DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Belisarius
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I am poor and old and blind;
The sun burns me, and the wind
Blows through the city gate
And covers me with dust
From the wheels of the august
Justinian the Great.
It was for him I chased
The Persians o'er wild and waste,
As General of the East;
Night after night I lay
In their camps of yesterday;
Their forage was my feast.
For him, with sails of red,
And torches at mast-head,
Piloting the great fleet,
I swept the Afric coasts
And scattered the Vandal hosts,
Like dust in a windy street.
For him I won again
The Ausonian realm and reign,
Rome and Parthenope;
And all the land was mine
From the summits of Apennine
To the shores of either sea.
For him, in my feeble age,
I dared the battle's rage,
To save Byzantium's state,
When the tents of Zabergan,
Like snow-drifts overran
The road to the Golden Gate.
And for this, for this, behold!
Infirm and blind and old,
With gray, uncovered head,
Beneath the very arch
Of my triumphal march,
I stand and beg my bread!
Methinks I still can hear,
Sounding distinct and near,
The Vandal monarch's cry,
As, captive and disgraced,
With majestic step he paced,--
"All, all is Vanity!"
Ah! vainest of all things
Is the gratitude of kings;
The plaudits of the crowd
Are but the clatter of feet
At midnight in the street,
Hollow and restless and loud.
But the bitterest disgrace
Is to see forever the face
Of the Monk of Ephesus!
The unconquerable will
This, too, can bear;--I still
Am Belisarius!
I Am Running Forth To Meet You
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I am running forth to meet you, O my Master,
For they tell me you are surely on the way;
Yes, they tell me you are coming back again
(While I run, while I run).
And I wish my feet were winged to speed on faster,
And I wish I might behold you here to-day,
Lord of men.
I am running, yet I walk beside my neighbour,
And I take the duties given me to do;
Yes, I take the daily duties as they fall
(While I run, while I run),
And my heart runs to my hand and helps the labour,
For I think this is the way that leads to you,
Lord of all.
I am running, yet I turn from toil and duty,
Oftentimes to just the art of being glad;
Yes, to just the joys that make the earth-world bright
(While I run, while I run).
For the soul that worships God must worship beauty,
And the heart that thinks of You can not be sad,
Lord of light.
I am running, yet I pause to greet my brother,
And I lean to rid my garden of its weed;
Yes, I lean, although I lift my thoughts above
(While I run, while I run).
And I think of that command, 'Love one another,'
As I hear discordant sounds of creed with creed,
Lord of Love.
I am running, and the road is lit with splendour,
And it brightens and shines fairer with each span;
Yes, it brightens like the highway in a dream
(While I run, while I run).
And my heart to all the world grows very tender,
For I seem to see the Christ in every man,
Lord supreme.
In The Shadows
by Emily Pauline Johnson

I am sailing to the leeward,
Where the current runs to seaward
Soft and slow,
Where the sleeping river grasses
Brush my paddle as it passes
To and fro.
On the shore the heat is shaking
All the golden sands awaking
In the cove;
And the quaint sand-piper, winging
O'er the shallows, ceases singing
When I move.
On the water's idle pillow
Sleeps the overhanging willow,
Green and cool;
Where the rushes lift their burnished
Oval heads from out the tarnished
Emerald pool.
Where the very silence slumbers,
Water lilies grow in numbers,
Pure and pale;
All the morning they have rested,
Amber crowned, and pearly crested,
Fair and frail.
Here, impossible romances,
Indefinable sweet fancies,
Cluster round;
But they do not mar the sweetness
Of this still September fleetness
With a sound.
I can scarce discern the meeting
Of the shore and stream retreating,
So remote;
For the laggard river, dozing,
Only wakes from its reposing
Where I float.
Where the river mists are rising,
All the foliage baptizing
With their spray;
There the sun gleams far and faintly,
With a shadow soft and saintly,
In its ray.
And the perfume of some burning
Far-off brushwood, ever turning
To exhale
All its smoky fragrance dying,
In the arms of evening lying,
Where I sail.
My canoe is growing lazy,
In the atmosphere so hazy,
While I dream;
Half in slumber I am guiding,
Eastward indistinctly gliding
Down the stream.
Epigram, Engraved On The Collar Of A Dog Which I Gave To His Royal Highness.
by Alexander Pope

I am His Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
Ojistoh
by Emily Pauline Johnson

I am Ojistoh, I am she, the wife
Of him whose name breathes bravery and life
And courage to the tribe that calls him chief.
I am Ojistoh, his white star, and he
Is land, and lake, and sky - and soul to me.
Ah! but they hated him, those Huron braves,
Him who had flung their warriors into graves,
Him who had crushed them underneath his heel,
Whose arm was iron, and whose heart was steel
To all - save me, Ojistoh, chosen wife
Of my great Mohawk, white star of his life.
Ah! but they hated him, and councilled long
With subtle witchcraft how to work him wrong;
How to avenge their dead, and strike him where
His pride was highest, and his fame most fair.
Their hearts grew weak as women at his name:
They dared no war-path since my Mohawk came
With ashen bow, and flinten arrow-head
To pierce their craven bodies; but their dead
Must be avenged. Avenged? They dared not walk
In day and meet his deadly tomahawk;
They dared not face his fearless scalping knife;
So - Niyoh![1] - then they thought of me, his wife.
O! evil, evil face of them they sent
With evil Huron speech: "Would I consent
To take of wealth? be queen of all their tribe?
Have wampum ermine?" Back I flung the bribe
Into their teeth, and said, "While I have life
Know this - Ojistoh is the Mohawk's wife."
Wah! how we struggled! But their arms were strong.
They flung me on their pony's back, with thong
Round ankle, wrist, and shoulder. Then upleapt
The one I hated most: his eye he swept
Over my misery, and sneering said,
"Thus, fair Ojistoh, we avenge our dead."
And we two rode, rode as a sea wind-chased,
I, bound with buckskin to his hated waist,
He, sneering, laughing, jeering, while he lashed
The horse to foam, as on and on we dashed.
Plunging through creek and river, bush and trail,
On, on we galloped like a northern gale.
At last, his distant Huron fires aflame
We saw, and nearer, nearer still we came.
I, bound behind him in the captive's place,
Scarcely could see the outline of his face.
I smiled, and laid my cheek against his back:
"Loose thou my hands," I said. "This pace let slack.
Forget we now that thou and I are foes.
I like thee well, and wish to clasp thee close;
I like the courage of thine eye and brow;
I like thee better than my Mohawk now."
He cut the cords; we ceased our maddened haste
I wound my arms about his tawny waist;
My hand crept up the buckskin of his belt;
His knife hilt in my burning palm I felt;
One hand caressed his cheek, the other drew
The weapon softly - "I love you, love you,"
I whispered, "love you as my life."
And - buried in his back his scalping knife.
Ha! how I rode, rode as a sea wind-chased,
Mad with sudden freedom, mad with haste,
Back to my Mohawk and my home. I lashed
That horse to foam, as on and on I dashed.
Plunging thro' creek and river, bush and trail,
On, on I galloped like a northern gale.
And then my distant Mohawk's fires aflame
I saw, as nearer, nearer still I came,
My hands all wet, stained with a life's red dye,
But pure my soul, pure as those stars on high - 
"My Mohawk's pure white star, Ojistoh, still am I."
Longing
by Sara Teasdale

I am not sorry for my soul
That it must go unsatisfied,
For it can live a thousand times,
Eternity is deep and wide.
I am not sorry for my soul,
But oh, my body that must go
Back to a little drift of dust
Without the joy it longed to know.
Climacteric
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am not wiser for my age,
Nor skilful by my grief;
Life loiters at the book's first page,--
Ah! could we turn the leaf.
Verses, Supposed To Be Written By Alexander Selkirk, During His Solitary Abode In The Island Of Juan Fernandez.
by William Cowper

I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O Solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms
Than reign in this horrible place.
I am out of humanity's reach,
I must finish my journey alone,
Never hear the sweet music of speech,
I start at the sound of my own.
The beasts, that roam over the plain,
My form with indifference see;
They are so unacquainted with man,
Their tameness is shocking to me.
Society, friendship, and love,
Divinely bestow'd upon man,
O, had I the wings of a dove,
How soon would I taste you again!
My sorrows I then might assuage
In the ways of religion and truth,
Might learn from the wisdom of age,
And be cheer'd by the sallies of youth.
Religion! what treasure untold
Resides in that heavenly word!
More precious than silver and gold
Or all that this earth can afford.
But the sound of the church-going bell
These valleys and rocks never heard,
Never sigh'd at the sound of a knell,
Or smiled when a Sabbath appear'd.
Ye winds, that have made me your sport,
Convey to this desolate shore
Some cordial endearing report
Of a land I shall visit no more.
My friends, do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after me?
O tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.
How fleet is the glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight,
The tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift-winged arrows of light.
When I think of my own native land,
In a moment I seem to be there;
But alas! recollection at hand
Soon hurries me back to despair.
But the sea-fowl is gone to her nest,
The beast is laid down in his lair;
Even here is a season of rest,
And I to my cabin repair.
There's mercy in every place,
And mercy, encouraging thought!
Gives even affliction a grace,
And reconciles man to his lot.
Minerva Jones
by Edgar Lee Masters

I am Minerva, the village poetess,
Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street
For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk,
And all the more when "Butch" Weldy
Captured me after a brutal hunt.
He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers;
And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up,
Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice.
Will some one go to the village newspaper,
And gather into a book the verses I wrote? - 
I thirsted so for love
I hungered so for life!
The Paradox
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

I am the mother of sorrows,
I am the ender of grief;
I am the bud and the blossom,
I am the late-falling leaf.
I am thy priest and thy poet,
I am thy serf and thy king;
I cure the tears of the heartsick,
When I come near they shall sing.
White are my hands as the snowdrop;
Swart are my fingers as clay;
Dark is my frown as the midnight,
Fair is my brow as the day.
Battle and war are my minions,
Doing my will as divine;
I am the calmer of passions,
Peace is a nursling of mine.
Speak to me gently or curse me,
Seek me or fly from my sight;
I am thy fool in the morning,
Thou art my slave in the night.
Down to the grave will I take thee,
Out from the noise of the strife;
Then shalt thou see me and know me--
Death, then, no longer, but life.
Then shalt thou sing at my coming.
Kiss me with passionate breath,
Clasp me and smile to have thought me
Aught save the foeman of Death.
Come to me, brother, when weary,
Come when thy lonely heart swells;
I 'll guide thy footsteps and lead thee
Down where the Dream Woman dwells.
Tired.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I am tired to-night, and something,
The wind maybe, or the rain,
Or the cry of a bird in the copse outside,
Has brought back the past and its pain.
And I feel, as I sit here thinking,
That the hand of a dead old June
Has reached out hold of my heart's loose strings,
And is drawing them up in tune.
I am tired to-night, and I miss you,
And long for you, love, through tears;
And it seems but to-day that I saw you go - 
You, who have been gone for years.
And I seem to be newly lonely - 
I, who am so much alone;
And the strings of my heart are well in tune,
But they have not the same old tone.
I am tired; and that old sorrow
Sweeps down the bed of my soul,
As a turbulent river might sudden'y break
way from a dam's control.
It beareth a wreck on its bosom,
A wreck with a snow-white sail;
And the hand on my heart strings thrums away,
But they only respond with a wail.
Change
by John Frederick Freeman

I am that creature and creator who
Loosens and reins the waters of the sea,
Forming the rocky marge anon anew.
I stir the cold breasts of antiquity,
And in the soft stone of the pyramid
Move wormlike; and I flutter all those sands
Whereunder lost and soundless time is hid.
I shape the hills and valleys with these hands,
And darken forests on their naked sides,
And call the rivers from the vexing springs,
And lead the blind winds into deserts strange.
And in firm human bones the ill that hides
Is mine, the fear that cries, the hope that sings.
I am that creature and creator, Change.
Solution
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am the Muse who sung alway
By Jove, at dawn of the first day.
Star-crowned, sole-sitting, long I wrought
To fire the stagnant earth with thought:
On spawning slime my song prevails,
Wolves shed their fangs, and dragons scales;
Flushed in the sky the sweet May-morn,
Earth smiled with flowers, and man was born.
Then Asia yeaned her shepherd race,
And Nile substructs her granite base,--
Tented Tartary, columned Nile,--
And, under vines, on rocky isle,
Or on wind-blown sea-marge bleak,
Forward stepped the perfect Greek:
That wit and joy might find a tongue,
And earth grow civil, HOMER sung.
Flown to Italy from Greece,
I brooded long and held my peace,
For I am wont to sing uncalled,
And in days of evil plight
Unlock doors of new delight;
And sometimes mankind I appalled
With a bitter horoscope,
With spasms of terror for balm of hope.
Then by better thought I lead
Bards to speak what nations need;
So I folded me in fears,
And DANTE searched the triple spheres,
Moulding Nature at his will,
So shaped, so colored, swift or still,
And, sculptor-like, his large design
Etched on Alp and Apennine.
Seethed in mists of Penmanmaur,
Taught by Plinlimmon's Druid power,
England's genius filled all measure
Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,
Gave to the mind its emperor,
And life was larger than before:
Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE'S wit.
The men who lived with him became
Poets, for the air was fame.
Far in the North, where polar night
Holds in check the frolic light,
In trance upborne past mortal goal
The Swede EMANUEL leads the soul.
Through snows above, mines underground,
The inks of Erebus he found;
Rehearsed to men the damned wails
On which the seraph music sails.
In spirit-worlds he trod alone,
But walked the earth unmarked, unknown,
The near bystander caught no sound,--
Yet they who listened far aloof
Heard rendings of the skyey roof,
And felt, beneath, the quaking ground;
And his air-sown, unheeded words,
In the next age, are flaming swords.
In newer days of war and trade,
Romance forgot, and faith decayed,
When Science armed and guided war,
And clerks the Janus-gates unbar,
When France, where poet never grew,
Halved and dealt the globe anew,
GOETHE, raised o'er joy and strife,
Drew the firm lines of Fate and Life
And brought Olympian wisdom down
To court and mart, to gown and town.
Stooping, his finger wrote in clay
The open secret of to-day.
So bloom the unfading petals five,
And verses that all verse outlive.
Moods
by Sara Teasdale

I am the still rain falling,
Too tired for singing mirth,
Oh, be the green fields calling,
Oh, be for me the earth!
I am the brown bird pining
To leave the nest and fly,
Oh, be the fresh cloud shining,
Oh, be for me the sky!
Heredity
by Thomas Hardy

I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time to times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.
The years-heired feature that can
In curve and voice and eye
Despise the human span
Of durance - that is I;
The eternal thing in man,
That heeds no call to die.
Death.
by Charles Hamilton Musgrove

I am the outer gate of life where sit
Faith and Unfaith, those two interpreters
That spell in diverse ways what God has writ
In symbols on the archway of the years.
Backward I swing for many feet to pass;
Some come in stormy haste, some grave and slow,
And all like windy shadows on the grass:
Beyond my pale I know not where they go.
The Princess In The Tower
by Sara Teasdale

The Princess sings:
I am the princess up in the tower
And I dream the whole day thro'
Of a knight who shall come with a silver spear
And a waving plume of blue.
I am the princess up in the tower,
And I dream my dreams by day,
But sometimes I wake, and my eyes are wet,
When the dusk is deep and gray.
For the peasant lovers go by beneath,
I hear them laugh and kiss,
And I forget my day-dream knight,
And long for a love like this.
II
The Minstrel sings:
I lie beside the princess' tower,
So close she cannot see my face,
And watch her dreaming all day long,
And bending with a lily's grace.
Her cheeks are paler than the moon
That sails along a sunny sky,
And yet her silent mouth is red
Where tender words and kisses lie.
I am a minstrel with a harp,
For love of her my songs are sweet,
And yet I dare not lift the voice
That lies so far beneath her feet.
III
The Knight sings:
O princess cease your dreams awhile
And look adown your tower's gray side,
The princess gazes far away,
Nor hears nor heeds the words I cried.
Perchance my heart was overbold,
God made her dreams too pure to break,
She sees the angels in the air
Fly to and fro for Mary's sake.
Farewell, I mount and go my way,
But oh her hair the sun sifts thro',
The tilts and tourneys wait my spear,
I am the Knight of the Plume of Blue.
Memories {1}
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I am thinking of the Springtime
On the farm out in the West,
When my world held nothing for me that I wanted,
(Save a courage all undaunted),
And my foolish little rhymes,
Were but heart beats, rung in chimes,
That I sounded, just to ease my life's unrest.
Yes, I sang them, and I rang them,
Just to ease my youth's unrest.
When I heard the name of London,
In that early day, afar,
In that Springtime of my Country over yonder,
Then I used to sit and wonder
If the day would come to me,
When my ship should cross the sea,
To the land that seemed as distant as a star.
In my dreaming, ever gleaming
Like a distant unknown star.
Now in London in the Springtime,
I am sitting here, your guest.
Nay - I think it is a vision, or a fancy - 
Part of dreamland Necromancy;
And I question:    is it true
That the great warm hearts of you,
Heard the winging of that singing in the West,
Heard the chiming of my rhyming
From the farmhouse in the West?
Let me linger in the fancy,
For the soul of me is stirred
As I dream that I am sitting here among you;
And the songs that I have sung you
Shall grow stronger through the art
Of heart speaking unto heart,
Through the gladness of the singer who is heard
Lo! my songs have crossed the ocean
But the voice of my emotion finds no word.
Love's Proud Farewell
by Richard Le Gallienne

I am too proud of loving thee, too proud
Of the sweet months and years that now have end,
To feign a heart indifferent to this loss,
Too thankful-happy that the gods allowed
Our orbits cross,
Beloved and lovely friend;
And though I wend
Lonely henceforth along a road grown gray,
I shall not be all lonely on the way,
Companioned with the attar of thy rose,
Though in my garden it no longer blows.
Thou canst not give elsewhere thy gifts to me,
Or only seem to give;
Yea, not so fugitive
The glory that hath hallowed me and thee,
Not thou or I alone that marvel wrought
Immortal is the paradise of thought,
Nor ours to destroy,
Born of our hearts together, where bright streams
Ran through the woods for joy,
That heaven of our dreams.
There shall it shine
Under green boughs,
So long as May and June bring leaves and flowers,
Couches of moss and fern and woven bowers,
Still thine and mine,
A golden house;
And, perchance, e'er the winter that takes all,
I, there alone in the deep listening wood,
Shall hear thy lost foot-fall,
And, scarce believing the beatitude,
Shall know thee there,
Wild heart to wild heart pressed,
And wrap me in the splendour of thine hair,
And laugh within thy breast.
The Modern Major-General.
by William Schwenck Gilbert

I am the very pattern of a modern Major-Gineral.
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral;
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical,
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted too with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous,
In short in matters vegetable, animal and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral.
I know our mythic history King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's,
I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for paradox,
I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus,
In conies I can floor peculiarities parabolous.
I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies,
I know the croaking chorus from the "Frogs" of Aristophanes,
Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's din afore,
And whistle all the airs from that confounded nonsense "Pinafore."
Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform,
And tell you every detail of Caractacus's uniform.
In short in matters vegetable, animal and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral.
In fact when I know what is meant by "mamelon" and "ravelin,"
When I can tell at sight a Chassepot rifle from a javelin,
When such affairs as sorties and surprises I'm more wary at,
And when I know precisely what is meant by Commissariat,
When I have learn what progress has been made in modern gunnery,
When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery,
In short when I've a smattering of elementary strategy,
You'll say a better Major-General has never sat a gee 
For my military knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century,
But still in learning vegetable, animal and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral.
Fragments
by Louisa May Alcott

I am the monarch of the Sea,
The ruler of the Queen's Navee,--
When at anchor here I ride,
My bosom swells with pride,
And I snap my fingers at a foeman's taunts.
And so do his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts
His sisters and his cousins!
Whom he reckons by the dozens,
And his aunts!
"I am the lowliest tar
That sails the water.
And you, proud maiden, are
My captain's daughter."
"Refrain, audacious tar.
Your suit from pressing;
Remember what you are,
And whom addressing."
For I am called Little Buttercup,--dear Little Buttercup,
Though I never could tell why;
But still I'm called Buttercup,--poor Little Buttercup,
Sweet Little Buttercup I!
Fair moon, to thee I sing
Bright regent of the heavens;
Say, why is every thing
Either at sixes or at sevens!
He is an Englishman!
For he himself has said it,
And it's greatly to his credit
That he is an Englishman.