DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Lines Upon A Lady Dying Soon After She Had Been Wrecked On The Cornish Coast, Leaving A Little Infant Behind Her.
by John Carr (Sir)

Sweet stranger! tho' the merc'less storm
Here sternly cast thy fainting form,
What tho' no kindred hand was near
To wipe away Affliction's tear,
Yet shall thy gentle spirit own,
Amidst these sea-girt shores unknown,
That Pity pour'd her balmy store,
And kindred hands could do no more.
Ne'er shall that pang disturb thy rest,
That moves the parted mother's breast;
The object of thy dying fear
Shall want no father's fondness here.
Oft shall his little lips proclaim,
With April-tears, thy treasur'd name;
His little hands, when summers bloom,
Shall gather flow'rs to deck thy tomb.
O Do Not Love Too Long
by William Butler Yeats

Sweetheart, do not love too long:
I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like an old song.
All through the years of our youth
Neither could have known
Their own thought from the other's,
We were so much at one.
But O, in a minute she changed --
O do not love too long,
Or you will grow out of fashion
Like an old song.
The Lost Path.
by Thomas Osborne Davis

Air--Gr'dh mo chroidhe.
I.
Sweet thoughts, bright dreams, my comfort be,
All comfort else has flown;
For every hope was false to me,
And here I am, alone.
What thoughts were mine in early youth!
Like some old Irish song,
Brimful of love, and life, and truth,
My spirit gushed along.
II.
I hoped to right my native isle,
I hoped a soldier's fame,
I hoped to rest in woman's smile
And win a minstrel's name--
Oh! little have I served my land,
No laurels press my brow,
I have no woman's heart or hand,
Nor minstrel honours now.
III.
But fancy has a magic power,
It brings me wreath and crown,
And woman's love, the self-same hour
It smites oppression down.
Sweet thoughts, bright dreams, my comfort be,
I have no joy beside;
Oh! throng around, and be to me
Power, country, fame, and bride.
Sweetest Of Maidens, Oh, How Can I Tell
by Louisa May Alcott

'Sweetest of maidens, oh, how can I tell
The love that transfigures the whole earth to me?
The longing that causes my bosom to swell,
When I dream of a life all devoted to thee?'
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet LXXX
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

Sweet-swelling lip, well maist thou swell in pride,
Since best wits thinke it wit thee to admire;
Natures praise, Vertues stall; Cupids cold fire,
Whence words, not words but heau'nly graces slide;
The new Parnassus, where the Muses bide;
Sweetner of Musicke, Wisedomes beautifier,
Breather of life, and fastner of desire,
Where Beauties blush in Honors graine is dide.
Thus much my heart compeld my mouth to say;
But now, spite of my heart, my mouth will stay,
Loathing all lies, doubting this flatterie is:
And no spurre can his resty race renewe,
Without, how farre this praise is short of you,
Sweet Lipp, you teach my mouth with one sweet kisse.
Upon His Kinswoman, Mistress Elizabeth Herrick.
by Robert Herrick

Sweet virgin, that I do not set
The pillars up of weeping jet
Or mournful marble, let thy shade
Not wrathful seem, or fright the maid
Who hither at her wonted hours
Shall come to strew thy earth with flowers.
No; know, bless'd maid, when there's not one
Remainder left of brass or stone,
Thy living epitaph shall be,
Though lost in them, yet found in me;
Dear, in thy bed of roses then,
Till this world shall dissolve as men,
Sleep while we hide thee from the light,
Drawing thy curtains round: Good-night.
By My Sweetheart
by Eugene Field

Sweetheart, be my sweetheart
When birds are on the wing,
When bee and bud and babbling flood
Bespeak the birth of spring,
Come, sweetheart, be my sweetheart
And wear this posy-ring!
Sweetheart, be my sweetheart
In the mellow golden glow
Of earth aflush with the gracious blush
Which the ripening fields foreshow;
Dear sweetheart, be my sweetheart,
As into the noon we go!
Sweetheart, be my sweetheart
When falls the bounteous year,
When fruit and wine of tree and vine
Give us their harvest cheer;
Oh, sweetheart, be my sweetheart,
For winter it draweth near.
Sweetheart, be my sweetheart
When the year is white and old,
When the fire of youth is spent, forsooth,
And the hand of age is cold;
Yet, sweetheart, be my sweetheart
Till the year of our love be told!
The Lily Of The Valley
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Sweetest of the flowers a-blooming
In the fragrant vernal days
Is the Lily of the Valley
With its soft, retiring ways.
Well, you chose this humble blossom
As the nurse's emblem flower,
Who grows more like her ideal
Every day and every hour.
Like the Lily of the Valley
In her honesty and worth,
Ah, she blooms in truth and virtue
In the quiet nooks of earth.
Tho' she stands erect in honor
When the heart of mankind bleeds,
Still she hides her own deserving
In the beauty of her deeds.
In the silence of the darkness
Where no eye may see and know,
There her footsteps shod with mercy,
And fleet kindness come and go.
Not amid the sounds of plaudits,
Nor before the garish day,
Does she shed her soul's sweet perfume,
Does she take her gentle way.
But alike her ideal flower,
With its honey-laden breath,
Still her heart blooms forth its beauty
In the valley shades of death.
Amalfi
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sweet the memory is to me
Of a land beyond the sea,
Where the waves and mountains meet,
Where, amid her mulberry-trees
Sits Amalfi in the heat,
Bathing ever her white feet
In the tideless summer seas.
In the middle of the town,
From its fountains in the hills,
Tumbling through the narrow gorge,
The Canneto rushes down,
Turns the great wheels of the mills,
Lifts the hammers of the forge.
'T is a stairway, not a street,
That ascends the deep ravine,
Where the torrent leaps between
Rocky walls that almost meet.
Toiling up from stair to stair
Peasant girls their burdens bear;
Sunburnt daughters of the soil,
Stately figures tall and straight,
What inexorable fate
Dooms them to this life of toil?
Lord of vineyards and of lands,
Far above the convent stands.
On its terraced walk aloof
Leans a monk with folded hands,
Placid, satisfied, serene,
Looking down upon the scene
Over wall and red-tiled roof;
Wondering unto what good end
All this toil and traffic tend,
And why all men cannot be
Free from care and free from pain,
And the sordid love of gain,
And as indolent as he.
Where are now the freighted barks
From the marts of east and west?
Where the knights in iron sarks
Journeying to the Holy Land,
Glove of steel upon the hand,
Cross of crimson on the breast?
Where the pomp of camp and court?
Where the pilgrims with their prayers?
Where the merchants with their wares,
And their gallant brigantines
Sailing safely into port
Chased by corsair Algerines?
Vanished like a fleet of cloud,
Like a passing trumpet-blast,
Are those splendors of the past,
And the commerce and the crowd!
Fathoms deep beneath the seas
Lie the ancient wharves and quays,
Swallowed by the engulfing waves;
Silent streets and vacant halls,
Ruined roofs and towers and walls;
Hidden from all mortal eyes
Deep the sunken city lies:
Even cities have their graves!
This is an enchanted land!
Round the headlands far away
Sweeps the blue Salernian bay
With its sickle of white sand:
Further still and furthermost
On the dim discovered coast
Paestum with its ruins lies,
And its roses all in bloom
Seem to tinge the fatal skies
Of that lonely land of doom.
On his terrace, high in air,
Nothing doth the good monk care
For such worldly themes as these,
From the garden just below
Little puffs of perfume blow,
And a sound is in his ears
Of the murmur of the bees
In the shining chestnut-trees;
Nothing else he heeds or hears.
All the landscape seems to swoon
In the happy afternoon;
Slowly o'er his senses creep
The encroaching waves of sleep,
And he sinks as sank the town,
Unresisting, fathoms down,
Into caverns cool and deep!
Walled about with drifts of snow,
Hearing the fierce north-wind blow,
Seeing all the landscape white,
And the river cased in ice,
Comes this memory of delight,
Comes this vision unto me
Of a long-lost Paradise
In the land beyond the sea.
Spring Bereaved Ii
by William Henry Drummond

Sweet Spring, thou turn'st with all thy goodly train,
Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flow'rs:
The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain,
The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their show'rs.
Thou turn'st, sweet youth, but ah! my pleasant hours
And happy days with thee come not again;
The sad memorials only of my pain
Do with thee turn, which turn my sweets in sours.
Thou art the same which still thou wast before,
Delicious, wanton, amiable, fair;
But she, whose breath embalm'd thy wholesome air,
Is gone, nor gold nor gems her can restore.
Neglected virtue, seasons go and come,
Sonnet. On The Death Of Mrs. Charlotte Smith.
by Thomas Gent

Sweet songstress! whom the melancholy Muse
With more than fondness loved, for thee she strung
The lyre, on which herself enraptured hung,
And bade thee through the world its sweets diffuse.
Oft hath my childhood's tributary tear
Paid homage to the sad harmonious strain,
That told, alas! too true, the grief and pain
Which thy afflicted mind was doom'd to bear.
Rest, sainted spirit! from a life of woe,
And though no friendly hand on thee bestow
The stately marble, or emblazon'd name,
To tell a thoughtless world who sleeps below:
Yet o'er thy narrow bed a wreath shall blow.
Deriving vigour from the breath of fame!
The Resurrection of Alcilia
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Gratefully inscribed to Dr. A.B. Grosart.
Sweet song-flower of the Mayspring of our song,
Be welcome to us, with loving thanks and praise
To his good hand who travelling on strange ways
Found thee forlorn and fragrant, lain along
Beneath dead leaves that many a winter's wrong
Had rained and heaped through nigh three centuries' maze
Above thy Maybloom, hiding from our gaze
The life that in thy leaves lay sweet and strong.
For thine have life, while many above thine head
Piled by the wind lie blossomless and dead.
So now disburdened of such load above
That lay as death's own dust upon thee shed
By days too deaf to hear thee like a dove
Murmuring, we hear thee, bird and flower of love.
Hugo's "Flower To Butterfly"
by Eugene Field

Sweet, bide with me and let my love
Be an enduring tether;
Oh, wanton not from spot to spot,
But let us dwell together.
You've come each morn to sip the sweets
With which you found me dripping,
Yet never knew it was not dew
But tears that you were sipping.
You gambol over honey meads
Where siren bees are humming;
But mine the fate to watch and wait
For my beloved's coming.
The sunshine that delights you now
Shall fade to darkness gloomy;
You should not fear if, biding here,
You nestled closer to me.
So rest you, love, and be my love,
That my enraptured blooming
May fill your sight with tender light,
Your wings with sweet perfuming.
Or, if you will not bide with me
Upon this quiet heather,
Oh, give me wing, thou beauteous thing,
That we may soar together.
From "A Rhapsody"
by John Clare

Sweet solitude, what joy to be alone--
In wild, wood-shady dell to stay for hours.
Twould soften hearts if they were hard as stone
To see glad butterflies and smiling flowers.
Tis pleasant in these quiet lonely places,
Where not the voice of man our pleasure mars,
To see the little bees with coal black faces
Gathering sweets from little flowers like stars.
The wind seems calling, though not understood.
A voice is speaking; hark, it louder calls.
It echoes in the far-outstretching wood.
First twas a hum, but now it loudly squalls;
And then the pattering rain begins to fall,
And it is hushed--the fern leaves scarcely shake,
The tottergrass it scarcely stirs at all.
And then the rolling thunder gets awake,
And from black clouds the lightning flashes break.
The sunshine's gone, and now an April evening
Commences with a dim and mackerel sky.
Gold light and woolpacks in the west are leaving,
And leaden streaks their splendid place supply.
Sheep ointment seems to daub the dead-hued sky,
And night shuts up the lightsomeness of day,
All dark and absent as a corpse's eye.
Flower, tree, and bush, like all the shadows grey,
In leaden hues of desolation fade away.
Tis May; and yet the March flower Dandelion
Is still in bloom among the emerald grass,
Shining like guineas with the sun's warm eye on--
We almost think they are gold as we pass,
Or fallen stars in a green sea of grass.
They shine in fields, or waste grounds near the town.
They closed like painter's brush when even was.
At length they turn to nothing else but down,
While the rude winds blow off each shadowy crown.
Flower Of Love
by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault
was, had I not been made of common clay
I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed
yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day.
From the wildness of my wasted passion I had
struck a better, clearer song,
Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled
with some Hydra-headed wrong.
Had my lips been smitten into music by the
kisses that but made them bleed,
You had walked with Bice and the angels on
that verdant and enamelled mead.
I had trod the road which Dante treading saw
the suns of seven circles shine,
Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening,
as they opened to the Florentine.
And the mighty nations would have crowned
me, who am crownless now and without name,
And some orient dawn had found me kneeling
on the threshold of the House of Fame.
I had sat within that marble circle where the
oldest bard is as the young,
And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the
lyre's strings are ever strung.
Keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from out
the poppy-seeded wine,
With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead,
clasped the hand of noble love in mine.
And at springtide, when the apple-blossoms
brush the burnished bosom of the dove,
Two young lovers lying in an orchard would
have read the story of our love;
Would have read the legend of my passion,
known the bitter secret of my heart,
Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as
we two are fated now to part.
For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by
the cankerworm of truth,
And no hand can gather up the fallen withered
petals of the rose of youth.
Yet I am not sorry that I loved you - ah!
what else had I a boy to do, -
For the hungry teeth of time devour, and the
silent-footed years pursue.
Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and
when once the storm of youth is past,
Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death
the silent pilot comes at last.
And within the grave there is no pleasure,
for the blindworm battens on the root,
And Desire shudders into ashes, and the tree
of Passion bears no fruit.
Ah! what else had I to do but love you?
God's own mother was less dear to me,
And less dear the Cytheraean rising like an
argent lily from the sea.
I have made my choice, have lived my
poems, and, though youth is gone in wasted days,
I have found the lover's crown of myrtle better
than the poet's crown of bays.
To The Western Wind.
by Robert Herrick

Sweet western wind, whose luck it is,
Made rival with the air,
To give Perenna's lip a kiss,
And fan her wanton hair.
Bring me but one, I'll promise thee,
Instead of common showers,
Thy wings shall be embalm'd by me,
And all beset with flowers.
Amour 46
by Michael Drayton

Sweete secrecie, what tongue can tell thy worth?
What mortall pen sufficiently can prayse thee?
What curious Pensill serues to lim thee forth?
What Muse hath power aboue thy height to raise thee?
Strong locke of kindnesse, Closet of loues store,
Harts Methridate, the soules preseruatiue;
O vertue! which all vertues doe adore,
Cheefe good, from whom all good things wee deriue.
O rare effect! true bond of friendships measure,
Conceite of Angels, which all wisdom teachest;
O, richest Casket of all heauenly treasure,
In secret silence which such wonders preachest.
O purest mirror! wherein men may see
The liuely Image of Diuinitie.
A Sonnet.
by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick

Sweet summer queen, with trailing robe of green,
What spell has thou to bind the heart to thee?
Thy throne is built upon the sun-lit sea,
Where break the waves in clouds of silver sheen
And oft at dawn like some resplendent queen,
Thou sittest on the hills in majesty;
And all the flowers wake at thy decree.
But now farewell to all thy joys serene;
The autumn comes with swift-winged, silent flight,
And he will woo thee with his fiery breath;
In crimson robes and hues of flashing gold
He'll clothe thee, and thy beauty in the night
Will take a richer glow.    But wintry death
Will come and wrap thee in his fold.
To A Star.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sweet star, which gleaming o'er the darksome scene
Through fleecy clouds of silvery radiance fliest,
Spanglet of light on evening's shadowy veil,
Which shrouds the day-beam from the waveless lake,
Lighting the hour of sacred love; more sweet
Than the expiring morn-star's paly fires: -
Sweet star! When wearied Nature sinks to sleep,
And all is hushed, - all, save the voice of Love,
Whose broken murmurings swell the balmy blast
Of soft Favonius, which at intervals
Sighs in the ear of stillness, art thou aught but
Lulling the slaves of interest to repose
With that mild, pitying gaze? Oh, I would look
In thy dear beam till every bond of sense
Became enamoured -
To Dianeme
by Robert Herrick

Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes,
Which, star-like, sparkle in their skies;
Nor be you proud, that you can see
All hearts your captives, yours, yet free;
Be you not proud of that rich hair
Which wantons with the love-sick air;
When as that ruby which you wear,
Sunk from the tip of your soft ear,
Will last to be a precious stone,
When all your world of beauty's gone.
A Lark's Song
by Michael Fairless

Sweet, sweet!
I rise to greet
The sapphire sky
The air slips by
On either side
As up I ride
On mounting wing,
And sing and sing -
Then reach my bliss,
The sun's great kiss;
And poise a space
To see his face,
Sweet, sweet,
In radiant grace,
Ah, sweet! ah, sweet!
Sweet, sweet!
Beneath my feet
My nestlings call:
And down I fall
Unerring, true,
Through heaven's blue;
And haste to fill
Each noisy bill.
My brooding breast
Stills their unrest.
Sweet, sweet,
Their quick hearts beat,
Safe in the nest:
Ah, sweet, sweet, sweet!
Ah, sweet!
Sweet, sweet
The calling sky
That bids me fly
Up--up--on high.
Sweet, sweet
The claiming earth;
It holds my nest
And draws me down
To where Love's crown
Of priceless worth
Awaits my breast.
Sweet, sweet!
Ah, this is best
And this most meet,
Sweet, sweet! ah, sweet!
Sword Of Jehovah.
by A. H. Laidlaw

Sword of Jehovah, swing
O'er the world's ravening,
Wide on the tempest's wing,
Swing far! Swing free!
Where the mailed hand is set,
Braced to the bayonet,
Bloody and warm and wet,
Swing far! Swing free!
Strike where the sordid great
Revel in royal state,
Liberty desolate,
Strike far! Strike free!
Where the King's coursers champ,
Where the mailed millions tramp,
Ringed round the tyrant's camp,
Strike far! Strike free!
Fall where the Kaiser stands,
Guarded by gory bands,
Known by their bloody hands,
Fall far! Fall free!
Till the last Despots die,
Till the Christ, lifted high,
Consummates Destiny,
Fall far! Fall free!
Soldier, Maiden, And Flower
by Eugene Field

"Sweetheart, take this," a soldier said,
"And bid me brave good-by;
It may befall we ne'er shall wed,
But love can never die.
Be steadfast in thy troth to me,
And then, whate'er my lot,
'My soul to God, my heart to thee,'--
Sweetheart, forget me not!"
The maiden took the tiny flower
And nursed it with her tears:
Lo! he who left her in that hour
Came not in after years.
Unto a hero's death he rode
'Mid shower of fire and shot;
But in the maiden's heart abode
The flower, forget-me-not.
And when he came not with the rest
From out the years of blood,
Closely unto her widowed breast
She pressed a faded bud;
Oh, there is love and there is pain,
And there is peace, God wot,--
And these dear three do live again
In sweet forget-me-not.
'T is to an unmarked grave to-day
That I should love to go,--
Whether he wore the blue or gray,
What need that we should know?
"He loved a woman," let us say,
And on that sacred spot,
To woman's love, that lives for aye,
We'll strew forget-me-not.
The Old Shepherd
by John Clare

'T is pleasant to bear recollections in mind
Of joys that time hurries away--
To look back on smiles that have passed like the wind,
And compare them with frowns of to-day.
'T was the constant delight of Old Robin, forsooth,
On the past with clear vision to dwell--
To recount the fond loves and the raptures of youth,
And tales of lost pleasures to tell.
"'T is now many years," like a child, he would say,
"Since I joined in the sports of the green--
Since I tied up the flowers for the garland of May,
And danced with the holiday queen.
My memory looks backward in sorrowful pride,
And I think, till my eyes dim with tears,
Of the past, where my happiness withered and died,
And the present dull, desolate years.
I love to be counting, while sitting alone,
With many a heart-aching sigh,
How many a season has rapidly flown,
And springs, with their summers, gone by,
Since Susan the pride of the village was deemed,
To whom youth's affections I gave;
Whom I led to the church, and beloved and esteemed,
And followed in grief to the grave.
Life's changes for many hours musings supply;
Both the past and the present appear;
I mark how the years that remain hurry by,
And feel that my last must be near.
The youths that with me to man's summer did bloom
Have dwindled away to old men,
And maidens, like flowers of the Spring, have made room
For many new blossoms since then.
I have lived to see all but life's sorrows pass by,
Leaving changes, and pains, and decay,
Where nought is the same but the wide-spreading sky,
And the sun that awakens the day.
The green, where I tended my sheep when a boy,
Has yielded its pride to the plough;
And the shades where my infancy revelled in joy
The axe has left desolate now.
Yet a bush lingers still, that will urge me to stop--
(What heart can such fancies withstand?)
Where Susan once saw a bird's nest on the top,
And I reached her the eggs with my hand:
And so long since the day I remember so well,
It has stretched to a sizable tree,
And the birds yearly come in its branches to dwell,
As far from a giant as me.
On a favourite spot, by the side of a brook,
When Susan was just in her pride,
A ripe bunch of nuts from her apron she took,
To plant as she sat by my side.
They have grown up with years, and on many a bough
Cluster nuts like their parents agen,
Where shepherds no doubt have oft sought them ere now,
To please other Susans since then.
The joys that I knew when my youth was in prime,
Like a dream that's half ended, are o'er;
And the faces I knew in that changeable time
Are met with the living no more.
I have lived to see friends that I loved pass away
With the pleasures their company gave:
I have lived to see love, with my Susan, decay,
And the grass growing green on her grave."
Song Of The Spinning Wheel
by William Wordsworth

Swiftly turn the murmuring wheel!
Night has brought the welcome hour,
When the weary fingers feel
Help, as if from faery power;
Dewy night o'ershades the ground;
Turn the swift wheel round and round!
Now, beneath the starry sky,
Couch the widely-scattered sheep;
Ply the pleasant labour, ply!
For the spindle, while they sleep,
Runs with speed more smooth and fine,
Gathering up a trustier line.
Short-lived likings may be bred
By a glance from fickle eyes;
But true love is like the thread
Which the kindly wool supplies,
When the flocks are all at rest
Sleeping on the mountain's breast.
No Other
by Nancy Rebecca Campbell Glass

Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. Acts 4:12.
Swiftly we float upon time's tide
Adown the stream of years.
Sometimes past hills of joy we glide,
Sometimes through vales of tears.
Age follows youth, which, ere we know,
Has vanished like a dream,
And takes its glamour from the glow
Of mem'ry's silvery gleam.
There is no halt; and more and more
There seems an open sea
Reaching us with its ceaseless roar 
It is eternity.
There is one Pilot that we need,
One who can safely steer,
One who at heaven's court can plead,
And all our journey cheer.
'Tis Jesus Christ; and all who see
In him the truth, the way,
Are in possession of the key
To heaven's eternal day.