DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Could I But Ride Indefinite,
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Could I but ride indefinite,
As doth the meadow-bee,
And visit only where I liked,
And no man visit me,
And flirt all day with buttercups,
And marry whom I may,
And dwell a little everywhere,
Or better, run away
With no police to follow,
Or chase me if I do,
Till I should jump peninsulas
To get away from you, --
I said, but just to be a bee
Upon a raft of air,
And row in nowhere all day long,
And anchor off the bar,--
What liberty! So captives deem
Who tight in dungeons are.
To An Early Cowslip.
by John Clare

Cowslip bud, so early peeping,
Warm'd by April's hazard hours;
O'er thy head though sunshine's creeping,
Close the threatening tempest lowers:
Trembling blossom, let me bear thee
To a better, safer home;
Though a fairer blossom wear thee,
Never tempest there shall come:
Mary's bonny breast to charm thee,
Bosom soft as down can be,
Eyes like any suns to warm thee,
And scores of sweets unknown to me;--
Ah! for joys thou'lt there be meeting,
In a station so divine,
I could wish, what's vain repeating,
Cowslip bud, thy life were mine.
Strategy. A Quatrain.
by Madison Julius Cawein

Craft's silent sister and the daughter deep
Of Contemplation, she, who spreads below
A hostile tent soft comfort for her foe,
With eyes of Jael watching till he sleep.
Flotsam
by Lola Ridge

Crass rays streaming from the vestibules;
Cafes glittering like jeweled teeth;
High-flung signs
Blinking yellow phosphorescent eyes;
Girls in black
Circling monotonously
About the orange lights...
Nothing to guess at...
Save the darkness above
Crouching like a great cat.
In the dim-lit square,
Where dishevelled trees
Tustle with the wind - the wind like a scythe
Mowing their last leaves - 
Arcs shimmering through a greenish haze - 
Pale oval arcs
Like ailing virgins,
Each out of a halo circumscribed,
Pallidly staring...
Figures drift upon the benches
With no more rustle than a dropped leaf settling - 
Slovenly figures like untied parcels,
And papers wrapped about their knees
Huddled one to the other,
Cringing to the wind - 
The sided wind,
Leaving no breach untried...
So many and all so still...
The fountain slobbering its stone basin
Is louder than They - 
Flotsam of the five oceans
Here on this raft of the world.
This old man's head
Has found a woman's shoulder.
The wind juggles with her shawl
That flaps about them like a sail,
And splashes her red faded hair
Over the salt stubble of his chin.
A light foam is on his lips,
As though dreams surged in him
Breaking and ebbing away...
And the bare boughs shuffle above him
And the twigs rattle like dice...
She - diffused like a broken beetle - 
Sprawls without grace,
Her face gray as asphalt,
Her jaws sagging as on loosened hinges...
Shadows ply about her mouth - 
Nimble shadows out of the jigging tree,
That dances above her its dance of dry bones.
II
A uniformed front,
Paunched;
A glance like a blow,
The swing of an arm,
Verved, vigorous;
Boot-heels clanking
In metallic rhythm;
The blows of a baton,
Quick, staccato...
- There is a rustling along the benches
As of dried leaves raked over...
And the old man lifts a shaking palsied hand,
Tucking the displaced paper about his knees.
Colder...
And a frost under foot,
Acid, corroding,
Eating through worn bootsoles.
Drab forms blur into greenish vapor.
Through boughs like cross-bones,
Pale arcs flare and shiver
Like lilies in a wind.
High over Broadway
A far-flung sign
Glitters in indigo darkness
And spurts again rhythmically,
Spraying great drops
Red as a hemorrhage.
Song
by Duncan Campbell Scott

Creep into my heart, creep in, creep in,
Afar from the fret, the toil and the din,
Where the spring of love forever flows,
As clear as light and as sweet as the rose;
(Creep into my heart),
Where the dreams never wilt but their tints refine,
Rooted in beautiful thoughts of thine;
Where morn falls cool on the soul, like sleep,
And the nights are tranquil and tranced and deep;
Where the fairest thing of all the fair
Thou art, who hast somehow crept in there,
Deep into my heart,
Deep into my heart.
Roses And Rue
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

(To L. L.)
Could we dig up this long-buried treasure,
Were it worth the pleasure,
We never could learn love's song,
We are parted too long.
Could the passionate past that is fled
Call back its dead,
Could we live it all over again,
Were it worth the pain!
I remember we used to meet
By an ivied seat,
And you warbled each pretty word
With the air of a bird;
And your voice had a quaver in it,
Just like a linnet,
And shook, as the blackbird's throat
With its last big note;
And your eyes, they were green and grey
Like an April day,
But lit into amethyst
When I stooped and kissed;
And your mouth, it would never smile
For a long, long while,
Then it rippled all over with laughter
Five minutes after.
You were always afraid of a shower,
Just like a flower:
I remember you started and ran
When the rain began.
I remember I never could catch you,
For no one could match you,
You had wonderful, luminous, fleet,
Little wings to your feet.
I remember your hair did I tie it?
For it always ran riot
Like a tangled sunbeam of gold:
These things are old.
I remember so well the room,
And the lilac bloom
That beat at the dripping pane
In the warm June rain;
And the colour of your gown,
It was amber-brown,
And two yellow satin bows
From your shoulders rose.
And the handkerchief of French lace
Which you held to your face
Had a small tear left a stain?
Or was it the rain?
On your hand as it waved adieu
There were veins of blue;
In your voice as it said good-bye
Was a petulant cry,
'You have only wasted your life.'
(Ah, that was the knife!)
When I rushed through the garden gate
It was all too late.
Could we live it over again,
Were it worth the pain,
Could the passionate past that is fled
Call back its dead!
Well, if my heart must break,
Dear love, for your sake,
It will break in music, I know,
Poets' hearts break so.
But strange that I was not told
That the brain can hold
In a tiny ivory cell
God's heaven and hell.
The Cow (The Adventures Of Seumas Beg)
by James Stephens

Cow, Cow!
I and thou
Are looking at each other's eyes
You are lying on the grass
Eating every time I pass,
And you do not seem to be
Ever in perplexity:
You are good I'm sure, and not
Fit for nothing but the pot:
For your bearing is so kind,
And your quietness so wise:
Cow, Cow!
I and thou
Are looking at each other's eyes.
Sonnet XVII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Son animali al mondo di s' altera.
HE COMPARES HIMSELF TO A MOTH.
Creatures there are in life of such keen sight
That no defence they need from noonday sun,
And others dazzled by excess of light
Who issue not abroad till day is done,
And, with weak fondness, some because 'tis bright,
Who in the death-flame for enjoyment run,
Thus proving theirs a different virtue quite--
Alas! of this last kind myself am one;
For, of this fair the splendour to regard,
I am but weak and ill--against late hours
And darkness gath'ring round--myself to ward.
Wherefore, with tearful eyes of failing powers,
My destiny condemns me still to turn
Where following faster I but fiercer burn.
MACGREGOR.
The Traveling Man
by James Whitcomb Riley

I
Could I pour out the nectar the gods only can,
I would fill up my glass to the brim
And drink the success of the Traveling Man,
And the house represented by him;
And could I but tincture the glorious draught
With his smiles, as I drank to him then,
And the jokes he has told and the laughs he has laughed,
I would fill up the goblet again -
And drink to the sweetheart who gave him good-by
With a tenderness thrilling him this
Very hour, as he thinks of the tear in her eye
That salted the sweet of her kiss;
To her truest of hearts and her fairest of hands
I would drink, with all serious prayers,
Since the heart she must trust is a Traveling Man's,
And as warm as the ulster he wears.
II
I would drink to the wife, with the babe on her knee,
Who awaits his returning in vain -
Who breaks his brave letters so tremulously
And reads them again and again!
And I'd drink to the feeble old mother who sits
At the warm fireside of her son
And murmurs and weeps o'er the stocking she knits,
As she thinks of the wandering one.
I would drink a long life and a health to the friends
Who have met him with smiles and with cheer -
To the generous hand that the landlord extends
To the wayfarer journeying here:
And I pledge, when he turns from this earthly abode
And pays the last fare that he can,
Mine Host of the Inn at the End of the Road
Will welcome the Traveling Man!
Sonnet.
by Frances Anne Kemble (Fanny)

Cover me with your everlasting arms,
Ye guardian giants of this solitude!
From the ill-sight of men, and from the rude,
Tumultuous din of yon wide world's alarms!
Oh, knit your mighty limbs around, above,
And close me in for ever! let me dwell
With the wood spirits, in the darkest cell
That ever with your verdant locks ye wove.
The air is full of countless voices, joined
In one eternal hymn; the whispering wind,
The shuddering leaves, the hidden water-springs,
The work-song of the bees, whose honeyed wings
Hang in the golden tresses of the lime,
Or buried lie in purple beds of thyme.
Probation.
by Eric Mackay

IV.
Probation.
Could I, O Love! obtain a charter clear
To be thy bard, in all thy nights and days,
I would consult the stars, from year to year,
And talk with trees, and learn of them their ways,
And why the nymphs so seldom now appear
In human form, with rapt and earnest gaze;
And I would learn of thee why joy decays,
And why the Fauns have ceas'd to flourish here.
I would, in answer to the wind's "Alas!"
Explain the causes of a sorrow's flight;
I would peruse the writing on the grass
Which flowers have traced in blue and red and white;
And, reading these, I would, as from a pen,
Read thoughts of thine unguess'd by other men!
To A Foil'd European Revolutionaire
by Walt Whitman

Courage yet! my brother or my sister!
Keep on! Liberty is to be subserv'd, whatever occurs;
That is nothing, that is quell'd by one or two failures, or any number of failures,
Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any unfaithfulness,
Or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal statutes.
Revolt! and still revolt! revolt!
What we believe in waits latent forever through all the continents, and all the islands and archipelagos of the sea;
What we believe in invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, knows no discouragement,
Waiting patiently, waiting its time.
(Not songs of loyalty alone are these,
But songs of insurrection also;
For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel, the world over,
And he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him,
And stakes his life, to be lost at any moment.)
Revolt! and the downfall of tyrants!
The battle rages with many a loud alarm, and frequent advance and retreat,
The infidel triumphs or supposes he triumphs,
Then the prison, scaffold, garrote, hand-cuffs, iron necklace and anklet, lead-balls, do their work,
The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,
The great speakers and writers are exiled they lie sick in distant lands,
The cause is asleep the strongest throats are still, choked with their own blood,
The young men droop their eyelashes toward the ground when they meet;
But for all this, liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the infidel enter'd into full possession.
When liberty goes out of a place, it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go,
It waits for all the rest to go it is the last.
When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,
And when all life, and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth,
Then only shall liberty, or the idea of liberty, be discharged from that part of the earth,
And the infidel come into full possession.
Then courage! European revolter! revoltress!
For, till all ceases, neither must you cease.
I do not know what you are for, (I do not know what I am for myself, nor what anything is for,)
But I will search carefully for it even in being foil'd,
In defeat, poverty, misconception, imprisonment for they too are great.
Revolt! and the bullet for tyrants!
Did we think victory great?
So it is But now it seems to me, when it cannot be help'd, that defeat is great,
And that death and dismay are great.
New Year, 1868.
by Kate Seymour Maclean

Cradled in ice, and swathed in snows,
And shining like a Christmas rose,
Wreathed round with white chrysanthemums;
Heaven in his innocent, brave blue eyes,
Straight from the primal paradise,
Behold the infant New Year comes!
His looks a serious sweetness wear,
As if upon that unseen way,
Those baby hands that lightly bear
Garlands, and festive tokens gay,
For but a glance,--a touch sufficed,--
Had met and touched the infant Christ!
And lingering on the wing, had heard,
Sweeter than song of any bird,
Of cherub or of seraphim,
The notes of that divinest hymn,--
Glory to God in highest strain,
And peace on earth, good will to men.
Oh, diamond days, so royally set
In winter's stern and rugged breast,
Like jewels in an amulet,--
Your light has cheered, and soothed, and blest,
The want and toil, the sighs and tears,
And sorrows-of a thousand years!
The bells ring in the merry morn,
The poor forget their poverty,
The saddest face grows bright with glee,
And smiles for joy that he is born;
The fair round world shines out with cheer,
To welcome in the glad New Year.
Oh ye, whose homes are warm and bright,
With plenty smiling at the board,
Remember those whose roofs to-night,
Nor warmth, nor light, nor food afford,
Still make those wants, and woes your care,
And let the poor your bounty share.
For yet our hills and lakes along
Echoes the herald angels' song,--
Peace and good will!--oh look abroad,--
In every nation, tribe, and clan,
Behold the brotherhood of man,--
Behold the Fatherhood of God!
Peace to our mountains and our hills,--
Peace to our rivers and our rills;--
Our young Dominion takes her place
Among the nations west and east,--
God send her length of happy days,
And years of plenty and of peace!
Upon Crab. Epig.
by Robert Herrick

Crab faces gowns with sundry furs; 'tis known
He keeps the fox fur for to face his own.
Odes Of Anacreon - Ode XIV.
by Thomas Moore

[1]
Count me, on the summer trees,
Every leaf that courts the breeze;
Count me, on the foamy deep,
Every wave that sinks to sleep;
Then, when you have numbered these
Billowy tides and leafy trees,
Count me all the flames I prove,
All the gentle nymphs I love.
First, of pure Athenian maids
Sporting in their olive shades,
You may reckon just a score,
Nay, I'll grant you fifteen more.
In the famed Corinthian grove,
Where such countless wantons rove,[2]
Chains of beauties may be found,
Chains, by which my heart is bound;
There, indeed, are nymphs divine,
Dangerous to a soul like mine.
Many bloom in Lesbos' isle;
Many in Ionia smile;
Rhodes a pretty swarm can boast;
Caria too contains a host.
Sum them all--of brown and fair
You may count two thousand there.
What, you stare? I pray you peace!
More I'll find before I cease.
Have I told you all my flames,
'Mong the amorous Syrian dames?
Have I numbered every one,
Glowing under Egypt's sun?
Or the nymphs, who blushing sweet
Deck the shrine of Love in Crete;
Where the God, with festal play,
Holds eternal holiday?
Still in clusters, still remain
Gades' warm, desiring train:[3]
Still there lies a myriad more
On the sable India's shore;
These, and many far removed,
All are loving--all are loved!
The Town Witch
by Madison Julius Cawein

Crab-Faced, crab-tongued, with deep-set eyes that glared,
Unfriendly and unfriended lived the crone
Upon the common in her hut, alone,
Past which but seldom any villager fared.
Some said she was a witch and rode, wild-haired,
To devils' revels: on her hearth's rough stone
A fiend sat ever with gaunt eyes that shone
A shaggy hound whose fangs at all were bared.
So one day, when a neighbour's cow had died
And some one's infant sickened, good men shut
The crone in prison: dragged to court and tried:
Then hung her for a witch and burnt her hut.
Days after, on her grave, all skin and bones
They found the dog, and him they killed with stones.
Longing.
by Friedrich Schiller

Could I from this valley drear,
Where the mist hangs heavily,
Soar to some more blissful sphere,
Ah! how happy should I be!
Distant hills enchant my sight,
Ever young and ever fair;
To those hills I'd take my flight
Had I wings to scale the air.
Harmonies mine ear assail,
Tunes that breathe a heavenly calm;
And the gently-sighing gale
Greets me with its fragrant balm.
Peeping through the shady bowers,
Golden fruits their charms display.
And those sweetly-blooming flowers
Ne'er become cold winter's prey.
In you endless sunshine bright,
Oh! what bliss 'twould be to dwell!
How the breeze on yonder height
Must the heart with rapture swell!
Yet the stream that hems my path
Checks me with its angry frown,
While its waves, in rising wrath,
Weigh my weary spirit down.
See - a bark is drawing near,
But, alas, the pilot fails!
Enter boldly - wherefore fear?
Inspiration fills its sails,
Faith and courage make thine own, - 
Gods ne'er lend a helping-hand;
'Tis by magic power alone
Thou canst reach the magic land!
Within.
by Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey)

Could my heart hold another one?
I cannot tell.
Sometimes it seems an ample dome,
Sometimes a cell,
Sometimes a temple filled with saints,
Serene and fair,
Whose eyes are pure from mortal taints
All lilies are.
Sometimes a narrow shrine, in which
One precious fare
Smiles ever from its guarded niche,
With deathless grace.
Sometimes a nest, where weary things,
And weal; and shy,
Are brooded under mother wings
Till they can fly.
And then a palace, with wide rooms
Adorned and dressed,
Where eager slaves pour sweet perfumes
For each new guest.
Whiche'er it be, I know always
Within that door--
Whose latch it is not mine to raise--
Blows evermore,
With breath of balm upon its wing,
A soft, still air,
Which makes each closely folded thing
Look always fair.
My darlings, do you feel me near,
As every day
Into this hidden place and dear
I take my way?
Always you stand in radiant guise,
Always I see
A noiseless welcome in the eyes
You turn on me.
And, whether I come soon or late,
Whate'er befall,
Always within the guarded gate
I find you all.
Sonnet, Addressed To Henry Cowper, Esq.
by William Cowper

On His Emphatical And Interesting Delivery Of The Defence Of Warren Hastings, Esq., In The House Of Lords.
Cowper, whose silver voice, task'd sometimes hard,
Legends prolix delivers in the ears
(Attentive when thou read'st) of England's peers,
Let verse at length yield thee thy just reward.
Thou wast not heard with drowsy disregard,
Expending late on all that length of plea
Thy generous powers, but silence honour'd thee,
Mute as e'er gazed on orator or bard.
Thou art not voice alone, but hast beside
Both heart and head; and couldst with music sweet
Of Attic phrase and senatorial tone,
Like thy renown'd forefathers, far and wide
Thy fame diffuse, praised not for utterance meet
Of others' speech, but magic of thy own.
Upon Craw.
by Robert Herrick

Craw cracks in sirrop; and does stinking say,
Who can hold that, my friends, that will away?
Stanzas.[591]
by George Gordon Byron

1.
Could Love for ever
Run like a river,
And Time's endeavour
Be tried in vain -
No other pleasure
With this could measure;
And like a treasure[ik]
We'd hug the chain.
But since our sighing
Ends not in dying,
And, formed for flying,
Love plumes his wing;
Then for this reason
Let's love a season;
But let that season be only Spring.
2.
When lovers parted
Feel broken-hearted,
And, all hopes thwarted,
Expect to die;
A few years older,
Ah! how much colder
They might behold her
For whom they sigh!
When linked together,
In every weather,[il]
They pluck Love's feather
From out his wing -
He'll stay for ever,[im]
But sadly shiver
Without his plumage, when past the Spring.[in]
3.
Like Chiefs of Faction,
His life is action -
A formal paction
That curbs his reign,
Obscures his glory,
Despot no more, he
Such territory
Quits with disdain.
Still, still advancing,
With banners glancing,
His power enhancing,
He must move on -
Repose but cloys him,
Retreat destroys him,
Love brooks not a degraded throne.
4.
Wait not, fond lover!
Till years are over,
And then recover
As from a dream.
While each bewailing
The other's failing.
With wrath and railing,
All hideous seem -
While first decreasing,
Yet not quite ceasing,
Wait not till teasing,
All passion blight:
If once diminished
Love's reign is finished -
Then part in friendship, - and bid good-night.[io]
5.
So shall Affection
To recollection
The dear connection
Bring back with joy:
You had not waited[ip]
Till, tired or hated,
Your passions sated
Began to cloy.
Your last embraces
Leave no cold traces -
The same fond faces
As through the past:
And eyes, the mirrors
Of your sweet errors,
Reflect but rapture - not least though last.
6.
True, separations[iq]
Ask more than patience;
What desperations
From such have risen!
But yet remaining,
What is't but chaining
Hearts which, once waning,
Beat 'gainst their prison?
Time can but cloy love,
And use destroy love:
The wing'd boy, Love,
Is but for boys -
You'll find it torture
Though sharper, shorter,
To wean, and not wear out your joys.
December 1, 1819.
[First published, New Monthly Magazine, 1832, vol. xxxv. pp. 310-312.]
The Death Of The First Born
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Cover him over with daisies white
And eke with the poppies red,
Sit with me here by his couch to-night,
For the First-Born, Love, is dead.
Poor little fellow, he seemed so fair
As he lay in my jealous arms;
Silent and cold he is lying there
Stripped of his darling charms.
Lusty and strong he had grown forsooth,
Sweet with an infinite grace,
Proud in the force of his conquering youth,
Laughter alight in his face.
Oh, but the blast, it was cruel and keen,
And ah, but the chill it was rare;
The look of the winter-kissed flow'r you've seen
When meadows and fields were bare.
Can you not wake from this white, cold sleep
And speak to me once again?
True that your slumber is deep, so deep,
But deeper by far is my pain.
Cover him over with daisies white,
And eke with the poppies red,
Sit with me here by his couch to-night,
For the First-Born, Love, is dead.
Could I But Will (Song)
by Thomas Hardy

(Verses 1, 3, Key Major; Verse 2, Key Minor)
Could I but will,
Will to my bent,
I'd have afar ones near me still,
And music of rare ravishment,
In strains that move the toes and heels!
And when the sweethearts sat for rest
The unbetrothed should foot with zest
Ecstatic reels.
Could I be head,
Head-god, "Come, now,
Dear girl," I'd say, "whose flame is fled,
Who liest with linen-banded brow,
Stirred but by shakes from Earth's deep core "
I'd say to her: "Unshroud and meet
That Love who kissed and called thee Sweet! -
Yea, come once more!"
Even half-god power
In spinning dooms
Had I, this frozen scene should flower,
And sand-swept plains and Arctic glooms
Should green them gay with waving leaves,
Mid which old friends and I would walk
With weightless feet and magic talk
Uncounted eves.
The crazed moon
by William Butler Yeats

Crazed through much child-bearing
The moon is staggering in the sky;
Moon-struck by the despairing
Glances of her wandering eye
We grope, and grope in vain,
For children born of her pain.
Children dazed or dead!
When she in all her virginal pride
First trod on the mountain's head
What stir ran through the countryside
Where every foot obeyed her glance!
What manhood led the dance!
Fly-catchers of the moon,
Our hands are blenched, our fingers seem
But slender needles of bone;
Blenched by that malicious dream
They are spread wide that each
May rend what comes in reach.