DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Love Scorned By Pride
by John Clare

O far is fled the winter wind,
And far is fled the frost and snow,
But the cold scorn on my love's brow
Hath never yet prepared to go.
More lasting than ten winters' wind,
More cutting than ten weeks of frost,
Is the chill frowning of thy mind,
Where my poor heart was pledged and lost.
I see thee taunting down the street,
And by the frowning that I see
I might have known it long ere now,
Thy love was never meant for me.
And had I known ere I began
That love had been so hard to win,
I would have filled my heart with pride,
Nor left one hope to let love in.
I would have wrapped it in my breast,
And pinned it with a silver pin,
Safe as a bird within its nest,
And 'scaped the trouble I am in.
I wish I was a happy bird,
And thou a true and timid dove:
O I would fly the land of grief,
And rest me in the land of love.
O I would rest where I love best;
Where I love best I may not be:
A hawk doth on that rose-tree sit,
And drives young love to fear and flee.
O would I were the goldfinch gay!
My richer suit had tempted strong.
O would I were the nightingale!
Thou then had'st listened to my song.
Though deep my scorn I cannot hate,
Thy beauty's sweet though sour thy pride;
To praise thee is to love thee still,
And it doth cheer my heart beside.
For I could swim the deepest lake,
And I could climb the highest tree,
The greatest danger face and brave,
And all for one kind kiss of thee.
O love is here, and love is there:
O love is like no other thing:
Its frowns can make a king a slave,
Its smiles can make a slave a king.
Verses
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

To the tune of the Spanish song, "Si tu senora no ducles de mi."
O fair! O sweet! when I do look on thee,
In whom all joys so well agree,
Heart and soul do sing in me.
This you hear is not my tongue,
Which once said what I conceived;
For it was of use bereaved,
With a cruel answer stung.
No! though tongue to roof be cleaved,
Fearing lest he chastised be,
Heart and soul do sing in me.
O fair! O sweet! when I do look on thee,
In whom all joys so well agree,
Just accord all music makes;
In thee just accord excelleth,
Where each part in such peace dwelleth,
One of other beauty takes.
Since then truth to all minds telleth,
That in thee lives harmony,
Heart and soul do sing in me.
O fair! O sweet! when I do look on thee,
In whom all joys so well agree,
They that heaven have known do say,
That whoso that grace obtaineth,
To see what fair sight there reigneth,
Forced are to sing alway:
So then since that heaven remaineth
In thy face, I plainly see,
Heart and soul do sing in me.
O fair! O sweet! when I do look on thee,
In whom all joys so well agree,
Sweet, think not I am at ease,
For because my chief part singeth;
This song from death's sorrow springeth:
As to swan in last disease:
For no dumbness, nor death, bringeth
Stay to true love's melody:
Heart and soul do sing in me.
To The Fountain Of Bandusia
by Eugene Field

O fountain of Bandusia!
Whence crystal waters flow,
With garlands gay and wine I'll pay
The sacrifice I owe;
A sportive kid with budding horns
I have, whose crimson blood
Anon shall dye and sanctify
Thy cool and babbling flood.
O fountain of Bandusia!
The Dog-star's hateful spell
No evil brings into the springs
That from thy bosom well;
Here oxen, wearied by the plow,
The roving cattle here
Hasten in quest of certain rest,
And quaff thy gracious cheer.
O fountain of Bandusia!
Ennobled shalt thou be,
For I shall sing the joys that spring
Beneath yon ilex-tree.
Yes, fountain of Bandusia,
Posterity shall know
The cooling brooks that from thy nooks
Singing and dancing go.
Elegiac Stanzas - Addressed To Sir G. H. B. Upon The Death Of His Sister-In-Law
by William Wordsworth

O for a dirge! But why complain?
Ask rather a triumphal strain
When Fermor's race is run;
A garland of immortal boughs
To twine around the Christian's brows,
Whose glorious work is done.
We pay a high and holy debt;
No tears of passionate regret
Shall stain this votive lay;
Ill-worthy, Beaumont! were the grief
That flings itself on wild relief
When Saints have passed away.
Sad doom, at Sorrow's shrine to kneel,
For ever covetous to feel,
And impotent to bear!
Such once was hers, to think and think
On severed love, and only sink
From anguish to despair!
But nature to its inmost part
Faith had refined; and to her heart
A peaceful cradle given:
Calm as the dew-drop's, free to rest
Within a breeze-fanned rose's breast
Till it exhales to Heaven.
Was ever Spirit that could bend
So graciously? that could descend,
Another's need to suit,
So promptly from her lofty throne?
In works of love, in these alone,
How restless, how minute!
Pale was her hue; yet mortal cheek
Ne'er kindled with a livelier streak
When aught had suffered wrong,
When aught that breathes had felt a wound;
Such look the Oppressor might confound,
However proud and strong.
But hushed be every thought that springs
From out the bitterness of things;
Her quiet is secure;
No thorns can pierce her tender feet,
Whose life was, like the violet, sweet,
As climbing jasmine, pure.
As snowdrop on an infant's grave,
Or lily heaving with the wave
That feeds it and defends;
As Vesper, ere the star hath kissed
The mountain top, or breathed the mist
That from the vale ascends.
Thou takest not away, O Death!
Thou strikest, absence perisheth,
Indifference is no more;
The future brightens on our sight;
For on the past hath fallen a light
That tempts us to adore.
Fragment Of Chorus Of A Dejaneira
by Matthew Arnold

O frivolous mind of man,
Light ignorance, and hurrying, unsure thoughts,
Though man bewails you not,
How I bewail you!
Little in your prosperity
Do you seek counsel of the Gods.
Proud, ignorant, self-adored, you live alone.
In profound silence stern
Among their savage gorges and cold springs
Unvisited remain
The great oracular shrines.
Thither in your adversity
Do you betake yourselves for light,
But strangely misinterpret all you hear.
For you will not put on
New hearts with the inquirer's holy robe,
And purged, considerate minds.
And him on whom, at the end
Of toil and dolour untold,
The Gods have said that repose
At last shall descend undisturb'd,
Him you expect to behold
In an easy old age, in a happy home;
No end but this you praise.
But him, on whom, in the prime
Of life, with vigour undimm'd,
With unspent mind, and a soul
Unworn, undebased, undecay'd,
Mournfully grating, the gates
Of the city of death have for ever closed,
Him, I count him, well-starr'd.
Memorials Of A Tour On The Continent, 1820 - VII. - In The Cathedral At Cologne
by William Wordsworth

O for the help of Angels to complete
This Temple, Angels governed by a plan
Thus far pursued (how gloriously!) by Man,
Studious that He might not disdain the seat
Who dwells in heaven! But that aspiring heat
Hath failed; and now, ye Powers! whose gorgeous wings
And splendid aspect yon emblazonings
But faintly picture, 'twere an office meet
For you, on these unfinished shafts to try
The midnight virtues of your harmony:
This vast design might tempt you to repeat
Strains that call forth upon empyrean ground
Immortal Fabrics, rising to the sound
Of penetrating harps and voices sweet!
To John Goudie Of Kilmarnock. - On The Publication Of His Essays
by Robert Burns

O Goudie! terror of the Whigs,
Dread of black coats and rev'rend wigs,
Sour Bigotry, on her last legs,
Girnin', looks back,
Wishin' the ten Egyptian plagues
Wad seize you quick.
Poor gapin', glowrin' Superstition,
Waes me! she's in a sad condition:
Fie! bring Black Jock, her state physician,
To see her water:
Alas! there's ground o' great suspicion
She'll ne'er get better.
Auld Orthodoxy lang did grapple,
But now she's got an unco ripple;
Haste, gie her name up i' the chapel,
Nigh unto death;
See, how she fetches at the thrapple,
An' gasps for breath.
Enthusiasm's past redemption,
Gaen in a gallopin' consumption,
Not a' the quacks, wi' a' their gumption,
Will ever mend her.
Her feeble pulse gies strong presumption
Death soon will end her.
'Tis you and Taylor[1] are the chief,
Wha are to blame for this mischief,
But gin the Lord's ain focks gat leave,
A toom tar-barrel,
An' twa red peats wad send relief,
An' end the quarrel.
Persephone.
by Madison Julius Cawein

O Hades! O false gods! false to yourselves!
O Hades, 'twas thy brother gave her thee
Without a mother's sanction or her knowledge!
He bare her to the horrid gulfs below,
And made her queen, a shadowy queen of shades,
Queen of the fiery flood and mournful realms
Of grating iron and the clank of chains.
On blossomed plains in far Trinacria
A maiden, the dark cascade of whose hair
Seemed gleaming rays of midnight 'mid the stars,
Rays slowly bright'ning 'neath a mellow moon,
She 'mid the flowers with the Oceanids
Sought Echo's passion, loved Narcissus pale,
'Ghast staring in the mirror of a lake,
Whose smoothness brake his image, flickering seen,
E'en with the fast tears of his dewy eyes.
A shape there rose with iron wain and steeds
'Mid sallow fume of sulphur and pale fires;
Its countenance meager, and its eyes e'en such
As the wild, ghastly sulphur. In its arms,
Its sooty arms, where like to supple steel
The muscles rigid lay, unto its breast,
Such as its arms, it rushed her fragile form
As bosomed bulks of tempest in their joy
With arms of winds drag to their black embrace
A fairy mist of white that flecks the summer
With shadeless wings of gauze, and 'tis no more
Heaved on the rapture of its thundering heart.
The snowy flowers shuddered and grew still
With withered faces bowed, and on the stream - 
Where all the day it was their wont to stand
In silent sisterhood down-gazing at their charms - 
Withered and limp and dead laid their fair brows.
Flames hissed aloft like fiery whips of snakes
Blasting and killing all the fragrant sprites
That make the dewy zephyrs their dim haunts.
O foam-fair daughters of Oceanus!
In vain you seek your mate and chide the flowers
For hiding her 'neath their broad, snowy palms;
Nor is she hidden in that pearly shell,
Which, like a pinky babe cast from the sea,
Moans at your pallid feet washed with white spray.
But, sitting by the tumbling blue of waves,
Mourn to your billows on the foamy sands
The falseness of the god who grasps the storm!
Blessed are they that have not seen!
by Arthur Hugh Clough

O happy they whose hearts receive
The implanted word with faith; believe
Because their fathers did before,
Because they learnt, and ask no more
High triumphs of convictions wrought,
And won by individual thought.
The joy, delusive oft, but keen,
Of having with our own eyes seen,
What if they have not felt nor known?
An amplitude instead they own,
By no self-binding ordinance prest
To toil in labour they detest:
By no deceiving reasoning tied
Or this or that way to decide.
O happy they! above their head
The glory of the unseen is spread;
Their happy heart is free to range
Thro' largest tracts of pleasant change;
Their intellects encradled lie
In boundless possibility.
For impulses of varying kinds
The Ancient Home a lodging finds
Each appetite our nature breeds,
It meets with viands for its needs.
O happy they! nor need they fear
The wordy strife that rages near:
All reason wastes by day, and more,
Will instinct in a night restore.
O happy, so their state but give
A clue by which a man can live;
O blest, unless 'tis proved by fact
A dream impossible to act.
The Telegram
by Thomas Hardy

"O he's suffering maybe dying and I not there to aid,
And smooth his bed and whisper to him! Can I nohow go?
Only the nurse's brief twelve words thus hurriedly conveyed,
As by stealth, to let me know.
"He was the best and brightest! candour shone upon his brow,
And I shall never meet again a soldier such as he,
And I loved him ere I knew it, and perhaps he's sinking now,
Far, far removed from me!"
- The yachts ride mute at anchor and the fulling moon is fair,
And the giddy folk are strutting up and down the smooth parade,
And in her wild distraction she seems not to be aware
That she lives no more a maid,
But has vowed and wived herself to one who blessed the ground she trod
To and from his scene of ministry, and thought her history known
In its last particular to him aye, almost as to God,
And believed her quite his own.
So great her absentmindedness she droops as in a swoon,
And a movement of aversion mars her recent spousal grace,
And in silence we two sit here in our waning honeymoon
At this idle watering-place . . .
What now I see before me is a long lane overhung
With lovelessness, and stretching from the present to the grave.
And I would I were away from this, with friends I knew when young,
Ere a woman held me slave.
My Prayer.
by Charles Sangster

O God! forgive the erring thought,
The erring word and deed,
And in thy mercy hear the Christ
Who comes to intercede.
My sins, like mountain-weights of lead,
Weigh heavy on my soul;
I'm bruised and broken in this strife,
But Thou canst make me whole.
Allay this fever of unrest,
That fights against the Will;
And in Thy still small voice do Thou
But whisper, "Peace, be still!"
Until within this heart of mine
Thy lasting peace come down,
Will all the waves of Passion roll,
Each good resolve to drown.
We walk in blindness and dark night
Through half our earthly way;
Our clouds of weaknesses obscure
The glory of the day.
We cannot lead the lives we would,
But grope in dumb amaze,
Leaving the straight and flowery paths
To tread the crooked ways.
We are as pilgrims toiling on
Through all the weary hours;
And our poor hands are torn with thorns,
Plucking life's tempting flowers.
We worship at a thousand shrines,
And build upon the sands,
Passing the one great Temple, and
The Rock on which it stands.
O, fading dream of human life!
What can this change portend?
I long for higher walks, and true
Progression without end.
Here I know nothing, and my search
Can find no secret out;
I cannot think a single thought
That is not mixed with doubt.
Relying on the higher source,
The influence divine,
I can but hope that light may dawn
Within this soul of mine.
I ask not wisdom, such as that
To which the world is prone,
Nor knowledge ask, unless it come
Direct from God alone.
Send down then, God! in mercy send
Thy Love and Truth to me,
That I may henceforth walk in light
That comes direct from Thee.
On The Bluff.
by John Milton Hay

O grandly flowing River!
O silver-gliding River!
Thy springing willows shiver
In the sunset as of old;
They shiver in the silence
Of the willow-whitened islands,
While the sun-bars and the sand-bars
Fill air and wave with gold.
O gay, oblivious River!
O sunset-kindled River!
Do you remember ever
The eyes and skies so blue
On a summer day that shone here,
When we were all alone here,
And the blue eyes were too wise
To speak the love they knew?
O stern, impassive River!
O still, unanswering River!
The shivering willows quiver
As the night-winds moan and rave.
From the past a voice is calling,
From heaven a star is falling,
And dew swells in the bluebells
Above her hillside grave.
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

O God, within whose sight
All men have equal right
To worship Thee.
Break every bar that holds
Thy flock in diverse folds!
Thy Will from none withholds
Full liberty.
Lord, set Thy Churches free
From foolish rivalry!
Lord, set us free!
Let all past bitterness
Now and for ever cease,
And all our souls possess
Thy charity!
Lord, set the people free!
Let all men draw to Thee
In unity!
Thy temple courts are wide,
Therein let all abide
In peace, and side by side,
Serve only Thee!
God, grant us now Thy peace!
Bid all dissensions cease!
God, send us peace!
Peace in True Liberty,
Peace in Equality,
Peace and Fraternity,
God, send us peace!
Cor Cordium - O Golden Day! O Silver Night!
by Richard Le Gallienne

O golden day! O silver night!
That brought my own true love at last,
Ah, wilt thou drop from out our sight,
And drown within the past?
One wave, no more, in life's wide sea,
One little nameless crest of foam,
The day that gave her all to me
And brought us to our home.
Nay, rather as the morning grows
In flush, and gleam, and kingly ray,
While up the heaven the sun-god goes,
So shall ascend our day.
And when at last the long night nears,
And love grows angel in the gloam,
Nay, sweetheart, what of fears and tears? - 
The stars shall see us home.
Ode To Psyche
by John Keats

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes?
I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A brooklet, scarce espied:
'Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still past kisses to outnumber
At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
The winged boy I knew;
But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?
His Psyche true!
O latest born and loveliest vision far
Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!
Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region'd star,
Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;
Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,
Nor altar heap'd with flowers;
Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan
Upon the midnight hours;
No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
From chain-swung censer teeming;
No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.
O brightest! though too late for antique vows,
Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retir'd
From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours;
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
From swinged censer teeming;
Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.
Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:
Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees
Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;
And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,
The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep;
And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary will I dress
With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,
With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,
With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,
Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win,
A bright torch, and a casement open at night,
To let the warm Love in!
To Tom Bracken
by Henry Lawson

O had you tracked where Kendall trod
I think you would be kneelin'
Three times a week and thankin' God
That you are of New Zealan'!
For this I'll say, to make it short,
An' keep my tongue from clacken,
The people are a kinder sort
You're singin' for, Tom Bracken
The Anxious Dead
by John Alexander McCrae

O guns, fall silent till the dead men hear
Above their heads the legions pressing on:
(These fought their fight in time of bitter fear,
And died not knowing how the day had gone.)
O flashing muzzles, pause, and let them see
The coming dawn that streaks the sky afar;
Then let your mighty chorus witness be
To them, and Caesar, that we still make war.
Tell them, O guns, that we have heard their call,
That we have sworn, and will not turn aside,
That we will onward till we win or fall,
That we will keep the faith for which they died.
Bid them be patient, and some day, anon,
They shall feel earth enwrapt in silence deep;
Shall greet, in wonderment, the quiet dawn,
And in content may turn them to their sleep.
Gone For Ever
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

O happy rose-bud blooming
Upon thy parent tree,
Nay, thou art too presuming;
For soon the earth entombing
Thy faded charms shall be,
And the chill damp consuming.
O happy skylark springing
Up to the broad blue sky,
Too fearless in thy winging,
Too gladsome in thy singing,
Thou also soon shalt lie
Where no sweet notes are ringing.
And through life's shine and shower
We shall have joy and pain;
But in the summer bower,
And at the morning hour,
We still shall look in vain
For the same bird and flower.
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet LXIII
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

O grammer-rules, O now your vertues show;
So children still reade you with awfull eyes,
As my young doue may, in your precepts wise,
Her graunt to me by her owne vertue know:
For late, with heart most hie, with eyes most lowe,
I crau'd the thing which euer she denies;
Shee, lightning loue, displaying Venus skies,
Least once should not be heard, twise said, No, no.
Sing then, my Muse, now Io P'n sing;
Heau'ns enuy not at my high triumphing,
But grammers force with sweete successe confirme:
For grammer says, (O this, deare Stella, say,)
For grammer sayes, (to grammer who sayes nay?)
That in one speech two negatiues affirme!
The Light That Never Was On Sea Or Land
by John Frederick Freeman

O gone are now those eager great glad days of days, but I remember
Yet even yet the light that turned the saddest of sad hours to mirth;
I remember how elate I swung upon the thrusting bowsprits,
And how the sun in setting burned and made the earth all unlike earth.
O gone are now those mighty ships I haunted days and days together,
And gone the mighty men that sang as crawled the tall craft out to sea;
And fallen ev'n the forest tips and changed the eyes that watched their burning,
But still I hear that shout and clang, and still the old spell stirs in me.
And as to some poor ship close locked in water dense and dark and vile
The wind comes garrulous from afar and sets the idle masts a-quiver;
And ev'n to her so foully docked, swift as the sun's first beam at dawn
The sea-bird comes and like a star wheels by and down along the river;--
So to me the full wind blows from far strange waters echoingly,
And faint forgotten longings break the fast-sealed pools within my breast;
So to me when sunset glows the scream comes of the white sea-bird,
And all those ancient raptures wake and wakes again the old unrest.
I see again the masts that crowd and part lie trees in living wind,
I hear again the shouts and cries and lip-lap of the waveless pool;
I see again the smalling cloud of sail that into distance fades,
I am again the boy whose eyes with tears of grief and hope are full.
Heart of God
by Vachel Lindsay

O great heart of God,
Once vague and lost to me,
Why do I throb with your throb to-night,
In this land, eternity?
O little heart of God,
Sweet intruding stranger,
You are laughing in my human breast,
A Christ-child in a manger.
Heart, dear heart of God,
Beside you now I kneel,
Strong heart of faith.    O heart not mine,
Where God has set His seal.
Wild thundering heart of God
Out of my doubt I come,
And my foolish feet with prophets' feet,
March with the prophets' drum.
If This Be All
by Anne Bronte

O God! if this indeed be all
That Life can show to me;
If on my aching brow may fall
No freshening dew from Thee,
If with no brighter light than this
The lamp of hope may glow,
And I may only dream of bliss,
And wake to weary woe;
If friendship's solace must decay,
When other joys are gone,
And love must keep so far away,
While I go wandering on,
Wandering and toiling without gain,
The slave of others' will,
With constant care, and frequent pain,
Despised, forgotten still;
Grieving to look on vice and sin,
Yet powerless to quell
The silent current from within,
The outward torrent's swell:
While all the good I would impart,
The feelings I would share,
Are driven backward to my heart,
And turned to wormwood, there;
If clouds must ever keep from sight
The glories of the Sun,
And I must suffer Winter's blight,
Ere Summer is begun;
If life must be so full of care,
Then call me soon to Thee;
Or give me strength enough to bear
My load of misery.