DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
The Merryman And His Maid
by William Schwenck Gilbert

[HE]    I have a song to sing, O!
[SHE]    Sing me your song, O!
[HE]    It is sung to the moon
By a love-lorn loon,
Who fled from the mocking throng, O!
It's the song of a merryman, moping mum,
Whose soul was sad, whose glance was glum,
Who sipped no sup, and who craved no crumb,
As he sighed for the love of a ladye.
Heighdy! heighdy!
Misery me - lackadaydee!
He sipped no sup, and he craved no crumb,
As he sighed for the love of a ladye!
[SHE]    I have a song to sing, O!
[HE]    Sing me your song, O!
[SHE]    It is sung with the ring
Of the song maids sing
Who love with a love life-long, O!
It's the song of a merrymaid, peerly proud,
Who loved a lord, and who laughed aloud
At the moan of the merryman, moping mum,
Whose soul was sore, whose glance was glum,
Who sipped no sup, and who craved no crumb,
As he sighed for the love of a ladye!
Heighdy! heighdy!
Misery me - lackadaydee!
He sipped no sup, and he craved no crumb,
As he sighed for the love of a ladye!
[HE]    I have a song to sing, O!
[SHE]    Sing me your song, O!
[HE]    It is sung to the knell
Of a churchyard bell,
And a doleful dirge, ding dong, O!
It's a song of a popinjay, bravely born,
Who turned up his noble nose with scorn
At the humble merrymaid, peerly proud,
Who loved that lord, and who laughed aloud
At the moan of the merryman, moping mum,
Whose soul was sad, whose glance was glum,
Who sipped no sup, and who craved no crumb,
As he sighed for the love of a ladye!
Heighdy! heighdy!
Misery me - lackadaydee!
He sipped no sup, and he craved no crumb,
As he sighed for the love of a ladye!
[SHE]    I have a song to sing, O!
[HE]    Sing me your song, O!
[SHE]    It is sung with a sigh
And a tear in the eye,
For it tells of a righted wrong, O!
It's a song of a merrymaid, once so gay,
Who turned on her heel and tripped away
From the peacock popinjay, bravely born,
Who turned up his noble nose with scorn
At the humble heart that he did not prize;
And it tells how she begged, with downcast eyes,
For the love of a merryman, moping mum,
Whose soul was sad, whose glance was glum,
Who sipped no sup, and who craved no crumb,
As he sighed for the love of a ladye!
[BOTH]    Heighdy! heighdy!
Misery me - lackadaydee!
His pains were o'er, and he sighed no more.
For he lived in the love of a ladye!
The Pet Rabbit.
by Lizzie Lawson

"I HAVE a little Bunny with a coat as soft as down,
And nearly all of him is white except one bit of brown.
The first thing in the morning when I get out of bed,
I wonder if my Bunny's still safe in his little shed.
And than the next thing that I do I dare say you have guessed;
It's to go at once and see him, when I am washed and dressed.
And every day I see him I like him more and more,
And each day he is bigger than he was the day before.
I feed him in the morning with bran and bits of bread,
And every night I take some straw to make his little bed.
What with carrots in the morning and turnip-tops for tea,
If a bunny can be happy, I'm sure he ought to be.
Then when it's nearly bedtime I go down to his shed,
And say 'Good night you Bunny' before I go to bed.
I think there's only one thing that would make me happy quite,
If I could take my Bunny dear with me to bed at night?"
My Fairy
by Lewis Carroll

I have a fairy by my side
Which says I must not sleep,
When once in pain I loudly cried
It said "You must not weep"
If, full of mirth, I smile and grin,
It says "You must not laugh"
When once I wished to drink some gin
It said "You must not quaff".
When once a meal I wished to taste
It said "You must not bite"
When to the wars I went in haste
It said "You must not fight".
"What may I do?" at length I cried,
Tired of the painful task.
The fairy quietly replied,
And said "You must not ask".
Moral: "You mustn't."
Prelude
by Rudyard Kipling

I have eaten your bread and salt.
I have drunk your water and wine.
In deaths ye died I have watched beside,
And the lives ye led were mine.
Was there aught that I did not share
In vigil or toil or ease,
One joy or woe that I did not know,
Dear hearts across the seas?
I have written the tale of our life
For a sheltered people's mirth,
In jesting guise, but ye are wise,
And ye know what the jest is worth.
If Thou Sayest, Behold, We Knew It Not.
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

- Proverbs xxiv. 11, 12.
1.
I have done I know not what, - what have I done?
My brother's blood, my brother's soul, doth cry:
And I find no defence, find no reply,
No courage more to run this race I run
Not knowing what I have done, have left undone;
Ah me, these awful unknown hours that fly
Fruitless it may be, fleeting fruitless by
Rank with death-savor underneath the sun.
For what avails it that I did not know
The deed I did? what profits me the plea
That had I known I had not wronged him so?
Lord Jesus Christ, my God, him pity Thou;
Lord, if it may be, pity also me:
In judgment pity, and in death, and now.
2.
Thou Who hast borne all burdens, bear our load,
Bear Thou our load whatever load it be;
Our guilt, our shame, our helpless misery,
Bear Thou Who only canst, O God my God.
Seek us and find us, for we cannot Thee
Or seek or find or hold or cleave unto:
We cannot do or undo; Lord, undo
Our self-undoing, for Thine is the key
Of all we are not though we might have been.
Dear Lord, if ever mercy moved Thy mind,
If so be love of us can move Thee yet,
If still the nail-prints in Thy Hands are seen,
Remember us, - yea, how shouldst Thou forget?
Remember us for good, and seek, and find.
3.
Each soul I might have succored, may have slain,
All souls shall face me at the last Appeal,
That great last moment poised for woe or weal,
That final moment for man's bliss or bane.
Vanity of vanities, yea all is vain
Which then will not avail or help or heal:
Disfeatured faces, worn-out knees that kneel,
Will more avail than strength or beauty then.
Lord, by Thy Passion, - when Thy Face was marred
In sight of earth and hell tumultuous,
And Thy heart failed in Thee like melting wax,
And Thy Blood dropped more precious than the nard, -
Lord, for Thy sake, not ours, supply our lacks,
For Thine own sake, not ours, Christ, pity us.
Humiliation
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

I have been so innerly proud, and so long alone,
Do not leave me, or I shall break.
Do not leave me.
What should I do if you were gone again
So soon?
What should I look for?
Where should I go?
What should I be, I myself,
"I"?
What would it mean, this
I?
Do not leave me.
What should I think of death?
If I died, it would not be you:
It would be simply the same
Lack of you.
The same want, life or death,
Unfulfilment,
The same insanity of space
You not there for me.
Think, I daren't die
For fear of the lack in death.
And I daren't live.
Unless there were a morphine or a drug.
I would bear the pain.
But always, strong, unremitting
It would make me not me.
The thing with my body that would go on living
Would not be me.
Neither life nor death could help.
Think, I couldn't look towards death
Nor towards the future:
Only not look.
Only myself
Stand still and bind and blind myself.
God, that I have no choice!
That my own fulfilment is up against me
Timelessly!
The burden of self-accomplishment!
The charge of fulfilment!
And God, that she is necessary!
Necessary, and I have no choice!
Do not leave me.
Soeur Louise De La Mis'ricorde.
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

(1674.)
I have desired, and I have been desired;
But now the days are over of desire,
Now dust and dying embers mock my fire;
Where is the hire for which my life was hired?
Oh vanity of vanities, desire!
Longing and love, pangs of a perished pleasure,
Longing and love, a disenkindled fire,
And memory a bottomless gulf of mire,
And love a fount of tears outrunning measure;
Oh vanity of vanities, desire!
Now from my heart, love's deathbed, trickles, trickles,
Drop by drop slowly, drop by drop of fire,
The dross of life, of love, of spent desire;
Alas, my rose of life gone all to prickles, -
Oh vanity of vanities, desire!
Oh vanity of vanities, desire;
Stunting my hope which might have strained up higher,
Turning my garden plot to barren mire;
Oh death-struck love, oh disenkindled fire,
Oh vanity of vanities, desire!
And They Are Dumb.
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I have been across the bridges of the years.
Wet with tears
Were the ties on which I trod, going back
Down the track
To the valley where I left, 'neath skies of Truth,
My lost youth.
As I went, I dropped my burdens, one and all - 
Let them fall;
All my sorrows, all my wrinkles, all my care,
My white hair,
I laid down, like some lone pilgrim's heavy pack,
By the track.
As I neared the happy valley with light feet,
My heart beat
To the rhythm of a song I used to know
Long ago,
And my spirits gushed and bubbled like a fountain
Down a mountain.
On the border of that valley I found you,
Tried and true;
And we wandered through the golden Summer-Land
Hand in hand.
And my pulses beat with rapture in the blisses
Of your kisses.
And we met there, in those green and verdant places,
Smiling faces,
And sweet laughter echoed upward from the dells
Like gold bells.
And the world was spilling over with the glory
Of Youth's story.
It was but a dreamer's journey of the brain;
And again
I have left the happy valley far behind;
And I find
Time stands waiting with his burdens in a pack
For my back.
As he speeds me, like a rough, well-meaning friend,
To the end,
Will I find again the lost ones loved so well?
Who can tell!
But the dead know what the life will be to come - 
And they are dumb!
Mongan Thinks Of His Past Greatness
by William Butler Yeats

I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young
And weep because I know all things now:
I have been a hazel tree and they hung
The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough
Among my leaves in times out of mind:
I became a rush that horses tread:
I became a man, a hater of the wind,
Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head
Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair
Of the woman that he loves, until he dies;
Although the rushes and the fowl of the air
Cry of his love with their pitiful cries.
Heaven - Haven A nun takes the veil
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
Nursery Rhyme. CLXX. Songs.
by Unknown

I have been to market, my lady, my lady;
Then you've not been to the fair, says pussy, says pussy;
I bought me a rabbit, my lady, my lady;
Then you did not buy a hare, says pussy, says pussy;
I roasted it, my lady, my lady;
Then you did not boil it, says pussy, says pussy;
I eat it, my lady, my lady;
And I'll eat you, says pussy, says pussy.
She Revisits Alone The Church Of Her Marriage
by Thomas Hardy

I have come to the church and chancel,
Where all's the same!
- Brighter and larger in my dreams
Truly it shaped than now, meseems,
Is its substantial frame.
But, anyhow, I made my vow,
Whether for praise or blame,
Here in this church and chancel
Where all's the same.
Where touched the check-floored chancel
My knees and his?
The step looks shyly at the sun,
And says, "'Twas here the thing was done,
For bale or else for bliss!"
Of all those there I least was ware
Would it be that or this
When touched the check-floored chancel
My knees and his!
Here in this fateful chancel
Where all's the same,
I thought the culminant crest of life
Was reached when I went forth the wife
I was not when I came.
Each commonplace one of my race,
Some say, has such an aim -
To go from a fateful chancel
As not the same.
Here, through this hoary chancel
Where all's the same,
A thrill, a gaiety even, ranged
That morning when it seemed I changed
My nature with my name.
Though now not fair, though gray my hair,
He loved me, past proclaim,
Here in this hoary chancel,
Where all's the same.
Prelude To Departmental Ditties And Other Verses
by Rudyard Kipling

I have eaten your bread and salt,
I have drunk your water and wine,
The deaths ye died I have watched be-side,
And the lives that ye led were mine.
Was there aught that I did not share
In vigil or toil or ease,
One joy or woe that I did not know,
Dear hearts across the seas?
I have written the tale of our life
For a sheltered people's mirth,
In jesting guise, but ye are wise,
And ye know what the jest is worth.
The Ultimate Joy
by Unknown

I have felt the thrill of passion in the poet's mystic book
And I've lingered in delight to catch the rhythm of the brook;
I've felt the ecstasy that comes when prima donnas reach
For upper C and hold it in a long, melodious screech.
And yet the charm of all these blissful memories fades away
As I think upon the fortune that befell the other day,
As I bring to recollection, with a joyous, wistful sigh,
That I woke and felt the need of extra covers in July.
Oh, eerie hour of drowsiness - 'twas like a fairy spell,
That respite from the terrors we have known, alas, so well,
The malevolent mosquito, with a limp and idle bill,
Hung supinely from the ceiling, all exhausted by his chill.
And the early morning sunbeam lost his customary leer
And brought a gracious greeting and a prophecy of cheer;
A generous affability reached up from earth to sky,
When I woke and felt the need of extra covers in July.
In every life there comes a time of happiness supreme,
When joy becomes reality and not a glittering dream.
'Tis less appreciated, but it's worth a great deal more
Than tides which taken at their flood lead on to fortune's shore.
How vain is Art's illusion, and how potent Nature's sway
When once in kindly mood she deigns to waft our woes away!
And the memory will cheer me, though all other pleasures fly,
Of how I woke and needed extra covers in July.
Unknown.
The Happy Warrior
by Violet Jacob

I have brought no store from the field now the day is ended,
The harvest moon is up and I bear no sheaves;
When the toilers carry the fruits hanging gold and splendid,
I have but leaves.
When the saints pass by in the pride of their stainless raiment,
Their brave hearts high with the joy of the gifts they bring,
I have saved no whit from the sum of my daily payment
For offering.
Not there is my place where the workman his toil delivers,
I scarce can see the ground where the hero stands,
I must wait as the one poor fool in that host of givers,
With empty hands.
There was no time lent to me that my skill might fashion
Some work of praise, some glory, some thing of light,
For the swarms of hell came on in their power and passion,
I could but fight.
I am maimed and spent, I am broken and trodden under,
With wheel and horseman the battle has swept me o'er,
And the long, vain warfare has riven my heart asunder,
I can no more.
But my soul is still; though the sundering door has hidden
The mirth and glitter, the sound of the lighted feast,
Though the guests go in and I stand in the night, unbidden,
The worst, the least.
My soul is still. I have gotten nor fame nor treasure,
Let all men spurn me, let devils and angels frown,
But the scars I bear are a guerdon of royal measure,
My stars - my crown.
March Elegy
by Anna Akhmatova

I have enough treasures from the past
to last me longer than I need, or want.
You know as well as I . . . malevolent memory
won't let go of half of them:
a modest church, with its gold cupola
slightly askew; a harsh chorus
of crows; the whistle of a train;
a birch tree haggard in a field
as if it had just been sprung from jail;
a secret midnight conclave
of monumental Bible-oaks;
and a tiny rowboat that comes drifting out
of somebody's dreams, slowly foundering.
Winter has already loitered here,
lightly powdering these fields,
casting an impenetrable haze
that fills the world as far as the horizon.
I used to think that after we are gone
there's nothing, simply nothing at all.
Then who's that wandering by the porch
again and calling us by name?
Whose face is pressed against the frosted pane?
What hand out there is waving like a branch?
By way of reply, in that cobwebbed corner
a sunstruck tatter dances in the mirror.
Leningrad, 1960
The Punisher
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)

I have fetched the tears up out of the little wells,
Scooped them up with small, iron words,
Dripping over the runnels.
The harsh, cold wind of my words drove on, and still
I watched the tears on the guilty cheek of the boys
Glitter and spill.
Cringing Pity, and Love, white-handed, came
Hovering about the Judgment which stood in my eyes,
Whirling a flame.
The tears are dry, and the cheeks' young fruits are fresh
With laughter, and clear the exonerated eyes, since pain
Beat through the flesh.
The Angel of Judgment has departed again to the Nearness.
Desolate I am as a church whose lights are put out.
And night enters in drearness.
The fire rose up in the bush and blazed apace,
The thorn-leaves crackled and twisted and sweated in anguish;
Then God left the place.
Like a flower that the frost has hugged and let go, my head
Is heavy, and my heart beats slowly, laboriously,
My strength is shed.
His Last Request To Julia
by Robert Herrick

I have been wanton, and too bold, I fear,
To chafe o'er-much the virgin's cheek or ear;
Beg for my pardon, Julia!    he doth win
Grace with the gods who's sorry for his sin.
That done, my Julia, dearest Julia, come,
And go with me to choose my burial room:
My fates are ended; when thy Herrick dies,
Clasp thou his book, then close thou up his eyes.
The Song Of The Dynamo.
by Charles Hamilton Musgrove

I have been kissed by the Priestess of the Thin and Deadly Blood--
With the kiss that men call Lightning, and yet I did not die,
For the kiss was a message from God; I felt it and understood,
And I knew how He looked on the cosmic light and called it "Good";
I thrilled with a vibrant joy; I hummed with ecstasy.
Men hear me sing but they know not the source of my song;
I hold them enthralled with my mysterious eyes;
They quiver when I purr with the voice of a wanton woman;
They touch me and fall dead.
I am a dream of the Creator made visible;
My voice is an echo of the Voice that taught
The morning stars their choral hymn;
The force that binds me to the marts of men
Is the force that holds the planets in a leash while God
Drives them in glittering galaxy around the sun.
Here I am a weakling's symbol of a power
That spins the luminous girdle of Saturn in sure hands,
And frames the awful face of God in the shifting boreal light.
My soul is destiny and immortality;
It flashes in the eyes of the tempest, glows along
The phosphorescent billows where the hand of the Almighty
Is laid for a moment on the breast of the sea,
And the sea smiles;
My soul is the wingless word
That flies from zone to zone and speaks suddenly out of the void.
In the years that are to be
I shall soar like an evil bird over the warring camps of men,
And spew destroying poison.
I shall be the sinew of a strange wing,--
A wing that shall bear men into the forge of the thunder and the lightning.
But when I fail the groundlings shall look up
And see their brothers through the ether plunge,
Stricken, a haggard rout of flame-flotillas of the sun!
In the years that are to come
I shall be a servant in the house of men;
I shall breathe unutterable music on the spindle and the loom;
I shall sing, exultant, with the choristers of dreams fulfilled,
And light shall be bound like sandals on my feet.
I have been kissed by the Priestess of the Thin and Deadly Blood--
With the kiss that men call Lightning, and yet I did not die,
For the kiss was a message from God; I felt it and understood,
And I knew how He looked on the cosmic light and called it "Good";
I thrilled with a vibrant joy; I hummed with ecstasy.
His Last Request To Julia
by Robert Herrick

I have been wanton, and too bold, I fear,
To chafe o'er-much the virgin's cheek or ear;--
Beg for my pardon, Julia!    he doth win
Grace with the gods who's sorry for his sin.
That done, my Julia, dearest Julia, come,
And go with me to chuse my burial room:
My fates are ended; when thy Herrick dies,
Clasp thou his book, then close thou up his eyes.
And They Are Dumb
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I have been across the bridges of the years.
Wet with tears
Were the ties on which I trod, going back
Down the track
To the valley where I left, 'neath skies of Truth,
My lost youth.
As I went, I dropped my burdens, one and all - 
Let them fall;
All my sorrows, all my wrinkles, all my care,
My white hair,
I laid down, like some lone pilgrim's heavy pack,
By the track.
As I neared the happy valley with light feet,
My heart beat
To the rhythm of a song I used to know
Long ago,
And my spirits gushed and bubbled like a fountain
Down a mountain.
On the border of that valley I found you,
Tried and true;
And we wandered through the golden Summer-Land
Hand in hand.
And my pulses beat with rapture in the blisses
Of your kisses.
And we met there, in those green and verdant places,
Smiling faces,
And sweet laughter echoed upward from the dells
Like gold bells.
And the world was spilling over with the glory
Of Youth's story.
It was but a dreamer's journey of the brain;
And again
I have left the happy valley far behind;
And I find
Time stands waiting with his burdens in a pack
For my back.
As he speeds me, like a rough, well-meaning friend,
To the end,
Will I find again the lost ones loved so well?
Who can tell!
But the dead know what the life will be to come - 
And they are dumb!
New Year's Eve
by Thomas Hardy

"I have finished another year," said God,
"In grey, green, white, and brown;
I have strewn the leaf upon the sod,
Sealed up the worm within the clod,
And let the last sun down."
"And what's the good of it?" I said.
"What reasons made you call
From formless void this earth we tread,
When nine-and-ninety can be read
Why nought should be at all?
"Yea, Sire; why shaped you us, 'who in
This tabernacle groan' -
If ever a joy be found herein,
Such joy no man had wished to win
If he had never known!"
Then he: "My labours - logicless -
You may explain; not I:
Sense-sealed I have wrought, without a guess
That I evolved a Consciousness
To ask for reasons why.
"Strange that ephemeral creatures who
By my own ordering are,
Should see the shortness of my view,
Use ethic tests I never knew,
Or made provision for!"
He sank to raptness as of yore,
And opening New Year's Day
Wove it by rote as theretofore,
And went on working evermore
In his unweeting way.
1906.
I Have Become Very Hairy
by Yehuda Amichai

I have become very hairy all over my body.
I'm afraid they'll start hunting me because of my fur.
My multicolored shirt has no meaning of love,
it looks like an air photo of a railway station.
At night my body is open and awake under the blanket,
like eyes under the blindfold of someone to be shot.
Restless I shall wander about;
hungry for life I'll die.
Yet I wanted to be calm, like a mound with all its cities destroyed,
and tranquil, like a full cemetery.
Irreparableness
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I have been in the meadows all the day
And gathered there the nosegay that you see
Singing within myself as bird or bee
When such do field-work on a morn of May.
But, now I look upon my flowers, decay
Has met them in my hands more fatally
Because more warmly clasped, and sobs are free
To come instead of songs. What do you say,
Sweet counsellors, dear friends? that I should go
Back straightway to the fields and gather more?
Another, sooth, may do it, but not I!
My heart is very tired, my strength is low,
My hands are full of blossoms plucked before,
Held dead within them till myself shall die.
In Spring, Santa Barbara
by Sara Teasdale

I have been happy two weeks together,
My love is coming home to me,
Gold and silver is the weather
And smooth as lapis is the sea.
The earth has turned its brown to green
After three nights of humming rain,
And in the valleys peck and preen
Linnets with a scarlet stain.
High in the mountains all alone
The wild swans whistle on the lakes,
But I have been as still as stone,
My heart sings only when it breaks.