DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Spring In War Time
by Sara Teasdale

I feel the spring far off, far off,
The faint, far scent of bud and leaf,
Oh, how can spring take heart to come
To a world in grief,
Deep grief?
The sun turns north, the days grow long,
Later the evening star grows bright,
How can the daylight linger on
For men to fight,
Still fight?
The grass is waking in the ground,
Soon it will rise and blow in waves,
How can it have the heart to sway
Over the graves,
New graves?
Under the boughs where lovers walked
The apple-blooms will shed their breath,
But what of all the lovers now
Parted by Death,
Grey Death?
Sonnet CIV.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra.
LOVE'S INCONSISTENCY.
I fynde no peace and all my warre is done,
I feare and hope, I bourne and freese lyke yse;
I flye above the wynde, yet cannot ryse;
And nought I have, yet all the worlde I season,
That looseth, nor lacketh, holdes me in pryson,
And holdes me not, yet can I escape no wyse.
Nor lets me leeve, nor die at my devyce,
And yet of death it giveth none occasion.
Without eye I see, and without tongue I playne;
I desyre to perishe, yet aske I health;
I love another, and yet I hate my self;
I feede in sorrow and laughe in all my payne,
Lykewyse pleaseth me both death and lyf,
And my delight is cawser of my greif.
WYATT.[S]
[Footnote S: Harrington's Nug' Antiqu'.]
Warfare I cannot wage, yet know not peace;
I fear, I hope, I burn, I freeze again;
Mount to the skies, then bow to earth my face;
Grasp the whole world, yet nothing can obtain.
His prisoner Love nor frees, nor will detain;
In toils he holds me not, nor will release;
He slays me not, nor yet will he unchain;
Nor joy allows, nor lets my sorrow cease.
Sightless I see my fair; though mute, I mourn;
I scorn existence, and yet court its stay;
Detest myself, and for another burn;
By grief I'm nurtured; and, though tearful, gay;
Death I despise, and life alike I hate:
Such, lady, dost thou make my wayward state!
NOTT.
I Felt A Funeral In My Brain,
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.
And when they all were seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb.
And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead, again.
Then space began to toll
As all the heavens were a bell,
And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
Wrecked, solitary, here.
God's Care
by Joseph Horatio Chant

I fear not, my Father, the tempest's loud roar,
Nor dread the huge breakers on the rock-girded shore;
Thy presence is with me, my refuge is near,
With help all-sufficient; oh, why should I fear?
Tho' billows of sorrow should roll o'er my head,
My sun sink in darkness, and joys be all dead,
Thy presence will cheer me, and spectres will flee,
For who can molest me while trusting in thee?
On The Western Front
by Alfred Noyes

(1916)
I.
I found a dreadful acre of the dead,
Marked with the only sign on earth that saves.
The wings of death were hurrying overhead,
The loose earth shook on those unquiet graves;
For the deep gun-pits, with quick stabs of flame,
Made their own thunders of the sunlit air;
Yet, as I read the crosses, name by name,
Mort pour la France, it seemed that peace was there;
Sunlight and peace, a peace too deep for thought,
The peace of tides that underlie our strife,
The peace with which the moving heavens are fraught,
The peace that is our everlasting life.
The loose earth shook. The very hills were stirred.
The silence of the dead was all I heard.
II.
We, who lie here, have nothing more to pray.
To all your praises we are deaf and blind.
We may not even know if you betray
Our hope, to make earth better for mankind.
Only our silence, in the night, shall grow
More silent, as the stars grow in the sky;
And, while you deck our graves, you shall not know
How many scornful legions pass you by.
For we have heard you say (when we were living)
That some small dream of good would "cost too much."
But when the foe struck, we have watched you giving,
And seen you move the mountains with one touch.
What can be done, we know. But, have no fear!
If you fail now, we shall not see or hear.
Since Then
by Madison Julius Cawein

I found myself among the trees
What time the reapers ceased to reap;
And in the sunflower-blooms the bees
Huddled brown heads and went to sleep,
Rocked by the balsam-breathing breeze.
I saw the red fox leave his lair,
A shaggy shadow, on the knoll;
And tunneling his thoroughfare
Beneath the soil, I watched the mole
Stealth's own self could not take more care.
I heard the death-moth tick and stir,
Slow-honeycombing through the bark;
I heard the cricket's drowsy chirr,
And one lone beetle burr the dark
The sleeping woodland seemed to purr.
And then the moon rose: and one white
Low bough of blossoms grown almost
Where, ere you died, 'twas our delight
To meet, dear heart! I thought your ghost...
The wood is haunted since that night.
The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - A Sonnet On Caucasus.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Temo che per morir.
I fear that by my death the human race
Would gain no vantage. Thus I do not die.
So wide is this vast cage of misery
That flight and change lead to no happier place.
Shifting our pains, we risk a sorrier case:
All worlds, like ours, are sunk in agony:
Go where we will, we feel; and this my cry
I may forget like many an old disgrace.
Who knows what doom is mine? The Omnipotent
Keeps silence; nay, I know not whether strife
Or peace was with me in some earlier life.
Philip in a worse prison me hath pent
These three days past--but not without God's will.
Stay we as God decrees: God doth no ill.
The Nations Peril.
by Alfred Castner King

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
--Goldsmith.
I fear the palace of the rich,
I fear the hovel of the poor;
Though fortified by moat and ditch,
The castle strong could not endure;
Nor can the squalid hovel be
A source of strength, and those who cause
This widening discrepancy
Infringe on God's eternal laws.
The heritage of man, the earth,
Was framed for homes, not vast estates;
A lowering scale of human worth
Each generation demonstrates,
Which feels the landlord's iron hand,
And hopeless, plod with effort brave;
Who love no home can love no land;
These own no home, until the grave.
The nation's strongest safeguards lie
In free and unencumbered homes;
Not in its hordes of vagrancy,
Nor in its proud, palatial domes;
Nor can the mercenary sword
E'er cross with that the freeman draws.
Nor oil upon the waters poured
Perpetuate an unjust cause.
Eternal Justice, still prevail
And stay this menace ere too late!
Ere sturdy manhood droop and fail,
The law, immutable, of fate;
No foe can daunt the stalwart heart
Of him who guards that sacred ground
Where every hero owns a part,
Where each an ample home has found.
No more shall battle's lurid gleam
The cloudless sky of peace obscure;
Nor blood becrimson field, or stream,
Nor avarice grind down the poor;
But onward let thy progress be
A pageant, beautiful and grand;
May He who e'er has guided thee
Protect thee still, my native land!
Half Fledged.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I feel the stirrings in me of great things.
New half-fledged thoughts rise up and beat their wings,
And tremble on the margin of their nest,
Then flutter back, and hide within my breast.
Beholding space, they doubt their untried strength.
Beholding men, they fear them. But at length
Grown all too great and active for the heart
That broods them with such tender mother art,
Forgetting fear, and men, and all, that hour,
Save the impelling consciousness of power
That stirs within them - they shall soar away
Up to the very portals of the Day.
Oh, what exultant rapture thrills me through
When I contemplate all those thoughts may do;
Like snow-white eagles penetrating space,
They may explore full many an unknown place,
And build their nests on mountain heights unseen,
Whereon doth lie that dreamed-of rest serene.
Stay thou a little longer in my breast,
Till my fond heart shall push thee from the nest,
Anxious to see thee soar to heights divine - 
Oh, beautiful but half-fledged thoughts of mine.
Sir Richard's Song
by Rudyard Kipling

I followed my Duke ere I was a lover,
To take from England fief and fee;
But now this game is the other way over,
But now England hath taken me!
I had my horse, my shield and banner,
And a boy's heart, so whole and free;
But now I sing in another manner,
But now England hath taken me!
As for my Father in his tower,
Asking news of my ship at sea,
He will remember his own hour,
Tell him England hath taken me!
As for my Mother in her bower,
That rules my Father so cunningly,
She will remember a maiden's power,
Tell her England hath taken me!
As for my Brother in Rouen City,
A nimble and naughty' page is he,
But he will come to suffer and pity,
Tell him England hath taken me!
As for my little Sister waiting
In the pleasant orchards of Normandie,
Tell her youth is the time for mating,
Tell her England hath taken me!
As for my comrades in camp and highway
That lift their eyebrows scornfully,
Tell them their way is not my way,
Tell them England hath taken me!
Kings and Princes and Barons famed,
Knights and Captains in your degree;
Hear me a little before I am blamed,
Seeing England hath taken me!
Howso great man's strength be reckoned,
There are two things he cannot flee.
Love is the first, and Death is the second,
And Love in England hath taken me!
Song In The "Maiden Queen."
by John Dryden

I feed a flame within, which so torments me,
That it both pains my heart, and yet contents me:
'Tis such a pleasing smart, and I so love it,
That I had rather die than once remove it.
Yet he for whom I grieve shall never know it:
My tongue does not betray, nor my eyes show it.
Not a sigh, not a tear, my pain discloses,
But they fall silently, like dew on roses.
Thus, to prevent my love from being cruel,
My heart's the sacrifice, as 'tis the fuel:
And while I suffer this to give him quiet,
My faith rewards my love, though he deny it.
On his eyes will I gaze, and there delight me;
Where I conceal my love no frown can fright me:
To be more happy, I dare not aspire;
Nor can I fall more low, mounting no higher.
I Gaed A Waefu' Gate Yestreen.
by Robert Burns

Air - "The blue-eyed lass."
I.
I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen,
A gate, I fear, I'll dearlie rue;
I gat my death frae twa sweet een,
Twa lovely een o' bonnie blue.
'Twas not her golden ringlets bright;
Her lips, like roses, wat wi' dew,
Her heaving bosom, lily-white,
It was her een sae bonnie blue.
II.
She talk'd, she smil'd, my heart she wyl'd;
She charm'd my soul, I wist na how:
And ay the stound, the deadly wound,
Cam frae her een sae bonnie blue.
But spare to speak, and spare to speed;
She'll aiblins listen to my vow:
Should she refuse, I'll lay my dead
To her twa een sae bonnie blue.
Crazy Jane Grown Old Looks At The Dancers
by William Butler Yeats

I found that ivory image there
Dancing with her chosen youth,
But when he wound her coal-black hair
As though to strangle her, no scream
Or bodily movement did I dare,
Eyes under eyelids did so gleam;
Love is like the lion's tooth.
When She, and though some said she played
I said that she had danced heart's truth,
Drew a knife to strike him dead,
I could but leave him to his fate;
For no matter what is said
They had all that had their hate;
Love is like the lion's tooth.
Did he die or did she die?
Seemed to die or died they both?
God be with the times when I
Cared not a thraneen for what chanced
So that I had the limbs to try
Such a dance as there was danced -
Love is like the lion's tooth.
Design
by Robert Lee Frost

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth,
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth,
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?
If design govern in a thing so small.
Dinner Favors, To S.
by Arthur Macy

I fill my goblet to the brim
And clink the glasses rim to rim.
Across the board I waft a kiss
With thanks for such an hour as this,
And clasping joy, bid sorrow flee,
And welcome you my vis-'-vis.
The Masked Face
by Thomas Hardy

I found me in a great surging space,
At either end a door,
And I said: "What is this giddying place,
With no firm-fixed floor,
That I knew not of before?"
"It is Life," said a mask-clad face.
I asked: "But how do I come here,
Who never wished to come;
Can the light and air be made more clear,
The floor more quietsome,
And the doors set wide? They numb
Fast-locked, and fill with fear."
The mask put on a bleak smile then,
And said, "O vassal-wight,
There once complained a goosequill pen
To the scribe of the Infinite
Of the words it had to write
Because they were past its ken."
Sonet 27
by Michael Drayton

I gaue my faith to Loue, Loue his to mee,
That hee and I, sworne brothers should remaine,
Thus fayth receiu'd, fayth giuen back againe,
Who would imagine bond more sure could be?
Loue flies to her, yet holds he my fayth taken,
Thus from my vertue raiseth my offence,
Making me guilty by mine innocence;
And surer bond by beeing so forsaken,
He makes her aske what I before had vow'd,
Giuing her that, which he had giuen me,
I bound by him, and he by her made free,
Who euer so hard breach of fayth alow'd?
Speake you that should of right and wrong discusse,
Was right ere wrong'd, or wrong ere righted thus?
Sonnet CLX.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Pasco la mente d' un s' nobil cibo.
TO SEE AND HEAR HER IS HIS GREATEST BLISS.
I feed my fancy on such noble food,
That Jove I envy not his godlike meal;
I see her--joy invades me like a flood,
And lethe of all other bliss I feel;
I hear her--instantly that music rare
Bids from my captive heart the fond sigh flow;
Borne by the hand of Love I know not where,
A double pleasure in one draught I know.
Even in heaven that dear voice pleaseth well,
So winning are its words, its sound so sweet,
None can conceive, save who had heard, their spell;
Thus, in the same small space, visibly, meet
All charms of eye and ear wherewith our race
Art, Genius, Nature, Heaven have join'd to grace.
MACGREGOR.
Such noble aliment sustains my soul,
That Jove I envy not his godlike food;
I gaze on her--and feel each other good
Engulph'd in that blest draught at Lethe's bowl:
Her every word I in my heart enrol,
That on its grief it still may constant brood;
Prostrate by Love--my doom not understood
From that one form, I feel a twin control.
My spirit drinks the music of her voice,
Whose speaking harmony (to heaven so dear)
They only feel who in its tone partake:
Again within her face my eyes rejoice,
For in its gentle lineaments appear
What Genius, Nature, Art, and Heaven can wake.
WOLLASTON.
Anacreontic.
by Thomas Moore

I filled to thee, to thee I drank,
I nothing did but drink and fill;
The bowl by turns was bright and blank,
'Twas drinking, filling, drinking still.
At length I bade an artist paint
Thy image in this ample cup,
That I might see the dimpled saint,
To whom I quaffed my nectar up.
Behold, how bright that purple lip
Now blushes through the wave at me;
Every roseate drop I sip
Is just like kissing wine from thee.
And still I drink the more for this;
For, ever when the draught I drain,
Thy lip invites another kiss,
And--in the nectar flows again.
So, here's to thee, my gentle dear,
And may that eyelid never shine
Beneath a darker, bitterer tear
Than bathes it in this bowl of mine!
The Past.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I fling my past behind me, like a robe
Worn threadbare in the seams, and out of date.
I have outgrown it. Wherefore should I weep
And dwell upon its beauty, and its dyes
Of Oriental splendor, or complain
That I must needs discard it? I can weave
Upon the shuttles of the future years
A fabric far more durable. Subdued,
It may be, in the blending of its hues,
Where somber shades commingle, yet the gleam
Of golden warp shall shoot it through and through,
While over all a fadeless luster lies,
And starred with gems made out of crystalled tears,
My new robe shall be richer than the old.
Ode, To Horror
by Thomas Oldham

I felt thee, Horror! rush upon my soul,
Thy hideous band my frighted fancy saw;
Spare me, O spare me! cease thy dire controul,
And let my trembling hand the vision draw.
Lo! what terrific Forms around thee wait,
The monstrous births abhorr'd of Mind and Fate!
Murder, with blood of innocence defiled;
Despair, deep-groaning; Madness screaming wild;
Mid clouds of smoke, the fire-eyed Fury, War,
Through gore and mangled flesh whirl'd in her thundering car;
Plague, sallow Hag! who arms her breath
With thousand viewless darts of death;
And Earthquake, image of the final doom,
That, bursting fierce his anguish'd mother's womb,
Whelms nations in the yawning jaws of night,
And palsies mighty Nature with affright.
Amid that direful band
I see thee, Horror! stand,
With bloodless visage, terror-frozen stare,
Distorted, ice-bound limbs, and bristling hair,
Thy shivering lips bereft of speech and breath,
In monstrous union life combined with death.
I see thee still, O Horror! and in thee
Methinks an image of myself I see;
For, while I gaze with fear-fixed sight,
O Horror! thy Gorgonian might
Turns me to stone: dread tyrant, O forbear!
To view thee I no longer dare.
I feel my throbbing heart respire.
Again my fancy with unquell'd desire,
O Horror! courts thee, trembling owns thy power.
Come, let us now, at this congenial hour,
While midnight tempests sweep
With bellowing rage the ship-ingulfing deep,
While thunders roar, and livid lightnings blaze,
Let us on that dread, watery chaos gaze.
Or from the peopled vale, below,
Uplooking, see, from lofty Alpine crown,
The rolling mass of snow,
Into a mountain grown,
Rush overwhelming down.
Or let us, in Numidian desert drear,
The roar of prowling beasts, and hiss of serpents hear;
Or bask by blazing city; or explore,
On Etna's brink, the sulphurous mouth of hell,
And hear the fiery flood tempestuous roar,
And hear the damn'd in hotter torments yell.
Or wilt thou, Horror! haunt the villain's breast,
In dismal solitude, by thought opprest;
Where guilty Conscience fetter'd lies,
Turn'd all her shrinking lidless eyes
Full to the blaze of truth's unclouded sun,
And struggles, still in vain, her pangs, herself to shun?
Ah! now more hideous grows thine air;
With direr aspect ne'er dost thou appear,
To fright weak Beings in this earthly sphere;
Faint semblance of thy most tremendous mien,
As, in Tartarean gulfs of endless night,
By agonizing demons thou art seen:
But oh! what living eye could bear that sight?
To look on it e'en Fancy does not dare.
Oh! may I ne'er be doom'd to see thee, Horror! there!
Gifts
by Sara Teasdale

I gave my first love laughter,
I gave my second tears,
I gave my third love silence
Through all the years.
My first love gave me singing,
My second eyes to see,
But oh, it was my third love
Who gave my soul to me.
The Sonnets LXXXII - I grant thou wert not married to my Muse
by William Shakespeare

I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,
And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook
The dedicated words which writers use
Of their fair subject, blessing every book.
Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,
Finding thy worth a limit past my praise;
And therefore art enforced to seek anew
Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.
And do so, love; yet when they have devis'd,
What strained touches rhetoric can lend,
Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathiz'd
In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend;
And their gross painting might be better us'd
Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abus'd.
Touched
by Alfred Lichtenstein

I gladly left
The noisy death of the city,
With its thousands of leering faces,
The yellow night of the alleys.
I stride into the broad,
Silver sky;
The pious limbs glide
Deep into gently being.
I am in the white brightness
Of cloud, meadow, wind.
Am tree, am town, am child...
How wet are my eyes!
Soon the green evening will stand
At its silver end...
I raise blessed hands - 
I want to go to meet it -
I Grieved For Buonaparte
by William Wordsworth

I grieved for Buonaparte, with a vain
And an unthinking grief! The tenderest mood
Of that Man's mind, what can it be? what food
Fed his first hopes? what knowledge could 'he' gain?
'Tis not in battles that from youth we train
The Governor who must be wise and good,
And temper with the sternness of the brain
Thoughts motherly, and meek as womanhood.
Wisdom doth live with children round her knees:
Books, leisure, perfect freedom, and the talk
Man holds with week-day man in the hourly walk
Of the mind's business: these are the degrees
By which true Sway doth mount; this is the stalk
True Power doth grow on; and her rights are these.
To  ----
by Thomas Hood

Composed At Rotterdam.
I.
I gaze upon a city, - 
A city new and strange, - 
Down many a watery vista
My fancy takes a range;
From side to side I saunter,
And wonder where I am;
And can you be in England,
And I at Rotterdam!
II.
Before me lie dark waters
In broad canals and deep,
Whereon the silver moonbeams
Sleep, restless in their sleep;
A sort of vulgar Venice
Reminds me where I am;
Yes, yes, you are in England,
And I'm at Rotterdam.
III.
Tall houses with quaint gables,
Where frequent windows shine,
And quays that lead to bridges,
And trees in formal line,
And masts of spicy vessels
From western Surinam,
All tell me you're in England,
But I'm in Rotterdam.
IV.
Those sailors, how outlandish
The face and form of each!
They deal in foreign gestures,
And use a foreign speech;
A tongue not learn'd near Isis,
Or studied by the Cam,
Declares that you're in England,
And I'm at Rotterdam.
V.
And now across a market
My doubtful way I trace,
Where stands a solemn statue,
The Genius of the place;
And to the great Erasmus
I offer my salaam;
Who tells me you're in England,
But I'm at Rotterdam.
VI.
The coffee-room is open - 
I mingle in its crowd, - 
The dominos are noisy - 
The hookahs raise a cloud;
The flavor, none of Fearon's,
That mingles with my dram,
Reminds me you're in England,
And I'm at Rotterdam.
VII.
Then here it goes, a bumper - 
The toast it shall be mine,
In schiedam, or in sherry,
Tokay, or hock of Rhine;
It well deserves the brightest,
Where sunbeam ever swam - 
"The Girl I love in England"
I drink at Rotterdam!
Suggested by a Mountain Eagle.
by Alfred Castner King

I gazed at the azure-hued mantle of heaven,
The measureless depths of ethereal space;
I gazed at the clouds, so invisibly driven,
And an eagle, which wheeled with symmetrical grace.
I gazed at that eagle, majestically wheeling,
With dignity, born of the free mountain air;
I envied that bird, with an envious feeling
Which springs from a heart that is shackled with care.
I envied that eagle, which bowed to no master,
But soared at his will, through the ambient skies,
Defiant of danger, and scorning disaster,
He screamed at the cliffs, which re-echoed his cries.
I envied that bird, on that fair summer morning,
When nature lay decked with spontaneous art,
As he circled, with aspect defiant and scorning,
And perched on a pinnacle's loftiest part.
And scanning the scene with a stern indecision,
He spread his dark wings, with intuitive cries,
And sped, till acute and inquisitive vision
Discerned but a movable speck in the skies.
When the shades of the evening, so listless and dreary,
Descend on the valley, his wing never flags,
As through the dark shadows he soars to his eyerie,
Which nestles among the impregnable crags.
Ah! fain would I rise on thy feathery pinions,
Above the material cares of the day,
And float over earth's most enchanting dominions,
As clouds, by the zephyrs, are wafted away!