DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Immortal Love, Forever Full
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Immortal love, forever full,
Forever flowing free,
Forever shared, forever whole,
A never ebbing sea!
Our outward lips confess the name
All other names above;
Love only knoweth whence it came,
And comprehendeth love.
Blow, winds of God, awake and blow
The mists of earth away:
Shine out, O Light divine, and show
How wide and far we stray.
We may not climb the heavenly steeps
To bring the Lord Christ down;
In vain we search the lowest deeps,
For Him no depths can drown.
But warm, sweet, tender, even yet,
A present help is He;
And faith still has its Olivet,
And love its Galilee.
The healing of His seamless dress
Is by our beds of pain;
We touch Him in life's throng and press,
And we are whole again.
Through Him the first fond prayers are said
Our lips of childhood frame,
The last low whispers of our dead
Are burdened with His Name.
O Lord and Master of us all,
Whate'er our name or sign,
We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call,
We test our lives by Thine.
The letter fails, the systems fall,
And every symbol wanes;
The Spirit over brooding all,
Eternal Love remains
To Sappho I
by Sara Teasdale

Impassioned singer of the happy time.
When all the world was waking into morn,
And dew still glistened on the tangled thorn,
And lingered on the branches of the lime, 
Oh peerless singer of the golden rhyme,
Happy wert thou to live ere doubt was born, 
Before the joy of life was half out-worn,
And nymphs and satyrs vanished from your clime.
Then maidens bearing parsley in their hands
Wound thro' the groves to where the goddess stands,
And mariners might sail for unknown lands
Past sea-clasped islands veiled in mystery, 
And Venus still was shining from the sea,
And Ceres had not lost Persephone.
Upon Love.
by Robert Herrick

In a dream, Love bade me go
To the galleys there to row;
In the vision I ask'd why?
Love as briefly did reply,
'Twas better there to toil, than prove
The turmoils they endure that love.
I awoke, and then I knew
What Love said was too-too true;
Henceforth therefore I will be,
As from love, from trouble free.
None pities him that's in the snare,
And, warned before, would not beware.
Translations. - The Dream. (From Uhland.)
by George MacDonald

In a garden sweet went walking
Two lovers hand in hand;
Two pallid figures, low talking,
They sat in the flowery land.
They kissed on the cheek one another,
And they kissed upon the mouth;
They held in their arms each the other,
And back came their health and youth.
Two little bells rang shrilly--
And the lovely dream was dead!
She lay in the cloister chilly;
He afar on his dungeon-bed.
Ahoy
by Paul Cameron Brown

Image throttled in the subconscious,
romantic throwback - 
the mind on a voyage round land's end
to eclipse pyramidal fires
set as beacons along rock strewn shores - 
her skeletal inhabitants on ice flows
wrapped in bearskins
with dirks between their teeth
slapping one another to keep warm.
Then, alpine ranges carrying
the plight of the Andes in their mouth;
a dull, white sail propped against ship's bow
with a noise like an anvil
coming loose in the brain.
More frightening, sailors mutiny on a diet
of bread as sallow maggots
march in a quarter horse sized trot
across the floorboards.
Such men in the bellows of one's mind
break out rubber dinghies
in quickening escape thru the
maw of an Arctic sea.
Expiry. Dry rot. Sunken astrolobe
and an armada of feelings drifting alone.
The Fish
by Rupert Brooke

In a cool curving world he lies
And ripples with dark ecstasies.
The kind luxurious lapse and steal
Shapes all his universe to feel
And know and be; the clinging stream
Closes his memory, glooms his dream,
Who lips the roots o' the shore, and glides
Superb on unreturning tides.
Those silent waters weave for him
A fluctuant mutable world and dim,
Where wavering masses bulge and gape
Mysterious, and shape to shape
Dies momently through whorl and hollow,
And form and line and solid follow
Solid and line and form to dream
Fantastic down the eternal stream;
An obscure world, a shifting world,
Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled,
Or serpentine, or driving arrows,
Or serene slidings, or March narrows.
There slipping wave and shore are one,
And weed and mud. No ray of sun,
But glow to glow fades down the deep
(As dream to unknown dream in sleep);
Shaken translucency illumes
The hyaline of drifting glooms;
The strange soft-handed depth subdues
Drowned colour there, but black to hues,
As death to living, decomposes,
Red darkness of the heart of roses,
Blue brilliant from dead starless skies,
And gold that lies behind the eyes,
The unknown unnameable sightless white
That is the essential flame of night,
Lustreless purple, hooded green,
The myriad hues that lie between
Darkness and darkness! . . .
And all's one.
Gentle, embracing, quiet, dun,
The world he rests in, world he knows,
Perpetual curving. Only, grows
An eddy in that ordered falling,
A knowledge from the gloom, a calling
Weed in the wave, gleam in the mud,
The dark fire leaps along his blood;
Dateless and deathless, blind and still,
The intricate impulse works its will;
His woven world drops back; and he,
Sans providence, sans memory,
Unconscious and directly driven,
Fades to some dank sufficient heaven.
O world of lips, O world of laughter,
Where hope is fleet and thought flies after,
Of lights in the clear night, of cries
That drift along the wave and rise
Thin to the glittering stars above,
You know the hands, the eyes of love!
The strife of limbs, the sightless clinging,
The infinite distance, and the singing
Blown by the wind, a flame of sound,
The gleam, the flowers, and vast around
The horizon, and the heights above,
You know the sigh, the song of love!
But there the night is close, and there
Darkness is cold and strange and bare;
And the secret deeps are whisperless;
And rhythm is all deliciousness;
And joy is in the throbbing tide,
Whose intricate fingers beat and glide
In felt bewildering harmonies
Of trembling touch; and music is
The exquisite knocking of the blood.
Space is no more, under the mud;
His bliss is older than the sun.
Silent and straight the waters run.
The lights, the cries, the willows dim,
And the dark tide are one with him.
The Light Celestial.
by Charles Hamilton Musgrove

(Written on the ter-centenary of John Milton, December 9, 1908.)
Immortal singer, in whose glorious brain
Unearthly melodies were born to make
A nocturn for the blessed Master's sake,
I see thee pass through heaven's gates again;
I hear thee singing that majestic strain,
Which soothed the heart affliction could not break,
And proved the faith no worldly ills could shake;
And then I see thee join God's holy train,
But, wonder of all wonders! where the light
Breaks from a thousand suns, the seraphs, shod
With flaming sandals, lead thee; and my sight
Dims with the vision, till fresh from His rod,
I see thee lift those orbs, once quenched in night,
And gaze into the steadfast eyes of God!
To My Lord And Master
by George MacDonald

Imagination cannot rise above thee;
Near and afar I see thee, and I love thee;
My misery away from me I thrust it,
For thy perfection I behold, and trust it.
On A Similar Occasion. For The Year 1788.
by William Cowper

Quod adest, memento
Componere 'quus. C'tera fluminis
Ritu feruntur.'Horace.
Improve the present hour, for all beside
Is a mere feather on a torrent's tide.
Could I, from heaven inspired, as sure presage
To whom the rising year shall prove his last,
As I can number in my punctual page,
And item down the victims of the past;
How each would trembling wait the mournful sheet,
On which the press might stamp him next to die;
And, reading here his sentence, how replete
With anxious meaning, heavenward turn his eye!
Time then would seem more precious than the joys
In which he sports away the treasure now;
And prayer more seasonable than the noise
Of drunkards, or the music-drawing bow.
Then doubtless many a trifler, on the brink
Of this world's hazardous and headlong shore,
Forced to a pause, would feel it good to think,
Told that his setting sun must rise no more.
Ah self-deceived! Could I prophetic say
Who next is fated, and who next to fall,
The rest might then seem privileged to play;
But, naming none, the Voice now speaks to all.
Observe the dappled foresters, how light
They bound and airy o'er the sunny glade'
One falls'the rest, wide scatter'd with affright,
Vanish at once into the darkest shade.
Had we their wisdom, should we, often warn'd,
Still need repeated warnings, and at last,
A thousand awful admonitions scorn'd,
Die self-accused of life run all to waste!
Sad waste! for which no after-thrift atones.
The grave admits no cure for guilt or sin;
Dewdrops may deck the turf that hides the bones,
But tears of godly grief ne'er flow within.
Learn then, ye living! by the mouths be taught
Of all these sepulchres, instructors true,
That, soon or late, death also is your lot,
And the next opening grave may yawn for you.
Bothwell Castle
by William Wordsworth

Immured in Bothwell's Towers, at times the Brave
(So beautiful is the Clyde) forgot to mourn
The liberty they lost at Bannockburn.
Once on those steeps I roamed at large, and have
In mind the landscape, as if still in sight;
The river glides, the woods before me wave;
But, by occasion tempted, now I crave
Needless renewal of an old delight.
Better to thank a dear and long-past day
For joy its sunny hours were free to give
Than blame the present, that our wish hath crost.
Memory, like Sleep, hath powers which dreams obey,
Dreams, vivid dreams, that are not fugitive;
How little that she cherishes is lost!
Songs of the Fleet - The Middle Watch
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

In a blue dusk the ship astern
Uplifts her slender spars,
With golden lights that seem to burn
Among the silver stars.
Like fleets along a cloudy shore
The constellations creep,
Like planets on the ocean floor
Our silent course we keep.
And over the endless plain,
Out of the night forlorn
Rises a faint refrain,
A song of the day to be born--
Watch, oh watch till ye find again
Life and the land of morn.
From a dim West to a dark East
Our lines unwavering head,
As if their motion long had ceased
And Time itself were dead.
Vainly we watch the deep below,
Vainly the void above,
They died a thousand years ago--
Life and the land we love.
But over the endless plain,
Out of the night forlorn
Rises a faint refrain,
A song of the day to be born--
Watch, oh watch till ye find again
Life and the land of morn.
To E.L., On His Travels In Greece
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls
Of water, sheets of summer glass,
The long divine Pene'an pass,
The vast Akrokeraunian walls,
Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair,
With such a pencil, such a pen,
You shadow forth to distant men,
I read and felt that I was there:
And trust me while I turn'd the page,
And track'd you still on classic ground,
I grew in gladness till I found
My spirits in the golden age.
For me the torrent ever pour'd
And glisten'd'here and there alone
The broad-limb'd Gods at random thrown
By fountain-urns;'and Naiads oar'd
A glimmering shoulder under gloom
Of cavern pillars; on the swell
The silver lily heaved and fell;
And many a slope was rich in bloom
From him that on the mountain lea
By dancing rivulets fed his flocks
To him who sat upon the rocks,
And fluted to the morning sea.
Countess II
by Paul Cameron Brown

Imagining the smoke burnt
imprint of a tatoo
with tapers flickering,
the bejewelled gaze a dragon's snout
must bring
or the serpent coil, crimson flame
curl of dashing cobra,
its very fangs drawing
lifeblood from the fleshy
perch in smooth, red scorching.
On the pectorals of a sailor.
Perhaps whiplash of the granite waves,
grim trucker with a "Mother"
grasping chains
that see burly sandbags in place - 
hirsute biker, cords of
hair lashing his tattooed lady
the lavender caress of scar
with implant that
of the chopper itself,
her fleshy buttocks
careening off the road.
The Mean.
by Robert Herrick

Imparity doth ever discord bring;
The mean the music makes in everything.
Immortal Is An Ample Word
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Immortal is an ample word
When what we need is by,
But when it leaves us for a time,
'T is a necessity.
Of heaven above the firmest proof
We fundamental know,
Except for its marauding hand,
It had been heaven below.
To A Canary.
by Thomas Frederick Young

Imprison'd songster, thou for me
Hath warbl'd many a cheerful lay,
Thy songs, so sweetly glad and free,
Revive my heart, from day to day.
The frost is keen, the wind is cold,
No wild-bird twitters from the spray,
But, still resounding as of old,
Thy voice thrills forth, and seems to say:
"Wake up! O sadden'd mortal, wake!
Shake off that anxious, careworn frown,
Thy hopes renew, fresh courage take,
Nor let your troubles weigh you down.
"See, I am happy all alone,
And, kept behind the prison bars,
I sing, and shouldst thou ever moan?
A mortal free, beneath the stars.
"I fly around my narrow cage,
I sing the song that gladdens you,
But carking care thy thoughts engage,
While walking free, 'neath heaven's blue.
"My heart might faint, my spirit die,
Far from my kind, and from my home,
But cheerfully I sing and fly,
Beneath my narrow prison's dome.
"Oh, list, sad mortal to my song,
And, while thou hearest, mark it well,
And go thy cheerful way along,
Nor pray to know, what none can tell.
"I'll sing my song each day for thee,
And live the moments as they fly,
With gladden'd heart, with sounding glee,
And thou shouldst do the same as I."
The Man And The Echo
by William Butler Yeats

i(Man)
In a cleft that's christened Alt
Under broken stone I halt
At the bottom of a pit
That broad noon has never lit,
And shout a secret to the stone.
All that I have said and done,
Now that I am old and ill,
Turns into a question till
I lie awake night after night
And never get the answers right.
Did that play of mine send out
Certain men the English shot?
Did words of mine put too great strain
On that woman's reeling brain?
Could my spoken words have checked
That whereby a house lay wrecked?
And all seems evil until I
Sleepless would lie down and die.
i(Echo)
Lie down and die.
i(Man)
That were to shirk
The spiritual intellect's great work,
And shirk it in vain. There is no release
In a bodkin or disease,
Nor can there be work so great
As that which cleans man's dirty slate.
While man can still his body keep
Wine or love drug him to sleep,
Waking he thanks the Lord that he
Has body and its stupidity,
But body gone he sleeps no more,
And till his intellect grows sure
That all's arranged in one clear view,
pursues the thoughts that I pursue,
Then stands in judgment on his soul,
And, all work done, dismisses all
Out of intellect and sight
And sinks at last into the night.
i(Echo)
Into the night.
i(Man)
O Rocky Voice,
Shall we in that great night rejoice?
What do we know but that we face
One another in this place?
But hush, for I have lost the theme,
Its joy or night-seem but a dream;
Up there some hawk or owl has struck,
Dropping out of sky or rock,
A stricken rabbit is crying out,
And its cry distracts my thought.
Bothwell Castle - Passed Unseen, On Account Of Stormy Weather
by William Wordsworth

Immured in Bothwell's towers, at times the Brave
(So beautiful is Clyde) forgot to mourn
The liberty they lost at Bannockburn.
Once on those steeps 'I' roamed at large, and have
In mind the landscape, as if still in sight;
The river glides, the woods before me wave;
Then why repine that now in vain I crave
Needless renewal of an old delight?
Better to thank a dear and long-past day
For joy its sunny hours were free to give
Than blame the present, that our wish hath crost.
Memory, like sleep, hath powers which dreams obey,
Dreams, vivid dreams, that are not fugitive:
How little that she cherishes is lost!
All-Saints
by Edmund Hodgson Yates

In a church which is furnish'd with mullion and gable,
With altar and reredos, with gargoyle and groin,
The penitents' dresses are sealskin and sable,
The odour of sanctity's eau-de-Cologne.
But only could Lucifer, flying from Hades,
Gaze down on this crowd with its panniers and paints,
He would say, as he look'd at the lords and the ladies,
"Oh, where is All-Sinners', if this is All-Saints'?"
Devonshire Lane, The
by John Marriott

In a Devonshire lane as I trotted along
T'other day, much in want of a subject for song;
Thinks I to myself, I have hit on a strain,
Sure marriage is much like a Devonshire lane.
In the first place, 'tis long, and when once you are in it,
It holds you as fast as the cage holds a linnet;
For howe'er rough and dirty the road may be found,
Drive forward you must, since there's no turning round.
But though 'tis so long, it is not very wide,
For two are the most that together can ride;
And e'en there 'tis a chance but they get in a pother,
And jostle and cross, and run foul of each other.
Old Poverty greets them with mendicant looks,
And Care pushes by them o'erladen with crooks,
And Strife's grating wheels try between them to pass,
Or Stubbornness blocks up the way on her ass.
Then the banks are so high, both to left hand and right,
That they shut up the beauties around from the sight;
And hence, you'll allow, 'tis an inference plain
That marriage is just like a Devonshire lane.
But, thinks I, too, these banks within which we are pent,
With bud, blossom, and berry are richly besprent;
And the conjugal fence which forbids us to roam
Looks lovely when deck'd with the comforts of home.
In the rock's gloomy crevice the bright holly grows,
The ivy waves fresh o'er the withering rose;
And the evergreen love of a virtuous wife
Smooths the roughness of care, cheers the winter of life.
Then long be the journey and narrow the way;
I'll rejoice that I've seldom a turnpike to pay;
And, whate'er others think, be the last to complain,
Though marriage is just like a Devonshire lane.
By the Cliffs of the Sea
by Henry Kendall

In a far-away glen of the hills,
Where the bird of the night is at rest,
Shut in from the thunder that fills
The fog-hidden caves of the west
In a sound of the leaf, and the lute
Of the wind on the quiet lagoon,
I stand, like a worshipper, mute
In the flow of a marvellous tune!
And the song that is sweet to my sense
Is, 'Nearer, my God, unto Thee';
But it carries me sorrowing hence,
To a grave by the cliffs of the sea.
So many have gone that I loved
So few of the fathers remain,
That where in old seasons I moved
I could never be happy again.
In the breaks of this beautiful psalm,
With its deep, its devotional tone,
And hints of ineffable calm,
I feel like a stranger, alone.
No wonder my eyes are so dim
Your trouble is heavy on me,
O widow and daughter of him
Who sleeps in the grave by the sea!
The years have been hard that have pressed
On a head full of premature grey,
Since Stenhouse went down to his rest,
And Harpur was taken away.
In the soft yellow evening-ends,
The wind of the water is faint
By the home of the last of my friends
The shrine of the father and saint.
The tenderness touching the grace
Of Ridley no more is for me;
And flowers have hidden the face
Of the brother who sleeps by the sea.
The vehement voice of the South
Is loud where the journalist lies;
But calm hath encompassed his mouth,
And sweet is the peace in his eyes.
Called hence by the Power who knows
When the work of a hero is done,
He turned at the message, and rose
With the harness of diligence on.
In the midst of magnificent toil,
He bowed at the holy decree;
And green is the grass on the soil
Of the grave by the cliffs of the sea.
I knew him, indeed; and I knew,
Having suffered so much in his day,
What a beautiful nature and true
In Bennett was hidden away.
In the folds of a shame without end,
When the lips of the scorner were curled,
I found in this brother a friend
The last that was left in the world.
Ah! under the surface austere
Compassion was native to thee;
I send from my solitude here
This rose for the grave by the sea.
To the high, the heroic intent
Of a life that was never at rest,
He held, with a courage unspent,
Through the worst of his days and the best.
Far back in the years that are dead
He knew of the bitterness cold
That saddens with silver the head
And makes a man suddenly old.
The dignity gracing his grief
Was ever a lesson to me;
He lies under blossom and leaf
In a grave by the cliffs of the sea.
Above him the wandering face
Of the moon is a loveliness now,
And anthems encompass the place
From lutes of the luminous bough.
The forelands are fiery with foam
Where often and often he roved;
He sleeps in the sight of the home
That he built by the waters he loved.
The wave is his fellow at night,
And the sun, shining over the lea,
Sheds out an unspeakable light
On this grave by the cliffs of the sea.
Child Made Happy.
by James McIntyre

In a great city hospital
There lay poor Mary Crosby small,
She had no friends her heart to cheer,
So time with her passed sad and drear.
She sought for ease but all in vain,
Month after month she passed in pain,
She had no relative nor friend
Who aid or comfort could her lend.
A surgeon saw her cheerless state,
And deplored the poor child's fate,
She tried to make doll of her finger,
And sang to it poor little singer.
Her's indeed was an awful lot,
The weary days she spent in cot,
For the poor child she could not walk,
And it soon exhausted her to talk.
But surgeon bought her ribbon gay,
And with it she all day did play,
The giver often she did bless,
And thought sometimes she was princess.
For in it she did take such pride,
She fancied she was beauteous bride,
And was possessed of great riches,
Or thought herself a wealthy Duchess.
And she would bind it round her hair,
Imagining that she was fair.
But poor child feels that she must die,
She asks the surgeon to come nigh.
And kindly o'er her he doth stand,
She asked him for to take her hand,
Thanked him for ribbon green and blue,
Then evermore bade him adieu.
Aesthetic.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In a garb that was guiltless of colors
She stood, with a dull, listless air - 
A creature of dumps and of dolors,
But most undeniably fair.
The folds of her garment fell round her,
Revealing the curve of each limb;
Well proportioned and graceful I found her,
Although quite alarmingly slim.
From the hem of her robe peeped one sandal - 
"High art" was she down to her feet;
And though I could not understand all
She said, I could see she was sweet.
Impressed by her limpness and languor,
I proffered a chair near at hand;
She looked back a mild sort of anger - 
Posed anew, and continued to stand.
Some praises I next tried to mutter
Of the fan that she held to her face;
She said it was "utterly utter,"
And waved it with languishing grace.
I then, in a strain quite poetic,
Begged her gaze on the bow in the sky,
She looked - said its curve was "'sthetic."
But the "tone was too dreadfully high."
Her lovely face, lit by the splendor
That glorified landscape and sea,
Woke thoughts that were daring and tender:
Did her thoughts, too, rest upon me?
"Oh, tell me," I cried, growing bolder,
"Have I in your musings a place?"
"Well, yes," she said over her shoulder:
"I was thinking of nothing in space."
Annunciation - From A Picture By Botticelli
by Ethel Allen Murphy

Immortal eloquence of mystic Art!
How strangely o'er oblivion and gray time,
That hand doth speak, as in the painter's prime
It uttered thus his own and Mary's heart,
At sight of it, what rich conjectures start,
Adown the years, what wistful Aves chime,
That wake the soul to rapture how sublime,
Wherewith we, too, must bear in Him our part!
For unto each to bring redemption's share,
Whereby adown the ages Christ is borne,
There comes the angel of the lilied rod;
And though our souls with anguish sore are torn,
We pray once more the world-o'ercoming prayer,
And then is born in us the Word of God.