DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Lines Written In The Highlands After A Visit To Burns's Country
by John Keats

There is a charm in footing slow across a silent plain,
Where patriot battle has been fought, where glory had the gain;
There is a pleasure on the heath where Druids old have been,
Where mantles grey have rustled by and swept the nettles green;
There is a joy in every spot made known by times of old,
New to the feet, although each tale a hundred times be told;
There is a deeper joy than all, more solemn in the heart,
More parching to the tongue than all, of more divine a smart,
When weary steps forget themselves upon a pleasant turf,
Upon hot sand, or flinty road, or sea-shore iron scurf,
Toward the castle or the cot, where long ago was born
One who was great through mortal days, and died of fame unshorn.
Light heather-bells may tremble then, but they are far away;
Wood-lark may sing from sandy fern, the Sun may hear this lay;
Runnels may kiss the grass on shelves and shallows clear,
But their low voices are not heard, though come on travels drear;
Blood-red the Sun may set behind the black mountain peaks;
Blue tides may sluice and drench their time in caves and weedy creeks;
Eagles may seem to sleep wing-side upon the air;
Ring-dove may fly convuls'd across to some high-cedar'd lair;
But the forgotten eye is still fast lidded to the ground,
As Palmer's, that with weariness, mid-desert shrine hath found.
At such a time the soul's a child, in childhood is the brain;
Forgotten is the worldly heart alone, it beats in vain.
Aye, if a madman could have leave to pass a healthful day
To tell his forehead's swoon and faint when first began decay,
He might make tremble many a one whose spirit had gone forth
To find a Bard's low cradle-place about the silent North!
Scanty the hour and few the steps, because a longer stay
Would bar return, and make a man forget his mortal way:
O horrible! to lose the sight of well remember'd face,
Of Brother's eyes, of Sister's brow constant to every place;
Filling the air, as on we move, with portraiture intense;
More warm than those heroic tints that pain a painter's sense,
When shapes of old come striding by, and visages of old,
Locks shining black, hair scanty grey, and passions manifold.
No, no, that horror cannot be, for at the cable's length
Man feels the gentle anchor pull and gladdens in its strength:
One hour, half-idiot, he stands by mossy waterfall,
But in the very next he reads his soul's memorial:
He reads it on the mountain's height, where chance he may sit down
Upon rough marble diadem that hill's eternal crown.
Yet be his anchor e'er so fast, room is there for a prayer
That man may never lose his mind on mountains black and bare;
That he may stray league after league some great birth-place to find
And keep his vision clear from speck, his inward sight unblind.
Echoes
by John Collings Squire, Sir

There is a far unfading city
Where bright immortal people are;
Remote from hollow shame and pity,
Their portals frame no guiding star
But blightless pleasure's moteless rays
That follow their footsteps as they dance
Long lutanied measures through a maze
Of flower-like song and dalliance.
There always glows the vernal sun,
There happy birds for ever sing,
There faint perfumed breezes run
Through branches of eternal spring;
There faces browned and fruit and milk
And blue-winged words and rose-bloomed kisses
In galleys gowned with gold and silk
Shake on a lake of dainty blisses.
Coyness is not, nor bear they thought,
Save of a shining gracious flow;
All natural joys are temperate sought.
For calm desire there they know,
A fire promiscuous, languorous, kind;
They scorn all fiercer lusts and quarrels,
Nor blow about on anger's wind,
Nor burn with love, nor rust with morals.
Folk in the far unfading city,
Burning with lusts my senses are,
I am torn with love and shame and pity,
Be to my heart a guiding star:
Wise youths and maidens in the sun,
With eyes that charm and lips that sing,
And gentle arms that rippling run,
Shed on my heart your endless spring!
The Path By The Creek.
by Madison Julius Cawein

There is a path that leads
Through purple iron-weeds,
By button-bush and mallow
Along a creek;
A path that wildflowers hallow,
That wild birds seek;
Roofed thick with eglantine
And grape and trumpet-vine.
This side, blackberries sweet
Glow cobalt in the heat;
That side, a creamy yellow,
In summertime
The pawpaws slowly mellow;
And autumn's prime
Strews red the Chickasaw,
Persimmon brown and haw.
The glittering dragon-fly,
A wing'd flash, goes by;
And tawny wasp and hornet
Seem gleams that drone;
The beetle, like a garnet,
Slips from the stone;
And butterflies float there,
Spangling with gold the air.
Here the brown thrashers hide,
The chat and cat-bird chide;
The blue kingfisher houses
Above the stream,
And here the heron drowses
Lost in his dream;
The vireo's flitting note
Haunts all the wild remote.
And now a cow's slow bell
Tinkles along the dell;
Where breeze-dropped petals winnow
From blossomy limbs
On waters, where the minnow,
Faint-twinkling, swims;
Where, in the root-arched shade,
Slim prisms of light are laid.
When in the tangled thorn
The new-moon hangs a horn,
Or, 'mid the sunset's islands,
Guides a canoe,
The brown owl in the silence
Calls, and the dew
Beads here its orbs of damp,
Each one a firefly lamp.
Then when the night is still
Here sings the whippoorwill;
And stealthy sounds of crickets,
And winds that pass,
Whispering, through bramble thickets
Along the grass,
Faint with far scents of hay,
Seem feet of dreams astray.
And where the water shines
Dark through tree-twisted vines,
Some water-spirit, dreaming,
Braids in her hair
A star's reflection; seeming
A jewel there;
While all the sweet night long
Ripples her quiet song'.
Would I could imitate,
O path, thy happy state!
Making my life all beauty,
All bloom and beam;
Knowing no other duty
Than just to dream,
And far from pain and woe
Lead feet that come and go.
Leading to calm content,
O'er ways the Master went,
Through lowly things and humble,
To peace and love;
Teaching the lives that stumble
To look above,
Forget the world of toil
And all its sad turmoil.
Grief.
by Emma Lazarus

There is a hungry longing in the soul,
A craving sense of emptiness and pain,
She may not satisfy nor yet control,
For all the teeming world looks void and vain.
No compensation in eternal spheres,
She knows the loneliness of all her years.
There is no comfort looking forth nor back,
The present gives the lie to all her past.
Will cruel time restore what she doth lack?
Why was no shadow of this doom forecast?
Ah! she hath played with many a keen-edged thing;
Naught is too small and soft to turn and sting.
In the unnatural glory of the hour,
Exalted over time, and death, and fate,
No earthly task appears beyond her power,
No possible endurance seemeth great.
She knows her misery and her majesty,
And recks not if she be to live or die.
Barter
by Sophie M. (Almon) Hensley

There is a long thin line of fading gold
In the far West, and the transfigured leaves
On some slight, topmost bough that sways and heaves
Hang limp and tremulous. Nor warm, nor cold
The pungent air, and, 'neath the yellow haze,
Show flushed and glad the wild, October ways.
There is a soft enchantment in the air,
A mystery the Summer knows not, nor
The sturdy, frost-crowned Winter. Nature wore
Her blandest smile to-day, as here and there
I wandered, elf-beset, through wood and field
And gleaned the glories of the autumn yield.
A bunch of purple aster, golden-rod
Darkened by the first frost, a drooping spray
Of scarlet barberry, and tall and gray
The silk-cored cotton with its bursting pod,
Some tarnished maple-boughs, and, like a flash
Of sudden flame, a branch of mountain ash.
She smiled, but it was not the welcoming smile
Of frank surrender. As a witching maid
In gorgeous garments cunningly arrayed
Might smile and draw them closer, hers the guile
To let men hope, pray, labor in love's stress
Ere they her hidden beauties may possess.
Deep in the heart of earth where the springs rise,
Down with the sweet linn'a and the moss,
In the brown thrush's throat, where the pines toss
In Winter's harrying storms her secret lies.
Ours the chill night-dews and the waiting pain
Ere we her fairy wealth may hope to gain.
'Tis so with knowledge. Eagerly we turn
Great Wisdom's page, and when our clear eyes grow
Dim in the dusk of years, and heads bend low
Weary at last, the truth we strove to learn
Is ours forever. But its joy of sight
Is dearly bought, methinks, with Youth's delight.
Fate, too, with chaffering voice and beckoning hand
Doles out our happiness; we snatch at wealth
And pay with anxious care and fading health.
We call for Love, and dream that we shall stand
On ground enchanted, but, though sweet the way,
The rocks are sharp, and grief comes with the Day.
Even in love, Dear Heart, there is exchange
Of gifts and griefs, and so I render thee
Vows for thy vows, and pay unfalteringly
What love demands, nor ever deem it strange.
And when the snow drifts fast, and north-winds sting
I make no murmur, but await the Spring.
Sin.
by Madison Julius Cawein

There is a legend of an old Hartz tower
That tells of one, a noble, who had sold
His soul unto the Fiend; who grew not old
On this condition: That the demon's power
Cease every midnight for a single hour,
And in that hour his body should be cold,
His limbs grow shriveled, and his face, behold!
Become a death's-head in the taper's glower.
So unto Sin Life gives his best. Her arts
Make all his outward seeming beautiful
Before the world; but in his heart of hearts
Abides an hour when her strength is null;
When he shall feel the death through all his parts
Strike, and his countenance become a skull.
Praise For The Fountain Opened. - Zechariah xiii.1.
by William Cowper

There is a fountain fill'd with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.
The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
And there have I, as vile as he,
Wash'd all my sins away.
Dear dying Lamb, thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power,
Till all the ransom'd church of God
Be saved to sin no more.
E'er since, by faith, I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.
Then in a nobler, sweeter song,
I'll sing thy power to save;
When this poor lisping stammering tongue
Lies silent in the grave.
Lord, I believe thou hast prepared
(Unworthy though I be)
For me a blood-bought free reward,
A golden harp for me!
'Tis strung, and tuned, for endless years,
And form'd by power divine,
To sound in God the Father's ears
No other name but thine.
Stanzas To Jessy. [1]
by George Gordon Byron

1
There is a mystic thread of life
So dearly wreath'd with mine alone,
That Destiny's relentless knife
At once must sever both, or none.
2
There is a Form on which these eyes
Have fondly gazed with such delight - 
By day, that Form their joy supplies,
And Dreams restore it, through the night.
3
There is a Voice whose tones inspire
Such softened feelings in my breast,    - 
I would not hear a Seraph Choir,
Unless that voice could join the rest.
4
There is a Face whose Blushes tell
Affection's tale upon the cheek,
But pallid at our fond farewell,
Proclaims more love than words can speak.
5
There is a Lip, which mine has prest,
But none had ever prest before;
It vowed to make me sweetly blest,
That mine alone should press it more. 
6
There is a Bosom all my own,
Has pillow'd oft this aching head,
A Mouth which smiles on me alone,
An Eye, whose tears with mine are shed.
7
There are two Hearts whose movements thrill,
In unison so closely sweet,
That Pulse to Pulse responsive still
They Both must heave, or cease to beat.
8
There are two Souls, whose equal flow
In gentle stream so calmly run,
That when they part - they part? - ah no!
They cannot part - those Souls are One.
[GEORGE GORDON, LORD] BYRON.
Architectural Masks
by Thomas Hardy

I
There is a house with ivied walls,
And mullioned windows worn and old,
And the long dwellers in those halls
Have souls that know but sordid calls,
And daily dote on gold.
II
In blazing brick and plated show
Not far away a "villa" gleams,
And here a family few may know,
With book and pencil, viol and bow,
Lead inner lives of dreams.
III
The philosophic passers say,
"See that old mansion mossed and fair,
Poetic souls therein are they:
And O that gaudy box! Away,
You vulgar people there."
High On A Hill
by Madison Julius Cawein

There is a place among the Cape Ann hills
That looks from fir-dark summits on the sea,
Whose surging sapphire changes constantly
Beneath deep heavens, Morning windowsills,
With golden calm, or sunset citadels
With storm, whose towers the winds' confederacy
And bandit thunder hold in rebel fee,
Swooping upon the ilsher's sail that swells.
A place, where Sorrow ceases to complain,
And life's old Cares put all their burdens by,
And Weariness forgets itself in rest.
Would that all life were like it; might obtain
Its pure repose, its outlook, strong and high,
That sees, beyond, far Islands of the Blest.
The Swamp Angel
by Herman Melville

There is a coal-black Angel
With a thick Afric lip,
And he dwells (like the hunted and harried)
In a swamp where the green frogs dip.
But his face is against a City
Which is over a bay of the sea,
And he breathes with a breath that is blastment,
And dooms by a far decree.
By night there is fear in the City,
Through the darkness a star soareth on;
There's a scream that screams up to the zenith,
Then the poise of a meteor lone--
Lighting far the pale fright of the faces,
And downward the coming is seen;
Then the rush, and the burst, and the havoc,
And wails and shrieks between.
It comes like the thief in the gloaming;
It comes, and none may foretell
The place of the coming--the glaring;
They live in a sleepless spell
That wizens, and withers, and whitens;
It ages the young, and the bloom
Of the maiden is ashes of roses--
The Swamp Angel broods in his gloom.
Swift is his messengers' going,
But slowly he saps their halls,
As if by delay deluding.
They move from their crumbling walls
Farther and farther away;
But the Angel sends after and after,
By night with the flame of his ray--
By night with the voice of his screaming--
Sends after them, stone by stone,
And farther walls fall, farther portals,
And weed follows weed through the Town.
Is this the proud City? the scorner
Which never would yield the ground?
Which mocked at the coal-black Angel?
The cup of despair goes round.
Vainly he calls upon Michael
(The white man's seraph was he,)
For Michael has fled from his tower
To the Angel over the sea.
Who weeps for the woeful City
Let him weep for our guilty kind;
Who joys at her wild despairing--
Christ, the Forgiver, convert his mind.
Brownie.
by Richard Hunter

There is a brown dolly
Who has a guitar;
She plays on it always,
Tra lal, tra lal la!
She has a new ditty
For every day;
I wish you could hear it,
Tra lal, tra lal lay!
Heartsease
by Walter Savage Landor

There is a flower I wish to wear,
But not until first worn by you,
Heartsease of all earth's flowers most rare;
Bring it; and bring enough for two.
The Heliotrope.
by Thomas Gent

There is a flower, whose modest eye
Is turn'd with looks of light and love,
Who breathes her softest, sweetest sigh.
Whene'er the sun is bright above.
Let clouds obscure, or darkness veil,
Her fond idolatry is fled,
Her sighs no more their sweets exhale.
The loving eye is cold--and dead.
Canst thou not trace a moral here,
False flatterer of the prosperous hour?
Let but an adverse cloud appear,
And Thou art faithless, as the Flower!
The Fading Flower.
by William McKendree Carleton

There is a chillness in the air - 
A coldness in the smile of day;
And e'en the sunbeam's crimson glare
Seems shaded with a tinge of gray.
Weary of journeys to and fro,
The sun low creeps adown the sky;
And on the shivering earth below,
The long, cold shadows grimly lie.
But there will fall a deeper shade,
More chilling than the Autumn's breath:
There is a flower that yet must fade,
And yield its sweetness up to death.
She sits upon the window-seat,
Musing in mournful silence there,
While on her brow the sunbeams meet,
And dally with her golden hair.
She gazes on the sea of light
That overflows the western skies,
Till her great soul seems plumed for flight
From out the window of her eyes.
Hopes unfulfilled have vexed her breast,
Sad smiles have checked the rising sigh;
Until her weary heart confessed,
Reluctantly, that she must die.
And she has thought of all the ties - 
The golden ties - that bind her here;
Of all that she has learned to prize,
Of all that she has counted dear;
The joys of body, heart, and mind,
The pleasures that she loves so well;
The grasp of friendship, warm and kind,
And love's delicious, hallowed spell.
And she has wept, that she must lie
Beneath the snow-wreaths, drifted deep,
With no fond mother standing nigh,
To watch her in her silent sleep.
And she has prayed, if it might be
Within the reach of human skill,
And not averse to Heaven, that she
Might live a little longer still.
But earthly hope is gone; and now
Comes in its place a brighter beam,
Leaving upon her snowy brow
The impress of a heavenly dream:
That she, when her frail body yields,
And fades away to mortal eyes,
Shall burst through Heaven's eternal fields,
And bloom again - in Paradise.
Field And Forest Call
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
There is a field, that leans upon two hills,
Foamed o'er of flowers and twinkling with clear rills;
That in its girdle of wild acres bears
The anodyne of rest that cures all cares;
Wherein soft wind and sun and sound are blent
With fragrance as in some old instrument
Sweet chords; calm things, that Nature's magic spell
Distills from Heaven's azure crucible,
And pours on Earth to make the sick mind well.
There lies the path, they say
Come away! come away!
II.
There is a forest, lying 'twixt two streams,
Sung through of birds and haunted of dim dreams;
That in its league-long hand of trunk and leaf
Lifts a green wand that charms away all grief;
Wrought of quaint silence and the stealth of things,
Vague, whispering touches, gleams and twitterings,
Dews and cool shadows that the mystic soul
Of Nature permeates with suave control,
And waves o'er Earth to make the sad heart whole.
There lies the road, they say
Come away! come away!
The Little Native Rose
by Henry Lawson

There is a lasting little flower,
That everybody knows,
Yet none has thought to think about
The little Native Rose.
The wattle and the waratah,
The world has heard of those;
But who, outside Australia, kens
The little Native Rose.
Yet first for faint, far off perfume,
That lives where memory goes;
And first of all for fadelessness,
The little Native Rose.
The Pause.
by Susanna Moodie

There is a pause in nature, ere the storm
Rushes resistless in its awful might;
There is a softening twilight, ere the morn
Expands her wings of glory into light.
There is a sudden stillness in the heart,
Ere yet the tears of wounded feeling flow;
A speechless expectation, ere the dart
Of sorrow lays our fondest wishes low.
There is a dreamy silence in the mind,
Ere yet it wakes to energy of thought;
A breathless pause of feeling, undefined,
Ere the bright image is from fancy caught.
There is a pause more holy still,
When Faith a brighter hope has given,
And, soaring over earthly ill,
The soul looks up to heaven!
Dilly Dally
by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
There is a little girl I know
Who takes her time to come and go.
If you should ask her please to hurry,
She tries her best then to be slow:
She gives her parents lots of worry;
But she, she never worries no.
Her name is Dilly Dally;
But some folks call her"Gallie."
From head to feet
She's never neat,
But always shilly shally.
II.
When it is time for her to rise,
She won't get up, but lies and lies,
Her head beneath the cover:
Then down she comes with sleepy eyes,
When breakfast-time is over;
Uncombed, with shoes she never ties.
Her name is Dilly Dally;
But some folks call her"Gallie."
From head to feet
She's never neat,
But always shilly shally.
III.
When it is time to go to bed,
She plays around or hangs her head,
And mopes in some dark corner,
And cries and wishes she were dead:
No girl could be forlorner
When off to bed at last she's led.
Her name is Dilly Dally;
But some folks call her"Gallie."
From head to feet
She's never neat,
But always shilly shally.
The Garden
by Thomas Campion

There is a garden in her face,
Where roses and white lilies grow;
A heavenly paradise is that place,
Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow.
These cherries grow which none may buy,
Till "Cherry-ripe" themselves do cry.
Those cherries fairly do enclose
Of orient pearl a double row,
Which when her lovely laughter shows,
They look like rosebuds filled with snow.
Yet them nor peer nor prince can buy,
Till "Cherry-ripe" themselves do cry.
Her eyes like angels watch them still;
Her brows like bended bows do stand,
Threatening with piercing frowns to kill
All that attempt with eye or hand
Those sacred cherries to come nigh,
Till "Cherry-ripe" themselves do cry.
Gold
by John Drinkwater

There is a castle on a hill,
So far into the sky,
That birds that from the valley-beds
Up to the turrets fly,
Climbing towards the sun can feel
The clouds go tumbling by.
But always far above the clouds
The sun is shining there,
It shines for ever on those walls;
And the great boughs that bear
Harvests of never fading fruit
Are golden everywhere.
Who journeys to that castled crest
Finds, with his journey done,
All ages and all colours in
Cascades of light that run
Over the broad weirs of the air
For ever from the sun.
Two things are silver: flower of plum
When April yet is cold;
And willowed floods that of the moon
Quiet leases hold.
That castle in the sky alone
Of living things is gold.
Between unfathomable blue
And the bright belts of green,
Midway the plains of heaven and earth,
Rock-borne it stands between
Woods and the sky, a golden world
Where only gold is seen.
Old carvers in the stone have cut
Forests and wraths and herds,
And these are gold: the dials tell
The sun in golden words;
The very jackdaws, from the towers
Wheeling, are golden birds.
The minting of the sun is on
The gravel everywhere,
The yellow walls are fleeces washed
In pools of sunny air,
That coming to that castle place
All men are Jasons there.
Trancelike to stand upon that hill
When the deep summer sings,
Gold-clad, gold-hearted, and gold-voiced,
And sings and sings and sings,
Is as to wait a rising world
In flight of golden wings.
And I have walked with love that way,
And on that golden crest
The sun was happy for my love,
For she is golden-tressed.
Red gold, that of all golden things
The great sun marks for best.
O golden castle of the sky
Hereafter gold can be
Only your image when the sun
Transfigured her for me,
Till she was golden-clouded Jove,
And I her Danae.
Hereafter in the chambered night
When linked love is told,
One thought shall spare to climb that hill
Into the sunbright fold,
For a great summer noon when love
Was gold, and gold, and gold.
The Suitors
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There is a little Bungalow
Perched on a granite ledge,
And at its feet two suitors meet;
(I watch them, and I know)
One waits outside the casement edge;
One paces to and fro.
The Patient Rock speaks not a word;
The Sea goes up and down,
And sings full oft, in cadence soft;
(I listen, and have heard)
Again he wears an angry frown
By jealous passion stirred.
This dawn, the Rock was all aglow;
Far out the mad Sea went;
Beyond the raft, like one gone daft;
(I saw them, and I know)
While radiant and well content
Smiled down the Bungalow.
That was at Dawn; ere day had set,
The Sea with pleading voice
Came back to woo his love anew;
(I saw them when they met)
And now I know not which her choice - 
(The Rock's gray face was wet.)