DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Upon Love.
by Robert Herrick

I played with Love, as with the fire
The wanton Satyr did;
Nor did I know, or could descry
What under there was hid.
That Satyr he but burnt his lips;
But mine's the greater smart,
For kissing Love's dissembling chips
The fire scorch'd my heart.
What Is Truth?
by Charles Baudelaire

I once knew a certain Benedicta whose presence filled the air with the ideal and whose eyes spread abroad the desire of grandeur, of beauty, of glory, and of all that makes man believe in immortality.
But this miraculous maiden was too beautiful for long life, so she died soon after I knew her first, and it was I myself who entombed her, upon a day when spring swung her censer even in the burial-ground. It was I myself who entombed her, fast closed in a coffin of perfumed wood, as uncorruptible as the coffers of India.
And, as my eyes rested upon the spot where my treasure lay hidden, I became suddenly aware of a little being who singularly resembled the dead; and who, stamping the newly-turned earth with a curious and hysterical violence, burst into laughter, and said:
"It is I, the true Benedicta! It is I, the notorious drab! As the punishment of your folly and blindness you shall love me as I truly am."
But I, furious, replied: "No!" The better to emphasise my refusal I struck the ground so violently with my foot that my leg was thrust up to the knee in the recent grave, and I, like a wolf in a trap, was caught perhaps for ever in the Grave of the Ideal.
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet XLIX
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

I on my horse, and Loue on me, doth trie
Our horsemanships, while by strange worke I proue
A horsman to my horse, a horse to Loue,
And now mans wrongs in me, poor beast! descrie.
The raines wherewith my rider doth me tie
Are humbled thoughts, which bit of reuerence moue,
Curb'd-in with feare, but with gilt bosse aboue
Of hope, which makes it seem fair to the eye:
The wand is will; thou, Fancie, saddle art,
Girt fast by Memorie; and while I spurre
My horse, he spurres with sharpe desire my hart.
He sits me fast, howeuer I do sturre,
And now hath made me to his hand so right,
That in the manage my selfe take delight.
The Fallen Tree.
by Alfred Castner King

I passed along a mountain road,
Which led me through a wooded glen,
Remote from dwelling or abode
And ordinary haunts of men;
And wearied from the dust and heat.
Beneath a tree, I found a seat.
The tree, a tall majestic spruce,
Which had, perhaps for centuries,
Withstood, without a moment's truce,
The wing-ed warfare of the breeze;
A monarch of the solitude,
Which well might grace the noblest wood.
Beneath its cool and welcome shade,
Protected from the noontide rays,
The birds amid its branches played
And caroled forth their twittering praise;
A squirrel perched upon a limb
And chattered with loquacious vim.
E'er yet that selfsame week had sped,
On my return, I sought its shade;
But where it reared its form, instead;
A fallen monarch I surveyed,
Prostrate and broken on the ground,
Nor longer cast its shade around.
Uprooted and disheveled, there
The monarch of the forest lay;
As if in desolate despair
Its last resistance fell away,
And overwhelmed, in evil hour
Went down before the tempest's power.
Such are the final works of fate;
The birds to other branches flew;
And man, whatever his estate,
Must face that same mutation, too!
To-day, I stand erect and tall,
The morrow--may record my fall.
Read By Moonlight
by Thomas Hardy

I paused to read a letter of hers
By the moon's cold shine,
Eyeing it in the tenderest way,
And edging it up to catch each ray
Upon her light-penned line.
I did not know what years would flow
Of her life's span and mine
Ere I read another letter of hers
By the moon's cold shine!
I chance now on the last of hers,
By the moon's cold shine;
It is the one remaining page
Out of the many shallow and sage
Whereto she set her sign.
Who could foresee there were to be
Such letters of pain and pine
Ere I should read this last of hers
By the moon's cold shine!
The Nobleman's Wedding
by William Allingham

I once was a guest at a Nobleman's wedding;
Fair was the Bride, but she scarce had been kind,
And now in our mirth, she had tears nigh the shedding
Her former true lover still runs in her mind.
Attired like a minstrel, her former true lover
Takes up his harp, and runs over the strings;
And there among strangers, his grief to discover,
A fair maiden's falsehood he bitterly sings.
'Now here is the token of gold that was broken;
Seven long years it was kept for your sake;
You gave it to me as a true lover's token;
No longer I'll wear it, asleep or awake.'
She sat in her place by the head of the table,
The words of his ditty she mark'd them right well:
To sit any longer this bride was not able,
So down at the bridegroom's feet she fell.
'O one, one request, my lord, one and no other,
O this one request will you grant it to me?
To lie for this night in the arms of my mother,
And ever, and ever thereafter with thee.'
Her one, one request it was granted her fairly;
Pale were her cheeks as she went up to bed;
And the very next morning, early, early,
They rose and they found this young bride was dead.
The bridegroom ran quickly, he held her, he kiss'd her,
He spoke loud and low, and listen'd full fain;
He call'd on her waiting-maids round to assist her
But nothing could bring the lost breath back again.
O carry her softly! the grave is made ready;
At head and at foot plant a laurel-bush green;
For she was a young and a sweet noble lady,
The fairest young bride that I ever have seen.
The Woodpecker.
by William Morris

I once a King and chief
Now am the tree-bark's thief,
Ever 'twixt trunk and leaf
Chasing the prey.
The Bankrupt Peace Maker
by Vachel Lindsay

I opened the ink-well and smoke filled the room.
The smoke formed the giant frog-cat of my doom.
His web feet left dreadful slime tracks on the floor.
He had hammer and nails that he laid by the door.
He sprawled on the table, claw-hands in my hair.
He looked through my heart to the mud that was there.
Like a black-mailer hating his victim he spoke:
"When I see all your squirming I laugh till I choke
Singing of peace. Railing at battle.
Soothing a handful with saccharine prattle.
All the millions of earth have voted for fight.
You are voting for talk, with hands lily white."
He leaped to the floor, then grew seven feet high,
Beautiful, terrible, scorn in his eye:
The Devil Eternal, Apollo grown old,
With beard of bright silver and garments of gold.
"What will you do to end war for good?
Will you stand by the book-case, be nailed to the wood?"
I stretched out my arms. He drove the nails deep,
Silently, coolly. The house was asleep,
I hung for three years, forbidden to die.
I seemed but a shadow the servants passed by.
At the end of the time with hot irons he returned.
"The Quitter Sublime" on my bosom he burned.
As he seared me he hissed: "You are wearing away.
The good angels tell me you leave them today.
You want to come down from the nails in the door.
The victor must hang there three hundred years more.
If any prig-saint would outvote all mankind
He must use an immortally resolute mind.
Think what the saints of Benares endure,
Through infinite birthpangs their courage is sure.
Self-tortured, self-ruled, they build their powers high,
Until they are gods, overmaster the sky."
Then he pulled out the nails. He shouted "Come in."
To heal me there stepped in a lady of sin.
Her hand was in mine. We walked in the sun.
She said: "Now forget them, the Saxon and Hun.
You are dreary and aged and silly and weak.
Let us smell the sweet groves. Let the summertime speak."
We walked to the river. We swam there in state.
I was a serpent. She was my mate.
I forgot in the marsh, as I tumbled about,
That trial in my room, where I did not hold out.
Since I was a serpent, my mate seemed to me
As a mermaiden seems to a fisher at sea,
Or a whisky soaked girl to a whisky soaked king.
I woke. She had turned to a ravening thing
On the table - a buzzard with leperous head.
She tore up my rhymes and my drawings. She said:
"I am your own cheap bankrupt soul.
Will you die for the nations, making them whole?
We joy in the swamp and here we are gay.
WILL YOU BRING YOUR FINE PEACE TO THE NATIONS TODAY?"
39
by Henry Lawson

I only woke this morning
To find the world is fair,
I'm going on for forty,
With scarcely one grey hair;
I'm going on for forty,
Where man's strong life begins,
With scarce a sign of crows' feet,
In spite of all my sins.
Then here's the living Forties!
The Forties! The Forties!
Then here's the living Forties!
We're good for ten years more.
The teens were black and bitter,
A smothered boyhood's grave,
A farm-drudge in the drought-time,
A weary workshop slave.
But twenty years have laid them,
And all the world is fair,
We'll find time in the Forties,
To have some boyhood there.
Then here's the wide, free Forties,
The Forties! The Forties!
Then here's the wide, free Forties!
We're good for ten years more!
The twenties they were noble,
The bravest years, I think;
'Twas man to man in trouble,
In working and in drink;
'Twas man to man in fighting,
For money or for praise.
And we'll find in the Forties
Some more Bohemian days.
Then here's the wiser Forties!
The Forties! The Forties!
Then here's the wiser Forties!
We're good for ten years more.
The thirties were the fate years;
I fought behind the scenes.
The thirties were more cruel
And blacker than the teens;
I held them not but bore them,
They were no years of mine;
But they are going from me,
For I am thirty-nine.
So here's the stronger Forties!
The Forties! The Forties!
And here's the good old Forties!
We're good for ten years more.
The Triumph Of Man
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

I plod and peer amid mean sounds and shapes,
I hunt for dusty gain and dreary praise,
And slowly pass the dismal grinning days,
Monkeying each other like a line of apes.
What care? There was one hour amid all these
When I had stripped off like a tawdry glove
My starriest hopes and wants, for very love
Of time and desolate eternities.
Yea, for one great hour's triumph, not in me
Nor any hope of mine did I rejoice,
But in a meadow game of girls and boys
Some sunset in the centuries to be.
The Death Of Regret
by Thomas Hardy

I opened my shutter at sunrise,
And looked at the hill hard by,
And I heartily grieved for the comrade
Who wandered up there to die.
I let in the morn on the morrow,
And failed not to think of him then,
As he trod up that rise in the twilight,
And never came down again.
I undid the shutter a week thence,
But not until after I'd turned
Did I call back his last departure
By the upland there discerned.
Uncovering the casement long later,
I bent to my toil till the gray,
When I said to myself, "Ah what ails me,
To forget him all the day!"
As daily I flung back the shutter
In the same blank bald routine,
He scarcely once rose to remembrance
Through a month of my facing the scene.
And ah, seldom now do I ponder
At the window as heretofore
On the long valued one who died yonder,
And wastes by the sycamore.
I Pluck Summer Blossoms
by John Clare

I pluck Summer blossoms,
And think of rich bosoms--
The bosoms I've leaned on, and worshipped, and won.
The rich valley lilies,
The wood daffodillies,
Have been found in our rambles when Summer begun.
Where I plucked thee the bluebell,
'T was where the night dew fell,
And rested till morn in the cups of the flowers;
I shook the sweet posies,
Bluebells and brere roses,
As we sat in cool shade in Summer's warm hours.
Bedlam-cowslips and cuckoos,
With freck'd lip and hooked nose,
Growing safe near the hazel of thicket and woods,
And water blobs, ladies' smocks,
Blooming where haycocks
May be found, in the meadows, low places, and floods.
And cowslips a fair band
For May ball or garland,
That bloom in the meadows as seen by the eye;
And pink ragged robin,
Where the fish they are bobbing
Their heads above water to catch at the fly.
Wild flowers and wild roses!
'T is love makes the posies
To paint Summer ballads of meadow and glen.
Floods can't drown it nor turn it,
Even flames cannot burn it;
Let it bloom till we walk the green meadows again.
I Dreamt of Robin
by John Clare

I opened the casement this morn at starlight,
And, the moment I got out of bed,
The daisies were quaking about in their white
And the cowslip was nodding its head.
The grass was all shivers, the stars were all bright,
And Robin that should come at e'en--
I thought that I saw him, a ghost by moonlight,
Like a stalking horse stand on the green.
I went bed agen and did nothing but dream
Of Robin and moonlight and flowers.
He stood like a shadow transfixed by a stream,
And I couldn't forget him for hours.
I'd just dropt asleep when I dreamed Robin spoke,
And the casement it gave such a shake,
As if every pane in the window was broke;
Such a patter the gravel did make.
So I up in the morning before the cock crew
And to strike me a light I sat down.
I saw from the door all his track in the dew
And, I guess, called "Come in and sit down."
And one, sure enough, tramples up to the door,
And who but young Robin his sen?
And ere the old folks were half willing to stir
We met, kissed, and parted agen.
My Fancy
by Lewis Carroll

I painted her a gushing thing,
With years about a score;
I little thought to find they were
A least a dozen more;
My fancy gave her eyes of blue,
A curly auburn head:
I came to find the blue a green,
The auburn turned to red.
She boxed my ears this morning,
They tingled very much;
I own that I could wish her
A somewhat lighter touch;
And if you ask me how
Her charms might be improved,
I would not have them added to,
But just a few removed!
She has the bear's ethereal grace,
The bland hyaena's laugh,
The footstep of the elephant,
The neck of a giraffe;
I love her still, believe me,
Though my heart its passion hides;
"She's all my fancy painted her,"
But oh! how much besides!
Ben Allah Achmet; Or, The Fatal Tum
by William Schwenck Gilbert

I once did know a Turkish man
Whom I upon a two-pair-back met,
His name it was Effendi Khan
Backsheesh Pasha Ben Allah Achmet.
A Doctor Brown I also knew 
I've often eaten of his bounty 
The Turk and he they lived at Hooe,
In Sussex, that delightful county.
I knew a nice young lady there,
Her name was Isabella Sherson,
And though she wore another's hair,
She was an interesting person.
The Turk adored the maid of Hooe
(Although his harem would have shocked her);
But Brown adored that maiden, too:
He was a most seductive doctor.
They'd follow her where'er she'd go 
A course of action most improper;
She neither knew by sight, and so
For neither of them cared a copper.
Brown did not know that Turkish male,
He might have been his sainted mother:
The people in this simple tale
Are total strangers to each other.
One day that Turk he sickened sore
Which threw him straight into a sharp pet;
He threw himself upon the floor
And rolled about upon his carpet.
It made him moan it made him groan
And almost wore him to a mummy:
Why should I hesitate to own
That pain was in his little tummy?
At length a Doctor came and rung
(As Allah Achmet had desired)
Who felt his pulse, looked up his tongue,
And hummed and hawed, and then inquired:
"Where is the pain, that long has preyed
Upon you in so sad a way, sir?"
The Turk he giggled, blushed, and said,
"I don't exactly like to say, sir."
"Come, nonsense!" said good Doctor Brown,
"So this is Turkish coyness, is it?
You must contrive to fight it down 
Come, come, sir, please to be explicit."
The Turk he shyly bit his thumb,
And coyly blushed like one half-witted,
"The pain is in my little tum,"
He, whispering, at length admitted.
"Then take you this, and take you that 
Your blood flows sluggish in its channel 
You must get rid of all this fat,
And wear my medicated flannel.
"You'll send for me, when you're in need 
My name is Brown your life I've saved it!"
"My rival!" shrieked the invalid,
And drew a mighty sword and waved it.
"This to thy weazand, Christian pest!"
Aloud the Turk in frenzy yelled it,
And drove right through the Doctor's chest
The sabre and the hand that held it.
The blow was a decisive one,
And Doctor Brown grew deadly pasty 
"Now see the mischief that you've done, 
You Turks are so extremely hasty.
"There are two Doctor Browns in Hooe,
He's short and stout I'm tall and wizen;
You've been and run the wrong one through,
That's how the error has arisen."
The accident was thus explained,
Apologies were only heard now:
"At my mistake I'm really pained,
I am, indeed, upon my word now."
"With me, sir, you shall be interred,
A Mausoleum grand awaits me" 
"Oh, pray don't say another word,
I'm sure that more than compensates me.
"But, p'r'aps, kind Turk, you're full inside?"
"There's room," said he, "for any number."
And so they laid them down and died.
In proud Stamboul they sleep their slumber.
Lost Love
by Thomas Hardy

I play my sweet old airs -
The airs he knew
When our love was true -
But he does not balk
His determined walk,
And passes up the stairs.
I sing my songs once more,
And presently hear
His footstep near
As if it would stay;
But he goes his way,
And shuts a distant door.
So I wait for another morn
And another night
In this soul-sick blight;
And I wonder much
As I sit, why such
A woman as I was born!
Iris, Her Book
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

I pray thee by the soul of her that bore thee,
By thine own sister's spirit I implore thee,
Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee!
For Iris had no mother to infold her,
Nor ever leaned upon a sister's shoulder,
Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her.
She had not learned the mystery of awaking
Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow's aching,
Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking.
Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token
Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken,
Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken?
She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies, - 
Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances,
And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances.
Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing:
Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring,
Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing.
Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her?
What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her?
Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor.
And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven,
Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven,
Save me! Oh, save me! Shall I die forgiven?
And then - Ah, God! But nay, it little matters:
Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters,
The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters!
If she had - Well! She longed, and knew not wherefore.
Had the world nothing she might live to care for?
No second self to say her evening prayer for?
She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming,
Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streaming
Showed not unlovely to her simple seeming.
Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher.
What if a lonely and unsistered creature
Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature,
Saying, unsaddened, - This shall soon be faded,
And double-hued the shining tresses braided,
And all the sunlight of the morning shaded?
This her poor book is full of saddest follies,
Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies,
With summer roses twined and wintry hollies.
In the strange crossing of uncertain chances,
Somewhere, beneath some maiden's tear-dimmed glances
May fall her little book of dreams and fancies.
Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee,
Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee,
Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee.
Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping,
Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping.
No more! She leaves her memory in thy keeping.
To-Day
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

I rake no coffined clay, nor publish wide
The resurrection of departed pride.
Safe in their ancient crannies, dark and deep,
Let kings and conquerors, saints and soldiers sleep--
Late in the world,--too late perchance for fame,
Just late enough to reap abundant blame,--
I choose a novel theme, a bold abuse
Of critic charters, an unlaurelled Muse.
Old mouldy men and books and names and lands
Disgust my reason and defile my hands.
I had as lief respect an ancient shoe,
As love old things for age, and hate the new.
I spurn the Past, my mind disdains its nod,
Nor kneels in homage to so mean a God.
I laugh at those who, while they gape and gaze,
The bald antiquity of China praise.
Youth is (whatever cynic tubs pretend)
The fault that boys and nations soonest mend.
Dirge
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

CONCORD, 1838
I reached the middle of the mount
Up which the incarnate soul must climb,
And paused for them, and looked around,
With me who walked through space and time.
Five rosy boys with morning light
Had leaped from one fair mother's arms,
Fronted the sun with hope as bright,
And greeted God with childhood's psalms.
Knows he who tills this lonely field
To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn?
In the long sunny afternoon
The plain was full of ghosts;
I wandered up, I wandered down,
Beset by pensive hosts.
The winding Concord gleamed below,
Pouring as wide a flood
As when my brothers, long ago,
Came with me to the wood.
But they are gone,--the holy ones
Who trod with me this lovely vale;
The strong, star-bright companions
Are silent, low and pale.
My good, my noble, in their prime,
Who made this world the feast it was
Who learned with me the lore of time,
Who loved this dwelling-place!
They took this valley for their toy,
They played with it in every mood;
A cell for prayer, a hall for joy,--
They treated Nature as they would.
They colored the horizon round;
Stars flamed and faded as they bade,
All echoes hearkened for their sound,--
They made the woodlands glad or mad.
I touch this flower of silken leaf,
Which once our childhood knew;
Its soft leaves wound me with a grief
Whose balsam never grew.
Hearken to yon pine-warbler
Singing aloft in the tree!
Hearest thou, O traveller,
What he singeth to me?
Not unless God made sharp thine ear
With sorrow such as mine,
Out of that delicate lay could'st thou
Its heavy tale divine.
'Go, lonely man,' it saith;
'They loved thee from their birth;
Their hands were pure, and pure their faith,--
There are no such hearts on earth.
'Ye drew one mother's milk,
One chamber held ye all;
A very tender history
Did in your childhood fall.
'You cannot unlock your heart,
The key is gone with them;
The silent organ loudest chants
The master's requiem.'
The Tryst.
by Muriel Stuart

I raised the veil, I loosed the bands,
I took the dead thing from its place.
Like a warm stream in frozen lands
My lips went wandering on her face,
My hands burnt in her hands.
She could not stay me, being dead;
Her body here was mine to hold.
What if her lips had lost their red?
To me they always tasted cold
With the cold words she said.
Did my breath run along her hair,
And free the pulse, and fire the brain,
My wild blood wake her wild blood there?
Her eyelids lifted wide again
In a blue, sudden stare.
Beneath my fierce, profane caress
The whole white length of body moved;
The drowsy bosom seemed to press
As if against a breast beloved,
Then fail for weariness.
No, not that anguish!    Christ forbid
That I should raise such dead!    I rose,
Stifled the mouth with lilies, hid
Those eyes, and drew the long hair close,
And shut the coffin lid.
My cold brow on the cold wood laid,
Quiet and close to-night we lie.
No cruel words her lips have said.
I shall not take nor she deny.
The dead is with the dead.
I Prayed So Eagerly
by Dora Sigerson Shorter

I prayed so eagerly,
'Turn and see
How bitter I have striven-
A word and all forgiven.'
I prayed so eagerly.
I prayed so eagerly-
Not to be,
You turned and passed.    Good-bye!
Fates smile for me, dreamed I-
Yet I prayed eagerly.