DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Song.
by Thomas Runciman

My love's unchanged - though time, alas!
Turns silver-gilt the golden mass
Of flowing hair, and pales, I wis,
The rose that deepened with that kiss - 
The first - before our marriage was.
And though the fields of corn and grass,
So radiant then, as summers pass
Lose something of their look of bliss,
My love's unchanged.
Our tiny girl's a sturdy lass;
Our boy's shrill pipe descends to bass;
New friends appear, the old we miss;
My Love grows old ... in spite of this
My love's unchanged.
Mary.
by John Hartley

My Mary's as sweet as the flowers that grow,
By the side of the brooklet that runs near her cot;
Her brow is as fair as the fresh fallen snow,
And the gleam of her smile can be never forgot.
Her figure is lithe and as graceful I ween
As was Venus when Paris awarded the prize,
She's the wiles of a fairy, - the step of a queen,
And the light of true love's in her bonny brown eyes.
To see was to love her, - to love was to mourn, - 
For her heart was as fickle as April days
When you'd given her all and asked some return,
You got but a taste of her false winsome ways.
You never could tell, though you knew her so well,
That her sweet fascinations were nothing but lies,
Like a fool you loved on when of hope there was none
And your heart sought relief in her bonny brown eyes.
Yet 'tis sad to relate, though unhappy my fate,
I would sacrifice all that on earth I hold dear,
If she would but consent to be true, and content,
With the heart that is faithful when distant or near.
Through pleasure and pain we together again,
May never commingle our smiles and our sighs,
But when sleeping or waking, I struggle in vain,
To forget the sweet maid with the bonny brown eyes.
Oh, Mary, my love! with the coo of the dove,
I would woo thee to win thee, and ever to live,
Where thy bright loving face and thy figure of grace,
Could surround me with joys that none other can give.
Oh, say but a word, and I'll fly like a bird,
To the one whom my heart will beat for till it dies,
Bid me come to my home, bid me come, bid me come,
And bask in the light of thy bonny brown eyes.
To His Lute
by William Henry Drummond

My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow
With thy green mother in some shady grove,
When immelodious winds but made thee move,
And birds their ramage did on thee bestow.
Since that dear Voice which did thy sounds approve,
Which wont in such harmonious strains to flow,
Is reft from Earth to tune those spheres above,
What art thou but a harbinger of woe?
Thy pleasing notes be pleasing notes no more,
But orphans' wailings to the fainting ear;
Each stroke a sigh, each sound draws forth a tear;
For which be silent as in woods before:
Or if that any hand to touch thee deign,
Like widowed turtle, still her loss complain.
The Third Of February, 1852
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

My Lords, we heard you speak: you told us all
That England's honest censure went too far,
That our free press should cease to brawl,
Not sting the fiery Frenchman into war.
It was our ancient privilege, my Lords,
To fling whate'er we felt, not fearing, into words.
We love not this French God, the child of hell,
Wild War, who breaks the converse of the wise;
But though we love kind Peace so well,
We dare not even by silence sanction lies.
It might be safe our censures to withdraw,
And yet, my Lords, not well; there is a higher law.
As long as we remain, we must speak free,
Tho' all the storm of Eurpoe on us break.
No little German state are we,
But the one voice in Europe; we must speak,
That if to-night our greatness were struck dead,
There might be left some record of the things we said.
If you be fearful, then must we be bold.
Our Britain cannot salve a tyrant o'er.
Better the waste Atlantic roll'd
On her and us and ours for evermore.
What? have we fought for Freedom from our prime,
At last to dodge and palter with a public crime?
Shall we fear him? our own we never fear'd.
From our first Charles by force we wrung our claims.
Prick'd by the Papal spur, we rear'd,
We flung the burthen of the second James.
I say, we never fear'd! and as for these,
We broke them on the land, we drove them on the seas.
And you, my Lords, you make the people muse
In doubt if you be of our Barons' breed'
Were those your sires who fought at Lewes?
Is this the manly strain of Runnymede?
O fallen nobility that, overawed,
Would lisp in honey'd whispers of this monstrous fraud!
We feel, at least, that silence here were sin,
Not ours the fault if we have feeble hosts'
If easy patrons of their kin
Have left the last free race with naked coasts!
They knew the precious things they had to guard;
For us, we will not spare the tyrant one hard word.
Tho' niggard throats of Manchester may bawl,
What England was, shall her true sons forget?
We are not cotton-spinners all,
But some love England and her honor yet.
And these in our Thermopyl' shall stand,
And hold against the world this honor of the land.
My Love She's But A Lassie Yet.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "Lady Bandinscoth's Reel."
I.
My love she's but a lassie yet,
My love she's but a lassie yet,
We'll let her stand a year or twa,
Shell no be half so saucy yet.
I rue the day I sought her, O;
I rue the day I sought her, O;
Wha gets her needs na say he's woo'd,
But he may say he's bought her, O!
II.
Come, draw a drap o' the best o't yet;
Come, draw a drap o' the best o't yet;
Gae seek for pleasure where ye will,
But here I never miss'd it yet.
We're a' dry wi' drinking o't;
We're a' dry wi' drinking o't;
The minister kiss'd the fiddler's wife,
An' could na preach for thinkin' o't.
Beauty's Wardrobe
by Richard Le Gallienne

My love said she had nought to wear;
Her garments all were old,
And soon her body must go bare
Against the winter's cold.
I took her out into the dawn,
And from the mountain's crest
Unwound long wreaths of misty lawn,
And wound them round her breast.
Then passed we to the maple grove,
Like a great hall of gold,
The yellow and the red we wove
In rustling flounce and fold.
"Now, love," said I, "go, do it on!
And I would have you note
No lovely lady dead and gone
Had such a petticoat."
Then span I out of milkweeds fine
Fair stockings soft and long,
And other things of quaint design
That unto maids belong.
And beads of amber and of pearl
About her neck I strung,
And in the bronze of her thick hair
The purple grape I hung. . . .
Then led her to a glassy spring,
And bade her look and see
If any girl in all the world
Had such fine clothes as she.
Preservation.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

My maiden she proved false to me;
To hate all joys I soon began,
Then to a flowing stream I ran, 
The stream ran past me hastily.
There stood I fix'd, in mute despair;
My head swam round as in a dream;
I well-nigh fell into the stream,
And earth seem'd with me whirling there.
Sudden I heard a voice that cried 
I had just turn'd my face from thence 
It was a voice to charm each sense:
"Beware, for deep is yonder tide!"
A thrill my blood pervaded now,
I look'd and saw a beauteous maid
I asked her name twas Kate, she said 
"Oh lovely Kate! how kind art thou!
"From death I have been sav'd by thee,
'Tis through thee only that I live;
Little 'twere life alone to give,
My joy in life then deign to be!"
And then I told my sorrows o'er,
Her eyes to earth she sweetly threw;
I kiss'd her, and she kiss'd me too,
And then I talked of death no more.
In Absence. (Moods Of Love.)
by George Parsons Lathrop

My love for thee is like a winged seed
Blown from the heart of thy rare beauty's flower,
And deftly guided by some breezy power
To fall and rest, where I should never heed,
In deepest caves of memory. There, indeed,
With virtue rife of many a sunny hoar, - 
Ev'n making cold neglect and darkness dower
Its roots with life, - swiftly it 'gan to breed,
Till now wide-branching tendrils it outspreads
Like circling arms, to prison its own prison,
Fretting the walls with blooms by myriads,
And blazoning in my brain full summer-season:
Thy face, whose dearness presence had not taught.
In absence multiplies, and fills all thought.
The Snake.
by Thomas Moore

My love and I, the other day,
Within a myrtle arbor lay,
When near us, from a rosy bed,
A little Snake put forth its head.
"See," said the maid with thoughtful eyes--
"Yonder the fatal emblem lies!
"Who could expect such hidden harm
"Beneath the rose's smiling charm?"
Never did grave remark occur
Less '-propos than this from her.
I rose to kill the snake, but she,
Half-smiling, prayed it might not be.
"No," said the maiden--and, alas,
Her eyes spoke volumes, while she said it--
"Long as the snake is in the grass,
"One may, perhaps, have cause to dread it:
"But, when its wicked eyes appear,
"And when we know for what they wink so,
"One must be very simple, dear,
"To let it wound one--don't you think so?"
The Jacobite Lass
by Violet Jacob

My love stood at the loanin' side
An' held me by the hand,
The bonniest lad that e'er did bide
In a' this waefu' land - 
There's but ae bonnier to be seen
Frae Pentland to the sea,
And for his sake but yestre'en
I sent my love frae me.
I gi'ed my love the white white rose
That's at my feyther's wa',
It is the bonniest flower that grows
Whaur ilka flower is braw;
There's but ae bonnier that I ken
Frae Perth unto the main,
An' that's the flower o' Scotland's men
That's fechtin' for his ain.
Gin I had kept whate'er was mine
As I hae gie'd my best,
My he'rt were licht by day, and syne
The nicht wad bring me rest;
There is nae heavier he'rt to find
Frae Forfar toon to Ayr,
As aye I sit me doon to mind
On him I see nae mair.
Lad, gin ye fa' by Chairlie's side
To rid this land o' shame,
There winna be a prooder bride
Than her ye left at hame,
But I will seek ye whaur ye sleep
Frae lawlands to the peat,
An ilka nicht at mirk I'll creep
To lay me at yer feet.
Faded Flowers.
by Juliana Horatia Ewing

My love she sent a flower to me
Of tender hue and fragrance rare,
And with it came across the sea
A letter kind as she was fair;
But when her letter met mine eyes,
The flower, the little flower, was dead:
And ere I touched the tender prize
The hues were dim, the fragrance fled.
I sent my love a letter too,
In happy hope no more to roam;
I bade her bless the vessel true
Whose gallant sails should waft me home.
But ere my letter reach'd her hand,
My love, my little love, was dead,
And when the vessel touch'd the land,
Fair hope for evermore had fled.
Penance
by John Alexander McCrae

My lover died a century ago,
Her dear heart stricken by my sland'rous breath,
Wherefore the Gods forbade that I should know
The peace of death.
Men pass my grave, and say, "'Twere well to sleep,
Like such an one, amid the uncaring dead!"
How should they know the vigils that I keep,
The tears I shed?
Upon the grave, I count with lifeless breath,
Each night, each year, the flowers that bloom and die,
Deeming the leaves, that fall to dreamless death,
More blest than I.
'Twas just last year -- I heard two lovers pass
So near, I caught the tender words he said:
To-night the rain-drenched breezes sway the grass
Above his head.
That night full envious of his life was I,
That youth and love should stand at his behest;
To-night, I envy him, that he should lie
At utter rest.
My Lover Asks Me
by Nizar Qabbani

My lover asks me:
"What is the difference between me and the sky?"
The difference, my love,
Is that when you laugh,
I forget about the sky.
S. Elizabeth's Leper
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

"My lord, there came unto the gate
One, in such pitiful estate,
So all forlorn and desolate,
Ill-fed, ill-clad, of ills compact;
A leper too,--his poor flesh wracked
And dead, his very bones infect;
Of all God's sons none so abject.
I could not, on the Lord's own day,
Turn such a stricken one away.
In pity him I took, and fed,
And happed him in our royal bed."
"A leper!--in our bed!--Nay then,
My Queen, thy charities do pass
The bounds of sense at times!    A bane
On such unwholesome tenderness!
Dost nothing owe to him who shares
Thy couch, and suffers by thy cares?
He could have slept upon the floor,
And left you still his creditor.
A leper!--in my bed!--God's truth!
Out upon such outrageous ruth!"
He strode in anger towards the bed,
And lo!--
The Christ, with thorn-crowned head,
Lay there in sweet sleep pillowed.
The Humble Petition Of Bruar Water To The Noble Duke Of Athole.
by Robert Burns

I.
My Lord, I know your noble ear
Woe ne'er assails in vain;
Embolden'd thus, I beg you'll hear
Your humble slave complain,
How saucy Phoebus' scorching beams
In flaming summer-pride,
Dry-withering, waste my foamy streams,
And drink my crystal tide.
II.
The lightly-jumpin' glowrin' trouts,
That thro' my waters play,
If, in their random, wanton spouts,
They near the margin stray;
If, hapless chance! they linger lang,
I'm scorching up so shallow,
They're left the whitening stanes amang,
In gasping death to wallow.
III.
Last day I grat wi' spite and teen,
As Poet Burns came by,
That to a bard I should be seen
Wi' half my channel dry:
A panegyric rhyme, I ween,
Even as I was he shor'd me;
But had I in my glory been,
He, kneeling, wad ador'd me.
IV.
Here, foaming down the shelvy rocks,
In twisting strength I rin;
There, high my boiling torrent smokes,
Wild-roaring o'er a linn:
Enjoying large each spring and well,
As Nature gave them me,
I am, altho' I say't mysel',
Worth gaun a mile to see.
V.
Would then my noble master please
To grant my highest wishes,
He'll shade my banks wi' tow'ring trees,
And bonnie spreading bushes.
Delighted doubly then, my Lord,
You'll wander on my banks,
And listen mony a grateful bird
Return you tuneful thanks.
VI.
The sober laverock, warbling wild,
Shall to the skies aspire;
The gowdspink, music's gayest child,
Shall sweetly join the choir:
The blackbird strong, the lintwhite clear,
The mavis mild and mellow;
The robin pensive autumn cheer,
In all her locks of yellow.
VII.
This, too, a covert shall insure
To shield them from the storm;
And coward maukin sleep secure,
Low in her grassy form:
Here shall the shepherd make his seat,
To weave his crown of flow'rs;
Or find a shelt'ring safe retreat
From prone-descending show'rs.
VIII.
And here, by sweet, endearing stealth,
Shall meet the loving pair,
Despising worlds with all their wealth
As empty idle care.
The flow'rs shall vie in all their charms
The hour of heav'n to grace,
And birks extend their fragrant arms
To screen the dear embrace.
IX.
Here haply too, at vernal dawn,
Some musing bard may stray,
And eye the smoking, dewy lawn,
And misty mountain gray;
Or, by the reaper's nightly beam,
Mild-chequering thro' the trees,
Rave to my darkly-dashing stream,
Hoarse-swelling on the breeze.
X.
Let lofty firs, and ashes cool,
My lowly banks o'erspread,
And view, deep-bending in the pool,
Their shadows' wat'ry bed!
Let fragrant birks in woodbines drest
My craggy cliffs adorn;
And, for the little songster's nest,
The close embow'ring thorn.
XI.
So may old Scotia's darling hope,
Your little angel band,
Spring, like their fathers, up to prop
Their honour'd native land!
So may thro' Albion's farthest ken,
To social-flowing glasses,
The grace be, "Athole's honest men,
And Athole's bonnie lasses?"
An Extempore Invitation To The Earl Of Oxford, Lord High Treasurer
by Matthew Prior

My Lord,
Our weekly friends to-morrow meet
At Matthew's palace in Duke-street,
To try for once if they can dine
On bacon-ham and mutton-chine.
If, wearied with the great affairs
Which Britain trusts to Harley's cares,
Thou, humble statesman, may'st descend
Thy mind one moment to unbend,
To see thy servant from his soul
Crown with thy health the sprightly bowl,
Among the guests, which e'er my house
Received it never can produce
Of honour a more glorious proof, 
Though Dorset used to bless the roof.
The Bride
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

My love looks like a girl to-night,
But she is old.
The plaits that lie along her pillow
Are not gold,
But threaded with filigree,
And uncanny cold.
She looks like a young maiden, since her brow
Is smooth and fair,
Her cheeks are very smooth, her eyes are closed,
She sleeps a rare
Still winsome sleep, so still, and so composed.
Nay, but she sleeps like a bride, and dreams her dreams
Of perfect things.
She lies at last, the darling, in the shape of her dream,
And her dead mouth sings
By its shape, like the thrushes in clear evenings.
Mary Bateman
by John Clare

My love she wears a cotton plaid,
A bonnet of the straw;
Her cheeks are leaves of roses spread,
Her lips are like the haw.
In truth she is as sweet a maid
As true love ever saw.
Her curls are ever in my eyes,
As nets by Cupid flung;
Her voice will oft my sleep surprise,
More sweet then ballad sung.
O Mary Bateman's curling hair!
I wake, and there is nothing there.
I wake, and fall asleep again,
The same delights in visions rise;
There's nothing can appear more plain
Than those rose cheeks and those bright eyes.
I wake again, and all alone
Sits Darkness on his ebon throne.
All silent runs the silver Trent,
The cobweb veils are all wet through,
A silver bead's on every bent,
On every leaf a bleb of dew.
I sighed, the moon it shone so clear;
Was Mary Bateman walking here?
To Be Read In The Morning And At Night
by Bertolt Brecht

My love
Has told me
That he needs me.
That's why
I take good care of myself
Watch out where I'm going and
Fear that any drop of rain
Might kill me.
A Love Song
by Theodosia Garrison

My love it should be silent, being deep--
And being very peaceful should be still--
Still as the utmost depths of ocean keep--
Serenely silent as some mighty hill.
Yet is my love so great it needs must fill
With very joy the inmost heart of me,
The joy of dancing branches on the hill,
The joy of leaping waves upon the sea.
If You Could Come
by Katharine Lee Bates

My love, my love, if you could come once more
From your high place,
I would not question you for heavenly lore,
But, silent, take the comfort of your face.
I would not ask you if those golden spheres
In love rejoice,
If only our stained star hath sin and tears,
But fill my famished hearing with your voice.
One touch of you were worth a thousand creeds.
My wound is numb
Through toil-pressed, but all night long it bleeds
In aching dreams, and still you cannot come.
Three Women
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

My love is young, so young;
Young is her cheek, and her throat,
And life is a song to be sung
With love the word for each note.
Young is her cheek and her throat;
Her eyes have the smile o' May.
And love is the word for each note
In the song of my life to-day.
Her eyes have the smile o' May;
Her heart is the heart of a dove,
And the song of my life to-day
Is love, beautiful love.
Her heart is the heart of a dove,
Ah, would it but fly to my breast
Where lone, beautiful love,
Has made it a downy nest.
Ah, would she but fly to my breast,
My love who is young, so young;
I have made her a downy nest
And life is a song to be sung.
Amour 27
by Michael Drayton

My Loue makes hote the fire whose heat is spent,
The water moisture from my teares deriueth,
And my strong sighes the ayres weake force reuiueth:
Thus loue, tears, sighes, maintaine each one his element.
The fire, vnto my loue, compare a painted fire,
The water, to my teares as drops to Oceans be,
The ayre, vnto my sighes as Eagle to the flie,
The passions of dispaire but ioyes to my desire.
Onely my loue is in the fire ingraued,
Onely my teares by Oceans may be gessed,
Onely my sighes are by the ayre expressed;
Yet fire, water, ayre, of nature not depriued.
Whilst fire, water, ayre, twixt heauen and earth shal be,
My loue, my teares, my sighes, extinguisht cannot be.
The Sonnets CXLVII - My love is as a fever longing still
by William Shakespeare

My love is as a fever longing still,
For that which longer nurseth the disease;
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
Song: The Weed.
by Edward Shanks

My mother told me this for true
That there behind the mountains,
That wear the mists about their feet
And clouds about their summits,
There grows the weed Forgetfulness,
It grows there in the gullies.
If I but knew the way thereto,
Three days long would I wander
And pick a handful of the weed
And drink it steeped in honey,
That so I might forget your mouth
A thousand times that kissed me.
My Mopsa Is Little. By Philodemus.
by Thomas Moore

My Mopsa is little, my Mopsa is brown,
But her cheek is as smooth as the peach's soft down,
And, for blushing, no rose can come near her;
In short, she has woven such nets round my heart,
That I ne'er from my dear little Mopsa can part,--
Unless I can find one that's dearer.
Her voice hath a music that dwells on the ear,
And her eye from its orb gives a daylight so clear,
That I'm dazzled whenever I meet her;
Her ringlets, so curly, are Cupid's own net,
And her lips, oh their sweetness I ne'er shall forget--
Till I light upon lips that are sweeter.
But 'tis not her beauty that charms me alone,
'Tis her mind, 'tis that language whose eloquent tone
From the depths of the grave could revive one:
In short, here I swear, that if death were her doom,
I would instantly join my dead love in the tomb--
Unless I could meet with a live
The Little Black Boy
by William Blake

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.
My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And, pointed to the east, began to say:
"Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.
"And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
"For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
Saying, 'Come out from the grove, my love and care
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice',"
Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy
I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.
My Mother's Kiss.
by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

My mother's kiss, my mother's kiss,
I feel its impress now;
As in the bright and happy days
She pressed it on my brow.
You say it is a fancied thing
Within my memory fraught;
To me it has a sacred place - 
The treasure house of thought.
Again, I feel her fingers glide
Amid my clustering hair;
I see the love-light in her eyes,
When all my life was fair.
Again, I hear her gentle voice
In warning or in love.
How precious was the faith that taught
My soul of things above.
The music of her voice is stilled,
Her lips are paled in death.
As precious pearls I'll clasp her words
Until my latest breath.
The world has scattered round my path
Honor and wealth and fame;
But naught so precious as the thoughts
That gather round her name.
And friends have placed upon my brow
The laurels of renown;
But she first taught me how to wear
My manhood as a crown.
My hair is silvered o'er with age,
I'm longing to depart;
To clasp again my mother's hand,
And be a child at heart.
To roam with her the glory-land
Where saints and angels greet;
To cast our crowns with songs of love
At our Redeemer's feet.