DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
A Song Of Hope
by George MacDonald

I dinna ken what's come ower me!
There's a how whaur ance was a hert!
I never luik oot afore me,
An' a cry winna gar me stert;
There's naething nae mair to come ower me,
Blaw the win' frae ony airt!
For i' yon kirkyard there's a hillock,
A hert whaur ance was a how;
An' o' joy there's no left a mealock--
Deid aiss whaur ance was a low!
For i' yon kirkyard, i' the hillock,
Lies a seed 'at winna grow.
It's my hert 'at hauds up the wee hillie--
That's hoo there's a how i' my breist;
It's awa doon there wi' my Willie--
Gaed wi' him whan he was releast;
It's doon i' the green-grown hillie,
But I s' be efter it neist!
Come awa, nicht an' mornin,
Come ooks, years, a' Time's clan:
Ye're welcome: I'm no a bit scornin!
Tak me til him as fest as ye can.
Come awa, nicht an' mornin,
Ye are wings o' a michty span!
For I ken he's luikin an' waitin,
Luikin aye doon as I clim;
An' I'll no hae him see me sit greitin
I'stead o' gaein to him!
I'll step oot like ane sure o' a meetin,
I'll travel an' rin to him.
Upon Himself.
by Robert Herrick

I dislik'd but even now;
Now I love I know not how.
Was I idle, and that while
Was I fir'd with a smile?
I'll to work, or pray; and then
I shall quite dislike again.
The Unpardonable Sin
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

I do not cry, beloved, neither curse.
Silence and strength, these two at least are good.
He gave me sun and stars and ought He could,
But not a woman's love; for that is hers.
He sealed her heart from sage and questioner--
Yea, with seven seals, as he has sealed the grave.
And if she give it to a drunken slave,
The Day of Judgment shall not challenge her.
Only this much: if one, deserving well,
Touching your thin young hands and making suit,
Feel not himself a crawling thing, a brute,
Buried and bricked in a forgotten hell;
Prophet and poet be he over sod,
Prince among angels in the highest place,
God help me, I will smite him on the face,
Before the glory of the face of God.
Doubt.
by Sophie M. (Almon) Hensley

I do not know if all the fault be mine,
Or why I may not think of thee and be
At peace with mine own heart. Unceasingly
Grim doubts beset me, bygone words of thine
Take subtle meaning, and I cannot rest
Till all my fears and follies are confessed.
Perhaps the wild wind's questioning has brought
My heart its melancholy, for, alone
In the night stillness, I can hear him moan
In sobbing gusts, as though he vainly sought
Some bygone bliss. Against the dripping pane
In storm-blown torrents beats the driving rain.
Nay I will tell thee all, I will not hide
One thought from thee, and if I do thee wrong
So much the more must I be brave and strong
To show my fault. And if thou then shouldst chide
I will accept reproof most willingly
So it but bringeth peace to thee and me.
I dread thy past. Phantoms of other days
Pursue my vision. There are other hands
Which thou hast held, perchance some slender bands
That draw thee still to other woodland ways
Than those which we have known, some blissful hours
I do not share, of love, and June, and flowers.
I dread her most, that woman whom thou knewest
Those years ago, - I cannot bear to think
That she can say: "My lover praised the pink
Of palm, or ear," "The violets were bluest
In that dear copse," and dream of some fair day
When thou didst while her summer hours away.
I dread them too, those light loves and desires
That lie in the dim shadow of the years;
I fain would cheat myself of all my fears
And, as a child watching warm winter fires,
Dream not of yesterday's black embers, nor
To-morrow's ashes that may strew the floor.
I did not dream of this while thou wert near,
But now the thought that haunts me day by day
Is that the things I love, the tender way
Of mastery, the kisses that are dear
As Heaven's best gifts, to other lips and arms
Owe half their blessedness and all their charms.
Tell me that I am wrong, O! Man of men,
Surely it is not hard to comfort me,
Laugh at my fears with dear persistency,
Nay, if thou must, lie to me! There, again,
I hear the rain, and the wind's wailing cry
Stirs with wild life the night's monotony.
Asking Forgiveness
by John Frederick Freeman

I did not say, "Yes, we had better part
Since love is over or must be suppressed."
I did not say, "I'll hold you in my heart
Saint-like, and in the thought of your thought rest,
And pray for you and wish you happiness
In a better love than mine."
I was another man to another woman,
Tears falling or burnt dry were nothing then.
I struck your heart, I struck your mind; inhuman,
Future and past I stabbed and stabbed again,
Cursing the very thought of your happiness
In another love than mine:
--Then left you sick to death, and I like death.
It was a broken body bore me away--
A broken mind--poisoned by my own breath,
And love self-poisoned.... Was it but yesterday?
--Forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive,
Forgive!
To Fanny
by John Keats

I cry your mercy, pity, love! aye, love!
Merciful love that tantalizes not,
One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmasked, and being seen, without a blot!
O! let me have thee whole, all, all, be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss, those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast, 
Yourself, your soul, in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom's atom or I die,
Or living on, perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life's purposes, the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!
To Eliza. (Written In Her Album.)
by Thomas Gent

I dare not spoil this spotless page
With any feeble verse of mine;
The Poet's fire has lost its rage,
Around his lyre no myrtles twine.
The voice of fame cannot recal
Those fairy days of past delight,
When pleasure seem'd to welcome all,
And morning hail'd a welcome night.
E'en love has lost its soothing power,
Its spells no more can chain my soul;
I must not venture in the bower,
Where Wit and Verse and Wine controul.
And yet, I fear, in thoughtless mirth
I once did say, Eliza, dear!
That I would tell the world thy worth,
And write the living record here.
Come Love, and Truth, and Friendship, come,
Enwreath'd in Virtue's snowy arms,
With magic rhymes the page illume,
And fancy sketch her varied charms--
Which o'er the cares of home has thrown
A thousand blessings, deep engraved,
For every heart she makes her own,
And every friend is free-enslaved.
No Inspiration o'er my pen
Glows with the lightning's vivid spell;
My soul is sad--forgive me then,
My heart's too full the tale to tell!
Yet, if the humblest poet's theme
Be welcome in Eliza's name;
Then, angel, give the cheering gleam,
For thy approving smile is fame!
The Prisoner
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I count the dismal time by months and years
Since last I felt the green sward under foot,
And the great breath of all things summer
Met mine upon my lips. Now earth appears
As strange to me as dreams of distant spheres
Or thoughts of Heaven we weep at. Nature's lute
Sounds on, behind this door so closely shut,
A strange wild music to the prisoner's ears,
Dilated by the distance, till the brain
Grows dim with fancies which it feels too
While ever, with a visionary pain,
Past the precluded senses, sweep and Rhine
Streams, forests, glades, and many a golden train
Of sunlit hills transfigured to Divine.
Sonnet. (Exodus xxxiii. 18-23.)
by George MacDonald

"I do beseech Thee, God, show me thy face."
"Come up to me in Sinai on the morn:
Thou shalt behold as much as may be borne."
And Moses on a rock stood lone in space.
From Sinai's top, the vaporous, thunderous place,
God passed in clouds, an earthly garment worn
To hide, and thus reveal. In love, not scorn,
He put him in a cleft in the rock's base,
Covered him with his hand, his eyes to screen,
Then passed, and showed his back through mists of years.
Ah, Moses! had He turned, and hadst thou seen
The pale face crowned with thorns, baptized with tears,
The eyes of the true man, by men belied,
Thou hadst beheld God's face, and straightway died.
Waldeinsamkeit
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

I do not count the hours I spend
In wandering by the sea;
The forest is my loyal friend,
Like God it useth me.
In plains that room for shadows make
Of skirting hills to lie,
Bound in by streams which give and take
Their colors from the sky;
Or on the mountain-crest sublime,
Or down the oaken glade,
O what have I to do with time?
For this the day was made.
Cities of mortals woe-begone
Fantastic care derides,
But in the serious landscape lone
Stern benefit abides.
Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy,
And merry is only a mask of sad,
But, sober on a fund of joy,
The woods at heart are glad.
There the great Planter plants
Of fruitful worlds the grain,
And with a million spells enchants
The souls that walk in pain.
Still on the seeds of all he made
The rose of beauty burns;
Through times that wear and forms that fade,
Immortal youth returns.
The black ducks mounting from the lake,
The pigeon in the pines,
The bittern's boom, a desert make
Which no false art refines.
Down in yon watery nook,
Where bearded mists divide,
The gray old gods whom Chaos knew,
The sires of Nature, hide.
Aloft, in secret veins of air,
Blows the sweet breath of song,
O, few to scale those uplands dare,
Though they to all belong!
See thou bring not to field or stone
The fancies found in books;
Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own,
To brave the landscape's looks.
Oblivion here thy wisdom is,
Thy thrift, the sleep of cares;
For a proud idleness like this
Crowns all thy mean affairs.
The Dark Night Of The Mind
by John Frederick Freeman

I could not love if my thought loved not too,
Nor could my body touch the body of you,
Unless first in the dark night of the mind
Love had fulfilled what Love had well designed.
Was it in thought or flesh we walked, when low
The sun dropped, and the white scar on the hill
Sank into the dark trees?
Could we indeed so quietly go
Body by body into that heavenly glow?
The elms that rose so vast above the mill
Near leafless were and still;
But from the branches with such loud unease
Black flocking starlings mixed their warring cries
That seemed the greater noise of the creaking mill;
And every branch and extreme twig was black
With birds that whistled and heard and whistled back,
Filling with noise as late with wings the skies.
Was it their noise we heard,
Or clamour of other thoughts in our quiet mind that stirred?
Then through the climbing hazel hedge new thinned
By the early and rapacious wind,
We saw the silver birches gleam with light
Of frozen masts in seas all wild and green.
O, were they truly trees, or some unseen
Thought taking on an image dark and bright?
And did those bodies see them, or the mind?
And did those bodies face once more the hill
To bathe in night, or on a darker road
Our spirits unseeing unwearying rise and rise
Where these feet never trod?
From that familiar outer darkness I
Would rise to the inner, deeper, darker sky
And find you in my spirit--or find you not,
O, never, never, if not in my thought.
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet XLVI
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

I curst thee oft, I pitie now thy case,
Blind-hitting Boy, since she that thee and me
Rules with a becke, so tyranniseth thee,
That thou must want or food or dwelling-place,
For she protests to banish thee her face.
Her face! O Loue, a roge thou then shouldst be,
If Loue learne not alone to loue and see,
Without desire to feed of further grace.
Alas, poor wag, that now a scholler art
To such a schoolmistresse, whose lessons new
Thou needs must misse, and so thou needs must smart.
Yet, deare, let me his pardon get of you,
So long, though he from book myche to desire,
Till without fewell you can make hot fire.
The Legend Glorified.
by James Whitcomb Riley

"I deem that God is not disquieted" -
This in a mighty poet's rhymes I read;
And blazoned so forever doth abide
Within my soul the legend glorified.
Though awful tempests thunder overhead,
I deem that God is not disquieted, -
The faith that trembles somewhat yet is sure
Through storm and darkness of a way secure.
Bleak winters, when the naked spirit hears
The break of hearts, through stinging sleet of tears,
I deem that God is not disquieted;
Against all stresses am I clothed and fed.
Nay, even with fixed eyes and broken breath,
My feet dip down into the tides of death,
Nor any friend be left, nor prayer be said,
I deem that God is not disquieted.
No Luck In Love.
by Robert Herrick

I do love I know not what,
Sometimes this and sometimes that;
All conditions I aim at.
But, as luckless, I have yet
Many shrewd disasters met
To gain her whom I would get.
Therefore now I'll love no more
As I've doted heretofore:
He who must be, shall be poor.
The Awakening
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

I did not know that life could be so sweet,
I did not know the hours could speed so fleet,
Till I knew you, and life was sweet again.
The days grew brief with love and lack of pain--
I was a slave a few short days ago,
The powers of Kings and Princes now I know;
I would not be again in bondage, save
I had your smile, the liberty I crave.
Christmas Treasures
by Eugene Field

I count my treasures o'er with care.--
The little toy my darling knew,
A little sock of faded hue,
A little lock of golden hair.
Long years ago this holy time,
My little one--my all to me--
Sat robed in white upon my knee
And heard the merry Christmas chime.
"Tell me, my little golden-head,
If Santa Claus should come to-night,
What shall he bring my baby bright,--
What treasure for my boy?" I said.
And then he named this little toy,
While in his round and mournful eyes
There came a look of sweet surprise,
That spake his quiet, trustful joy.
And as he lisped his evening prayer
He asked the boon with childish grace;
Then, toddling to the chimney-place,
He hung this little stocking there.
That night, while lengthening shadows crept,
I saw the white-winged angels come
With singing to our lowly home
And kiss my darling as he slept.
They must have heard his little prayer,
For in the morn, with rapturous face,
He toddled to the chimney-place,
And found this little treasure there.
They came again one Christmas-tide,--
That angel host, so fair and white!
And singing all that glorious night,
They lured my darling from my side.
A little sock, a little toy,
A little lock of golden hair,
The Christmas music on the air,
A watching for my baby boy!
But if again that angel train
And golden-head come back for me,
To bear me to Eternity,
My watching will not be in vain!
To Christ.
by Robert Herrick

I crawl, I creep; my Christ, I come
To Thee for curing balsamum:
Thou hast, nay more, Thou art the tree
Affording salve of sovereignty.
My mouth I'll lay unto Thy wound
Bleeding, that no blood touch the ground:
For, rather than one drop shall fall
To waste, my JESU, I'll take all.
Sonnet IV.
by Fernando Ant'nio Nogueira Pessoa

I could not think of thee as piec'd rot,
Yet such thou wert, for thou hadst been long dead;
Yet thou liv'dst entire in my seeing thought
And what thou wert in me had never fled.
Nay, I had fixed the moments of thy beauty--
Thy ebbing smile, thy kiss's readiness,
And memory had taught my heart the duty
To know thee ever at that deathlessness.
But when I came where thou wert laid, and saw
The natural flowers ignoring thee sans blame,
And the encroaching grass, with casual flaw,
Framing the stone to age where was thy name,
I knew not how to feel, nor what to be
Towards thy fate's material secrecy.
Incurable
by Edward Powys Mathers (As Translator)

I desire the door-sill of my beloved
More than a king's house;
I desire the shadow of the wall where her beauty hides
More than the Delhi palaces.
Why did you wait till spring;
Were not my hands already full of red-thorned roses?
My heart is yours,
So that I know not which heart I hear sighing:
Yaquin, Yaquin, Yaquin, foolish Yaquin.
From the Hindustani of Yaquin (eighteenth century).
The Rival
by Thomas Hardy

I determined to find out whose it was -
The portrait he looked at so, and sighed;
Bitterly have I rued my meanness
And wept for it since he died!
I searched his desk when he was away,
And there was the likeness - yes, my own!
Taken when I was the season's fairest,
And time-lines all unknown.
I smiled at my image, and put it back,
And he went on cherishing it, until
I was chafed that he loved not the me then living,
But that past woman still.
Well, such was my jealousy at last,
I destroyed that face of the former me;
Could you ever have dreamed the heart of woman
Would work so foolishly!
His Creed.
by Robert Herrick

I do believe that die I must,
And be return'd from out my dust:
I do believe that when I rise,
Christ I shall see, with these same eyes:
I do believe that I must come,
With others, to the dreadful doom:
I do believe the bad must go
From thence, to everlasting woe:
I do believe the good, and I,
Shall live with Him eternally:
I do believe I shall inherit
Heaven, by Christ's mercies, not my merit.
I do believe the One in Three,
And Three in perfect unity:
Lastly, that JESUS is a deed
Of gift from God: and here's my creed.
I Do Confess Thou Art Sae Fair.
by Robert Burns

Tune - "I do confess thou art sae fair."
I.
I do confess thou art sae fair,
I wad been o'er the lugs in love,
Had I na found the slightest prayer
That lips could speak thy heart could muve.
I do confess thee sweet, but find
Thou art sae thriftless o' thy sweets,
Thy favours are the silly wind,
That kisses ilka thing it meets.
II.
See yonder rose-bud, rich in dew,
Amang its native briers sae coy;
How sune it tines its scent and hue
When pou'd and worn a common toy!
Sic fate, ere lang, shall thee betide,
Tho' thou may gaily bloom awhile;
Yet sune thou shalt be thrown aside
Like ony common weed and vile.
I Crossed The Orchard Walking Home
by Richard Le Gallienne

I crossed the orchard, walking home,
The rising moon was at my back,
The apples and the moonlight fell
Together on the railroad track.
Then, speeding through the evening dews,
A dozen lighted windows glide - 
The East-bound flyer for New York,
Soft as a magic-lantern slide.
New York! on through the sleeping flowers,
Through echoing midnight on to noon;
How strange that yonder is New York,
And here such silence and the moon.
All Souls' Eve
by Dora Sigerson Shorter

I cried all night to you,
I called till day was here;
Perhaps you could not come,
Or were too tir'd, dear.
Your chair I set by mine,
I made the dim hearth glow,
I whispered, 'When he comes
I shall not let him go.'
I closed the shutters tight,
I feared the dawn of day,
I stopped the busy clock
That timed your hours away.
Loud howled my neighbour's dog,
O glad was I to hear.
The dead are going by,
Now you will come, my dear,
To take the chair by mine-
Until the cock would crow-
O, if it be you came
And could not let me know,
For once a shadow passed
Behind me in the room,
I thought your loving eyes
Would meet mine in the gloom.
And once I thought I heard
A footstep by my chair,
I raised my eager hands,
But no sweet ghost was there.
We were too wide apart-
You in your spirit land-
I knew not when you came,
I could not understand.
Your eyes perhaps met mine,
Reproached me through the gloom,
Alas, for me alone
The empty, empty room!
The dead were passing home,
The cock crew loud and clear,
Mavourneen, if you came,
I knew not you were here.
The Heights
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I cried, 'Dear Angel, lead me to the heights,
And spur me to the top.'
The Angel answered, 'Stop
And set thy house in order; make it fair
For absent ones who may be speeding there.
Then will we talk of heights.'
I put my house in order.    'Now lead on!'
The Angel said, 'Not yet;
Thy garden is beset
By thorns and tares; go weed it, so all those
Who come to gaze may find the unvexed rose;
Then will we journey on.'
I weeded well my garden.    'All is done.'
The Angel shook his head.
'A beggar stands,' he said,
'Outside thy gates; till thou hast given heed
And soothed his sorrow, and supplied his need,
Say not that all is done.'
The beggar left me singing.    'Now at last - 
At last the path is clear.'
'Nay, there is one draws near
Who seeks, like thee, the difficult highway.
He lacks thy courage; cheer him through the day
Then will we cry, "At last!"'
I helped my weaker brother.    'Now the heights;
Oh, Guide me, Angel, guide!'
The Presence at my side,
With radiant face, said, 'Look, where are we now?'
And lo! we stood upon the mountain's brow - 
The heights, the shining heights!
I Died For Beauty, But Was Scarce
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth, -- the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.
And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.
To Mrs. Irving,
by Nora Pembroke (Margaret Moran Dixon McDougall)

I dedicate these verses to one whom I hold dear,
One who in the dark days drew in Christian kindness near
May He who led me all my life do so and more to me
If ever I forget the debt of love I owe to thee.
If Only You Knew It
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

I dare never speak up to you,
For you to look down would not do,
But always you are there each day,
And always I wander this way.
Our thoughts go by stealth to make search and renew it,
But neither dares question nor give answer due it;
If only you knew it!
When constantly I could be found,
You often in pride on me frowned;
But now that I rarely appear,
I see that you wait for me here!
Two eyes, oh, two eyes made a snare and then drew it,
And who would escape must beware, and eschew it!
If only you knew it!
Yes, if you but guessed, this might be
A poem for you made by me,
Whose billowy lines just now fly
Up where you stand graceful and high!
But look you, this knowledge, to no purpose grew it,
I farther will go, Heaven guard, lest we rue it, - 
If only you knew it!
Who I Know
by William Henry Davies

I do not know his grace the Duke,
Outside whose gilded gate there died
Of want a feeble, poor old man,
With but his shadow at his side.
I do not know his Lady fair,
Who in a bath of milk doth lie;
More milk than could feed fifty babes,
That for the want of it must die.
But well I know the mother poor,
Three pounds of flesh wrapped in her shawl:
A puny babe that, stripped at home,
Looks like a rabbit skinned, so small.
And well I know the homeless waif,
Fed by the poorest of the poor;
Since I have seen that child alone,
Crying against a bolted door.
Modern Elfland
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

I Cut a staff in a churchyard copse,
I clad myself in ragged things,
I set a feather in my cap
That fell out of an angel's wings.
I filled my wallet with white stones,
I took three foxgloves in my hand,
I slung my shoes across my back,
And so I went to fairyland.
But Lo, within that ancient place
Science had reared her iron crown,
And the great cloud of steam went up
That telleth where she takes a town.
But cowled with smoke and starred with lamps
That strange land's light was still its own;
The word that witched the woods and hills
Spoke in the iron and the stone.
Not Nature's hand had ever curved
That mute unearthly porter's spine.
Like sleeping dragon's sudden eyes
The signals leered along the line.
The chimneys thronging crooked or straight
Were fingers signalling the sky;
The dog that strayed across the street
Seemed four-legged by monstrosity.
'In vain,' I cried, 'though you too touch
The new time's desecrating hand,
Through all the noises of a town
I hear the heart of fairyland.'
I read the name above a door,
Then through my spirit pealed and passed:
'This is the town of thine own home,
And thou hast looked on it at last.'