DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Against Suspicion; Ode V
by Mark Akenside

Oh fly! 'tis dire Suspicion's mien;
And, meditating plagues unseen,
The sorceress hither bends:
Behold her torch in gall imbrued:
Behold'her garment drops with blood
Of lovers and of friends.
Fly far! Already in your eyes
I see a pale suffusion rise;
And soon through every vein,
Soon will her secret venom spread,
And all your heart and all your head
Imbibe the potent stain.
Then many a demon will she raise
To vex your sleep, to haunt your ways;
While gleams of lost delight
Raise the dark tempest of the brain,
As lightning shines across the main
Through whirlwinds and through night.
No more can faith or candor move;
But each ingenuous deed of love,
Which reason would applaud,
Now, smiling o'er her dark distress,
Fancy malignant strives to dress
Like injury and fraud.
Farewell to virtue's peaceful times:
Soon will you stoop to act the crimes
Which thus you stoop to fear:
Guilt follows guilt: and where the train
Begins with wrongs of such a stain,
What horrors form the rear!
'Tis thus to work her baleful power,
Suspicion waits the sullen hour
Of fretfulness and strife,
When care the infirmer bosom wrings,
Or Eurus waves his murky wings
To damp the seats of life.
But come, forsake the scene unbless'd
Which first beheld your faithful breast
To groundless fears a prey:
Come, where with my prevailing lyre
The skies, the streams, the groves conspire
To charm your doubts away.
Thron'd in the sun's descending car,
What power unseen diffuseth far
This tenderness of mind?
What genius smiles on yonder flood?
What god, in whispers from the wood,
Bids every thought be kind?
O thou, whate'er thy awful name,
Whose wisdom our untoward frame
With social love restrains;
Thou, who by fair affection's ties
Giv'st us to double all our joys
And half disarm our pains;
Let universal candor still,
Clear as yon heaven-reflecting rill,
Preserve my open mind;
Nor this nor that man's crooked ways
One sordid doubt within me raise
To injure human kind.
A Night Of Storm.
by Archibald Lampman

Oh city, whom grey stormy hands have sown
With restless drift, scarce broken now of any,
Out of the dark thy windows dim and many
Gleam red across the storm. Sound is there none,
Save evermore the fierce wind's sweep and moan,
From whose grey hands the keen white snow is shaken
In desperate gusts, that fitfully lull and waken,
Dense as night's darkness round thy towers of stone.
Darkling and strange art thou thus vexed and chidden;
More dark and strange thy veil'd agony,
City of storm, in whose grey heart are hidden
What stormier woes, what lives that groan and beat,
Stern and thin-cheeked, against time's heavier sleet,
Rude fates, hard hearts, and prisoning poverty.
The Progress Of Art.
by Thomas Hood

Oh happy time! - Art's early days!
When o'er each deed, with sweet self-praise,
Narcissus-like I hung!
When great Rembrandt but little seemed,
And such Old Masters all were deemed
As nothing to the young!
Some scratchy strokes - abrupt and few,
So easily and swift I drew,
Sufficed for my design;
My sketchy, superficial hand
Drew solids at a dash - and spanned
A surface with a line.
Not long my eye was thus content,
But grew more critical - my bent
Essayed a higher walk;
I copied leaden eyes in lead - 
Rheumatic hands in white and red,
And gouty feet - in chalk.
Anon my studious art for days
Kept making faces - happy phrase,
For faces such as mine!
Accomplished in the details then,
I left the minor parts of men,
And drew the form divine.
Old Gods and Heroes - Trojan - Greek,
Figures - long after the antique,
Great Ajax justly feared;
Hectors, of whom at night I dreamt,
And Nestor, fringed enough to tempt
Bird-nesters to his beard.
A Bacchus, leering on a bowl,
A Pallas that out-stared her owl,
A Vulcan - very lame;
A Dian stuck about with stars,
With my right hand I murdered Mars - 
(One Williams did the same).
But tired of this dry work at last,
Crayon and chalk aside I cast,
And gave my brush a drink!
Dipping - "as when a painter dips
In gloom of earthquake and eclipse," - 
That is - in Indian ink.
Oh then, what black Mont Blancs arose,
Crested with soot, and not with snows:
What clouds of dingy hue!
In spite of what the bard has penned,
I fear the distance did not "lend
Enchantment to the view."
Not Radcliffe's brush did e'er design
Black Forests half so black as mine,
Or lakes so like a pall;
The Chinese cake dispersed a ray
Of darkness, like the light of Day
And Martin over all.
Yet urchin pride sustained me still,
I gazed on all with right good will,
And spread the dingy tint;
"No holy Luke helped me to paint,
The devil surely, not a Saint,
Had any finger in't!"
But colors came! - like morning light,
With gorgeous hues, displacing night,
Or Spring's enlivened scene:
At once the sable shades withdrew;
My skies got very, very blue;
My trees extremely green.
And washed by my cosmetic brush,
How Beauty's cheek began to blush;
With lock of auburn stain - 
(Not Goldsmith's Auburn) - nut-brown hair,
That made her loveliest of the fair;
Not "loveliest of the plain!"
Her lips were of vermilion hue:
Love in her eyes, and Prussian blue,
Set all my heart in flame!
A young Pygmalion, I adored
The maids I made - but time was stored
With evil - and it came!
Perspective dawned - and soon I saw
My houses stand against its law;
And "keeping" all unkept!
My beauties were no longer things
For love and fond imaginings;
But horrors to be wept!
Ah! why did knowledge ope my eyes?
Why did I get more artist wise?
It only serves to hint,
What grave defects and wants are mine;
That I'm no Hilton in design - 
In nature no De Wint!
Thrice happy time! - Art's early days!
When o'er each deed, with sweet self-praise,
Narcissus-like I hung!
When great Rembrandt but little seemed,
And such Old Masters all were deemed
As nothing to the young!
Sabbath Bells
by George MacDonald

Oh holy Sabbath bells,
Ye have a pleasant voice!
Through all the land your music swells,
And man with one commandment tells
To rest and to rejoice.
As birds rejoice to flee
From dark and stormy skies
To brighter lands beyond the sea
Where skies are calm, and wings are free
To wander and to rise;
As thirsty travellers sing,
Through desert paths that pass,
To hear the welcome waters spring,
And see, beyond the spray they fling
Tall trees and waving grass;
So we rejoice to know
Your melody begun;
For when our paths are parched below
Ye tell us where green pastures glow
And living waters run.
LONDON, December 15, 1840.
Aspiration.
by Archibald Lampman

Oh deep-eyed brothers was there ever here,
Or is there now, or shall there sometime be
Harbour or any rest for such as we,
Lone thin-cheeked mariners, that aye must steer
Our whispering barks with such keen hope and fear
Toward misty bournes across that coastless sea,
Whose winds are songs that ever gust and flee,
Whose shores are dreams that tower but come not near.
Yet we perchance, for all that flesh and mind
Of many ills be marked with many a trace,
Shall find this life more sweet more strangely kind,
Than they of that dim-hearted earthly race,
Who creep firm-nailed upon the earth's hard face,
And hear nor see not, being deaf and blind.
Oh For The Swords Of Former Time!
by Thomas Moore

Oh for the swords of former time!
Oh for the men who bore them,
When armed for Right, they stood sublime,
And tyrants crouched before them:
When free yet, ere courts began
With honors to enslave him,
The best honors worn by Man
Were those which Virtue gave him.
Oh for the swords, etc.
Oh for the kings who flourished then!
Oh for the pomp that crowned them,
When hearts and hands of freeborn men
Were all the ramparts round them.
When, safe built on bosoms true,
The throne was but the centre,
Round which Love a circle drew,
That Treason durst not enter.
Oh for the kings who flourished then!
Oh for the pomp that crowned them,
When hearts and hands of freeborn men
Were all the ramparts round them!
The Fountain
by Sara Teasdale

Oh in the deep blue night
The fountain sang alone;
It sang to the drowsy heart
Of a satyr carved in stone.
The fountain sang and sang
But the satyr never stirred
Only the great white moon
In the empty heaven heard.
The fountain sang and sang
And on the marble rim
The milk-white peacocks slept,
Their dreams were strange and dim.
Bright dew was on the grass,
And on the ilex dew,
The dreamy milk-white birds
Were all a-glisten too.
The fountain sang and sang
The things one cannot tell,
The dreaming peacocks stirred
And the gleaming dew-drops fell.
To My God
by George MacDonald

Oh how oft I wake and find
I have been forgetting thee!
I am never from thy mind:
Thou it is that wakest me.
A Presentiment.
by William Cullen Bryant

"Oh father, let us hence, for hark,
A fearful murmur shakes the air.
The clouds are coming swift and dark:
What horrid shapes they wear!
A winged giant sails the sky;
Oh father, father, let us fly!"
"Hush, child; it is a grateful sound,
That beating of the summer shower;
Here, where the boughs hang close around,
We'll pass a pleasant hour,
Till the fresh wind, that brings the rain,
Has swept the broad heaven clear again."
"Nay, father, let us haste, for see,
That horrid thing with horned brow,
His wings o'erhang this very tree,
He scowls upon us now;
His huge black arm is lifted high;
Oh father, father, let us fly!"
"Hush, child;" but, as the father spoke,
Downward the livid firebolt came,
Close to his ear the thunder broke,
And, blasted by the flame,
The child lay dead; while dark and still,
Swept the grim cloud along the hill.
Wild Oats.
by Marietta Holley

Oh gay young husbandmen would you be sure of a crop
Upspringing rankly, an abundant and bountiful yield?
Go forth in the morning, and sow on your life's broad field
This pleasantly odorous seed, then smooth the ground on top,
Or leave it rough, with the utmost undeceit,
Never you fear, it will thriftily thrive and grow,
Loading the harvest plain beneath your feet,
With the ripened sheaves of shame, remorse, and woe.
You have but to sow the seed, no care will it want,
For he who soweth tares while the husbandman sleeps
Taketh unwearied pains, a vigilant guard he keeps
Tirelessly watching, and tending each evil plant.
These are his pleasure gardens, leased to him through time
Where he walketh to and fro, chanting a demon song;
Tending with ghastly fingers, the scarlet buds of wrong,
And drinking greedily in the sweet perfume of crime.
And of all the seeds, the one that thriftiest thrives
Is the color of ruby wine, when it flashes high - 
Who would think the tiny seed so fair to the eye
Could cast such a deadly shade over countless lives,
And branch out into murder in one springing shoot;
Thrifty branches of sin, bristling with thorns of woe
Shadowing graves where broken hearts lie low,
And minds that were God-like lowered beneath the brute.
Eurydice.
by Sophie M. (Almon) Hensley

Oh come, Eurydice!
The Stygian deeps are past
Well-nigh; the light dawns fast.
Oh come, Eurydice!
The gods have heard my song!
My love's despairing cry
Filled hell with melody, - 
And the gods heard my song.
I knew no life but thee;
Persephone was moved;
She, too, hath lived, hath loved;
She saw I lived for thee.
I may not look on thee,
Such was the gods' decree; - 
Till sun and earth we see
No kiss, no smile for thee!
The way is rough, is hard;
I cannot hear thy feet
Swift following; speak, my Sweet, - 
Is the way rough and hard?
"Oh come, Eurydice!"
I turn: "our woe is o'er,
I will not lose thee more!"
I cry: "Eurydice!"
O father Hermes, help!
I see her fade away
Back from the dawning ray;
Dear Father Hermes, help!
One swift look, - all is lost!
Wild heaven-arousing cries
Pierce to the dull dead skies;
My heaven, my all is lost!
The unrelenting gods
Refuse me. "No," say they,
"Thy chance is thrown away."
Fierce unrelenting gods!
The sky is blue no more,
The spring-tide airs are bleak,
I find not her I seek,
The earth is fair no more!
I loathe all earth, all life!
These Thracian women gaze
And whispering, go their ways,
Seeing I loathe my life.
Only my song remains.
I may not cease to sing,
Though hot tears start and sting,
The song that still remains,
Even - "Come Eurydice!"
The sea rolls on in pain,
Echoing the note again:
"Lost, lost Eurydice!"
And still the sea moves on,
The woods give back the thrill
"Eurydice!" and still
The quiet sea moves on.
The years, Eurydice,
The long unquiet years
Heed not or sighs or tears,
Oh Heart, Eurydice!
A Sailor's Song
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Oh for the breath of the briny deep,
And the tug of the bellying sail,
With the sea-gull's cry across the sky
And a passing boatman's hail.
For, be she fierce or be she gay,
The sea is a famous friend alway.
Ho! for the plains where the dolphins play,
And the bend of the mast and spars,
And a fight at night with the wild sea-sprite
When the foam has drowned the stars.
And, pray, what joy can the landsman feel
Like the rise and fall of a sliding keel?
Fair is the mead; the lawn is fair
And the birds sing sweet on the lea;
But the echo soft of a song aloft
Is the strain that pleases me;
And swish of rope and ring of chain
Are music to men who sail the main.
Then, if you love me, let me sail
While a vessel dares the deep;
For the ship 's my wife, and the breath of life
Are the raging gales that sweep;
And when I 'm done with calm and blast,
A slide o'er the side, and rest at last.
A Prayer.
by Archibald Lampman

Oh earth, oh dewy mother, breathe on us
Something of all thy beauty and thy might,
Us that are part of day, but most of night,
Not strong like thee, but ever burdened thus
With glooms and cares, things pale and dolorous
Whose gladest moments are not wholly bright;
Something of all thy freshness and thy light,
Oh earth, oh mighty mother, breathe on us.
Oh mother, who wast long before our day,
And after us full many an age shalt be.
Careworn and blind, we wander from thy way:
Born of thy strength, yet weak and halt are we
Grant us, oh mother, therefore, us who pray,
Some little of thy light and majesty.
Christian And Jew - A Dialogue
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

'Oh happy happy land!
Angels like rushes stand
About the wells of light.' - 
'Alas, I have not eyes for this fair sight:
Hold fast my hand.' - 
'As in a soft wind, they
Bend all one blessed way,
Each bowed in his own glory, star with star.' - 
'I cannot see so far,
Here shadows are.' - 
'White-winged the cherubim,
Yet whiter seraphim,
Glow white with intense fire of love.' - 
'Mine eyes are dim:
I look in vain above,
And miss their hymn.' - 
'Angels, Archangels cry
One to other ceaselessly
(I hear them sing)
One "Holy, Holy, Holy" to their King.' - 
'I do not hear them, I.' - 
'At one side Paradise
Is curtained from the rest,
Made green for wearied eyes;
Much softer than the breast
Of mother-dove clad in a rainbow's dyes.
'All precious souls are there
Most safe, elect by grace,
All tears are wiped for ever from their face:
Untired in prayer
They wait and praise
Hidden for a little space.
'Boughs of the Living Vine
They spread in summer shine
Green leaf with leaf:
Sap of the Royal Vine it stirs like wine
In all both less and chief.
'Sing to the Lord,
All spirits of all flesh, sing;
For He hath not abhorred
Our low estate nor scorn'd our offering:
Shout to our King.' - 
'But Zion said:
My Lord forgetteth me.
Lo, she hath made her bed
In dust; forsaken weepeth she
Where alien rivers swell the sea.
'She laid her body as the ground,
Her tender body as the ground to those
Who passed; her harpstrings cannot sound
In a strange land; discrowned
She sits, and drunk with woes.' - 
'O drunken not with wine,
Whose sins and sorrows have fulfilled the sum, - 
Be not afraid, arise, be no more dumb;
Arise, shine,
For thy light is come.' - 
'Can these bones live?' - 
'God knows:
The prophet saw such clothed with flesh and skin;
A wind blew on them and life entered in;
They shook and rose.
Hasten the time, O Lord, blot out their sin,
Let life begin.'
Uncertainty.
by Susanna Moodie

Oh dread uncertainty!
Life-wasting agony!
How dost thou pain the heart,
Causing such tears to start,
As sorrow never shed
O'er hopes for ever fled.
For memory hoards up joy
Beyond Time's dull alloy;
Pleasures that once have been
Shed light upon the scene,
As setting suns fling back
A bright and glowing track,
To show they once have cast
A glory o'er the past;
But thou, tormenting fiend,
Beneath Hope's pinions screened,
Leagued with distrust and pain,
Makest her promise vain;
Weaving in life's fair crown
Thistles instead of down.
Who would not rather know
Present than coming woe?
For certain sorrow brings
A healing in its wings.
The softening touch of years
Still dries the mourner's tears;
For human minds inherit
A gay, elastic spirit,
Which rises in the hour
Of trial, with such power,
That men, with wonder, find
Sorrow is less unkind;
That human hearts can bear
All evils but despair,
Or that anticipated grief
Which, for a season, mocks relief.
Uncertainty still clings
To earth's fair but fleeting things;
And mortals vainly trust
In fabrics formed of dust!
We look into life's waste,
And tread its paths in haste;
The past--for ever flown;
The present--scarce our own;
While, cold and dim, before
Stretches the shadowy shore,
The dark futurity, which lies
Beyond the glance of mortal eyes,
Wrapped in the mystic gloom
Which canopies the tomb.
But faith can pour a light
On the spirit's earthly night,
And break that sullen shroud;
As a star bursts through the cloud,
To show the upward eye
The clear, but distant, sky;
The land of joy and peace,
Where doubts and sorrows cease.
Oh Day Of Fire And Sun
by Sara Teasdale

Oh day of fire and sun,
Pure as a naked flame,
Blue sea, blue sky and dun
Sands where he spoke my name;
Laughter and hearts so high
That the spirit flew off free,
Lifting into the sky
Diving into the sea;
Oh day of fire and sun
Like a crystal burning,
Slow days go one by one,
But you have no returning.
Cases - Ex Parte Jones
by James Williams

(18 Chancery Division, 109)
Oh for the wily infant who married the widow and made
Profit of coke and of breeze, and never a penny he paid!
Oh for the Corporation of Birmingham cheated and snared,
Taking orders for coke that the widow and infant prepared!
Oh for the Court of Appeal, and oh for Lords Justices three!
Oh for the Act that infants from contracts may shake themselves free!
Oh for the common law with its store of things old and new!
Birmingham coke is good and good Coke upon Littleton too.
June Night
by Sara Teasdale

Oh Earth, you are too dear to-night,
How can I sleep while all around
Floats rainy fragrance and the far
Deep voice of the ocean that talks to the ground?
Oh Earth, you gave me all I have,
I love you, I love you, oh what have I
That I can give you in return
Except my body after I die?
To A Picture Of Eleonora Duse As "Francesca da Rimini"
by Sara Teasdale

Oh flower-sweet face and bended flower-like head!
Oh violet whose purple cannot pale,
Or forest fragrance ever faint or fail,
Or breath and beauty pass among the dead!
Yea, very truly has the poet said,
No mist of years or might of death avail
To darken beauty, brighter thro' the veil
We see the glimmer of its-wings outspread.
Oh face embowered and shadowed by thy hair,
Some lotus blossom on a darkened stream!
If ever I have pictured in a dream
My guardian angel, she is like to this,
Her eyes know joy, yet sorrow lingers there,
And on her lips the shadow of a kiss.
A Pier-Head Chorus
by John Masefield

Oh I'll be chewing salted horse and biting flinty bread,
And dancing with the stars to watch, upon the fo'c's'le head,
Hearkening to the bow-wash and the welter of the tread
Of a thousand tons of clipper running free.
For the tug has got the tow-rope and will take us to the Downs,
Her paddles churn the river-wrack to muddy greens and browns,
And I have given river-wrack and all the filth of towns
For the rolling, combing cresters of the sea.
We'll sheet the mizzen-royals home and shimmer down the Bay,
The sea-line blue with billows, the land-line blurred and grey;
The bow-wash will be piling high and thrashing into spray,
As the hooker's fore-foot tramples down the swell.
She'll log a giddy seventeen and rattle out the reel,
The weight of all the run-out line will be a thing to feel,
As the bacca-quidding shell-back shambles aft to take the wheel,
And the sea-sick little middy strikes the bell.
By The Sea-Shore At Night.
by Kate Seymour Maclean

Oh lapping waves!--oh gnawing waves!--
That rest not day nor night,--
I hear ye when the light
Is dim and awful in your hollow caves.--
All day the winds were out, and rode
Their steeds, your tossing crest,--
To-night the fierce winds rest,
And the moon walks above them her bright road.
Yet none the less ye lift your hands,
And your despairing cry
Up to the midnight sky,
And clutch, and trample on the shuddering sands,
That shrink and tremble even in sleep,
Out of your passionate reach,
Afraid of your dread speech,
And the more dreadful silence that ye keep
Oh sapping waves!--oh mining waves!--
Under the oak's gnarled feet,
And tower, and village street,
Scooping by stealth in darkness myriad graves;--
What secret strive ye thus to hide,
A thousand fathoms deep,
Which the sea will not keep,
And pours, and babbles forth upon her refluent tide?--
I see your torn and wind-blown hair,
Shewn far along the shore,--
And lifted evermore
You white hands tossing in a fierce despair;
And half I deem ye hold below,
In vast and wandering cell,
The primal spirits who fell,
Reserved in chains and immemorial woe.
Keep ye, oh waves!--your mystery:--
The time draws on apace,
When from before His face,
The heavens and the earth shall flee,
And evermore there shall be no more sea!
The Jealous Gods
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

'Oh life is wonderful,' she said,
'And all my world is bright;
Can Paradise show fairer skies,
Or more effulgent light?'
(Speak lower, lower, mortal heart,
The jealous gods may hear.)
She turned for answer; but his gaze
Cut past her like a lance,
And shone like flame on one who came
With radiant glance for glance.
(You spoke too loud, O mortal heart,
The jealous gods were near.)
They walked through green and sunlit ways;
And yet the earth seemed black,
For there were three, where two should be;
So runs the world, alack.
(The listening gods, the jealous gods,
They want no Edens here.)
Illic Jacet
by Alfred Edward Housman

Oh hard is the bed they have made him,
And common the blanket and cheap;
But there he will lie as they laid him:
Where else could you trust him to sleep?
To sleep when the bugle is crying
And cravens have heard and are brave,
When mothers and sweethearts are sighing
And lads are in love with the grave.
Oh dark is the chamber and lonely,
And lights and companions depart;
But lief will he lose them and only
Behold the desire of his heart.
And low is the roof, but it covers
A sleeper content to repose;
And far from his friends and his lovers
He lies with the sweetheart he chose.
To C. C. C.
by Robert Fuller Murray

Oh for the nights when we used to sit
In the firelight's glow or flicker,
With the gas turned low and our pipes all lit,
And the air fast growing thicker;
When you, enthroned in the big arm-chair,
Would spin for us yarns unending,
Your voice and accent and pensive air
With the narrative subtly blending!
Oh for the bleak and wintry days
When we set our blood in motion,
Leaping the rocks below the braes
And wetting our feet in the ocean,
Or shying at marks for moderate sums
(A penny a hit, you remember),
With aching fingers and purple thumbs,
In the merry month of December!
There is little doubt we were very daft,
And our sports, like the stakes, were trifling;
While the air of the room where we talked and laughed
Was often unpleasantly stifling.
Now we are grave and sensible men,
And wrinkles our brows embellish,
And I fear we shall never relish again
The pleasures we used to relish.
And I fear we never again shall go,
The cold and weariness scorning,
For a ten mile walk through the frozen snow
At one o'clock in the morning:
Out by Cameron, in by the Grange,
And to bed as the moon descended . . .
To you and to me there has come a change,
And the days of our youth are ended.