DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Transcendentalism:
by Robert Browning

A Poem In Twelve Books
Stop playing, poet! may a brother speak?
'Tis you speak, that's your error. Song's our art:
Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts
Instead of draping them in sighs and sounds.
True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up!
But why such long prolusion and display,
Such turning and adjustment of the harp,
And taking it upon your breast at length,
Only to speak dry words across its strings?
Stark-naked thought is in request enough,
Speak prose and holloa it till Europe hears!
The six-foot Swiss tube, braced about with bark,
Which helps the hunter's voice from Alp to Alp,
Exchange our harp for that, who hinders you?
But here's your fault; grown men want thought, you think;
Thought's what they mean by verse, and seek in verse:
Boys seek for images and melody,
Men must have reason, so you aim at men.
Quite otherwise! Objects throng our youth, 'tis true,
We see and hear and do not wonder much.
If you could tell us what they mean, indeed!
As Swedish B'hme never cared for plants
Until it happed, a-walking in the fields,
He noticed all at once that plants could speak,
Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him.
That day the daisy had an eye indeed,
Colloquised with the cowslip on such themes!
We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose.
But by the time youth slips a stage or two
While reading prose in that tough book he wrote,
(Collating, and emendating the same
And settling on the sense most of our mind)
We shut the clasps and find life's summer past.
Then, who helps more, pray, to repair our loss,
Another B'hme with a tougher book
And subtler meanings of what roses say,
Or some stout Mage like him of Halderstadt,
John, who made things B'hme wrote thoughts about?
He with a 'look you!' vents a brace of rhymes,
And in there breaks the sudden rose herself,
Over us, under, round us every side,
Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs
And musty volumes, B'hme's book and all,
Buries us with a glory, young once more,
Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.
So come, the harp back to your heart again!
You are a poem, though your poem's naught.
The best of all you did before, believe,
Was your own boy's-face o'er the finer chords
Bent, following the cherub at the top
That points to God with his paired half-moon wings.
Still, Like Dew In Silence Falling. By Meleager.
by Thomas Moore

Still, like dew in silence falling,
Drops for thee the nightly tear
Still that voice the past recalling,
Dwells, like echo, on my ear,
Still, still!
Day and night the spell hangs o'er me,
Here forever fixt thou art:
As thy form first shone before me,
So 'tis graven on this heart,
Deep, deep!
Love, oh Love, whose bitter sweetness,
Dooms me to this lasting pain.
Thou who earnest with so much fleetness,
Why so slow to go again?
Why? why?
The Lifelong War
by Michael Earls

Still goes the strife; the anguish does not die.
Stronger the flesh is grown from earthy years,
In siege about my soul that upward peers
To see and hold its Good. The spirit's eye
Approves the better things; but senses spy
The passing sweets, spurning the present fears,
And take their moment's prize. Ah, then hot tears
Deluge my soul, and contrite moans my cry!
Courage, my heart: bright patience to the end!
Few years remain; then goes the warring wall
Of sensely flesh, that men will throw to earth.
So be it; so the contrite soul shall wend
A homeward way unto the Captain's call,
Eternally to know contrition's worth.
Still, Though The One I Sing
by Walt Whitman

Still, though the one I sing,
(One, yet of contradictions made,) I dedicate to Nationality,
I leave in him Revolt, (O latent right of insurrection! O quenchless, indispensable fire!)
Still When Daylight.
by Thomas Moore

Still when daylight o'er the wave
Bright and soft its farewell gave,
I used to hear, while light was falling,
O'er the wave a sweet voice calling,
Mournfully at distance calling.
Ah! once how blest that maid would come,
To meet her sea-boy hastening home;
And thro' the night those sounds repeating,
Hail his bark with joyous greeting,
Joyously his light bark greeting.
But, one sad night, when winds were high,
Nor earth, nor heaven could hear her cry.
She saw his boat come tossing over
Midnight's wave,--but not her lover!
No, never more her lover.
And still that sad dream loath to leave,
She comes with wandering mind at eve,
And oft we hear, when night is falling,
Faint her voice thro' twilight calling,
Mournfully at twilight calling.
Sonnet To A Stilton Cheese
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Stilton, thou shouldst be living at this hour
And so thou art. Nor losest grace thereby;
England has need of thee, and so have I--
She is a Fen. Far as the eye can scour,
League after grassy league from Lincoln tower
To Stilton in the fields, she is a Fen.
Yet this high cheese, by choice of fenland men,
Like a tall green volcano rose in power.
Plain living and long drinking are no more,
And pure religion reading 'Household Words',
And sturdy manhood sitting still all day
Shrink, like this cheese that crumbles to its core;
While my digestion, like the House of Lords,
The heaviest burdens on herself doth lay.
In School-Days
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Still sits the school-house by the road,
A ragged beggar sleeping;
Around it still the sumachs grow,
And blackberry-vines are creeping.
Within, the master's desk is seen,
Deep scarred by raps official;
The warping floor, the battered seats,
The jack-knife's carved initial;
The charcoal frescos on its wall;
Its door's worn sill, betraying
The feet that, creeping slow to school,
Went storming out to playing!
Long years ago a winter sun
Shone over it at setting;
Lit up its western window-panes,
And low eaves' icy fretting.
It touched the tangled golden curls,
And brown eyes full of grieving,
Of one who still her steps delayed
When all the school were leaving.
For near her stood the little boy
Her childish favor singled:
His cap pulled low upon a face
Where pride and shame were mingled.
Pushing with restless feet the snow
To right and left, he lingered;
As restlessly her tiny hands
The blue-checked apron fingered.
He saw her lift her eyes; he felt
The soft hand's light caressing,
And heard the tremble of her voice,
As if a fault confessing.
'I'm sorry that I spelt the word
I hate to go above you,
Because,' the brown eyes lower fell,
'Because you see, I love you!'
Still memory to a gray-haired man
That sweet child-face is showing.
Dear girl! the grasses on her grave
Have forty years been growing!
He lives to learn, in life's hard school,
How few who pass above him
Lament their triumph and his loss,
Like her, because they love him.
Thoughts On Peace.
by Thomas Gent

Still e'er that shrine defiance rears its head,
Which rolls in sullen murmurs o'er the dead,
That shrine which conquest, as it stems the flood.
Too often tinges deep with human blood;
Still o'er the land stern devastation reigns,
Its giant mountains, and its spreading plains,
Where the dark pines, their heads all gloomy, wave,
Or rushing cataracts, loud-sounding, lave
The precipice, whose brow with awful pride
Tow'rs high above, and scorns the foaming tide;
The village sweet, the forest stretching far,
Groan undistinguish'd, 'midst the shock of war.
There, the rack'd matron sees her son expire,
There, clasps the infant son his murder'd sire,
While the sad virgin on her lover's face,
Weeps, with the last farewel, the last embrace,
And the lone widow too, with frenzied cries,
Amid the common wreck, unheeded dies.
O Peace, bright Seraph, heaven-lov'd maid, return!
And bid distracted nature cease to mourn!
O, let the ensign drear of war be furl'd,
And pour thy blessings on a bleeding world;
Then social order shall again expand,
It's sovereign good again shall bless the land,
Elate the simple villager shall see,
Contentment's inoffensive revelry;
Then, once again shall o'er the foaming tide,
The swelling sail of commerce fearless ride,
With bounteous hand shall plenty grace our shore,
And cheerless want's complaint be known no more.
Then hear a nation's pray'r, lov'd goddess, hear!
Wipe the wan cheek, deep-lav'd by many a tear;
Nature, the triumph foul of horror o'er,
Shall raise her frame to scenes of blood no more;
Pale recollection shall recall her woes,
Again shall paint her agonizing throes:
These, o'er the earth thine empire firm shall raise,
Unaw'd by war's destructive storms, the bliss of future days.
Barking Hall: A Year After
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Still the sovereign trees
Make the sundawn's breeze
More bright, more sweet, more heavenly than it rose,
As wind and sun fulfil
Their living rapture: still
Noon, dawn, and evening thrill
With radiant change the immeasurable repose
Wherewith the woodland wilds lie blest
And feel how storms and centuries rock them still to rest.
Still the love-lit place
Given of God such grace
That here was born on earth a birth divine
Gives thanks with all its flowers
Through all their lustrous hours,
From all its birds and bowers
Gives thanks that here they felt her sunset shine
Where once her sunrise laughed, and bade
The life of all the living things it lit be glad.
Soft as light and strong
Rises yet their song
And thrills with pride the cedar-crested lawn
And every brooding dove.
But she, beloved above
All utterance known of love,
Abides no more the change of night and dawn,
Beholds no more with earth-born eye
These woods that watched her waking here where all things die.
Not the light that shone
When she looked thereon
Shines on them or shall shine for ever here.
We know not, save when sleep
Slays death, who fain would keep
His mystery dense and deep,
Where shines the smile we held and hold so dear.
Dreams only, thrilled and filled with love,
Bring back its light ere dawn leave nought alive above.
Nought alive awake
Sees the strong dawn break
On all the dreams that dying night bade live.
Yet scarce the intolerant sense
Of day's harsh evidence
How came their word and whence
Strikes dumb the song of thanks it bids them give,
The joy that answers as it heard
And lightens as it saw the light that spake the word.
Night and sleep and dawn
Pass with dreams withdrawn:
But higher above them far than noon may climb
Love lives and turns to light
The deadly noon of night.
His fiery spirit of sight
Endures no curb of change or darkling time.
Even earth and transient things of earth
Even here to him bear witness not of death but birth.
The Pilgrim.
by Thomas Moore

Still thus, when twilight gleamed,
Far off his Castle seemed,
Traced on the sky;
And still, as fancy bore him.
To those dim towers before him,
He gazed, with wishful eye;
And thought his home was nigh.
"Hall of my Sires!" he said,
"How long, with weary tread,
"Must I toil on?
"Each eve, as thus I wander,
"Thy towers seem rising yonder,
"But, scarce hath daylight shone,
"When, like a dream, thou'rt gone!"
So went the Pilgrim still,
Down dale and over hill,
Day after day;
That glimpse of home, so cheering,
At twilight still appearing,
But still, with morning's ray,
Melting, like mist, away!
Where rests the Pilgrim now?
Here, by this cypress bough,
Closed his career;
That dream, of fancy's weaving,
No more his steps deceiving,
Alike past hope and fear,
The Pilgrim's home is here.
Song From The Silent Woman
by Ben Jonson

Still to be neat, still to be dressed,
As you were going to a feast;
Still to be powdered, still perfumed:
Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art's hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.
Give me a look, give me a face,
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free;
Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than all th' adulteries of art:
They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.
The Letters
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Still on the tower stood the vane,
A black yew gloomed the stagnant air,
I peered athwart the chancel pane
And saw the altar cold and bare.
A clog of lead was round my feet,
A band of pain across my brow;
'Cold altar, Heaven and earth shall meet
Before you hear my marriage vow.'
II.
I turned and hummed a bitter song
That mocked the wholesome human heart,
And then we met in wrath and wrong,
We met, but only met to part.
Full cold my greeting was and dry;
She faintly smiled, she hardly moved;
I saw with half-unconscious eye
She wore the colours I approved.
III.
She took the little ivory chest,
With half a sigh she turned the key,
Then raised her head with lips comprest,
And gave my letters back to me.
And gave the trinkets and the rings,
My gifts, when gifts of mine could please;
As looks a father on the things
Of his dead son, I looked on these.
IV.
She told me all her friends had said;
I raged against the public liar;
She talked as if her love were dead,
But in my words were seeds of fire.
'No more of love; your sex is known:
I never will be twice deceived.
Henceforth I trust the man alone,
The woman cannot be believed.
V.
Through slander, meanest spawn of Hell'
And woman's slander is the worst,
And you, whom once I loved so well,
Through you, my life will be accurst.'
I spoke with heart, and heat and force,
I shook her breast with vague alarms'
Like torrents from a mountain's source
We rushed into each other's arms.
VI.
We parted: sweetly gleamed the stars,
And sweet the vapour-braided blue,
Low breezes fanned the belfry bars,
As homeward by the church I drew.
The very graves appeared to smile,
So fresh they rose in shadowed swells;
'Dark porch,' I said, 'and silent aisle,
There comes a sound of marriage bells.'
Separation
by Matthew Arnold

Stop Not to me, at this bitter departing,
Speak of the sure consolations of Time.
Fresh be the wound, still-renew'd be its smarting,
So but thy image endure in its prime.
But, if the stedfast commandment of Nature
Wills that remembrance should always decay;
If the lov'd form and the deep-cherish'd feature
Must, when unseen, from the soul fade away
Me let no half-effac'd memories cumber!
Fled, fled at once, be all vestige of thee
Deep be the darkness, and still be the slumber
Dead be the Past and its phantoms to me!
Then, when we meet, and thy look strays towards me,
Scanning my face and the changes wrought there,
Who, let me say, is this Stranger regards me,
With the grey eyes, and the lovely brown hair?
Child-Songs
by John Greenleaf Whittier

Still linger in our noon of time
And on our Saxon tongue
The echoes of the home-born hymns
The Aryan mothers sung.
And childhood had its litanies
In every age and clime;
The earliest cradles of the race
Were rocked to poet's rhyme.
Nor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor flower,
Nor green earth's virgin sod,
So moved the singer's heart of old
As these small ones of God.
The mystery of unfolding life
Was more than dawning morn,
Than opening flower or crescent moon
The human soul new-born.
And still to childhood's sweet appeal
The heart of genius turns,
And more than all the sages teach
From lisping voices learns,
The voices loved of him who sang,
Where Tweed and Teviot glide,
That sound to-day on all the winds
That blow from Rydal-side,
Heard in the Teuton's household songs,
And folk-lore of the Finn,
Where'er to holy Christmas hearths
The Christ-child enters in!
Before life's sweetest mystery still
The heart in reverence kneels;
The wonder of the primal birth
The latest mother feels.
We need love's tender lessons taught
As only weakness can;
God hath His small interpreters;
The child must teach the man.
We wander wide through evil years,
Our eyes of faith grow dim;
But he is freshest from His hands
And nearest unto Him!
And haply, pleading long with Him
For sin-sick hearts and cold,
The angels of our childhood still
The Father's face behold.
Of such the kingdom! Teach Thou us,
O-Master most divine,
To feel the deep significance
Of these wise words of Thine!
The haughty eye shall seek in vain
What innocence beholds;
No cunning finds the key of heaven,
No strength its gate unfolds.
Alone to guilelessness and love
That gate shall open fall;
The mind of pride is nothingness,
The childlike heart is all
To A Poet - (To Edmund Gosse)
by Richard Le Gallienne

Still towards the steep Parnassian way
The moon-led pilgrims wend,
Ah, who of all that start to-day
Shall ever reach the end?
Year after year a dream-fed band
That scorn the vales below,
And scorn the fatness of the land
To win those heights of snow, - 
Leave barns and kine and flocks behind,
And count their fortune fair,
If they a dozen leaves may bind
Of laurel in their hair.
Like us, dear Poet, once you trod
That sweet moon-smitten way,
With mouth of silver sought the god
All night and all the day;
Sought singing, till in rosy fire
The white Apollo came,
And touched your brow, and wreathed your lyre,
And named you by his name;
And led you, loving, by the hand
To those grave laurelled bowers,
Where keep your high immortal band
Your high immortal hours.
Strait was the way, thorn-set and long - 
Ah, tell us, shining there,
Is fame as wonderful as song?
And laurels in your hair!
Still Thou Fliest.
by Thomas Moore

Still thou fliest, and still I woo thee,
Lovely phantom,--all in vain;
Restless ever, my thoughts pursue thee,
Fleeting ever, thou mock'st their pain.
Such doom, of old, that youth betided,
Who wooed, he thought, some angel's charms,
But found a cloud that from him glided,--
As thou dost from these outstretched arms.
Scarce I've said, "How fair thou shinest,"
Ere thy light hath vanished by;
And 'tis when thou look'st divinest
Thou art still most sure to fly.
Even as the lightning, that, dividing
The clouds of night, saith, "Look on me,"
Then flits again, its splendor hiding.--
Even such the glimpse I catch of thee.
The Mountains
by Walter De La Mare

Still, and blanched, and cold, and lone,
The icy hills far off from me
With frosty ulys overgrown
Stand in their sculptured secrecy.
No path of theirs the chamois fleet
Treads, with a nostril to the wind;
O'er their ice-marbled glaciers beat
No wings of eagles in my mind - 
Yea, in my mind these mountains rise,
Their perils dyed with evening's rose;
And still my ghost sits at my eyes
And thirsts for their untroubled snows.
The Annex
by Helen Leah Reed

"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage"
High halls do not a College make, nor book-lined shelves a sage.
So might I follow haltingly these olden words to show
That even in this newer home the Annex may not know
A greater zeal for learning than the old house could bestow.
But comparisons are odious, so I'll merely try to say
That cherished deep within the hearts of many here today
Is the memory of that early home in the classic Appian Way.
There first did the young Annex (whose real Christian name
Contains as many syllables as it has liens on fame)
Win laurels even brighter than its friends had hoped to claim.
And there, too, in their search, for intellectual recreation
Its students formed the short-livedAppian Way Association
Of which this later Club is but an "Idler" imitation.
Just where the interloper dwelt was long a mystery.
In the past to Harvard students and to townsmen equally,
Till they cried, "There is no Annex - believe we only what we see!"
Now the Annex and its mission every year are better known,
From the smallest of beginnings strong and powerful it has grown:
Only Harvard Freshmen speak of it in supercilious tone,
Although custom would forbid us as we are passing near,
To salute the ancient building with a rousing Annex cheer,
We need no sign like this to prove that still we hold it dear.
Now the students who have profited by their foreseeing care
Fondly thank the Annex founders who knew not the word "despair."
Its best home was the hearts of those who planned the structure fair.
(Read at a College celebration.)
Reveille
by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Still bathed in its moonlight slumber, the little white house by the cedar
Stands silent against the red dawn;
And nothing I know of who sleeps there, to the travail of day yet unwakened,
Behind the blue curtains undrawn:
But I dream as we march down the roadway, ringing loud and white-rimed in the moonlight,
Of a little dark house on a hill
Wherein when the battle is over, to the rapture of day yet unwakened,
We shall slumber as dreamless and still.
Songs Set To Music: 8. Set By Mr. Smith
by Matthew Prior

Still, Dorinda, I adore;
Think I mean not to deceive you,
For I loved you much before,
And, alas! now love you more
Though I force myself to leave you.
Staying I my vows shall fail,
Virtue yields as love grows stronger;
Fierce desires will prevail,
You are fair and I am frail,
And dare trust myself no longer.
You, my love, too nicely coy,
Lest I should have gain'd the treasure,
Made my vows and oaths destroy
The pleasing hopes I did enjoy
Of all my future peace and pleasure.
To my vows I have been true,
And in silence hid my anguish,
But I cannot promise too
What my love may make me do
While with her for whom I languish.
For in thee strange magic lies,
And my heart is too, too tender;
Nothing's proof against those eyes,
Best resolves and strictest ties
To their force must soon surrender.
But, Dorinda, you're severe,
I much doting thus to sever:
Since from all I hold most dear,
That you may no longer fear,
I divorce myself for ever.
Love And Marriage.
by Thomas Moore

Eque brevi verbo ferre perenne malum.
SECUNDUS, eleg. vii.
Still the question I must parry,
Still a wayward truant prove:
Where I love, I must not marry;
Where I marry, can not love.
Were she fairest of creation,
With the least presuming mind;
Learned without affectation;
Not deceitful, yet refined;
Wise enough, but never rigid;
Gay, but not too lightly free;
Chaste as snow, and yet not frigid:
Fond, yet satisfied with me:
Were she all this ten times over,
All that heaven to earth allows.
I should be too much her lover
Ever to become her spouse.
Love will never bear enslaving;
Summer garments suit him best;
Bliss itself is not worth having,
If we're by compulsion blest.
Epigram On Hearing A Clergyman Preach A Dull Sermon In A Loud, Shrill Voice
by Thomas Oldham

Still, still his bell-like voice rings through my head;
Yet not one bright thought cheers my mental view;
O! would that I were deaf, asleep, or dead!
Ye marble statues! how I envy you!
*        *        *        *        *
To hear him preach the Methodistic creed,
What eager crowds to Ranter's chapel speed!
His eloquence the harden'd sinner frightens;
Like heaven itself says Fame, he thunders, lightens.
I go to hear him; Fame has made a blunder;
I see no lightning, though I hear the thunder.
For flowery sermons Doctor Drudge
Of preachers at the top is;
If from their influence we may judge,
His flowers are only poppies.
*        *        *        *        *
Sir! you're both fool and knave! to Frank, Blunt cries
I know I am, Sir, Frank to Blunt replies:
Now, in self-knowledge if all knowledge lies,
A fool, like Frank, must be extremely wise!
*        *        *        *        *
Vice is a mouse-trap, pleasure is the bait,
Like mice, enticing mortals to their fate;
And of this truth experience leaves no doubt;
'Tis far more easy to get in than out.
Old maids their spleen on marriage vent;
The reason would you know?
'Tis not, that others are made wives,
But that they can't be so.
*        *        *        *        *
How grave he looks! how mighty wise!
He seems Minerva's sacred bird:
He speaks! our ears refute our eyes
The cackling of a goose is heard.
*        *        *        *        *
How came that Jew, deform'd and old,
To wed the youthful, fair Coquette?
Ben had a purse well-stored with gold!
He caught her in't; 'twas Hymen's net!
Flirtilla's teeth, well-form'd and white,
Were Hymen's pincers, and could bite!
When the Royal Exchange to the flames fell a prey,
All the Monarchs and Queens from their niches were thrown;
Lackaday! on the pavement in fragments they lay,
Every one except Charley the Second alone.
Strange event! O my Muse! to blind mortals below
Clear this mystery which none but immortals can know.
"Cytherea and Momus pray'd Vulcan to spare
The blithe, amorous King: Vulcan granted their prayer."