DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
I Watch, And Long Have Watched, With Calm Regret
by William Wordsworth

I watch, and long have watched, with calm regret
Yon slowly-sinking star, immortal Sire
(So might he seem) of all the glittering quire!
Blue ether still surrounds him, yet, and yet;
But now the horizon's rocky parapet
Is reached, where, forfeiting his bright attire,
He burns, transmuted to a dusky fire,
Then pays submissively the appointed debt
To the flying moments, and is seen no more.
Angels and gods! We struggle with our fate,
While health, power, glory, from their height decline,
Depressed; and then extinguished; and our state,
In this, how different, lost Star, from thine,
That no to-morrow shall our beams restore!
She, I, And They
by Thomas Hardy

I was sitting,
She was knitting,
And the portraits of our fore-folk hung around;
When there struck on us a sigh;
"Ah - what is that?" said I:
"Was it not you?" said she. "A sigh did sound."
I had not breathed it,
Nor the night-wind heaved it,
And how it came to us we could not guess;
And we looked up at each face
Framed and glazed there in its place,
Still hearkening; but thenceforth was silentness.
Half in dreaming,
"Then its meaning,"
Said we, "must be surely this; that they repine
That we should be the last
Of stocks once unsurpassed,
And unable to keep up their sturdy line."
1916.
Meditations - His
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I was so proud of you last night, dear girl,
While man with man was striving for your smile.
You never lost your head, nor once dropped down
From your high place
As queen in that gay whirl.
(It takes more poise to wear a little crown
With modesty and grace
Than to adorn the lordlier thrones of earth.)
You seem so free from artifice and wile:
And in your eyes I read
Encouragement to my unspoken thought.
My heart is eloquent with words to plead
Its cause of passion; but my questioning mind,
Knowing how love is blind,
Dwells on the pros and cons, and God knows what.
My heart cries with each beat,
'She is so beautiful, so pure, so sweet,
So more than dear.'
And then I hear
The voice of Reason, asking:    'Would she meet
Life's common duties with good common sense?
Could she bear quiet evenings at your hearth,
And not be sighing for gay scenes of mirth?
If, some great day, love's mighty recompense
For chastity surrendered came to her,
If she felt stir
Beneath her heart a little pulse of life,
Would she rejoice with holy pride and wonder,
And find new glory in the name of wife?
Or would she plot with sin, and seek to plunder
Love's sanctuary, and cast away its treasure,
That she might keep her freedom and her pleasure?
Could she be loyal mate and mother dutiful?
Or is she only some bright hothouse bloom,
Seedless and beautiful,
Meant just for decoration, and for show?'
Alone here in my room,
I hear this voice of Reason.    My poor heart
Has ever but one answer to impart,
'I love her so.'
Zenas Witt
by Edgar Lee Masters

I was sixteen, and I had the most terrible dreams,
And specks before my eyes, and nervous weakness.
And I couldn't remember the books I read,
Like Frank Drummer who memorized page after page.
And my back was weak, and I worried and worried,
And I was embarrassed and stammered my lessons,
And when I stood up to recite I'd forget
Everything that I had studied.
Well, I saw Dr. Weese's advertisement,
And there I read everything in print,
Just as if he had known me;
And about the dreams which I couldn't help.
So I knew I was marked for an early grave.
And I worried until I had a cough
And then the dreams stopped.
And then I slept the sleep without dreams
Here on the hill by the river.
Tank-Top
by Paul Cameron Brown

I was playing sonatas on your skin - 
no beauty & the beast scenario
though the Tower pulchritude was intact
with enough purple agape grape leaves
and ivy for a fig-leaved Eve
with wind wet at the windows
(and later the willows),
where gravelly, cloven hooves became party
to my thoughts; for you,
blessed with a triangular patch,
- and something like strawberry - 
lay moist & woven into strict tapestry
like a mantle covering
abrupt oasis of skin
(the better to peer in).
I scaled the heights
not castle vaults, mind you,
but the elevator shaft and draw-bridge equivalent
of a white charger - 
fierce visor in place
- armour gleaming - 
a sabre rattling at my side
be-jewelled & twinkling
the key clinking
there, to corner distance
(time & space)
dragons to be dirked and slain.
Fiery eye, forked tails
donut-sized scales
plastered as a calendar
or shingler might a tiled roof
- the empty spell
Bellerophon spying his Lady in a belfry
on driving home.
Song
by George MacDonald

I was very cold
In the summer weather;
The sun shone all his gold,
But I was very cold--
Alas, we were grown old,
Love and I together!
Oh, but I was cold
In the summer weather!
Sudden I grew warmer
Though the brooks were frozen:
"Truly, scorn did harm her!"
I said, and I grew warmer;
"Better men the charmer
Knows at least a dozen!"
I said, and I grew warmer
Though the brooks were frozen.
Spring sits on her nest,
Daisies and white clover;
And my heart at rest
Lies in the spring's young nest:
My love she loves me best,
And the frost is over!
Spring sits on her nest,
Daisies and white clover!
The Child And The Flower-Elf.
by H. P. Nichols

"I was walking, dearest mother,
This morning, by the brook,
And tired at last I rested me
Within a shady nook.
"There all was still and lonely,
And suddenly I heard
A little voice,--a sweeter one
Than note of any bird.
"I looked above, around me,
I saw not whence it came;
And yet that tone of music
Was calling me by name.
"The violet beside me
Bloomed with its purple cup,
And a tiny face, so lovely,
Amidst its leaves peeped up.
"Again the silver music,--
The voice I loved to hear,--
Upon its sweet breath floated,
And bade me not to fear.
"'I am the elf,' it whispered,
'Who in the violet dwells,
And every blossom hides one
Within its fragrant cells.
"'If you will list our teaching,
And catch our faintest tone,
Your heart will be as spotless,
As loving as our own.'
"And then, as I was gazing,
It vanished from my sight;
Once more the violet nodded,
And sought the sunshine bright."
"My darling child, the elfins
That live within the flowers
Sweet sounds are ever breathing,
To glad this world of ours.
"Well may we weep and sorrow,
If they are silent all;
Then are our souls too sinful
To heed their spirit call.
"The pure in heart alone can hear
Those precious words and low;
And by their lessons purer yet
Throughout their lives shall grow."
Youth And June.
by Jean Blewett

I was your lover long ago, sweet June,
Ere life grew hard; I am your lover still,
And follow gladly to the wondrous tune
You pipe on golden reeds to vale and hill.
I am your lover still - to me you seem
To hold the fragrance of the joys long dead - 
The brightness and the beauty of the dream
We dreamed in youth - to hold the tears we shed,
The laughter of our lips - the faith that lies
Back in that season dear to every heart,
Life's springtime, when God's earth and God's blue skies
Are, measured by our glance, not far apart.
The Voice
by Charles Baudelaire

I was the height of a folio, my bed just
backed on the bookcases' sombre Babel,
everything, Latin ashes, Greek dust
jumbled together: novel, science, fable.
Two voices spoke to me. One, firmly, slyly,
said: 'The Earth's a cake filled with sweetness:
I can give you (and your pleasure will be
endless!) an appetite of comparable vastness.'
The other said: 'Come! Come voyage in dream,
beyond the known, beyond the possible!'
And that one sang like the ocean breeze,
phantom, from who knows where, its wail
caressing the ear, and yet still frightening.
You I answered: 'Yes! Gentle voice!' My
wound and what, I'd call my fatality, begins
alas, from then. From behind the scenery
of vast existence, in voids without light,
I see the strangest worlds distinctly:
ecstatic victim of my second sight,
snakes follow me striking at my feet.
Since then, like the prophets, I greet
the desert and the sea with tenderness:
I laugh at funerals, I cry at feasts,
wine tastes smooth that's full of bitterness:
and, eyes on the sky, I fall into holes,
and frequently I take facts for lies.
But 'Keep your dreams!' the Voice consoles,
'Madmen have sweeter ones than the wise!'
Josiah Tompkins
by Edgar Lee Masters

I was well known and much beloved
And rich, as fortunes are reckoned
In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked.
That was the home for me,
Though all my children had flown afar - 
Which is the way of Nature - all but one.
The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home,
To be my help in my failing years
And the solace of his mother.
But I grew weaker, as he grew stronger,
And he quarreled with me about the business,
And his wife said I was a hindrance to it;
And he won his mother to see as he did,
Till they tore me up to be transplanted
With them to her girlhood home in Missouri.
And so much of my fortune was gone at last,
Though I made the will just as he drew it,
He profited little by it.
The Derelict
by Rudyard Kipling

I was the staunchest of our fleet
Till the sea rose beneath my feet
Unheralded, in hatred past all measure.
Into his pits he stamped my crew,
Buffeted, blinded, bound and threw,
Bidding me eyeless wait upon his pleasure.
Man made me, and my will
Is to my maker still,
Whom now the currents con, the rollers steer,
Lifting forlorn to spy
Trailed smoke along the sky,
Falling afraid lest any keel come near!
Wrenched as the lips of thirst,
Wried, dried, and split and burst,
Bone-bleached my decks, wind-scoured to the graining;
And, jarred at every roll
The gear that was my soul
Answers the anguish of my beams' complaining.
For life that crammed me full,
Gangs of the prying gull
That shriek and scrabble on the riven hatches.
For roar that dumbed the gale,
My hawse-pipes' guttering wail,
Sobbing my heart out through the uncounted watches.
Blind in the hot blue ring
Through all my points I swing,
Swing and return to shift the sun anew.
Blind in my well-known sky
I hear the stars go by,
Mocking the prow that cannot hold one true.
White on my wasted path
Wave after wave in wrath
Frets 'gainst his fellow, warring where to send me.
Flung forward, heaved aside,
Witless and dazed I bide
The mercy of the comber that shall end me.
North where the bergs careen,
The spray of seas unseen
Smokes round my head and freezes in the falling.
South where the corals breed,
The footless, floating weed
Folds me and fouls me, strake on strake upcrawling.
I that was clean to run
My race against the sun,
Strength on the deep, am bawd to all disaster;
Whipped forth by night to meet
My sister's careless feet,
And with a kiss betray her to my master.
Man made me, and my will
Is to my maker still,
To him and his, our peoples at their pier:
Lifting in hope to spy
Trailed smoke along the sky,
Falling afraid lest any keel come near!
Willie Metcalf
by Edgar Lee Masters

I was Willie Metcalf.
They used to call me "Doctor Meyers,"
Because, they said, I looked like him.
And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.
I lived in the livery stable,
Sleeping on the floor
Side by side with Roger Baughman's bulldog,
Or sometimes in a stall.
I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses
Without getting kicked - we knew each other.
On spring days I tramped through the country
To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost,
That I was not a separate thing from the earth.
I used to lose myself, as if in sleep,
By lying with eyes half-open in the woods.
Sometimes I talked with animals - even toads and snakes - 
Anything that had an eye to look into.
Once I saw a stone in the sunshine
Trying to turn into jelly.
In April days in this cemetery
The dead people gathered all about me,
And grew still, like a congregation in silent prayer.
I never knew whether I was a part of the earth
With flowers growing in me, or whether I walked - 
Now I know.
To An Intrusive Butterfly.
by Henry Austin Dobson

"Kill not--for Pity's sake--and lest ye slay
The meanest thing upon its upward way."
Five Rules of Buddha.
I watch you through the garden walks,
I watch you float between
The avenues of dahlia stalks,
And flicker on the green;
You hover round the garden seat,
You mount, you waver. Why,--
Why storm us in our still retreat,
O saffron Butterfly!
Across the room in loops of flight
I watch you wayward go;
Dance down a shaft of glancing light,
Review my books a-row;
Before the bust you flaunt and flit
Of "blind M'onides"--
Ah, trifler, on his lips there lit
Not butterflies, but bees!
You pause, you poise, you circle up
Among my old Japan;
You find a comrade on a cup,
A friend upon a fan;
You wind anon, a breathing-while,
Around AMANDA'S brow;--
Dost dream her then, O Volatile!
E'en such an one as thou?
Away! Her thoughts are not as thine.
A sterner purpose fills
Her steadfast soul with deep design
Of baby bows and frills;
What care hath she for worlds without,
What heed for yellow sun,
Whose endless hopes revolve about
A planet, 'tat One!
Away! Tempt not the best of wives;
Let not thy garish wing
Come fluttering our Autumn lives
With truant dreams of Spring!
Away! Re-seek thy "Flowery Land;"
Be Buddha's law obeyed;
Lest Betty's undiscerning hand
Should slay ... a future PRAED!
On The Brink.
by Charles Stuart Calverley

I watch'd her as she stoop'd to pluck
A wildflower in her hair to twine;
And wish'd that it had been my luck
To call her mine.
Anon I heard her rate with mad
Mad words her babe within its cot;
And felt particularly glad
That it had not.
I knew (such subtle brains have men)
That she was uttering what she shouldn't;
And thought that I would chide, and then
I thought I wouldn't:
Who could have gazed upon that face,
Those pouting coral lips, and chided?
A Rhadamanthus, in my place,
Had done as I did:
For ire wherewith our bosoms glow
Is chain'd there oft by Beauty's spell;
And, more than that, I did not know
The widow well.
So the harsh phrase pass'd unreproved.
Still mute - (O brothers, was it sin?) -
I drank, unutterably moved,
Her beauty in:
And to myself I murmur'd low,
As on her upturn'd face and dress
The moonlight fell, "Would she say No,
By chance, or Yes?"
She stood so calm, so like a ghost
Betwixt me and that magic moon,
That I already was almost
A finish'd coon.
But when she caught adroitly up
And soothed with smiles her little daughter;
And gave it, if I'm right, a sup
Of barley-water;
And, crooning still the strange sweet lore
Which only mothers' tongues can utter,
Snow'd with deft hand the sugar o'er
Its bread and butter;
And kiss'd it clingingly - (Ah, why
Don't women do these things in private?) -
I felt that if I lost her, I
Should not survive it:
And from my mouth the words nigh flew -
The past, the future, I forgat 'em:
"Oh! if you'd kiss me as you do
That thankless atom!"
But this thought came ere yet I spake,
And froze the sentence on my lips:
"They err, who marry wives that make
Those little slips."
It came like some familiar rhyme,
Some copy to my boyhood set;
And that's perhaps the reason I'm
Unmarried yet.
Would she have own'd how pleased she was,
And told her love with widow's pride?
I never found out that, because
I never tried.
Be kind to babes and beasts and birds:
Hearts may be hard, though lips are coral;
And angry words are angry words:
And that's the moral.
Hamilton Greene
by Edgar Lee Masters

I was the only child of Frances Harris of Virginia
And Thomas Greene of Kentucky,
Of valiant and honorable blood both.
To them I owe all that I became,
Judge, member of Congress, leader in the State.
From my mother I inherited
Vivacity, fancy, language;
From my father will, judgment, logic.
All honor to them
For what service I was to the people!
The Well-Beloved
by Thomas Hardy

I wayed by star and planet shine
Towards the dear one's home
At Kingsbere, there to make her mine
When the next sun upclomb.
I edged the ancient hill and wood
Beside the Ikling Way,
Nigh where the Pagan temple stood
In the world's earlier day.
And as I quick and quicker walked
On gravel and on green,
I sang to sky, and tree, or talked
Of her I called my queen.
- "O faultless is her dainty form,
And luminous her mind;
She is the God-created norm
Of perfect womankind!"
A shape whereon one star-blink gleamed
Glode softly by my side,
A woman's; and her motion seemed
The motion of my bride.
And yet methought she'd drawn erstwhile
Adown the ancient leaze,
Where once were pile and peristyle
For men's idolatries.
- "O maiden lithe and lone, what may
Thy name and lineage be,
Who so resemblest by this ray
My darling? - Art thou she?"
The Shape: "Thy bride remains within
Her father's grange and grove."
- "Thou speakest rightly," I broke in,
"Thou art not she I love."
- "Nay: though thy bride remains inside
Her father's walls," said she,
"The one most dear is with thee here,
For thou dost love but me."
Then I: "But she, my only choice,
Is now at Kingsbere Grove?"
Again her soft mysterious voice:
"I am thy only Love."
Thus still she vouched, and still I said,
"O sprite, that cannot be!" . . .
It was as if my bosom bled,
So much she troubled me.
The sprite resumed: "Thou hast transferred
To her dull form awhile
My beauty, fame, and deed, and word,
My gestures and my smile.
"O fatuous man, this truth infer,
Brides are not what they seem;
Thou lovest what thou dreamest her;
I am thy very dream!"
- "O then," I answered miserably,
Speaking as scarce I knew,
"My loved one, I must wed with thee
If what thou say'st be true!"
She, proudly, thinning in the gloom:
"Though, since troth-plight began,
I've ever stood as bride to groom,
I wed no mortal man!"
Thereat she vanished by the Cross
That, entering Kingsbere town,
The two long lanes form, near the fosse
Below the faneless Down.
- When I arrived and met my bride,
Her look was pinched and thin,
As if her soul had shrunk and died,
And left a waste within.
Murmurs In The Gloom
by Thomas Hardy

(Nocturne)
I wayfared at the nadir of the sun
Where populations meet, though seen of none;
And millions seemed to sigh around
As though their haunts were nigh around,
And unknown throngs to cry around
Of things late done.
"O Seers, who well might high ensample show"
(Came throbbing past in plainsong small and slow),
"Leaders who lead us aimlessly,
Teachers who train us shamelessly,
Why let ye smoulder flamelessly
The truths ye trow?
"Ye scribes, that urge the old medicament,
Whose fusty vials have long dried impotent,
Why prop ye meretricious things,
Denounce the sane as vicious things,
And call outworn factitious things
Expedient?
"O Dynasties that sway and shake us so,
Why rank your magnanimities so low
That grace can smooth no waters yet,
But breathing threats and slaughters yet
Ye grieve Earth's sons and daughters yet
As long ago?
"Live there no heedful ones of searching sight,
Whose accents might be oracles that smite
To hinder those who frowardly
Conduct us, and untowardly;
To lead the nations vawardly
From gloom to light?"
September 22, 1899.
The Turn Of The Road (The Adventures Of Seumas Beg)
by James Stephens

I was playing with my hoop along the road
Just where the bushes are, when, suddenly,
There came a shout., I ran away and stowed
Myself beneath a bush, and watched to see
What made the noise, and then, around the bend,
I saw a woman running.    She was old
And wrinkle-faced, and had big teeth., The end
Of her red shawl caught on a bush and rolled
Right off her, and her hair fell down., Her face
Was awful white, and both her eyes looked sick,
And she was talking queer.    "O God of Grace!"
Said she, "where is the child?" and flew back quick
The way she came, and screamed, and shook her hands;
... Maybe she was a witch from foreign lands.
Brookland Road
by Rudyard Kipling

I was very well pleased with what I knowed,
I reckoned myself no fool, 
Till I met with a maid on the Brookland Road,
That turned me back to school. 
Low down-low down!
Where the liddle green lanterns shine, 
O maids, I've done with 'ee all but one,
And she can never be mine!
'Twas right in the middest of a hot June night,
With thunder duntin' round,
And I see her face by the fairy-light
That beats from off the ground.
She only smiled and she never spoke,
She smiled and went away;
But when she'd gone my heart was broke
And my wits was clean astray.
0, stop your ringing and let me be, 
Let be, 0 Brookland bells!
You'll ring Old Goodman out of the sea,
Before I wed one else!
Old Goodman's Farm is rank sea-sand,
And was this thousand year;
But it shall turn to rich plough-land
Before I change my dear.
0, Fairfield Church is water-bound
From autumn to the spring;
But it shall turn to high hill-ground
Before my bells do ring.
0, leave me walk on Brookland Road,
In the thunder and warm rain, 
0, leave me look where my love goed,
And p'raps I'll see her again!
Low down, low down!
Where the liddle green lanterns shine, 
0 maids, I've done with 'ee all but one,
And she can never be mine!
Elegiac Stanzas Suggested By A Picture Of Peele Castle In A Storm, Painted By Sir George Beaumont
by William Wordsworth

I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.
So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so very like, was day to day!
Whene'er I looked, thy Image still was there;
It trembled, but it never passed away.
How perfect was the calm! it seemed no sleep;
No mood, which season takes away, or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.
Ah! then , if mine had been the Painter's hand,
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet's dream;
I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile
Amid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.
Thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house divine
Of peaceful years; a chronicle of heaven;
Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine
The very sweetest had to thee been given.
A Picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature's breathing life.
Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
Such Picture would I at that time have made:
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A steadfast peace that might not be betrayed.
So once it would have been, 'tis so no more;
I have submitted to a new control:
A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanised my Soul.
Not for a moment could I now behold
A smiling sea, and be what I have been:
The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old;
This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.
Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the Friend,
If he had lived, of Him whom I deplore,
This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.
O 'tis a passionate Work!'yet wise and well,
Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
That Hulk which labours in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!
And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,
I love to see the look with which it braves,
Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time,
The lightning, the fierce wind, the trampling waves.
Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind.
But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.