DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Cean Duv Deelish
by Dora Sigerson Shorter

Cean duv deelish, beside the sea
I stand and stretch my hands to thee
Across the world.
The riderless horses race to shore
With thundering hoofs and shuddering, hoar,
Blown manes uncurled.
Cean duv deelish, I cry to thee
Beyond the world, beneath the sea,
Thou being dead.
Where hast thou hidden from the beat
Of crushing hoofs and tearing feet
Thy dear black head?
Cean duv deelish, 'tis hard to pray
With breaking heart from day to day,
And no reply;
When the passionate challenge of sky is cast
In the teeth of the sea and an angry blast
Goes by.
God bless the woman, whoever she be,
From the tossing waves will recover thee
And lashing wind.
Who will take thee out of the wind and storm,
Dry thy wet face on her bosom warm
And lips so kind?
I not to know.    It is hard to pray,
But I shall for this woman from day to day,
'Comfort my dead,
The sport of the winds and the play of the sea.'
I loved thee too well for this thing to be,
O dear black head!
The Tidings (Easter 1916)
by Lola Ridge

Censored lies that mimic truth...
Censored truth as pale as fear...
My heart is like a rousing bell - 
And but the dead to hear...
My heart is like a mother bird,
Circling ever higher,
And the nest-tree rimmed about
By a forest fire...
My heart is like a lover foiled
By a broken stair - 
They are fighting to-night in Sackville Street,
And I am not there!
If They Meant All They Said
by Alice Duer Miller

Charm is a woman's strongest arm;
My charwoman is full of charm;
I chose her, not for strength of arm
But for her strange, elusive charm.
And how tears heighten woman's powers!
My typist weeps for hours and hours:
I took her for her weeping powers,
They so delight my business hours.
A woman lives by intuition.
Though my accountant shuns addition
She has the rarest intuition.
(And I myself can do addition.)
Timidity in girls is nice.
My cook is so afraid of mice.
Now you'll admit it's very nice
To feel your cook's afraid of mice.
To Music, To Becalm His Fever
by Robert Herrick

Charm me asleep, and melt me so
With thy delicious numbers;
That being ravish'd, hence I go
Away in easy slumbers.
Ease my sick head,
And make my bed,
Thou Power that canst sever
From me this ill;
And quickly still,
Though thou not kill
My fever.
Thou sweetly canst convert the same
From a consuming fire,
Into a gentle-licking flame,
And make it thus expire.
Then make me weep
My pains asleep,
And give me such reposes,
That I, poor I,
May think, thereby,
I live and die
'Mongst roses.
Fall on me like a silent dew,
Or like those maiden showers,
Which, by the peep of day, do strew
A baptism o'er the flowers.
Melt, melt my pains
With thy soft strains;
That having ease me given,
With full delight,
I leave this light,
And take my flight
For Heaven.
Translations. - Milton's Italian Poems. V.
by George MacDonald

Certes, my lady sweet, your blessed eyes--
It cannot be but that they are my sun;
As strong they smite me as he smites upon
The man whose way o'er Libyan desert lies,
The while a vapour hot doth me surprise
From that side springing where my pain doth won:
Perchance accustomed lovers--I am none
And know not--in their speech call such things sighs:
A part shut in, sore vexed, itself conceals,
And shakes my bosom; part, undisciplined,
Breaks forth, and all around to ice congeals;
But that which to mine eyes the way doth find,
Makes all my nights in silent showers abound,
Until my dawn[1] returns, with roses crowned.
The Lady's Looking-Glass
by Matthew Prior

Celia and I the other Day
Walk'd o'er the Sand-Hills to the Sea:
The setting Sun adorn'd the Coast,
His Beams entire, his Fierceness lost:
And, on the Surface of the Deep,
The Winds lay only not asleep:
The Nymph did like the Scene appear,
Serenely pleasant, calmly fair:
Soft fell her words, as flew the Air.
With secret Joy I heard Her say,
That She would never miss one Day
A Walk so fine, a Sight so gay.
But, oh the Change! the Winds grow high:
Impending Tempests charge the Sky:
The Lightning flies: the Thunder roars:
And big Waves lash the frighten'd Shoars.
Struck with the Horror of the Sight,
She turns her Head, and wings her Flight;
And trembling vows, She'll ne'er again
Approach the Shoar, or view the Main.
Once more at least look back, said I;
Thy self in That large Glass descry:
When Thou art in good Humour drest;
When gentle Reason rules thy Breast;
The Sun upon the calmest Sea
Appears not half so bright as Thee:
'Tis then, that with Delight I rove
Upon the boundless Depth of Love:
I bless my Chain: I hand my Oar;
Nor think on all I left on Shoar.
But when vain Doubt, and groundless Fear
Do That Dear Foolish Bosom tear;
When the big Lip, and wat'ry Eye
Tell Me, the rising Storm is nigh:
'Tis then, Thou art yon' angry Main,
Deform'd by Winds, and dash'd by Rain;
And the poor Sailor that must try
Its Fury, labours less than I.
Shipwreck'd, in vain to Land I make;
While Love and Fate still drive Me back:
Forc'd to doat on Thee thy own Way,
I chide Thee first, and then obey:
Wretched when from Thee, vex'd when nigh,
I with Thee, or without Thee, die.
Songs In Albion And Albanius.
by John Dryden

I.
Cease, Augusta! cease thy mourning,
Happy days appear,
Godlike Albion is returning,
Loyal hearts to cheer!
Every grace his youth adorning,
Glorious as the star of morning,
Or the planet of the year.
II.
Albion, by the nymph attended,
Was to Neptune recommended,
Peace and plenty spread the sails:
Venus, in her shell before him,
From the sands in safety bore him,
And supplied Etesian gales.
Archon on the shore commanding,
Lowly met him at his landing,
Crowds of people swarm'd around;
Welcome, rang like peals of thunder,
Welcome, rent the skies asunder,
Welcome, heaven and earth resound.
III.
Infernal offspring of the Night,
Debarr'd of heaven your native right,
And from the glorious fields of light,
Condemn'd in shades to drag the chain,
And fill with groans the gloomy plain;
Since pleasures here are none below,
Be ill our good, our joy be woe;
Our work t' embroil the worlds above,
Disturb their union, disunite their love,
And blast the beauteous frame of our victorious foe.
IV.
See the god of seas attends thee,
Nymphs divine, a beauteous train:
All the calmer gales befriend thee
In thy passage o'er the main:
Every maid her locks is binding,
Every Triton's horn is winding,
Welcome to the watery plain.
V.
Albion, loved of gods and men,
Prince of Peace too mildly reigning,
Cease thy sorrow and complaining,
Thou shalt be restored again:
Albion, loved of gods and men.
Still thou art the care of heaven,
In thy youth to exile driven:
Heaven thy ruin then prevented,
Till the guilty land repented:
In thy age, when none could aid thee,
Foes conspired, and friends betray'd thee.
To the brink of danger driven,
Still thou art the care of heaven.
The Good Man.
by James McIntyre

Cheerful and happy was his mood,
He to the poor was kind and good,
And he oft' times did find them food,
Also supplies of coal and wood,
He never spake a word was rude,
And cheer'd those did o'er sorrows brood,
He passed away not understood,
Because no poet in his lays
Had penned a sonnet in his praise,
'Tis sad, but such is world's ways.
Envoi
by Walter De La Mare

Child, do you love the flower
Ashine with colour and dew
Lighting its transient hour?
So I love you.
The lambs in the mead are at play,
'Neath a hurdle the shepherd's asleep;
From height to height of the day
The sunbeams sweep.
Evening will come. And alone
The dreamer the dark will beguile;
All the world will be gone
For a dream's brief while.
Then I shall be old; and away:
And you, with sad joy in your eyes,
Will brood over children at play
With as loveful surmise.
Cherry-Time
by Robert von Ranke Graves

Cherries of the night are riper
Than the cherries pluckt at noon
Gather to your fairy piper
When he pipes his magic tune:
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
Mine are rounder,
Mine are sweeter
For the eater
Under the moon.
And you'll be fairies soon.
In the cherry pluckt at night,
With the dew of summer swelling,
There's a juice of pure delight,
Cool, dark, sweet, divinely smelling.
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
Mine are rounder
Mine are sweeter
For the eater
In the moonlight.
And you'll be fairies quite.
When I sound the fairy call,
Gather here in silent meeting,
Chin to knee on the orchard wall,
Cooled with dew and cherries eating.
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
Mine are rounder,
Mine are sweeter.
For the eater
When the dews fall.
And you'll be fairies all.
Pondicherry
by Paul Cameron Brown

Chess pieces resting upon the jade mantle piece
see sampans move quietly
thru warm night,
rich bundles of bougainvillaea crowd market squares
where deck chairs extend
to the Persian Gulf.
Leisured gentlemen
finger walking canes,
hold eyelids thick as goblets,
sharp tridents beside private lairs.
Skin in puffy whiteness bulges under
lamp's white glare, becomes copra gathered
miles from Pondicherry, sesame
oil in rotting casks.
And the Indian heat, closing with certitude
akin to the trance of the snake charmer,
holds his flute poised with the Bengali lancer
riding a slow crop over the prostrate polo ball.
Written In Autumn.
by John Clare

Checq'd Autumn, doubly sweet is thy declining,
To meditate within this 'wilder'd shade;
To view the wood in its pied lustre shining,
And catch thy varied beauties as they fade;
Where o'er broad hazel-leaves thy pencil mellows,
Red as the glow that morning's opening warms,
And ash or maple 'neath thy colour yellows,
Robbing some sunbeam of its setting charms:
I would say much of what now meets my eye,
But beauties lose me in variety.
O for the warmth of soul and 'witching measure,
Expressing semblance, Poesy, which is thine,
And Genius' eye to view this transient treasure,
That Autumn here might lastingly decline.
Death's Chill Between
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

(Athenaeum, October 14, 1848)
Chide not; let me breathe a little,
For I shall not mourn him long;
Though the life-cord was so brittle,
The love-cord was very strong.
I would wake a little space
Till I find a sleeping-place.
You can go, - I shall not weep;
You can go unto your rest.
My heart-ache is all too deep,
And too sore my throbbing breast.
Can sobs be, or angry tears,
Where are neither hopes nor fears?
Though with you I am alone
And must be so everywhere,
I will make no useless moan, - 
None shall say 'She could not bear:'
While life lasts I will be strong, - 
But I shall not struggle long.
Listen, listen! Everywhere
A low voice is calling me,
And a step is on the stair,
And one comes ye do not see,
Listen, listen! Evermore
A dim hand knocks at the door.
Hear me; he is come again, - 
My own dearest is come back.
Bring him in from the cold rain;
Bring wine, and let nothing lack.
Thou and I will rest together,
Love, until the sunny weather.
I will shelter thee from harm, - 
Hide thee from all heaviness.
Come to me, and keep thee warm
By my side in quietness.
I will lull thee to thy sleep
With sweet songs: - we will not weep.
Who hath talked of weeping? - Yet
There is something at my heart,
Gnawing, I would fain forget,
And an aching and a smart.
- Ah! my mother, 'tis in vain,
For he is not come again.
Welcome To The Chicago Commercial Club
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse;
One comfort we have - Cincinnati sounds worse;
If we only were licensed to say Chicago!
But Worcester and Webster won't let us, you know.
No matter, we songsters must sing as we can;
We can make some nice couplets with Lake Michigan,
And what more resembles a nightingale's voice,
Than the oily trisyllable, sweet Illinois?
Your waters are fresh, while our harbor is salt,
But we know you can't help it - it is n't your fault;
Our city is old and your city is new,
But the railroad men tell us we're greener than you.
You have seen our gilt dome, and no doubt you've been told
That the orbs of the universe round it are rolled;
But I'll own it to you, and I ought to know best,
That this is n't quite true of all stars of the West.
You'll go to Mount Auburn, - we'll show you the track, - 
And can stay there, - unless you prefer to come back;
And Bunker's tall shaft you can climb if you will,
But you'll puff like a paragraph praising a pill.
You must see - but you have seen - our old Faneuil Hall,
Our churches, our school-rooms, our sample-rooms, all;
And, perhaps, though the idiots must have their jokes,
You have found our good people much like other folks.
There are cities by rivers, by lakes, and by seas,
Each as full of itself as a cheese-mite of cheese;
And a city will brag as a game-cock will crow
Don't your cockerels at home - just a little, you know?
But we'll crow for you now - here's a health to the boys,
Men, maidens, and matrons of fair Illinois,
And the rainbow of friendship that arches its span
From the green of the sea to the blue Michigan!
Child, Child
by Sara Teasdale

Child, child, love while you can
The voice and the eyes and the soul of a man;
Never fear though it break your heart,
Out of the wound new joy will start;
Only love proudly and gladly and well,
Though love be heaven or love be hell.
Child, child, love while you may,
For life is short as a happy day;
Never fear the thing you feel,
Only by love is life made real;
Love, for the deadly sins are seven,
Only through love will you enter heaven.
Religious Isolation
by Matthew Arnold

Children (as such forgive them) have I known,
Ever in their own eager pastime bent
To make the incurious bystander, intent
On his own swarming thoughts, an interest own;
Too fearful or too fond to play alone.
Do thou, whom light in thine own inmost soul
(Not less thy boast) illuminates, control
Wishes unworthy of a man full-grown.
What though the holy secret which moulds thee
Moulds not the solid Earth? though never Winds
Have whisper'd it to the complaining Sea,
Nature's great law, and law of all men's minds
To its own impulse every creature stirs:
Live by thy light, and Earth will live by hers
Dickens - Sonnets
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Chief in thy generation born of men
Whom English praise acclaimed as English-born,
With eyes that matched the worldwide eyes of morn
For gleam of tears or laughter, tenderest then
When thoughts of children warmed their light, or when
Reverence of age with love and labour worn,
Or godlike pity fired with godlike scorn,
Shot through them flame that winged thy swift live pen:
Where stars and suns that we behold not burn,
Higher even than here, though highest was here thy place,
Love sees thy spirit laugh and speak and shine
With Shakespeare and the soft bright soul of Sterne
And Fielding's kindliest might and Goldsmith's grace j
Scarce one more loved or worthier love than thine.
The New Charon:
by Robert Herrick

UPON THE DEATH OF HENRY, LORD HASTINGS.
The musical part being set by Mr. Henry Lawes.
THE SPEAKERS,
CHARON AND EUCOSMIA.
Euc. Charon, O Charon, draw thy boat to th' shore,
And to thy many take in one soul more.
Cha. Who calls? who calls? Euc. One overwhelm'd with ruth;
Have pity either on my tears or youth,
And take me in who am in deep distress;
But first cast off thy wonted churlishness.
Cha. I will be gentle as that air which yields
A breath of balm along the Elysian fields.
Speak, what art thou? Euc. One once that had a lover,
Than which thyself ne'er wafted sweeter over.
He was---- Cha. Say what? Euc. Ah me, my woes are deep.
Cha. Prithee relate, while I give ear and weep.
Euc. He was a Hastings; and that one name has
In it all good that is, and ever was.
He was my life, my love, my joy, but died
Some hours before I should have been his bride.
Chorus. Thus, thus the gods celestial still decree,
For human joy contingent misery.
Euc. The hallowed tapers all prepared were,
And Hymen call'd to bless the rites. Cha. Stop there.
Euc. Great are my woes. Cha. And great must that grief be
That makes grim Charon thus to pity thee.
But now come in. Euc. More let me yet relate.
Cha. I cannot stay; more souls for waftage wait
And I must hence. Euc. Yet let me thus much know,
Departing hence, where good and bad souls go?
Cha. Those souls which ne'er were drench'd in pleasure's stream,
The fields of Pluto are reserv'd for them;
Where, dress'd with garlands, there they walk the ground
Whose blessed youth with endless flowers is crown'd.
But such as have been drown'd in this wild sea,
For those is kept the Gulf of Hecate,
Where with their own contagion they are fed,
And there do punish and are punished.
This known, the rest of thy sad story tell
When on the flood that nine times circles hell.
Chorus. We sail along to visit mortals never;
But there to live where love shall last for ever.
The Poet's Child
by Abram Joseph Ryan

Lines addressed to the daughter of Richard Dalton Williams.
Child of the heart of a child of sweetest song!
The poet's blood flows through thy fresh pure veins;
Dost ever hear faint echoes float along
Thy days and dreams of thy dead father's strains?
Dost ever hear,
In mournful times,
With inner ear,
The strange sweet cadences of thy father's rhymes?
Child of a child of art, which Heaven doth give
To few, to very few as unto him!
His songs are wandering o'er the world, but live
In his child's heart, in some place lone and dim;
And nights and days
With vestal's eyes
And soundless sighs
Thou keepest watch above thy father's lays.
Child of a dreamer of dreams all unfulfilled --
(And thou art, child, a living dream of him) --
Dost ever feel thy spirit all enthrilled
With his lost dreams when summer days wane dim?
When suns go down,
Thou, song of the dead singer,
Dost sigh at eve and grieve
O'er the brow that paled before it won the crown?
Child of the patriot! Oh, how he loved his land!
And how he moaned o'er Erin's ev'ry wrong!
Child of the singer! he swept with purest hand
The octaves of all agonies, until his song
Sobbed o'er the sea;
And now through thee
It cometh to me,
Like a shadow song from some Gethsemane.
Child of the wanderer! and his heart the shrine
Where three loves blended into only one --
His God's, thy mother's, and his country's; and 'tis thine
To be the living ray of such a glorious sun.
His genius gleams,
My child, within thee,
And dim thy dreams
As stars on the midnight sea.
Child of thy father, I have read his songs --
Thou art the sweetest song he ever sung --
Peaceful as Psalms, but when his country's wrongs
Swept o'er his heart he stormed. And he was young;
He died too soon --
So men will say --
Before he reached Fame's noon;
His songs are letters in a book -- thou art their ray.
Chatsworth! Thy Stately Mansion, And The Pride
by William Wordsworth

Chatsworth! thy stately mansion, and the pride
Of thy domain, strange contrast do present
To house and home in many a craggy rent
Of the wild Peak; where new-born waters glide
Through fields whose thrifty occupants abide
As in a dear and chosen banishment,
With every semblance of entire content;
So kind is simple Nature, fairly tried!
Yet He whose heart in childhood gave her troth
To pastoral dales, thin-set with modest farms,
May learn, if judgment strengthen with his growth,
That, not for Fancy only, pomp hath charms;
And, strenuous to protect from lawless harms
The extremes of favoured life, may honour both.
In Memoriam D. O. M.
by William Kerr

Chestnut candles are lit again
For the dead that died in spring:
Dead lovers walk the orchard ways,
And the dead cuckoos sing.
Is it they who live and we who are dead?
Hardly the springtime knows
For which today the cuckoo calls,
And the white blossom blows.
Listen and hear the happy wind
Whisper and lightly pass:
'Your love is sweet as hawthorn is,
Your hope green as the grass.
'The hawthorn's faint and quickly gone,
The grass in autumn dies;
Put by your life, and see the spring
With everlasting eyes.'
To The Butterfly.
by Samuel Rogers

Child of the sun! pursue thy rapturous flight,
Mingling with her thou lov'st in fields of light;
And, where the flowers of paradise unfold,
Quaff fragrant nectar from their cups of gold.
There shall thy wings, rich as an evening-sky,
Expand and shut with silent ecstasy!
--Yet wert thou once a worm, a thing that crept
On the bare earth, then wrought a tomb and slept!
And such is man; soon from his cell of clay
To burst a seraph in the blaze of day!
The Crowns
by John Frederick Freeman

Cherry and pear are white,
Their snows lie sprinkled on the land like light
On darkness shed.
Far off and near
The orchards toss their crowns of delight,
And the sun casts down
Another shining crown.
The wind tears and throws down
Petal by petal the crown
Of cherry and pear till the earth is white,
And all the brightness is shed
In the orchards far off and near,
That tossed by the road and under the green hill;
And the wind is fled.
Far, far off the wind
Has shaken down
A brightness that was as the brightness of cherry or pear
When the orchards shine in the sun.
--Oh there is no more fairness
Since this rareness,
The radiant blossom of English earth--is dead!
To Dora Dorian
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Child of two strong nations, heir
Born of high-souled hope that smiled,
Seeing for each brought forth a fair
Child,
By thy gracious brows, and wild
Golden-clouded heaven of hair,
By thine eyes elate and mild,
Hope would fain take heart to swear
Men should yet be reconciled,
Seeing the sign she bids thee bear,
Child.
The River Cherwell
by William Lisle Bowles

Cherwell! how pleased along thy willowed edge
Erewhile I strayed, or when the morn began
To tinge the distant turret's golden fan,
Or evening glimmered o'er the sighing sedge!
And now reposing on thy banks once more,
I bid the lute farewell, and that sad lay
Whose music on my melancholy way
I wooed: beneath thy willows waving hoar,
Seeking a while to rest, till the bright sun
Of joy return; as when Heaven's radiant Bow
Beams on the night-storm's passing wings below:
Whate'er betide, yet something have I won
Of solace, that may bear me on serene,
Till eve's last hush shall close the silent scene.
Sonnets XII
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Cherish you then the hope I shall forget
At length, my lord, Pieria?--put away
For your so passing sake, this mouth of clay
These mortal bones against my body set,
For all the puny fever and frail sweat
Of human love,--renounce for these, I say,
The Singing Mountain's memory, and betray
The silent lyre that hangs upon me yet?
Ah, but indeed, some day shall you awake,
Rather, from dreams of me, that at your side
So many nights, a lover and a bride,
But stern in my soul's chastity, have lain,
To walk the world forever for my sake,
And in each chamber find me gone again!