DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Magi
by George William Russell

"The mountain was filled with the hosts of the Tuatha de Dannan."
--Old Celtic Poem
See where the auras from the olden fountain
Starward aspire;
The sacred sign upon the holy mountain
Shines in white fire:
Waving and flaming yonder o'er the snows
The diamond light
Melts into silver or to sapphire glows
Night beyond night;
And from the heaven of heavens descends on earth
A dew divine.
Come, let us mingle in the starry mirth
Around the shrine!
Enchantress, mighty mother, to our home
In thee we press,
Thrilled by the fiery breath and wrapt in some
Vast tenderness
The homeward birds uncertain o'er their nest
Wheel in the dome,
Fraught with dim dreams of more enraptured rest,
Wheel in the dome,
But gather ye to whose undarkened eyes
The night is day:
Leap forth, Immortals, Birds of Paradise,
In bright array
Robed like the shining tresses of the sun;
And by his name
Call from his haunt divine the ancient one
Our Father Flame.
Aye, from the wonder-light that wraps the star,
Come now, come now;
Sun-breathing Dragon, ray thy lights afar,
Thy children bow;
Hush with more awe the breath;    the bright-browed races
Are nothing worth
By those dread gods from out whose awful faces
The earth looks forth
Infinite pity, set in calm;    their vision cast
Adown the years
Beholds how beauty burns away at last
Their children's tears.
Now while our hearts the ancient quietness
Floods with its tide,
The things of air and fire and height no less
In it abide;
And from their wanderings over sea and shore
They rise as one
Unto the vastness and with us adore
The midnight sun;
And enter the innumerable All,
And shine like gold,
And starlike gleam in the immortals' hall,
The heavenly fold,
And drink the sun-breaths from the mother's lips
Awhile--and then
Fail from the light and drop in dark eclipse
To earth again,
Roaming along by heaven-hid promontory
And valley dim.
Weaving a phantom image of the glory
They knew in Him.
Out of the fulness flow the winds, their son
Is heard no more,
Or hardly breathes a mystic sound along
The dreamy shore:
Blindly they move unknowing as in trance,
Their wandering
Is half with us, and half an inner dance
Led by the King.
--January 15, 1896
The Statue.
by Eric Mackay

The Statue.
I.
See where my lady stands,
Lifting her lustrous hands, -
Here let me bow.
Image of truth and grace!
Maid with the angel-face!
Earth was no dwelling-place
For such as thou.
II.
Ah, thou unhappy stone,
Make now thy sorrows known;
Make known thy longing.
Thou art the form of one
Whom I, with hopes undone,
Buried at set of sun, -
All the friends thronging.
III.
Thou art some Vision bright
Lost out of Heaven at night,
Far from thy race.
Oft when the others dance,
Come I, with wistful glance,
Fearful lest thou, perchance,
Leave the dark place.
IV.
No! thou wilt never flee,
Earth has a charm for thee; -
Why should we sever?
Years have I seen thee so,
Making pretence to go,
Lifting thine arms of snow, -
Voiceless for ever!
V.
Here bring I all my cares,
Here dream and say my prayers
While the bells toll.
O thou belov'd saint!
Let not my courage faint,
Let not a shame, or taint,
Injure my soul!
Sonnet XXVII.
by Anna Seward

See wither'd WINTER, bending low his head;
His ragged locks stiff with the hoary dew;
His eyes, like frozen lakes, of livid hue;
His train, a sable cloud, with murky red
Streak'd. - Ah! behold his nitrous breathings shed
Petrific death! - Lean, wailful Birds pursue,
On as he sweeps o'er the dun lonely moor,
Amid the battling blast of all the Winds,
That, while their sleet the climbing Sailor blinds,
Lash the white surges to the sounding shore.
So com'st thou, WINTER, finally to doom
The sinking year; and with thy ice-dropt sprays,
Cypress and yew, engarland her pale tomb,
Her vanish'd hopes, and aye-departed days.
The Cherries. A Parable.
by Thomas Moore

[1]
See those cherries, how they cover
Yonder sunny garden wall;--
Had they not that network over,
Thieving birds would eat them all.
So to guard our posts and pensions,
Ancient sages wove a net,
Thro' whose holes of small dimensions
Only certain knaves can get.
Shall we then this network widen;
Shall we stretch these sacred holes,
Thro' which even already slide in
Lots of small dissenting souls?
"God forbid!" old Testy crieth;
"God forbid!" so echo I;
Every ravenous bird that flieth
Then would at our cherries fly.
Ope but half an inch or so,
And, behold! what bevies break in;--
Here some curst old Popish crow
Pops his long and lickerish beak in;
Here sly Arians flock unnumbered,
And Socinians, slim and spare,
Who with small belief encumbered
Slip in easy anywhere;--
Methodists, of birds the aptest,
Where there's pecking going on;
And that water-fowl, the Baptist--
All would share our fruits anon;
Every bird of every city,
That for years with ceaseless din,
Hath reverst the starling's ditty,
Singing out "I can't get in."
"God forbid!" old Testy snivels;
"God forbid!" I echo too;
Rather may ten thousand devils
Seize the whole voracious crew!
If less costly fruits won't suit 'em,
Hips and haws and such like berries,
Curse the cormorants! stone 'em, shoot 'em,
Anything--to save our cherries.
Kant And His Commentators.
by Friedrich Schiller

See how a single rich man gives a living to numbers of beggars!
'Tis when sovereigns build, carters are kept in employ.
The Bubble
by William Allingham

See the pretty planet!
Floating sphere!
Faintest breeze will fan it
Far or near;
World as light as feather;
Moonshine rays,
Rainbow tints together,
As it plays.
Drooping, sinking, failing,
Nigh to earth,
Mounting, whirling, sailing,
Full of mirth;
Life there, welling, flowing,
Waving round;
Pictures coming, going,
Without sound.
Quick now, be this airy
Globe repelled!
Never can the fairy
Star be held.
Touched, it in a twinkle
Disappears!
Leaving but a sprinkle,
As of tears.
See You Have Dancers
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

See you have dancers and wine and a girl like one of the angels
(If they exist),
And find a clear stream singing near its birth and a bed of moss
(If moss exists),
For loving and singing to the dancers and drinking and forgetting hell
(If hell exists),
Because this is a pastime better than paradise
(If paradise exists).
From the Persian of Omar Khayyam (eleventh century).
Old And New:  A Parable
by Charles Kingsley

See how the autumn leaves float by decaying,
Down the wild swirls of the rain-swollen stream.
So fleet the works of men, back to their earth again;
Ancient and holy things fade like a dream.
Nay! see the spring-blossoms steal forth a-maying,
Clothing with tender hues orchard and glen;
So, though old forms pass by, ne'er shall their spirit die,
Look!    England's bare boughs show green leaf again.
Eversley, 1848.
Nursery Rhyme. XVI. Historical
by Unknown

[Taken from MS. Douce, 357, fol. 124. See Echard's 'History of England,' book iii, chap. 1.]
See saw, sack-a-day;
Monmouth is a pretie boy,
Richmond is another,
Grafton is my onely joy,
And why should I these three destroy,
To please a pious brother!
Philosopher's Garden
by William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)

"See this my garden,
Large and fair!"
--Thus, to his friend,
The Philosopher.
"'Tis not too long,"
His friend replied,
With truth exact,--
"Nor yet too wide.
But well compact,
If somewhat cramped
On every side."
Quick the reply--
"But see how high!--
It reaches up
To God's blue sky!"
Not by their size
Measure we men
Or things.
Wisdom, with eyes
Washed in the fire,
Seeketh the things
That are higher--
Things that have wings,
Thoughts that aspire.
The Photograph
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

See dis pictyah in my han'?
Dat's my gal;
Ain't she purty? goodness lan'!
Huh name Sal.
Dat's de very way she be--
Kin' o' tickles me to see
Huh a-smilin' back at me.
She sont me dis photygraph
Jes' las' week;
An' aldough hit made me laugh--
My black cheek
Felt somethin' a-runnin' queer;
Bless yo' soul, it was a tear
Jes' f'om wishin' she was here.
Often when I 's all alone
Layin' here,
I git t'inkin' 'bout my own
Sallie dear;
How she say dat I 's huh beau,
An' hit tickles me to know
Dat de gal do love me so.
Some bright day I 's goin' back,
Fo' de la!
An' ez sho' 's my face is black,
Ax huh pa
Fu' de blessed little miss
Who 's a-smilin' out o dis
Pictyah, lak she wan'ed a kiss!
Hope.
by Joseph Rodman Drake

See through yon cloud that rolls in wrath,
One little star benignant peep,
To light along their trackless path
The wanderers of the stormy deep.
And thus, oh Hope! thy lovely form
In sorrow's gloomy night shall be
The sun that looks through cloud and storm
Upon a dark and moonless sea.
When heaven is all serene and fair,
Full many a brighter gem we meet;
'Tis when the tempest hovers there,
Thy beam is most divinely sweet.
The rainbow, when the sun declines,
Like faithless friend will disappear;
Thy light, dear star! more brightly shines
When all is wail and weeping here.
And though Aurora's stealing beam
May wake a morning of delight,
'Tis only thy consoling beam
Will smile amid affliction's night.
The Common Fate.
by Friedrich Schiller

See how we hate, how we quarrel, how thought and how feeling divide us!
But thy locks, friend, like mine, meanwhile are bleachening fast.
A Seed
by William Allingham

See how a Seed, which Autumn flung down, 
And through the Winter neglected lay, 
Uncoils two little green leaves and two brown, 
With tiny root taking hold on the clay 
As, lifting and strengthening day by day, 
It pushes red branchless, sprouts new leaves, 
And cell after cell the Power in it weaves 
Out of the storehouse of soil and clime, 
To fashion a Tree in due course of time; 
Tree with rough bark and boughs' expansion, 
Where the Crow can build his mansion, 
Or a Man, in some new May, 
Lie under whispering leaves and say, 
"Are the ills of one's life so very bad 
When a Green Tree makes me deliciously glad?" 
As I do now. But where shall I be 
When this little Seed is a tall green Tree?
Puck's Song
by Rudyard Kipling

See you the ferny ride that steals
Into the oak-woods far?
O that was whence they hewed the keels
That rolled to Trafalgar.
And mark you where the ivy clings
To Bayham's mouldering walls?
O there we cast the stout railings
That stand around St. Paul's.
See you the dimpled track that runs
All hollow through the wheat?
O that was where they hauled the guns
That smote King Philip's fleet.
(Out of the Weald, the secret Weald,
Men sent in ancient years,
The horse-shoes red at Flodden Field,
The arrows at Poitiers!)
See you our little mill that clacks,
So busy by the brook?
She has ground her corn and paid her
Ever since Domesday Book.
See you our stilly woods of oak,
And the dread ditch beside?
O that was where the Saxons broke
On the day that Harold died.
See you the windy levels spread
About the gates of Rye?
O that was where the Northmen fled,
When Alfred's ships came by.
See you our pastures wide and lone,
Where the red oxen browse?
O there was a City thronged and known,
Ere London boasted a house.
And see you after rain, the trace
Of mound and ditch and wall?
O that was a Legion's camping-place,
When Caesar sailed from Gaul.
And see you marks that show and fade,
Like shadows on the Downs?
O they are the lines the Flint Men made,
To guard their wondrous towns.
Trackway and Camp and City lost,
Salt Marsh where now is corn,
Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
And so was England born!
She is not any common Earth,
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare!
Upon Her Alms.
by Robert Herrick

See how the poor do waiting stand
For the expansion of thy hand.
A wafer dol'd by thee will swell
Thousands to feed by miracle.
Beethoven At The Piano.
by Eric Mackay

Beethoven At The Piano.
I.
See where Beethoven sits alone - a dream of days elysian,
A crownless king upon a throne, reflected in a vision -
The man who strikes the potent chords which make the world, in wonder,
Acknowledge him, though poor and dim, the mouthpiece of the thunder.
II.
He feels the music of the skies the while his heart is breaking;
He sings the songs of Paradise, where love has no forsaking.
And, though so deaf he cannot hear the tempest as a token,
He makes the music of his mind the grandest ever spoken.
III.
He doth not hear the whispered word of love in his seclusion,
Or voice of friend, or song of bird, in Nature's sad confusion;
But he hath made, for Love's sweet sake, so wild a declamation
That all true lovers of the earth have claim'd him of their nation.
IV.
He had a Juliet in his youth, as Romeo had before him,
And, Romeo-like, he sought to die that she might then adore him;
But she was weak, as women are whose faith has not been proven,
And would not change her name for his - Guiciardi for Beethoven.
V.
O minstrel, whom a maiden spurned, but whom a world has treasured!
O sovereign of a greater realm than man has ever measured!
Thou hast not lost the lips of love, but thou hast gain'd, in glory,
The love of all who know the thrall of thine immortal story.
VI.
Thou art the bard whom none discard, but whom all men discover
To be a god, as Orpheus was, albeit a lonely lover;
A king to call the stones to life beside the roaring ocean,
And bid the stars discourse to trees in words of man's emotion.
VII.
A king of joys, a prince of tears, an emperor of the seasons,
Whose songs are like the sway of years in Love's immortal reasons;
A bard who knows no life but this: to love and be rejected,
And reproduce in earthly strains the prayers of the elected.
VIII.
O poet heart! O seraph soul! by men and maids ador'd!
O Titan with the lion's mane, and with the splendid forehead!
We men who bow to thee in grief must tremble in our gladness,
To know what tears were turned to pearls to crown thee in thy sadness.
IX.
An Angel by direct descent, a German by alliance,
Thou didst intone the wonder-chords which made Despair a science.
Yea, thou didst strike so grand a note that, in its large vibration,
It seemed the roaring of the sea in nature's jubilation.
X.
O Sire of Song! Sonata-King! Sublime and loving master;
The sweetest soul that ever struck an octave in disaster;
In thee were found the fires of thought - the splendours of endeavour, -
And thou shalt sway the minds of men for ever and for ever!
The Giraffe.
by Oliver Herford

SEE the Gi-raffe; he is so tall
There is not room to get him all
U-pon the page. His head is high-er - 
The pic-ture proves it - than the Spire.
That's why the na-tives, when they race
To catch him, call it stee-ple-chase.
His chief de-light it is to set
A good example: shine or wet
He rises ere the break of day,
And starts his break-fast right away.
His food has such a way to go, - 
His throat's so very long, - and so
An early break-fast he must munch
To get it down ere time for lunch.
Highland Hut
by William Wordsworth

See what gay wild flowers deck this earth-built Cot,
Whose smoke, forth-issuing whence and how it may,
Shines in the greeting of the sun's first ray
Like wreaths of vapour without stain or blot.
The limpid mountain rill avoids it not;
And why shouldst thou? If rightly trained and bred,
Humanity is humble, finds no spot
Which her Heaven-guided feet refuse to tread.
The walls are cracked, sunk is the flowery roof,
Undressed the pathway leading to the door;
But love, as Nature loves, the lonely Poor;
Search, for their worth, some gentle heart wrong-proof,
Meek, patient, kind, and, were its trials fewer,
Belike less happy. Stand no more aloof!
Rose Leaves When The Rose Is Dead
by Madison Julius Cawein

See how the rose leaves fall
The rose leaves fall and fade:
And by the wall, in dusk funereal,
How leaf on leaf is laid,
Withered and soiled and frayed.
How red the rose leaves fall
And in the ancient trees,
That stretch their twisted arms about the hall,
Burdened with mysteries,
How sadly sighs the breeze.
How soft the rose leaves fall
The rose leaves drift and lie:
And over them dull slugs and beetles crawl,
And, palely glimmering by,
The glow-worm trails its eye.
How thick the rose leaves fall
And strew the garden way,
For snails to slime and spotted toads to sprawl,
And, plodding past each day,
Coarse feet to tread in clay.
How fast they fall and fall
Where Beauty, carved in stone,
With broken hands veils her dead eyes; and, tall,
White in the moonlight lone,
Looms like a marble moan.
How slow they drift and fall
And strew the fountained pool,
That, in the nymph-carved basin by the wall,
Reflects in darkness cool.
Ruin made beautiful.
How red the rose leaves fall
Fall and like blood remain
Upon the dial's disc, whose pedestal,
Black-mossed and dark with stain,
Crumbles in sun and rain.
How wan they seem to fall
Around one where she stands
Dim in their midst, beyond the years' recall,
Reaching pale, passionate hands
Into the past's vague lands.
How still they fall and fall
Around them where they meet
As oft of old: she in her gem-pinned shawl
Of white; and he, complete
In black from head to feet.
How faint the rose leaves fall
Around them where, it seems,
He holds her clasped parting from her and all
His heart's young hopes and dreams
There in the moon's thin beams.
Around them rose leaves fall
And in the stress and urge
Of winds that strew them lightly over all,
With deep, autumnal surge,
There seems to rise a dirge:
"See how the rose leaves fall
Upon thy dead, O soul!
The rose leaves of the love that once in thrall
Held thee beyond control,
Making thy heart's world whole.
"God help them still to fall
Around thee, bowed above
The face within thy heart, beneath the pall!
The perished face thereof,
The beautiful face of Love."
The Empty House
by Walter De La Mare

See this house, how dark it is
Beneath its vast-boughed trees!
Not one trembling leaflet cries
To that Watcher in the skies - 
"Remove, remove thy searching gaze,
Innocent, of heaven's ways,
Brood not, Moon, so wildly bright,
On secrets hidden from sight."
"Secrets," sighs the night-wind,
"Vacancy is all I find;
Every keyhole I have made
Wails a summons, faint and sad,
No voice ever answers me,
Only vacancy."
"Once, once ..." the cricket shrills,
And far and near the quiet fills
With its tiny voice, and then
Hush falls again.
Mute shadows creeping slow
Mark how the hours go.
Every stone is mouldering slow.
And the least winds that blow
Some minutest atom shake,
Some fretting ruin make
In roof and walls. How black it is
Beneath these thick-boughed trees!
Mothers.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Regardez: les enfants.")
[XX., June, 1884.]
See all the children gathered there,
Their mother near; so young, so fair,
An eider sister she might be,
And yet she hears, amid their games,
The shaking of their unknown names
In the dark urn of destiny.
She wakes their smiles, she soothes their cares,
On that pure heart so like to theirs,
Her spirit with such life is rife
That in its golden rays we see,
Touched into graceful poesy,
The dull cold commonplace of life.
Still following, watching, whether burn
The Christmas log in winter stern,
While merry plays go round;
Or streamlets laugh to breeze of May
That shakes the leaf to break away - 
A shadow falling to the ground.
If some poor man with hungry eyes
Her baby's coral bauble spies,
She marks his look with famine wild,
For Christ's dear sake she makes with joy
An alms-gift of the silver toy - 
A smiling angel of the child.
Dublin University Magazine
Written On Passing Deadman's Island, In The Gulf Of St. Lawrence,[1] Late In The Evening, September, 1804.
by Thomas Moore

See you, beneath yon cloud so dark,
Fast gliding along a gloomy bark?
Her sails are full,--though the wind is still,
And there blows not a breath her sails to fill!
Say, what doth that vessel of darkness bear?
The silent calm of the grave is there,
Save now and again a death-knell rung,
And the flap of the sails with night-fog hung.
There lieth a wreck on the dismal shore
Of cold and pitiless Labrador;
Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,
Full many a mariner's bones are tost.
Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck,
And the dim blue fire, that lights her deck,
Doth play on as pale and livid a crew,
As ever yet drank the churchyard dew.
To Deadman's Isle, in the eye of the blast,
To Deadman's Isle, she speeds her fast;
By skeleton shapes her sails are furled,
And the hand that steers is not of this world!
Oh! hurry thee on-oh! hurry thee on,
Thou terrible bark, ere the night be gone,
Nor let morning look on so foul a sight
As would blanch for ever her rosy light!
In Spring
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

See how the trees and the osiers lithe
Are green bedecked and the woods are blithe,
The meadows have donned their cape of flowers,
The air is soft with the sweet May showers,
And the birds make melody:
But the spring of the soul, the spring of the soul,
Cometh no more for you or for me.
The lazy hum of the busy bees
Murmureth through the almond trees;
The jonquil flaunteth a gay, blonde head,
The primrose peeps from a mossy bed,
And the violets scent the lane.
But the flowers of the soul, the flowers of the soul,
For you and for me bloom never again.
Fragments On Nature And Life - Transition
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

See yonder leafless trees against the sky,
How they diffuse themselves into the air,
And, ever subdividing, separate
Limbs into branches, branches into twigs.
As if they loved the element, and hasted
To dissipate their being into it.
Parks and ponds are good by day;
I do not delight
In black acres of the night,
Nor my unseasoned step disturbs
The sleeps of trees or dreams of herbs.
In Walden wood the chickadee
Runs round the pine and maple tree
Intent on insect slaughter:
O tufted entomologist!
Devour as many as you list,
Then drink in Walden water.
The low December vault in June be lifted high,
And largest clouds be flakes of down in that enormous sky.
Love Will Find
by Hanford Lennox Gordon

Seek ye the fairest lily of the field,
The fairest lotus that in lakelet lies,
The fairest rose that ever morn revealed,
And Love will find from other eyes concealed 
A fairer flower in some fair woman's eyes.
List ye the lark that warbles to the morn,
The sweetest note that linnet ever sung,
Or trembling lute in tune with silver horn,
And Love will list and laugh your lute to scorn 
A sweeter lute in some fair woman's tongue.
Seek ye the dewy perfume seaward blown
From flowering orange-groves to passing ships;
Nay, sip the nectared dew of Helicon,
And Love will find and claim it all his own 
A sweeter dew on some fair woman's lips.
Seek ye a couch of softest eider-down,
The silken floss that baby birdling warms,
Or shaded moss with blushing roses strown,
And Love will find when they are all alone 
A softer couch in some fair woman's arms.
See The Field Of Battle Gleams.
by A. H. Laidlaw

See, the field of battle gleams
Yonward past the tented streams,
There the foe is camping;
By the thirst-assuaging rill,
From the copse behind the hill
Hear his war-steeds champing.
Northern Knights and Southern Sons,
Onward to the gleaming guns!
Now's the hour of battle!
Though his files be ten to one,
Seek the foe from sun to sun,
Where his muskets rattle.
O'er the walls with slaughter wet,
O'er the ball-scarred parapet,
Daring man and missile,
Charge to meet his best or worst,
Where his shrieking bombshells burst
And his bullets whistle.
Roll in waves of living blue,
Pierce the columned centre through,
Fill the world with wonder;
Rush, as with a lion's will,
Where his lightnings flash to kill
And his cannon thunder.
Meet him with a tiger's spring,
Quicker than an eagle's wing,
Where the bayonet piercest.
When you feel the foeman's breath,
Soldier, strike for life or death,
Where the fight is fiercest.
Than a coward, proved and known,
Better be to atoms blown,
Where the doomed are dying.
Welcome death in wildest way,
But to mingle with that clay
Where the brave are lying.
Thus will Honor be our meed
For some doubly daring deed
When we end our story.
Then in graves with roses blown,
By the hands of patriots strown,
We will sleep in glory.