DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Billy.
by Jean Blewett

O! He was the boy of the house, you know,
A jolly and rollicking lad;
He never was sick, he never was tired,
And nothing could make him sad.
If he started to play at sunrise,
Not a rest would he take at noon;
No day was so long from beginning to end,
But his bed-time came too soon.
Did someone urge that he make less noise,
He would say, with a saucy grin:
"Why, one boy alone doesn't make much stir - 
O sakes! I wish I was a twin.
"There's two of twins, and it must be fun
To go double at everything;
To holler by twos, and whistle by twos,
To stamp by twos, and to sing!"
His laugh was something to make you glad,
So brimful was it of joy;
A conscience he had, perhaps, in his breast,
But it never troubled the boy.
You met him out on the garden path,
The terrier at his heels,
And knew by the shout he hailed you with
How happy a youngster feels.
The maiden auntie was half distraught
With his tricks as the days went by;
"The most mischievous child in all the world!"
She said with a shrug and a sigh.
His father owned that her words were true,
His mother declared each day
He was putting wrinkles into her face,
And turning her brown hair gray.
His grown-up sister referred to him
As "a trouble," "a trial," "a grief";
The way he ignored all rules, she said,
Was something beyond belief!
It never troubled the boy of the house,
He revelled in racket and din,
Had only one regret in the world - 
He hadn't been born a twin!
*        *        *        *        *
There's nobody making a noise to-day,
There's nobody stamping the floor,
'Tis strangely silent upstairs and down - 
White ribbons upon the door.
The terrier's whining out in the sun:
"Where's my comrade?" he seems to say.
Turn your plaintive eyes away, little dog,
There's no frolic for you to-day.
The freckle-faced girl from the house next door
Is sobbing her young heart out.
Don't cry, little girl, you'll soon forget
The laugh and the merry shout.
The grown-up sister is kissing his face,
And calling him "angel" and "sweet,"
And the maiden aunt is nursing the boots
He wore on his restless feet.
So big, so solemn the old house seems - 
No uproar, no racket, no din,
No shrill peal of laughter, no voice shrieking out,
"O sakes! I wish I was a twin!"
A man and a woman white with grief
Watch the wearisome moments creep - 
Oh! the loneliness touches everything,
The boy of the house is asleep!
Sonnet. To Charity.
by Thomas Gent

O! best-beloved of Heaven, on earth bestow'd,
To raise the pilgrim sunk with ghastly fears,
To cool his burning wounds, to wipe his tears,
And strew with amaranths his thorny road.
Alas! how long has Superstition hurl'd
Thine altars down, thine attributes reviled,
The hearts of men with witchcrafts foul beguiled.
And spread his empire o'er the vassal world?
But truth returns! she spreads resistless day;
And mark, the monster's cloud-wrapt fabric falls--
He shrinks--he trembles 'mid his inmost halls,
And all his damn'd illusions melt away!
The charm dissolved--immortal, fair, and free,
Thy holy fanes shall rise, celestial Charity!
The Sea Serpent
by Oliver Herford

O wondrous worm that won the Height
Of Fame by keeping out of sight!
Never was known on Land or Sea
Such a Colossal Modesty;
Never such arrogant pretence
Of Ostentatious Diffidence.
Celebrity whom none has seen,
Save some Post Prandial Marine,
No magazine can reproduce
Your Photograph.--Oh, what's the use
Of doing things when one may be
So Famous a Nonentity!
Tennyson' At The Farm
by Richard Le Gallienne

(TO L. AND H.H.)
O you that dwell 'mid farm and fold,
Yet keep so quick undulled a heart,
I send you here that book of gold,
So loved so long;
The fairest art,
The sweetest English song.
And often in the far-off town,
When summer sits with open door,
I'll dream I see you set it down
Beside the churn,
Whose round shall slacken more and more,
Till you forget to turn.
And I shall smile that you forget,
And Dad will scold - but never mind!
Butter is good, but better yet,
Think such as we,
To leave the farm and fold behind,
And follow such as he.
A Hymn To The Muses.
by Robert Herrick

O you the virgins nine!
That do our souls incline
To noble discipline!
Nod to this vow of mine.
Come, then, and now inspire
My viol and my lyre
With your eternal fire,
And make me one entire
Composer in your choir.
Then I'll your altars strew
With roses sweet and new;
And ever live a true
Acknowledger of you.
Fond Counsel
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

O youth, beside thy silver-springing fountain,
In sight and hearing of thy father's cot,
These and the morning woods, the lonely mountain,
These are thy peace, although thou know'st it not.
Wander not yet where noon's unpitying glare
Beats down the toilers in the city bare;
Forsake not yet, not yet, the homely plot,
O Youth, beside thy silver-springing fountain.
The Rose Tree
by William Butler Yeats

"O words are lightly spoken,"
Said Pearse to Connolly,
"Maybe a breath of politic words
Has withered our Rose Tree;
Or maybe but a wind that blows
Across the bitter sea."
"It needs to be but watered,"
James Connolly replied,
"To make the green come out again
And spread on every side,
And shake the blossom from the bud
To be the garden's pride."
"But where can we draw water,"
Said Pearse to Connolly,
"When all the wells are parched away?
O plain as plain can be
There's nothing but our own red blood
Can make a right Rose Tree."
The Sonnets LXXX - O! how I faint when I of you do write
by William Shakespeare

O! how I faint when I of you do write,
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame!
But since your worth, wide as the ocean is, 
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
My saucy bark, inferior far to his,
On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
Or, being wrack'd, I am a worthless boat,
He of tall building, and of goodly pride:
Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
The worst was this, my love was my decay.
Songs to Berlin
by Alfred Lichtenstein

1
O you Berlin, you colorful stone, you beast.
You cast me with street lamps like briars.
Ah, when one flows in the night through your lamps
After women, silky, plump.
A man gets dizzy from the eye-play.
The little moon-candy sweetens the sky.
When the days struck the steeples.
The head still glows, a red Chinese lantern.
2
Soon I must leave you, my Berlin.
Must again travel into the desolate cities.
Soon I shall sit on the distant hill tops.
In dense woods carve your name.
Farewell, Berlin, with your bold fires.
Farewell, your streets full of adventures.
Who has known as much as I have of your pain.
Saloons, you, I press you to my breast.
3
In meadows and in pure winds peacefully
Cheerful people may glide along gleefully.
We, however, rotten and poisoned long ago,
Would deceive ourselves with this stepping into heaven
In strange cities I move about without direction.
The strange days are hollow and like chalk.
You, my Berlin, you opium rush, you bastard.
Only he who knows longing knows what I suffer.
Sonnet LXXVII.
by Anna Seward

O! hast thou seen a vernal Morning bright
Gem every bank and trembling leaf with dews,
Tinging the green fields with her amber hues,
Changing the leaden streams to lines of light?
Then seen dull Clouds, that shed untimely night,
Roll envious on, and every ray suffuse,
Till the chill'd Scenes their early beauty lose,
And faint, and colourless, no more invite
The glistening gaze of Joy? - 'Twas emblem just
Of my youth's sun, on which deep shadows fell,
Spread from the PALL OF FRIENDS; and Grief's loud gust
Resistless, oft wou'd wasted tears compel:
Yet let me hope, that on my darken'd days
Science, and pious Trust, may shed pervading rays.
Hendecasyllabics
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

O you chorus of indolent reviewers,
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
All composed in a metre of Catullus,
All in quantity, careful of my motion,
Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him,
Lest I fall unawares before the people,
Waking laughter in indolent reviewers.
Should I flounder awhile without a tumble
Thro' this metrification of Catullus,
They should speak to me not without a welcome,
All that chorus of indolent reviewers.
Hard, hard, hard it is, only not to tumble,
So fantastical is the dainty meter.
Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me
Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers.
O blatant Magazines, regard me rather -
Since I blush to belaud myself a moment -
As some rare little rose, a piece of inmost
Horticultural art, or half-coquette-like
Maiden, not to be greeted unbenignly.
The Sonnets CXI - O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide
by William Shakespeare

O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdu'd
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
Pity me, then, and wish I were renew'd;
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink,
Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.
Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye,
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.
The Sonnets CXXXIX - O! call not me to justify the wrong
by William Shakespeare

O! call not me to justify the wrong
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;
Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue:
Use power with power, and slay me not by art,
Tell me thou lov'st elsewhere; but in my sight,
Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside:
What need'st thou wound with cunning, when thy might
Is more than my o'erpress'd defence can bide?
Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows
Her pretty looks have been mine enemies;
And therefore from my face she turns my foes,
That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:
Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,
Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.
Charming May.
by John Hartley

"O! charming May!"
That's what they say.
The saying is not new, - 
The saying is not true; - 
O! May!
Bare fields and icebound streams,
Sunshine in fitful gleams,
May smile
Beguile,
And dispel poets' dreams.
Was ever May so gay
As what the poets say?
If so,
We know,
We live not in their day.
A cosy coat and wrap,
You may not find mishap - 
Propo
You know
When comes the next cold snap.
A heavy woollen scarf,
Strong boots that reach the calf, - 
Away we go
Through snow and slush and wet, - 
And can we once forget
'Tis May? Oh, no!
Best is the old advice
Which we so oft despise,
"Cast not a clout
Till May goes out."
May like a maiden, lies.
A Maypole dance. - O, my!
Such sport is all "my eye,"
Just try,
I tried it and I know,
The snow, the blow,
The aching toes, the smarting nose.
I all defied,
And loudly cried
"Come on,
Each one,
Be gay! be gay! - 'Tis May! Tis May"
They laughed and shook the head,
And this is what they said,
"Old Skunk, he's drunk."
Still we do love her so, - 
Her truth? O, no!
She's like some fancy fickle,
She lands you in a pickle,
You grin and bear,
Maybe you swear
In manner most alarming,
And yet - Sweet May is charming.
God's World
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour!    That gaunt crag
To crush!    To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!
Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,--Lord, I do fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,--let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.
Beautiful Hands.
by James Whitcomb Riley

O your hands - they are strangely fair!
Fair - for the jewels that sparkle there, -
Fair - for the witchery of the spell
That ivory keys alone can tell;
But when their delicate touches rest
Here in my own do I love them best,
As I clasp with eager acquisitive spans
My glorious treasure of beautiful hands!
Marvelous - wonderful - beautiful hands!
They can coax roses to bloom in the strands
Of your brown tresses; and ribbons will twine,
Under mysterious touches of thine,
Into such knots as entangle the soul,
And fetter the heart under such a control
As only the strength of my love understands -
My passionate love for your beautiful hands.
As I remember the first fair touch
Of those beautiful hands that I love so much,
I seem to thrill as I then was thrilled,
Kissing the glove that I found unfilled -
When I met your gaze, and the queenly bow,
As you said to me, laughingly, "Keep it now!"
And dazed and alone in a dream I stand
Kissing this ghost of your beautiful hand.
When first I loved, in the long ago,
And held your hand as I told you so -
Pressed and caressed it and gave it a kiss,
And said "I could die fora hand like this!"
Little I dreamed love's fulness yet
Had to ripen when eyes were wet,
And prayers were vain in their wild demands
For one warm touch of your beautiful hands.
Beautiful Hands! O Beautiful Hands!
Could you reach out of the alien lands
Where you are lingering, and give me, to-night,
Only a touch - were it ever so light -
My heart were soothed, and my weary brain
Would lull itself into rest again;
For there is no solace the world commands
Like the caress of your beautiful hands.
The Butterfly
by Clark Ashton Smith

I
O wonderful and wing'd flow'r,
That hoverest in the garden-close,
Finding in mazes of the rose,
The beauty of a Summer hour!
O symbol of Impermanence,
Thou art a word of Beauty's tongue,
A word that in her song is sung,
Appealing to the inner sense!
Of that great mystic harmony,
All lovely things are notes and words -
The trees, the flow'rs, the songful birds,
The flame-white stars, the surging sea,
The aureate light of sudden dawn,
The sunset's crimson afterglow,
The summer clouds, the dazzling snow,
The brooks, the moonlight chaste and wan.
Lacking (who knows?) a cloud, a tree,
A streamlet's purl, the ocean's roar
From Nature's multitudinous store -
Imperfect were the melody!
II
O Beauty, why so sad my heart?
Why stirs in me a nameless pain
Which seems like some remembered strain,
As on this product of thine art
Enraptured, marvelling I gaze,
And note how airily 'tis wrought -
A wing'd dream, a bodied thought,
The spirit of the summer days?
Thy beauty opes, O Butterfly,
The doors of being, with subtle sense
Of Beauty's frail impermanence,
And grief of knowing it must die.
Again I seem to know the tears
Of other lives, the woe and pain
Of days that died; resurgent wane
The moons of countless bygone years.
III
On other worlds, on other stars,
To us but tiny points of light,
Or lost in distances of night
Beyond our system's farthest bars,
A priest to Beauty's service sworn,
I sought and served her all my days,
With music and with hymns of praise.
In sunset and the fires of morn,
With thrilling heart her form I knew,
And in the stars she whitely gleamed,
And all the face of Nature seemed
Expression of her shape and hue.
I grieved to watch the summers pass
With all their gorgeous shows of bloom,
And sterner autumn months assume
Their realm with withered leaves and grass.
Mine was the grief of Change and Death,
Of fair things gone beyond recall,
The paling light of dawns, and all
The flowers' vanished hues and breath.
IV
From out the web of former lives,
The ancient catenated chain
Of joy and sorrow, loss and gain,
One certain truth my heart derives: -
Though Beauty passes, this I know,
From Change and Death, this verity:
Her spirit lives eternally -
'Tis but her forms that come and go.
V
Lo! I am Beauty's constant thrall,
Must ever on her voice await,
And follow through the maze of Fate
Her luring, strange and mystical.
Obedient to her summonings,
Forever must my soul aspire,
And seek, on wings of lyric fire,
To penetrate the Heart of Things,
Wherein she sits, augustly throned,
In loveliness that renders dumb -
The Essence and the final Sum -
With peril and with wonder zoned
What though I fail, my duller sense
Baffled as by a wall of stone?
The high desire, the search alone
Are their own prize and recompense.
The Sonnets XXXIX - O! how thy worth with manners may I sing
by William Shakespeare

O! how thy worth with manners may I sing,
When thou art all the better part of me?
What can mine own praise to mine own self bring?
And what is't but mine own when I praise thee?
Even for this, let us divided live,
And our dear love lose name of single one,
That by this separation I may give
That due to thee which thou deserv'st alone.
O absence! what a torment wouldst thou prove,
Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave,
To entertain the time with thoughts of love,
Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive,
And that thou teachest how to make one twain,
By praising him here who doth hence remain.
Daylicht Has Mony Een.
by David Rorie M.D.

O! can'le licht's baith braw and bricht
At e'en when bars are drawn,
But can'le licht's a dowie sicht
When dwinin' i' the dawn.
Yet dawn can bring nae wearier day
Than I hae dree'd yestre'en,
An' comin' day may licht my way-
Daylicht has mony een.
Noo, daylicht's fairly creepin' in,
I hear the auld cock craw;
Fu' aft I've banned him for his din,
An' wauk'nin' o' us a'!
But welcome noo's his lichtsome cry
Sin' bed-fast I ha'e been,
It tells anither nicht's gane by-
Daylicht has mony een.
O! bed-fast men are weary men,
Laid by frae a' their wark;
Hoo thocht can kill ye ne'er will ken
Till tholin' 't in the dark.
But ere nicht fa's I'll maybe see
What yet I hinna seen,
A land whaur mirk can never be-
Daylicht has mony een.
Individuality.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

O yes, I love you, and with all my heart;
Just as a weaker woman loves her own,
Better than I love my beloved art,
Which, till you came, reigned royally, alone,
My king, my master. Since I saw your face
I have dethroned it, and you hold that place.
I am as weak as other women are:
Your frown can make the whole world like a tomb;
Your smile shines brighter than the sun, by far.
Sometimes I think there is not space or room
In all the earth for such a love as mine,
And it soars up to breathe in realms divine.
I know that your desertion or neglect
Could break my heart, as women's hearts do break.
If my wan days had nothing to expect
From your love's splendor, all joy would forsake
The chambers of my soul. Yes, this is true.
And yet, and yet - one thing I keep from you.
There is a subtle part of me, which went
Into my long pursued and worshipped art;
Though your great love fills me with such content
No other love finds room now, in my heart.
Yet that rare essence was my art's alone.
Thank God, you cannot grasp it; 'tis mine own.
Thank God, I say, for while I love you so,
With that vast love, as passionate as tender,
I feel an exultation as I know
I have not made you a complete surrender.
Here is my body; bruise it, if you will,
And break my heart; I have that something still.
You cannot grasp it. Seize the breath of morn
Or bind the perfume of the rose, as well.
God put it in my soul when I was born;
It is not mine to give away, or sell,
Or offer up on any altar shrine.
It was my art's; and when not art's, 'tis mine,
For love's sake I can put the art away,
Or anything which stands 'twixt me and you.
But that strange essence God bestowed, I say,
To permeate the work He gave to do:
And it cannot be drained, dissolved, or sent
Through any channel save the one He meant.
Astrophel and Stella - Sixt Song.
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

O you that heare this voice,
O you that see this face,
Say whether of the choice
Deserues the former place:
Feare not to iudge this bate,
For it is void of hate.
This side doth Beauty take.
For that doth Musike speake;
Fit Oratours to make
The strongest iudgements weake:
The barre to plead their right
Is only true delight.
Thus doth the voice and face,
These gentle Lawiers, wage,
Like louing brothers case,
For fathers heritage;
That each, while each contends,
It selfe to other lends.
For Beautie beautifies
With heau'nly hew and grace
The heau'nly harmonies;
And in this faultlesse face
The perfect beauties be
A perfect harmony.
Musick more loftly swels
In speeches nobly plac'd;
Beauty as farre excels,
In action aptly grac'd:
A friend each party draws
To countenance his cause.
Loue more affected seemes
To Beauties louely light;
And Wonder more esteemes
Of Musickes wondrous might;
But both to both so bent,
As both in both are spent.
Musicke doth witnesse call
The eare his truth to trie;
Beauty brings to the hall
Eye-iudgement of the eye:
Both in their obiects such,
As no exceptions tutch.
The common sense, which might
Be arbiter of this,
To be, forsooth, vpright,
To both sides partiall is;
He layes on this chiefe praise,
Chiefe praise on that he laies.
Then reason, princesse hy,
Whose throne is in the minde,
Which Musicke can in sky
And hidden beauties finde,
Say whether thou wilt crowne
With limitlesse renowne?
Gifts.
by Emma Lazarus

"O World-God, give me Wealth!" the Egyptian cried.
His prayer was granted. High as heaven, behold
Palace and Pyramid; the brimming tide
Of lavish Nile washed all his land with gold.
Armies of slaves toiled ant-wise at his feet,
World-circling traffic roared through mart and street,
His priests were gods, his spice-balmed kings enshrined,
Set death at naught in rock-ribbed charnels deep.
Seek Pharaoh's race to-day and ye shall find
Rust and the moth, silence and dusty sleep.
"O World-God, give me beauty!" cried the Greek.
His prayer was granted. All the earth became
Plastic and vocal to his sense; each peak,
Each grove, each stream, quick with Promethean flame,
Peopled the world with imaged grace and light.
The lyre was his, and his the breathing might
Of the immortal marble, his the play
Of diamond-pointed thought and golden tongue.
Go seek the sun-shine race, ye find to-day
A broken column and a lute unstrung.
"O World-God, give me Power!" the Roman cried.
His prayer was granted. The vast world was chained
A captive to the chariot of his pride.
The blood of myriad provinces was drained
To feed that fierce, insatiable red heart.
Invulnerably bulwarked every part
With serried legions and with close-meshed Code,
Within, the burrowing worm had gnawed its home,
A roofless ruin stands where once abode
The imperial race of everlasting Rome.
"O Godhead, give me Truth!" the Hebrew cried.
His prayer was granted; he became the slave
Of the Idea, a pilgrim far and wide,
Cursed, hated, spurned, and scourged with none to save.
The Pharaohs knew him, and when Greece beheld,
His wisdom wore the hoary crown of Eld.
Beauty he hath forsworn, and wealth and power.
Seek him to-day, and find in every land.
No fire consumes him, neither floods devour;
Immortal through the lamp within his hand.
The Poets
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

O ye dead Poets, who are living still
Immortal in your verse, though life be fled,
And ye, O living Poets, who are dead
Though ye are living, if neglect can kill,
Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill,
With drops of anguish falling fast and red
From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head,
Ye were not glad your errand to fulfil?
Yes; for the gift and ministry of Song
Have something in them so divinely sweet,
It can assuage the bitterness of wrong;
Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.