DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Sonnet - My Heart Shall Be Thy Garden
by Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell

My heart shall be thy garden. Come, my own,
Into thy garden; thine be happy hours
Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers,
From root to crowning petal, thine alone.
Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown
Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers.
But ah, the birds, the birds! Who shall build bowers
To keep these thine? O friend, the birds have flown.
For as these come and go, and quit our pine
To follow the sweet season, or, new-comers,
Sing one song only from our alder-trees.
My heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes hold mine,
Flit to the silent world and other summers,
With wings that dip beyond the silver seas.
Links Of Love, The
by Owen Seaman

My heart is like a driver-club,
That heaves the pellet hard and straight,
That carries every let and rub,
The whole performance really great;
My heart is like a bulger-head,
That whiffles on the wily tee,
Because my love has kindly said
She'll halve the round of life with me.
My heart is also like a cleek,
Resembling most the mashie sort,
That spanks the object, so to speak,
Across the sandy bar to port;
And hers is like a putting-green,
The haven where I boast to be,
For she assures me she is keen
To halve the round of life with me.
Raise me a bunker, if you can,
That beetles o'er a deadly ditch,
Where any but the bogey-man
Is practically bound to pitch;
Plant me beneath a hedge of thorn,
Or up a figurative tree,
What matter, when my love has sworn
To halve the round of life with me?
Song
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

My heart to thy heart,
My hand to thine;
My lip to thy lips,
Kisses are wine
Brewed for the lover in sunshine and shade;
Let me drink deep, then, my African maid.
Lily to lily,
Rose unto rose;
My love to thy love
Tenderly grows.
Rend not the oak and the ivy in twain,
Nor the swart maid from her swarthier swain.
Song: Meadow and Orchard.
by Edward Shanks

My heart is like a meadow,
Where clouds go over,
Dappling the mingled grass and clover
With mingled sun and shadow,
With light that will not stay
And shade that sails away.
Your heart is like an orchard,
That has the sun for ever in its leaves,
Where, on the grass beneath the trees,
There falls the shadow of the fruit
That ripen there for me.
My Heart Is Heavy
by Sara Teasdale

My heart is heavy with many a song
Like ripe fruit bearing down the tree,
But I can never give you one,
My songs do not belong to me.
Yet in the evening, in the dusk
When moths go to and fro,
In the gray hour if the fruit has fallen,
Take it, no one will know.
Sonnet XC. Subject Continued.
by Anna Seward

My hour is not yet come! - these burning eyes
Have not yet look'd their last! - else, 'mid the roar
Of this wild STORM, what gloomy joy to pour
My freed, exhaling Soul! - sublime to rise,
Rend the conflicting clouds, inflame the skies,
And lash the torrents! - Bending to explore
Our evening seat, my straining eye once more
Roves the wide watry Waste; - but nought descries
Save the pale Flood, o'erwhelming as it strays.
Yet Oh! lest my remorseless Fate decree
That all I love, with life's extinguish'd rays
Sink from my soul, to soothe this agony,
To balm that life, whose loss may forfeit thee,
COME DEAR REMEMBRANCE OF DEPARTED DAYS!
The Mood O' The Earth.
by Madison Julius Cawein

My heart is high, is high, my dear,
And the warm wind sunnily blows;
My heart is high with a mood that's cheer,
And burns like a sun-blown rose.
My heart is high, is high, my dear,
And the Heaven's deep skies are blue;
My heart is high as the passionate year,
And smiles like a bud in dew.
My heart, my heart is high, my sweet,
For wild is the smell o' the wood,
That gusts in the breeze with a pulse o' heat,
Mad heat that beats like a blood.
My heart, my heart is high, my sweet,
And the sense of summer is full;
A sense of summer, - full fields of wheat,
Full forests and waters cool.
My heart is high, is high, my heart,
As the bee's that groans and swinks
In the dabbled flowers that dart and part
To his woolly bulk when he drinks.
My heart is high, is high, my heart, - 
Oh, sing again, O good, gray bird,
That I may get that lilt by heart,
And fit each note with a word.
God's saints! I tread the air, my dear!
Flow one with the running wind;
And the stars that stare I swear, my dear,
Right soon in my hair I'll find.
To live high up a life of mist
With the white things in white skies,
With their limbs of pearl and of amethyst,
Who laugh blue humorous eyes!
Or to creep and to suck like an elfin thing
To the aching heart of a rose;
In the harebell's ear to cling and swing
And whisper what no one knows!
To live on wild honey as fresh as thin
As the rain that's left in a flower,
And roll forth golden from feet to chin
In the god-flower's Dana' shower!
Or free, full-throated curve back the throat
With a vigorous look at the blue,
And sing right staunch with a lusty note
Like the hawk hurled where he flew!
God's life! the blood of the Earth is mine!
And the mood of the Earth I'll take,
And brim my soul with her wonderful wine,
And sing till my heart doth break!
The Ballad Of Oriana
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

My heart is wasted with my woe,
Oriana.
There is no rest for me below,
Oriana.
When the long dun wolds are ribb'd with snow,
And loud the Norland whirlwinds blow,
Oriana,
Alone I wander to and fro,
Oriana.
Ere the light on dark was growing,
Oriana,
At midnight the cock was crowing,
Oriana;
Winds were blowing, waters flowing,
We heard the steeds to battle going,
Oriana,
Aloud the hollow bugle blowing,
Oriana.
In the yew-wood black as night,
Oriana,
Ere I rode into the fight,
Oriana,
While blissful tears blinded my sight
By star-shine and by moonlight,
Oriana,
I to thee my troth did plight,
Oriana.
She stood upon the castle wall,
Oriana;
She watch'd my crest among them all,
Oriana;
She saw me fight, she heard me call,
When forth there stept a foeman tall,
Oriana,
Atween me and the castle wall,
Oriana.
The bitter arrow went aside,
Oriana:
The false, false arrow went aside,
Oriana;
The damned arrow glanced aside,
And pierced thy heart, my love, my bride,
Oriana!
Thy heart, my life, my love, my bride,
Oriana!
O, narrow, narrow was the space,
Oriana!
Loud, loud rung out the bugle's brays,
Oriana.
O, deathful stabs were dealt apace,
The battle deepen'd in its place,
Oriana;
But I was down upon my face,
Oriana.
They should have stabb'd me where I lay,
Oriana!
How could I rise and come away,
Oriana?
How could I look upon the day?
They should have stabb'd me where I lay,
Oriana'
They should have trod me into clay,
Oriana.
O breaking heart that will not break,
Oriana!
O pale, pale face so sweet and meek,
Oriana!
Thou smilest, but thou dost not speak,
And then the tears run down my cheek,
Oriana.
What wantest thou? whom dost thou seek,
Oriana?
I cry aloud; none hear my cries,
Oriana.
Thou comest atween me and the skies,
Oriana.
I feel the tears of blood arise
Up from my heart unto my eyes,
Oriana.
Within thy heart my arrow lies,
Oriana.
O cursed hand! O cursed blow!
Oriana!
O happy thou that liest low,
Oriana!
All night the silence seems to flow
Beside me in my utter woe,
Oriana.
A weary, weary way I go,
Oriana!
When Norland winds pipe down the sea,
Oriana,
I walk, I dare not think of thee,
Oriana.
Thou liest beneath the greenwood tree,
I dare not die and come to thee,
Oriana.
I hear the roaring of the sea,
Oriana.
Drinking Song, On the Excellence of Burgundy Wine
by Hilaire Belloc

My jolly fat host with your face all a-grin,
Come, open the door to us, let us come in.
A score of stout fellows who think it no sin
If they toast till they're hoarse, and drink till they spin,
Hoofed it amain
Rain or no rain,
To crack your old jokes, and your bottle to drain.
Such a warmth in the belly that nectar begets
As soon as his guts with its humour he wets,
The miser his gold, and the student his debts,
And the beggar his rags and his hunger forgets.
For there's never a wine
Like this tipple of thine
From the great hill of Nuits to the River of Rhine.
Outside you may hear the great gusts as they go
By Foy, by Duerne, and the hills of Lerraulx,
But the rain he may rain, and the wind he may blow,
If the Devil's above there's good liquor below.
So it abound,
Pass it around,
Burgundy's Burgundy all the year round.
Sonnets: Idea XL
by Michael Drayton

My heart the anvil where my thoughts do beat,
My words the hammers fashioning my desire,
My breast the forge including all the heat,
Love is the fuel which maintains the fire;
My sighs the bellows which the flame increaseth,
Filling mine ears with noise and nightly groaning;
Toiling with pain, my labour never ceaseth,
In grievous passions my woes still bemoaning;
My eyes with tears against the fire striving,
Whose scorching gleed my heart to cinders turneth;
But with those drops the flame again reviving,
Still more and more it to my torment burneth,
With Sisyphus thus do I roll the stone,
And turn the wheel with damn'd Ixion.
The Rainbow
by William Wordsworth

My heart leaps up when I behold
A Rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the man;
And I wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
Alms
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

My heart is what it was before,
A house where people come and go;
But it is winter with your love,
The sashes are beset with snow.
I light the lamp and lay the cloth,
I blow the coals to blaze again;
But it is winter with your love,
The frost is thick upon the pane.
I know a winter when it comes:
The leaves are listless on the boughs;
I watched your love a little while,
And brought my plants into the house.
I water them and turn them south,
I snap the dead brown from the stem;
But it is winter with your love,--
I only tend and water them.
There was a time I stood and watched
The small, ill-natured sparrows' fray;
I loved the beggar that I fed,
I cared for what he had to say,
I stood and watched him out of sight;
Today I reach around the door
And set a bowl upon the step;
My heart is what it was before,
But it is winter with your love;
I scatter crumbs upon the sill,
And close the window,--and the birds
May take or leave them, as they will.
Improvisations: Light And Snow: 13
by Conrad Potter Aiken

My heart is an old house, and in that forlorn old house,
In the very centre, dark and forgotten,
Is a locked room where an enchanted princess
Lies sleeping.
But sometimes, in that dark house,
As if almost from the stars, far away,
Sounds whisper in that secret room
Faint voices, music, a dying trill of laughter?
And suddenly, from her long sleep,
The beautiful princess awakes and dances.
Who is she? I do not know.
Why does she dance? Do not ask me!
Yet to-day, when I saw you,
When I saw your eyes troubled with the trouble of happiness,
And your mouth trembling into a smile,
And your fingers pull shyly forward,
Softly, in that room,
The little princess arose
And danced;
And as she danced the old house gravely trembled
With its vague and delicious secret.
The Open Gates.
by John Hartley

My heart was sad when first we met;
'Yet with a smile, - 
A welcome smile I ne'er forget,
Thou didst beguile
My sighs and sorrows;-and a sweet delight
Shed a soft radiance, where erst was night.
I dreamed not we should meet again; - 
But fate was kind,
Once more my heart o'er fraught with pain,
To joy inclined.
It seemed thy soul had power to penetrate
My inmost self, changing at will my state.
Then sprang the thought: - Be thou my Queen!
I will be slave;
Make here thy throne and reign supreme,
'Tis all I crave.
Let me within thy soothing influence dwell,
Content to know, with thee all must be well.
I knew not that another claimed
By prior right,
Those charms that had my breast inflamed
With fancies bright.
Ah! then I recognized my loneliness: - 
My dreams dispelled; - still I admired no less.
Time wearily dragged on its way, - 
We met once more,
And thou wert free! Oh, happy day!
As sight of shore
Cheers the worn mariner; - so sight of thee,
Made my heart beat with sweet expectancy.
Is it too much to hope, - someday
This heart of mine,
That beats alone for thee, - yet may
Thy love enshrine?
All things are said to come to him who waits,
I'm waiting, darling. - Love, opes wide the gates.
Not Anchored
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

My heart is like a ship that finds no rest,
Tossed here and there upon the stormy breast
Of loves of many hearts too oft conferred.
Thy love is like the harbour, safe and still,
Into whose calm that ship may glide at will,
Under the slope of God's Eternal Will.
So near the perfect peace that knows no word;
Yet with an empty, white emotion stirred,
It folds its wings like some contented bird.
At rest, and yet not anchored; and some day
Out of the restful peace of this calm bay
The winds of Fate will drift it far away.
My Light Thou Art
by John Wilmot

My light thou art, without thy glorious sight
My eyes are darkened with eternal night;
My Love, thou art my way, my life, my light.
Thou art my way, I wander if thou fly;
Thou art my light, if hid, how blind am I!
Thou art my life, if thou withdraw'st I die.
Thou art my life; if thou but turn away,
My life's a thousand deaths. Thou art my way;
Without thee, Love, I travel not, but stray.
A Late Good Night
by Robert Fuller Murray

My lamp is out, my task is done,
And up the stair with lingering feet
I climb.    The staircase clock strikes one.
Good night, my love! good night, my sweet!
My solitary room I gain.
A single star makes incomplete
The blackness of the window pane.
Good night, my love! good night, my sweet!
Dim and more dim its sparkle grows,
And ere my head the pillows meet,
My lids are fain themselves to close.
Good night, my love! good night, my sweet!
My lips no other words can say,
But still they murmur and repeat
To you, who slumber far away,
Good night, my love! good night, my sweet!
To Carthy, Attributing Some Performances To Mr. Dunkin (Epigram Against Carthy)
by Jonathan Swift

From the Gentleman's London Magazine for January.
My lines to him you give; to speak your due,
'Tis what no man alive will say of you.
Your works are like old Jacob's speckled goats,
Known by the verse, yet better by the notes.
Pope's essays upon some for Young's may pass,
But all distinguish thy dull leaden mass;
So green in different lights may pass for blue,
But what's dyed black will take no other hue.
Lord Leitrim.
by Francis William Lauderdale Adams

My Lord, at last you have it! Now we know
Truth's not a phrase, justice an idle show.
Your life ran red with murder, green with lust.
Blood has washed blood clean, and, in the final dust
Your carrion will be purified. Yet, see,
Though your body perish, for your soul shall be
An immortality of infamy!
On the Death of the Bishop of Ely.[1] Anno Aetates 17.
by William Cowper

My lids with grief were tumid yet,
And still my sullied cheek was wet
With briny dews profusely shed
For venerable Winton dead,[2]
When Fame, whose tales of saddest sound
Alas! are ever truest found,
The news through all our cities spread
Of yet another mitred head
By ruthless Fate to Death consign'd,
Ely, the honour of his kind.
At once, a storm of passion heav'd
My boiling bosom, much I grieved
But more I raged, at ev'ry breath
Devoting Death himself to death.
With less revenge did Naso[3] teem
When hated Ibis was his theme;
With less, Archilochus,[4] denied
The lovely Greek, his promis'd bride.
But lo! while thus I execrate,
Incens'd, the Minister of Fate,
Wondrous accents, soft, yet clear,
Wafted on the gale I hear.
Ah, much deluded! lay aside
Thy threats and anger misapplied.
Art not afraid with sounds like these
T'offend whom thou canst not appease?
Death is not (wherefore dream'st thou thus?)
The son of Night and Erebus,
Nor was of fel[1] Erynnis born[5]
In gulphs, where Chaos rules forlorn,
But sent from God, his presence leaves,
To gather home his ripen'd sheaves,
To call encumber'd souls away
From fleshly bonds to boundless day,
(As when the winged Hours excite,
And summon forth the Morning-light)
And each to convoy to her place
Before th'Eternal Father's face.
But not the wicked-Them, severe
Yet just, from all their pleasures here
He hurries to the realms below,
Terrific realms of penal woe!
Myself no sooner heard his call
Than, scaping through my prison-wall,
I bade adieu to bolts and bars,
And soar'd with angels to the stars,
Like Him of old, to whom 'twas giv'n
To mount, on fiery wheels, to heav'n.
Bootes' wagon,[6] slow with cold
Appall'd me not, nor to behold
The sword that vast Orion draws,
Or ev'n the Scorpion's horrid claws.[7]
Beyond the Sun's bright orb I fly,
And far beneath my feet descry
Night's dread goddess, seen with awe,
Whom her winged dragons draw.
Thus, ever wond'ring at my speed
Augmented still as I proceed,
I pass the Planetary sphere,
The Milky Way--and now appear
Heav'ns crystal battlements, her door
Of massy pearl, and em'rald floor.
But here I cease. For never can
The tongue of once a mortal man
In suitable description trace
The pleasures of that happy place,
Suffice it that those joys divine
Are all, and all for ever, mine.
The Captive
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

My lady is robed for the ball to-night,
All in a shimmer and silken sheen.
She glides down the stairs like a thing of light,
The ballroom's beautiful queen.
Priceless gems on her bosom glow -
Half hid by laces a queen might wear.
Robed is she, as befits, you know,
The wife of a millionaire.
Gliding along at her liege lord's side,
Out-shining all in that company,
Into the mind of the old man's bride
There creeps a curious simile.
She thinks how once in the Long Ago,
A beautiful captive, all aflame
With jewels that weighed her down like woe,
Close in the wake of her captor came.
All day long in that mocking plight,
She followed him in a dumb despair;
And the people thought her a goodly sight,
Decked in her jewels rare.
And now at her lawful master's side,
With a pain in her heart, as great as then
(So thinks this old man's beautiful bride),
Zenobia walks again.
My Lady Waits for Me.
by George Pope Morris

Suggested by a popular German melody.
My lady waits!--'Tis now the hour
When morn unbars her gates!--
My vessel glides beneath the tower
Where now my lady waits.
Her signal flutters from the wall,
Above the friendly sea!
I life but to obey her call!
My lady waits for me.
My lady waits--for me she waits,
While morning opes her golden gates.
My lady waits!--No fairer flower
E'er deck'd the floral grove,
Than she, the pride of hall and bower,
The lady of my love!
The eastern hills are flecked with light,
The land-breeze curls the sea!
By love and truth sustained, for flight,
My lady waits for me.
My lady waits--for me she waits,
While morning opes her golden gates.
The Shadows
by George MacDonald

My little boy, with smooth, fair cheeks,
And dreamy, large, brown eyes,
Not often, little wisehead, speaks,
But hearing, weighs and tries.
"God is not only in the sky,"
His sister said one day--
Not older much, but she would cry
Like Wisdom in the way--
"He's in this room." His dreamy, clear,
Large eyes look round for God:
In vain they search, in vain they peer;
His wits are all abroad!
"He is not here, mamma? No, no;
I do not see him at all!
He's not the shadows, is he?" So
His doubtful accents fall--
Fall on my heart, no babble mere!
They rouse both love and shame:
But for earth's loneliness and fear,
I might be saying the same!
Nay, sometimes, ere the morning break
And home the shadows flee,
In my dim room even yet I take
Those shadows, Lord, for thee!
Lovelace Grown Old
by Theodosia Garrison

I
My life has been like a bee that roves
Through a scented garden close,
And 'tis I who have kept the honey of love,
The hoarded sweetness and scent thereof,
For all I forget the rose.
Oh, exquisite gardens long forgot
That have made my store complete,
Though winter fall upon blossom and bee,
Yet the kisses I garnered remain with me
Forever and ever sweet.
II
The Priest hath had his word and said his say--
A word i' faith more honest than beguiling--
But now he turns upon his gloomy way--
Good soul, he leaves me smiling.
I may not ponder much on future wrath;
Of all those loves of mine, some six or seven,
Surely ere this have climbed that thorny path
That leads at last to Heaven.
My bold, brown beauties, eh, my delicate
And golden damsels with uncensuring eyes,
Not long once did you make your Lovelace wait
Outside of Paradise.
Much am I minded of a certain night--
A night of moon and drifting clouds that hid
The convent wall from overmuch of light
Whereby one watched forbid.
Watched, till he heard within the trembling sound
Of white, girl fingers on the rusting key
That turned her heart as well, till each unbound
Let in felicity.
Ah well, I have small fear--her eyes were blue;
Blue eyes remember though it cost them tears.
Who knows but that same hand shall lead me through
Another Gate of Fears.
In the same fashion, brave, yet most afraid,
Bold for her love yet trembling for her sin--
So, Saints were tricked before. My blue-eyed maid,
Be there to let me in.
III
Since I loved you for a day--Ah, a day, the fleetest--
Since I sighed and rode away when our love was sweetest,
So shall you remember me, now that youth is over,
Fairly, of your courtesy, as your fondest lover.
Since I turned and said good-bye when my heart was truest,
Since we parted, you and I, when our joy was newest,
Love might never turn to doubt and from doubt to scorning.
We but lived his sweetness out twixt a night and morning.
So shall you remember me, eager in pursuing,
Faithful as a man must be in his time o' wooing.
Greater loves but stay and pine so, now youth is over,
Smiling shall you think of mine--mine, your fondest lover.
Another, At Chester (Epigrams On Windows)
by Jonathan Swift

My landlord is civil,
But dear as the d - l:
Your pockets grow empty
With nothing to tempt ye;
The wine is so sour,
'Twill give you a scour,
The beer and the ale
Are mingled with stale.
The veal is such carrion,
A dog would be weary on.
All this I have felt,
For I live on a smelt.
The Thank-Offering
by George MacDonald

My Lily snatches not my gift;
Glad is she to be fed,
But to her mouth she will not lift
The piece of broken bread,
Till on my lips, unerring, swift,
The morsel she has laid.
This is her grace before her food,
This her libation poured;
Even thus his offering, Aaron good
Heaved up to thank the Lord,
When for the people all he stood,
And with a cake adored.
So, Father, every gift of thine
I offer at thy knee;
Else take I not the love divine
With which it comes to me;
Not else the offered grace is mine
Of sharing life with thee.
Yea, all my being I would bring,
Yielding it utterly,
Not yet a full-possessed thing
Till heaved again to thee:
Away, my self! away, and cling
To him that makes thee be!
La Bella Donna Della Mia Mente
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

My limbs are wasted with a flame,
My feet are sore with travelling,
For, calling on my Lady's name,
My lips have now forgot to sing.
O Linnet in the wild-rose brake
Strain for my Love thy melody,
O Lark sing louder for love's sake,
My gentle Lady passeth by.
She is too fair for any man
To see or hold his heart's delight,
Fairer than Queen or courtesan
Or moonlit water in the night.
Her hair is bound with myrtle leaves,
(Green leaves upon her golden hair!)
Green grasses through the yellow sheaves
Of autumn corn are not more fair.
Her little lips, more made to kiss
Than to cry bitterly for pain,
Are tremulous as brook-water is,
Or roses after evening rain.
Her neck is like white melilote
Flushing for pleasure of the sun,
The throbbing of the linnet's throat
Is not so sweet to look upon.
As a pomegranate, cut in twain,
White-seeded, is her crimson mouth,
Her cheeks are as the fading stain
Where the peach reddens to the south.
O twining hands! O delicate
White body made for love and pain!
O House of love! O desolate
Pale flower beaten by the rain!