DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Weeping Cherry.
by Robert Herrick

I saw a cherry weep, and why?
Why wept it? but for shame
Because my Julia's lip was by,
And did out-red the same.
But, pretty fondling, let not fall
A tear at all for that:
Which rubies, corals, scarlets, all
For tincture wonder at.
Sonnet CXCIII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Cantai, or piango; e non men di dolcezza.
THOUGH IN THE MIDST OF PAIN, HE DEEMS HIMSELF THE HAPPIEST OF MEN.
I sang, who now lament; nor less delight
Than in my song I found, in tears I find;
For on the cause and not effect inclined,
My senses still desire to scale that height:
Whence, mildly if she smile or hardly smite,
Cruel and cold her acts, or meek and kind,
All I endure, nor care what weights they bind,
E'en though her rage would break my armour quite.
Let Love and Laura, world and fortune join,
And still pursue their usual course for me,
I care not, if unblest, in life to be.
Let me or burn to death or living pine,
No gentler state than mine beneath the sun,
Since from a source so sweet my bitters run.
MACGREGOR.
The Departure
by William Vaughn Moody

I
I sat beside the glassy evening sea,
One foot upon the thin horn of my lyre,
And all its strings of laughter and desire
Crushed in the rank wet grasses heedlessly;
Nor did my dull eyes care to question how
The boat close by had spread its saffron sails,
Nor what might mean the coffers and the bales,
And streaks of new wine on the gilded prow.
Neither was wonder in me when I saw
Fair women step therein, though they were fair
Even to adoration and to awe,
And in the gracious fillets of their hair
Were blossoms from a garden I had known,
Sweet mornings ere the apple buds were blown.
II
One gazed steadfast into the dying west
With lips apart to greet the evening star;
And one with eyes that caught the strife and jar
Of the sea's heart, followed the sunward breast
Of a lone gull; from a slow harp one drew
Blind music like a laugh or like a wail;
And in the uncertain shadow of the sail
One wove a crown of berries and of yew.
Yet even as I said with dull desire,
"All these were mine, and one was mine indeed,"
The smoky music burst into a fire,
And I was left alone in my great need,
One foot upon the thin horn of my lyre
And all its strings crushed in the dripping weed.
The Room Of Mirrors
by Edgar Lee Masters

I saw a room where many feet were dancing.
The ceiling and the wall were mirrors glancing
Both flames of candles and the heaven's light,
Though windows there were none for air or flight.
The room was in a form polygonal
Reached by a little door and narrow hall.
One could behold them enter for the dance,
And waken as it were out of a trance,
And either singly or with some one whirl:
The old, the young, full livers, boy and girl.
And every panel of the room was just
A mirrored door through which a hand was thrust
Here, there, around the room, a soul to seize
Whereat a scream would rise, but no surcease
Of music or of dancing, save by him
Drawn through the mirrored panel to the dim
And unknown space behind the flashing mirrors,
And by his partner struck through by the terrors
Of sudden loss.
And looking I could see
That scarcely any dancer here could free
His eyes from off the mirrors, but would gaze
Upon himself or others, till a craze
Shone in his eyes thus to anticipate
The hand that took each dancer soon or late.
Some analyzed themselves, some only glanced,
Some stared and paled and then more madly danced.
One dancer only never looked at all.
He seemed soul captured by the carnival.
There were so many dancers there he loved,
He was so greatly by the music moved,
He had no time to study his own face
There in the mirrors as from place to place
He quickly danced.
Until I saw at last
This dancer by the whirling dancers cast
Face full against a mirrored panel where
Before he could look at himself or stare
He plunged through to the other side - and quick,
As water closes when you lift the stick,
The mirrored panel swung in place and left
No trace of him, as 'twere a magic trick.
But all his partners thus so soon bereft
Went dancing to the music as before.
But I saw faces in that mirrored door
Anatomizing their forced smiles and watching
Their faces over shoulders, even matching
Their terror with each other's to repress
A growing fear in seeing it was less
Than some one else's, or to ease despair
By looking in a face who did not care,
While watching for the hand that through some door
Caught a poor dancer from the dancing floor
With every time-beat of the orchestra.
What is this room of mirrors? Who can say?
Nursery Rhyme. CCCLXXVII. Paradoxes.
by Unknown

I saw a ship a-sailing,
A-sailing on the sea;
And, oh! it was all laden
With pretty things for thee!
There were comfits in the cabin,
And apples in the hold;
The sails were made of silk,
And the masts were made of gold:
The four-and-twenty sailors,
That stood between the decks,
Were four-and-twenty white mice,
With chains about their necks.
The captain was a duck,
With a packet on his back;
And when the ship began to move,
The captain said, "Quack! quack!"
Anarchy
by John Alexander McCrae

I saw a city filled with lust and shame,
Where men, like wolves, slunk through the grim half-light;
And sudden, in the midst of it, there came
One who spoke boldly for the cause of Right.
And speaking, fell before that brutish race
Like some poor wren that shrieking eagles tear,
While brute Dishonour, with her bloodless face
Stood by and smote his lips that moved in prayer.
"Speak not of God!    In centuries that word
Hath not been uttered!    Our own king are we."
And God stretched forth his finger as He heard
And o'er it cast a thousand leagues of sea.
God's Funeral
by Thomas Hardy

I
I saw a slowly-stepping train -
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar -
Following in files across a twilit plain
A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.
II
And by contagious throbs of thought
Or latent knowledge that within me lay
And had already stirred me, I was wrought
To consciousness of sorrow even as they.
III
The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes,
At first seemed man-like, and anon to change
To an amorphous cloud of marvellous size,
At times endowed with wings of glorious range.
IV
And this phantasmal variousness
Ever possessed it as they drew along:
Yet throughout all it symboled none the less
Potency vast and loving-kindness strong.
V
Almost before I knew I bent
Towards the moving columns without a word;
They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went,
Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard:-
VI
"O man-projected Figure, of late
Imaged as we, thy knell who shall survive?
Whence came it we were tempted to create
One whom we can no longer keep alive?
VII
"Framing him jealous, fierce, at first,
We gave him justice as the ages rolled,
Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,
And longsuffering, and mercies manifold.
VIII
"And, tricked by our own early dream
And need of solace, we grew self-deceived,
Our making soon our maker did we deem,
And what we had imagined we believed.
IX
"Till, in Time's stayless stealthy swing,
Uncompromising rude reality
Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning,
Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be.
X
"So, toward our myth's oblivion,
Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and grope
Sadlier than those who wept in Babylon,
Whose Zion was a still abiding hope.
XI
"How sweet it was in years far hied
To start the wheels of day with trustful prayer,
To lie down liegely at the eventide
And feel a blest assurance he was there!
XII
"And who or what shall fill his place?
Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyes
For some fixed star to stimulate their pace
Towards the goal of their enterprise?" . . .
XIII
Some in the background then I saw,
Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous,
Who chimed as one: "This figure is of straw,
This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!"
XIV
I could not prop their faith: and yet
Many I had known: with all I sympathized;
And though struck speechless, I did not forget
That what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized.
XV
Still, how to bear such loss I deemed
The insistent question for each animate mind,
And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed
A pale yet positive gleam low down behind,
XVI
Whereof to lift the general night,
A certain few who stood aloof had said,
"See you upon the horizon that small light -
Swelling somewhat?" Each mourner shook his head.
XVII
And they composed a crowd of whom
Some were right good, and many nigh the best . . .
Thus dazed and puzzled 'twixt the gleam and gloom
Mechanically I followed with the rest.
1908-10.
The Song For Colin
by Sara Teasdale

I sang a song at dusking time
Beneath the evening star,
And Terence left his latest rhyme
To answer from afar.
Pierrot laid down his lute to weep,
And sighed, "She sings for me."
But Colin slept a careless sleep
Beneath an apple tree.
The Silent Messenger
by Pamela S. Vining, (J. C. Yule)

I sat beside a bed of pain,
And all the muffled hours were still;
The breeze that bent the summer grain,
Scarce sighed along the pine-clad hill;
The pensive stars, the silvery moon
Seemed sleeping in a sea of calm.
And all the leafy bowers of June
Were steeped in midnight's dewy balm.
She seemed to sleep, for lull of pain
Had calmed the fevered pulse a while,
But, as I watched, she woke again,
With wondering glance and eager smile.
The pale lips moved as if to speak,
The thin hand trembled in my own,
Then, with a sigh for words too weak,
The eyelids closed, and she was gone.
Gone! gone! - but where, or how, or when?
I had not seen or form or face;
Unmarked God's messenger had been
Beside me in that sacred place - 
No sound of footsteps as he came,
No gleam of glory as he went,
Swift as the lightning's arrowy flame,
Still as the dew the flowers that bent.
Yet she had heard the coming feet,
Had seen the glory of that face,
And, with unuttered raptures sweet,
Had sprung to welcome his embrace
As the swift arrow leaves the string, - 
As the glad lark ascends the sky; - 
And 'neath that soft o'ershadowing wing,
Swept past the radiant spheres on high.
O track of light! O car of flame!
The calm sky bears no trace of you;
The tranquil orbs sleep on the same,
In heaven's unclouded fields of blue;
And yet, upon this placid clay,
There lingers still that radiance blest, - 
Sweet token that her untracked way
Led up to bowers of heavenly rest!
All At Sea, The Voyage Of A Certain Uncertain Sailorman
by Frederick Moxon

I saw a certain sailorman who sat beside the sea,
And in the manner of his tribe he yawned this yarn to me:
"'Twere back in eighteen-fifty-three, or mebbe fifty-four,
I skipped the farm, no, 't were the shop, an' went to Baltimore.
I shipped aboard the Lizzie or she might ha' bin the Jane;
Them wimmin names are mixey, so I don't remember plain;
But anyhow, she were a craft that carried schooner rig,
(Although Sam Swab, the bo'sun, allus swore she were a brig);
We sailed away from Salem Town, no, lemme think; 't were Lynn,
An' steered a course for Africa (or Greece, it might ha' bin);
But anyway, we tacked an' backed an' weathered many a storm
Oh, no, as I recall it now, that week was fine an' warm!
Who did I say the cap'n was? I didn't say at all?
Wa-a-ll now, his name were 'Lijah Bell or was it Eli Ball?
I kinder guess 't were Eli. He'd a big, red, bushy beard
No-o-o, come to think, he allus kept his whiskers nicely sheared.
But anyhow, that voyage was the first I'd ever took,
An' all I had to do was cut up cabbage for the cook;
But come to talk o' cabbage just reminds me, that there trip
Would prob'ly be my third one, on a Hong Kong clipper-ship.
The crew they were a jolly lot, an' used to sing 'Avast,'
I think it were, or else 'Ahoy,' while bailing out the mast.
And as I recollect it now, "
But here I cut him short,
And said: "It's time to tack again, and bring your wits to port;
I came to get a story both adventurous and true,
And here is how I started out to write the interview:
'I saw a certain sailorman,' but you turn out to be
The most un-certain sailorman that ever sailed the sea!"
He puffed his pipe, and answered, "Wa-a-ll, I thought 'twere mine, but
still,
I must ha' told the one belongs to my twin brother Bill!"
Smiles
by William Henry Davies

I saw a black girl once,
As black as winter's night;
Till through her parted lips
There came a flood of light;
It was the milky way
Across her face so black:
Her two lips closed again,
And night came back.
I see a maiden now,
Fair as a summer's day;
Yet through her parted lips
I see the milky way;
It makes the broad daylight
In summer time look black:
Her two lips close again,
And night comes back.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - XXIV - Confirmation Continued
by William Wordsworth

I saw a Mother's eye intensely bent
Upon a Maiden trembling as she knelt;
In and for whom the pious Mother felt
Things that we judge of by a light too faint:
Tell, if ye may, some star-crowned Muse, or Saint!
Tell what rushed in, from what she was relieved
Then, when her Child the hallowing touch received,
And such vibration through the Mother went
That tears burst forth amain. Did gleams appear?
Opened a vision of that blissful place
Where dwells a Sister-child? And was power given
Part of her lost One's glory back to trace
Even to this Rite? For thus 'She' knelt, and, ere
The summer-leaf had faded, passed to Heaven.
His Immortality
by Thomas Hardy

I
I saw a dead man's finer part
Shining within each faithful heart
Of those bereft. Then said I: "This must be
His immortality."
II
I looked there as the seasons wore,
And still his soul continuously upbore
Its life in theirs. But less its shine excelled
Than when I first beheld.
III
His fellow-yearsmen passed, and then
In later hearts I looked for him again;
And found him - shrunk, alas! into a thin
And spectral mannikin.
IV
Lastly I ask - now old and chill -
If aught of him remain unperished still;
And find, in me alone, a feeble spark,
Dying amid the dark.
February 1899.
Plain Sermons
by James Whitcomb Riley

I saw a man - and envied him beside -
Because of this world's goods he had great store;
But even as I envied him, he died,
And left me envious of him no more.
I saw another man - and envied still -
Because he was content with frugal lot;
But as I envied him, the rich man's will
Bequeathed him all, and envy I forgot.
Yet still another man I saw, and he
I envied for a calm and tranquil mind
That nothing fretted in the least degree -
Until, alas! I found that he was blind.
What vanity is envy! for I find
I have been rich in dross of thought, and poor
In that I was a fool, and lastly blind
For never having seen myself before!
Just The Same
by Thomas Hardy

I sat. It all was past;
Hope never would hail again;
Fair days had ceased at a blast,
The world was a darkened den.
The beauty and dream were gone,
And the halo in which I had hied
So gaily gallantly on
Had suffered blot and died!
I went forth, heedless whither,
In a cloud too black for name:
- People frisked hither and thither;
The world was just the same.
In Memoriam. - Mrs. Georgiana Ives Comstock,
by Lydia Howard Sigourney

Died at Hartford, April 30th, 1861, aged 22.
I saw a brilliant bridal.
All that cheers
And charms the leaping heart of youth was there;
And she, the central object of the group,
The cherished song-bird of her father's house,
Array'd in beauty, was the loved of all.
Would I could tell you what a world of flowers
Were concentrated there--how they o'erflow'd
In wreaths and clusters--how they climb'd and swept
From vase to ceiling, with their gay festoons
Whispering each other in their mystic lore
Of fragrance, and consulting how to swell,
As best they might, the tide of happiness.
A few brief moons departed and I sought
The same abode. There was a gather'd throng
Beyond the threshold stone. A few white flowers
Crept o'er a bosom and a gentle hand
That clasp'd them not. A holy hymn awoke
In plaintive melody; but she who breath'd
The very soul of music from her birth,
Lay there with close-seal'd lips.
And the same voice
That in the flushing of the autumnal rose
Gladly pronounced the irrevocable words
"What God hath join'd together let no man
Asunder put," now, in the chasten'd tones
Of deep humility and tenderness,
Strove, from the armory of Heaven, to gird
The hearts that freshly bled.
At close of day,
In the lone, sadden'd hour of musing thought,
I seem'd to view a scene where, side by side,
Bridals and burials gleam'd--the smile and tear--
Anguish and joy--peace in her heavenly vest,
And brazen-throated war--and heard a cry,
"Such is man's life below."
I would have wept,
Save that a symphony of harps unseen
Broke from a hovering cloud; "Lo! we are they
Who from earth's tribulation rose and found
Our robes made white. Henceforth we grieve no more."
List! List! She mingleth in that raptur'd strain
Who said so sweetly to her spirit's-guide,
That the dear Lord whom she had early serv'd
Stood near in her extremity, and gave
Her soul full willingness to leave a world
All bright with beauty, and requited love.
And so Death lost his victory, tho' he snatched
The unwither'd garland out of Hymen's hand,
And wound it in cold mockery round the tomb.
Heloise
by Hanford Lennox Gordon

I saw a light on yester-night 
A low light on the misty lea;
The stars were dim and silence grim
Sat brooding on the sullen sea.
From out the silence came a voice 
A voice that thrilled me through and through,
And said, "Alas, is this your choice?
For he is false and I was true."
And in my ears the passing years
Will sadly whisper words of rue:
Forget and yet can I forget
That one was false and one was true?
Thoughts On The Late Destructive Propositions Of The Tories.[1] By A Common-Councilman.
by Thomas Moore

I sat me down in my easy chair,
To read, as usual, the morning papers;
But--who shall describe my look of despair,
When I came to Lefroy's "destructive" capers!
That he--that, of all live men, Lefroy
Should join in the cry "Destroy, destroy!"
Who, even when a babe, as I've heard said,
On Orange conserve was chiefly fed,
And never, till now, a movement made
That wasn't manfully retrograde!
Only think--to sweep from the light of day
Mayors, maces, criers and wigs away;
To annihilate--never to rise again--
A whole generation of aldermen,
Nor leave them even the accustomed tolls,
To keep together their bodies and souls!--
At a time too when snug posts and places
Are falling away from us one by one,
Crash--crash--like the mummy-cases
Belzoni, in Egypt, sat upon,
Wherein lay pickled, in state sublime,
Conservatives of the ancient time;--
To choose such a moment to overset
The few snug nuisances left us yet;
To add to the ruin that round us reigns,
By knocking out mayors' and town-clerks' brains;
By dooming all corporate bodies to fall,
Till they leave at last no bodies at all--
Naught but the ghosts of by-gone glory,
Wrecks of a world that once was Tory!--
Where pensive criers, like owls unblest,
Robbed of their roosts, shall still hoot o'er them:
Nor mayors shall know where to seek a nest,
Till Gaily Knight shall find one for them;--
Till mayors and kings, with none to rue 'em,
Shall perish all in one common plague;
And the sovereigns of Belfast and Tuam
Must join their brother, Charles Dix, at Prague.
Thus mused I, in my chair, alone,
(As above described) till dozy grown,
And nodding assent to my own opinions,
I found myself borne to sleep's dominions,
Where, lo! before my dreaming eyes,
A new House of Commons appeared to rise,
Whose living contents, to fancy's survey,
Seemed to me all turned topsy-turvy--
A jumble of polypi--nobody knew
Which was the head or which the queue.
Here, Inglis, turned to a sansculotte,
Was dancing the hays with Hume and Grote;
There, ripe for riot, Recorder Shaw
Was learning from Roebuck "'aira:"
While Stanley and Graham, as poissarde wenches,
Screamed "'-bas!" from the Tory benches;
And Peel and O'Connell, cheek by jowl,
Were dancing an Irish carmagnole.
The Lord preserve us!--if dreams come true,
What is this hapless realm to do?
Anarchy
by John McCrae

I saw a city filled with lust and shame,
Where men, like wolves, slunk through the grim half-light;
And sudden, in the midst of it, there came
One who spoke boldly for the cause of Right.
And speaking, fell before that brutish race
Like some poor wren that shrieking eagles tear,
While brute Dishonour, with her bloodless face
Stood by and smote his lips that moved in prayer.
"Speak not of God! In centuries that word
Hath not been uttered! Our own king are we."
And God stretched forth his finger as He heard
And o'er it cast a thousand leagues of sea.
Ecstasy
by W.J. Turner

I saw a frieze on whitest marble drawn
Of boys who sought for shells along the shore,
Their white feet shedding pallor in the sea,
The shallow sea, the spring-time sea of green
That faintly creamed against the cold, smooth pebbles.
The air was thin, their limbs were delicate,
The wind had graven their small eager hands
To feel the forests and the dark nights of Asia
Behind the purple bloom of the horizon,
Where sails would float and slowly melt away.
Their naked, pure, and grave, unbroken silence
Filled the soft air as gleaming, limpid water
Fills a spring sky those days when rain is lying
In shattered bright pools on the wind-dried roads,
And their sweet bodies were wind-purified.
One held a shell unto his shell-like ear
And there was music carven in his face,
His eyes half-closed, his lips just breaking open
To catch the lulling, mazy, coralline roar
Of numberless caverns filled with singing seas.
And all of them were hearkening as to singing
Of far-off voices thin and delicate,
Voices too fine for any mortal wind
To blow into the whorls of mortal ears -
And yet those sounds flowed from their grave, sweet faces.
And as I looked I heard that delicate music,
And I became as grave, as calm, as still
As those carved boys. I stood upon that shore,
I felt the cool sea dream around my feet,
My eyes were staring at the far horizon:
And the wind came and purified my limbs,
And the stars came and set within my eyes,
And snowy clouds rested upon my shoulders,
And the blue sky shimmered deep within me,
And I sang like a carven pipe of music.