DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
In Early Spring
by Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell

O Spring, I know thee! Seek for sweet surprise
In the young children's eyes.
But I have learnt the years, and know the yet
Leaf-folded violet.
Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretell
The cuckoo's fitful bell.
I wander in a grey time that encloses
June and the wild hedge-roses.
A year's procession of the flowers doth pass
My feet, along the grass.
And all you sweet birds silent yet, I know
The notes that stir you so,
Your songs yet half devised in the dim dear
Beginnings of the year.
In these young days you meditate your part;
I have it all by heart.
I know the secrets of the seeds of flowers
Hidden and warm with showers,
And how, in kindling Spring, the cuckoo shall
Alter his interval.
But not a flower or song I ponder is
My own, but memory's.
I shall be silent in those days desired
Before a world inspired.
O dear brown birds, compose your old song-phrases
Earth, thy familiar daisies.
The poet mused upon the dusky height,
Between two stars towards night,
His purpose in his heart. I watched, a space,
The meaning of his face:
There was the secret, fled from earth and skies,
Hid in his grey young eyes.
My heart and all the Summer wait his choice,
And wonder for his voice.
Who shall foretell his songs, and who aspire
But to divine his lyre?
Sweet earth, we know thy dimmest mysteries,
But he is lord of his.
The Remorse Of The Dead
by Charles Baudelaire

O shadowy Beauty mine, when thou shalt sleep
In the deep heart of a black marble tomb;
When thou for mansion and for bower shalt keep
Only one rainy cave of hollow gloom;
And when the stone upon thy trembling breast,
And on thy straight sweet body's supple grace,
Crushes thy will and keeps thy heart at rest,
And holds those feet from their adventurous race;
Then the deep grave, who shares my reverie,
(For the deep grave is aye the poet's friend)
During long nights when sleep is far from thee,
Shall whisper: "Ah, thou didst not comprehend
The dead wept thus, thou woman frail and weak"
And like remorse the worm shall gnaw thy cheek.
Wealth
by Nancy Rebecca Campbell Glass

He heapeth up riches and knoweth not who shall gather them. Psalm 39:6.
O soul, it is not thine,
But lent to thee in trust
That thou may'st make God's glory shine,
Secured from moth and rust.
Thou can'st not take one mite
Except as thou dost give
And waft it in the golden light
Where heaven's glories live.
Go look for those in need 
The hungry and the cold.
Kind words and actions are the seed
Which yield their fruits of gold.
Give to the heathen world
Knowledge of Christ our Lord;
Pray that his banner be unfurled;
Send forth, his priceless word.
He lived for us and died,
And intercedes above.
His blood, a sacrificial tide,
Redeems us by his love.
"Barbarian, bond and free,
The wise and the unwise" 
'Tis ours to give and theirs to see
Salvation's blood-bought prize.
We know not 'neath the sky
Who'll gather of our store,
But if we lay it up on high,
'Tis ours forevermore.
The Singer In The Prison
by Walt Whitman

O sight of shame, and pain, and dole!
O fearful thought a convict Soul!
Rang the refrain along the hall, the prison,
Rose to the roof, the vaults of heaven above,
Pouring in floods of melody, in tones so pensive, sweet and strong, the like whereof was never heard,
Reaching the far-off sentry, and the armed guards, who ceas'd their pacing,
Making the hearer's pulses stop for extasy and awe.
O sight of pity, gloom, and dole!
O pardon me, a hapless Soul!
The sun was low in the west one winter day,
When down a narrow aisle, amid the thieves and outlaws of the land,
(There by the hundreds seated, sear-faced murderers, wily counterfeiters,
Gather'd to Sunday church in prison walls the keepers round,
Plenteous, well-arm'd, watching, with vigilant eyes,)
All that dark, cankerous blotch, a nation's criminal mass,
Calmly a Lady walk'd, holding a little innocent child by either hand,
Whom, seating on their stools beside her on the platform,
She, first preluding with the instrument, a low and musical prelude,
In voice surpassing all, sang forth a quaint old hymn.
The Hymn.
A Soul, confined by bars and bands,
Cries, Help! O help! and wrings her hands;
Blinded her eyes bleeding her breast,
Nor pardon finds, nor balm of rest.
O sight of shame, and pain, and dole!
O fearful thought a convict Soul!
Ceaseless, she paces to and fro;
O heart-sick days! O nights of wo!
Nor hand of friend, nor loving face;
Nor favor comes, nor word of grace.
O sight of pity, gloom, and dole!
O pardon me, a hapless Soul!
It was not I that sinn'd the sin,
The ruthless Body dragg'd me in;
Though long I strove courageously,
The Body was too much for me.
O Life! no life, but bitter dole!
O burning, beaten, baffled Soul!
(Dear prison'd Soul, bear up a space,
For soon or late the certain grace;
To set thee free, and bear thee home,
The Heavenly Pardoner, Death shall come.
Convict no more nor shame, nor dole!
Depart! a God-enfranchis'd Soul!)
The singer ceas'd;
One glance swept from her clear, calm eyes, o'er all those upturn'd faces;
Strange sea of prison faces a thousand varied, crafty, brutal, seam'd and beauteous faces;
Then rising, passing back along the narrow aisle between them,
While her gown touch'd them, rustling in the silence,
She vanish'd with her children in the dusk.
While upon all, convicts and armed keepers, ere they stirr'd,
(Convict forgetting prison, keeper his loaded pistol,)
A hush and pause fell down, a wondrous minute,
With deep, half-stifled sobs, and sound of bad men bow'd, and moved to weeping,
And youth's convulsive breathings, memories of home,
The mother's voice in lullaby, the sister's care, the happy childhood,
The long-pent spirit rous'd to reminiscence;
A wondrous minute then But after, in the solitary night, to many, many there,
Years after even in the hour of death the sad refrain the tune, the voice, the words,
Resumed the large, calm Lady walks the narrow aisle,
The wailing melody again the singer in the prison sings:
O sight of shame, and pain, and dole!
O fearful thought a convict Soul!
O ship, ship, ship
by Arthur Hugh Clough

O ship, ship, ship,
That travellest over the sea,
What are the tidings, I pray thee,
Thou bearest hither to me?
Are they tidings of comfort and joy,
That shall make me seem to see
The sweet lips softly moving
And whispering love to me?
Or are they of trouble and grief,
Estrangement, sorrow, and doubt,
To turn into torture my hopes,
And drive me from Paradise out?
O ship, ship, ship,
That comest over the sea,
Whatever it be thou bringest,
Come quickly with it to me.
On the Russian Persecution of the Jews - Sonnets
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

O son of man, by lying tongues adored,
By slaughterous hands of slaves with feet red-shod
In carnage deep as ever Christian trod
Profaned with prayer and sacrifice abhorred
And incense from the trembling tyrant's horde,
Brute worshippers or wielders of the rod,
Most murderous even of all that call thee God,
Most treacherous even that ever called thee Lord;
Face loved of little children long ago,
Head hated of the priests and rulers then,
If thou see this, or hear these hounds of thine
Run ravening as the Gadarean swine,
Say, was not this thy Passion, to foreknow
In death's worst hour the works of Christian men?
The Saviour of Society
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

1
O son of man, but of what man who knows?
That broughtest healing on thy leathern wings
To priests, and under them didst gather kings,
And madest friends to thee of all man's foes;
Before thine incarnation, the tale goes,
Thy virgin mother, pure of sensual stings,
Communed by night with angels of chaste things,
And, full of grace, untimely felt the throes
Of motherhood upon her, and believed
The obscure annunciation made when late
A raven-feathered raven-throated dove
Croaked salutation to the mother of love
Whose misconception was immaculate,
And when her time was come she misconceived.
2
Thine incarnation was upon this wise,
Saviour; and out of east and west were led
To thy foul cradle by thy planet red
Shepherds of souls that feed their sheep with lies
Till the utter soul die as the body dies,
And the wise men that ask but to be fed
Though the hot shambles be their board and bed
And sleep on any dunghill shut their eyes,
So they lie warm and fatten in the mire:
And the high priest enthroned yet in thy name,
Judas, baptised thee with men's blood for hire;
And now thou hangest nailed to thine own shame
In sight of all time, but while heaven has flame
Shalt find no resurrection from hell-fire.
Address To The Wood-Lark.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "Where'll bonnie Ann lie."
I.
O stay, sweet warbling woodlark, stay!
Nor quit for me the trembling spray;
A hapless lover courts thy lay,
Thy soothing fond complaining.
II.
Again, again that tender part,
That I may catch thy melting art;
For surely that would touch her heart,
Wha kills me wi' disdaining.
III.
Say, was thy little mate unkind,
And heard thee as the careless wind?
Oh, nocht but love and sorrow join'd,
Sic notes o' woe could wauken.
IV.
Thou tells o' never-ending care;
O' speechless grief and dark despair:
For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair!
Or my poor heart is broken!
The Stream Of Life
by Arthur Hugh Clough

O stream descending to the sea,
Thy mossy banks between,
The flow'rets blow, the grasses grow,
The leafy trees are green.
In garden plots the children play,
The fields the labourers till,
And houses stand on either hand,
And thou descendest still.
O life descending into death,
Our waking eyes behold,
Parent and friend thy lapse attend,
Companions young and old.
Strong purposes our mind possess,
Our hearts affections fill,
We toil and earn, we seek and learn,
And thou descendest still.
O end to which our currents tend,
Inevitable sea,
To which we flow, what do we know,
What shall we guess of thee?
A roar we hear upon thy shore,
As we our course fulfil;
Scarce we divine a sun will shine
And be above us still.
Theocritus A Villanelle
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

O singer of Persephone!
In the dim meadows desolate
Dost thou remember Sicily?
Still through the ivy flits the bee
Where Amaryllis lies in state;
O Singer of Persephone!
Simaetha calls on Hecate
And hears the wild dogs at the gate;
Dost thou remember Sicily?
Still by the light and laughing sea
Poor Polypheme bemoans his fate;
O Singer of Persephone!
And still in boyish rivalry
Young Daphnis challenges his mate;
Dost thou remember Sicily?
Slim Lacon keeps a goat for thee,
For thee the jocund shepherds wait;
O Singer of Persephone!
Dost thou remember Sicily?
A Reverie [`"O Songs!" I said:']
by Abram Joseph Ryan

"O Songs!" I said:
"Stop sounding in my soul
Just for a little while and let me sleep,
Resting my head on the breast
Of Silence;" but the rhythmic roll
Of a thousand songs swept on and on,
And a far Voice said:
"When thou art dead
Thy restless heart shall rest."
And the songs will never let me sleep.
I plead with them; but o'er the deep
They still will roll
On, and on, and on,
Their music never gone.
Ah! world-tired soul!
Just for a little while,
Just like a poor, tired child
Beneath its Mother's smile --
Only to fall asleep!
Silence! be mother to me!
But -- No! No! No!
The waves will ebb and flow.
I wonder is it best
To never, never rest
Down on the shores of this strange Below?
From Generation To Generation
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

O Son of mine, when dusk shall find thee bending
Between a gravestone and a cradle's head---
Between the love whose name is loss unending
And the young love whose thoughts are liker dread,---
Thou too shalt groan at heart that all thy spending
Cannot repay the dead, the hungry dead.
To My Sister.
by George MacDonald

O sister, God is very good--
Thou art a woman now:
O sister, be thy womanhood
A baptism on thy brow!
For what?--Do ancient stories lie
Of Titans long ago,
The children of the lofty sky
And mother earth below?
Nay, walk not now upon the ground
Some sons of heavenly mould?
Some daughters of the Holy, found
In earthly garments' fold?
He said, who did and spoke the truth:
"Gods are the sons of God."
And so the world's Titanic youth
Strives homeward by one road.
Then live thou, sister, day and night,
An earth-child of the sky,
For ever climbing up the height
Of thy divinity.
Still in thy mother's heart-embrace,
Waiting thy hour of birth,
Thou growest by the genial grace
Of the child-bearing earth.
Through griefs and joys, each sad and sweet,
Thou shalt attain the end;
Till then a goddess incomplete--
O evermore my friend!
Nor is it pride that striveth so:
The height of the Divine
Is to be lowly 'mid the low;
No towering cloud--a mine;
A mine of wealth and warmth and song,
An ever-open door;
For when divinely born ere long,
A woman thou the more.
For at the heart of womanhood
The child's great heart doth lie;
At childhood's heart, the germ of good,
Lies God's simplicity.
So, sister, be thy womanhood
A baptism on thy brow
For something dimly understood,
And which thou art not now;
But which within thee, all the time,
Maketh thee what thou art;
Maketh thee long and strive and climb--
The God-life at thy heart.
Apostrophe To Nature.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("O Soleil!")
[Bk. II. iv., Anniversary of the Coup d''tat, 1852.]
O Sun! thou countenance divine!
Wild flowers of the glen,
Caves swoll'n with shadow, where sunshine
Has pierced not, far from men;
Ye sacred hills and antique rocks,
Ye oaks that worsted time,
Ye limpid lakes which snow-slide shocks
Hurl up in storms sublime;
And sky above, unruflfed blue,
Chaste rills that alway ran
From stainless source a course still true,
What think ye of this man?
Bonny Lassie O!
by John Clare

O the evening's for the fair, bonny lassie O!
To meet the cooler air and walk an angel there,
With the dark dishevelled hair,
Bonny lassie O!
The bloom's on the brere, bonny lassie O!
Oak apples on the tree; and wilt thou gang to see
The shed I've made for thee,
Bonny lassie O!
Tis agen the running brook, bonny lassie O!
In a grassy nook hard by, with a little patch of sky,
And a bush to keep us dry,
Bonny lassie O!
There's the daisy all the year, bonny lassie O!
There's the king-cup bright as gold, and the speedwell never cold,
And the arum leaves unrolled,
Bonny lassie O!
O meet me at the shed, bonny lassie O!
With a woodbine peeping in, and the roses like thy skin
Blushing, thy praise to win,
Bonny lassie O!
I will meet thee there at e'en, bonny lassie O!
When the bee sips in the bean, and grey willow branches lean,
And the moonbeam looks between,
Bonny lassie O!
The Drum.
by James Whitcomb Riley

O the drum!
There is some
Intonation in thy grum
Monotony of utterance that strikes the spirit dumb,
As we hear
Through the clear
And unclouded atmosphere,
Thy palpitating syllables roll in upon the car!
There's a part
Of the art
Of thy music-throbbing heart
That thrills a something in us that awakens with a start,
And in rhyme
With the chime
And exactitude of time,
Goes marching on to glory to thy melody sublime.
And the guest
Of the breast
That thy rolling robs of rest
Is a patriotic spirit as a Continental dressed;
And he looms
From the glooms
Of a century of tombs,
And the blood he spilled at Lexington in living beauty blooms.
And his eyes
Wear the guise
Of a purpose pure and wise,
As the love of them is lifted to a something in the skies
That is bright
Red and white,
With a blur of starry light,
As it laughs in silken ripples to the breezes day and night.
There are deep
Hushes creep
O'er the pulses as they leap,
As thy tumult, fainter growing, on the silence falls asleep,
While the prayer
Rising there
Wills the sea and earth and air
As a heritage to Freedom's sons and daughters everywhere.
Then, with sound
As profound
As the thunderings resound,
Come thy wild reverberations in a throe that shakes the ground,
And a cry
Flung on high,
Like the flag it flutters by,
Wings rapturously upward till it nestles in the sky.
O the drum!
There is some
Intonation in thy grum
Monotony of utterance that strikes the spirit dumb,
As we hear
Through the clear
And unclouded atmosphere,
Thy palpitating syllables roll in upon the ear!
To ------. An Impromptu.
by Thomas Gent

O Sue! you certainly have been
A little raking, roguish creature,
And in that face may still be seen
Each laughing love's bewitching feature!
For thou hast stolen many a heart;
And robb'd the sweetness of the rose;
Placed on that cheek, it doth impart
More lovely tints--more fragrant blows!
Yes, thou art Nature's favourite child,
Array'd in smiles, seducing, killing;
Did Joseph live, you'd drive him wild,
And set his very soul a-thrilling!
A poet, much too poor to live,
Too poor in this rich world to rove;
Too poor for aught but verse to give,
But not, thank God, too poor to love!
Gives thee his little doggerel lay;--One
truth I tell, in sorrow tell it:
I'm forced to give my verse away,
Because, alas! I cannot sell it.
And should you with a critic's eye
Proclaim me 'gainst the Muse a sinner,
Reflect, dear girl I that such as I,
Six times a-week don't get a dinner.
And want of comfort, food, and wine,
Will damp the genius, curb the spirit:
These wants I'll own are often mine;--But
can't allow a want of merit.
For every stupid dog that drinks
At poet's pond, nicknamed divine;
Say what he will, I know he thinks
That all he writes is wondrous fine!
English Hills
by John Frederick Freeman

O that I were
Where breaks the pure cold light
On English hills,
And peewits rising cry,
And gray is all the sky.
Or at evening there
When the faint slow light stays,
And far below
Sleeps the last lingering sound,
And night leans all round.
O then, O there
'Tis English haunted ground.
The diligent stars
Creep out, watch, and smile;
The wise moon lingers awhile.
For surely there
Heroic shapes are moving,
Visible thoughts,
Passions, things divine,
Clear beneath clear star-shine.
O that I were
Again on English hills,
Seeing between
Laborious villages
Her cool dark loveliness.
Satires Of Circumstances In Fifteen Glimpses - X In The Nuptial Chamber
by Thomas Hardy

"O that mastering tune?" And up in the bed
Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride;
"And why?" asks the man she had that day wed,
With a start, as the band plays on outside.
"It's the townsfolks' cheery compliment
Because of our marriage, my Innocent."
"O but you don't know! 'Tis the passionate air
To which my old Love waltzed with me,
And I swore as we spun that none should share
My home, my kisses, till death, save he!
And he dominates me and thrills me through,
And it's he I embrace while embracing you!"
A Medley: O Swallow (The Princess)
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South,
Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves,
And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee.
O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,
And dark and true and tender is the North.
O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light
Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill,
And cheep and twitter twenty million loves.
O were I thou that she might take me in,
And lay me on her bosom, and her heart
Would rock the snowy cradle till I died.
Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love,
Delaying as the tender ash delays
To clothe herself, when all the woods are green?
O tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown:
Say to her, I do but wanton in the South,
But in the North long since my nest is made.
O tell her, brief is life but love is long,
And brief the sun of summer in the North,
And brief the moon of beauty in the South.
O Swallow, flying from the golden woods,
Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine,
And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee.
To Laura In Death. Sonnet LXXXVII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Dolci durezze e placide repulse.
HE OWES HIS OWN SALVATION TO THE VIRTUOUS CONDUCT OF LAURA.
O sweet severity, repulses mild,
With chasten'd love, and tender pity fraught;
Graceful rebukes, that to mad passion taught
Becoming mastery o'er its wishes wild;
Speech dignified, in which, united, smiled
All courtesy, with purity of thought;
Virtue and beauty, that uprooted aught
Of baser temper had my heart defiled:
Eyes, in whose glance man is beatified--
Awful, in pride of virtue, to restrain
Aspiring hopes that justly are denied,
Then prompt the drooping spirit to sustain!
These, beautiful in every change, supplied
Health to my soul, that else were sought in vain.
DACRE.
Sonnet To John Hamilton Reynolds
by John Keats

O that a week could be an age, and we
Felt parting and warm meeting every week,
Then one poor year a thousand years would be,
The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:
So could we live long life in little space,
So time itself would be annihilate,
So a day's journey in oblivious haze
To serve ourjoys would lengthen and dilate.
O to arrive each Monday morn from Ind!
To land each Tuesday from the rich Levant!
In little time a host of joys to bind,
And keep our souls in one eternal pant!
This morn, my friend, and yester-evening taught
Me how to harbour such a happy thought.
The Cricket.
by Jean Blewett

O the gayest of musicians! O the gladdest thing on earth,
With its piping and its chirping, is the cricket on the hearth!
There is magic in the music that he flings us with such zest:
"Love's the only wealth that's lasting - who cares aught for all the rest?
Never mind though ill-luck dog you, never mind though times are hard,
Have you not the wife and bairns?" chirps the sweet, insistent bard - 
Chirps and chirps, until you heed him, till your heart is all aglow - 
"Love's the only wealth that's lasting, home's a bit of heaven below."
O the gayest of musicians! O the gladdest thing on earth,
With his piping and his chirping, is the cricket on the hearth!
Fata Morgana
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

O sweet illusions of Song,
That tempt me everywhere,
In the lonely fields, and the throng
Of the crowded thoroughfare!
I approach, and ye vanish away,
I grasp you, and ye are gone;
But ever by nigh an day,
The melody soundeth on.
As the weary traveller sees
In desert or prairie vast,
Blue lakes, overhung with trees,
That a pleasant shadow cast;
Fair towns with turrets high,
And shining roofs of gold,
That vanish as he draws nigh,
Like mists together rolled,--
So I wander and wander along,
And forever before me gleams
The shining city of song,
In the beautiful land of dreams.
But when I would enter the gate
Of that golden atmosphere,
It is gone, and I wander and wait
For the vision to reappear.
The Wild Geese
by Violet Jacob

"O tell me what was on yer road, ye roarin' norlan' Wind,
As ye cam' blawin' frae the land that's niver frae my mind?
My feet they traivel England, but I'm dee'in for the north."
"My man, I heard the siller tides rin up the Firth o' Forth."
"Aye, Wind, I ken them weel eneuch, and fine they fa' an' rise,
And fain I'd feel the creepin' mist on yonder shore that lies,
But tell me, ere ye passed them by, what saw ye on the way?"
"My man, I rocked the rovin' gulls that sail abune the Tay."
"But saw ye naething, leein' Wind, afore ye cam' to Fife?
There's muckle lyin' 'yont the Tay that's mair to me nor life."
"My man, I swept the Angus braes ye hae'na trod for years."
"O Wind, forgi'e a hameless loon that canna see for tears!"
"And far abune the Angus straths I saw the wild geese flee,
A lang, lang skein o' beatin' wings, wi' their heids towards the sea,
And aye their cryin' voices trailed ahint them on the air - "
"O Wind, hae maircy, haud yer whisht, for I daurna listen mair!"
O Tell Na Me O' Wind And Rain.
by Robert Burns

O Tell Na Me O' Wind And Rain.
I.
O tell na me o' wind and rain,
Upbraid na me wi' cauld disdain!
Gae back the gate ye cam again,
I winna let you in, jo.
I tell you now this ae night,
This ae, ae, ae night,
And ance for a' this ae night,
I winna let you in, jo!
II.
The snellest blast, at mirkest hours,
That round the pathless wand'rer pours,
Is nocht to what poor she endures,
That's trusted faithless man, jo.
III.
The sweetest flower that deck'd the mead,
Now trodden like the vilest weed:
Let simple maid the lesson read,
The weird may be her ain, jo.
IV.
The bird that charm'd his summer-day,
Is now the cruel fowler's prey;
Let witless, trusting woman say
How aft her fate's the same, jo.
I tell you now this ae night,
This ae, ae, ae night;
And ance for a' this ae night,
I winna let you in jo!