DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
A Hillside Thaw
by Robert Lee Frost

To think to know the country and now know
The hillside on the day the sun lets go
Ten million silver lizards out of snow!
As often as I've seen it done before
I can't pretend to tell the way it's done.
It looks as if some magic of the sun
Lifted the rug that bred them on the floor
And the light breaking on them made them run.
But if I though to stop the wet stampede,
And caught one silver lizard by the tail,
And put my foot on one without avail,
And threw myself wet-elbowed and wet-kneed
In front of twenty others' wriggling speed,
In the confusion of them all aglitter,
And birds that joined in the excited fun
By doubling and redoubling song and twitter,
I have no doubt I'd end by holding none.
It takes the moon for this. The sun's a wizard
By all I tell; but so's the moon a witch.
From the high west she makes a gentle cast
And suddenly, without a jerk or twitch,
She has her speel on every single lizard.
I fancied when I looked at six o'clock
The swarm still ran and scuttled just as fast.
The moon was waiting for her chill effect.
I looked at nine: the swarm was turned to rock
In every lifelike posture of the swarm,
Transfixed on mountain slopes almost erect.
Across each other and side by side they lay.
The spell that so could hold them as they were
Was wrought through trees without a breath of storm
To make a leaf, if there had been one, stir.
One lizard at the end of every ray.
The thought of my attempting such a stray!
To Venerate The Simple Days
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

To venerate the simple days
Which lead the seasons by,
Needs but to remember
That from you or me
They may take the trifle
Termed mortality!
To invest existence with a stately air,
Needs but to remember
That the acorn there
Is the egg of forests
For the upper air!
A Letter To Sir George Etherege.[1]
by John Dryden

To you who live in chill degree,
As map informs, of fifty-three,
And do not much for cold atone,
By bringing thither fifty-one,
Methinks all climes should be alike,
From tropic e'en to pole arctique;
Since you have such a constitution
As nowhere suffers diminution.
You can be old in grave debate,
And young in love-affairs of state;
And both to wives and husbands show
The vigour of a plenipo.
Like mighty missioner you come
"Ad Partes Infidelium."
A work of wondrous merit sure,
So far to go, so much t' endure;
And all to preach to German dame,
Where sound of Cupid never came.
Less had you done, had you been sent
As far as Drake or Pinto went,
For cloves or nutmegs to the line-a,
Or even for oranges to China.
That had indeed been charity;
Where love-sick ladies helpless lie,
Chapt, and for want of liquor dry.
But you have made your zeal appear
Within the circle of the Bear.
What region of the earth's so dull
That is not of your labours full?
Triptolemus (so sung the Nine)
Strew'd plenty from his cart divine,
But spite of all these fable-makers,
He never sow'd on Almain acres:
No; that was left by Fate's decree,
To be perform'd and sung by thee.
Thou break'st through forms with as much ease
As the French king through articles.
In grand affairs thy days are spent,
In waging weighty compliment,
With such as monarchs represent.
They, whom such vast fatigues attend,
Want some soft minutes to unbend,
To show the world that now and then
Great ministers are mortal men.
Then Rhenish rammers walk the round;
In bumpers every king is crown'd;
Besides three holy mitred Hectors,
And the whole college of Electors,
No health of potentate is sunk,
That pays to make his envoy drunk.
These Dutch delights I mention'd last
Suit not, I know, your English taste:
For wine to leave a whore or play
Was ne'er your Excellency's way.
Nor need this title give offence,
For here you were your Excellence,
For gaming, writing, speaking, keeping,
His Excellence for all but sleeping.
Now if you tope in form, and treat,
'Tis the sour sauce to the sweet meat,
The fine you pay for being great.
Nay, here's a harder imposition,
Which is indeed the court's petition,
That setting worldly pomp aside,
Which poet has at font denied,
You would be pleased in humble way
To write a trifle call'd a play.
This truly is a degradation,
But would oblige the crown and nation
Next to your wise negotiation.
If you pretend, as well you may,
Your high degree, your friends will say,
The Duke St Aignon made a play.
If Gallic wit convince you scarce,
His Grace of Bucks has made a farce,
And you, whose comic wit is terse all,
Can hardly fall below rehearsal.
Then finish what you have began;
But scribble faster, if you can:
For yet no George, to our discerning,
Has writ without a ten years' warning.
To This Moment A Rebel
by John Wilmot

To this moment a rebel I throw down my arms,
Great Love, at first sight of Olinda's bright charms.
Make proud and secure by such forces as these,
You may now play the tyrant as soon as you please.
When Innocence, Beauty, and Wit do conspire
To betray, and engage, and inflame my Desire,
Why should I decline what I cannot avoid?
And let pleasing Hope by base Fear be destroyed?
Her innocence cannot contrive to undo me,
Her beauty's inclined, or why should it pursue me?
And Wit has to Pleasure been ever a friend,
Then what room for Despair, since Delight is Love's end?
There can be no danger in sweetness and youth,
Where Love is secured by good nature and truth;
On her beauty I'll gaze and of pleasure complain
While every kind look adds a link to my chain.
'Tis more to maintain than it was to surprise,
But her Wit leads in triumpth the slave of her eyes;
I beheld, with the loss of my freedom before,
But hearing, forever must serve and adore.
Too bright is my Goddess, her temple too weak:
Retire, divine image! I feel my heart break.
Help, Love! I dissolve in a rapture of charms
At the thought of those joys I should meet in her arms.
Life is Struggle
by Arthur Hugh Clough

To wear out heart, and nerves, and brain,
And give oneself a world of pain;
Be eager, angry, fierce, and hot,
Imperious, supple God knows what,
For what's all one to have or not;
O false, unwise, absurd, and vain!
For 'tis not joy, it is not gain,
It is not in itself a bliss,
Only it is precisely this
That keeps us all alive.
To say we truly feel the pain,
And quite are sinking with the strain;
Entirely, simply, undeceived,
Believe, and say we ne'er believed
The object, e'en were it achieved,
A thing we e'er had cared to keep;
With heart and soul to hold it cheap,
And then to go and try it again;
O false, unwise, absurd, and vain!
O, 'tis not joy, and 'tis not bliss,
Only it is precisely this
That keeps us still alive.
How To Read Me
by Walter Savage Landor

To turn my volumes o'er nor find
(Sweet unsuspicious friend!)
Some vestige of an erring mind
To chide or discommend,
Believe that all were lov'd like you
With love from blame exempt,
Believe that all my griefs were true
And all my joys but dreamt.
Garden And Gardener
by Madison Julius Cawein

To weed the Garden of the Mind
Of all rank growths of doubt and sin,
And let faith's flowers thrive and win
To blossom; and, through faith, to find
That lilies, too, can toil and spin,
And roses work for good and right;
That even the frailest flower that fills
A serious purpose, as God wills,
Is all man needs to give him light,
Is all he needs for all his ills.
Here is a Garden gone to flowers
While one beside it runs to weeds
Yet both were sown with similar seeds:
What was it? Did the World, or Hours,
Bring forth according to their needs?
Or was it that the Gardener
Neglected one? or did not care
What growths matured to slay and snare?
Thinking, whatever might occur,
Labour, perhaps, would manage there.
But Labour looked and took his ease,
Saying, "To-morrow I will do;
Will weed my Garden." And in view
Of all that work sat down at peace,
Waiting for something to ensue.
Whose fault? The Gardener's? Haply no
He sowed with fairest flowers the soil.
And yet, whence came the weeds that spoil
From Heaven! brought by winds that blow.
God give us all the gift to toil!
Prologue To Mr Addison's Tragedy Of Cato.
by Alexander Pope

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold:
For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage,
Commanding tears to stream through every age;
Tyrants no more their savage nature kept,
And foes to virtue wonder'd how they wept.
Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move
The hero's glory, or the virgin's love;
In pitying love, we but our weakness show,
And wild ambition well deserves its woe.
Here tears shall flow from a more generous cause,
Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws:
He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise,
And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes.
Virtue confess'd in human shape he draws,
What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was:
No common object to your sight displays,
But what with pleasure[59] Heaven itself surveys,
A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
And greatly falling with a falling state.
While Cato gives his little senate laws,
What bosom beats not in his country's cause?
Who sees him act, but envies every deed?
Who hears him groan, and does not wish to bleed?
Even when proud Caesar, 'midst triumphal cars,
The spoils of nations, and the pomp of wars,
Ignobly vain and impotently great,
Show'd Rome her Cato's figure drawn in state;
As her dead father's reverend image pass'd,
The pomp was darken'd and the day o'ercast;
The triumph ceased, tears gush'd from every eye;
The world's great victor pass'd unheeded by;
Her last good man dejected Rome adored,
And honour'd Caesar's less than Cato's sword.
Britons, attend: be worth like this approved,
And show you have the virtue to be moved.
With honest scorn the first famed Cato view'd
Rome learning arts from Greece, whom she subdued;
Your scene precariously subsists too long
On French translation, and Italian song.
Dare to have sense yourselves; assert the stage,
Be justly warm'd with your own native rage;
Such plays alone should win a British ear,
As Cato's self had not disdain'd to hear.
The Wanderer
by Henry John Newbolt, Sir

To Youth there comes a whisper out of the west:
"O loiterer, hasten where there waits for thee
A life to build, a love therein to nest,
And a man's work, serving the age to be."
Peace, peace awhile!    Before his tireless feet
Hill beyond hill the road in sunlight goes;
He breathes the breath of morning, clear and sweet,
And his eyes love the high eternal snows.
Sonnets: Idea XVIII To The Celestial Numbers
by Michael Drayton

To this our world, to learning, and to heaven,
Three nines there are, to every one a nine;
One number of the earth, the other both divine;
One woman now makes three odd numbers even.
Nine orders first of angels be in heaven;
Nine muses do with learning still frequent:
These with the gods are ever resident.
Nine worthy women to the world were given.
My worthy one to these nine worthies addeth;
And my fair Muse, one Muse unto the nine.
And my good angel, in my soul divine!--
With one more order these nine orders gladdeth.
My Muse, my worthy, and my angel then
Makes every one of these three nines a ten.
Prologue To Mr Addison's 'Cato.'
by Alexander Pope

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold:
For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage,
Commanding tears to stream through every age;
Tyrants no more their savage nature kept,
And foes to virtue wonder'd how they wept.
Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move
The hero's glory, or the virgin's love;
In pitying love, we but our weakness show,
And wild ambition well deserves its woe.
Here tears shall flow from a more generous cause,
Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws:
He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise,
And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes.
Virtue confess'd in human shape he draws,
What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was:
No common object to your sight displays,
But what with pleasure Heaven itself surveys,
A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
And greatly falling with a falling state.
While Cato gives his little senate laws,
What bosom beats not in his country's cause?
Who sees him act, but envies every deed?
Who hears him groan, and does not wish to bleed?
E'en when proud Caesar, 'midst triumphal cars,
The spoils of nations, and the pomp of wars,
Ignobly vain, and impotently great,
Show'd Rome her Cato's figure drawn in state;
As her dead father's reverend image pass'd,
The pomp was darkened, and the day o'ercast;
The triumph ceased, tears gush'd from every eye;
The world's great victor pass'd unheeded by;
Her last good man dejected Rome adored,
And honour'd Caesar's less than Cato's sword.
Britons, attend: be worth like this approved,
And show you have the virtue to be moved.
With honest scorn the first famed Cato view'd
Rome learning arts from Greece, whom she subdued:
Your scene precariously subsists too long
On French translation and Italian song.
Dare to have sense yourselves; assert the stage,
Be justly warm'd with your own native rage:
Such plays alone should win a British ear,
As Cato's self had not disdain'd to hear.
An Easter Market.
by Bliss Carman (William)

Today, through your Easter market
In the lazy Southern sun,
I strolled with hands in pockets
Past the flower-stalls one by one.
Indolent, dreamy, ready
For anything to amuse,
Shyfoot out for a ramble
In his oldest hat and shoes.
Roses creamy and yellow,
Azaleas crimson and white,
And the flaky fresh carnations
My Orient of delight,--
Masses and banks of blossom
That dazzle and summon the eye,
Till the buyers are half bewildered
To know what they want. Not I.
Who would not rather be artist
And slip through the crowd unseen
To gather it all in a picture
And guess what the faces mean?
So down through the chaffering darkies
I pass to the sidewalk's end,
Through the smiling gingham bonnets
With their small farm-stuff to vend.
When, hello! my dreamer, sudden
As call at the dead of night,
What sets your pulses a-quiver,
What sets your fancy alight?
Sure of it! Mayflowers, mayflowers,
Scent of the North in spring!
Out in the vernal distance,
Heart of me, whither a-wing?
"Give me some!" Clutch the first handful,
Hungering rover of earth!
How I devour and kiss them,
Beauties that brought me to birth,
Away in the great north country,
The land of the lonely sun,
Where God has few for his fellows,
And the wolves of the snowdrift run.
Once more to the frost-bound valley
Comes April with rain in her jar;
I can hear the vesper sparrow
Under the silver star.
And many and dear and gracious
Are the dreams that walk at my side
From the land of the lingering shadows,
As out of the throng I stride.
Oh, well for you, mere onlooker,
Who drift through the world's great mart!
But we of the human sorrow
Have a joy beyond your art.
Sonnets on Separation VI.
by Edward Shanks

To-morrow I shall see you come again
Between the pale trees, through the sullen gate,
Out of the dark and secret house of pain
Where lie the unhappy and unfortunate.
To-morrow you will live with me and love me,
Spring will go on again, I'll see the flowers
And little things, ridiculous things, shall move me
To smiles or tears or verse.    The world is ours
To-morrow.    Open heaths, tall trees, great skies,
With massive clouds that fly and come again,
Sweet fields, delicious rivers and the rise
And fall of swelling land from the swift train
We'll see together, knowing that all this
Is one great room wherein we two may kiss.
The Years
by Sara Teasdale

To-night I close my eyes and see
A strange procession passing me,
The years before I saw your face
Go by me with a wistful grace;
They pass, the sensitive, shy years,
As one who strives to dance, half blind with tears.
The years went by and never knew
That each one brought me nearer you;
Their path was narrow and apart
And yet it led me to your heart,
Oh, sensitive, shy years, oh, lonely years,
That strove to sing with voices drowned in tears.
The Lover's Sacrifice.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Fuyons ensemble.")
[HERNANI, Act II.]
DONNA SOL.    Together let us fly!
HERNANI. Together? No! the hour is past for flight.
Dearest, when first thy beauty smote my sight,
I offered, for the love that bade me live,
Wretch that I was, what misery had to give:
My wood, my stream, my mountain. Bolder grown,
By thy compassion to an outlaw shown,
The outlaw's meal beneath the forest shade,
The outlaw's couch far in the greenwood glade,
I offered. Though to both that couch be free,
I keep the scaffold block reserved for me.
DONNA SOL. And yet you promised?
HERNANI (falls on his knee.)    Angel! in this hour,
Pursued by vengeance and oppressed by power - 
Even in this hour when death prepares to close
In shame and pain a destiny of woes - 
Yes, I, who from the world proscribed and cast,
Have nursed one dark remembrance of the past,
E'en from my birth in sorrow's garment clad,
Have cause to smile and reason to be glad;
For you have loved the outlaw and have shed
Your whispered blessings on his forfeit head.
DONNA SOL. Let me go with you.
HERNANI.     No! I will not rend
From its fair stem the flower as I descend.
Go - I have smelt its perfume. Go - resume
All that this grasp has brushed away of bloom.
Wed the old man, - believe that ne'er we met;
I seek my shade - be happy, and forget!
LORD F. LEVESON GOWER (1ST EARL OF ELLESMERE).
April In The Hills
by Archibald Lampman

To-day the world is wide and fair
With sunny fields of lucid air,
And waters dancing everywhere;
The snow is almost gone;
The noon is builded high with light,
And over heaven's liquid height,
In steady fleets serene and white,
The happy clouds go on.
The channels run, the bare earth steams,
And every hollow rings and gleams
With jetting falls and dashing streams;
The rivers burst and fill;
The fields are full of little lakes,
And when the romping wind awakes
The water ruffles blue and shakes,
And the pines roar on the hill.
The crows go by, a noisy throng;
About the meadows all day long
The shore-lark drops his brittle song;
And up the leafless tree
The nut-hatch runs, and nods, and clings;
The bluebird dips with flashing wings,
The robin flutes, the sparrow sings,
And the swallows float and flee.
I break the spirit's cloudy bands,
A wanderer in enchanted lands,
I feel the sun upon my hands;
And far from care and strife
The broad earth bids me forth. I rise
With lifted brow and upward eyes.
I bathe my spirit in blue skies,
And taste the springs of life.
I feel the tumult of new birth;
I waken with the wakening earth;
I match the bluebird in her mirth;
And wild with wind and sun,
A treasurer of immortal days,
I roam the glorious world with praise,
The hillsides and the woodland ways,
Till earth and I are one.
Happiness And Vision.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

TOGETHER at the altar we
In vision oft were seen by thee,
Thyself as bride, as bridegroom I.
Oft from thy mouth full many a kiss
In an unguarded hour of bliss
I then would steal, while none were by.
The purest rapture we then knew,
The joy those happy hours gave too,
When tasted, fled, as time fleets on.
What now avails my joy to me?
Like dreams the warmest kisses flee,
Like kisses, soon all joys are gone.
Third Song, written during Fever (Three Songs of Zahir-u-Din)
by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

To-night the clouds hang very low,
They take the Hill-tops to their breast,
And lay their arms about the fields.
The wind that fans me lying low,
Restless with great desire for rest,
No cooling touch of freshness yields.
I, sleepless through the stifling heat,
Watch the pale Lightning's constant glow
Between the wide set open doors.
I lie and long amidst the heat, - 
The fever that my senses know,
For that cool slenderness of yours.
So delicate and cool you are!
A roseleaf that has lain in snow,
A snowflake tinged with sunset fire.
You do not know, so young you are,
How Fever fans the senses' glow
To uncontrollable desire!
And fills the spaces of the night
With furious and frantic thought,
One would not dare to think by day.
Ah, if you came to me to-night
These visions would be turned to naught,
These hateful dreams be held at bay!
But you are far, and Loneliness
My only lover through the night;
And not for any word or prayer
Would you console my loneliness
Or lend yourself, serene and slight,
And the cool clusters of your hair.
All through the night I long for you,
As shipwrecked men in tropics yearn
For the fresh flow of streams and springs.
My fevered fancies follow you
As dying men in deserts turn
Their thoughts to clear and chilly things.
Such dreams are mine, and such my thirst,
Unceasing and unsatisfied,
Until the night is burnt away
Among these dreams and fevered thirst,
And, through the open doorways, glide
The white feet of the coming day.
The Witch
by William Butler Yeats

Toil and grow rich,
What's that but to lie
With a foul witch
And after, drained dry,
To be brought
To the chamber where
Lies one long sought
With despair.
Song Of The Battle Eve.
by Thomas Moore

TIME--THE NINTH CENTURY.
To-morrow, comrade, we
On the battle-plain must be,
There to conquer, or both lie low!
The morning star is up,--
But there's wine still in the cup,
And we'll take another quaff, ere we go, boy, go;
We'll take another quaff, ere we go.
'Tis true, in manliest eyes
A passing tear will rise,
When we think of the friends we leave lone;
But what can wailing do?
See, our goblet's weeping too!
With its tears we'll chase away our own, boy, our own;
With its tears we'll chase away our own.
But daylight's stealing on;--
The last that o'er us shone
Saw our children around us play;
The next--ah! where shall we
And those rosy urchins be?
But--no matter--grasp thy sword and away, boy, away;
No matter--grasp thy sword and away!
Let those, who brook the chain
Of Saxon or of Dane,
Ignobly by their firesides stay;
One sigh to home be given,
One heartfelt prayer to heaven,
Then, for Erin and her cause, boy, hurra! hurra! hurra!
Then, for Erin and her cause, hurra!
Winter Evening
by Archibald Lampman

To-night the very horses springing by
Toss gold from whitened nostrils. In a dream
The streets that narrow to the westward gleam
Like rows of golden palaces; and high
From all the crowded chimneys tower and die
A thousand aureoles. Down in the west
The brimming plains beneath the sunset rest,
One burning sea of gold. Soon, soon shall fly
The glorious vision, and the hours shall feel
A mightier master; soon from height to height,
With silence and the sharp unpitying stars,
Stern creeping frosts, and winds that touch like steel,
Out of the depth beyond the eastern bars,
Glittering and still shall come the awful night.
Inevitable.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

To-day I was so weary and I lay
In that delicious state of semi-waking,
When baby, sitting with his nurse at play,
Cried loud for "mamma," all his toys forsaking.
I was so weary and I needed rest,
And signed to nurse to bear him from the room.
Then, sudden, rose and caught him to my breast,
And kissed the grieving mouth and cheeks of bloom.
For swift as lightning came the thought to me,
With pulsing heart-throes and a mist of tears,
Of days inevitable, that are to be,
If my fair darling grows to manhood's years;
Days when he will not call for "mamma," when
The world with many a pleasure and bright joy,
Shall tempt him forth into the haunts of men
And I shall lose the first place with my boy;
When other homes and loves shall give delight,
When younger smiles and voices will seem best.
And so I held him to my heart to-night,
Forgetting all my need of peace and rest.