DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
After Reading Psalms XXXIX., XL., Etc.
by Thomas Hardy

Simple was I and was young;
Kept no gallant tryst, I;
Even from good words held my tongue,
Quoniam Tu fecisti!
Through my youth I stirred me not,
High adventure missed I,
Left the shining shrines unsought;
Yet me deduxisti!
At my start by Helicon
Love-lore little wist I,
Worldly less; but footed on;
Why? Me suscepisti!
When I failed at fervid rhymes,
"Shall," I said, "persist I?"
"Dies" (I would add at times)
"Meos posuisti!"
So I have fared through many suns;
Sadly little grist I
Bring my mill, or any one's,
Domine, Tu scisti!
And at dead of night I call:
"Though to prophets list I,
Which hath understood at all?
Yea: Quem elegisti?"
Since First Thy Word. (Air.--Nicholas Freeman.)
by Thomas Moore

Since first Thy Word awaked my heart,
Like new life dawning o'er me,
Where'er I turn mine eyes, Thou art,
All light and love before me.
Naught else I feel, or hear or see--
All bonds of earth I sever--
Thee, O God, and only Thee
I live for, now and ever.
Like him whose fetters dropt away
When light shone o'er his prison,[1]
My spirit, touched by Mercy's ray,
Hath from her chains arisen.
And shall a soul Thou bidst be free,
Return to bondage?--never!
Thee, O God, and only Thee
I live for, now and ever.
Moths And Fireflies
by Madison Julius Cawein

Since Fancy taught me in her school of spells
I know her tricks--These are not moths at all,
Nor fireflies; but masking Elfland belles
Whose link-boys torch them to Titania's ball.
To Japan.
by Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Simple you were, and good. No kindlier heart
Beat than the heart within your gentle breast.
Labour you had, and happiness, and rest,
And were the maid of nations. Now you start
To feverish life, feeling the poisonous smart
Upon your lips of harlot lips close-pressed,
The lips of her who stands among the rest
With greasy righteous soul and rotten heart.
O sunrise land, O land of gentleness,
What madness drives you to lust's dreadful bed?
O thrice accursed England, wretchedness
For ever be on you, of whom 'tis said,
Prostitute plague-struck, that you catch and kiss
Innocent lives to make them foully dead!
John Marr And Other Sailors
by Herman Melville

Since as in night's deck-watch ye show,
Why, lads, so silent here to me,
Your watchmate of times long ago?
Once, for all the darkling sea,
You your voices raised how clearly,
Striking in when tempest sung;
Hoisting up the storm-sail cheerly,
Life is storm--let storm! you rung.
Taking things as fated merely,
Childlike though the world ye spanned;
Nor holding unto life too dearly,
Ye who held your lives in hand--
Skimmers, who on oceans four
Petrels were, and larks ashore.
O, not from memory lightly flung,
Forgot, like strains no more availing,
The heart to music haughtier strung;
Nay, frequent near me, never staleing,
Whose good feeling kept ye young.
Like tides that enter creek or stream,
Ye come, ye visit me, or seem
Swimming out from seas of faces,
Alien myriads memory traces,
To enfold me in a dream!
I yearn as ye. But rafts that strain,
Parted, shall they lock again?
Twined we were, entwined, then riven,
Ever to new embracements driven,
Shifting gulf-weed of the main!
And how if one here shift no more,
Lodged by the flinging surge ashore?
Nor less, as now, in eve's decline,
Your shadowy fellowship is mine.
Ye float around me, form and feature:--
Tattooings, ear-rings, love-locks curled;
Barbarians of man's simpler nature,
Unworldly servers of the world.
Yea, present all, and dear to me,
Though shades, or scouring China's sea.
Whither, whither, merchant-sailors,
Whitherward now in roaring gales?
Competing still, ye huntsman-whalers,
In leviathan's wake what boat prevails?
And man-of-war's men, whereaway?
If now no dinned drum beat to quarters
On the wilds of midnight waters--
Foemen looming through the spray;
Do yet your gangway lanterns, streaming,
Vainly strive to pierce below,
When, tilted from the slant plank gleaming,
A brother you see to darkness go?
But, gunmates lashed in shotted canvas,
If where long watch-below ye keep,
Never the shrill "All hands up hammocks!"
Breaks the spell that charms your sleep,
And summoning trumps might vainly call,
And booming guns implore--
A beat, a heart-beat musters all,
One heart-beat at heart-core.
It musters. But to clasp, retain;
To see you at the halyards main--
To hear your chorus once again!
Prologue To "The King And Queen."[1]
by John Dryden

UPON THE UNION OF THE TWO COMPANIES IN 1686.
Since faction ebbs, and rogues grow out of fashion,
Their penny scribes take care to inform the nation,
How well men thrive in this or that plantation:
How Pennsylvania's air agrees with Quakers,
And Carolina's with Associators:
Both even too good for madmen and for traitors.
Truth is, our land with saints is so run o'er,
And every age produces such a store,
That now there's need of two New-Englands more.
What's this, you'll say, to us and our vocation?
Only thus much, that we have left our station,
And made this theatre our new plantation.
The factious natives never could agree;
But aiming, as they call'd it, to be free,
Those playhouse Whigs set up for property.
Some say, they no obedience paid of late;
But would new fears and jealousies create;
Till topsy-turvy they had turn'd the state.
Plain sense, without the talent of foretelling,
Might guess 'twould end in downright knocks and quelling:
For seldom comes there better of rebelling.
When men will, needlessly, their freedom barter
For lawless power, sometimes they catch a Tartar;
There's a damn'd word that rhymes to this call'd Charter.
But, since the victory with us remains,
You shall be call'd to twelve in all our gains;
If you'll not think us saucy for our pains.
Old men shall have good old plays to delight them
And you, fair ladies and gallants, that slight them,
We'll treat with good new plays; if our new wits can write them.
We'll take no blundering verse, no fustian tumour,
No dribbling love, from this or that presumer;
No dull fat fool shamm'd on the stage for humour.
For, faith, some of them such vile stuff have made,
As none but fools or fairies ever play'd;
But 'twas, as shopmen say, to force a trade.
We've given you tragedies, all sense defying,
And singing men, in woful metre dying;
This 'tis when heavy lubbers will be flying.
All these disasters we well hope to weather;
We bring you none of our old lumber hither;
Whig poets and Whig sheriffs may hang together.
The Grand River Marshes
by Edgar Lee Masters

Silvers and purples breathing in a sky
Of fiery mid-days, like a watching tiger,
Of the restrained but passionate July
Upon the marshes of the river lie,
Like the filmed pinions of the dragon fly.
*        *        *        *        *
A whole horizon's waste of rushes bend
Under the flapping of the breeze's wing,
Departing and revisiting
The haunts of the river twisting without end.
*        *        *        *        *
The torsions of the river make long miles
Of the waters of the river which remain
Coiled by the village, tortuous aisles
Of water between the rushes, which restrain
The bewildered currents in returning files,
Twisting between the greens like a blue racer,
Too hurt to leap with body or uplift
Its head while gliding, neither slow nor swift
*        *        *        *        *
Against the shaggy yellows of the dunes
The iron bridge's reticules
Are seen by fishermen from the Damascened lagoons.
But from the bridge, watching the little steamer
Paddling against the current up to Eastmanville,
The river loosened from the abandoned spools
Of earth and heaven wanders without will,
Between the rushes, like a silken streamer.
And two old men who turn the bridge
For passing boats sit in the sun all day,
Toothless and sleepy, ancient river dogs,
And smoke and talk of a glory passed away.
And of the ruthless sacrilege
Which mowed away the pines,
And cast them in the current here as logs,
To be devoured by the mills to the last sliver,
Making for a little hour heroes and heroines,
Dancing and laughter at Grand Haven,
When the great saws sent screeches up and whines,
And cries for more and more
Slaughter of forests up and down the river
And along the lake's shore.
*        *        *        *        *
But all is quiet on the river now
As when the snow lay windless in the wood,
And the last Indian stood
And looked to find the broken bough
That told the path under the snow.
All is as silent as the spiral lights
Of purple and of gold that from the marshes rise,
Like the wings of swarming dragon flies,
Far up toward Eastmanville, where the enclosing skies
Quiver with heat; as silent as the flights
Of the crow like smoke from shops against the glare
Of dunes and purple air,
There where Grand Haven against the sand hill lies.
*        *        *        *        *
The forests and the mills are gone!
All is as silent as the voice I heard
On a summer dawn
When we two fished among the river reeds.
As silent as the pain
In a heart that feeds
A sorrow, but does not complain.
As silent as above the bridge in this July,
Noiseless, far up in this mirror-lighted sky
Wheels aimlessly a hydroplane:
A man-bestridden dragon fly!
Incompleteness.
by Sophie M. (Almon) Hensley

Since first I met thee, Dear, and long before
I knew myself beloved, save by the sense
All women have, a shadowy confidence
Half-fear, that feels its bliss nor asks for more,
I have learned new desires, known Love's distress
Sounded the deepest depths of loneliness.
I was a child at heart, and lived alone,
Dreaming my dreams, as children may, at whiles,
Between their hours of play, and Earth's broad smiles
Allured my heart, and ocean's marvellous tone
Woke no strange echoes, and the woods' complain
Made chants sonorous, stirred no thoughts of pain.
And if, sometimes, dear Nature spoke to me
In tones mysterious, I had learned so much
Dwelling beside her daily, that her touch
Made me discerning. Though I might not see
Her purpose nor her meaning, I had part
In the proud throbbing of that mighty heart.
But now the earth has put a tiring-cloth
About her face; even in the mountains' cheer
There is a lack, and in the sea a fear,
The glad, rash sea, whose every mood, if wroth
Or soothing mild, is dear to me as are
Joy's new-born kisses on the lips of Care.
Since I have known thee, Dear, all life has grown
An expectation. As the swelling grain
Trembles to harvesting, and earth in pain
Travails till Spring is born, so felt alone
Is the dumb reaching out of things unborn,
The night's gray promise of the amber morn.
I long to taste my pleasures through thy lips,
To sail with thee o'er foaming waves and feel
Our spirits rise together with the reel
Of waters and the wavering land's eclipse;
To see thy fair hair damp with salt sea-spray
And in thine eyes the wildness of the way.
I long to share my woods with thee, to fly
To some black-hearted forest where the trail
Of mortals lingers not, - to hear the gale.
Sweep round us with a shuddering ecstasy,
To feel, night's tumult passed, the cool soft hand
Of the untroubled dawn move o'er the land.
To swim with thee far out into the bay,
A trembling glitter on the waves, the shore
Glowing with noontide fervor, nevermore
To fear the treacherous depths, though long the way.
Sweet beyond words the sighs that breathe and blow,
The moist salt kisses, and the glad warm glow.
And when the unrest, the vague desires that rush
Over our lives and may not be denied, - 
Gone in the tasting, - lure us where the tide
Of men sweeps on, let us forget the hush
Together, and in city madness drain
Our cup of pleasure to its dregs of pain.
Ever I need thee. Incomplete and poor
This life of mine. Yet never dream my soul
Craves the old peace. Till I may have the whole
My joy is my abiding, and what more
Of dreams and waking bliss the Fates allow
Comes as a gift of Love's great overflow.
Simmer's A Pleasant Time.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "Ay waukin o'."
I.
Simmer's a pleasant time,
Flow'rs of ev'ry colour;
The water rins o'er the heugh,
And I long for my true lover.
Ay waukin O,
Waukin still and wearie:
Sleep I can get nane
For thinking on my dearie.
II.
When I sleep I dream,
When I wauk I'm eerie;
Sleep I can get nane
For thinking on my dearie.
III.
Lanely night comes on,
A' the lave are sleeping;
I think on my bonnie lad
And I bleer my een with greetin'.
Ay waukin O,
Waukin still and wearie:
Sleep I can get nane
For thinking on my dearie.
The Sonnets LXV - Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
by William Shakespeare

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O! how shall summer's honey breath hold out,
Against the wrackful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O! none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
To Laura In Death. Sonnet VIII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Poich' la vista angelica serena.
WITH HER, HIS ONLY SOLACE, IS TAKEN AWAY ALL HIS DESIRE OF LIFE.
Since her calm angel face, long beauty's fane,
My beggar'd soul by this brief parting throws
In darkest horrors and in deepest woes,
I seek by uttering to allay my pain.
Certes, just sorrow leads me to complain:
This she, who is its cause, and Love too shows;
No other remedy my poor heart knows
Against the troubles that in life obtain.
Death! thou hast snatch'd her hence with hand unkind,
And thou, glad Earth! that fair and kindly face
Now hidest from me in thy close embrace;
Why leave me here, disconsolate and blind,
Since she who of mine eyes the light has been,
Sweet, loving, bright, no more with me is seen?
MACGREGOR.
The Heart Healed And Changed By Mercy.
by William Cowper

Sin enslaved me many years,
And led me bound and blind;
Till at length a thousand fears
Came swarming o'er my mind.
'Where,' I said, in deep distress,
'Will these sinful pleasures end?
How shall I secure my peace,
And make the Lord my friend?'
Friends and ministers said much
The gospel to enforce;
But my blindness still was such,
I chose a legal course:
Much I fasted, watch'd, and strove,
Scarce would show my face abroad,
Fear'd almost to speak or move,
A stranger still to God.
Thus afraid to trust his grace,
Long time did I rebel;
Till, despairing of my case,
Down at his feet I fell:
Then my stubborn heart he broke,
And subdued me to his sway;
By a simple word he spoke,
'Thy sins are done away.'
To His Muse.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Puisqu'ici-bas tout 'me.")
[XL, May 19, 1836.]
Since everything below,
Doth, in this mortal state,
Its tone, its fragrance, or its glow
Communicate;
Since all that lives and moves
Upon the earth, bestows
On what it seeks and what it loves
Its thorn or rose;
Since April to the trees
Gives a bewitching sound,
And sombre night to grief gives ease,
And peace profound;
Since day-spring on the flower
A fresh'ning drop confers,
And the fresh air on branch and bower
Its choristers;
Since the dark wave bestows
A soft caress, imprest
On the green bank to which it goes
Seeking its rest;
I give thee at this hour,
Thus fondly bent o'er thee,
The best of all the things in dow'r
That in me be.
Receive,-poor gift, 'tis true,
Which grief, not joy, endears, - 
My thoughts, that like a shower of dew,
Reach thee in tears.
My vows untold receive,
All pure before thee laid;
Receive of all the days I live
The light or shade!
My hours with rapture fill'd,
Which no suspicion wrongs;
And all the blandishments distill'd
From all my songs.
My spirit, whose essay
Flies fearless, wild, and free,
And hath, and seeks, to guide its way
No star but thee.
No pensive, dreamy Muse,
Who, though all else should smile,
Oft as thou weep'st, with thee would choose,
To weep the while.
Oh, sweetest mine! this gift
Receive; - 'tis throe alone; - 
My heart, of which there's nothing left
When Love is gone!
Fraser's Magazine.
Sin.
by Robert Herrick

Sin leads the way, but as it goes, it feels
The following plague still treading on his heels.
To The Rural Muse.
by John Clare

Simple enchantress! wreath'd in summer blooms
Of slender bent-stalks topt with feathery down,
Heath's creeping vetch, and glaring yellow brooms,
With ash-keys wavering on thy rushy crown;
Simple enchantress! how I've woo'd thy smiles,
How often sought thee far from flush'd renown;
Sought thee unseen where fountain-waters fell;
Touch'd thy wild reed unheard, in weary toils;
And though my heavy hand thy song defiles,
'Tis hard to leave thee, and to bid farewel.
Simple enchantress! ah, from all renown,
Far off, my soul hath warm'd in bliss to see
The varied figures on thy summer-gown,
That nature's finger works so 'witchingly;
The colour'd flower, the silken leaves that crown
Green nestling bower-bush and high towering tree;
Brooks of the sunny green and shady dell:
Ah, sweet full many a time they've been to me;
And though my weak song faulters, sung to thee,
I cannot, wild enchantress, bid farewel.
Still must I seek thee, though I wind the brook
When morning sunbeams o'er the waters glide,
And trace thy footsteps in the lonely nook
As evening moists the daisy by thy side;
Ah, though I woo thee on thy bed of thyme,--
If courting thee be deem'd ambition's pride,
It is so passing sweet with thee to dwell--
If love for thee in clowns be call'd a crime,
Forgive presumption, O thou queen of rhyme!
I've lov'd thee long, I cannot bid farewel.
Another. (Sin.)
by Robert Herrick

Sin is an act so free, that if we shall
Say 'tis not free, 'tis then no sin at all.
Briggate at Setterdy Neet.
by John Hartley

Sin Leeds wor a city it puts on grand airs,
An aw've noa wish to bother wi' others' affairs;
'At they've mich to be praad on aw freely admit,
But aw think thier's some things they mud alter a bit.
They've raised some fine buildings 'at's worth lookin at, - 
They're a credit to th' city, thers noa daat o' that;
But ther's nowt strikes a stranger soa mich as a seet
O'th' craad 'at's i' Briggate at Setterdy neet.
Aw've travelled a bit i' booath cities an taans,
An aw've oft seen big craads when they've stept aght o' baands; - 
Well, - excitement sometimes will lead fowk astray,
When they dooant meean owt wrang, but just rollikin play,
But Leeds is a licker, - for tumult an din, - 
For bullies an rowdies an brazzen-faced sin.
Aw defy yo to find me another sich street, - 
As disgraceful, as Briggate at Setterdy neet.
Poleecemen are standin i' twos an i' threes,
But they must be stooan blinnd to what other fowk sees;
It must be for ornaments they've been put thear, - 
It cant be nowt else, for they dooant interfere.
Young lads who imagine it maks 'em seem men
If they hustle an shaat and mak fooils o' thersen.
Daycent fowk mun leeav th' cawsey for th' middle o'th' street
For its th' roughs at own Briggate at Setterdy neet.
An if yo've a heart 'at can feel, it must ache
When yo hear ther faal oaths an what coorse jests they make;
Yet once they wor daycent an wod be soa still,
But they've takken th' wrang turnin, - they're gooin daan hill.
Them lasses, soa bonny, just aght o' ther teens,
Wi' faces an figures 'at's fit for a queen's.
What is it they're dooin? Just watch an yo'll see 't,
What they're hawkin i' Briggate at Setterdy neet.
They keep sendin praichers to th' heathen an sich,
But we've heathen at hooam at require 'em as mich:
Just luk at that craad at comes troopin along,
Some yellin aght th' chorus o'th' new comic song;
Old an young, - men an wimmen, - some bummers, some swells,
Turned aght o' some dnnkin an singin room hells; - 
They seek noa dark corners, they glory i'th' leet,
This is Briggate, - their Briggate, at Setterdy neet.
Is it axin too mich ov "the powers that be,"
For a city's main street from sich curse to be free?
Shall Morality's claims be set all o' one side,
Sich a market for lewdness an vice to provide?
Will that day ivver come when a virtuous lass,
Alone, withaat insult, in safety may pass?
Its time for a change, an awm langin to see 't, - 
A respectable Briggate at Setterdy neet.
Them well-meeanin parents, at hooam at ther ease,
Are oft wilfully blind to sich dangers as theas;
Their sons an their dowters are honest an pure, - 
That may be, - an pray God it may ivver endure.
But ther's noa poor lost craytur, but once on a time,
Wor as pure as ther own an wod shudder at crime.
The devil is layin his snares for ther feet, - 
An they're swarmin i' Briggate at Setterdy neet.
Sin.
by Robert Herrick

Sin never slew a soul unless there went
Along with it some tempting blandishment.
Sin.
by Robert Herrick

Sin no existence; nature none it hath,
Or good at all, as learned Aquinas saith.
The Way Of The World.
by Freeman Edwin Miller

Since Adam's first sin in the garden of song,
Where the hopes of the race were empearled,
Whenever a mortal does anything wrong,
It is only the way of the world!
If statesmen forget all the pledges they made,
And the people to evils are hurled,--
Excuse their misdeeds! 'Tis a trick of the trade,
And is only the way of the world!
If bankers, confusing distinctions of wealth,
Have your gold to their own pockets whirled,
And then gone to Europe for pleasure and health--
It is only the way of the world.
If preachers, forgetting the Master of old
And the banner of light He unfurled,
Elope with the fairest ewe-lambs of the fold,--
It is only the way of the world.
If merchants, unscrupulous, cheat with a will
While their lips are at honesty curled,--
Harsh blame, hie away! And your censure, be still!
It is only the way of the world!
The way of the world! What a happy excuse
For the faults and the follies unfurled!
Bind virtue securely! The vices turn loose!
'Tis the way--'tis the way--of the world!
Sonnet XLI. Invitation To A Friend.
by Anna Seward

Since dark December shrouds the transient day,
And stormy Winds are howling in their ire,
Why com'st not THOU, who always can'st inspire
The soul of cheerfulness, and best array
A sullen hour in smiles? - O haste to pay
The cordial visit sullen hours require! - 
Around the circling walls a glowing fire
Shines; - but it vainly shines in this delay
To blend thy spirit's warm Promethean light.
Come then, at Science', and at Friendship's call,
Their vow'd Disciple; - come, for they invite!
The social Powers without thee languish all.
Come, that I may not hear the winds of Night,
Nor count the heavy eave-drops as they fall.
Dec. 21st, 1782.
Songs Set To Music: 20. Set By Mr. De Fesch
by Matthew Prior

Since by ill fate I'm forced away,
And snatch'd so soon from those dear arms,
Against my will I must obey,
And leave those sweet endearing charms.
Yet still love on, and never fear
But you and constancy will prove
Enough my present flame to bear,
And make me, though in absence, love.
For though your presence Fate denies,
I feel, alas! the killing smart,
And can with undiscerned eyes
Behold your picture in my heart.