DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
In Sleep
by Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell

I dreamt (no "dream" awake-a dream indeed)
A wrathful man was talking in the park:
"Where are the Higher Powers, who know our need
And leave us in the dark?
"There are no Higher Powers; there is no heart
In God, no love"-his oratory here,
Taking the paupers' and the cripples' part,
Was broken by a tear.
And then it seemed that One who did create
Compassion, who alone invented pity,
Walked, as though called, in at that north-east gate,
Out from the muttering city;
Threaded the little crowd, trod the brown grass,
Bent o'er the speaker close, saw the tear rise,
And saw Himself, as one looks in a glass,
In those impassioned eyes.
The Lost Thought.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

I felt a clearing in my mind
As if my brain had split;
I tried to match it, seam by seam,
But could not make them fit.
The thought behind I strove to join
Unto the thought before,
But sequence ravelled out of reach
Like balls upon a floor.
Life.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I feel the great immensity of life.
All little aims slip from me, and I reach
My yearning soul toward the Infinite.
As when a mighty forest, whose green leaves
Have shut it in, and made it seem a bower
For lovers' secrets, or for children's sports,
Casts all its clustering foliage to the winds,
And lets the eye behold it, limitless,
And full of winding mysteries of ways:
So now with life that reaches out before,
And borders on the unexplained Beyond.
I see the stars above me, world on world:
I hear the awful language of all Space;
I feel the distant surging of great seas,
That hide the secrets of the Universe
In their eternal bosoms; and I know
That I am but an atom of the Whole.
A Golden Day
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

I found you and I lost you,
All on a gleaming day.
The day was rilled with sunshine,
And the land was full of May.
A golden bird was singing
Its melody divine,
I found you and I loved you,
And all the world was mine.
I found you and I lost you,
All on a golden day,
But when I dream of you, dear,
It is always brimming May.
The End Of The World - A Dream
by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

I fancied I was somewhere in Russia, in the wilds, in a simple country house.
The room big and low pitched with three windows; the walls whitewashed; no furniture. Before the house a barren plain; gradually sloping downwards, it stretches into the distance; a grey monotonous sky hangs over it, like the canopy of a bed.
I am not alone; there are some ten persons in the room with me. All quite plain people, simply dressed. They walk up and down in silence, as it were stealthily. They avoid one another, and yet are continually looking anxiously at one another.
Not one knows why he has come into this house and what people there are with him. On all the faces uneasiness and despondency ... all in turn approach the windows and look about intently as though expecting something from without.
Then again they fall to wandering up and down. Among us is a small-sized boy; from time to time he whimpers in the same thin voice, 'Father, I'm frightened!' My heart turns sick at his whimper, and I too begin to be afraid ... of what? I don't know myself. Only I feel, there is coming nearer and nearer a great, great calamity.
The boy keeps on and on with his wail. Oh, to escape from here! How stifling! How weary! how heavy.... But escape is impossible.
That sky is like a shroud. And no wind.... Is the air dead or what?
All at once the boy runs up to the window and shrieks in the same piteous voice, 'Look! look! the earth has fallen away!'
'How? fallen away?' Yes; just now there was a plain before the house, and now it stands on a fearful height! The horizon has sunk, has gone down, and from the very house drops an almost overhanging, as it were scooped-out, black precipice.
We all crowded to the window.... Horror froze our hearts. 'Here it is ... here it is!' whispers one next me.
And behold, along the whole far boundary of the earth, something began to stir, some sort of small, roundish hillocks began heaving and falling.
'It is the sea!' the thought flashed on us all at the same instant. 'It will swallow us all up directly.... Only how can it grow and rise upwards?
To this precipice?'
And yet, it grows, grows enormously.... Already there are not separate hillocks heaving in the distance.... One continuous, monstrous wave embraces the whole circle of the horizon.
It is swooping, swooping, down upon us! In an icy hurricane it flies, swirling in the darkness of hell. Everything shuddered - and there, in this flying mass - was the crash of thunder, the iron wail of thousands of throats....
Ah! what a roaring and moaning! It was the earth howling for terror....
The end of it! the end of all!
The child whimpered once more.... I tried to clutch at my companions, but already we were all crushed, buried, drowned, swept away by that pitch-black, icy, thundering wave! Darkness ... darkness everlasting!
Scarcely breathing, I awoke.
March 1878.
Sonnet XIII
by Alan Seeger

I fancied, while you stood conversing there,
Superb, in every attitude a queen,
Her ermine thus Boadicea bare,
So moved amid the multitude Faustine.
My life, whose whole religion Beauty is,
Be charged with sin if ever before yours
A lesser feeling crossed my mind than his
Who owning grandeur marvels and adores.
Nay, rather in my dream-world's ivory tower
I made your image the high pearly sill,
And mounting there in many a wistful hour,
Burdened with love, I trembled and was still,
Seeing discovered from that azure height
Remote, untrod horizons of delight.
Half Fledged
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I feel the stirrings in me of great things.
New half-fledged thoughts rise up and beat their wings,
And tremble on the margin of their nest,
Then flutter back, and hide within my breast.
Beholding space, they doubt their untried strength.
Beholding men, they fear them.    But at length,
Grown all too great and active for the heart
That broods them with such tender mother art,
Forgetting fear, and men, and all, that hour,
Save the impelling consciousness of power
That stirs within them - they shall soar away
Up to the very portals of the Day.
Oh, what exultant rapture thrills me through
When I contemplate all those thoughts may do;
Like snow-white eagles penetrating space,
They may explore full many an unknown place,
And build their nests on mountain heights unseen,
Whereon doth lie that dreamed-of rest serene.
Stay thou a little longer in my breast,
Till my fond heart shall push thee from the nest
Anxious to see thee soar to heights divine - 
Oh, beautiful but half-fledged thoughts of mine.
An Empty Nest
by James Whitcomb Riley

I find an old deserted nest,
Half-hidden in the underbrush:
A withered leaf, in phantom jest,
Has nestled in it like a thrush
With weary, palpitating breast.
I muse as one in sad surprise
Who seeks his childhood's home once more,
And finds it in a strange disguise
Of vacant rooms and naked floor,
With sudden tear-drops in his eyes.
An empty nest!    It used to bear
A happy burden, when the breeze
Of summer rocked it, and a pair
Of merry tattlers told the trees
What treasures they had hidden there.
But Fancy, flitting through the gleams
Of youth's sunshiny atmosphere,
Has fallen in the past, and seems,
Like this poor leaflet nestled here, -
A phantom guest of empty dreams.
I Found The Phrase To Every Thought
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

I found the phrase to every thought
I ever had, but one;
And that defies me, -- as a hand
Did try to chalk the sun
To races nurtured in the dark; --
How would your own begin?
Can blaze be done in cochineal,
Or noon in mazarin?
My Only Property.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I feel that I'm possess'd of nought,
Saving the free unfetterd thought
Which from my bosom seeks to flow,
And each propitious passing hour
That suffers me in all its power
A loving fate with truth to know.
Since Then
by Madison Julius Cawein

I found myself among the trees
What time the reapers ceased to reap;
And in the sunflower-blooms the bees
Huddled brown heads and went to sleep,
Rocked by the balsam-breathing breeze.
I saw the red fox leave his lair,
A shaggy shadow, on the knoll;
And tunneling his thoroughfare
Beneath the soil, I watched the mole - 
Stealth's own self could not take more care.
I heard the death-moth tick and stir,
Slow-honeycombing through the bark;
I heard the cricket's drowsy chirr,
And one lone beetle burr the dark - 
The sleeping woodland seemed to purr.
And then the moon rose: and one white
Low bough of blossoms - grown almost
Where, ere you died, 'twas our delight
To meet, - dear heart! - I thought your ghost....
The wood is haunted since that night.
A Love Song
by Duncan Campbell Scott

I gave her a rose in early June,
Fed with the sun and the dew,
Each petal I said is a note in the tune,
The rose is the whole tune through and through,
The tune is the whole red-hearted rose,
Flush and form, honey and hue,
Lull with the cadence and throb to the close,
I love you, I love you, I love you.
She gave me a rose in early June,
Fed with the sun and the dew,
Each petal she said is a mount in the moon,
The rose is the whole moon through and through,
The moon is the whole pale-hearted rose,
Round and radiance, burnish and blue,
Break in the flood-tide that murmurs and flows,
I love you, I love you, I love you.
This is our love in early June,
Fed with the sun and the dew,
Moonlight and roses hid in a tune,
The roses are music through and through,
The moonlight falls in the breath of the rose,
Light and cadence, honey and hue,
Mingle, and murmur, and flow to the close,
I love you, I love you, I love you.
The Pilgrim
by William Butler Yeats

I fasted for some forty days on bread and buttermilk,
For passing round the bottle with girls in rags or silk,
In country shawl or Paris cloak, had put my wits astray,
And what's the good of women, for all that they can say
i(Is fol de rol de rolly O.)
Round Lough Derg's holy island I went upon the
stones,
I prayed at all the Stations upon my matrow-bones,
And there I found an old man, and though, I prayed all
day
And that old man beside me, nothing would he say
i(But fol de rol de rolly O.)
All know that all the dead in the world about that
place are stuck,
And that should mother seek her son she'd have but
little luck
Because the fires of purgatory have ate their shapes
away;
I swear to God I questioned them, and all they had to
say
i(Was fol de rol de rolly O.)
A great black ragged bird appeared when I was in the
boat;
Some twenty feet from tip to tip had it stretched
rightly out,
With flopping and with flapping it made a great dis-
play,
But I never stopped to question, what could the boat-
man say
i(But fol de rol de rolly O.)
Now I am in the public-house and lean upon the wall,
So come in rags or come in silk, in cloak or country
shawl,
And come with learned lovers or with what men you
may,
For I can put the whole lot down, and all I have to say
i(Is fol de rol de rolly O.)
Lethe
by Clark Ashton Smith

I flow beneath the columns that upbear
The world, and all the tracts of heaven and hell;
Foamless I sweep, where sounds nor glimmers tell
My motion nadir-ward; no moment's flare
Gives each to each the shapes that, unaware,
Commingle at my verge, to test the spell
Of waves intense with night, whose deeps compel
One face from pain, and rapture, and despair.
The fruitless earth's denied and cheated sons
Meet here, where fruitful and unfruitful cease.
And when their lords, the mightier, hidden Ones,
Have drained all worlds till being's wine is low,
Shall they not come, and from the oblivious flow
Drink at one draught a universe of peace?
Lamentations
by Siegfried Loraine Sassoon

I found him in the guard-room at the Base.
From the blind darkness I had heard his crying
And blundered in. With puzzled, patient face
A sergeant watched him; it was no good trying
To stop it; for he howled and beat his chest.
And, all because his brother had gone West,
Raved at the bleeding war; his rampant grief
Moaned, shouted, sobbed, and choked, while he was kneeling
Half-naked on the floor. In my belief
Such men have lost all patriotic feeling.
A Ballad of Life
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

I found in dreams a place of wind and flowers,
Full of sweet trees and colour of glad grass,
In midst whereof there was
A lady clothed like summer with sweet hours.
Her beauty, fervent as a fiery moon,
Made my blood burn and swoon
Like a flame rained upon.
Sorrow had filled her shaken eyelids' blue,
And her mouth's sad red heavy rose all through
Seemed sad with glad things gone.
She held a little cithern by the strings,
Shaped heartwise, strung with subtle-coloured hair
Of some dead lute-player
That in dead years had done delicious things.
The seven strings were named accordingly;
The first string charity,
The second tenderness,
The rest were pleasure, sorrow, sleep, and sin,
And loving-kindness, that is pity's kin
And is most pitiless.
There were three men with her, each garmented
With gold and shod with gold upon the feet;
And with plucked ears of wheat
The first man's hair was wound upon his head.
His face was red, and his mouth curled and sad;
All his gold garment had
Pale stains of dust and rust.
A riven hood was pulled across his eyes;
The token of him being upon this wise
Made for a sign of Lust.
The next was Shame, with hollow heavy face
Coloured like green wood when flame kindles it.
He hath such feeble feet
They may not well endure in any place.
His face was full of grey old miseries,
And all his blood's increase
Was even increase of pain.
The last was Fear, that is akin to Death;
He is Shame's friend, and always as Shame saith
Fear answers him again.
My soul said in me; This is marvellous,
Seeing the air's face is not so delicate
Nor the sun's grace so great,
If sin and she be kin or amorous.
And seeing where maidens served her on their knees,
I bade one crave of these
To know the cause thereof.
Then Fear said: I am Pity that was dead.
And Shame said: I am Sorrow comforted.
And Lust said: I am Love.
Thereat her hands began a lute-playing
And her sweet mouth a song in a strange tongue;
And all the while she sung
There was no sound but long tears following
Long tears upon men's faces waxen white
With extreme sad delight.
But those three following men
Became as men raised up among the dead;
Great glad mouths open and fair cheeks made red
With child's blood come again.
Then I said: Now assuredly I see
My lady is perfect, and transfigureth
All sin and sorrow and death,
Making them fair as her own eyelids be,
Or lips wherein my whole soul's life abides;
Or as her sweet white sides
And bosom carved to kiss.
Now therefore, if her pity further me,
Doubtless for her sake all my days shall be
As righteous as she is.
Forth, ballad, and take roses in both arms,
Even till the top rose touch thee in the throat
Where the least thornprick harms;
And girdled in thy golden singing-coat,
Come thou before my lady and say this;
Borgia, thy gold hair's colour burns in me,
Thy mouth makes beat my blood in feverish rhymes;
Therefore so many as these roses be,
Kiss me so many times.
Then it may be, seeing how sweet she is,
That she will stoop herself none otherwise
Than a blown vine-branch doth,
And kiss thee with soft laughter on thine eyes,
Ballad, and on thy mouth.
The Frozen Heart.
by Robert Herrick

I freeze, I freeze, and nothing dwells
In me but snow and icicles.
For pity's sake, give your advice,
To melt this snow and thaw this ice.
I'll drink down flames; but if so be
Nothing but love can supple me,
I'll rather keep this frost and snow
Than to be thaw'd or heated so.
On Himself.
by Robert Herrick

I fear no earthly powers,
But care for crowns of flowers;
And love to have my beard
With wine and oil besmear'd.
This day I'll drown all sorrow:
Who knows to live to-morrow?
To His Orphan Grandchildren.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("O Charles, je te sens pr's de moi.")
[July, 1871.]
I feel thy presence, Charles. Sweet martyr! down
In earth, where men decay,
I search, and see from cracks which rend thy tomb,
Burst out pale morning's ray.
Close linked are bier and cradle: here the dead,
To charm us, live again:
Kneeling, I mourn, when on my threshold sounds
Two little children's strain.
George, Jeanne, sing on! George, Jeanne, unconscious play!
Your father's form recall,
Now darkened by his sombre shade, now gilt
By beams that wandering fall.
Oh, knowledge! what thy use? did we not know
Death holds no more the dead;
But Heaven, where, hand in hand, angel and star
Smile at the grave we dread?
A Heaven, which childhood represents on earth.
Orphans, may God be nigh!
That God, who can your bright steps turn aside
From darkness, where I sigh.
All joy be yours, though sorrow bows me down!
To each his fitting wage:
Children, I've passed life's span, and men are plagued
By shadows at that stage.
Hath any done - nay, only half performed - 
The good he might for others?
Hath any conquered hatred, or had strength
To treat his foes like brothers?
E'en he, who's tried his best, hath evil wrought:
Pain springs from happiness:
My heart has triumphed in defeat, my pulse
Ne'er quickened at success.
I seemed the greater when I felt the blow:
The prick gives sense of gain;
Since to make others bleed my courage fails,
I'd rather bear the pain.
To grow is sad, since evils grow no less;
Great height is mark for all:
The more I have of branches, more of clustering boughs,
The ghastlier shadows fall.
Thence comes my sadness, though I grant your charms:
Ye are the outbursting
Of the soul in bloom, steeped in the draughts
Of nature's boundless spring.
George is the sapling, set in mournful soil;
Jeanne's folding petals shroud
A mind which trembles at our uproar, yet
Half longs to speak aloud.
Give, then, my children - lowly, blushing plants,
Whom sorrow waits to seize - 
Free course to instincts, whispering 'mid the flowers,
Like hum of murmuring bees.
Some day you'll find that chaos comes, alas!
That angry lightning's hurled,
When any cheer the People, Atlas huge,
Grim bearer of the world!
You'll see that, since our fate is ruled by chance,
Each man, unknowing, great,
Should frame life so, that at some future hour
Fact and his dreamings meet.
I, too, when death is past, one day shall grasp
That end I know not now;
And over you will bend me down, all filled
With dawn's mysterious glow.
I'll learn what means this exile, what this shroud
Enveloping your prime;
And why the truth and sweetness of one man
Seem to all others crime.
I'll hear - though midst these dismal boughs you sang - 
How came it, that for me,
Who every pity feel for every woe,
So vast a gloom could be.
I'll know why night relentless holds me, why
So great a pile of doom:
Why endless frost enfolds me, and methinks
My nightly bed's a tomb:
Why all these battles, all these tears, regrets,
And sorrows were my share;
And why God's will of me a cypress made,
When roses bright ye were.
MARWOOD TUCKER.
Gossamer Threads
by Paul Cameron Brown

I feel like cutting my finger,
hiding upside down
clinking a canteen
shelling peas along the floor.
From the focal point above
anything could be.
Light dripping upon
forlorn gossamer spreads
like a balloon.
Merely the vantage point
of a perspective
quietly threading.
Constancy
by Arthur Macy

I first saw Phebe when the show'rs
Had just made brighter all the flow'rs;
Yet she was fair
As any there,
And so I loved her hours and hours.
Then I met Helen, and her ways
Set my untutored heart ablaze.
I loved at sight
And deemed it right
To worship her for days and days.
Yet when I gazed on Clara's cheeks
And spoke the language Cupid speaks,
O'er all the rest
She seemed the best,
And so I loved her weeks and weeks.
But last of Love's sweet souvenirs
Was Delia with her sighs and tears.
Of her it seemed
I'd always dreamed,
And so I loved her years and years.
But now again with Phebe met,
I love the first one of the set.
"Fickle," you say?
I answer, "Nay,
My heart is true to one quartette."
I Found Her Out There
by Thomas Hardy

I found her out there
On a slope few see,
That falls westwardly
To the salt-edged air,
Where the ocean breaks
On the purple strand,
And the hurricane shakes
The solid land.
I brought her here,
And have laid her to rest
In a noiseless nest
No sea beats near.
She will never be stirred
In her loamy cell
By the waves long heard
And loved so well.
So she does not sleep
By those haunted heights
The Atlantic smites
And the blind gales sweep,
Whence she often would gaze
At Dundagel's far head,
While the dipping blaze
Dyed her face fire-red;
And would sigh at the tale
Of sunk Lyonnesse,
As a wind-tugged tress
Flapped her cheek like a flail;
Or listen at whiles
With a thought-bound brow
To the murmuring miles
She is far from now.
Yet her shade, maybe,
Will creep underground
Till it catch the sound
Of that western sea
As it swells and sobs
Where she once domiciled,
And joy in its throbs
With the heart of a child.
Rondel
by George MacDonald

I follow, tottering, in the funeral train
That bears my body to the welcoming grave.
As those I mourn not, that entomb the brave,
But smile as those that lay aside the vain;
To me it is a thing of poor disdain,
A clod I would not give a sigh to save!
I follow, careless, in the funeral train,
My outworn raiment to the cleansing grave.
I follow to the grave with growing pain--
Then sudden cry: Let Earth take what she gave!
And turn in gladness from the yawning cave--
Glad even for those whose tears yet flow amain:
They also follow, in their funeral train,
Outworn necessities to the welcoming grave!
I Gained It So,
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

I gained it so,
By climbing slow,
By catching at the twigs that grow
Between the bliss and me.
It hung so high,
As well the sky
Attempt by strategy.
I said I gained it, --
This was all.
Look, how I clutch it,
Lest it fall,
And I a pauper go;
Unfitted by an instant's grace
For the contented beggar's face
I wore an hour ago.
To - .
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

1.
I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden,
Thou needest not fear mine;
My spirit is too deeply laden
Ever to burthen thine.
2.
I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion,
Thou needest not fear mine;
Innocent is the heart's devotion
With which I worship thine.
To Laura In Death. Sonnet LII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

Sente l' aura mia antica, e i dolci colli.
HE REVISITS VAUCLUSE.
I feel the well-known gale; the hills I spy
So pleasant, whence my fair her being drew,
Which made these eyes, while Heaven was willing, shew
Wishful, and gay; now sad, and never dry.
O feeble hopes! O thoughts of vanity!
Wither'd the grass, the rills of turbid hue;
And void and cheerless is that dwelling too,
In which I live, in which I wish'd to die;
Hoping its mistress might at length afford
Some respite to my woes by plaintive sighs,
And sorrows pour'd from her once-burning eyes.
I've served a cruel and ungrateful lord:
While lived my beauteous flame, my heart be fired;
And o'er its ashes now I weep expired.
NOTT.
Once more, ye balmy gales, I feel you blow;
Again, sweet hills, I mark the morning beams
Gild your green summits; while your silver streams
Through vales of fragrance undulating flow.
But you, ye dreams of bliss, no longer here
Give life and beauty to the glowing scene:
For stern remembrance stands where you have been,
And blasts the verdure of the blooming year.
O Laura! Laura! in the dust with thee,
Would I could find a refuge from despair!
Is this thy boasted triumph. Love, to tear
A heart thy coward malice dares not free;
And bid it live, while every hope is fled,
To weep, among the ashes of the dead?
ANNE BANNERMAN.
Life
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I feel the great immensity of life.
All little aims slip from me, and I reach
My yearning soul toward the Infinite.
As when a mighty forest, whose green leaves
Have shut it in, and made it seem a bower
For lovers' secrets, or for children's sports,
Casts all its clustering foliage to the winds,
And lets the eye behold it, limitless,
And full of winding mysteries of ways:
So now with life that reaches out before,
And borders on the unexplained Beyond.
I see the stars above me, world on world:
I hear the awful language of all Space;
I feel the distant surging of great seas,
That hide the secrets of the Universe
In their eternal bosoms; and I know
That I am but an atom of the Whole.