DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Sonnets LXXV - So are you to my thoughts as food to life
by William Shakespeare

So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found.
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure:
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
And by and by clean starved for a look;
Possessing or pursuing no delight,
Save what is had, or must from you be took.
Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
Or gluttoning on all, or all away.
To The Leaf-Cricket
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
Small twilight singer
Of dew and mist: thou ghost-gray, gossamer winger
Of dusk's dim glimmer,
How cool thy note sounds; how thy wings of shimmer
Vibrate, soft-sighing,
Meseems, for Summer that is dead or dying.
I stand and listen,
And at thy song the garden-beds, that glisten
With rose and lily,
Seem touched with sadness; and the tuberose chilly,
Breathing around its cold and colorless breath,
Fills the pale evening with wan hints of death.
II.
I see thee quaintly
Beneath the leaf; thy shell-shaped winglets faintly
As thin as spangle
Of cobwebbed rain held up at airy angle;
I hear thy tinkle,
Thy fairy notes, the silvery stillness sprinkle;
Investing wholly
The moonlight with divinest melancholy:
Until, in seeming,
I see the Spirit of the Summer dreaming
Amid her ripened orchards, apple-strewn,
Her great, grave eyes fixed on the harvest-moon.
III.
As dew-drops beady,
As mist minute, thy notes ring low and reedy:
The vaguest vapor
Of melody, now near; now, like some taper
Of sound, far fading
Thou will-o'-wisp of music aye evading.
Among the bowers,
The fog-washed stalks of Autumn's weeds and flowers,
By hill and hollow,
I hear thy murmur and in vain I follow
Thou jack-o'-lantern voice, thou elfin cry,
Thou dirge, that tellest Beauty she must die.
IV.
And when the frantic
Wild winds of Autumn with the dead leaves antic;
And walnuts scatter
The mire of lanes; and dropping acorns patter
In grove and forest,
Like some frail grief, with the rude blast thou warrest,
Sending thy slender
Far cry against the gale, that, rough, untender,
Untouched of sorrow,
Sweeps thee aside, where, haply, I to-morrow
Shall find thee lying, tiny, cold and crushed,
Thy weak wings folded and thy music hushed.
The Evening Star
by Walter Savage Landor

Smiles soon abate; the boisterous throes
Of anger long burst forth;
Inconstantly the south-wind blows,
But steadily the north.
Thy star, O Venus! often changes
Its radiant seat above,
The chilling pole-star never ranges,
'Tis thus with Hate and Love.
Fair Shows Deceive.
by Robert Herrick

Smooth was the sea, and seem'd to call
Two pretty girls to play withal:
Who paddling there, the sea soon frown'd,
And on a sudden both were drown'd.
What credit can we give to seas,
Who, kissing, kill such saints as these?
A Rover's Song.
by Bliss Carman (William)

Snowdrift of the mountains,
Spindrift of the sea,
We who down the border
Rove from gloom to glee,--
Snowdrift of the mountains,
Spindrift of the sea,
There be no such gypsies
Over earth as we.
Snowdrift of the mountains,
Spindrift of the sea,
Let us part the treasure
Of the world in three.
Snowdrift of the mountains,
Spindrift of the sea,
You shall keep your kingdoms;
Joscelyn for me!
Afternoon.
by Emma Lazarus

Small, shapeless drifts of cloud
Sail slowly northward in the soft-hued sky,
With blur half-tints and rolling summits bright,
By the late sun caressed; slight hazes shroud
All things afar; shineth each leaf anigh
With its own warmth and light.
O'erblown by Southland airs,
The summer landscape basks in utter peace:
In lazy streams the lazy clouds are seen;
Low hills, broad meadows, and large, clear-cut squares
Of ripening corn-fields, rippled by the breeze,
With shifting shade and sheen.
Hark! and you may not hear
A sound less soothing than the rustle cool
Of swaying leaves, the steady wiry drone
Of unseen crickets, sudden chirpings clear
Of happy birds, the tinkle of the pool,
Chafed by a single stone.
What vague, delicious dreams,
Born of this golden hour of afternoon,
And air balm-freighted, fill the soul with bliss,
Transpierced like yonder clouds with lustrous gleams,
Fantastic, brief as they, and, like them, spun
Of gilded nothingness!
All things are well with her.
'T is good to be alive, to see the light
That plays upon the grass, to feel (and sigh
With perfect pleasure) the mild breezes stir
Among the garden roses, red and white,
With whiffs of fragrancy.
There is no troublous thought,
No painful memory, no grave regret,
To mar the sweet suggestions of the hour:
The soul, at peace, reflects the peace without,
Forgetting grief as sunset skies forget
The morning's transient shower.
Upon Sneape. Epig.
by Robert Herrick

Sneape has a face so brittle, that it breaks
Forth into blushes whensoe'er he speaks.
To A Child - Written In Her Album
by William Wordsworth

Small service is true service while it lasts:
Of humblest Friends, bright Creature! scorn not one:
The Daisy, by the shadow that it casts,
Protects the lingering dew-drop from the Sun.
Landscape
by Charles Baudelaire

So as to write my eclogues in the purest verse
I wish to lay me down, like the astrologers,
Next to the sky, and hear in reverie the hymns
Of all the neighbouring belfries, carried on the wind.
My two hands to my chin, up in my attic room,
I'll see the atelier singing a babbled tune;
The chimney-pipes, the steeples, all the city's masts,
The great, inspiring skies, magnificent and vast.
How sweet it is to see, across the misty gloom,
A star born in the blue, a lamp lit in a room,
Rivers of chimney smoke, rising in purplish streams,
The pale of glow of the moon, transfiguring the scene.
I will look out on springs and summers, autumn's show,
And when the winter comes, in monotone of snow,
I'll lock up all the doors and shutters neat and tight,
And build a fairy palace for myself at night.
So I will dream of bright horizons in the blue
Where fountains weep in pools of alabaster hue,
Of kisses in the glades, where birds sing night and day,
Of all to make an idyll in a childish way.
Riot,' that rages vainly at my window glass,
Will never make me raise my forehead from my task,
Since I am plunged in this voluptuous delight
Of conjuring the spring with all the poet's might,
Of hauling forth a sun out of my heart, with care
Transmuting furious thoughts to gently breathing air.
Upon Snare, An Usurer.
by Robert Herrick

Snare, ten i' th' hundred calls his wife; and why?
She brings in much by carnal usury.
He by extortion brings in three times more:
Say, who's the worst, th' exactor or the whore?
Southampton Water
by William Lisle Bowles

Smooth went our boat upon the summer seas,
Leaving, for so it seemed, the world behind,
Its sounds of mingled uproar: we, reclined
Upon the sunny deck, heard but the breeze
That o'er us whispering passed, or idly played
With the lithe flag aloft. A woodland scene
On either side drew its slope line of green,
And hung the water's shining edge with shade.
Above the woods, Netley! thy ruins pale
Peered as we passed; and Vecta's[1] azure hue
Beyond the misty castle[2] met our view;
Where in mid channel hung the scarce seen sail.
So all was calm and sunshine as we went
Cheerily o'er the briny element.
Oh! were this little boat to us the world,
As thus we wandered far from sounds of care,
Circled by friends and gentle maidens fair,
Whilst morning airs the waving pennant curled;
How sweet were life's long voyage, till in peace
We gained that haven still, where all things cease!
Screw-Guns
by Rudyard Kipling

Smokin' my pipe on the mountings, sniffin' the mornin' cool,
I walks in my old brown gaiters along o' my old brown mule,
With seventy gunners be'ind me, an' never a beggar forgets
It's only the pick of the Army that handles the dear little pets, 'Tss! 'Tss!
For you all love the screw-guns, the screw-guns they all love you!
So when we call round with a few guns, o' course you will know what to do, hoo! hoo!
Jest send in your Chief an' surrender, it's worse if you fights or you runs:
You can go where you please, you can skid up the trees, but you don't get away from the guns!
They sends us along where the roads are, but mostly we goes where they ain't:
We'd climb up the side of a sign-board an' trust to the stick o' the paint:
We've chivied the Naga an' Looshai, we've give the Afreedeeman fits,
For we fancies ourselves at two thousand, we guns that are built in two bits, 'Tss! 'Tss!
For you all love the screw-guns . . .
If a man doesn't work, why, we drills 'im an' teaches 'im 'ow to behave;
If a beggar can't march, why, we kills 'im an' rattles 'im into 'is grave.
You've got to stand up to our business an' spring without snatchin' or fuss.
D'you say that you sweat with the field-guns? By God, you must lather with us, 'Tss! 'Tss!
For you all love the screw-guns . . .
The eagles is screamin' around us, the river's a-moanin' below,
We're clear o' the pine an' the oak-scrub, we're out on the rocks an' the snow,
An' the wind is as thin as a whip-lash what carries away to the plains
The rattle an' stamp o' the lead-mules, the jinglety-jink o' the chains, 'Tss! 'Tss!
For you all love the screw-guns . . .
There's a wheel on the Horns o' the Mornin', an' a wheel on the edge o' the Pit,
An' a drop into nothin' beneath you as straight as a beggar can spit:
With the sweat runnin' out o' your shirt-sleeves, an' the sun off the snow in your face,
An' 'arf o' the men on the drag-ropes to hold the old gun in 'er place, 'Tss! 'Tss!
For you all love the screw-guns . . .
Smokin' my pipe on the mountings, sniffin' the mornin' cool,
I climbs in my old brown gaiters along o' my old brown mule.
The monkey can say what our road was, the wild-goat 'e knows where we passed.
Stand easy, you long-eared old darlin's! Out drag-ropes! With shrapnel! Hold fast, 'Tss! 'Tss!
For you all love the screw-guns, the screw-guns they all love you!
So when we take tea with a few guns, o' course you will know what to do, hoo! hoo!
Jest send in your Chief an' surrender, it's worse if you fights or you runs:
You may hide in the caves, they'll be only your graves, but you can't get away from the guns!
A-Tishoo
by Walter De La Mare

"Sneeze, Pretty, sneeze, Dainty,
Else the Elves will have you sure,
Sneeze, Light-of-Seven-Bright-Candles,
See they're tippeting at the door;
Their wee feet in measure falling,
All their little voices calling,
Calling, calling, calling, calling - 
Sneeze, or never come no more!"
"A-tishoo!"
Gone Before.
by Marietta Holley

Smooth the hair;
Silken waves of sunny brown
Lay upon the white brow down,
Crowned with the blossoms rare;
Lilies on a golden stream,
Ne'er to float in summer air
Wreathed with meadow daisies fair.
Lay away the broken crown
And your broken dream,
With one shining tress of hair,
Nevermore to need your care.
Postponement
by Thomas Hardy

Snow-bound in woodland, a mournful word,
Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird,
Reached me on wind-wafts; and thus I heard,
Wearily waiting:-
"I planned her a nest in a leafless tree,
But the passers eyed and twitted me,
And said: 'How reckless a bird is he,
Cheerily mating!'
"Fear-filled, I stayed me till summer-tide,
In lewth of leaves to throne her bride;
But alas! her love for me waned and died,
Wearily waiting.
"Ah, had I been like some I see,
Born to an evergreen nesting-tree,
None had eyed and twitted me,
Cheerily mating!"
1866.
Stones
by John Frederick Freeman

Small yellow stones
That, lifted, through my idle fingers fall
Leaving a score--
And these I toss between the parted lips
Of the lapping sea,
And the sea tosses again with millions more--
Yellow and white stones;
Then drawing back her snaky long waves all,
Leaves the stones
Yellow and white upon the sandy shore....
As they were bones
Yellow and white left on the silent shore
Of an unfoaming far unvisioned Sea.
Desert Places
by Robert Lee Frost

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it, it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars, on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
The Foundling
by Lola Ridge

Snow wraiths circle us
Like washers of the dead,
Flapping their white wet cloths
Impatiently
About the grizzled head,
Where the coarse hair mats like grass,
And the efficient wind
With cold professional baste
Probes like a lancet
Through the cotton shirt...
About us are white cliffs and space.
No fa'ades show,
Nor roof nor any spire...
All sheathed in snow...
The parasitic snow
That clings about them like a blight.
Only detached lights
Float hazily like greenish moons,
And endlessly
Down the whore-street,
Accouched and comforted and sleeping warm,
The blizzard waltzes with the night.
Nursery Rhyme. DII. Natural History.
by Unknown

[The snail scoops out hollows, little rotund chambers, in limestone, for its residence. This habit of the animal is so important in its effects, as to have attracted the attention of geologists, and Dr. Buckland alluded to it at the meeting of the British Association in 1841. See Chambers' 'Popular Rhymes,' p. 43. The following rhyme is a boy's invocation to the snail to come out of such holes.]
Snail, snail, come out of your hole,
Or else I will beat you as black as a coal.
Neither!
by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

So ancient to myself I seem,
I might have crossed grave Styx's stream
A year ago; - 
My word, 'tis so; - 
And now be wandering with my sires
In that rare world we wonder o'er,
Half disbelieve, and prize the more!
Yet spruce I am, and still can mix
My wits with all the sparkling tricks,
A youth and girl
At twenty's whirl
Play round each other's bosom fires,
On this brisk earth I once enjoyed: - 
But now I'm otherwise employed!
Am I a thing without a name;
A sort of dummy in the game?
"Not young, not old:"
A world is told
Of misery in that lengthened phrase;
Yet, gad, although my coat be smooth,
My forehead's wrinkled, - that's the truth!
I hardly know which road to go.
With youth? Perhaps. With age? Oh no!
Well, then, with those
Who share my woes,
Doomed to mere fashionable ways, - 
Fair matrons, cigarettes, and tea,
Sighs, mirrors, and society?
Is it a folly still to twirl,
And smirk and promenade and querl
About the town?
I'll put this down:
A man becomes downright blast
Before he knows that he is either
That, or what I am - call it, "Neither."
Oh, for a hint what we shall do,
We bucks whose comedy is through!
Who'd be sedate?
And yet I hate
To pose persistently to-day
As one just trying flights, you know,
When I did try them long ago!
Suppose I hurry up the tide
Of age, and bravely drift beside
Those hoary dogs
Who lie like logs
Around the clubs where life is hushed?
My blood runs cold! What? Say farewell
To this year's new bewildering belle!
Hold, man, the secret broad and huge,
With every well-known subterfuge!
If bald and gray
And thin, still say
You're only thirty: don't be crushed;
But when your voice shakes o'er a pun,
Be off to China: - your day's done!
"So Bashful When I Spied Her,"
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

So bashful when I spied her,
So pretty, so ashamed!
So hidden in her leaflets,
Lest anybody find;
So breathless till I passed her,
So helpless when I turned
And bore her, struggling, blushing,
Her simple haunts beyond!
For whom I robbed the dingle,
For whom betrayed the dell,
Many will doubtless ask me,
But I shall never tell!
Titania.
by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

By Lord T-n.
So bluff Sir Leolin gave the bride away:
And when they married her, the little church
Had seldom seen a costlier ritual.
The coach and pair alone were two-pound-ten,
And two-pound-ten apiece the wedding-cakes;--
Three wedding-cakes.    A Cupid poised a-top
Of each hung shivering to the frosted loves
Of two fond cushats on a field of ice,
As who should say 'I see you!'--Such the joy
When English-hearted Edwin swore his faith
With Mariana of the Moated Grange.
For Edwin, plump head-waiter at The Cock,
Grown sick of custom, spoilt of plenitude,
Lacking the finer wit that saith,
'I wait, They come; and if I make them wait, they go,'
Fell in a jaundiced humour petulant-green,
Watched the dull clerk slow-rounding to his cheese,
Flicked a full dozen flies that flecked the pane--
All crystal-cheated of the fuller air,
Blurted a free 'Good-day t'ye,' left and right,
And shaped his gathering choler to this head:--
'Custom!    And yet what profit of it all?
The old order changeth yielding place to new,
To me small change, and this the Counter-change
Of custom beating on the self-same bar--
Change out of chop.    Ah me! the talk, the tip,
The would-be-evening should-be-mourning suit,
The forged solicitude for petty wants
More petty still than they,--all these I loathe,
Learning they lie who feign that all things come
To him that waiteth.    I have waited long,
And now I go, to mate me with a bride
Who is aweary waiting, even as I!'
But when the amorous moon of honeycomb
Was over, ere the matron-flower of Love--
Step-sister of To-morrow's marmalade--
Swooned scentless, Mariana found her lord
Did something jar the nicer feminine sense
With usage, being all too fine and large,
Instinct of warmth and colour, with a trick
Of blunting 'Mariana's' keener edge
To 'Mary Ann'--the same but not the same:
Whereat she girded, tore her crisped hair,
Called him 'Sir Churl,' and ever calling 'Churl!'
Drave him to Science, then to Alcohol,
To forge a thousand theories of the rocks,
Then somewhat else for thousands dewy cool,
Wherewith he sought a more Pacific isle
And there found love, a duskier love than hers.
On The Death Of A Certain Journal[1]
by Charles Kingsley

So die, thou child of stormy dawn,
Thou winter flower, forlorn of nurse;
Chilled early by the bigot's curse,
The pedant's frown, the worldling's yawn.
Fair death, to fall in teeming June,
When every seed which drops to earth
Takes root, and wins a second birth
From steaming shower and gleaming moon.
Fall warm, fall fast, thou mellow rain;
Thou rain of God, make fat the land;
That roots which parch in burning sand
May bud to flower and fruit again.
To grace, perchance, a fairer morn
In mightier lands beyond the sea,
While honour falls to such as we
From hearts of heroes yet unborn,
Who in the light of fuller day,
Of purer science, holier laws,
Bless us, faint heralds of their cause,
Dim beacons of their glorious way.
Failure?    While tide-floods rise and boil
Round cape and isle, in port and cove,
Resistless, star-led from above:
What though our tiny wave recoil?
Eversley, 1852.
Love's Furnace.
by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

S' amico al freddo sasso.
So friendly is the fire to flinty stone,
That, struck therefrom and kindled to a blaze,
It burns the stone, and from the ash doth raise
What lives thenceforward binding stones in one:
Kiln-hardened this resists both frost and sun,
Acquiring higher worth for endless days--
As the purged soul from hell returns with praise,
Amid the heavenly host to take her throne.
E'en so the fire struck from my soul, that lay
Close-hidden in my heart, may temper me,
Till burned and slaked to better life I rise.
If, made mere smoke and dust, I live to-day,
Fire-hardened I shall live eternally;
Such gold, not iron, my spirit strikes and tries.
Lord Wellington And The Ministers.
by Thomas Moore

So gently in peace Alcibiades smiled,
While in battle he shone forth so terribly grand,
That the emblem they graved on his seal, was a child
With a thunderbolt placed in its innocent hand.
Oh Wellington, long as such Ministers wield
Your magnificent arm, the same emblem will do;
For while they're in the Council and you in the Field.
We've the babies in them, and the thunder in     you!
Easter Day II
by Arthur Hugh Clough

So in the sinful streets, abstracted and alone,
I with my secret self held communing of mine own.
So in the southern city spake the tongue
Of one that somewhat overwildly sung,
But in a later hour I sat and heard
Another voice that spake another graver word.
Weep not, it bade, whatever hath been said,
Though He be dead, He is not dead.
In the true creed
He is yet risen indeed;
Christ is yet risen.
Weep not beside His tomb,
Ye women unto whom
He was great comfort and yet greater grief;
Nor ye, ye faithful few that wont with Him to roam,
Seek sadly what for Him ye left, go hopeless to your home;
Nor ye despair, ye sharers yet to be of their belief;
Though He be dead, He is not dead,
Nor gone, though fled,
Not lost, though vanished;
Though He return not, though
He lies and moulders low;
In the true creed
He is yet risen indeed;
Christ is yet risen.
Sit if ye will, sit down upon the ground,
Yet not to weep and wail, but calmly look around.
Whate'er befel,
Earth is not hell;
Now, too, as when it first began,
Life is yet life, and man is man.
For all that breathe beneath the heaven's high cope,
Joy with grief mixes, with despondence hope.
Hope conquers cowardice, joy grief;
Or at least, faith unbelief.
Though dead, not dead;
Not gone, though fled;
Not lost, though vanished.
In the great gospel and true creed,
He is yet risen indeed;
Christ is yet risen.
So Breaks The Sun
by Ben Jonson

So breaks the sun earth's rugged chains,
Wherein rude winter bound her veins;
So grows both stream and source of price,
That lately fettered were with ice.
So naked trees get crisped heads,
And colored coats the roughest meads,
And all get vigor, youth, and sprite,
That are but looked on by his light.
To Laura In Death. Sonnet XVI.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

S' breve ' 'l tempo e 'l pensier s' veloce.
THE REMEMBRANCE OF HER CHASES SADNESS FROM HIS HEART.
So brief the time, so fugitive the thought
Which Laura yields to me, though dead, again,
Small medicine give they to my giant pain;
Still, as I look on her, afflicts me nought.
Love, on the rack who holds me as he brought,
Fears when he sees her thus my soul retain,
Where still the seraph face and sweet voice reign,
Which first his tyranny and triumph wrought.
As rules a mistress in her home of right,
From my dark heavy heart her placid brow
Dispels each anxious thought and omen drear.
My soul, which bears but ill such dazzling light,
Says with a sigh: "O blessed day! when thou
Didst ope with those dear eyes thy passage here!"
MACGREGOR.
Revival
by Arthur Hugh Clough

So I went wrong,
Grievously wrong, but folly crushed itself,
And vanity o'ertoppling fell, and time
And healthy discipline and some neglect,
Labour and solitary hours revived
Somewhat, at least, of that original frame.
Oh, well do I remember then the days
When on some grassy slope (what time the sun
Was sinking, and the solemn eve came down
With its blue vapour upon field and wood
And elm-embosomed spire) once more again
I fed on sweet emotion, and my heart
With love o'erflowed, or hushed itself in fear
Unearthly, yea celestial. Once again
My heart was hot within me, and, me seemed,
I too had in my body breath to wind
The magic horn of song; I too possessed
Up-welling in my being's depths a fount
Of the true poet-nectar whence to fill
The golden urns of verse.
Epitaph On Mrs Margaret Paston, Of Burningham In Norfolk.
by John Dryden

So fair, so young, so innocent, so sweet,
So ripe a judgment, and so rare a wit,
Require at least an age in one to meet.
In her they met; but long they could not stay,
'Twas gold too fine to mix without allay.
Heaven's image was in her so well express'd,
Her very sight upbraided all the rest;
Too justly ravish'd from an age like this,
Now she is gone, the world is of a piece.