DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
In The Willow Shade.
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

I sat beneath a willow tree,
Where water falls and calls;
While fancies upon fancies solaced me,
Some true, and some were false.
Who set their heart upon a hope
That never comes to pass,
Droop in the end like fading heliotrope,
The sun's wan looking-glass.
Who set their will upon a whim
Clung to through good and ill,
Are wrecked alike whether they sink or swim,
Or hit or miss their will.
All things are vain that wax and wane,
For which we waste our breath;
Love only doth not wane and is not vain,
Love only outlives death.
A singing lark rose toward the sky,
Circling he sang amain;
He sang, a speck scarce visible sky-high,
And then he sank again.
A second like a sunlit spark
Flashed singing up his track;
But never overtook that foremost lark,
And songless fluttered back.
A hovering melody of birds
Haunted the air above;
They clearly sang contentment without words,
And youth and joy and love.
O silvery weeping willow tree
With all leaves shivering,
Have you no purpose but to shadow me
Beside this rippled spring?
On this first fleeting day of Spring,
For Winter is gone by,
And every bird on every quivering wing
Floats in a sunny sky;
On this first Summer-like soft day,
While sunshine steeps the air,
And every cloud has gat itself away,
And birds sing everywhere.
Have you no purpose in the world
But thus to shadow me
With all your tender drooping twigs unfurled,
O weeping willow tree?
With all your tremulous leaves outspread
Betwixt me and the sun,
While here I loiter on a mossy bed
With half my work undone;
My work undone, that should be done
At once with all my might;
For after the long day and lingering sun
Comes the unworking night.
This day is lapsing on its way,
Is lapsing out of sight;
And after all the chances of the day
Comes the resourceless night.
The weeping-willow shook its head
And stretched its shadow long;
The west grew crimson, the sun smouldered red,
The birds forbore a song.
Slow wind sighed through the willow leaves,
The ripple made a moan,
The world drooped murmuring like a thing that grieves;
And then I felt alone.
I rose to go, and felt the chill,
And shivered as I went;
Yet shivering wondered, and I wonder still,
What more that willow meant;
That silvery weeping-willow tree
With all leaves shivering,
Which spent one long day overshadowing me
Beside a spring in Spring.
The Teacher's Lesson.
by Samuel Griswold Goodrich

I saw a child some four years old,
Along a meadow stray;
Alone she went unchecked untold 
Her home not far away.
She gazed around on earth and sky 
Now paused, and now proceeded;
Hill, valley, wood, she passed them by,
Unmarked, perchance unheeded.
And now gay groups of roses bright,
In circling thickets bound her 
Yet on she went with footsteps light,
Still gazing all around her.
And now she paused, and now she stooped,
And plucked a little flower 
A simple daisy 'twas, that drooped
Within a rosy bower.
The child did kiss the little gem,
And to her bosom pressed it;
And there she placed the fragile stem,
And with soft words caressed it.
I love to read a lesson true,
From nature's open book 
And oft I learn a lesson new,
From childhood's careless look.
Children are simple loving true;
'Tis Heaven that made them so;
And would you teach them be so too 
And stoop to what they know.
Begin with simple lessons things
On which they love to look:
Flowers, pebbles, insects, birds on wings 
These are God's spelling-book.
And children know His A, B, C,
As bees where flowers are set:
Would'st thou a skilful teacher be? 
Learn, then, this alphabet.
From leaf to leaf, from page to page,
Guide thou thy pupil's look,
And when he says, with aspect sage,
"Who made this wondrous book?"
Point thou with reverent gaze to heaven,
And kneel in earnest prayer,
That lessons thou hast humbly given,
May lead thy pupil there.
Her Letter in Chambers
by James Williams

I sat by the fire and watched it blaze,
And dreamed that she wrote me a letter,
And for that dream to the end of my days
To Fancy I owe myself debtor.
Next day there came the postman's knock,
The morning was bright and sunny,
And showed me a sheaf of circulars, stock
Attempts to get hold of my money.
'Mid correspondence of this dull kind
A dainty notelet lay hidden,
It seemed as though it had half a mind
To consider itself forbidden.
The writing was like herself, complete,
With a touch of her queenly bearing,
So Venus wrote when she ordered in Crete
Her doves to take her an airing.
Inside it was just as promising,
'Twas a pressing invitation
To dine at her house to-morrow, and bring
My book for her approbation.
For I have published, be it confessed,
A little volume of verses,
And in the volume whatever is best
The praise of herself rehearses.
I sit by the fire, and again I dream
A happier dream than ever,
I see her beautiful eyes soft gleam
As she murmurs, "How lovely--how clever!"
Her criticism may be commonplace,
But who can be angry after
Now sweet with pity he marks her face,
Now bright with impulsive laughter?
Commemoration
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

I sat by the granite pillar, and sunlight fell
Where the sunlight fell of old,
And the hour was the hour my heart remembered well,
And the sermon rolled and rolled
As it used to roll when the place was still unhaunted,
And the strangest tale in the world was still untold.
And I knew that of all this rushing of urgent sound
That I so clearly heard,
The green young forest of saplings clustered round
Was heeding not one word:
Their heads were bowed in a still serried patience
Such as an angel's breath could never have stirred.
For some were already away to the hazardous pitch,
Or lining the parapet wall,
And some were in glorious battle, or great and rich,
Or throned in a college hall:
And among the rest was one like my own young phantom,
Dreaming for ever beyond my utmost call.
"O Youth," the preacher was crying, "deem not thou
Thy life is thine alone;
Thou bearest the will of the ages, seeing how
They built thee bone by bone,
And within thy blood the Great Age sleeps sepulchred
Till thou and thine shall roll away the stone.
"Therefore the days are coming when thou shalt burn
With passion whitely hot;
Rest shall be rest no more; thy feet shall spurn
All that thy hand hath got;
And One that is stronger shall gird thee, and lead thee swiftly
Whither, O heart of Youth, thou wouldest not."
And the School passed; and I saw the living and dead
Set in their seats again,
And I longed to hear them speak of the word that was said,
But I knew that I longed in vain.
And they stretched forth their hands, and the wind of the spirit took them
Lightly as drifted leaves on an endless plain.
The Name On The Tree
by Madison Julius Cawein

I saw a name carved on a tree
"Julia";
A simpler name there could not be
Julia:
But seeing it I seemed to see
A Devon garden, pleasantly
About a parsonage, the bee
Made drowsy-sweet; where rosemary
And pink and phlox and peony
Bowed down to one
Whom Herrick made to bloom in Poetry.
A moment there I saw her stand,
Julia;
A gillyflower in her hand,
Julia:
And then, kind-faced and big and bland,
As raised by some magician's wand,
Herrick himself passed by, sun-tanned,
And smiling; and the quiet land
Seemed to take on and understand
A dream long dreamed,
And for the lives of two some gladness planned.
And then I seemed to hear a sigh,
"Julia!"
And someone softly walking nigh,
Julia:
The leaves shook; and a butterfly
Trailed past; and through the sleepy sky
A bird flew, crying strange its cry
Then suddenly before my eye
Two lovers strolled They knew not why
I looked amazed,
But I had seen old ghosts of long dead loves go by.
Categorical Courtship
by Unknown

I sat one night beside a blue-eyed girl,
The fire was out, and so, too, was her mother;
A feeble flame around the lamp did curl,
Making faint shadows, blending in each other:
'Twas nearly twelve o'clock, too, in November;
She had a shawl on, also, I remember.
Well, I had been to see her every night
For thirteen days, and had a sneaking notion
To pop the question, thinking all was right,
And once or twice had make an awkward motion
To take her hand, and stammer'd, cough'd, and stutter'd,
But, somehow, nothing to the point had utter'd.
I thought this chance too good now to be lost;
I hitched my chair up pretty close beside her,
Drew a long breath, and then my legs I cross'd,
Bent over, sighed, and for five minutes eyed her:
She looked as if she knew what next was coming,
And with her feet upon the floor was drumming.
I didn't know how to begin, or where,
I couldn't speak, the words were always choking;
I scarce could move, I seem'd tied to the chair,
I hardly breathed, 'twas awfully provoking!
The perspiration from each pore came oozing,
My heart, and brain, and limbs their power seem'd losing.
At length I saw a brindle tabby cat
Walk purring up, inviting me to pat her;
An idea came, electric-like at that,
My doubts, like summer clouds, began to scatter,
I seized on tabby, though a scratch she gave me,
And said, "Come, Puss, ask Mary if she'll have me."
'Twas done at once, the murder now was out;
The thing was all explain'd in half a minute.
She blush'd, and, turning pussy-cat about,
Said, "Pussy, tell him 'yes'"; her foot was in it!
The cat had thus saved me my category,
And here's the catastrophe of my story.
I Saw A Chapel
by William Blake

I saw a chapel all of gold
That none did dare to enter in,
And many weeping stood without,
Weeping, mourning, worshipping.
I saw a serpent rise between
The white pillars of the door,
And he forc'd and forc'd and forc'd,
Down the golden hinges tore.
And along the pavement sweet,
Set with pearls and rubies bright,
All his slimy length he drew
Till upon the altar white
Vomiting his poison out
On the bread and on the wine.
So I turn'd into a sty
And laid me down among the swine.
Her Song
by Thomas Hardy

I sang that song on Sunday,
To witch an idle while,
I sang that song on Monday,
As fittest to beguile;
I sang it as the year outwore,
And the new slid in;
I thought not what might shape before
Another would begin.
I sang that song in summer,
All unforeknowingly,
To him as a new-comer
From regions strange to me:
I sang it when in afteryears
The shades stretched out,
And paths were faint; and flocking fears
Brought cup-eyed care and doubt.
Sings he that song on Sundays
In some dim land afar,
On Saturdays, or Mondays,
As when the evening star
Glimpsed in upon his bending face
And my hanging hair,
And time untouched me with a trace
Of soul-smart or despair?
To Richard Wagner.
by Sidney Lanier

"I saw a sky of stars that rolled in grime.
All glory twinkled through some sweat of fight,
From each tall chimney of the roaring time
That shot his fire far up the sooty night
Mixt fuels - Labor's Right and Labor's Crime -
Sent upward throb on throb of scarlet light
Till huge hot blushes in the heavens blent
With golden hues of Trade's high firmament.
"Fierce burned the furnaces; yet all seemed well,
Hope dreamed rich music in the rattling mills.
`Ye foundries, ye shall cast my church a bell,'
Loud cried the Future from the farthest hills:
`Ye groaning forces, crack me every shell
Of customs, old constraints, and narrow ills;
Thou, lithe Invention, wake and pry and guess,
Till thy deft mind invents me Happiness.'
"And I beheld high scaffoldings of creeds
Crumbling from round Religion's perfect Fane:
And a vast noise of rights, wrongs, powers, needs,
- Cries of new Faiths that called `This Way is plain,'
- Grindings of upper against lower greeds -
- Fond sighs for old things, shouts for new, - did reign
Below that stream of golden fire that broke,
Mottled with red, above the seas of smoke.
"Hark! Gay fanfares from halls of old Romance
Strike through the clouds of clamor: who be these
That, paired in rich processional, advance
From darkness o'er the murk mad factories
Into yon flaming road, and sink, strange Ministrants!
Sheer down to earth, with many minstrelsies
And motions fine, and mix about the scene
And fill the Time with forms of ancient mien?
"Bright ladies and brave knights of Fatherland;
Sad mariners, no harbor e'er may hold,
A swan soft floating tow'rds a magic strand;
Dim ghosts, of earth, air, water, fire, steel, gold,
Wind, grief, and love; a lewd and lurking band
Of Powers - dark Conspiracy, Cunning cold,
Gray Sorcery; magic cloaks and rings and rods;
Valkyries, heroes, Rhinemaids, giants, gods!
*    *    *    *    *
"O Wagner, westward bring thy heavenly art,
No trifler thou: Siegfried and Wotan be
Names for big ballads of the modern heart.
Thine ears hear deeper than thine eyes can see.
Voice of the monstrous mill, the shouting mart,
Not less of airy cloud and wave and tree,
Thou, thou, if even to thyself unknown,
Hast power to say the Time in terms of tone."
1877.
Nursery Rhyme. CCCLXXIV. Paradoxes.
by Unknown

[Mind your punctuation!]
I saw a peacock with a fiery tail,
I saw a blazing comet drop down hail,
I saw a cloud wrapped with ivy round,
I saw an oak creep upon the ground,
I saw a pismire swallow up a whale,
I saw the sea brimful of ale,
I saw a Venice glass full fifteen feet deep,
I saw a well full of men's tears that weep,
I saw red eyes all of a flaming fire,
I saw a house bigger than the moon and higher,
I saw the sun at twelve o'clock at night,
I saw the man that saw this wondrous sight.
The Dove (From Halte Hulda)
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

I saw a dove fear-daunted,
By howling storm-blast driven;
Where waves their power vaunted,
From land it had been riven.
No cry nor moan it uttered,
I heard no plaint repeated;
In vain its pinions fluttered - 
It had to sink, defeated.
The Mysterious Cat
by Vachel Lindsay

A chant for a children's pantomime dance, suggested by a picture painted by George Mather Richards.
I saw a proud, mysterious cat,
I saw a proud, mysterious cat
Too proud to catch a mouse or rat - 
Mew, mew, mew.
But catnip she would eat, and purr,
But catnip she would eat, and purr.
And goldfish she did much prefer - 
Mew, mew, mew.
I saw a cat - 'twas but a dream,
I saw a cat - 'twas but a dream
Who scorned the slave that brought her cream - 
Mew, mew, mew.
Unless the slave were dressed in style,
Unless the slave were dressed in style
And knelt before her all the while - 
Mew, mew, mew.
Did you ever hear of a thing like that?
Did you ever hear of a thing like that?
Did you ever hear of a thing like that?
Oh, what a proud mysterious cat.
Oh, what a proud mysterious cat.
Oh, what a proud mysterious cat.
Mew... mew... mew.
At The Dinner-Table
by Thomas Hardy

I sat at dinner in my prime,
And glimpsed my face in the sideboard-glass,
And started as if I had seen a crime,
And prayed the ghastly show might pass.
Wrenched wrinkled features met my sight,
Grinning back to me as my own;
I well-nigh fainted with affright
At finding me a haggard crone.
My husband laughed. He had slily set
A warping mirror there, in whim
To startle me. My eyes grew wet;
I spoke not all the eve to him.
He was sorry, he said, for what he had done,
And took away the distorting glass,
Uncovering the accustomed one;
And so it ended? No, alas,
Fifty years later, when he died,
I sat me in the selfsame chair,
Thinking of him. Till, weary-eyed,
I saw the sideboard facing there;
And from its mirror looked the lean
Thing I'd become, each wrinkle and score
The image of me that I had seen
In jest there fifty years before.
The Amber Bead.
by Robert Herrick

I saw a fly within a bead
Of amber cleanly buried;
The urn was little, but the room
More rich than Cleopatra's tomb.
A Man Dreams That He Is The Creator
by Fredegond Shove

I sat in heaven like the sun
Above a storm when winter was:
I took the snowflakes one by one
And turned their fragile shapes to glass:
I washed the rivers blue with rain
And made the meadows green again.
I took the birds and touched their springs,
Until they sang unearthly joys:
They flew about on golden wings
And glittered like an angel's toys:
I filled the fields with flowers' eyes,
As white as stars in Paradise.
And then I looked on man and knew
Him still intent on death - still proud;
Whereat into a rage I flew
And turned my body to a cloud:
In the dark shower of my soul
The star of earth was swallowed whole.
The Tree Of Song
by Sara Teasdale

I sang my songs for the rest,
For you I am still;
The tree of my song is bare
On its shining hill.
For you came like a lordly wind,
And the leaves were whirled
Far as forgotten things
Past the rim of the world.
The tree of my song stands bare
Against the blue,
I gave my songs to the rest,
Myself to you.
The Madness Of King Goll
by William Butler Yeats

I sat on cushioned otter-skin:
My word was law from Ith to Emain,
And shook at Inver Amergin
The hearts of the world-troubling seamen,
And drove tumult and war away
From girl and boy and man and beast;
The fields grew fatter day by day,
The wild fowl of the air increased;
And every ancient Ollave said,
While he bent down his fading head.
"He drives away the Northern cold.'
i[They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.]
I sat and mused and drank sweet wine;
A herdsman came from inland valleys,
Crying, the pirates drove his swine
To fill their dark-beaked hollow galleys.
I called my battle-breaking men
And my loud brazen battle-cars
From rolling vale and rivery glen;
And under the blinking of the stars
Fell on the pirates by the deep,
And hurled them in the gulph of sleep:
These hands won many a torque of gold.
i[They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.]
But slowly, as I shouting slew
And trampled in the bubbling mire,
In my most secret spirit grew
A whirling and a wandering fire:
I stood: keen stars above me shone,
Around me shone keen eyes of men:
I laughed aloud and hurried on
By rocky shore and rushy fen;
I laughed because birds fluttered by,
And starlight gleamed, and clouds flew high,
And rushes waved and waters rolled.
i[They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.]
And now I wander in the woods
When summer gluts the golden bees,
Or in autumnal solitudes
Arise the leopard-coloured trees;
Or when along the wintry strands
The cormorants shiver on their rocks;
I wander on, and wave my hands,
And sing, and shake my heavy locks.
The grey wolf knows me; by one ear
I lead along the woodland deer;
The hares run by me growing bold.
i[They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.]
I came upon a little town
That slumbered in the harvest moon,
And passed a-tiptoe up and down,
Murmuring, to a fitful tune,
How I have followed, night and day,
A tramping of tremendous feet,
And saw where this old tympan lay
Deserted on a doorway seat,
And bore it to the woods with me;
Of some inhuman misery
Our married voices wildly trolled.
i[They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.]
I sang how, when day's toil is done,
Orchil shakes out her long dark hair
That hides away the dying sun
And sheds faint odours through the air:
When my hand passed from wire to wire
It quenched, with sound like falling dew
The whirling and the wandering fire;
But lift a mournful ulalu,
For the kind wires are torn and still,
And I must wander wood and hill
Through summer's heat and winter's cold.
i[They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.]
Rome - The Vatican - Sala Delle Muse
by Thomas Hardy

I sat in the Muses' Hall at the mid of the day,
And it seemed to grow still, and the people to pass away,
And the chiselled shapes to combine in a haze of sun,
Till beside a Carrara column there gleamed forth One.
She was nor this nor that of those beings divine,
But each and the whole - an essence of all the Nine;
With tentative foot she neared to my halting-place,
A pensive smile on her sweet, small, marvellous face.
"Regarded so long, we render thee sad?" said she.
"Not you," sighed I, "but my own inconstancy!
I worship each and each; in the morning one,
And then, alas! another at sink of sun.
"To-day my soul clasps Form; but where is my troth
Of yesternight with Tune: can one cleave to both?"
- "Be not perturbed," said she. "Though apart in fame,
As I and my sisters are one, those, too, are the same.
- "But my loves go further - to Story, and Dance, and Hymn,
The lover of all in a sun-sweep is fool to whim -
Is swayed like a river-weed as the ripples run!"
- "Nay, wight, thou sway'st not. These are but phases of one;
"And that one is I; and I am projected from thee,
One that out of thy brain and heart thou causest to be -
Extern to thee nothing. Grieve not, nor thyself becall,
Woo where thou wilt; and rejoice thou canst love at all!
Equality
by John Alexander McCrae

I saw a King, who spent his life to weave
Into a nation all his great heart thought,
Unsatisfied until he should achieve
The grand ideal that his manhood sought;
Yet as he saw the end within his reach,
Death took the sceptre from his failing hand,
And all men said, "He gave his life to teach
The task of honour to a sordid land!"
Within his gates I saw, through all those years,
One at his humble toil with cheery face,
Whom (being dead) the children, half in tears,
Remembered oft, and missed him from his place.
If he be greater that his people blessed
Than he the children loved, God knoweth best.
Equality
by John McCrae

I saw a King, who spent his life to weave
Into a nation all his great heart thought,
Unsatisfied until he should achieve
The grand ideal that his manhood sought;
Yet as he saw the end within his reach,
Death took the sceptre from his failing hand,
And all men said, "He gave his life to teach
The task of honour to a sordid land!"
Within his gates I saw, through all those years,
One at his humble toil with cheery face,
Whom (being dead) the children, half in tears,
Remembered oft, and missed him from his place.
If he be greater that his people blessed
Than he the children loved, God knoweth best.
Visions - Sonnet - 1
by William Browne

I saw a silver swan swim down the Lea,
Singing a sad farewell unto the vale,
While fishes leapt to hear her melody,
And on each thorn a gentle nightingale
And many other birds forbore their notes,
Leaping from tree to tree, as she along
The panting bosom of the current floats,
Rapt with the music of her dying song:
When from a thick and all-entangled spring
A neatherd rude came with no small ado,
Dreading an ill presage to hear her sing,
And quickly struck her tender neck in two;
Whereat the birds, methought, flew thence with speed,
And inly griev'd for such a cruel deed.
The Girl I Left Behind
by Edward Dyson

I said: 'I leave my bit of land,
In khaki they've entwined me,
I go abroad to lend a hand.'
Said she: 'My love, I understand.
I will be true, and though we part
A thousand years you hold my heart",
The girl I left behind me.
I went away to fight the Huns,
No coward thought could bind me,
I sizzled n the tropic suns,
I faced the bayonets and the guns.
And when in daring deeds I shone
One little woman spurred me on,
The girl I left behind me.
Out there, in grim Gallipoli.
Hard going they assigned me,
I pricked the Turk up from the sea;
I riddled him, he punctured me;
And, bleeding in my rags, I said:
'She'll meet me somewhere if I'm dead,
The girl I left behind me.
In France we broke the German's face,
They tried with gas to blind me.
In mud we bogged from front to base,
And dirt was ours, but not disgrace.
They carved me till I couldn't stand.
Said I 'Now for the Lodden, and
The girl I left behind me.
I came ashore, and struck the track;
For dust you scarce could find me.
The dear girl gave no welcome back,
Shed changed her names and state, alack!
'You've been a time, I must say, Ned,
In finishing your old war.' Said
The girl I left behind me.
I flung a song up to the skies.
For battles gods designed me.
I think of Fifi's laughing eyes,
And Nami, dusk, but sweet and wise,
And chortle in my heart to find
How very far I've left behind,
The girl I left behind me.