot hear me moan.
One latest, solitary swallow flies
Across the sea, rough autumn-tempest tossed,
Poor bird, shall it be lost?
Dropped down into this uncongenial sea,
With no kind eyes
To watch it while it dies,
Unguessed, uncared for, free:
Set free at last,
The short pang past,
In sleep, in death, in dreamless sleep locked fast.
Mine avenue is all a growth of oaks,
Some rent by thunder strokes,
Some rustling leaves and acorns in the breeze;
Fair fall my fertile trees,
That rear their goodly heads, and live at ease.
A spider's web blocks all mine avenue;
He catches down and foolish painted flies
That spider wary and wise.
Each morn it hangs a rainbow strung with dew
Betwixt boughs green with sap,
So fair, few creatures guess it is a trap:
I will not mar the web,
Though sad I am to see the small lives ebb.
It shakes - my trees shake - for a wind is roused
In cavern where it housed:
Each white and quivering sail,
Of boats among the water leaves
Hollows and strains in the full-throated gale:
Each maiden sings again - 
Each languid maiden, whom the calm
Had lulled to sleep with rest and spice and balm
Miles down my river to the sea
They float and wane,
Long miles away from me.
Perhaps they say: 'She grieves,
Uplifted, like a beacon, on her tower.'
Perhaps they say: 'One hour
More, and we dance among the golden sheaves.'
Perhaps they say: 'One hour
More, and we stand,
Face to face, hand in hand;
Make haste, O slack gale, to the looked-for land!'
My trees are not in flower,
I have no bower,
And gusty creaks my tower,
And lonesome, very lonesome, is my strand.
God Is Good
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

I faced a future all unknown,
No opening could I see,
I heard without the night wind moan,
The ways were dark to me,--
"I cannot face it all alone
O be Thou near to me!"
I had done sums, and sums, and sums,
Inside my aching head.
I'd tried in vain to pierce the glooms
That lay so thick ahead.
But two and two will not make five,
Nor will do when I'm dead.
And then I thought of Him who fed
Five thousand hungry men,
With five small casual loaves of bread,--
Would he were here again!--
Dear God! hast Thou still miracles
For the troubled sons of men?
He has, He will, He worketh still,
In ways most wonderful.
He drew me from the miry clay,
He filled my cup quite full.
And while my heart can speak I'll tell
His love unspeakable.
"Rest in the Lord!"--I saw it there,
On the tablets of the night.
And, comforted, I dropped my care
Where burdens have no weight.
Then, trustfully, I turned and slept,
And woke, and it was light.
God works to-day as He did of old
For the lightening of men's woes.
His wonders never can be told,
His goodness no man knows,--
His Love, His Power, His Tenderness,--
Nor shall do till life's close.
His kindness is so very great,
His greatness is so good.
He looks upon my low estate,
He gives me daily food.
And nothing is too small for Him,--
Yes, truly! God is good.
The Maltworm's Madrigal.
by Henry Austin Dobson

I drink of the Ale of Southwark, I drink of the Ale of Chepe;
At noon I dream on the settle; at night I cannot sleep;
For my love, my love it groweth; I waste me all the day;
And when I see sweet Alison, I know not what to say.
The sparrow when he spieth his Dear upon the tree,
He beateth-to his little wing; he chirketh lustily;
But when I see sweet Alison, the words begin to fail;
I wot that I shall die of Love--an I die not of Ale.
Her lips are like the muscadel; her brows are black as ink;
Her eyes are bright as beryl stones that in the tankard wink;
But when she sees me coming, she shrilleth out--"Te-Hee!
Fye on thy ruddy nose, Cousin, what lackest thou of me?"
"Fye on thy ruddy nose, Cousin! Why be thine eyes so small?
Why go thy legs tap-lappetty like men that fear to fall?
Why is thy leathern doublet besmeared with stain and spot?
Go to. Thou art no man (she saith)--thou art a Pottle-pot!"
"No man," i'faith. "No man!" she saith. And "Pottle-pot" thereto!
"Thou sleepest like our dog all day; thou drink'st as fishes do."
I would that I were Tibb the dog; he wags at her his tail;
Or would that I were fish, in truth, and all the sea were Ale!
So I drink of the Ale of Southwark, I drink of the Ale of Chepe;
All day I dream in the sunlight; I dream and eke I weep,
But little lore of loving can any flagon teach,
For when my tongue is loos'd most, then most I lose my speech.
A Dream Song
by George MacDonald

I dreamed of a song--I heard it sung;
In the ear of my soul its strange notes rung.
What were its words I could not tell,
Only the voice I heard right well,
For its tones unearthly my spirit bound
In a calm delirium of mystic sound--
Held me floating, alone and high,
Placeless and silent, drinking my fill
Of dews that from cloudless skies distil
On desert places that thirst and sigh.
'Twas a woman's voice, deep calling to deep,
Rousing old echoes that all day sleep
In cavern and solitude, each apart,
Here and there in the waiting heart;--
A voice with a wild melodious cry
Reaching and longing afar and high.
Sorrowful triumph, and hopeful strife,
Gainful death, and new-born life,
Thrilled in each note of the prophet-song.
In my heart it said: O Lord, how long
Shall we groan and travail and faint and pray,
Ere thy lovely kingdom bring the day!
1842.
Unity
by Violet Jacob

I dreamed that life and time and space were one,
And the pure trance of dawn;
The increase drawn
From all the journeys of the travelling sun,
And the long mysteries of sound and sight,
The whispering rains,
And far, calm waters set in lonely plains,
And cry of birds at night.
I dreamed that these and love and death were one,
And all eternity,
The life to be
Therewith entwined, throughout the ages spun;
And so with Grief, my playmate; him I knew
One with the rest, - 
One with the mounting day, the east and west - 
Lord, is it true?
Lord, do I dream? Methinks a key unlocks
Some dungeon door, in thrall of blackened towers,
On ecstasies, half hid, like chill white flowers
Blown in the secret places of the rocks.
Eulalie
by Edgar Allan Poe

I dwelt alone
In a world of moan,
And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride,
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.
Ah, less, less bright
The stars of the night
Than the eyes of the radiant girl!
That the vapor can make
With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl,
Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless curl.
Now Doubt, now Pain
Come never again,
For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,
And all day long
Shines, bright and strong,
Astarte within the sky,
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye,
While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.
The Country Gods
by Richard Le Gallienne

I dwell, with all things great and fair:
The green earth and the lustral air,
The sacred spaces of the sea,
Day in, day out, companion me.
Pure-faced, pure-thoughted, folk are mine
With whom to sit and laugh and dine;
In every sunlit room is heard
Love singing, like an April bird,
And everywhere the moonlit eyes
Of beauty guard our paradise;
While, at the ending of the day,
To the kind country gods we pray,
And dues of our fair living pay.
Thus, when, reluctant, to the town
I go, with country sunshine brown,
So small and strange all seems to me - 
the boonfellow of the sea - 
That these town-people say and be:
Their insect lives, their insect talk,
Their busy little insect walk,
Their busy little insect stings - 
And all the while the sea-weed swings
Against the rock, and the wide roar
Rises foam-lipped along the shore.
Ah! then how good my life I know,
How good it is each day to go
Where the great voices call, and where
The eternal rhythms flow and flow.
In that august companionship,
The subtle poisoned words that drip,
With guileless guile, from friendly lip,
The lie that flits from ear to ear,
Ye shall not speak, ye shall not hear;
Nor shall you fear your heart to say,
Lest he who listens shall betray.
The man who hearkens all day long
To the sea's cosmic-thoughted song
Comes with purged ears to lesser speech,
And something of the skyey reach
Greatens the gaze that feeds on space;
The starlight writes upon his face
That bathes in starlight, and the morn
Chrisms with dew, when day is born,
The eyes that drink the holy light
Welling from the deep springs of night.
And so - how good to catch the train
Back to the country gods again.
The Golf-Ball And The Loan. After Longfellow
by Robert Fuller Murray

I drove a golf-ball into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I lent five shillings to some men,
They spent it all, I know not when,
For who is quick enough to know
The time in which a crown may go?
Long, long afterward, in a whin
I found the golf-ball, black as sin;
But the five shillings are missing still!
They haven't turned up, and I doubt if they will.
I Entreat You, Alfred Tennyson
by Walter Savage Landor

I entreat you, Alfred Tennyson,
Come and share my haunch of venison.
I have too a bin of claret,
Good, but better when you share it.
Tho' 'tis only a small bin,
There's a stock of it within.
And as sure as I'm a rhymer,
Half a butt of Rudeheimer.
Come; among the sons of men is one
Welcomer than Alfred Tennyson?
The Dream
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

I dreamed that I was touching her eyelids, and I awoke
To find her sleepy temples of rose jade
For one heart-beat....
Though the moonlight beats upon the sea,
There is no boat.
Lyric of Korea.
Ghost House
by Robert Lee Frost

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.
O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.
I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;
The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.
It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me 
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.
They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad, 
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.
The Question.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

1.
I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.
2.
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxslips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets -
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth -
Its mother's face with Heaven's collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.
3.
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day;
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,
Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.
4.
And nearer to the river's trembling edge
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white.
And starry river buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.
5.
Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
Within my hand, - and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it! - Oh! to whom?
Amour 37
by Michael Drayton

I euer loue where neuer hope appeares,
Yet hope drawes on my neuer-hoping care,
And my liues hope would die but for dyspaire;
My neuer certaine ioy breeds euer-certaine feares.
Vncertaine dread gyues wings vnto my hope,
Yet my hopes wings are loden so with feare,
As they cannot ascend to my hopes spheare,
Yet feare gyues them more then a heauenly scope.
Yet this large roome is bounded with dyspaire,
So my loue is still fettered with vaine hope,
And lyberty depriues him of hys scope,
And thus am I imprisond in the ayre:
Then, sweet Dispaire, awhile hold vp thy head,
Or all my hope for sorrow will be dead.
The One Before The Last
by Rupert Brooke

I dreamt I was in love again
With the One Before the Last,
And smiled to greet the pleasant pain
Of that innocent young past.
But I jumped to feel how sharp had been
The pain when it did live,
How the faded dreams of Nineteen-ten
Were Hell in Nineteen-five.
The boy's woe was as keen and clear,
The boy's love just as true,
And the One Before the Last, my dear,
Hurt quite as much as you.
* * * * *
Sickly I pondered how the lover
Wrongs the unanswering tomb,
And sentimentalizes over
What earned a better doom.
Gently he tombs the poor dim last time,
Strews pinkish dust above,
And sighs, "The dear dead boyish pastime!
But THIS, ah, God! is Love!"
Better oblivion hide dead true loves,
Better the night enfold,
Than men, to eke the praise of new loves,
Should lie about the old!
* * * * *
Oh! bitter thoughts I had in plenty.
But here's the worst of it,
I shall forget, in Nineteen-twenty,
YOU ever hurt abit!
Translations. - Lyrisches Intermezzo. Xli. (From Heine.)
by George MacDonald

I dreamt of the daughter of a king,
With white cheeks tear-bewetted;
We sat 'neath the lime tree's leavy ring,
In love's embraces netted.
"I would not have thy father's throne,
His crown or his golden sceptre;
I want my lovely princess alone--
From Fate that so long hath kept her."
"That cannot be," she said to me:
"I lie in the grave uncheerly;
And only at night I come to thee,
Because I love thee so dearly."
On The Lake,
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I drink fresh nourishment, new blood
From out this world more free;
The Nature is so kind and good
That to her breast clasps me!
The billows toss our bark on high,
And with our oars keep time,
While cloudy mountains tow'rd the sky
Before our progress climb.
Say, mine eye, why sink'st thou down?
Golden visions, are ye flown?
Hence, thou dream, tho' golden-twin'd;
Here, too, love and life I find.
Over the waters are blinking
Many a thousand fair star;
Gentle mists are drinking
Round the horizon afar.
Round the shady creek lightly
Morning zephyrs awake,
And the ripen'd fruit brightly
Mirrors itself in the lake.
The Insect
by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

I dreamed that we were sitting, a party of twenty, in a big room with open windows.
Among us were women, children, old men.... We were all talking of some very well-known subject, talking noisily and indistinctly.
Suddenly, with a sharp, whirring sound, there flew into the room a big insect, two inches long ... it flew in, circled round, and settled on the wall.
It was like a fly or a wasp. Its body dirt-coloured; of the same colour too its flat, stiff wings; outspread feathered claws, and a head thick and angular, like a dragon-fly's; both head and claws were bright red, as though steeped in blood.
This strange insect incessantly turned its head up and down, to right and to left, moved its claws ... then suddenly darted from the wall, flew with a whirring sound about the room, and again settled, again hatefully and loathsomely wriggling all over, without stirring from the spot.
In all of us it excited a sensation of loathing, dread, even terror....
No one of us had ever seen anything like it. We all cried: 'Drive that monstrous thing away!' and waved our handkerchiefs at it from a distance ... but no one ventured to go up to it ... and when the insect began flying, every one instinctively moved away.
Only one of our party, a pale-faced young man, stared at us all in amazement He shrugged his shoulders; he smiled, and positively could not conceive what had happened to us, and why we were in such a state of excitement. He himself did not see an insect at all, did not hear the ill-omened whirr of its wings.
All at once the insect seemed to stare at him, darted off, and dropping on his head, stung him on the forehead, above the eyes.... The young man feebly groaned, and fell dead.
The fearful fly flew out at once.... Only then we guessed what it was had visited us.
May 1878.
The Vine.
by Robert Herrick

I dreamt this mortal part of mine
Was metamorphos'd to a vine;
Which crawling one and every way
Enthrall'd my dainty Lucia.
Methought, her long small legs and thighs
I with my tendrils did surprise;
Her belly, buttocks, and her waist
By my soft nerv'lets were embrac'd;
About her head I writhing hung,
And with rich clusters, hid among
The leaves, her temples I behung:
So that my Lucia seem'd to me
Young Bacchus ravish'd by his tree.
My curls about her neck did crawl,
And arms and hands they did enthrall:
So that she could not freely stir,
All parts there made one prisoner.
But when I crept with leaves to hide
Those parts, which maids keep unespy'd,
Such fleeting pleasures there I took,
That with the fancy I awoke;
And found, ah me! this flesh of mine
More like a stock than like a vine.
Sonnets: Idea XXVI To Despair
by Michael Drayton

I ever love where never hope appears,
Yet hope draws on my never-hoping care,
And my life's hope would die but for despair;
My never certain joy breeds ever certain fears.
Uncertain dread gives wings unto my hope;
Yet my hope's wings are laden so with fear
As they cannot ascend to my hope's sphere,
Though fear gives them more than a heavenly scope.
Yet this large room is bounded with despair,
So my love is still fettered with vain hope,
And liberty deprives him of his scope,
And thus am I imprisoned in the air.
Then, sweet despair, awhile hold up thy head,
Or all my hope for sorrow will be dead.
Thoughts.
by Alfred Castner King

I dug a grave, one smiling April day,
A grave whose small proportions testified
To empty arms, and playthings put away,
To ears which heard, when only fancy cried;
I wondered, as I shaped that little mound,
If in my home such grief should e'er be found.
I dug a grave, 'twas in the month of June;
A grave for one who at his zenith died;
When, on that mound with floral tributes strewn,
The tear-drops fell of one but late his bride,
I wondered if upon my silent bier
Should rest the moist impression of a tear.
I dug a grave by Autumn's sober light,
A grave of full dimensions; 'twas for one
Whose hair had changed its raven hue to white,
Whose course had finished with the setting sun;
I wondered, as I toiled with pick and spade,
Where, and by whom, would my last home be made.
The Parliament Of Roses To Julia
by Robert Herrick

I dreamt the Roses one time went
To meet and sit in Parliament;
The place for these, and for the rest
Of flowers, was thy spotless breast.
Over the which a state was drawn
Of tiffany, or cob-web lawn;
Then in that Parly all those powers
Voted the Rose the Queen of flowers;
But so, as that herself should be
The Maid of Honour unto thee.
The Sun On The Letter
by Thomas Hardy

I drew the letter out, while gleamed
The sloping sun from under a roof
Of cloud whose verge rose visibly.
The burning ball flung rays that seemed
Stretched like a warp without a woof
Across the levels of the lea
To where I stood, and where they beamed
As brightly on the page of proof
That she had shown her false to me
As if it had shown her true - had teemed
With passionate thought for my behoof
Expressed with their own ardency!