DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Good Friday
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Am I a stone and not a sheep
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy Cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood's slow loss,
And yet not weep?
Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;
Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon - 
I, only I.
Yet give not o'er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.
Departure
by Anna Akhmatova

Although this land is not my own,
I will remember its inland sea
and the waters that are so cold
the sand as white
as old bones, the pine trees
strangely red where the sun comes down.
I cannot say if it is our love,
or the day, that is ending.
Sonnet LXV.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Io avr' sempre in odio la fenestra.
BETTER IS IT TO DIE HAPPY THAN TO LIVE IN PAIN.
Always in hate the window shall I bear,
Whence Love has shot on me his shafts at will,
Because not one of them sufficed to kill:
For death is good when life is bright and fair,
But in this earthly jail its term to outwear
Is cause to me, alas! of infinite ill;
And mine is worse because immortal still,
Since from the heart the spirit may not tear.
Wretched! ere this who surely ought'st to know
By long experience, from his onward course
None can stay Time by flattery or by force.
Oft and again have I address'd it so:
Mourner, away! he parteth not too soon
Who leaves behind him far his life's calm June.
MACGREGOR.
To A Gentlewoman, Objecting To Him His Gray Hair
by Robert Herrick

Am I despised, because you say;
And I dare swear, that I am gray?
Know, Lady, you have but your day!
And time will come when you shall wear
Such frost and snow upon your hair;
And when, though long, it comes to pass,
You question with your looking-glass,
And in that sincere crystal seek
But find no rose-bud in your cheek,
Nor any bed to give the shew
Where such a rare carnation grew:
Ah!    then too late, close in your chamber keeping,
It will be told
That you are old,
By those true tears you're weeping.
To Mildred
by Richard Le Gallienne

Always thy book, too late acknowledged thine,
Now when thine eyes no earthly page may read;
Blinded with death, or blinded with the shine
Of love's own lore celestial. Small need,
Forsooth, for thee to read my earthly line,
That on immortal flowers of fancy feed;
What should my angel do to stoop to mine,
Flowers of decay of no immortal seed.
Yet, love, if in thy lofty dwelling-place,
Higher than notes of any soaring bird,
Beyond the beam of any solar light,
A song of earth may scale the awful height,
And at thy heavenly window find thy face - 
know my voice shall never fall unheard.
December 6th, 1894.
Beauty
by Charles Baudelaire

Am as lovely as a dream in stone,
And this my heart where each finds death in turn,
Inspires the poet with a love as lone
As clay eternal and as taciturn.
Swan-white of heart, a sphinx no mortal knows,
My throne is in the heaven's azure deep;
I hate all movements that disturb my pose,
I smile not ever, neither do I weep.
Before my monumental attitudes,
That breathe a soul into the plastic arts,
My poets pray in austere studious moods,
For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts,
Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies,
The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes.
The Tree In The Tenement Yard
by Michael Earls

(For T. A. Daly)
America, Ireland and Italy,
All have known this poor old tree.
* * *
A rickety fence goes round the yard
And the noisy streets stand high:
The grassless ground is brown and hard,
And the cinder pathways, lined with shard,
Sees but a bit of sky.
Once the yard was fertile and fair,
And lilac bushes near:
And a Yankee counted with fretful care,
Under the solacing shadows there,
The gain of every year.
The crowded walls of trade arose
And gloomed the avenue:
But a Munster man at each day's close
Built in the tree his hope's rainbows,
And saw his dreams come true.
The years have thickened the darkened air,
But the tree is still on guard:
It comforts the young Italian there,
Who sees the future blossoming fair
From the tree in the tenement yard.
* * *
America, Ireland and Italy
All have loved this poor old tree.
Richard Watson Gilder
by Richard Le Gallienne

(Obiit Nov. 18, 1909)
America grows poorer day by day - 
Richer and richer, I have heard some say:
They thought of a poor wealth I do not heed - 
For, one by one, the men who dreamed the dream
That was America, and is now no more,
Have gone in flame through that mysterious door,
And scarcely one remains, in all our need.
The dream goes with the dreamer - ah! beware,
Country of facile silver and of gold,
To slight the gentle strength of a pure prayer;
America, all made out of a dream - 
A dream of good men in the days of old;
What if the dream should fade and none remain
To tell your children the old dream again!
Therefore, with laurel and with tears and rue,
Stand by his grave this sad November day,
Sadder that he untimely goes away,
Who sang and wrought so well for that high dream
We call America - the world made new,
New with clean hope and faith and purpose true.
Gilder, your name, with each return of Spring,
Shall write itself in the soft April flowers,
And, when you hear the murmur of bright showers
Over your sleep, and little lives that sing
Come back once more, know that the rainbowed rain
Is but our tears, saying: "Come back again."
Irony
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

Always, sweetheart,
Carry into your room the blossoming boughs of cherry,
Almond and apple and pear diffuse with light, that very
Soon strews itself on the floor; and keep the radiance of spring
Fresh quivering; keep the sunny-swift March-days waiting
In a little throng at your door, and admit the one who is plaiting
Her hair for womanhood, and play awhile with her, then bid her depart.
A come and go of March-day loves
Through the flower-vine, trailing screen;
A fluttering in of doves.
Then a launch abroad of shrinking doves
Over the waste where no hope is seen
Of open hands:
Dance in and out
Small-bosomed girls of the spring of love,
With a bubble of laughter, and shrilly shout
Of mirth; then the dripping of tears on your glove.
My Brother's Keeper?
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

(A WARNING)
"Am I my brother's keeper?"
Yes, of a truth!
Thine asking is thine answer.
That self-condemning cry of Cain
Has been the plea of every selfish soul since then,
Which hath its brother slain.
God's word is plain,
And doth thy shrinking soul arraign.
Thy brother's keeper?
Yea, of a truth thou art!
For if not--who?
Are ye not both,--both thou and he
Of God's great family?
How rid thee of thy soul's responsibility?
For every ill in all the world
Each soul is sponsor and account must bear.
And He, and he thy brother of despair,
Claim, of thy overmuch, their share.
Thou hast had good, and he the strangled days;
But now,--the old things pass.
No longer of thy grace
Is he content to live in evil case
For the anointing of thy shining face.
The old things pass.--Beware lest ye pass with them,
And your place
Become an emptiness!
Beware!    Lest, when the "Have-nots" claim,
From those who have, their rightful share,
Thy borders be swept bare
As by the final flame.
Better to share before than after.
"After?" ...    For thee may be no after!
Only the howl of mocking laughter
At thy belated care.    Make no mistake!--
"After" will be too late.
When once the "Have-nots" claim ...    they take.
"After!" ...    When that full claim is made,
You and your golden gods may all lie dead.
Set now your house in order,
Ere it be too late!
For, once the storm of hate
Be loosed, no man shall stay it till
Its thirst has slaked its fill,
And you, poor victims of this last "too late,"
Shall in the shadows mourn your lost estate.
Amarillis I Did Woo
by George Wither

Amarillis I did woo,
And I courted Phillis too;
Daphne, for her love, I chose;
Cloris, for that damask rose
In her cheek, I held as dear;
Yea, a thousand liked well near.
And, in love with all together,
Fear'd the enjoying either;
'Cause to be of one possest,
Barred the hope of all the rest.
The Skylark
by John Clare

Although I'm in prison
Thy song is uprisen,
Thou'rt singing away to the feathery cloud,
In the blueness of morn,
Over fields of green corn,
With a song sweet and trilling, and rural and loud.
When the day is serenest,
When the corn is the greenest,
Thy bosom mounts up and floats in the light,
And sings in the sun,
Like a vision begun
Of pleasure, of love, and of lonely delight.
The daisies they whiten
Plains the sunbeams now brighten,
And warm thy snug nest where thy russet eggs lie,
From whence thou'rt now springing,
And the air is now ringing,
To show that the minstrel of Spring is on high.
The cornflower is blooming,
The cowslip is coming,
And many new buds on the silken grass lie:
On the earth's shelt'ring breast
Thou hast left thy brown nest,
And art towering above it, a speck in the sky.
Thou'rt the herald of sunshine,
And the soft dewy moonshine
Gilds sweetly the sleep of thy brown speckled breast:
Thou'rt the bard of the Spring,
On thy brown russet wing,
And of each grassy close thou'rt the poet and guest.
There's the violet confiding,
In the mossy wood riding,
And primrose beneath the old thorn in the glen,
And the daisies that bed
In the sheltered homestead--
Old friends with old faces, I see them again.
And thou, feathered poet,
I see thee, and know it--
Thou'rt one of the minstrels that cheered me last Spring:
With Nature thou'rt blest,
And green grass round thy nest
Will keep thee still happy to mount up and sing.
Amang The Trees.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "The King of France, he rade a race."
I.
Amang the trees, where humming bees
At buds and flowers were hinging, O,
Auld Caledon drew out her drone,
And to her pipe was singing, O;
'Twas pibroch, sang, strathspey, or reels,
She dirl'd them aff fu' clearly, O,
When there cam a yell o' foreign squeels,
That dang her tapsalteerie, O.
II.
Their capon craws and queer ha ha's,
They made our lugs grow eerie, O;
The hungry bike did scrape and pike,
'Till we were wae and weary, O;
But a royal ghaist wha ance was cas'd
A prisoner aughteen year awa,
He fir'd a fiddler in the north
That dang them tapsalteerie, O.
Memorials Of A Tour On The Continent, 1820 - XXVIII. - The Column Intended By Buonaparte For A Triumphal Edifice In Milan, Now Lying By The Way-Side In The Simplon Pass
by William Wordsworth

Ambition, following down this far-famed slope
Her Pioneer, the snow-dissolving Sun,
While clarions prate of kingdoms to be won
Perchance, in future ages, here may stop;
Taught to mistrust her flattering horoscope
By admonition from this prostrate Stone!
Memento uninscribed of Pride o'erthrown;
Vanity's hieroglyphic; a choice trope
In Fortune's rhetoric. Daughter of the Rock,
Rest where thy course was stayed by Power divine!
The Soul transported sees, from hint of thine,
Crimes which the great Avenger's hand provoke,
Hears combats whistling o'er the ensanguined heath:
What groans! what shrieks! what quietness in death.
Good Little Girls
by William Schwenck Gilbert

Although of native maids the cream,
We're brought up on the English scheme -
The best of all
For great and small
Who modesty adore.
For English girls are good as gold,
Extremely modest (so we're told),
Demurely coy - divinely cold -
And we are that - and more.
To please papa, who argues thus -
All girls should mould themselves on us,
Because we are,
By furlongs far,
The best of all the bunch;
We show ourselves to loud applause
From ten to four without a pause -
Which is an awkward time because
It cuts into our lunch.
Oh, maids of high and low degree,
Whose social code is rather free,
Please look at us and you will see
What good young ladies ought to be!
And as we stand, like clockwork toys,
A lecturer papa employs
To puff and praise
Our modest ways
And guileless character -
Our well-known blush - our downcast eyes -
Our famous look of mild surprise
(Which competition still defies) -
Our celebrated "Sir!!!"
Then all the crowd take down our looks
In pocket memorandum books.
To diagnose,
Our modest pose
The kodaks do their best:
If evidence you would possess
Of what is maiden bashfulness,
You only need a button press -
And WE do all the rest.
The Dead Master
by John McCrae

Amid earth's vagrant noises, he caught the note sublime:
To-day around him surges from the silences of Time
A flood of nobler music, like a river deep and broad,
Fit song for heroes gathered in the banquet-hall of God.
Solomon Ben Judah Gabirol (Died Between 1070-80.) (Translations From The Hebrew Poets Of Medaeval Spain.)
by Emma Lazarus

"Am I sipping the honey of the lips?
Am I drunk with the wine of a kiss?
Have I culled the flowers of the cheek,
Have I sucked the fresh fragrance of the breath?
Nay, it is the Song of Gabirol that has revived me,
The perfume of his youthful, spring-tide breeze."
- MOSES BEN ESRA.
"I will engrave my songs indelibly upon the heart of
the world, so that no one can efface them."
- GABIROL.
In The Beech Woods
by Madison Julius Cawein

Amber and emerald, cairngorm and chrysoprase,
Stream through the autumn woods, scatter the beech-wood ways:
Ways where the wahoo-bush brightens with scarlet;
And where the aster-stalk lifts its last starlet.
Ways where the brier burns; poplars drop, one by one,
Leaves that seem beaten gold, each like a splash of sun:
'Round which the beeches rise, tree upon golden tree,
That, with each wind that blows, sound like a summer sea.
Ways where the papaw leans, great-leaved and beryl-green,
Like some grand forester one in Romance hath seen;
And like some Indian queen, sung of in story,
Flaming the gum-tree stands, crowned with its glory.
Ways where the bittersweet, cleaving its pods of gold,
Brightens the brake with flame, torches the dingle old:
And where the dogwood too crimsons with ruby seeds;
Spicewood and buckbush bend ruddy with rosy beads.
These are the woods of gold; forests our childhood knew,
Where the Enchanted dwelt, she with the eyes of blue;
She of the raven locks, and of the lovely looks,
She who oft gazed at us out of the Story Books.
And with that Prince again, striding his snowwhite steed,
To her deliverance through the gold wood we speed;
On through the wood of flame to the Dark Tower,
Where like a light she gleams high in her bower.
Kin To Sorrow
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Am I kin to Sorrow,
That so oft
Falls the knocker of my door--
Neither loud nor soft,
But as long accustomed,
Under Sorrow's hand?
Marigolds around the step
And rosemary stand,
And then comes Sorrow--
And what does Sorrow care
For the rosemary
Or the marigolds there?
Am I kin to Sorrow?
Are we kin?
That so oft upon my door--
*Oh, come in*!
The Fish
by William Butler Yeats

Although you hide in the ebb and flow
Of the pale tide when the moon has set,
The people of coming days will know
About the casting out of my net,
And how you have leaped times out of mind
Over the little silver cords,
And think that you were hard and unkind,
And blame you with many bitter words.
From My Arm-Chair
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

TO THE CHILDREN OF CAMBRIDGE
Who presented to me on my Seventy-second Birth-day, February 27, 1879, this Chair, made from the Wood of the Village Blacksmith's Chestnut Tree.
Am I a king, that I should call my own
This splendid ebon throne?
Or by what reason, or what right divine,
Can I proclaim it mine?
Only, perhaps, by right divine of song
It may to me belong;
Only because the spreading chestnut tree
Of old was sung by me.
Well I remember it in all its prime,
When in the summer-time
The affluent foliage of its branches made
A cavern of cool shade.
There, by the blacksmith's forge, beside the street,
Its blossoms white and sweet
Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,
And murmured like a hive.
And when the winds of autumn, with a shout,
Tossed its great arms about,
The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,
Dropped to the ground beneath.
And now some fragments of its branches bare,
Shaped as a stately chair,
Have by my hearthstone found a home at last,
And whisper of the past.
The Danish king could not in all his pride
Repel the ocean tide,
But, seated in this chair, I can in rhyme
Roll back the tide of Time.
I see again, as one in vision sees,
The blossoms and the bees,
And hear the children's voices shout and call,
And the brown chestnuts fall.
I see the smithy with its fires aglow,
I hear the bellows blow,
And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat
The iron white with heat!
And thus, dear children, have ye made for me
This day a jubilee,
And to my more than three-score years and ten
Brought back my youth again.
The heart hath its own memory, like the mind,
And in it are enshrined
The precious keepsakes, into which is wrought
The giver's loving thought.
Only your love and your remembrance could
Give life to this dead wood,
And make these branches, leafless now so long,
Blossom again in song.
Am I with you, or you with me?
by Arthur Hugh Clough

Am I with you, or you with me?
Or in some blessed place above,
Where neither lands divide nor sea,
Are we united in our love?
Oft while in longing here I lie,
That wasting ever still endures;
My soul out from me seems to fly,
And half-way, somewhere, meet with yours.
Somewhere, but where I cannot guess,
Beyond, may be, the bound of space,
The liberated spirits press
And meet, bless heaven, and embrace.
It seems not either here nor there,
Somewhere between us up above,
A region of a clearer air,
The dwelling of a purer love.
A Fish Answers
by James Henry Leigh Hunt

Amazing monster! that, for aught I know,
With the first sight of thee didst make our race
For ever stare! O flat and shocking face,
Grimly divided from the breast below!
Thou that on dry land horribly dost go
With a split body and most ridiculous pace,
Prong after prong, disgracer of all grace,
Long-useless-finned, haired, upright, unwet, slow!
O breather of unbreathable, sword-sharp air,
How canst exist? How bear thyself, thou dry
And dreary sloth? What particle canst share
Of the only blessed life, the watery?
I sometimes see of ye an actual pair
Go by! linked fin by fin! most odiously.
Always At Sea
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Always at sea I think about the dead.
On barques invisible they seem to sail
The self-same course; and from the decks cry 'Hail'!
Then I recall old words that they have said,
And see their faces etched upon the mist - 
Dear faces I have kissed.
Always the dead seem very close at sea.
The coarse vibrations of the earth debar
Our spirit friends from coming where we are.
But through God's ether, unimpeded, free,
They wing their way, the ocean deeps above - 
And find the hearts that love.
Always at sea my dead come very near.
A growing host; some old in spirit lore,
And some who crossed to find the other shore
But yesterday.    All, all, I see and hear
With inner senses, while the voice of faith
Proclaims - there is no death.
Picture Of Daniel In The Lion's Den At Hamilton Palace
by William Wordsworth

Amid a fertile region green with wood
And fresh with rivers, well doth it become
The Ducal Owner, in his Palace-home
To naturalise this tawny Lion brood;
Children of Art, that claim strange brotherhood,
Couched in their Den, with those that roam at large
Over the burning wilderness, and charge
The wind with terror while they roar for food.
But these are satiate, and a stillness drear
Calls into life a more enduring fear;
Yet is the Prophet calm, nor would the cave
Daunt him, if his Companions, now bedrowsed
Yawning and listless, were by hunger roused:
Man placed him here, and God, he knows, can save.
Song Of The Afternoon
by Charles Baudelaire

Although your wayward brows
Give you a curious air
Angelic not at all,
Witch of the tempting stare,
I love you with a passion
Terrible and odd,
With the obeisance
Of priest to golden god.
The desert and the woods
Embalm your heavy hair;
Your head takes attitudes
Mysterious and rare.
A censer's faint perfume
Prowls along your skin;
You charm as evening charms,
Warm and shadowy Nymph.
Ah! strongest potions stir me
Less than your idleness,
And you can make the dead
Revive with your caress!
Your hips are amorous
Of back and breasts and thighs,
And ravished by your pose
Are cushions where you lie.
Sometimes to appease
A rage that comes in fits,
Serious one, you squander
Bites within the kiss;
You wound me, my brunette,
With ever-mocking smile,
Then sweetly, like the moon,
Gaze on my heart a while.
Under your satin shoes,
Your charming silken feet,
I place myself, my joy,
My genius and my fate,
My soul, mended by you,
By you, color and light,
Explosion of heat
In my Siberian night!
Am Rhein. - No. II. Im Kahn
by Charles G. Leland

'Were diu werlt alle min,
Von deme mere unze an den Rin.
Des wolt ih mih darben,
Daz diu dame von Engellant
Lege an minen armen.'
- Carmina Burana.
Am Rhein! Acain am Rheine!
In boat oopon der Rhein!
De castle-bergs soft goldnen
Im Abendsonnenschein,
Mit lots of Rudesheimer,
Und saitenklang und sang,
Und laties singin lieder,
Ash ve go sailin 'long.
Und von fair Englisch dame
Vas dere, so wunderscheen;
Vene'er der Breitmann saw her,
Id made his heartsen pain.
Oh, dose long-tailed veilchen Augen,
Vitch voke soosh hopes und fears,
Deir shape vas nod like almonds,
Boot more like fallin tears.
Und shpecdagles were o'er dem,
De glass of pince-nez kind,
In mercy to de beoples,
Less dey pe shdrucken blind.
Und gazin in dem glasses,
Reflected he pehold
De Rhine, mit all de shdeam-poats,
Und crags in Sonnengold.
De signs upon de bier-haus;
De gals a-washin close;
De wein-garts on de moundain,
Like heafenly shdairs in rows:
De banks, basaltic-paven,
Like bee-hife cells to view;
A donkey shtandin on dem,
Likevise her lofer too.
All dis oopon dos glasses
Vas blainly to pe seen;
One saw whate'er vas nodiced,
Py de sch'ne Engl'ndrinn.
Boot oh! de fery lofe-most
Of all dat lofe-most pe
Her own plue veilchen Augen'
Herself she couldt not see.
So ist es in dis Leben;
For beaudy oft we spied,
Nor know de cratest peaudy
Ish in our soul inside.
Mein Gott! Vot himmlisch shplendor
Vas seen mitout an toubt,
If some crate bower supernal
Vas toorn oos insite out!
Und gazin long on Natur,
Und gazin long on Man,
Shdill all dings glite vor'ber,
Ash since de vorldt pegan:
Ash in dat laity's glasses,
Ve see dem bassin py;
Yet veel a soul beneat' dem,
A schweet eternal eye.
O sch'ne Englisch maiden
Mit honey-colored hair,
Dat flows ash if a beinen korb
Had got oopsettet dere'
Und all de schweetness of your soul
Vas dripplin from your brain!
Oh shall I efer meet mit dir
Oopon dis eart' acain?
O Englisch engel maiden!
O schveet betaubend dofe!
O Rheinwein und cigarren!
O luncheon, mixed mit lofe!
O Drachenfels und Nonnenwerth!
O Liebeslust und pein!
Dus ents de second chapterlet
Of Breitmann on der Rhein.
The Lamentation Of The Old Pensioner
by William Butler Yeats

Although I shelter from the rain
Under a broken tree,
My chair was nearest to the fire
In every company
That talked of love or politics,
Ere Time transfigured me.
Though lads are making pikes again
For some conspiracy,
And crazy rascals rage their fill
At human tyranny,
My contemplations are of Time
That has transfigured me.
There's not a woman turns her face
Upon a broken tree,
And yet the beauties that I loved
Are in my memory;
I spit into the face of Time
That has transfigured me.
I Shall Forget
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

Although my life, which thou hast scarred and shaken,
Retains awhile some influence of thee,
As shells, by faithless waves long since forsaken,
Still murmur with the music of the Sea,
I shall forget.    Not thine the haunting beauty,
Which, once beheld, for ever holds the heart,
Or, if resigned from stress of Fate or Duty,
Takes part of life away: - the dearer part.
I gave thee love; thou gavest but Desire.
Ah, the delusion of that summer night!
Thy soul vibrated at the rate of Fire;
Mine, with the rhythm of the waves of Light.
It is my love for thee that I regret,
Not thee, thyself, and hence, - I shall forget!