DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Song.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Cold, cold is the blast when December is howling,
Cold are the damps on a dying man's brow, -
Stern are the seas when the wild waves are rolling,
And sad is the grave where a loved one lies low;
But colder is scorn from the being who loved thee,
More stern is the sneer from the friend who has proved thee,
More sad are the tears when their sorrows have moved thee,
Which mixed with groans anguish and wild madness flow -
And ah! poor - has felt all this horror,
Full long the fallen victim contended with fate:
'Till a destitute outcast abandoned to sorrow,
She sought her babe's food at her ruiner's gate -
Another had charmed the remorseless betrayer,
He turned laughing aside from her moans and her prayer,
She said nothing, but wringing the wet from her hair,
Crossed the dark mountain side, though the hour it was late.
'Twas on the wild height of the dark Penmanmawr,
That the form of the wasted - reclined;
She shrieked to the ravens that croaked from afar,
And she sighed to the gusts of the wild sweeping wind. -
I call not yon rocks where the thunder peals rattle,
I call not yon clouds where the elements battle,
But thee, cruel - I call thee unkind!' -
Then she wreathed in her hair the wild flowers of the mountain,
And deliriously laughing, a garland entwined,
She bedewed it with tears, then she hung o'er the fountain,
And leaving it, cast it a prey to the wind.
'Ah! go,' she exclaimed, 'when the tempest is yelling,
'Tis unkind to be cast on the sea that is swelling,
But I left, a pitiless outcast, my dwelling,
My garments are torn, so they say is my mind - '
Not long lived - , but over her grave
Waved the desolate form of a storm-blasted yew,
Around it no demons or ghosts dare to rave,
But spirits of peace steep her slumbers in dew.
Then stay thy swift steps mid the dark mountain heather,
Though chill blow the wind and severe is the weather,
For perfidy, traveller! cannot bereave her,
Of the tears, to the tombs of the innocent due. -
JULY, 1810.
Shut Out That Moon
by Thomas Hardy

Close up the casement, draw the blind,
Shut out that stealing moon,
She wears too much the guise she wore
Before our lutes were strewn
With years-deep dust, and names we read
On a white stone were hewn.
Step not out on the dew-dashed lawn
To view the Lady's Chair,
Immense Orion's glittering form,
The Less and Greater Bear:
Stay in; to such sights we were drawn
When faded ones were fair.
Brush not the bough for midnight scents
That come forth lingeringly,
And wake the same sweet sentiments
They breathed to you and me
When living seemed a laugh, and love
All it was said to be.
Within the common lamp-lit room
Prison my eyes and thought;
Let dingy details crudely loom,
Mechanic speech be wrought:
Too fragrant was Life's early bloom,
Too tart the fruit it brought!
1904.
Cork Hill (The Rocky Road To Dublin)
by James Stephens

Come all ye happy children, and
Gather round me hand in hand,
Dancing to the merry cry,
"See the Robbers Passing By."
Past the Castle we will dance
To the Mansion House, and prance
Back by George's Street and cry,
"See the Robbers Passing By."
Gather then ye children all
Into ranks processional,
Marching to the merry cry,
"See the Robbers Passing By."
A Spiritual Woman
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

Close your eyes, my love, let me make you blind;
They have taught you to see
Only a mean arithmetic on the face of things,
A cunning algebra in the faces of men,
And God like geometry
Completing his circles, and working cleverly.
I'll kiss you over the eyes till I kiss you blind;
If I can - if any one could.
Then perhaps in the dark you'll have got what you want to find.
You've discovered so many bits, with your clever eyes,
And I'm a kaleidoscope
That you shake and shake, and yet it won't come to your mind.
Now stop carping at me. - But God, how I hate you!
Do you fear I shall swindle you?
Do you think if you take me as I am, that that will abate you
Somehow? - so sad, so intrinsic, so spiritual, yet so cautious, you
Must have me all in your will and your consciousness - 
I hate you.
Nursery Rhyme. DXLIII. Natural History.
by Unknown

Cock Robin got up early,
At the break of day,
And went to Jenny's window,
To sing a roundelay.
He sang Cock Robin's love
To the pretty Jenny Wren,
And when he got unto the end,
Then he began again.
The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - The Future.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Veggo in candida robba.
Clothed in white robes I see the Holy Sire
Descend to hold his court amid the band
Of shining saints and elders: at his hand
The white immortal Lamb commands their choir.
John ends his long lament for torments dire,
Now Judah's lion rises to expand
The fatal book, and the first broken band
Sends the white courier forth to work God's ire.
The first fair spirits raimented in white
Go out to meet him who on his white cloud
Comes heralded by horsemen white as snow.
Ye black-stoled folk, be dumb, who hate the loud
Blare of God's lifted angel-trumpets! Lo,
The pure white dove puts the black crows to flight!
The Billy-Goat Overland
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

Come all ye lads of the droving days, ye gentlemen unafraid,
I'll tell you all of the greatest trip that ever a drover made,
For we rolled our swags, and we packed our bags, and taking our lives in hand,
We started away with a thousand goats, on the billy-goat overland.
There wasn't a fence that'd hold the mob, or keep 'em from their desires;
They skipped along the top of the posts and cake-walked on the wires.
And where the lanes had been stripped of grass and the paddocks were nice and green,
The goats they travelled outside the lanes and we rode in between.
The squatters started to drive them back, but that was no good at all,
Their horses ran for the lick of their lives from the scent that was like a wall:
And never a dog had pluck or gall in front of the mob to stand
And face the charge of a thousand goats on the billy-goat overland.
We found we were hundreds over strength when we counted out the mob;
And they put us in jail for a crowd of thieves that travelled to steal and rob:
For every goat between here and Bourke, when he scented our spicy band,
Had left his home and his work to join in the billy-goat overland.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - XXXII - Rural Ceremony
by William Wordsworth

Closing the sacred Book which long has fed
Our meditations, give we to a day
Of annual joy one tributary lay;
This day, when, forth by rustic music led,
The village Children, while the sky is red
With evening lights, advance in long array
Through the still churchyard, each with garland gay,
That, carried sceptre-like, o'ertops the head
Of the proud Bearer. To the wide church-door,
Charged with these offerings which their fathers bore
For decoration in the Papal time,
The innocent procession softly moves: 
The spirit of Laud is pleased in heaven's pure clime,
And Hooker's voice the spectacle approves!
The Widow.
by Robert Southey

SAPPHICs.
Cold was the night wind, drifting fast the snows fell,
Wide were the downs and shelterless and naked,
When a poor Wanderer struggled on her journey
Weary and way-sore.
Drear were the downs, more dreary her reflexions;
Cold was the night wind, colder was her bosom!
She had no home, the world was all before her,
She had no shelter.
Fast o'er the bleak heath rattling drove a chariot,
"Pity me!" feebly cried the poor night wanderer.
"Pity me Strangers! lest with cold and hunger
Here I should perish.
"Once I had friends,--but they have all forsook me!
"Once I had parents,--they are now in Heaven!
"I had a home once--I had once a husband--
"Pity me Strangers!
"I had a home once--I had once a husband--
"I am a Widow poor and broken-hearted!"
Loud blew the wind, unheard was her complaining.
On drove the chariot.
On the cold snows she laid her down to rest her;
She heard a horseman, "pity me!" she groan'd out;
Loud blew the wind, unheard was her complaining,
On went the horseman.
Worn out with anguish, toil and cold and hunger,
Down sunk the Wanderer, sleep had seiz'd her senses;
There, did the Traveller find her in the morning,
GOD had releast her.
Winter
by Walter De La Mare

Clouded with snow
The cold winds blow,
And shrill on leafless bough
The robin with its burning breast
Alone sings now.
The rayless sun,
Day's journey done,
Sheds its last ebbing light
On fields in leagues of beauty spread
Unearthly white.
Thick draws the dark,
And spark by spark,
The frost-fires kindle, and soon
Over that sea of frozen foam
Floats the white moon.
Late October Woods
by Madison Julius Cawein

Clumped in the shadow of the beech,
In whose brown top the crows are loud,
Where, every side, great briers reach
And cling like hands, the beechdrops crowd
The mossy cirque with neutral tints
Of gray; and deep, with berries bowed,
The buckbush reddens 'mid the mints.
O'erhead the forest scarcely stirs:
The wind is laid: the sky is blue:
Bush-clover, with its links of burs,
And some last blooms, few, pink of hue,
Makes wild the way- and everywhere
Slim, white-ribbed cones of fungi strew
The grass that's like a wildman's hair.
The jewel-weeds, whose pods bombard
The hush with fairy batteries
Of seeds, grow dense here; pattering hard
Their sacs explode, persuade the eyes
To search the heaven for show 'rs. One seems
To walk where old Enchantment plies
Her shuttle of lost days and dreams.
And, lo! yon rock of fern and flower,
That heaves its height from bramble deeps,
All on a sudden seems the tower
Wherein the Sleeping Beauty sleeps:
And that red vine, the fire-drake,
The flaming dragon, seems, that keeps
The world from her no man may wake.
Upon Cock.
by Robert Herrick

Cock calls his wife his Hen: when Cock goes to't,
Cock treads his Hen, but treads her underfoot.
Cold And Quiet.
by Jean Ingelow

Cold, my dear, - cold and quiet.
In their cups on yonder lea,
Cowslips fold the brown bee's diet;
So the moss enfoldeth thee.
"Plant me, plant me, O love, a lily flower - 
Plant at my head, I pray you, a green tree;
And when our children sleep," she sighed, "at the dusk hour,
And when the lily blossoms, O come out to me!"
Lost, my dear? Lost! nay deepest
Love is that which loseth least;
Through the night-time while thou sleepest,
Still I watch the shrouded east.
Near thee, near thee, my wife that aye liveth,
"Lost" is no word for such a love as mine;
Love from her past to me a present giveth,
And love itself doth comfort, making pain divine.
Rest, my dear, rest. Fair showeth
That which was, and not in vain
Sacred have I kept, God knoweth,
Love's last words atween us twain.
"Hold by our past, my only love, my lover;
Fall not, but rise, O love, by loss of me!"
Boughs from our garden, white with bloom hang over.
Love, now the children slumber, I come out to thee.
Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - L
by Alfred Edward Housman

Clunton and Clunbury,
Clungunford and Clun,
Are the quietest places
Under the sun. 
In valleys of springs of rivers,
By Ony and Teme and Clun,
The country for easy livers,
The quietest under the sun,
We still had sorrows to lighten,
One could not be always glad,
And lads knew trouble at Knighton
When I was a Knighton lad.
By bridges that Thames runs under,
In London, the town built ill,
'Tis sure small matter for wonder
If sorrow is with one still.
And if as a lad grows older
The troubles he bears are more,
He carries his griefs on a shoulder
That handselled them long before.
Where shall one halt to deliver
This luggage I'd lief set down?
Not Thames, not Teme is the river,
Nor London nor Knighton the town:
'Tis a long way further than Knighton,
A quieter place than Clun,
Where doomsday may thunder and lighten
And little 'twill matter to one.
Christmas Prayer.
by George MacDonald

Cold my heart, and poor, and low,
Like thy stable in the rock;
Do not let it orphan go,
It is of thy parent stock!
Come thou in, and it will grow
High and wide, a fane divine;
Like the ruby it will glow,
Like the diamond shine!
His Vigil.
by James Whitcomb Riley

Close the book and dim the light,
I shall read no more to-night.
No - I am not sleepy, dear - 
Do not go: sit by me here
In the darkness and the deep
Silence of the watch I keep.
Something in your presence so
Soothes me - as in long ago
I first felt your hand - as now - 
In the darkness touch my brow;
I've no other wish than you
Thus should fold mine eyelids to,
Saying nought of sigh or tear - 
Just as God were sitting here.
Old Ghosts
by Madison Julius Cawein

Clove-spicy pinks and phlox that fill the sense
With drowsy indolence;
And in the evening skies
Interior splendor, pregnant with surprise,
As if in some new wise
The full moon soon would rise.
Hung with the crimson aigrets of its seeds
The purple monkshood bleeds;
The dewy crickets chirr,
And everywhere are lights of lavender;
And scents of musk and myrrh
To guide the foot of her.
She passes like a misty glimmer on
To where the rose blooms wan,
A twilight moth in flight,
As in the west its streak of chrysolite
The dusk erases quite,
And ushers in the night.
And now another shadow passes slow,
With firefly light a-glow:
The scent of a cigar,
And two who kiss beneath the evening-star,
Where, in a moonbeam bar,
A whippoorwill cries afar.
Again the tale is told, that has been told
So often here of old:
Ghosts of dead lovers they?
Or memories only of some perished day?
Old ghosts, no time shall lay,
That haunt the place alway.
Cock-A-Doodle-Doo
by Leonard Leslie Brooke

Cock-A-Doodle-Doo.
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
My dame has lost her shoe;
My master's lost his fiddling-stick,
And don't know what to do.
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
What is my dame to do?
Till master finds his fiddling-stick,
She'll dance without her shoe.
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
My dame has lost her shoe,
And master's found his fiddling-stick;
Sing doodle-doodle-doo!
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
My dame will dance with you,
While master fiddles his fiddling-stick,
For dame and doodle-doo.
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Dame has lost her shoe;
Gone to bed and scratched her head,
And can't tell what to do.
The Rule Of The A.J.C.
by Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)

Come all ye bold trainers attend to my song,
It's a rule of the A.J.C.
You mustn't train ponies, for that's very wrong
By the rules of the A.J.C.
You have to wear winkers when crossing the street,
For fear that a pony you'd happen to meet
If you hear one about, you must beat a retreat,
That's a rule of the A.J.C.
And all ye bold owners will find without fail
By the rules of the A.J.C.
The jockey boys' fees you must pay at the scale,
It's a rule of the A.J.C.
When your horse wins a fiver, you'll laugh, I'll be bound,
But you won't laugh so much by the time that you've found
That the fee to the boy is exactly ten pound!
That's a rule of the A.J.C.
And all ye bold "Books" who are keeping a shop,
In the rules of the A.J.C.,
There's a new regulation that says you must stop!
That's a rule of the A.J.C.
You must give up your shop with its pipes and cigars
To an unlicensed man who is thanking his stars,
While you go and bet in the threepenny bars,
That's a rule of the A.J.C.
And all ye small jockeys who ride in a race,
In the rules of the A.J.C.
If owners' instructions are "Don't get a place",
By the rules of the A.J.C.,
You must ride the horse out, though, of course, if you do
You will get no more mounts, it's starvation to you.
But, bless you, you'll always find plenty to chew
In the rules of the A.J.C.
On Leaving A Village In Scotland
by William Lisle Bowles

Clysdale! as thy romantic vales I leave,
And bid farewell to each retiring hill,
Where musing memory seems to linger still,
Tracing the broad bright landscape; much I grieve
That, mingled with the toiling crowd, no more
I may return your varied views to mark,
Of rocks amid the sunshine towering dark,
Of rivers winding wild, or mountains hoar,
Or castle gleaming on the distant steep!
Yet many a look back on thy hills I cast,
And many a softened image of the past
Sadly combine, and bid remembrance keep,
To soothe me with fair scenes, and fancies rude,
When I pursue my path in solitude.
Moonstruck
by Richard Arthur Warren Hughes

Cold shone the moon, with noise
The night went by.
Trees uttered things of woe:
Bent grass dared not grow:
Ah, desperate man with haggard eyes
And hands that fence away the skies,
On rock and briar stumbling,
Is it fear of the storm's rumbling,
Of the hissing cold rain,
Or lightning's tragic pain
Drives you so madly?
See, see the patient moon;
How she her course keeps
Through cloudy shallows and across black deeps,
Now gone, now shines soon.
Where's cause for fear?
'I shudder and shudder
At her bright light:
I fear, I fear,
That she her fixt course follows
So still and white
Through deeps and shallows
With never a tremor:
Naught shall disturb her.
I fear, I fear
What they may be
That secretly bind her:
What hand holds the reins
Of those sightless forces
That govern her courses.
Is it Setebos
Who deals in her command?
Or that unseen Night-Comer
With tender curst hand?
I shudder, and shudder.'
Poor storm-wisp, wander!
Wind shall not hurt thee,
Rain not appal thee,
Lightning not blast thee;
Thou art worn so frail,
Only the moonlight pale
To an ash shall burn thee,
To an invisible Pain.
Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650): Philip Massinger
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Clouds here and there arisen an hour past noon
Chequered our English heaven with lengthening bars
And shadow and sound of wheel-winged thunder-cars
Assembling strength to put forth tempest soon,
When the clear still warm concord of thy tune
Rose under skies unscared by reddening Mars
Yet, like a sound of silver speech of stars,
With full mild flame as of the mellowing moon.
Grave and great-hearted Massinger, thy face
High melancholy lights with loftier grace
Than gilds the brows of revel: sad and wise,
The spirit of thought that moved thy deeper song,
Sorrow serene in soft calm scorn of wrong,
Speaks patience yet from thy majestic eyes.
Umbra.[85]
by Alexander Pope

Close to the best known author Umbra sits,
The constant index to old Button's wits,
'Who's here?' cries Umbra: 'Only Johnson.'[86]--'Oh!
Your slave,' and exit; but returns with Rowe:
'Dear Rowe, let's sit and talk of tragedies;'
Ere long Pope enters, and to Pope he flies.
Then up comes Steele: he turns upon his heel,
And in a moment fastens upon Steele;
But cries as soon, 'Dear Dick, I must be gone,
For, if I know his tread, here's Addison.'
Says Addison to Steele, ''Tis time to go:'
Pope to the closet steps aside with Rowe.
Poor Umbra, left in this abandon'd pickle,
E'en sits him down, and writes to honest Tickell.
Fool! 'tis in vain from wit to wit to roam;
Know, sense, like charity, 'begins at home.'
Chartres Windows
by Rudyard Kipling

Colour fulfils where Music has no power:
By each man's light the unjudging glass betrays
All men's surrender, each man's holiest hour
And all the lit confusion of our days 
Purfled with iron, traced in dusk and fire,
Challenging ordered Time who, at the last,
Shall bring it, grozed and leaded and wedged fast,
To the cold stone that curbs or crowns desire.
Yet on the pavement that all feet have trod 
Even as the Spirit, in her deeps and heights,
Turns only, and that voiceless, to her God 
There falls no tincture from those anguished lights.
And Heaven's one light, behind them, striking through
Blazons what each man dreamed no other knew.
Upon Cob. Epig.
by Robert Herrick

Cob clouts his shoes, and, as the story tells,
His thumb nails par'd afford him sparrables.
Composed By The Side Of Grasmere Lake 1806
by William Wordsworth

Clouds, lingering yet, extend in solid bars
Through the grey west; and lo! these waters, steeled
By breezeless air to smoothest polish, yield
A vivid repetition of the stars;
Jove, Venus, and the ruddy crest of Mars
Amid his fellows beauteously revealed
At happy distance from earth's groaning field,
Where ruthless mortals wage incessant wars.
Is it a mirror? or the nether Sphere
Opening to view the abyss in which she feeds                             
Her own calm fires? But list! a voice is near;
Great Pan himself low-whispering through the reeds,
"Be thankful, thou; for, if unholy deeds
Ravage the world, tranquillity is here!"
The Negro Boy
by James Henry Leigh Hunt

Paupertas onus visa est grave.
Cold blows the wind, and while the tear
Bursts trembling from my swollen eyes,
The rain's big drop, quick meets it there,
And on my naked bosom flies!
O pity, all ye sons of Joy,
The little wand'ring Negro-boy.
These tatter'd clothes, this ice-cold breast
By Winter harden'd into steel,
These eyes, that know not soothing rest,
But speak the half of what I feel!
Long, long, I never new one joy,
The little wand'ring Negro-boy!
Cannot the sigh of early grief
Move but one charitable mind?
Cannot one hand afford relief?
One Christian pity, and be kind?
Weep, weep, for thine was never joy,
O little wand'ring Negro-boy!
Is there a good which men call Pleasure?
O Ozmyn, would that it were thine!
Give me this only precious treasure;
How it would soften grief like mine!
Then Ozmyn might be call'd, with joy,
The little wand'ring Negro-boy!
My limbs these twelve long years have borne
The rage of ev'ry angry wind:
Yet still does Ozmyn weep and mourn,
Yet still no ease, no rest can find!
Then death, alas, must soon destroy
The little wand'ring Negro-boy!
No sorrow e'er disturbs the rest,
That dwells within the lonely grave;
Thou best resource, the wo-wrung breast
E'er ask'd of Heav'n, or Heav'n e'er gave!
Ah then, farewell, vain world, with joy
I die the happy Negro-boy!
Beyond
by Kate Seymour Maclean

Cloudy argosies are drifting down into the purple dark,
And the long low amber reaches, lying on the horizon's mark,
Shape themselves into the gateways, dim and wonderful unfurled,
Gateways leading through' the sunset, out into the underworld.
How my spirit vainly flutters, like a bird that beats the bars,
To be launched upon that ocean, with its tides of throbbing stars,
To be gone beyond the sunset, and the day's revolving zone,
Out into the primal darkness, and the world of the unknown!
Hints and guesses of its grandeur, broken shadows, sudden gleams,
Like a falling star shoot past me, quenched within a sea of dreams,--
But the unimagined glory lying in the dark beyond,
Is to these as morn to midnight, or as silence is to sound.
Sweeter than the trees of Eden, dropping purple blooms, and balm,
Are the odors wafted toward me from its isles of windless calm,--
And the gold of all our sunsets, with their sapphire all impearled,
Would not match the fused and glowing heaven of that under world.
Pale sea-buds there weep forever, water lilies damp and cool,
And the mystic lotus shining through its white waves beautiful,
In those dusk and sunless valleys, where no steps of mortals tread,
Bind the white brows of the living, whom we blindly call the dead.
Oh ye lost ones,--ye departed, who have passed that silent shore,
Though we call you through the sunset, ye return to us no more.
Have ye found those blessed islands where earth's toils and sorrows cease?
Do ye wear the sacred lotus,--have ye entered into peace?
Do ye hear us when we call you,--do ye heed the tears we shed,--
Oh beloved!--oh immortal!--oh ye dead who are not dead!
Speak to us across the darkness,---wave to us a glimmering hand,--
Tell us but that ye remember, dwellers in the silent land!
But the sunset clouds have faded, arch and capital are gone,
And the regal night is glorious, with the starlight overblown;--
Life is labor and not dreaming, and I have my work to do,
Ere within those happy valleys I shall wear the lilies too.
Sonnet XII
by Alan Seeger

Clouds rosy-tinted in the setting sun,
Depths of the azure eastern sky between,
Plains where the poplar-bordered highways run,
Patched with a hundred tints of brown and green, - 
Beauty of Earth, when in thy harmonies
The cannon's note has ceased to be a part,
I shall return once more and bring to these
The worship of an undivided heart.
Of those sweet potentialities that wait
For my heart's deep desire to fecundate
I shall resume the search, if Fortune grants;
And the great cities of the world shall yet
Be golden frames for me in which to set
New masterpieces of more rare romance.