DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
An Epitaph Upon A Virgin
by Robert Herrick

Here a solemn fast we keep,
While all beauty lies asleep;
Hush'd be all things, no noise here
But the toning of a tear;
Or a sigh of such as bring
Cowslips for her covering.
A Midsummer Holiday:- IX. On The Verge
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Here begins the sea that ends not till the world's end. Where we stand,
Could we know the next high sea-mark set beyond these waves that gleam,
We should know what never man hath known, nor eye of man hath scanned.
Nought beyond these coiling clouds that melt like fume of shrines that steam
Breaks or stays the strength of waters till they pass our bounds of dream.
Where the waste Land's End leans westward, all the seas it watches roll
Find their border fixed beyond them, and a worldwide shore's control:
These whereby we stand no shore beyond us limits: these are free.
Gazing hence, we see the water that grows iron round the Pole,
From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.
Sail on sail along the sea-line fades and flashes; here on land
Flash and fade the wheeling wings on wings of mews that plunge and scream.
Hour on hour along the line of life and time's evasive strand
Shines and darkens, wanes and waxes, slays and dies: and scarce they seem
More than motes that thronged and trembled in the brief noon's breath and beam.
Some with crying and wailing, some with notes like sound of bells that toll,
Some with sighing and laughing, some with words that blessed and made us whole,
Passed, and left us, and we know not what they were, nor what were we.
Would we know, being mortal? Never breath of answering whisper stole
From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.
Shadows, would we question darkness? Ere our eyes and brows be fanned
Round with airs of twilight, washed with dews from sleep's eternal stream,
Would we know sleep's guarded secret? Ere the fire consume the brand,
Would it know if yet its ashes may requicken? yet we deem
Surely man may know, or ever night unyoke her starry team,
What the dawn shall be, or if the dawn shall be not, yea, the scroll
Would we read of sleep's dark scripture, pledge of peace or doom of dole.
Ah, but here man's heart leaps, yearning toward the gloom with venturous glee,
Though his pilot eye behold nor bay nor harbour, rock nor shoal,
From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.
Friend, who knows if death indeed have life or life have death for goal?
Day nor night can tell us, nor may seas declare nor skies unroll
What has been from everlasting, or if aught shall always be.
Silence answering only strikes response reverberate on the soul
From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.
The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - On The Sepulchre Of Christ. No. 2.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Quinci impara a stupirti.
Here bend in boundless wonder; bow your head:
Think how God's deathless Mind, that men might be
Robed in celestial immortality
(O Love divine!), in flesh was raimented:
How He was killed and buried; from the dead
How He arose to life with victory,
And reigned in heaven; how all of us shall be
Glorious like Him whose hearts to His are wed:
How they who die for love of reason, give
Hypocrites, tyrants, sophists--all who sell
Their neighbours ill for holiness--to hell:
How the dead saint condemns the bad who live;
How all he does becomes a law for men;
How he at last to judge shall come again!
Soul's Desire
by Edgar Lee Masters

Her soul is like a wolf that stands
Where sunlight falls between the trees
Of a sparse forest's leafless edge,
When Spring's first magic moveth these.
Her soul is like a little brook,
Thin edged with ice against the leaves,
Where the wolf drinks and is alone,
And where the woodbine interweaves.
A bank late covered by the snow,
But lighted by the frozen North;
Her soul is like a little plot
That one white blossom bringeth forth.
Her soul is slim, like silver slips,
And straight, like flags beside a stream.
Her soul is like a shape that moves
And changes in a wonder dream.
Who would pursue her clasps a cloud,
And taketh sorrow for his zeal.
Memory shall sing him many songs
While bound upon the torture wheel.
Her soul is like a wolf that glides
By moonlight o'er a phantom ridge;
Her face is like a light that runs
Beneath the shadow of a bridge.
Her voice is like a woodland cry
Heard in a summer's desolate hour.
Her eyes are dim; her lips are faint,
And tinctured like the cuckoo flower.
Her little breasts are like the buds
Of tulips in a place forlorn.
Her soul is like a mandrake bloom
Standing against the crimson moon.
Her dream is like the fenny snake's,
That warms him in the noonday's fire.
She hath no thought, nor any hope,
Save of herself and her desire.
She is not life; she is not death;
She is not fear, or joy or grief.
Her soul is like a quiet sea
Beneath a ruin-haunted reef.
She is the shape the sailor sees,
That slips the rock without a sound.
She is the soul that comes and goes
And leaves no mark, yet makes a wound.
She is the soul that hunts and flies;
She is a world-wide mist of care.
She is the restlessness of life,
Its rapture and despair.
A Child's Grace
by Robert Herrick

Here a little child I stand
Heaving up my either hand;
Cold as paddocks though they be,
Here I lift them up to Thee,
For a benison to fall
On our meat and on us all. Amen.
The Modern Saint
by Matthew Prior

Her time with equal prudence Silvia shares,
First writes her billet-doux, then says her prayers,
Her mass and toilette, vespers, and the play;
Thus God and Ashtaroth divide the day:
Constant she keeps her Ember-week and Lent,
At Easter calls all Israel to her tent:
Loose without bawd, and pious without zeal,
She still repeats the sins she would conceal.
Envy herself from Silvia's life must grant,
An artful woman makes a modern saint.
Her Only Pilot The Soft Breeze, The Boat
by William Wordsworth

Her only pilot the soft breeze, the boat
Lingers, but Fancy is well satisfied;
With keen-eyed Hope, with Memory, at her side,
And the glad Muse at liberty to note
All that to each is precious, as we float
Gently along; regardless who shall chide
If the heavens smile, and leave us free to glide,
Happy Associates breathing air remote
From trivial cares. But, Fancy and the Muse,
Why have I crowded this small bark with you
And others of your kind, ideal crew!
While here sits One whose brightness owes its hues
To flesh and blood; no Goddess from above,
No fleeting Spirit, but my own true love?
Another Grace For A Child.
by Robert Herrick

Here a little child I stand
Heaving up my either hand;
Cold as paddocks though they be,
Here I lift them up to Thee,
For a benison to fall
On our meat and on us all. Amen.
Egeria's Silence
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

Her thought that, like a brook beside the way,
Sang to my steps through all the wandering year,
Has ceased from melody--O Love, allay
My sudden fear!
She cannot fail--the beauty of that brow
Could never flower above a desert heart--
Somewhere beneath, the well-spring even now
Lives, though apart.
Some day, when winter has renewed her fount
With cold, white-folded snows and quiet rain,
O Love, O Love, her stream again will mount
And sing again!
Nursery Rhyme. CCCLXXI. Paradoxes.
by Unknown

Here am I, little jumping Joan;
When nobody's with me,
I'm always alone.
Louise Smith
by Edgar Lee Masters

Herbert broke our engagement of eight years
When Annabelle returned to the village From the
Seminary, ah me!
If I had let my love for him alone
It might have grown into a beautiful sorrow - 
Who knows? - filling my life with healing fragrance.
But I tortured it, I poisoned it
I blinded its eyes, and it became hatred - 
Deadly ivy instead of clematis.
And my soul fell from its support
Its tendrils tangled in decay.
Do not let the will play gardener to your soul
Unless you are sure
It is wiser than your soul's nature.
The Spinster
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I
Here are the orchard trees all large with fruit;
And yonder fields are golden with young grain.
In little journeys, branchward from the nest,
A mother bird, with sweet insistent cries,
Urges her young to use their untried wings.
A purring Tabby, stretched upon the sward,
Shuts and expands her velvet paws in joy,
While sturdy kittens nuzzle at her breast.
O mighty Maker of the Universe,
Am I not part and parcel of Thy World,
And one with Nature?    Wherefore, then, in me
Must this great reproductive impulse lie
Hidden, ashamed, unnourished, and denied,
Until it starves to slow and tortuous death?
I knew the hope of spring-time; like the tree
Now ripe with fruit, I budded, and then bloomed;
We laughed together through the young May morns;
We dreamed together through the summer moons;
Till all Thy purposes within the tree
Were to fruition brought.    Lord, Thou hast heard
The Woman in me crying for the Man;
The Mother in me crying for the Child;
And made no answer.    Am I less to Thee
Than lover forms of Nature, or in truth
Dost Thou hold Somewhere in another Realm
Full compensation and large recompense
For lonely virtue forced by fate to live
A life unnatural, in a natural world?
II
Thou who hast made for such sure purposes
The mightiest and the meanest thing that is - 
Planned out the lives of insects of the air
With fine precision and consummate care,
Thou who hast taught the bee the secret power
Of carrying on love's laws 'twixt flower and flower,
Why didst Thou shape this mortal frame of mine,
If Heavenly joys alone were Thy design?
Wherefore the wonder of my woman's breast,
By lips of lover and of babe unpressed,
If spirit children only shall reply
Unto my ever urgent mother cry?
Why should the rose be guided to its own,
And my love-craving heart beat on alone?
III
Yet do I understand; for Thou hast made
Something more subtle than this heart of me;
A finer part of me
To be obeyed.
Albeit I am a sister to the earth,
This nature self is not the whole of me;
The deathless soul of me
Has nobler birth.
The primal woman hungers for the man;
My better self demands the mate of me;
The spirit fate of me,
Part of Thy plan.
Nature is instinct with the mother-need;
So is my heart; but ah, the child of me
Should, undefiled of me,
Spring from love's seed.
And if, in barren chastity, I must
Know but in dreams that perfect choice of me,
Still will the voice of me
Proclaim God just.
Four Footprints
by Thomas Hardy

Here are the tracks upon the sand
Where stood last evening she and I -
Pressed heart to heart and hand to hand;
The morning sun has baked them dry.
I kissed her wet face - wet with rain,
For arid grief had burnt up tears,
While reached us as in sleeping pain
The distant gurgling of the weirs.
"I have married him - yes; feel that ring;
'Tis a week ago that he put it on . . .
A dutiful daughter does this thing,
And resignation succeeds anon!
"But that I body and soul was yours
Ere he'd possession, he'll never know.
He's a confident man. 'The husband scores,'
He says, 'in the long run' . . . Now, Dear, go!"
I went. And to-day I pass the spot;
It is only a smart the more to endure;
And she whom I held is as though she were not,
For they have resumed their honeymoon tour.
Autumn Etchings
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
Morning
Her rain-kissed face is fresh as rain,
Is cool and fresh as a rain-wet leaf;
She glimmers at my window-pane,
And all my grief
Becomes a feeble rushlight, seen no more
When the gold of her gown sweeps in my door.
II.
Forenoon
Great blurs of woodland waved with wind;
Gray paths, down which October came,
That now November's blasts have thinned
And flecked with fiercer flame,
Are her delight. She loves to lie
Regarding with a gray-blue eye
The far-off hills that hold the sky:
And I I lie and gaze with her
Beyond the autumn woods and ways
Into the hope of coming days,
The spring that nothing shall deter,
That puts my soul in unison
With what's to do and what is done.
III.
Noon
Wild grapes that purple through
Leaves that are golden;
Brush-fires that pillar blue
Woods, that, enfolden
Deep in the haze of dreams,
In resignation
Give themselves up, it seems,
To divination:
Woods, that, ablaze with oak,
That the crow flew in,
Gaze through the brushwood smoke
On their own ruin,
And on the countenance of Death who stalks
Amid their miles,
While to himself he talks
And smiles:
Where, in their midst, Noon sits and holds
Communion with their grays and golds,
Transforming with her rays their golds and grays,
And in my heart the memories of dead days.
IV.
Afternoon
Wrought-iron hues of blood and bronze,
Like some wild dawn's,
Make fierce each leafy spire
Of blackberry brier,
Where, through their thorny fire,
She goes, the Afternoon, from wood to wood,
From crest to oak-crowned crest
Of the high hill-lands, where the Morning stood
With rosy-ribboned breast.
Along the hills she takes the tangled path
Unto the quiet close of day,
Musing on what a lovely death she hath
The unearthly golden beryl far away
Banding the gradual west,
Seen through cathedral columns of the pines
And minster naves of woodlands arched with vines;
The golden couch, spread of the setting sun,
For her to lie, and me to gaze, upon.
V.
Evening
The winds awake,
And, whispering, shake
The aster-flower whose doom is sealed;
The sumach-bloom
Bows down its plume;
And, blossom-Bayard of the field,
The chicory stout
To the winds' wild rout
Lifts up its ragged shield.
Low in the west the Evening shows
A ridge of rose;
And, stepping Earthward from the hills,
Where'er she goes
The cricket wakes, and all the silence spills
With reed-like music shaken from the weeds:
She takes my hand
And leads
Softly my soul into the Fairyland,
The wonder-world of gold and chrysolite,
She builds there at the haunted edge of night.
VI.
Night
Autumn woods the winds tramp down
Sowing acorns left and right,
Where, in rainy raiment, Night
Tiptoes, rustling wild her gown
Dripping in the moon's pale light,
In the moonlight wan that hurries
Trailing now a robe of cloud
Now of glimmer, ghostly browed,
Through the leaves whose wildness skurries,
And whose tatters swirl and swarm
Round her in her stormy starkness;
She who takes my heart that leaps,
That exults, and onward sweeps,
Like a red leaf in the darkness
And the tumult of the storm.
The Captain
by John Alexander McCrae

1797
Here all the day she swings from tide to tide,
Here all night long she tugs a rusted chain,
A masterless hulk that was a ship of pride,
Yet unashamed:    her memories remain.
It was Nelson in the 'Captain', Cape St. Vincent far alee,
With the 'Vanguard' leading s'uth'ard in the haze --
Little Jervis and the Spaniards and the fight that was to be,
Twenty-seven Spanish battleships, great bullies of the sea,
And the 'Captain' there to find her day of days.
Right into them the 'Vanguard' leads, but with a sudden tack
The Spaniards double swiftly on their trail;
Now Jervis overshoots his mark, like some too eager pack,
He will not overtake them, haste he e'er so greatly back,
But Nelson and the 'Captain' will not fail.
Like a tigress on her quarry leaps the 'Captain' from her place,
To lie across the fleeing squadron's way:
Heavy odds and heavy onslaught, gun to gun and face to face,
Win the ship a name of glory, win the men a death of grace,
For a little hold the Spanish fleet in play.
Ended now the "Captain"'s battle, stricken sore she falls aside
Holding still her foemen, beaten to the knee:
As the 'Vanguard' drifted past her, "Well done, 'Captain'," Jervis cried,
Rang the cheers of men that conquered, ran the blood of men that died,
And the ship had won her immortality.
Lo! here her progeny of steel and steam,
A funnelled monster at her mooring swings:
Still, in our hearts, we see her pennant stream,
And "Well done, 'Captain'," like a trumpet rings.
A Bronze Head
by William Butler Yeats

Here at right of the entrance this bronze head,
Human, superhuman, a bird's round eye,
Everything else withered and mummy-dead.
What great tomb-haunter sweeps the distant sky
(Something may linger there though all else die;)
And finds there nothing to make its tetror less
i{Hysterica passio} of its own emptiness?
No dark tomb-haunter once; her form all full
As though with magnanimity of light,
Yet a most gentle woman; who can tell
Which of her forms has shown her substance right?
Or maybe substance can be composite,
profound McTaggart thought so, and in a breath
A mouthful held the extreme of life and death.
But even at the starting-post, all sleek and new,
I saw the wildness in her and I thought
A vision of terror that it must live through
Had shattered her soul. Propinquity had brought
Imagiation to that pitch where it casts out
All that is not itself: I had grown wild
And wandered murmuring everywhere, "My child, my
child! '
Or else I thought her supernatural;
As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
On this foul world in its decline and fall;
On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave,
And wondered what was left for massacre to save.
Her Violin.
by Madison Julius Cawein

I
Her violin! - Again begin
The dream-notes of her violin;
And dim and fair, with gold-brown hair,
I seem to see her standing there,
Soft-eyed and sweetly slender:
The room again, with strain on strain,
Vibrates to LOVE's melodious pain,
As, sloping slow, is poised her bow,
While round her form the golden glow
Of sunset spills its splendour.
II
Her violin! - now deep, now thin,
Again I hear her violin;
And, dream by dream, again I seem
To see the love-light's tender gleam
Beneath her eyes' long lashes:
While to my heart she seems a part
Of her pure song's inspir'd art;
And, as she plays, the rosy grays
Of twilight halo hair and face,
While sunset burns to ashes.
III
O violin! - Cease, cease within
My soul, O haunting violin!
In vain, in vain, you bring again
Back from the past the blissful pain
Of all the love then spoken;
When on my breast, at happy rest,
A sunny while her head was pressed - 
Peace, peace to these wild memories!
For, like my heart naught remedies,
Her violin lies broken.
The Captain
by John McCrae

Here all the day she swings from tide to tide,
Here all night long she tugs a rusted chain,
A masterless hulk that was a ship of pride,
Yet unashamed:    her memories remain.
It was Nelson in the `Captain', Cape St. Vincent far alee,
With the `Vanguard' leading s'uth'ard in the haze,
Little Jervis and the Spaniards and the fight that was to be,
Twenty-seven Spanish battleships, great bullies of the sea,
And the `Captain' there to find her day of days.
Right into them the `Vanguard' leads, but with a sudden tack
The Spaniards double swiftly on their trail;
Now Jervis overshoots his mark, like some too eager pack,
He will not overtake them, haste he e'er so greatly back,
But Nelson and the `Captain' will not fail.
Like a tigress on her quarry leaps the `Captain' from her place,
To lie across the fleeing squadron's way:
Heavy odds and heavy onslaught, gun to gun and face to face,
Win the ship a name of glory, win the men a death of grace,
For a little hold the Spanish fleet in play.
Ended now the "Captain"'s battle, stricken sore she falls aside
Holding still her foemen, beaten to the knee:
As the `Vanguard' drifted past her, "Well done, `Captain'," Jervis cried,
Rang the cheers of men that conquered, ran the blood of men that died,
And the ship had won her immortality.
Lo! here her progeny of steel and steam,
A funneled monster at her mooring swings:
Still, in our hearts, we see her pennant stream,
And "Well done, `Captain'," like a trumpet rings.
A Fantasy
by Sara Teasdale

Her voice is like clear water
That drips upon a stone
In forests far and silent
Where Quiet plays alone.
Her thoughts are like the lotus
Abloom by sacred streams
Beneath the temple arches
Where Quiet sits and dreams.
Her kisses are the roses
That glow while dusk is deep
In Persian garden closes
Where Quiet falls asleep.
Her Beauty
by George Wither

Her true beauty leaves behind
Apprehensions in my mind
Of more sweetness than all art
Or inventions can impart;
Thoughts too deep to be expressed,
And too strong to be suppressed....
... What pearls, what rubies can
Seem so lovely fair to man,
As her lips whom he doth love
When in sweet discourse they move:
Or her lovelier teeth, the while
She doth bless him with a smile!
Stars indeed fair creatures be;
Yet amongst us where is he
Joys not more the whilst he lies
Sunning in his mistress' eyes.
Than in all the glimmering light
Of a starry winter's night?
Note the beauty of an eye,
And if aught you praise it by
Leave such passion in your mind,
Let my reason's eye be blind.
Mark if ever red or white
Anywhere gave such delight
As when they have taken place
In a worthy woman's face.
From Faire Virtue.
Envoy In Autumn
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

Here are the doleful rains,
And one would say the sky is weeping
The death of the tolerable weather.
Tedium cloaks the wit like a veil of clouds
And we sit down indoors.
Now is the time for poetry coloured with summer.
Let it fall on the white paper
As ripe flowers fall from a perfect tree.
I will dip down my lips into my cup
Each time I wet my brush.
And keep my thoughts from wandering as smoke wanders,
For time escapes away from you and me
Quicker than birds.
From the Chinese of Tu Fu (712-770).
Autumn In King's Hintock Park
by Thomas Hardy

Here by the baring bough
Raking up leaves,
Often I ponder how
Springtime deceives, -
I, an old woman now,
Raking up leaves.
Here in the avenue
Raking up leaves,
Lords' ladies pass in view,
Until one heaves
Sighs at life's russet hue,
Raking up leaves!
Just as my shape you see
Raking up leaves,
I saw, when fresh and free,
Those memory weaves
Into grey ghosts by me,
Raking up leaves.
Yet, Dear, though one may sigh,
Raking up leaves,
New leaves will dance on high -
Earth never grieves! -
Will not, when missed am I
Raking up leaves.
1901.
Wandering Willie. (Last Version.)
by Robert Burns

I.
Here awa, there awa, wandering Willie,
Here awa, there awa, haud awa hame;
Come to my bosom, my ain only dearie,
Tell me thou bring'st me my Willie the same.
II.
Winter winds blew loud and cauld at our parting,
Fears for my Willie brought tears in my e'e;
Welcome now simmer, and welcome my Willie,
The simmer to nature, my Willie to me.
III.
Rest, ye wild storms, in the cave of your slumbers,
How your dread howling a lover alarms!
Wauken, ye breezes, row gently, ye billows,
And waft my dear laddie ance mair to my arms.
IV.
But oh, if he's faithless, and minds na his Nannie,
Flow still between us, thou wide roaring main;
May I never see it, may I never trow it,
But, dying, believe that my Willie's my ain.
Hafiz
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Her passions the shy violet
From Hafiz never hides;
Love-longings of the raptured bird
The bird to him confides.
Upon A Child
by Robert Herrick

Here a pretty baby lies
Sung asleep with lullabies;
Pray be silent, and not stir
Th' easy earth that covers her.
Teignmouth: "Some Doggerel," Sent In A Letter To B. R. Haydon
by John Keats

I.
Here all the summer could I stay,
For there's Bishop's teign
And King's teign
And Coomb at the clear Teign head
Where close by the stream
You may have your cream
All spread upon barley bread.
II.
There's Arch Brook
And there's Larch Brook
Both turning many a mill,
And cooling the drouth
Of the salmon's mouth
And fattening his silver gill.
III.
There is Wild wood,
A Mild hood
To the sheep on the lea o' the down,
Where the golden furze,
With its green, thin spurs,
Doth catch at the maiden's gown.
IV.
There is Newton Marsh
With its spear grass harsh
A pleasant summer level
Where the maidens sweet
Of the Market Street
Do meet in the dusk to revel.
V.
There's the Barton rich
With dyke and ditch
And hedge for the thrush to live in,
And the hollow tree
For the buzzing bee
And a bank for the wasp to hive in.
VI.
And O, and O
The daisies blow
And the primroses are waken'd,
And violets white
Sit in silver plight,
And the green bud's as long as the spike end.
VII.
Then who would go
Into dark Soho,
And chatter with dack'd-hair'd critics,
When he can stay
For the new-mown hay,
And startle the dappled Prickets?