DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Why This Volume Is So Thin.
by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

In youth I dreamed, as other youths have dreamt,
Of love, and thrummed an amateur guitar
To verses of my own,--a stout attempt
To hold communion with the Evening Star
I wrote a sonnet, rhymed it, made it scan.
Ah me! how trippingly those last lines ran.--
O Hesperus!    O happy star! to bend
O'er Helen's bosom in the tranced west,
To match the hours heave by upon her breast,
And at her parted lip for dreams attend--
If dawn defraud thee, how shall I be deemed,
Who house within that bosom, and am dreamed?
For weeks I thought these lines remarkable;
For weeks I put on airs and called myself
A bard: till on a day, as it befell,
I took a small green Moxon from the shelf
At random, opened at a casual place,
And found my young illusions face to face
With this:--'Still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair Love's ripening breast
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest;
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever,--or else swoon to death.'
O gulf not to be crossed by taking thought!
O heights by toil not to be overcome!
Great Keats, unto your altar straight I brought
My speech, and from the shrine departed dumb.
--And yet sometimes I think you played it hard
Upon a rather hopeful minor bard.
The End Of The Episode
by Thomas Hardy

Indulge no more may we
In this sweet-bitter pastime:
The love-light shines the last time
Between you, Dear, and me.
There shall remain no trace
Of what so closely tied us,
And blank as ere love eyed us
Will be our meeting-place.
The flowers and thymy air,
Will they now miss our coming?
The dumbles thin their humming
To find we haunt not there?
Though fervent was our vow,
Though ruddily ran our pleasure,
Bliss has fulfilled its measure,
And sees its sentence now.
Ache deep; but make no moans:
Smile out; but stilly suffer:
The paths of love are rougher
Than thoroughfares of stones.
Sonnet LXVI.
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)

S' tosto come avvien che l' arco scocchi.
HE CALLS THE EYES OF LAURA FOES, BECAUSE THEY KEEP HIM IN LIFE ONLY TO TORMENT HIM.
Instantly a good archer draws his bow
Small skill it needs, e'en from afar, to see
Which shaft, less fortunate, despised may be,
Which to its destined sign will certain go:
Lady, e'en thus of your bright eyes the blow,
You surely felt pass straight and deep in me,
Searching my life, whence--such is fate's decree--
Eternal tears my stricken heart overflow;
And well I know e'en then your pity said:
Fond wretch! to misery whom passion leads,
Be this the point at once to strike him dead.
But seeing now how sorrow sorrow breeds,
All that my cruel foes against me plot,
For my worse pain, and for my death is not.
MACGREGOR.
On A Pen.
by Jonathan Swift

In youth exalted high in air,
Or bathing in the waters fair,
Nature to form me took delight,
And clad my body all in white.
My person tall, and slender waist,
On either side with fringes graced;
Till me that tyrant man espied,
And dragg'd me from my mother's side:
No wonder now I look so thin;
The tyrant stript me to the skin:
My skin he flay'd, my hair he cropt:
At head and foot my body lopt:
And then, with heart more hard than stone,
He pick'd my marrow from the bone.
To vex me more, he took a freak
To slit my tongue and make me speak:
But, that which wonderful appears,
I speak to eyes, and not to ears.
He oft employs me in disguise,
And makes me tell a thousand lies:
To me he chiefly gives in trust
To please his malice or his lust.
From me no secret he can hide;
I see his vanity and pride:
And my delight is to expose
His follies to his greatest foes.
All languages I can command,
Yet not a word I understand.
Without my aid, the best divine
In learning would not know a line:
The lawyer must forget his pleading;
The scholar could not show his reading.
Nay; man my master is my slave;
I give command to kill or save,
Can grant ten thousand pounds a-year,
And make a beggar's brat a peer.
But, while I thus my life relate,
I only hasten on my fate.
My tongue is black, my mouth is furr'd,
I hardly now can force a word.
I die unpitied and forgot,
And on some dunghill left to rot.
Graves of Infants
by John Clare

Infant' graves are steps of angels, where
Earth's brightest gems of innocence repose.
God is their parent, and they need no tear;
He takes them to His bosom from earth's woes,
A bud their lifetime and a flower their close.
Their spirits are an Iris of the skies,
Needing no prayers; a sunset's happy close.
Gone are the bright rays of their soft blue eyes;
Flowers weep in dew-drops oer them, and the gale gently sighs
Their lives were nothing but a sunny shower,
Melting on flowers as tears melt from the eye.
Their deaths were dew-drops on Heaven's amaranth bower,
And tolled on flowers as Summer gales went by.
They bowed and trembled, and they left no sigh,
And the sun smiled to show their end was well.
Infants have nought to weep for ere they die;
All prayers are needless, beads they need not tell,
White flowers their mourners are, Nature their passing bell.
The Toast.
by Robert Burns

Instead of a song, boys, I'll give you a toast,
Here's the memory of those on the twelfth that we lost!
That we lost, did I say? nay, by Heav'n, that we found;
For their fame it shall last while the world goes round.
The next in succession, I'll give you, the King!
Whoe'er would betray him, on high may he swing;
And here's the grand fabric, our free Constitution,
As built on the base of the great Revolution;
And longer with politics not to be cramm'd,
Be Anarchy curs'd, and be Tyranny damn'd;
And who would to Liberty e'er prove disloyal,
May his son be a hangman, and he his first trial.
Points And Lines
by Aldous Leonard Huxley

Instants in the quiet, small sharp stars,
Pierce my spirit with a thrust whose speed
Baffles even the grasp of time.
Oh that I might reflect them
As swiftly, as keenly as they shine.
But I am a pool of waters, summer-still,
And the stars are mirrored across me;
Those stabbing points of the sky
Turned to a thread of shaken silver,
A long fine thread.
An Epigram Inscribed To The Honourable Sergeant Kite
by Jonathan Swift

In your indignation what mercy appears,
While Jonathan's threaten'd with loss of his ears;
For who would not think it a much better choice,
By your knife to be mangled than rack'd with your voice.
If truly you [would] be revenged on the parson,
Command his attendance while you act your farce on;
Instead of your maiming, your shooting, or banging,
Bid Povey[1] secure him while you are haranguing.
Had this been your method to torture him, long since,
He had cut his own ears to be deaf to your nonsense.
Yvonne Of Brittany
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

In your mother's apple-orchard
It is grown too dark to stray,
There is none to chide you, Yvonne!
You are over far away.
There is dew on your grave grass, Yvonne!
But your feet it shall not wet:
No, you never remember, Yvonne!
And I shall soon forget.
In Youth I Have Known One
by Edgar Allan Poe

I
In youth I have known one with whom the Earth
In secret communing held, as he with it,
In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:
Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit
From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
A passionate light such for his spirit was fit, 
And yet that spirit knew, not in the hour
Of its own fervor, what had o'er it power.
II
Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought
To a ferver by the moonbeam that hangs o'er,
But I will half believe that wild light fraught
With more of sovereignty than ancient lore
Hath ever told, or is it of a thought
The unembodied essence, and no more
That with a quickening spell doth o'er us pass
As dew of the night-time, o'er the summer grass?
III
Doth o'er us pass, when, as th' expanding eye
To the loved object, so the tear to the lid
Will start, which lately slept in apathy?
And yet it need not be, (that object) hid
From us in life, but common, which doth lie
Each hour before us, but then only bid
With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken
T' awake us'Tis a symbol and a token, 
IV
Of what in other worlds shall be, and given
In beauty by our God, to those alone
Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven
Drawn by their heart's passion, and that tone,
That high tone of the spirit which hath striven
Though not with Faith, with godliness, whose throne
With desperate energy 't hath beaten down;
Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.
Still Be A Child.
by Victor-Marie Hugo

("O vous que votre 'ge d'fende")
[IX., February, 1840.]
In youthful spirits wild,
Smile, for all beams on thee;
Sport, sing, be still the child,
The flower, the honey-bee.
Bring not the future near,
For Joy too soon declines - 
What is man's mission here?
Toil, where no sunlight shines!
Our lot is hard, we know;
From eyes so gayly beaming,
Whence rays of beauty flow,
Salt tears most oft are streaming.
Free from emotions past,
All joy and hope possessing,
With mind in pureness cast,
Sweet ignorance confessing.
Plant, safe from winds and showers,
Heart with soft visions glowing,
In childhood's happy hours
A mother's rapture showing.
Loved by each anxious friend,
No carking care within - 
When summer gambols end,
My winter sports begin.
Sweet poesy from heaven
Around thy form is placed,
A mother's beauty given,
By father's thought is graced!
Seize, then, each blissful second,
Live, for joy sinks in night,
And those whose tale is reckoned,
Have had their days of light.
Then, oh! before we part,
The poet's blessing take,
Ere bleeds that aged heart,
Or child the woman make.
Dublin University Magazine.
Ode on Beauty.
by Edward Shanks

Infinite peace is hanging in the air,
Infinite peace is resting on mine eyes,
That just an hour ago learnt how to bear
Seeing your body's flaming harmonies.
The grey clouds flecked with orange are and gold,
Birds unto rest are falling, falling, falling,
And all the earth goes slowly into night,
Steadily turning from the harshly bright
Sunset.    And now the wind is growing cold
And in my heart a hidden voice is calling.
Say, is our sense of beauty mixed with earth
When lip on lip and breast on breast we cling,
When ecstasy brings short bright sobs to birth
And all our pulses, both our bodies sing?
When through the haze that gathers on my sight
I see your eyelids, know the eyes behind
See me and half not see me, when our blood
Goes roaring like a deep tremendous flood,
Calm and terrific in unhasty might,
Is then our inner sight sealed up and blind?
Or could it be that when our blood was colder
And side by side we sat with lips disparted
I saw the perfect line of your resting shoulder,
Your mouth, your peaceful throat with fuller-hearted,
More splendid joy?    Ah poignant joys all these!
And rest can stab the heart as well as passion.
Yea, I have known sobs choke my heart to see
Your honey-coloured hair move languorously,
Ruffled, not by my hands, but by the breeze,
And I have prayed the rough air for compassion.
Yea, I have knelt to the unpiteous air
And knelt to gods I knew not, to remove
The viewless hands whose sight I could not bear
Out of the wind-blown head of her I love.
Ecstasy enters me and cannot speak,
Seizes my hands and smites my fainting eyes
And sends through all my veins a dim despair
Of never apprehending all so fair
And I have stood, unnerved and numb and weak,
Watching your breathing bosom fall and rise.
Ah no!    This joy is empty, incomplete,
And sullied with a sense of too much longing,
Where thoughts and fancies, sweet and bitter-sweet,
And old regrets and new-born hopes come thronging.
Man can see beauty for a moment's space
And live, having seen her with an unfilmed eye,
If all his body and all his soul in one
Instant are tuned by passion to unison
And I can image in your kissing face
The eternal meaning of the earth and sky.
The Serenade.
by Nathaniel Parker Willis

Innocent dreams be thine! The silver night
Is a fit curtain for thy lovely sleep.
The stars keep watch above thee, and the moon
Sits like a brooding spirit up in Heaven,
Ruling the night's deep influences, and life
Hath a hushed pulse, and the suspended leaves
Sleep with their whisperings as if the dew
Were a soft finger on the lip of sound.
Innocent dreams be thine! thy heart sends up
Its thoughts of purity like pearly bells
Rising in crystal fountains, and the sin
That thou hast seen by day, will, like a shade,
Pass from thy memory, as if the pure
Had an unconscious ministry by night.
Midnight - and now for music! Would I were
A sound that I might steal upon thy dreams,
And, like the breathing of my flute, distil
Sweetly upon thy senses. Softly, boy!
Breathe the low cadences as if the words
Fainted upon thy lip - I would not break
Her slumber quite - but only, as she dreams,
Witch the lull'd sense till she believes she hears
Celestial melody: -
At The Red Throat
by Paul Cameron Brown

In youth, Death was
a puny boy possessing but
wormy hands & fleshless fingers
as in Witch Hazel
or Scrooge's Future Ghost
- that insipid Evil One
Hansel so easily outwitted
in a gingerbread house.
Time brought increased notoriety.
Saucy times with a soup'on of respect
for the artful dodger.
Givens change, an armful of
orange lilies, limp & loathsome,
on a tombstone door
before trumpets of rain.
Graven images. Lifeless stone.
Death became stone.
Stone empty. The maggot emptiness
burrowing into chiselled easel and
the stone-cutter's savage magic.
Just a bitty stone
to herald a passing.
Night-jars.
Old straw-chairs with
a broom pronouncing
the wall base with its touch empty,
the empress of bandages
leaning to rags
On table scraps,
sorry gloom of an old building
by a pickled lake
leaking into ebb twilight.
The coronation of the nightmare,
the moon with her billowing robes and withered spoon
unfolding midstream ...
la cauchemar ou
d'nud'e soir'e
to discover, with wonder, ices with sherbet
reek like nightsweats;
a windsail of pooled light
thru puddles of trees.
Brackish backwater - 
thoughts of black ice
and huddled masses of silver
breaking thru the sun's
winter curtain as erupting coins.
Nocturne
by Virna Sheard

Infold us with thy peace, dear moon-lit night,
And let thy silver silence wrap us round
Till we forget the city's dazzling light,
The city's ceaseless sound.
Here where the sand lies white upon the shore,
And little velvet-fingered breezes blow,
Dear sea, thy world-old wonder-song once more
Sing to us e'er we go.
Give us thy garnered sweets, short summer hour:
Perfume of rose, and balm of sun-steeped pine;
Scent from the lily's cup and horned flower,
Where bees have drained the wine.
Come, small musicians in the rough sea grass,
Pipe us the serenade we love the best;
And winds of midnight, chant for us a mass,
Our hearts would be at rest.
God of all beauty, though the world is thine,
Our faith grows often faint, oft hope is spent;
Show us Thyself in all things fair and fine,
Teach us the stars' content.
Castle Gordon.
by James McIntyre

In youth we spent a pleasant day
Round Castle Gordon on the Spey,
There is no Clan can gird the sword on,
Can compare with the Clan Gordon,
In India, China and Soudan,
They manfully have led the van.
Paudeen
by William Butler Yeats

Indignant at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite
Of our old Paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind
Among the stones and thorn trees, under morning light;
Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind
A curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thought
That on the lonely height where all are in God's eye,
There cannot be, confusion of our sound forgot,
A single soul that lacks a sweet crystaline cry.
Ingerid Sletten (From Arne)
by Bj'rnstjerne Martinius Bj'rnson

Ingerid Sletten of Sillejord
Neither gold nor silver did own,
But a little hood of gay wool alone,
Her mother had given of yore.
A little hood of gay wool alone,
With no braid nor lining, was here;
But parent love made it ever dear,
And brighter than gold it shone.
She kept the hood twenty years just so:
"Be it spotless," softly she cried,
"Until I shall wear it once as bride,
When I to the altar go."
She kept the hood thirty years just so:
"Be it spotless," softly she cried,
"Then wear it I will, a gladsome bride,
When it to our Lord I show."
She kept the hood forty years just so,
With her mother ever in mind.
"Little hood, be with me to this resigned,
That ne'er to the altar we'll go."
She steps to the chest where the hood has lain,
And seeks it with swelling heart;
She guides her hand to its place apart, - 
But never a thread did remain.
Sonnets From The Portuguese XII
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Indeed this very love which is my boast,
And which, when rising up from breast to brow,
Doth crown me with a ruby large enow
To draw men's eyes and prove the inner cost,
This love even, all my worth, to the uttermost,
I should not love withal, unless that thou
Hadst set me an example, shown me how,
When first thine earnest eyes with mine were crossed,
And love called love. And thus, I cannot speak
Of love even, as a good thing of my own:
Thy soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak,
And placed it by thee on a golden throne,
And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!)
Is by thee only, whom I love alone.
Graves Of Infants
by John Clare

Infants' gravemounds are steps of angels, where
Earth's brightest gems of innocence repose.
God is their parent, so they need no tear;
He takes them to his bosom from earth's woes,
A bud their lifetime and a flower their close.
Their spirits are the Iris of the skies,
Needing no prayers; a sunset's happy close.
Gone are the bright rays of their soft blue eyes;
Flowers weep in dew-drops o'er them, and the gale gently sighs.
Their lives were nothing but a sunny shower,
Melting on flowers as tears melt from the eye.
Each death
Was tolled on flowers as Summer gales went by.
They bowed and trembled, yet they heaved no sigh,
And the sun smiled to show the end was well.
Infants have nought to weep for ere they die;
All prayers are needless, beads they need not tell,
White flowers their mourners are, Nature their passing bell.
Effigy Of A Nun
by Sara Teasdale

Infinite gentleness, infinite irony
Are in this face with fast-sealed eyes,
And round this mouth that learned in loneliness
How useless their wisdom is to the wise.
In her nun's habit carved, carefully, lovingly,
By one who knew the ways of womenkind,
This woman's face still keeps its cold wistful calm,
All the subtle pride of her mind.
These pale curved lips of hers holding their hidden smile,
Show she had weighed the world; her will was set;
These long patrician hands clasping he crucifix
Once having made their choice, had no regret.
She was one of those who hoard their own thoughts lovingly,
Feeling them far too dear to give away,
Content to look at life with the high insolent
Air of an audience watching a play.
If she was curious, if she was passionate,
She must have told herself that love was great,
But that the lacking it might be as great a thing
If she held fast to it, challenging fate.
She who so loved herself and her own warring thoughts,
Watching their humorous, tragic rebound,
In her thick habit's fold, sleeping, sleeping,
Is she amused at dreams she has found?
Infinite tenderness, infinite irony,
Hidden forever in her closed eyes,
That must have learned too well in their long loneliness
How empty their wisdom is even to the wise.
Foolishness.
by Robert Herrick

In's Tusc'lans, Tully doth confess,
No plague there's like to foolishness.
The Angel Of The Jasmine Wreath
by Ethel Allen Murphy

(From a picture by Botticelli, of the Madonna and Child with Angels,--in the Borghese Gallery)
Ineffable angel, with the jasmine wreathed,
Wherefrom the sweetness over brow and lips,
And luminous white eyelids tremulously slips,
A visible essence from thy beauty breathed,--
The pure and pensive marvel of thy face is sheathed
In tresses softer than the bloom of night,
Wherefrom the dampness on thy forehead drips
With dews from out God's meadows infinite,--
Thy face, itself, a lily filled with light:--
Thyself the youngest of God's angels and most fair,
Bearing His latest breath and blessing on thine hair,
Thou comest fresh from looking on thy Lord;
And all is well, and all is filled for thee
With eloquent, mute wonder of His Word.
Oh, lean a little forth thy lips to me,
For I am fain of peace amid this earthly strife,
And I would drink, a spent soul, thirstily,
From out thy never-failing cup of life.
The Mountain Sprite.
by Thomas Moore

In yonder valley there dwelt, alone,
A youth, whose moments had calmly flown,
Till spells came o'er him, and, day and night,
He was haunted and watched by a Mountain Sprite.
As once, by moonlight, he wander'd o'er
The golden sands of that island shore,
A foot-print sparkled before his sight--
'Twas the fairy foot of the Mountain Sprite!
Beside a fountain, one sunny day,
As bending over the stream he lay,
There peeped down o'er him two eyes of light,
And he saw in that mirror the Mountain Sprite.
He turned, but, lo, like a startled bird,
That spirit fled!--and the youth but heard
Sweet music, such as marks the flight
Of some bird of song, from the Mountain Sprite.
One night, still haunted by that bright look,
The boy, bewildered, his pencil took,
And, guided only by memory's light,
Drew the once-seen form of the Mountain Sprite.
"Oh thou, who lovest the shadow," cried
A voice, low whispering by his side,
"Now turn and see,"--here the youth's delight
Sealed the rosy lips of the Mountain Sprite.
"Of all the Spirits of land and sea,"
Then rapt he murmured, "there's none like thee,
"And oft, oh oft, may thy foot thus light
"In this lonely bower, sweet Mountain Sprite!"
Innocent Child And Snow-White Flower.
by William Cullen Bryant

Innocent child and snow-white flower!
Well are ye paired in your opening hour.
Thus should the pure and the lovely meet,
Stainless with stainless, and sweet with sweet.
White as those leaves, just blown apart,
Are the folds of thy own young heart;
Guilty passion and cankering care
Never have left their traces there.
Artless one! though thou gazest now
O'er the white blossom with earnest brow,
Soon will it tire thy childish eye;
Fair as it is, thou wilt throw it by.
Throw it aside in thy weary hour,
Throw to the ground the fair white flower;
Yet, as thy tender years depart,
Keep that white and innocent heart.
At Sunset
by Madison Julius Cawein

Into the sunset's turquoise marge
The moon dips, like a pearly barge
Enchantment sails through magic seas
To fairyland Hesperides,
Over the hills and away.
Into the fields, in ghost-gray gown,
The young-eyed Dusk comes slowly down;
Her apron filled with stars she stands,
And one or two slip from her hands
Over the hills and away.
Above the wood's black caldron bends
The witch-faced Night and, muttering, blends
The dew and heat, whose bubbles make
The mist and musk that haunt the brake
Over the hills and away.
Oh, come with me, and let us go
Beyond the sunset lying low,
Beyond the twilight and the night
Into Love's kingdom of long light
Over the hills and away.
At Sunset
by Madison Julius Cawein

Into the sunset's turquoise marge
The moon dips, like a pearly barge
Enchantment sails through magic seas
To faeryland Hesperides,
Over the hills and away.
Into the fields, in ghost-gray gown,
The young-eyed Dusk comes slowly down;
Her apron filled with stars she stands,
And one or two slip from her hands
Over the hills and away.
Above the wood's black caldron bends
The witch-faced Night and, muttering, blends
The dew and heat, whose bubbles make
The mist and musk that haunt the brake
Over the hills and away.
Oh, come with me, and let us go
Beyond the sunset lying low;
Beyond the twilight and the night,
Into Love's kingdom of long light,
Over the hills and away.
To The Reader Of These Sonnets
by Michael Drayton

Into these loves who but for passion looks,
At this first sight here let him lay them by,
And seek elsewhere in turning other books,
Which better may his labour satisfy.
No far-fetched sigh shall ever wound my breast;
Love from mine eye a tear shall never wring;
Nor in "Ah me's!" my whining sonnets drest,
A libertine fantasticly I sing.
My verse is the true image of my mind,
Ever in motion, still desiring change;
To choice of all variety inclined,
And in all humours sportively I range.
My muse is rightly of the English strain,
That cannot long one fashion entertain.