DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Winter: My Secret.
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

I tell my secret? No indeed, not I:
Perhaps some day, who knows?
But not to-day; it froze, and blows, and snows,
And you're too curious: fie!
You want to hear it? well:
Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell.
Or, after all, perhaps there's none:
Suppose there is no secret after all,
But only just my fun.
To-day's a nipping day, a biting day;
In which one wants a shawl,
A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:
I cannot ope to every one who taps,
And let the draughts come whistling through my hall;
Come bounding and surrounding me,
Come buffeting, astounding me,
Nipping and clipping through my wraps and all.
I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows
His nose to Russian snows
To be pecked at by every wind that blows?
You would not peck? I thank you for good-will,
Believe, but leave that truth untested still.
Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust
March with its peck of dust,
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
Nor even May, whose flowers
One frost may wither through the sunless hours.
Perhaps some languid summer day,
When drowsy birds sing less and less,
And golden fruit is ripening to excess,
If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud,
And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
Perhaps my secret I may say,
Or you may guess.
I Taught Myself To Live Simply
by Anna Akhmatova

I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops
I compose happy verses
about life's decay, decay and beauty.
I come back. The fluffy cat
licks my palm, purrs so sweetly
and the fire flares bright
on the saw-mill turret by the lake.
Only the cry of a stork landing on the roof
occasionally breaks the silence.
If you knock on my door
I may not even hear.
Success
by Rupert Brooke

I think if you had loved me when I wanted;
If I'd looked up one day, and seen your eyes,
And found my wild sick blasphemous prayer granted,
And your brown face, that's full of pity and wise,
Flushed suddenly; the white godhead in new fear
Intolerably so struggling, and so shamed;
Most holy and far, if you'd come all too near,
If earth had seen Earth's lordliest wild limbs tamed,
Shaken, and trapped, and shivering, for MY touch,
Myself should I have slain? or that foul you?
But this the strange gods, who had given so much,
To have seen and known you, this they might not do.
One last shame's spared me, one black word's unspoken;
And I'm alone; and you have not awoken.
"I Taste A Liquor Never Brewed,"
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!
Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.
When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!
Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!
Fragment
by Rupert Brooke

I strayed about the deck, an hour, to-night
Under a cloudy moonless sky; and peeped
In at the windows, watched my friends at table,
In the windows, watched my friends at table,
Or playing cards, or standing in the doorway,
Or coming out into the darkness. Still
No one could see me.
I would have thought of them
Heedless, within a week of battle, in pity,
Pride in their strength and in the weight and firmness
And link'd beauty of bodies, and pity that
This gay machine of splendour 'ld soon be broken,
Thought little of, pashed, scattered, . . .
Only, always,
I could but see them, against the lamplight--pass
Like coloured shadows, thinner than filmy glass,
Slight bubbles, fainter than the wave's faint light,
That broke to phosphorus out in the night,
Perishing things and strange ghosts, soon to die
To other ghosts, this one, or that or I.
Quand Meme.
by John Milton Hay

I strove, like Israel, with my youth,
And said, "Till thou bestow
Upon my life Love's joy and truth,
I will not let thee go."
And sudden on my night there woke
The trouble of the dawn;
Out of the east the red light broke,
To broaden on and on.
And now let death be far or nigh,
Let fortune gloom or shine,
I cannot all untimely die,
For love, for love is mine.
My days are tuned to finer chords,
And lit by higher suns;
Through all my thoughts and all my words
A purer purpose runs.
The blank page of my heart grows rife
With wealth of tender lore;
Her image, stamped upon my life,
Gives value evermore.
She is so noble, firm, and true,
I drink truth from her eyes,
As violets gain the heaven's own blue
In gazing at the skies.
No matter if my hands attain
The golden crown or cross;
Only to love is such a gain
That losing is not loss.
And thus whatever fate betide
Of rapture or of pain,
If storm or sun the future hide,
My love is not in vain.
So only thanks are on my lips;
And through my love I see
My earliest dreams, like freighted ships,
Come sailing home to me.
The Watcher
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"I think I hear the sound of horses feet
Beating upon the gravelled avenue.
Go to the window that looks on the street,
He would not let me die alone, I knew."
Back to the couch the patient watcher passed,
And said: "It is the wailing of the blast."
She turned upon her couch and, seeming, slept,
The long, dark lashes shadowing her cheek;
And on and on the weary moments crept,
When suddenly the watcher heard her speak:
"I think I hear the sound of horses' hoofs - "
And answered, "'Tis the rain upon the roofs."
Unbroken silence, quiet, deep, profound.
The restless sleeper turns: "How dark, how late!
What is it that I hear - a trampling sound?
I think there is a horseman at the gate."
The watcher turns away her eyes tear-blind:
"It is the shutter beating in the wind."
The dread hours passed; the patient clock ticked on;
The weary watcher moved not from her place.
The grey dim shadows of the early dawn
Caught sudden glory from the sleeper's face.
"He comes! my love!    I knew he would!" she cried;
And, smiling sweetly in her slumbers, died.
The Veil
by Walter De La Mare

I think and think: yet still I fail -
Why must this lady wear a veil?
Why thus elect to mask her face
Beneath that dainty web of lace?
The tip of a small nose I see,
And two red lips, set curiously
Like twin-born berries on one stem,
And yet, she has netted even them.
Her eyes, 'tis plain, survey with ease
Whate'er to glance upon they please.
Yet, whether hazel, gray, or blue,
Or that even lovelier lilac hue,
I cannot guess: why - why deny
Such beauty to the passer-by?
Out of a bush a nightingale
May expound his song; from 'neath that veil
A happy mouth no doubt can make
English sound sweeter for its sake.
But then, why muffle in like this
What every blossomy wind would kiss?
Why in that little night disguise
A daybreak face, those starry eyes?
Wein Geist
by Charles G. Leland

I stoompled oud ov a dafern,
Berauscht mit a gallon of wein,
Und I rooshed along de strassen,
Like a derriple Eberschwein.
Und like a lordly boar-pig,
I doomplet de soper folk;
Und I trowed a shtone droo a shdreed lamp,
Und bot' of de classes I proke.
Und a gal vent roonin' bast me,
Like a vild coose on de vings,
Boot I gatch her for all her skreechin',
Und giss her like efery dings.
Und denn mit an board und a parell,
I blay de horse-viddle a biece,
Dill de neighbours shkreem 'deat'!' und 'murder!'
Und holler aloudt 'bolice!'
Und vhen der crim night w'chter
Says all of dis foon moost shtop,
I oop mit mein oomberella,
Und schlog him ober de kop.
I leaf him like tead on de bavemend,
Und roosh droo a darklin' lane,
Dill moonlighd und tisdand musik,
Pring me roundt to my soul again.
Und I sits all oonder de linden,
De hearts-leaf linden dree;
Und I dink of de quick gevanisht lofe
Dat vent like de vind from me.
Und I voonders in mine dipsyhood,
If a damsel or dream vas she!
Dis life is all a lindens
Mit holes dat show de plue,
Und pedween de finite pranches
Cooms Himmel-light shinin' troo.
De blaetter are raushlin' o'er me,
Und efery leaf ish a fay,
Und dey vait dill de windsbraut comet,
To pear dem in Fall afay.
Denn I coomed to a rock py der rifer,
Vhere a stein ish of harpe form,
Jahrdausand in, oud, it standet'
Und nopody blays but de shtorm.
Here, vonce on a dimes, a vitches,
Soom melodies here peginned,
De harpe ward all zu steine,
Die melodie ward zu wind.
Und so mit dis tox-i-gation,
Vitch hardens de outer Me;
Ueber stein and schwein, de weine
Shdill harps oud a melodie.
Boot deeper de Ur-lied ringet',
Ober stein und wein und svines,
Dill it endeth vhere all peginnet,
Und alles wird ewig zu eins,
In de dipsy, treamless sloomper
Vhich units de Nichts und Seyns.
Und im Mondenlicht it moormoors,
Und it burns by waken wein,
In M'dchenlieb or Schnapsenrausch
Das Absolut ist dein.
His Dream
by William Butler Yeats

I Swayed upon the gaudy stern
The butt end of a steering oar,
And everywhere that I could turn
Men ran upon the shore.
And though I would have hushed the crowd,
There was no mother's son but said,
'What is the figure in a shroud
Upon a gaudy bed?'
And fishes bubbling to the brim
Cried out upon that thing beneath,
It had such dignity of limb,
By the sweet name of Death.
Though I'd my finger on my lip,
What could I but take up the song?
And fish and crowd and gaudy ship
Cried out the whole night long,
Crying amid the glittering sea,
Naming it with ecstatic breath,
Because it had such dignity
By the sweet name of Death.
Insult Not The Fallen.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("Oh! n'insultez jamais une femme qui tombe.")
[XIV., Sept. 6, 1835.]
I tell you, hush! no word of sneering scorn - 
True, fallen; but God knows how deep her sorrow.
Poor girl! too many like her only born
To love one day - to sin - and die the morrow.
What know you of her struggles or her grief?
Or what wild storms of want and woe and pain
Tore down her soul from honor? As a leaf
From autumn branches, or a drop of rain
That hung in frailest splendor from a bough - 
Bright, glistening in the sunlight of God's day - 
So had she clung to virtue once. But now - 
See Heaven's clear pearl polluted with earth's clay!
The sin is yours - with your accursed gold - 
Man's wealth is master - woman's soul the slave!
Some purest water still the mire may hold.
Is there no hope for her - no power to save?
Yea, once again to draw up from the clay
The fallen raindrop, till it shine above,
Or save a fallen soul, needs but one ray
Of Heaven's sunshine, or of human love.
W.C.K. WILDE.
Multiplication
by Alfred Joyce Kilmer (Joyce)

(For S. M. E.)
I take my leave, with sorrow, of Him I love so well;
I look my last upon His small and radiant prison-cell;
O happy lamp! to serve Him with never ceasing light!
O happy flame! to tremble forever in His sight!
I leave the holy quiet for the loudly human train,
And my heart that He has breathed upon is filled with lonely pain.
O King, O Friend, O Lover!    What sorer grief can be
In all the reddest depths of Hell than banishment from Thee?
But from my window as I speed across the sleeping land
I see the towns and villages wherein His houses stand.
Above the roofs I see a cross outlined against the night,
And I know that there my Lover dwells in His sacramental might.
Dominions kneel before Him, and Powers kiss His feet,
Yet for me He keeps His weary watch in the turmoil of the street:
The King of Kings awaits me, wherever I may go,
O who am I that He should deign to love and serve me so?
A Truthful Song
by Rudyard Kipling

THE BRICKLAYER:
I tell this tale, which is strictly true,
Just by way of convincing you
How very little, since things were made,
Things have altered in building trade.
A year ago, come the middle of March,
We was building flats near the Marble Arch,
When a thin young man with coal-black hair
Came up to watch us working there.
Now there wasn't a trick in brick or stone 
Which this young man hadn't seen or known;
Nor there wasn't a tool from trowel to maul
But this young man could use 'em all!
Then up and spoke the plumbyers bold,
Which was laying the pipes for the hot and cold:
"Since you with us have made so free,
Will you kindly say what your name might be? "
The young man kindly answered them:
"It might be Lot or Methusalem,
Or it might be Moses (a man I hate),
Whereas it is Pharaoh surnamed the Great.
"Your glazing is new and your plumbing's strange,
But otherwise I perceive no change;
And in less than a month if you do as I bid
I'd learn you to build me a Pyramid!"
THE SAILOR:
I tell this tale, which is stricter true,
Just by way of convincing you
How very little, since things was made,
Things have altered in the shipwright's trade.
In Blackwall Basin yesterday
A China barque re-fitting lay,
When a fat old man with snow-white hair
Came up to watch us working there.
Now there wasn't a knot which the riggers knew
But the old man made it--and better too;
Nor there wasn't a sheet, or a lift, or a brace,
But the old man knew its lead and place.
Then up and spoke the caulkyers bold,
Which was packing the pump in the afterhold:
"Since you with us have made so free,
Will you kindly tell what your name might be? "
The old man kindly answered them:
"It might be Japheth, it might be Shem,
Or it might be Ham (though his skin was dark),
Whereas it is Noah, commanding the Ark.
"Your wheel is new and your pumps are strange,
But otherwise I perceive no change;
And in less than a week, if she did not ground,
I'd sail this hooker the wide world round! "
BOTH: 
We tell these tales, which are strictest true,
Just by way of convincing you
How very little, since things was made,
Any thing alters in any one's trade!
Grief
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:
If it could weep, it could arise and go.
The Oath of the French Loyalist.
by W. M. MacKeracher

I swear by the holy Virgin,
I swear by her Son divine,
I swear by the throne of the Mighty,
I swear by the hope that is mine;
I swear by the youth and innocence,
By the beauty that has been,
I swear by the sacred ashes,
By the blood of the martyred queen.
That I will avenge the outrage,
So infamous, vile, and base,
The brutal and foul inhumanity,
That darkens my land with disgrace;
Or meet like a noble gentleman
The fate that my sovereign has met,
And die for my country's honour,
For my queen, - Marie Antoinette.
Lux E Tenebris
by Maurice Henry Hewlett

I thank all Gods that I can let thee go,
Lady, without one thought, one base desire
To tarnish that clear vision I gained by fire,
One stain in me I would not have thee know.
That is great might indeed that moves me so
To look upon thy Form, and yet aspire
To look not there, rather than I should mire
That wing'd Spirit that haunts and guards thy brow.
So now I see thee go, secure in this
That what I have is thee, that whole of thee
Whereof thy fair infashioning is sign:
For I see Honour, Love, and Wholesomeness,
And striving ever to reach them, and to be
As they, I keep thee still; for they are thine.
Dying Speech Of An Old Philosopher
by Walter Savage Landor

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm'd both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.
The Star
by Paul Bewsher

I stood, one azure dusk, in old Auxerre
Before the grey Cathedral's towering height,
And in the Eastern darkness, very fair
I saw a little star that twinkled bright;
How small it looked beside the mighty pile,
Whose stone was rosy with the Western glow - 
A little star - I pondered for a while,
And then the solemn truth began to know.
That tiny star was some enormous sphere,
The great cathedral was an atomy - 
So often when grey trouble looms so near
That God shines in our minds but distantly, - 
If we but thought, our grief would seem so small
That we would see that God's great love was all.
France, 1917.
Sonnet II
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I think I should have loved you presently,
And given in earnest words I flung in jest;
And lifted honest eyes for you to see,
And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;
And all my pretty follies flung aside
That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,
Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,
Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.
I, that had been to you, had you remained,
But one more waking from a recurrent dream,
Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,
And walk your memory's halls, austere, supreme,
A ghost in marble of a girl you knew
Who would have loved you in a day or two.
Christmas-Day, 1878
by George MacDonald

I think I might be weary of this day
That comes inevitably every year,
The same when I was young and strong and gay,
The same when I am old and growing sere--
I should grow weary of it every year
But that thou comest to me every day.
I shall grow weary if thou every day
But come to me, Lord of eternal life;
I shall grow weary thus to watch and pray,
For ever out of labour into strife;
Take everlasting house with me, my life,
And I shall be new-born this Christmas-day.
Thou art the Eternal Son, and born no day,
But ever he the Father, thou the Son;
I am his child, but being born alway--
How long, O Lord, how long till it be done?
Be thou from endless years to years the Son--
And I thy brother, new-born every day.
Letter VI. From The Wild Duck To The Tame Duck. (The Bird And Insects' Post-Office.)
by Robert Bloomfield

Dated Lincoln and Ely Fens.
DEAR COUSIN,
I suppose I must call you so, though I declare I know not how we are related. But, though I am thought so very wild and shy, I have still a kind of fellow-feeling for you; and, if you have not gone to the spit before this comes to you, I should be glad of your reply in a friendly way. You know very well that you are intended to be eaten, and so are we - when they can catch us. I understand that you never fly and that you seldom waddle above a meadow's length from your pond, where you keep puddling and groping from daylight till dark. This, I assure you, is not the life that I lead. We fly together in vast numbers in the night, for many miles over this flat, wet country; so, as to water, we have an inexhaustible store: we may swim ourselves tired. But, I dare say, every station of our duck-lives is subject to some disadvantages and some calamities. Thus, with all our wildness, we are not secure; for we are taken sometimes by hundreds in a kind of trap which is called a decoy.
Some of our tribe have been made tame like you (but I hope you are not so false-hearted), and then their masters feed them plentifully, in a place contrived on purpose, with a narrow entrance, with which these traitor ducks are well acquainted, so that they can pass in and out at a place we strangers should never have thought of. They are sent out in the dusk of the evening, when they soon join with large companies of us strangers; and knowing, as they do, their way home, and that they shall find food, they set off, close at each other's tails, along a ditch, or watercourse, and we fools follow them.
The entrance, as far as I could see of it, is very narrow; for I have been twice within a hair's breadth of being caught, and do not pretend to know all about it; but I wish heartily that every duck and drake in the country - ay, and every one of our allies, the geese, too, could say as much - could say that "they had twice been on the verge of destruction by keeping bad company, but had escaped."
What becomes of my companions, when taken, I think I have heard pretty accurately; for there is somewhere a very large assemblage of fellow-creatures to those who catch us, and whose demand seems never to be satisfied. Well, never mind, cousin; I am determined to fly, and swim too, as long as I can, and I advise you to do the same, and make the most of your day.
Hoping to hear from you, I am, affectionately, your wild cousin.
Finis
by Walter Savage Landor

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm'd both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
Sonnets From The Portuguese XLI
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I thank all who have loved me in their hearts,
With thanks and love from mine. Deep thanks to all
Who paused a little near the prison-wall
To hear my music in its louder parts
Ere they went onward, each one to the mart's
Or temple's occupation, beyond call.
But thou, who, in my voice's sink and fall
When the sob took it, thy divinest Art's
Own instrument didst drop down at thy foot
To harken what I said between my tears, . . .
Instruct me how to thank thee! Oh, to shoot
My soul's full meaning into future years,
That they should lend it utterance, and salute
Love that endures, from life that disappears!
A Sonnet, To The Noble Lady, The Lady Mary Wroth
by Ben Jonson

I that have been a lover, and could show it,
Though not in these, in rhymes not wholly dumb,
Since I exscribe your sonnets, am become
A better lover, and much better poet.
Nor is my Muse, or I ashamed to owe it
To those true numerous graces; whereof some
But charm the senses, others overcome
Both brains and hearts; and mine now best do know it:
For in your verse all Cupid's armory,
His flames, his shafts, his quiver, and his bow,
His very eyes are yours to overthrow.
But then his mother's sweets you so apply,
Her joys, her smiles, her loves, as readers take
For Venus' ceston, every line you make.