DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
An Afternoon Soliloquy.
by Thomas Runciman

How good some years of life may be!
Ah, once it was not guessed by me,
Past years would shine, like some bright sea,
In golden dusks of memory.
Ere then the music of the dawn
From me had long since surged away;
And in the disillusioned day
Of chill mid-life I plodded on.
Anon a fuller music thrilled
My world with meaning undertones,
That elegized our vanished ones,
And told how Lethe's banks are filled
With wordless calm, and wistful rest,
And sweet large silence, solemn sleep,
And brooding shadows cool and deep,
And grand oblivions, undistressed.
No more 'twas "Lethe rolling doom,"
But Lethe calling, "Come to me,
And wash away all memory
And taint of what precedes the tomb;
And know the changeless afterthought,
Half guessed, half named from age to age,
Wherein I quench the flame and rage
And sorrow with which life is fraught."
To Laura In Death. Sonnet XXII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Come va 'l mondo! or mi diletta e piace.
HE BLESSES LAURA FOR HER VIRTUE.
How goes the world! now please me and delight
What most displeased me: now I see and feel
My trials were vouchsafed me for my weal,
That peace eternal should brief war requite.
O hopes and wishes, ever fond and slight,
In lovers most, which oftener harm than heal!
Worse had she yielded to my warm appeal
Whom Heaven has welcomed from the grave's dark night.
But blind love and my dull mind so misled,
I sought to trespass even by main force
Where to have won my precious soul were dead.
Bless'd be she who shaped mine erring course
To better port, by turns who curb'd and lured
My bold and passionate will where safety was secured.
MACGREGOR.
Alas! this changing world! my present joy
Was once my grief's dark source, and now I feel
My sufferings pass'd were but my soul to heal
Its fearful warfare--peace's soft decoy.
Poor human wishes! Hope, thou fragile toy
To lovers oft! my woe had met its seal,
Had she but hearken'd to my love's appeal,
Who, throned in heaven, hath fled this world's alloy.
My blinded love, and yet more stubborn mind,
Resistless urged me to my bosom's shame,
And where my soul's destruction I had met:
But bless'd she who bade life's current find
A holier course, who still'd my spirit's flame
With gentle hope that soul might triumph yet.
WOLLASTON.
Mangroves
by Paul Cameron Brown

How do you survive
in the mangrove swamps - 
amid the twitchings of foetid water
& lice thick as baby tears?
How, with all the wallow of thick muck
making suction noises and the teams in
relays
searching nightly with baited hounds,
do you pull free?
Your bamboo pole knows every ploy
but a slender craft ill-equipped
to sparring blows from every quarter
the undergrowth necessitates.
The closeness of the clammy night
heaved about like so much rotting
fruit will draw
the ants ... devouring like that
abundance of cold yellow eye - 
the firefly swarms that mock your
heavy steel machete arm.
Across the drift of darkness
and the insect life
you bat in swarms,
the ultimate danger is not in the
cayman giant
or his reptilian cousin named of
copper wire,
the anaconda, or even mindless holes,
thick black
ooze that throttles a victim ... but
two legged form coming,
searching ... a spectre on hind quarters
with a bolo knife stepping
free of that beaded circle, the inner
camp.
The House Of Moss
by Madison Julius Cawein

(Built by a Child in a deep Forest.)
How fancy romped and played here,
Building this house of moss!
A faery house, the shade here
And sunlight gleam across;
And how it danced and swayed here,
A child with locks atoss!
I pause to gaze and ponder;
And, whisk! I seem to know
How, in that house and under,
The starry elf-lamps glow,
And pixy dances sunder
The hush when night falls slow.
Oh, that a witch had willed it
That those child-dreams come true!
With which the child-heart filled it
While 'neath glad hands it grew,
And, dim, amort, it builded
Far better than it knew.
For Middleage, that wandered
And found it hidden here,
And, pausing, gazed and pondered
Knowing a mystery near
A dream, its childhood squandered,
Or lost, gone many a year.
Had not Time so distorted
My vision, haply I
Had also viewed, wild-hearted,
Dreams which that child drew nigh,
And to the world imparted
Strange news none dare deny.
Loneliness
by John Frederick Freeman

How green and strange the light is,
Creeping through the window.
Lying alone in bed,
How strange the night is!
How still and chill the air is.
It seems no sound could live
Here in my room
That now so bare is.
All bright and still the room is,
But easeless here am I.
Deep in my heart
Cold lonely gloom is!
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part II. - XXXIV - Latimer And Ridley
by William Wordsworth

How fast the Marian death-list is unrolled!
See Latimer and Ridley in the might
Of Faith stand coupled for a common flight!
One (like those prophets whom God sent of old)
Transfigured, from this kindling hath foretold
A torch of inextinguishable light;
The Other gains a confidence as bold;
And thus they foil their enemy's despite.
The penal instruments, the shows of crime,
Are glorified while this once-mitred pair
Of saintly Friends the "murtherer's chain partake,
Corded, and burning at the social stake:"
Earth never witnessed object more sublime
In constancy, in fellowship more fair!
The Sonnets L - How heavy do I journey on the way
by William Shakespeare

How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek, my weary travel's end,
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!'
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider lov'd not speed, being made from thee:
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
For that same groan doth put this in my mind,
My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.
Song - Eternity Of Love Protested
by Thomas Carew

How ill doth he deserve a lover's name,
Whose pale weak flame
Cannot retain
His heat, in spite of absence or disdain;
But doth at once, like paper set on fire,
Burn and expire;
True love can never change his seat,
Nor did her ever love, that could retreat.
That noble flame which my breast keeps alive
Shall still survive
When my soul's fled;
Nor shall my love die when my body's dead,
That shall wait on me to the lower shade,
And never fade;
My very ashes in their urn
Shall, like a hallow'd lamp, forever burn.
How Long And Dreary Is The Night.
by Robert Burns

To a Gaelic air.
I.
How long and dreary is the night
When I am frae my dearie!
I sleepless lie frae e'en to morn,
Tho' I were ne'er sae weary.
I sleepless lie frae e'en to morn,
Tho' I were ne'er sae weary.
II.
When I think on the happy days
I spent wi' you, my dearie,
And now what lands between us lie,
How can I but be eerie!
And now what lands between us lie,
How can I be but eerie!
III.
How slow ye move, ye heavy hours,
As ye were wae and weary!
It was na sae ye glinted by,
When I was wi' my dearie.
It was na sae ye glinted by,
When I was wi' my dearie.
The Snake That Dances
by Charles Baudelaire

How I love to watch, dear indolence,
like a bright shimmer,
of fabric, the skin of your elegant
body glimmer!
Over the bitter-tasting perfume,
the depths of your hair,
odorous, restless spume,
blue, and brown, waves, there,
like a vessel that stirs, awake
when dawn winds rise,
my dreaming soul sets sail
for those distant skies.
Your eyes where nothing's revealed
either acrid or sweet,
are two cold jewels where steel
and gold both meet.
Seeing your rhythmic advance,
your fine abandon,
one might speak of a snake that danced
at the end of the branch it's on.
Under its burden of languidness,
your head's child-like slant,
rocks with weak listlessness
like a young elephant's,
and your body heels and stretches
like some trim vessel
that rocking from side to side, plunges
its yards in the swell.
As when the groaning glacier's thaw
fills the flowing stream,
so when your mouth's juices pour
to the tip of your teeth,
I fancy I'm drinking overpowering, bitter,
Bohemian wine,
that over my heart will scatter
its stars, a liquid sky!
Unanswered
by Madison Julius Cawein

How long ago it is since we went Maying!
Since she and I went Maying long ago! - 
The years have left my forehead lined, I know,
Have thinned my hair around the temples graying.
Ah, time will change us: yea, I hear it saying - 
"She too grows old: the face of rose and snow
Has lost its freshness: in the hair's brown glow
Some strands of silver sadly, too, are straying.
The form you knew, whose beauty so enspelled,
Has lost the litheness of its loveliness:
And all the gladness that her blue eyes held
Tears and the world have hardened with distress." - 
"True! true!" I answer, "O ye years that part!
These things are chaned - but is her heart, her heart?"
How Lightly Mounts The Muse'S Wing. (Air--Anonymous.)
by Thomas Moore

How lightly mounts the Muse's wing,
Whose theme is in the skies--
Like morning larks that sweeter sing
The nearer Heaven they rise,
Tho' love his magic lyre may tune,
Yet ah, the flowers he round it wreathes,
Were plucked beneath pale Passion's moon,
Whose madness in their ode breathes.
How purer far the sacred lute,
Round which Devotion ties
Sweet flowers that turn to heavenly fruit,
And palm that never dies.
Tho' War's high-sounding harp may be.,
Most welcome to the hero's ears,
Alas, his chords of victory
Are wet, all o'er, with human tears.
How far more sweet their numbers run,
Who hymn like Saints above,
No victor but the Eternal One,
No trophies but of Love!
How Lang And Dreary Is The Night.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "Cauld Kail in Aberdeen."
I.
How lang and dreary is the night,
When I am frae my dearie;
I restless lie frae e'en to morn,
Though I were ne'er sae weary.
For oh! her lanely nights are lang;
And oh! her dreams are eerie;
And oh, her widow'd heart is sair,
That's absent frae her dearie.
II.
When I think on the lightsome days
I spent wi' thee my dearie;
And now what seas between us roar - 
How can I be but eerie?
III.
How slow ye move, ye heavy hours;
The joyless day how dreary!
It was na sae ye glinted by,
When I was wi' my dearie.
For oh! her lanely nights are lang;
And oh, her dreams are eerie;
And oh, her widow'd heart is sair,
That's absent frae her dearie.
Odes Of Anacreon - Ode XXXIX.
by Thomas Moore

How I love the festive boy,
Tripping through the dance of joy!
How I love the mellow sage,
Smiling through the veil of age!
And whene'er this man of years
In the dance of joy appears,
Snows may o'er his head be flung,
But his heart--his heart is young.
The Collector Cleans His Picture
by Thomas Hardy

Fili hominis, ecce ego tollo a te desiderabile oculorum tuorom in plaga. EZECH. xxiv. 16.
How I remember cleaning that strange picture!
I had been deep in duty for my sick neighbour -
His besides my own over several Sundays,
Often, too, in the week; so with parish pressures,
Baptisms, burials, doctorings, conjugal counsel -
All the whatnots asked of a rural parson -
Faith, I was well-nigh broken, should have been fully
Saving for one small secret relaxation,
One that in mounting manhood had grown my hobby.
This was to delve at whiles for easel-lumber,
Stowed in the backmost slums of a soon-reached city,
Merely on chance to uncloak some worthy canvas,
Panel, or plaque, blacked blind by uncouth adventure,
Yet under all concealing a precious art-feat.
Such I had found not yet. My latest capture
Came from the rooms of a trader in ancient house-gear
Who had no scent of beauty or soul for brushcraft.
Only a tittle cost it murked with grime-films,
Gatherings of slow years, thick-varnished over,
Never a feature manifest of man's painting.
So, one Saturday, time ticking hard on midnight
Ere an hour subserved, I set me upon it.
Long with coiled-up sleeves I cleaned and yet cleaned,
Till a first fresh spot, a high light, looked forth,
Then another, like fair flesh, and another;
Then a curve, a nostril, and next a finger,
Tapering, shapely, significantly pointing slantwise.
"Flemish?" I said. "Nay, Spanish . . . But, nay, Italian!"
- Then meseemed it the guise of the ranker Venus,
Named of some Astarte, of some Cotytto.
Down I knelt before it and kissed the panel,
Drunk with the lure of love's inhibited dreamings.
Till the dawn I rubbed, when there gazed up at me
A hag, that had slowly emerged from under my hands there,
Pointing the slanted finger towards a bosom
Eaten away of a rot from the lusts of a lifetime . . .
- I could have ended myself in heart-shook horror.
Stunned I sat till roused by a clear-voiced bell-chime,
Fresh and sweet as the dew-fleece under my luthern.
It was the matin service calling to me
From the adjacent steeple.
Content And Happiness
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

How is it that men pray their earthly lot
May be 'content and happiness'?    Dire foes
Without one common trait which kinship shows
I hold these two.    Contentment comes when sought,
While Happiness pursued was never caught.
But, sudden, storms the heart with mighty throes
Whenceforth, mild eyed Content affrighted goes,
To seek some calmer heart, less danger fraught.
Bold Happiness knows but one rival -Fear;
Who follows ever on his footsteps, sent
By jealous Fate who calls great joy a crime.
While in far ways 'mong leaves just turning sere,
With gaze serene and placid, walks Content.
No heart ere held these two guests at one time.
Brothers
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

How lovely the elder brother's
Life all laced in the other's,
L've-laced! what once I well
Witnessed; so fortune fell.
When Shrovetide, two years gone,
Our boys' plays brought on
Part was picked for John,
Young J'hn: then fear, then joy
Ran revel in the elder boy.
Their night was come now; all
Our company thronged the hall;
Henry, by the wall,
Beckoned me beside him:
I came where called, and eyed him
By meanwhiles; making m' play
Turn most on tender byplay.
For, wrung all on love's rack,
My lad, and lost in Jack,
Smiled, blushed, and bit his lip;
Or drove, with a diver's dip,
Clutched hands down through clasped knees - 
Truth's tokens tricks like these,
Old telltales, with what stress
He hung on the imp's success.
Now the other was br'ss-b'ld:
H' had no work to hold
His heart up at the strain;
Nay, roguish ran the vein.
Two tedious acts were past;
Jack's call and cue at last;
When Henry, heart-forsook,
Dropped eyes and dared not look.
Eh, how 'll r'ng!
Young dog, he did give tongue!
But Harry - in his hands he has flung
His tear-tricked cheeks of flame
For fond love and for shame.
Ah Nature, framed in fault,
There 's comfort then, there 's salt;
Nature, bad, base, and blind,
Dearly thou canst be kind;
There dearly th'n, de'rly,
I'll cry thou canst be kind.
Of Love: A Sonnet
by Robert Herrick

How Love came in, I do not know,
Whether by th'eye, or ear, or no;
Or whether with the soul it came,
At first, infused with the same;
Whether in part 'tis here or there,
Or, like the soul, whole every where.
This troubles me; but I as well
As any other, this can tell;
That when from hence she does depart,
The outlet then is from the heart.
The Fly
by Walter De La Mare

How large unto the tiny fly
Must little things appear! - 
A rosebud like a feather bed,
Its prickle like a spear;
A dewdrop like a looking-glass,
A hair like golden wire;
The smallest grain of mustard-seed
As fierce as coals of fire;
A loaf of bread, a lofty hill;
A wasp, a cruel leopard;
And specks of salt as bright to see
As lambkins to a shepherd.
Unanswered.
by Madison Julius Cawein

How long ago it is since we went Maying!
Since she and I went Maying long ago!
The years have left my forehead lined, I know,
Have thinned my hair around the temples graying.
Ah, time will change us; yea, I hear it saying,
"She, too, grows old: the face of rose and snow
Has lost its freshness: in the hair's brown glow
Some strands of silver sadly, too, are straying.
The form you knew, whose beauty so enspelled,
Has lost the litheness of its loveliness:
And all the gladness that her blue eyes held
Tears and the world have hardened with distress."
"True! true!" I answer,"O ye years that part!
These things are changed, but is her heart, her heart?"
A Child's Thanks
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

How low soe'er men rank us,
How high soe'er we win,
The children far above us
Dwell, and they deign to love us,
With lovelier love than ours,
And smiles more sweet than flowers;
As though the sun should thank us
For letting light come in.
With too divine complaisance,
Whose grace misleads them thus,
Being gods, in heavenly blindness
They call our worship kindness,
Our pebble-gift a gem:
They think us good to them,
Whose glance, whose breath, whose presence,
Are gifts too good for us.
The poet high and hoary
Of meres that mountains bind
Felt his great heart more often
Yearn, and its proud strength soften
From stern to tenderer mood,
At thought of gratitude
Shown than of song or story
He heard of hearts unkind.
But with what words for token
And what adoring tears
Of reverence risen to passion,
In what glad prostrate fashion
Of spirit and soul subdued,
May man show gratitude
For thanks of children spoken
That hover in his ears?
The angels laugh, your brothers,
Child, hearing you thank me,
With eyes whence night grows sunny,
And touch of lips like honey,
And words like honey-dew:
But how shall I thank you?
For gifts above all others
What guerdon-gift may be?
What wealth of words caressing,
What choice of songs found best,
Would seem not as derision,
Found vain beside the vision
And glory from above
Shown in a child's heart's love?
His part in life is blessing;
Ours, only to be blest.
How Long?
by Emma Lazarus

How long, and yet how long,
Our leaders will we hail from over seas,
Master and kings from feudal monarchies,
And mock their ancient song
With echoes weak of foreign melodies?
That distant isle mist-wreathed,
Mantled in unimaginable green,
Too long hath been our mistress and our queen.
Our fathers have bequeathed
Too deep a love for her, our hearts within.
She made the whole world ring
With the brave exploits of her children strong,
And with the matchless music of her song.
Too late, too late we cling
To alien legends, and their strains prolong.
This fresh young world I see,
With heroes, cities, legends of her own;
With a new race of men, and overblown
By winds from sea to sea,
Decked with the majesty of every zone.
I see the glittering tops
Of snow-peaked mounts, the wid'ning vale's expanse,
Large prairies where free herds of horses prance,
Exhaustless wealth of crops,
In vast, magnificent extravagance.
These grand, exuberant plains,
These stately rivers, each with many a mouth,
The exquisite beauty of the soft-aired south,
The boundless seas of grains,
Luxuriant forests' lush and splendid growth.
The distant siren-song
Of the green island in the eastern sea,
Is not the lay for this new chivalry.
It is not free and strong
To chant on prairies 'neath this brilliant sky.
The echo faints and fails;
It suiteth not, upon this western plain,
Out voice or spirit; we should stir again
The wilderness, and make the vales
Resound unto a yet unheard-of strain.
Extract From "A New England Legend"
by John Greenleaf Whittier

How has New England's romance fled,
Even as a vision of the morning!
Its rites foredone, its guardians dead,
Its priestesses, bereft of dread,
Waking the veriest urchin's scorning!
Gone like the Indian wizard's yell
And fire-dance round the magic rock,
Forgotten like the Druid's spell
At moonrise by his holy oak!
No more along the shadowy glen
Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men;
No more the unquiet churchyard dead
Glimpse upward from their turfy bed,
Startling the traveller, late and lone;
As, on some night of starless weather,
They silently commune together,
Each sitting on his own head-stone
The roofless house, decayed, deserted,
Its living tenants all departed,
No longer rings with midnight revel
Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil;
No pale blue flame sends out its flashes
Through creviced roof and shattered sashes!
The witch-grass round the hazel spring
May sharply to the night-air sing,
But there no more shall withered hags
Refresh at ease their broomstick nags,
Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters
As beverage meet for Satan's daughters;
No more their mimic tones be heard,
The mew of cat, the chirp of bird,
Shrill blending with the hoarser laughter
Of the fell demon following after!
The cautious goodman nails no more
A horseshoe on his outer door,
Lest some unseemly hag should fit
To his own mouth her bridle-bit;
The goodwife's churn no more refuses
Its wonted culinary uses
Until, with heated needle burned,
The witch has to her place returned!
Our witches are no longer old
And wrinkled beldames, Satan-sold,
But young and gay and laughing creatures,
With the heart's sunshine on their features;
Their sorcery, the light which dances
Where the raised lid unveils its glances;
Or that low-breathed and gentle tone,
The music of Love's twilight hours,
Soft, dream-like, as a fairy's moan
Above her nightly closing flowers,
Sweeter than that which sighed of yore
Along the charmed Ausonian shore!
Even she, our own weird heroine,
Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn,'
Sleeps calmly where the living laid her;
And the wide realm of sorcery,
Left by its latest mistress free,
Hath found no gray and skilled invader.
So perished Albion's "glammarye,"
With him in Melrose Abbey sleeping,
His charmed torch beside his knee,
That even the dead himself might see
The magic scroll within his keeping.
And now our modern Yankee sees
Nor omens, spells, nor mysteries;
And naught above, below, around,
Of life or death, of sight or sound,
Whate'er its nature, form, or look,
Excites his terror or surprise,
All seeming to his knowing eyes
Familiar as his "catechise,"
Or "Webster's Spelling-Book.
November
by Virna Sheard

How like a hooded friar, bent and grey,
Whose pensive lips speak only when they pray
Doth sad November pass upon his way.
Through forest aisles while the wind chanteth low - 
In God's cathedral where the great trees grow,
Now all day long he paceth to and fro.
When shadows gather and the night-mists rise,
Up to the hills he lifts his sombre eyes
To where the last red rose of sunset lies.
A little smile he weareth, wise and cold,
The smile of one to whom all things are old,
And life is weary, as a tale twice told.
"Come see," he seems to say - "where joy has fled - 
The leaves that burned but yesterday so red
Have turned to ashes - and the flowers are dead.
"The summer's green and gold hath taken flight,
October days have gone. Now bleached and white
Winter doth come with many a lonely night.
"And though the people will not heed or stay,
But pass with careless laughter on their way,
Even I, with rain of tears, will wait and pray."