DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Walden
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

In my garden three ways meet,
Thrice the spot is blest;
Hermit-thrush comes there to build,
Carrier-doves to nest.
There broad-armed oaks, the copses' maze,
The cold sea-wind detain;
Here sultry Summer overstays
When Autumn chills the plain.
Self-sown my stately garden grows;
The winds and wind-blown seed,
Cold April rain and colder snows
My hedges plant and feed.
From mountains far and valleys near
The harvests sown to-day
Thrive in all weathers without fear,--
Wild planters, plant away!
In cities high the careful crowds
Of woe-worn mortals darkling go,
But in these sunny solitudes
My quiet roses blow.
Methought the sky looked scornful down
On all was base in man,
And airy tongues did taunt the town,
'Achieve our peace who can!'
What need I holier dew
Than Walden's haunted wave,
Distilled from heaven's alembic blue,
Steeped in each forest cave?
[If Thought unlock her mysteries,
If Friendship on me smile,
I walk in marble galleries,
I talk with kings the while.]
How drearily in College hall
The Doctor stretched the hours,
But in each pause we heard the call
Of robins out of doors.
The air is wise, the wind thinks well,
And all through which it blows,
If plants or brain, if egg or shell,
Or bird or biped knows;
And oft at home 'mid tasks I heed,
I heed how wears the day;
We must not halt while fiercely speed
The spans of life away.
What boots it here of Thebes or Rome
Or lands of Eastern day?
In forests I am still at home
And there I cannot stray.
To Mr. Harley - Wounded By Guiscard
by Matthew Prior

In one great now, superior to an age,
The full extremes of nature's force we find:
How heavenly virtue can exalt, or rage
Infernal how degrade the human mind.
While the fierce monk does at his trial stand,
He chews revenge, abjuring his offence:
Guile in his tongue, and murder in his hand,
He stabs his judge, to prove his innocence.
The guilty stroke and torture of the steel
Infix'd, our dauntless Briton scarce perceives:
The wounds his country from his death must feel,
The patriot views; for those alone he grieves.
The barbarous rage that durst attempt thy life,
Harley, great counsellor, extends thy fame;
And the sharp point of cruel Guiscard's knife,
In brass and marble carves thy deathless name.
Faithful assertor of thy country's cause,
Britain with tears shall bathe thy glorious wound;
She for thy safety shall enlarge her laws,
And in her statutes shall thy worth be found.
Yet 'midst her sighs she triumphs on the hand
Reflecting, that diffused the public wo;
A stranger to her altars, and her land;
No son of hers could meditate this bow,
Meantime thy pain is gracious Anna's are:
Our queen, our saint, with sacrificing breath,
Softens thy anguish: in her powerful prayer
She pleads thy service, and forbids thy death.
Great as thou art, thou canst demand no more,
O breast bewail'd by earth, preserved by Heaven?
No higher can aspiring virtue soar:
Enough to thee of grief and fame is given.
An October Garden.
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

In my Autumn garden I was fain
To mourn among my scattered roses;
Alas for that last rosebud which uncloses
To Autumn's languid sun and rain
When all the world is on the wane!
Which has not felt the sweet constraint of June,
Nor heard the nightingale in tune.
Broad-faced asters by my garden walk,
You are but coarse compared with roses:
More choice, more dear that rosebud which uncloses
Faint-scented, pinched, upon its stalk,
That least and last which cold winds balk;
A rose it is though least and last of all,
A rose to me though at the fall.
Correspondences
by Charles Baudelaire

In Nature's temple living pillars rise,
And words are murmured none have understood,
And man must wander through a tangled wood
Of symbols watching him with friendly eyes.
As long-drawn echoes heard far-off and dim
Mingle to one deep sound and fade away;
Vast as the night and brilliant as the day,
Colour and sound and perfume speak to him.
Some perfumes are as fragrant as a child,
Sweet as the sound of hautboys, meadow-green;
Others, corrupted, rich, exultant, wild,
Have all the expansion of things infinite:
As amber, incense, musk, and benzoin,
Which sing the sense's and the soul's delight.
An Ode Of The Birth Of Our Saviour
by Robert Herrick

In numbers, and but these few,
I sing thy birth, oh JESU!
Thou pretty Baby, born here,
With sup'rabundant scorn here;
Who for thy princely port here,
Hadst for thy place
Of birth, a base
Out-stable for thy court here.
Instead of neat enclosures
Of interwoven osiers;
Instead of fragrant posies
Of daffodils and roses,
Thy cradle, kingly stranger,
As gospel tells,
Was nothing else,
But, here, a homely manger.
But we with silks, not cruels,
With sundry precious jewels,
And lily-work will dress thee;
And as we dispossess thee
Of cloths, we'll make a chamber,
Sweet babe, for thee,
Of ivory,
And plaster'd round with amber.
The Jews, they did disdain thee;
But we will entertain thee
With glories to await here,
Upon thy princely state here,
And more for love than pity:
From year to year
We'll make thee, here,
A free-born of our city.
On Finding A Fan. [1]
by George Gordon Byron

1.
In one who felt as once he felt,
This might, perhaps, have fann'd the flame;
But now his heart no more will melt,
Because that heart is not the same.
2.
As when the ebbing flames are low,
The aid which once improved their light,
And bade them burn with fiercer glow,
Now quenches all their blaze in night.
3.
Thus has it been with Passion's fires - 
As many a boy and girl remembers - 
While every hope of love expires,
Extinguish'd with the dying embers.
4.
The first, though not a spark survive,
Some careful hand may teach to burn;
The last, alas! can ne'er survive;
No touch can bid its warmth return.
5.
Or, if it chance to wake again,
Not always doom'd its heat to smother,
It sheds (so wayward fates ordain)
Its former warmth around another.
Rachel
by Matthew Arnold

I
In paris all look'd hot and like to fade.
Brown in the garden of the Tuileries,
Brown with September, droop'd the chestnut-trees.
'Twas dawn; a brougham roll'd through the streets, and made
Halt at the white and silent colonnade
Of the French Theatre. Worn with disease,
Rachel, with eyes no gazing can appease,
Sate in the brougham, and those blank walls survey'd.
She follows the gay world, whose swarms have fled
To Switzerland, to Baden, to the Rhine;
Why stops she by this empty play-house drear?
Ah, where the spirit its highest life hath led,
All spots, match'd with that spot, are less divine;
And Rachel's Switzerland, her Rhine, is here!
II
Unto a lonely villa in a dell
Above the fragrant warm Provencal shore
The dying Rachel in a chair they bore
Up the steep pine-plumed paths of the Estrelle,
And laid her in a stately room, where fell
The shadow of a marble Muse of yore
The rose-crown'd queen of legendary lore,
Polymnia, full on her death-bed. 'Twas well!
The fret and misery of our northern towns,
In this her life's last day, our poor, our pain,
Our jangle of false wits, our climate's frowns,
Do for this radiant Greek-soul'd artist cease;
Sole object of her dying eyes remain
The beauty and the glorious art of Greece.
III
Sprung from the blood of Israel's scatter'd race,
At a mean inn in German Aarau born,
To forms from antique Greece and Rome uptorn,
Trick'd out with a Parisian speech and face,
Imparting life renew'd, old classic grace;
Then soothing with thy Christian strain forlorn,
A-Kempis! her departing soul outworn,
While by her bedside Hebrew rites have place
Ah, not the radiant spirit of Greece alone
She had one power, which made her breast its home!
In her, like us, there clash'd, contending powers,
Germany, France, Christ, Moses, Athens, Rome.
The strife, the mixture in her soul, are ours;
Her genius and her glory are her own.
The Home Lights
by Fay Inchfawn

"In my father's house!" The words
Bring sweet cadence to my ears.
Wandering thoughts, like homing birds,
Fly all swiftly down the years,
To that wide casement, where I always see
Bright love-lamps leaning out to welcome me.
Sweet it was, how sweet to go
To the worn, familiar door.
No need to stand a while, and wait,
Outside the well-remembered gate;
No need to knock;
The easy lock
Turned almost of itself, and so
My spirit was "at home" once more.
And then, within, how good to find
The same cool atmosphere of peace,
Where I, a tired child, might cease
To grieve, or dread,
Or toil for bread.
I could forget
The dreary fret.
The strivings after hopes too high,
I let them every one go by.
The ills of life, the blows unkind,
These fearsome things were left behind.
ENVOY.
O trembling soul of mine,
See how God's mercies shine!
When thou shalt rise,
And, stripped of earth, shall stand
Within an Unknown Land;
Alone, where no familiar thing
May bring familiar comforting;
Look up! 'Tis but thy Father's House! And, see
His love-lamps leaning out to welcome thee!
Prefixed to Sir David Murray's Sophonisba &c. (1611). - To my kinde friend Da: Murray.
by Michael Drayton

In new attire (and put most neatly on)
Thou Murray mak'st thy passionate Queene apeare,
As when she sat on the Numidian throne,
Deck'd with those Gems that most refulgent were.
So thy stronge muse her maker like repaires,
That from the ruins of her wasted vrne,
Into a body of delicious ayres:
Againe her spirit doth transmigrated turne,
That scortching soile which thy great subiect bore,
Bred those that coldly but exprest her merit,
But breathing now vpon our colder shore,
Here shee hath found a noble fiery spirit,
Both there, and here, so fortunate for Fame,
That what she was, she's euery where the same.
Memory's River
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In Nature's bright blossoms not always reposes
That strange subtle essence more rare than their bloom,
Which lies in the hearts of carnations and roses,
That unexplained something by men called perfume.
Though modest the flower, yet great is its power
And pregnant with meaning each pistil and leaf,
If only it hides there, if only abides there,
The fragrance suggestive of love, joy, and grief.
Not always the air that a master composes
Can stir human heart-strings with pleasure or pain.
But strange, subtle chords, like the scent of the roses,
Breathe out of some measures, though simple the strain.
And lo! when you hear them, you love them and fear them,
You tremble with anguish, you thrill with delight,
For back of them slumber old dreams without number,
And faces long vanished peer out into sight.
Those dear foolish days when the earth seemed all beauty,
Before you had knowledge enough to be sad;
When youth held no higher ideal of duty
Than just to lilt on through the world and be glad.
On harmony's river they seemed to afloat hither
With all the sweet fancies that hung round that time - 
Life's burdens and troubles turn into air-bubbles
And break on the music's swift current of rhyme.
Fair Folly comes back with her spell while you listen
And points to the paths where she led you of old.
You gaze on past sunsets, you see dead stars glisten,
You bathe in life's glory, you swoon in death's cold.
All pains and all pleasures surge up through those measures,
Your heart is wrenched open with earthquakes of sound;
From ashes and embers rise Junes and Decembers,
Lost islands in fathoms of feeling refound.
Some airs are like outlets of memory's oceans,
They rise in the past and flow into the heart;
And down them float shipwrecks of mighty emotions,
All sea-soaked and storm-tossed and drifting apart:
Their fair timbers battered, their lordly sails tattered,
Their skeleton crew of dead days on their decks;
Then a crash of chords blending, a crisis, an ending - 
The music is over, and vanished the wrecks.
New Love And Old
by Sara Teasdale

In my heart the old love
Struggled with the new;
It was ghostly waking
All night through.
Dear things, kind things,
That my old love said,
Ranged themselves reproachfully
Round my bed.
But I could not heed them,
For I seemed to see
The eyes of my new love
Fixed on me.
Old love, old love,
How can I be true?
Shall I be faithless to myself
Or to you?
In Paths Untrodden
by Walt Whitman

In paths untrodden,
In the growth by margins of pond-waters,
Escaped from the life that exhibits itself,
From all the standards hitherto publish'd - from the pleasures, profits, eruditions, conformities,
Which too long I was offering to feed my soul;
Clear to me, now, standards not yet publish'd - clear to me that my Soul,
That the Soul of the man I speak for, feeds, rejoices most in comrades;
Here, by myself, away from the clank of the world,
Tallying and talk'd to here by tongues aromatic,
No longer abash'd - for in this secluded spot I can respond as I would not dare elsewhere,
Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet contains all the rest,
Resolv'd to sing no songs to-day but those of manly attachment,
Projecting them along that substantial life,
Bequeathing, hence, types of athletic love,
Afternoon, this delicious Ninth-month, in my forty-first year,
I proceed, for all who are, or have been, young men,
To tell the secret of my nights and days,
To celebrate the need of comrades.
The Little London Girl.
by Kate Greenaway

In my little Green House, quite content am I,
When the hot sun pours down from the sky;
For oh, I love the country the beautiful country.
Who'd live in a London street when there's the country?
I live in a London street, then I long and long
To be the whole day the sweet Flowers among
Instead of tall chimney-pots up in the sky,
The joy of seeing Birds and Dragon Flies go by.
At home I lie in bed, and cannot go to sleep,
For the sound of cart-wheels upon the hard street.
But here my eyes close up to no sound of anything
Except it is to hear the nightingales sing.
And then I see the Chickens and the Geese go walking,
I hear the Pigs and the Ducks all talking.
And the Red and the Spotted Cows they stare at me,
As if they wondered whoever I could be.
I see the little Lambs out with their mothers 
Such pretty little white young sisters and brothers.
Oh, I'll stay in the country, and make a daisy chain,
And never go back to London again.
The Witnesses
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In Ocean's wide domains,
Half buried in the sands,
Lie skeletons in chains,
With shackled feet and hands.
Beyond the fall of dews,
Deeper than plummet lies,
Float ships, with all their crews,
No more to sink nor rise.
There the black Slave-ship swims,
Freighted with human forms,
Whose fettered, fleshless limbs
Are not the sport of storms.
These are the bones of Slaves;
They gleam from the abyss;
They cry, from yawning waves,
"We are the Witnesses!"
Within Earth's wide domains
Are markets for men's lives;
Their necks are galled with chains,
Their wrists are cramped with gyves.
Dead bodies, that the kite
In deserts makes its prey;
Murders, that with affright
Scare school-boys from their play!
All evil thoughts and deeds;
Anger, and lust, and pride;
The foulest, rankest weeds,
That choke Life's groaning tide!
These are the woes of Slaves;
They glare from the abyss;
They cry, from unknown graves,
"We are the Witnesses!
Jocosa Lyra.
by Henry Austin Dobson

In our hearts is the Great One of Avon
Engraven,
And we climb the cold summits once built on
By Milton.
But at times not the air that is rarest
Is fairest,
And we long in the valley to follow
Apollo.
Then we drop from the heights atmospheric
To Herrick,
Or we pour the Greek honey, grown blander,
Of Landor;
Or our cosiest nook in the shade is
Where Praed is,
Or we toss the light bells of the mocker
With Locker.
Oh, the song where not one of the Graces
Tight-laces,--
Where we woo the sweet Muses not starchly,
But archly,--
Where the verse, like a piper a-Maying,
Comes playing,--
And the rhyme is as gay as a dancer
In answer,--
It will last till men weary of pleasure
In measure!
It will last till men weary of laughter ...
And after!
A Culinary Puzzle
by Ellis Parker Butler

In our dainty little kitchen,
Where my aproned wife is queen
Over all the tin-pan people,
In a realm exceeding clean,
Oft I like to loiter, watching
While she mixes things for tea;
And she tasks me, slyly smiling,
'Now just guess what this will be!'
Hidden in a big blue apron,
Her dimpled arms laid bare,
And the love-smiles coyly mingling
With a housewife's frown of care
See her beat a golden batter,
Pausing but to ask of me,
As she adds a bit of butter,
'Now just guess what this will be!'
Then I bravely do my duty,
Guess it, 'pudding,' 'cake' or 'pie,'
'Dumplings,' 'waffles,' 'bread' or 'muffins;'
But no matter what I try,
This provoking witch just answers:
'Never mind, just wait and see!
But I think you should be able,
Dear, to guess what this will be.'
Little fraud! she never tells me
Until 'tis baked and browned
And I think I know the reason
For her secrecy profound
She herself with all her fine airs
And her books on cookery,
Could not answer, should I ask her,
'Dearest, what will that mess be?'
The New Amadis.
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

IN my boyhood's days so drear
I was kept confined;
There I sat for many a year,
All alone I pined,
As within the womb.
Yet thou drov'st away my gloom,
Golden phantasy!
I became a hero true,
Like the Prince Pipi,
And the world roam'd through,
Many a crystal palace built,
Crush'd them with like art,
And the Dragon's life-blood spilt
With my glitt'ring dart.
Yes! I was a man!
Next I formed the knightly plan
Princess Fish to free;
She was much too complaisant,
Kindly welcomed me, 
And I was gallant.
Heav'nly bread her kisses proved,
Glowing as the wine;
Almost unto death I loved.
Sun-s appeared to shine
In her dazzling charms.
Who hath torn her from mine arms?
Could no magic band
Make her in her flight delay?
Say, where now her land?
Where, alas, the way?
Morning Phoenix
by Robert von Ranke Graves

In my body lives a flame,
Flame that burns me all the day;
When a fierce sun does the same,
I am charred away.
Who could keep a smiling wit,
Roasted so in heart and hide,
Turning on the sun's red spit,
Scorched by love inside?
Caves I long for and cold rocks,
Minnow-peopled country brooks,
Blundering gales of Equinox,
Sunless valley-nooks,
Daily so I might restore
Calcined heart and shrivelled skin,
A morning phoenix with proud roar
Kindled new within.
Dry Guillotine
by Paul Cameron Brown

In my childhood, "Verdun," meant madness.
Bars on the windows, cages around the intellect.
Time was a poor keeper of souls, it seems, wore out all but
a fragment of my memories. Musical, poetic. The sounds of clay china
being dropped on the floor. Fierce Celts with a gift for the muse in
keeping with their love of lyricism and war.
Driving by 999 Queen in Toronto accompanies a lot of the above.
A cuckoo bin by any calculation and a reference not meant to be
pejorative. A subject so clothed in solemnity only irreverent
"kidding," can hope to disarm its grasp. Still, the truth must be told.
In university, no one shrinked from whispering the ultimate fate - 
a stint in Sydenham or a trip down the road to Cedar Springs.
Delightful euphemisms, the names reminiscent of sonorous rivers,
tree lined groves, peach blossoms across Georgia springs. Or
Ophelia's funeral oration wherein Polonius rightfully alludes to her
sudden falling away amid laughing brooks.
I am reminded of Charri're's desperate attempt to stay sane on Ile
du Di'ble, the cutting edge of his dry guillotine - his mind's fabric
giving way to the slightest irritation. In the present, the chant of
a crowd's "jump, jump," to the would be suicide. Then there is the
most foreboding type of all dementia, the collective sort. A strength
through joy movement of the Hitler camp with society's many
institutions set up along the spit and polish order of the Reich.
Indeed, if we think of it, we all have a deep knowledge of madness;
days when the centre is about to break alongside the pit. Days when
wars on the periphery take hold, colours appear different.
As a child, madness was watching Ichabod Crane in cartoon form
outrace the Headless Horseman. In Sleepy Hollow trying to put
down the panic in himself. Ichabod, the peaceful school master,
driven to the edge. At war with himself but trying to reassure that
same self the plodding sound of approaching hooves was only dried,
bullrush stems hitting against his head.
Madness is more than Van Gogh offering an ear; Druid priests
garnishing oak trees in a British forest or plaintive Gauguin
abandoning his family at 34, mid-stream in a successful career. It
probably stands behind half the men on skid row, beckons like a
welcome friend before turning fiend and consuming impulse to a
bag lady.
The close relation between the creative impulse and "letting go."
Between the arts and wide eyed eccentricity. Between wanting to be
free. And knowing. Hearing if you go on like that you'll end up on
the Lakeshore. Another pretty euphemism. A dangerous truth left
like an upturned rock for someone to trip on in another garden.
The farthest away anyone can be.
Sonnet CCXXII.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

In tale Stella duo begli occhi vidi.
THE BEAUTY OF LAURA IS PEERLESS.
In one fair star I saw two brilliant eyes,
With sweetness, modesty, so glistening o'er,
That soon those graceful nests of Love before
My worn heart learnt all others to despise:
Equall'd not her whoever won the prize
In ages gone on any foreign shore;
Not she to Greece whose wondrous beauty bore
Unnumber'd ills, to Troy death's anguish'd cries:
Not the fair Roman, who, with ruthless blade
Piercing her chaste and outraged bosom, fled
Dishonour worse than death, like charms display'd;
Such excellence should brightest glory shed
On Nature, as on me supreme delight,
But, ah! too lately come, too soon it takes its flight.
MACGREGOR.
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet XVI
by Philip Sidney (Sir)

In nature, apt to like, when I did see
Beauties which were of many carrets fine,
My boiling sprites did thither then incline,
And, Loue, I thought that I was full of thee:
But finding not those restlesse flames in mee,
Which others said did make their souls to pine,
I thought those babes of some pinnes hurt did whine,
By my soul iudging what Loues paine might be.
But while I thus with this young lion plaid,
Mine eyes (shall I say curst or blest?) beheld
Stella: now she is nam'd, neede more be said?
In her sight I a lesson new haue speld.
I now haue learnd loue right, and learnd euen so
As they that being poysond poyson know.