DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
To The Daisy
by William Wordsworth

In youth from rock to rock I went
From hill to hill in discontent
Of pleasure high and turbulent,
Most pleased when most uneasy;
But now my own delights I make, 
Thirst at every rill can slake,
And gladly Nature's love partake,
Of Thee, sweet Daisy!
Thee Winter in the garland wears
That thinly decks his few gray hairs;
Spring parts the clouds with softest airs,
That she may sun thee;
Whole Summer-fields are thine by right;
And Autumn, melancholy Wight!
Doth in thy crimson head delight
When rains are on thee.
In shoals and bands, a morrice train,
Thou greet'st the traveller in the lane;
Pleased at his greeting thee again;
Yet nothing daunted,
Nor grieved if thou be set at nought:
And oft alone in nooks remote
We meet thee, like a pleasant thought,
When such are wanted.
Be violets in their secret mews
The flowers the wanton Zephyrs choose;
Proud be the rose, with rains and dew
Her head impearling,
Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim,
Yet hast not gone without thy fame;
Thou art indeed by many a claim
The Poet's darling.
If to a rock from rain he fly,
Or, some bright day of April sky,
Imprisoned by hot sunshine lie
Near the green holly,
And wearily at length should fare;
He need but look about, and there
Thou art! a friend at hand, to care
His melancholy.
A hundred times, by rock or bower,
Ere thus I have lain couched an hour,
Have I derived from thy sweet power
Some apprehension
Some steady love; some brief delight;
Some memory that had taken flight;
Some chime of fancy wrong or right;
Of stray invention.
If stately passions in me burn,
And one chance look to Thee should turn,
I drink out of an humbler urn
A lowlier pleasure;
The homely sympathy that heeds
The common life, our nature breeds;
A wisdom fitted to the needs
Of hearts at leisure.
Fresh-smitten by the morning ray,
When thou art up, alert and gay,
Then, cheerful Flower! my spirits play
With kindred gladness:
And when, at dusk, by dews opprest
Thou sink'st, the image of thy rest
Hath often eased my pensive breast
Of careful sadness.
And all day long I number yet,
All seasons through, another debt,
Which I, wherever thou art met,
To thee am owing;
An instinct call it, a blind sense;
A happy, genial influence,
Coming one knows not how, nor whence,
Nor whither going.
Child of the Year! that round dost run
Thy pleasant course, when day's begun
As ready to salute the sun
As lark or leveret,
Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain;
Nor be less dear to future men
Than in old time; thou not in vain
Art Nature's favourite.
To Posterity
by Bertolt Brecht

1.
Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.
Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach of his friends
In trouble?
It is true: I earn my living
But, believe me, it is only an accident.
Nothing that I do entitles me to eat my fill.
By chance I was spared. (If my luck leaves me
I am lost.)
They tell me: eat and drink. Be glad you have it!
But how can I eat and drink
When my food is snatched from the hungry
And my glass of water belongs to the thirsty?
And yet I eat and drink.
I would gladly be wise.
The old books tell us what wisdom is:
Avoid the strife of the world
Live out your little time
Fearing no one
Using no violence
Returning good for evil,
Not fulfillment of desire but forgetfulness
Passes for wisdom.
I can do none of this:
Indeed I live in the dark ages!
2.
I came to the cities in a time of disorder
When hunger ruled.
I came among men in a time of uprising
And I revolted with them.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.
I ate my food between massacres.
The shadow of murder lay upon my sleep.
And when I loved, I loved with indifference.
I looked upon nature with impatience.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.
In my time streets led to the quicksand.
Speech betrayed me to the slaughterer.
There was little I could do. But without me
The rulers would have been more secure. This was my hope.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.
3.
You, who shall emerge from the flood
In which we are sinking,
Think,
When you speak of our weaknesses,
Also of the dark time
That brought them forth.
For we went,changing our country more often than our shoes.
In the class war, despairing
When there was only injustice and no resistance.
For we knew only too well:
Even the hatred of squalor
Makes the brow grow stern.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we
Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness
Could not ourselves be kind.
But you, when at last it comes to pass
That man can help his fellow man,
Do no judge us
Too harshly.
To Phidyle.
by Henry Austin Dobson

(HOR. III., 23.)
Incense, and flesh of swine, and this year's grain,
At the new moon, with suppliant hands, bestow,
O rustic Phidyle! So naught shall know
Thy crops of blight, thy vine of Afric bane,
And hale the nurslings of thy flock remain
Through the sick apple-tide. Fit victims grow
'Twixt holm and oak upon the Algid snow,
Or Alban grass, that with their necks must stain
The Pontiff's axe: to thee can scarce avail
Thy modest gods with much slain to assail,
Whom myrtle crowns and rosemary can please.
Lay on the altar a hand pure of fault;
More than rich gifts the Powers it shall appease,
Though pious but with meal and crackling salt.
To---- On Her First Ascent To The Summit Of Helvellyn
by William Wordsworth

Inmate of a mountain-dwelling,
Thou hast clomb aloft, and gazed
From the watch-towers of Helvellyn;
Awed, delighted, and amazed!
Potent was the spell that bound thee
Not unwilling to obey;
For blue Ether's arms, flung round thee,
Stilled the pantings of dismay.
Lo! the dwindled woods and meadows;
What a vast abyss is there!
Lo! the clouds, the solemn shadows,
And the glistenings heavenly fair!
And a record of commotion
Which a thousand ridges yield;
Ridge, and gulf, and distant ocean
Gleaming like a silver shield!
Maiden! now take flight; inherit
Alps or Andes they are thine!
With the morning's roseate Spirit,
Sweep their length of snowy line;
Or survey their bright dominions
In the gorgeous colours drest
Flung from off the purple pinions,
Evening spreads throughout the west!
Thine are all the coral fountains
Warbling in each sparry vault
Of the untrodden lunar mountains;
Listen to their songs! or halt,
To Niphates' top invited,
Whither spiteful Satan steered;
Or descend where the ark alighted,
When the green earth re-appeared;
For the power of hills is on thee,
As was witnessed through thine eye
Then, when old Helvellyn won thee
To confess their majesty!
The Lord's Prayer. From Proverbial Philosophy
by Martin Farquhar Tupper

Inquirest thou, man, wherewithal may I come unto the Lord?
And with what wonder-working sounds may I move the majesty of heaven?
There is a model to thy hand; upon that do thou frame thy supplication;
Wisdom hath measured its words; and redemption urgeth thee to use them.
Call thy God thy Father, and yet not thine alone,
For thou art but one of many, thy brotherhood is with all:
Remember his high estate, that he dwelleth King of Heaven;
So shall thy thoughts be humbled, nor love be unmixed with reverence:
Be thy first petition unselfish, the honour of Him who made thee.
And that in the depths of thy heart his memory be shrined in holiness:
Pray for that blessed time, when good shall triumph over evil.
And one universal temple echo the perfections of Jehovah:
Bend thou to his good will, and subserve his holy purposes.
Till in thee, and those around thee, grow a little heaven upon earth:
Humbly, as a grateful almsman, beg thy bread of God,'
Bread for thy triple estate, for thou hast a trinity of nature:
Humility smootheth the way, and gratitude softeneth the heart,
Be then thy prayer for pardon mingled with the tear of penitence;
Yea, and while, all unworthy, thou leanest on the hand that should smite,
Thou canst not from thy fellows withhold thy less forgiveness.
To thy Father thy weaknesses are known, and thou hast not hid thy sin,
Therefore ask him, in all trust, to lead thee from the dangers of temptation;
While the last petition of the soul, that breatheth on the confines of prayer.
Is deliverance from sin and the evil one, the miseries of earth and hell.
And wherefore, child of hope, should the rock of thy confidence be sure?
Thou knowest that God heareth, and promiseth an answer of peace;
Thou knowest that he is King, and none can stay his hand;
Thou knowest his power to he boundless, for there is none other:
And to Him thou givest glory, as a creature of his workmanship and favour.
For the never-ending term of thy saved and bright existence.
Transcribed from the 25th edition "Proverbial Philosophy by Martin Farquhar Tupper" by Mick Puttock, August 2011 (Spelling, punctuation and grammer left mostly unchanged from the 25th edition)
The Night Forest
by Clark Ashton Smith

Incumbent seemingly
On the jagged points of peaks
That end the visible west,
The rounded moon yet floods
The valleys hitherward
With fall of torrential light,
Ere from the overmost
Aggressive mountain-cusp,
She slip to the lower dark.
But here, on an eastward slope
Pointed and thick with its pine,
The forest scarcely remembers
Her light that is gone as a vision
Or ecstasy too poignant
And perilous for duration.
Withdrawn in what darker web
Or dimension of dream I know not,
In silence pre-occupied
And solemnest rectitude
The pines uprear, and no sigh
For the rapture of moonlight past,
Comes from their bosom of boughs.
Far in their secrecy
I stand, and the burden of dusk
Dull, but at times made keen
With tingle of fragrances,
Falls on me as a veil
Between my soul and the world.
What veil of trance, O pines,
Divides you from my soul,
That I feel but enter not
Your distances of dream?
Ah! strange, imperative sense
Of world-deep mystery
That shakes from out your boughs -
A fragrance yet more keen,
Pressing upon the mind.
The wind shall question you
Of the dream I may not gain,
And all its sombreness
And depth immeasurable,
Shall tremble away in sound
Of speech not understood
That my heart must break to hear.
Verses Written In Mary's Album.
by Kate Seymour Maclean

In your beautiful book, dear Mary,
With pages so white and fair,
I pause ere I trace the first sentence,
And thoughtfully breathe a prayer:--
That in the dew of the morning,
Ere the shadows begin to fall,
You may turn with a child's devotion
To the Book that is best of all:--
And learn with the gentle Mary,
At the Saviour's feet to stay,
And to choose that better portion
Which shall never be taken away.
Ah! lovely and thrice beloved,
Sitting at Jesus' feet,
In the shady walks of Bethany,
And the summer twilight sweet,--
With the thrilling palms and the olives,
Listening overhead,
To that wonderful voice whose music
Had power to waken the dead!
Even thus through life's grave-shadowed valleys,
We may walk with that Heavenly Friend,
With a child's loving faith in His promise
To be with us unto the end.
So I ask for my Mary, not grandeur,
Nor the wealth, nor the fame of the day,
But that which the world cannot give her,
The peace which it takes not away.
The Wife-Blessed.
by James Whitcomb Riley

I.
In youth he wrought, with eyes ablur,
Lorn-faced and long of hair - 
In youth - in youth he painted her
A sister of the air - 
Could clasp her not, but felt the stir
Of pinions everywhere.
II.
She lured his gaze, in braver days,
And tranced him sirenwise;
And he did paint her, through a haze
Of sullen paradise,
With scars of kisses on her face
And embers in her eyes.
III.
And now - nor dream nor wild conceit - 
Though faltering, as before - 
Through tears he paints her, as is meet,
Tracing the dear face o'er
With lilied patience meek and sweet
As Mother Mary wore.
To A Friend, Unsuccessful In Love; Ode III
by Mark Akenside

Indeed, my Phaedra, if to find
That wealth can female wishes gain
Had e'er disturb'd your thoughtful mind,
Or cost one serious moment's pain,
I should have said that all the rules,
You learn'd of moralists and schools,
Were very useless, very vain.
Yet I perhaps mistake the case,
Say, though with this heroic air,
Like one that holds a nobler chace,
You try the tender loss to bear,
Does not your heart renounce your tongue?
Seems not my censure strangely wrong
To count it such a slight affair?
When Hesper gilds the shaded sky,
Oft as you seek the well-known grove,
Methinks I see you cast your eye
Back to the morning scenes of love:
Each pleasing word you heard her say,
Her gentle look, her graceful way,
Again your struggling fancy move.
Then tell me, is your soul intire?
Does wisdom calmly hold her throne?
Then can you question each desire,
Bid this remain, and that begone?
No tear half-starting from your eye?
No kindling blush you know not why?
No stealing sigh, nor stifled groan?
Away with this unmanly mood!
See where the hoary churl appears,
Whose hand hath seiz'd the favorite good
Which you reserv'd for happier years:
While, side by side, the blushing maid
Shrinks from his visage, half-afraid,
Spite of the sickly joy she wears.
Ye guardian powers of love and fame,
This chaste, harmonious pair behold;
And thus reward the generous flame
Of all who barter vows for gold.
O bloom of youth, o tender charms
Well-buried in a dotard's arms!
O equal price of beauty sold!
Cease then to gaze with looks of love:
Bid her adieu, the venal fair:
Unworthy she your bliss to prove;
Then wherefore should she prove your care?
No: lay your myrtle garland down;
And let awhile the willow's crown
With luckier omens bind your hair.
O just escap'd the faithless main,
Though driven unwilling on the land;
To guide your favor'd steps again,
Behold your better genius stand:
Where truth revolves her page divine,
Where virtue leads to honor's shrine,
Behold, he lifts his awful hand.
Fix but on these your ruling aim,
And time, the sire of manly care,
Will fancy's dazzling colors tame
A soberer dress will beauty wear:
Then shall esteem by knowledge led
Inthrone within your heart and head
Some happier love, some truer fair.
Charlotte Street (The Rocky Road To Dublin)
by James Stephens

Inside a soap shop, down a lane,
A big bee buzzed on a window-pane,
Climbing the cold glass up and down;
Bee, what brought you into town?
You are tired and hungry and scarce alive,
Poor old Shaggy-Tail! where's your hive?
Near Dover, September 1802
by William Wordsworth

Inland, within a hollow vale, I stood;
And saw, while sea was calm and air was clear,
The coast of France, the coast of France how near!
Drawn almost into frightful neighbourhood.
I shrunk; for verily the barrier flood
Was like a lake, or river bright and fair,
A span of waters; yet what power is there!
What mightiness for evil and for good!
Even so doth God protect us if we be
Virtuous and wise. Winds blow, and waters roll,
Strength to the brave, and Power, and Deity;
Yet in themselves are nothing! One decree
Spake laws to 'them', and said that by the soul
Only, the Nations shall be great and free.
The Lake - Early Version
by Edgar Allan Poe

In youth's spring, it was my lot
To haunt of the wide earth a spot
The which I could not love the less;
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound.
And the tall pines that tower'd around.
But when the night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the wind would pass me by
In its stilly melody,
My infant spirit would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.
Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight,
And a feeling undefin'd,
Springing from a darken'd mind.
Death was in that poison'd wave
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his dark imagining;
Whose wild'ring thought could even make
An Eden of that dim lake
Sonnet XVIII.
by Fernando Ant'nio Nogueira Pessoa

Indefinite space, which, by co-substance night,
In one black mystery two void mysteries blends;
The stray stars, whose innumerable light
Repeats one mystery till conjecture ends;
The stream of time, known by birth-bursting bubbles;
The gulf of silence, empty even of nought;
Thought's high-walled maze, which the outed owner troubles
Because the string's lost and the plan forgot:
When I think on this and that here I stand,
The thinker of these thoughts, emptily wise,
Holding up to my thinking my thing-hand
And looking at it with thought-alien eyes,
The prayer of my wonder looketh past
The universal darkness lone and vast.
Retrospect (The South Seas)
by Rupert Brooke

In your arms was still delight,
Quiet as a street at night;
And thoughts of you, I do remember,
Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,
Were dark clouds in a moonless sky.
Love, in you, went passing by,
Penetrative, remote, and rare,
Like a bird in the wide air,
And, as the bird, it left no trace
In the heaven of your face.
In your stupidity I found
The sweet hush after a sweet sound.
All about you was the light
That dims the greying end of night;
Desire was the unrisen sun,
Joy the day not yet begun,
With tree whispering to tree,
Without wind, quietly.
Wisdom slept within your hair,
And Long-Suffering was there,
And, in the flowing of your dress,
Undiscerning Tenderness.
And when you thought, it seemed to me,
Infinitely, and like a sea,
About the slight world you had known
Your vast unconsciousness was thrown. . . .
O haven without wave or tide!
Silence, in which all songs have died!
Holy book, where hearts are still!
And home at length under the hill!
O mother quiet, breasts of peace,
Where love itself would faint and cease!
O infinite deep I never knew,
I would come back, come back to you,
Find you, as a pool unstirred,
Kneel down by you, and never a word,
Lay my head, and nothing said,
In your hands, ungarlanded;
And a long watch you would keep;
And I should sleep, and I should sleep!
On Seeing A Wounded Hare Limp By Me, Which A Fellow Had Just Shot.
by Robert Burns

Inhuman man! curse on thy barb'rous art,
And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye;
May never pity soothe thee with a sigh,
Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart.
Go live, poor wanderer of the wood and field!
The bitter little that of life remains:
No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains
To thee shall home, or food, or pastime yield.
Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest,
No more of rest, but now thy dying bed!
The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head,
The cold earth with thy bloody bosom prest.
Oft as by winding Nith, I, musing, wait
The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn;
I'll miss thee sporting o'er the dewy lawn,
And curse the ruffian's aim, and mourn thy hapless fate.
Sonnet XIV.
by Anna Seward

INGRATITUDE, how deadly is thy smart
Proceeding from the Form we fondly love!
How light, compared, all other sorrows prove!
THOU shed'st a Night of Woe, from whence depart
The gentle beams of Patience, that the heart
'Mid lesser ills, illume. - Thy Victims rove
Unquiet as the Ghost that haunts the Grove
Where MURDER spilt the life-blood. - O! thy dart
Kills more than Life, - e'en all that makes Life dear;
Till we "the sensible of pain" wou'd change
For Phrenzy, that defies the bitter tear;
Or wish, in kindred callousness, to range
Where moon-ey'd IDIOCY, with fallen lip,
Drags the loose knee, and intermitting step.
July 1773.
On An Edinburgh Advocate
by Robert Fuller Murray

In youth with diligence he toiled
A Roman nose to gain,
But though a decent pug was spoiled,
A pug it did remain.
Nocturne
by Lola Ridge

Indigo bulb of darkness
Punctured by needle lights
Through a fissure of brick canyon shutting out stars,
And a sliver of moon
Spigoting two high windows over the West river....
Boy, I met to-night,
Your eyes are two red-glowing arcs shifting with my vision....
They reflect as in a fading proof
The deadened eyes of a woman,
And your shed virginity,
Light as the withered pod of a sweet pea,
Moist and fragrant
Blows against my soul.
What are you to me, boy,
That I, who have passed so many lights,
Should carry your eyes
Like swinging lanterns?
The Voice of the Soul
by Victor James Daley

In Youth, when through our veins runs fast
The bright red stream of life,
The Soul's Voice is a trumpet-blast
That calls us to the strife.
The Spirit spurns its prison-bars,
And feels with force endued
To scale the ramparts of the stars
And storm Infinitude.
Youth passes; like a dungeon grows
The Spirit's house of clay:
The voice that once in music rose
In murmurs dies away.
But in the day when sickness sore
Smites on the body's walls,
The Soul's Voice through the breach once more
Like to a trumpet calls.
Well shall it be with him who heeds
The mystic summons then!
His after-life with loving deeds
Shall blossom amongst men.
He shall have gifts, the gift that feels
The germ within the clod,
And hears the whirring of the wheels
That turn the mills of God!
The gift that sees with glance profound
The secret soul of things,
And in the silence hears the sound
Of vast and viewless wings!
The veil of Isis sevenfold
To him as gauze shall be,
Wherethrough, clear-eyed, he shall behold
The Ancient Mystery.
He shall do battle for the True,
Defend till death the Right,
With Shoes of Swiftness Wrong pursue,
With Sword of Sharpness smite.
And, dying, he shall haply hear,
Like golden trumpets blown
For joy, far voices sweet and clear,
Soul-voices like his own.
So welcomed may he join the Throng
Upon the Shining Shore,
As one who, after wandering long,
Returneth home once more!
Yvonne Of Brittany
by Ernest Christopher Dowson

In your mother's apple-orchard,
Just a year ago, last spring:
Do you remember, Yvonne!
The dear trees lavishing
Rain of their starry blossoms
To make you a coronet?
Do you ever remember, Yvonne?
As I remember yet.
In your mother's apple-orchard,
When the world was left behind:
You were shy, so shy, Yvonne!
But your eyes were calm and kind.
We spoke of the apple harvest,
When the cider press is set,
And such-like trifles, Yvonne!
That doubtless you forget.
In the still, soft Breton twilight,
We were silent; words were few,
Till your mother came out chiding,
For the grass was bright with dew:
But I know your heart was beating,
Like a fluttered, frightened dove.
Do you ever remember, Yvonne?
That first faint flush of love?
In the fulness of midsummer,
When the apple-bloom was shed,
Oh, brave was your surrender,
Though shy the words you said.
I was glad, so glad, Yvonne!
To have led you home at last;
Do you ever remember, Yvonne!
How swiftly the days passed?
The Two Coffins
by Eugene Field

In yonder old cathedral
Two lovely coffins lie;
In one, the head of the state lies dead,
And a singer sleeps hard by.
Once had that King great power
And proudly ruled the land--
His crown e'en now is on his brow
And his sword is in his hand.
How sweetly sleeps the singer
With calmly folded eyes,
And on the breast of the bard at rest
The harp that he sounded lies.
The castle walls are falling
And war distracts the land,
But the sword leaps not from that mildewed spot
There in that dead king's hand.
But with every grace of nature
There seems to float along--
To cheer again the hearts of men
The singer's deathless song.