DanFosing/public-domain-poetry huggingface dataset:
Sonnet XL. December Morning[1].
by Anna Seward

I love to rise ere gleams the tardy light,
Winter's pale dawn; - and as warm fires illume,
And cheerful tapers shine around the room,
Thro' misty windows bend my musing sight
Where, round the dusky lawn, the mansions white,
With shutters clos'd, peer faintly thro' the gloom,
That slow recedes; while yon grey spires assume,
Rising from their dark pile, an added height
By indistinctness given. - Then to decree
The grateful thoughts to GOD, ere they unfold
To Friendship, or the Muse, or seek with glee
Wisdom's rich page! - O, hours! more worth than gold,
By whose blest use we lengthen Life, and free
From drear decays of Age, outlive the Old!
Dec. 19th, 1782.
1: This Sonnet was written in an Apartment of the West Front of the Bishop's Palace at Lichfield, inhabited by the Author from her thirteenth year. It looks upon the Cathedral-Area, a green Lawn encircled by Prebendal Houses, which are white from being rough-cast.
Autumn
by John Clare

I love the fitful gust that shakes
The casement all the day,
And from the glossy elm tree takes
The faded leaves away,
Twirling them by the window pane
With thousand others down the lane.
I love to see the shaking twig
Dance till the shut of eve,
The sparrow on the cottage rig,
Whose chirp would make believe
That Spring was just now flirting by
In Summer's lap with flowers to lie.
I love to see the cottage smoke
Curl upwards through the trees,
The pigeons nestled round the cote
On November days like these;
The cock upon the dunghill crowing,
The mill sails on the heath a-going.
The feather from the raven's breast
Falls on the stubble lea,
The acorns near the old crow's nest
Drop pattering down the tree;
The grunting pigs, that wait for all,
Scramble and hurry where they fall.
Youth And Age.
by Thomas Gent

I love the joyous thoughtless heart,
The revels of the youthful mind,
'Ere sad experience points the dart,
Which wounds so surely all mankind.
It glads me when the buoyant soul,
Unconscious ranges, fancy free,
Draining the sweets of pleasure's bowl,
And thinking all as blest as he.
Ah! me, yet sad it is to know,
The many griefs the future brings,
That time must change that note to woe,
Which now its merry carrol sings.
This "summer of the mind," alas!
Must have its autumn--leafless, bare,
When all these pleasing phantoms pass,
And end in winter, age, and care!
Such, such is life, the moral tells--
The tempest, and its sunny smiles,
A warning voice the cheerful bells,
The knell of death, our youth beguiles!
Autumn
by John Clare

I love the fitful gust that shakes
The casement all the day,
And from the glossy elm tree takes
The faded leaves away,
Twirling them by the window pane
With thousand others down the lane.
I love to see the shaking twig
Dance till the shut of eve,
The sparrow on the cottage rig,
Whose chirp would make believe
That Spring was just now flirting by,
In Summer's lap with flowers to lie.
I love to see the cottage smoke
Curl upwards through the trees,
The pigeons nestled round the cote
On November days like these;
The cock upon the dunghill crowing,
The mill sails on the heath a-going.
The feather from the raven's breast
Falls on the stubble lea,
The acorns near the old crow's nest
Drop pattering down the tree;
The grunting pigs, that wait for all,
Scramble and hurry where they fall.
I Love The Naked Ages Long Ago
by Charles Baudelaire

I love the naked ages long ago
When statues were gilded by Apollo,
When men and women of agility
Could play without lies and anxiety,
And the sky lovingly caressed their spines,
As it exercised its noble machine.
Fertile Cybele, mother of nature, then,
Would not place on her daughters a burden,
But, she-wolf sharing her heart with the people,
Would feed creation from her brown nipples.
Men, elegant and strong, would have the right
To be proud to have beauty named their king;
Virgin fruit free of blemish and cracking,
Whose flesh smooth and firm would summon a bite!
The Poet today, when he would convey
This native grandeur, would not be swept away
By man free and woman natural,
But would feel darkness envelop his soul
Before this black tableau full of loathing.
O malformed monsters crying for clothing!
O ludicrous heads! Torsos needing disguise!
O poor writhing bodies of every wrong size,
Children that the god of the Useful swaths
In the language of bronze and brass!
And women, alas! You shadow your heredity,
You gnaw nourishment from debauchery,
A virgin holds maternal lechery
And all the horrors of fecundity!
We have, it is true, corrupt nations,
Beauty unknown to the radiant ancients:
Faces that gnaw through the heart's cankers,
And talk with the cool beauty of languor;
But these inventions of our backward muses
Are never hindered in their morbid uses
Of the old for profound homage to youth,
To the young saint, the sweet air, the simple truth,
To the eye as limpid as the water current,
To spread out over all, insouciant
Like the blue sky, the birds and the flowers,
Its perfumes, its songs and its sweet fervors.
Daniel Frohman
by Oliver Herford

I love to picture Daniel Frohman
In costume of a noble Roman.
For Dan has just the style of hair,
That Julius C'sar used to wear.
Emmonsail's Heath in Winter
by John Clare

I love to see the old heath's withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling,
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps his melancholy wing,
And oddling crow in idle motions swing
On the half rotten ashtree's topmost twig,
Beside whose trunk the gipsy makes his bed.
Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread,
The fieldfares chatter in the whistling thorn
And for the awe round fields and closen rove,
And coy bumbarrels twenty in a drove
Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain
And hang on little twigs and start again.
To Ianthe.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I love thee, Baby! for thine own sweet sake;
Those azure eyes, that faintly dimpled cheek,
Thy tender frame, so eloquently weak,
Love in the sternest heart of hate might wake;
But more when o'er thy fitful slumber bending
Thy mother folds thee to her wakeful heart,
Whilst love and pity, in her glances blending,
All that thy passive eyes can feel impart:
More, when some feeble lineaments of her,
Who bore thy weight beneath her spotless bosom,
As with deep love I read thy face, recur, -
More dear art thou, O fair and fragile blossom;
Dearest when most thy tender traits express
The image of thy mother's loveliness.
Nature's Child.
by Alfred Castner King

I love to tread the solitudes,
The forests and the trackless woods,
Where nature, undisturbed by man,
Pursues her voluntary plan.
Where nature's chemistry distills
The fountains and the laughing rills,
I love to quaff her sparkling wine,
And breathe the fragrance of the pine.
I love to dash the crystal dews
From floral shapes of varied hues,
And interweave the modest white
Of columbine in garlands bright.
I love to lie within the shade,
On grassy couch, by nature made,
And listen to the warbling notes
From her fair songsters' feathered throats.
And freed from artificial wants,
I love to dwell in nature's haunts,
And by the mountain's crystal lake
A rustic habitation make.
I love to scale the mountain height
And watch the eagle in his flight,
Or gaze upon the azure sea
Of aerial immensity.
I love the busy marts of trade,
I love the things which men have made,
Though man has charms, none such as these,
In him the child of nature sees.
Nursery Rhyme. CLVII. Songs.
by Unknown

I love sixpence, pretty little sixpence,
I love sixpence better than my life;
I spent a penny of it, I spent another,
And took fourpence home to my wife.
Oh, my little fourpence, pretty little fourpence,
I love fourpence better than my life;
I spent a penny of it, I spent another,
And I took twopence home to my wife.
Oh, my little twopence, my pretty little twopence,
I love twopence better than my life;
I spent a penny of it, I spent another,
And I took nothing home to my wife.
Oh, my little nothing, my pretty little nothing,
What will nothing buy for my wife?
I have nothing, I spend nothing,
I love nothing better than my wife.
Chemist To His Love, The
by Unknown

I love thee, Mary, and thou lovest me,
Our mutual flame is like th' affinity
That doth exist between two simple bodies:
I am Potassium to thine Oxygen.
'Tis little that the holy marriage vow
Shall shortly make us one. That unity
Is, after all, but metaphysical.
Oh, would that I, my Mary, were an acid,
A living acid; thou an alkali
Endow'd with human sense, that, brought together,
We both might coalesce into one salt,
One homogeneous crystal. Oh, that thou
Wert Carbon, and myself were Hydrogen;
We would unite to form olefiant gas,
Or common coal, or naphtha, would to heaven
That I were Phosphorus, and thou wert Lime!
And we of Lime composed a Phosphuret.
I'd be content to be Sulphuric Acid,
So that thou might be Soda. In that case
We should be Glauber's Salt. Wert thou Magnesia
Instead we'd form the salt that's named from Epsom.
Couldst thou Potassa be, I Aqua-fortis,
Our happy union should that compound form,
Nitrate of Potash--otherwise Saltpetre.
And thus our several natures sweetly blent,
We'd live and love together, until death
Should decompose the fleshly tertium quid,
Leaving our souls to all eternity
Amalgamated. Sweet, thy name is Briggs
And mine is Johnson. Wherefore should not we
Agree to form a Johnsonate of Briggs?
On A Picture Of Children Playing. By Fisher.
by Nathaniel Parker Willis

I love to look on a scene like this,
Of wild and careless play,
And persuade myself that I am not old
And my locks are not yet gray;
For it stirs the blood in old man's heart,
And makes his pulses fly,
To catch the thrill of a happy voice,
And the light of a pleasant eye.
I have walked the world for fourscore years,
And they say that I am old;
That my heart is ripe for the reaper, Death,
And my years are well nigh told.
It is very true - it is very true - 
I'm old, and 'I bide my time' - 
But my heart will leap at a scene like this,
And I half renew my prime.
Play on! play on! I am with you there,
In the midst of your merry ring;
I can feel the thrill of the daring jump,
And the rush of the breathless swing.
I hide with you in the fragrant hay,
And I whoop the smothered call,
And my feet slip up on the seedy floor,
And I care not for the fall.
I am willing to die when my time shall come,
And I shall be glad to go;
For the world, at best, is a weary place,
And my pulse is getting low;
But the grave is dark, and the heart will fail
In treading its gloomy way;
And it wiles my heart from its dreariness,
To see the young so gay.
On The Boundary
by Barcroft Boake

I love the ancient boundary-fence,
That mouldering chock-and-log.
When I go ride the boundary
I let the old horse jog
And take his pleasure in and out
Where the sandalwood grows dense,
And tender pines clasp hands across
The log that tops the fence.
'Tis pleasant on the boundary-fence,
These sultry summer days;
A mile away, outside the scrub,
The plain is all ablaze,
The sheep are panting on the camps,
The heat is so intense;
But here the shade is cool and sweet
Along the boundary-fence.
I love to loaf along the fence,
So does my collie dog,
He often finds a spotted cat
Hid in a hollow log;
He's very near as old as I
And ought to have more sense,
I've hammered him so many times
Along the boundary-fence.
My mother says that boundary fence
Must surely be bewitched;
The old man says that through that fence
The neighbours are enriched;
It's always down, and through the gaps
Our stock all get them hence,
I takes me half my time to watch
The doings of that fence.
But should you seek the reason
You won't travel very far,
'Tis there a mile away among
The murmuring Belar:
The Jones's block joins on to ours,
And so, in consequence,
It's part of Polly's work to ride
Their side the boundary-fence.
Greek Title
by Robert Fuller Murray

I love the inoffensive frog,
'A little child, a limber elf,'
With health and spirits all agog,
He does the long jump in a bog
Or teaches men to swim and dive.
If he should be cut up alive,
Should I not be cut up myself?
So I intend to be straightway
An Anti-Vivisectionist;
I'll read Miss Cobbe five hours a day
And watch the little frogs at play,
With no desire to see their hearts
At work, or other inward parts,
If other inward parts exist.
Amor Vit'
by Archibald Lampman

I love the warm bare earth and all
That works and dreams thereon:
I love the seasons yet to fall:
I love the ages gone,
The valleys with the sheeted grain,
The river's smiling might,
The merry wind, the rustling rain,
The vastness of the night.
I love the morning's flame, the steep
Where down the vapour clings:
I love the clouds that float and sleep,
And every bird that sings.
I love the purple shower that pours
On far-off fields at even:
I love the pine-wood dusk whose floors
Are like the courts of heaven.
I love the heaven's azure span,
The grass beneath my feet:
I love the face of every man
Whose thought is swift and sweet.
I let the wrangling world go by,
And like an idle breath
Its echoes and its phantoms fly:
I care no jot for death.
Time like a Titan bright and strong
Spreads one enchanted gleam:
Each hour is but a fluted song,
And life a lofty dream.
The Lyric Muse
by Eugene Field

I love the lyric muse!
For when mankind ran wild in grooves
Came holy Orpheus with his songs
And turned men's hearts from bestial loves,
From brutal force and savage wrongs;
Amphion, too, and on his lyre
Made such sweet music all the day
That rocks, instinct with warm desire,
Pursued him in his glorious way.
I love the lyric muse!
Hers was the wisdom that of yore
Taught man the rights of fellow man,
Taught him to worship God the more,
And to revere love's holy ban.
Hers was the hand that jotted down
The laws correcting divers wrongs;
And so came honor and renown
To bards and to their noble songs.
I love the lyric muse!
Old Homer sung unto the lyre;
Tyrt'us, too, in ancient days;
Still warmed by their immortal fire,
How doth our patriot spirit blaze!
The oracle, when questioned, sings;
So our first steps in life are taught.
In verse we soothe the pride of kings,
In verse the drama has been wrought.
I love the lyric muse!
Be not ashamed, O noble friend,
In honest gratitude to pay
Thy homage to the gods that send
This boon to charm all ill away.
With solemn tenderness revere
This voiceful glory as a shrine
Wherein the quickened heart may hear
The counsels of a voice divine!
I Love Thee.
by Thomas Hood

I love thee - I love thee!
'Tis all that I can say; - 
It is my vision in the night,
My dreaming in the day;
The very echo of my heart,
The blessing when I pray:
I love thee - I love thee!
Is all that I can say.
I love thee - I love thee!
Is ever on my tongue;
In all my proudest poesy
That chorus still is sung;
It is the verdict of my eyes,
Amidst the gay and young:
I love thee - I love thee!
A thousand maids among.
I love thee - I love thee!
Thy bright hazel glance,
The mellow lute upon those lips,
Whose tender tones entrance;
But most, dear heart of hearts, thy proofs
That still these words enhance,
I love thee - I love thee!
Whatever be thy chance.
The Woods.
by Hattie Howard

I love the woods when the magic hand
Of Spring, as if sweeping the keys
Of a wornout instrument, touches the earth;
When beauty and song in the gladness of birth
Awaken the heart of the desolate land,
And carol its rapture to every breeze.
In summer's still solstice my steps are drawn
To the shade of the forest trees;
To revel with Pan in his secret haunts,
To pipe mazourkas while satyrs dance,
Or lull to soft slumber some favorite faun
And fascinate strange wild birds and bees.
I love the woods when autumnal fires
Are kindled on every hill;
When dead leaves rustle in grove and field,
And trees are known by the fruits they yield,
And the wild grapes, sweetened by frost, inspire
A mildly-desperate, bibulous thrill.
There's a joy for which I would fling to the air
My petty portion of wealth and fame,
In tracking the rabbit o'er fresh-fallen snow,
The ways of the 'coon and opossum to know,
To capture squirrels when branches are bare
As the cupboard shelf of that ancient dame.
Oh, I long to explore the woods again
In my own aboriginal way,
As before I knew how culture could frown
On a hoydenish gait and a homespun gown
Or dreamed that the strata of proud "upper-ten"
Would smile at rusticity's na'vet'.
I sigh for the pleasures of long ago
In youth's sweet halcyon time;
When better beloved than the thoroughfare
By multitudes trod were the woodlands, where
Was never a path that I did not know,
Nor thrifty sapling I dared not climb.
Alas for lost freedom! Alas for me!
For oh, Society's lip would curl,
Propriety's self with scornful eye
And gilt-edged Fashion would pass me by
To know that sometimes I'm dying to be
The romp, the rover, the same old girl.
Francie.
by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

I loved a child as we should love
Each other everywhere;
I cared more for his happiness
Than I dreaded my own despair.
An angel asked me to give him
My whole life's dearest cost;
And in adding mine to his treasures
I knew they could never be lost.
To his heart I gave the gold,
Though little my own had known;
To his eyes what tenderness
From youth in mine had grown!
I gave him all my buoyant
Hope for my future years;
I gave him whatever melody
My voice had steeped in tears.
Upon the shore of darkness
His drifted body lies.
He is dead, and I stand beside him,
With his beauty in my eyes.
I am like those withered petals
We see on a winter day,
That gladly gave their color
In the happy summer away.
I am glad I lavished my worthiest
To fashion his greater worth;
Since he will live in heaven,
I shall lie content in the earth.
A Night In November
by Thomas Hardy

I marked when the weather changed,
And the panes began to quake,
And the winds rose up and ranged,
That night, lying half-awake.
Dead leaves blew into my room,
And alighted upon my bed,
And a tree declared to the gloom
Its sorrow that they were shed.
One leaf of them touched my hand,
And I thought that it was you
There stood as you used to stand,
And saying at last you knew!
I Meant To Find Her When I Came;
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

I meant to find her when I came;
Death had the same design;
But the success was his, it seems,
And the discomfit mine.
I meant to tell her how I longed
For just this single time;
But Death had told her so the first,
And she had hearkened him.
To wander now is my abode;
To rest, -- to rest would be
A privilege of hurricane
To memory and me.
The Net
by Sara Teasdale

I made you many and many a song,
Yet never one told all you are,
It was as though a net of words
Were flung to catch a star;
It was as though I curved my hand
And dipped sea-water eagerly,
Only to find it lost the blue
Dark splendor of the sea.
Grown And Flown
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

I loved my love from green of Spring
Until sere Autumn's fall;
But now that leaves are withering
How should one love at all?
One heart's too small
For hunger, cold, love, everything.
I loved my love on sunny days
Until late Summer's wane;
But now that frost begins to glaze
How should one love again?
Nay, love and pain
Walk wide apart in diverse ways.
I loved my love - alas to see
That this should be, alas!
I thought that this could scarcely be,
Yet has it come to pass:
Sweet sweet love was,
Now bitter bitter grown to me.
Nursery Rhyme. CCCCLXXVII. Love And Matrimony.
by Unknown

I married my wife by the light of the moon,
A tidy housewife, a tidy one;
She never gets up until it is noon,
And I hope she'll prove a tidy one.
And when she gets up, she is slovenly laced,
A tidy housewife, a tidy one;
She takes up the poker to roll out the paste,
And I hope she'll prove a tidy one.
She churns her butter in a boot,
A tidy housewife, a tidy one;
And instead of a churnstaff she puts in her foot,
And I hope she'll prove a tidy one.
She lays her cheese on the scullery shelf,
A tidy housewife, a tidy one;
And she never turns it till it turns itself.
And I hope she'll prove a tidy one.
The Song Maker
by Sara Teasdale

I made a hundred little songs
That told the joy and pain of love,
And sang them blithely, tho' I knew
No whit thereof.
I was a weaver deaf and blind;
A miracle was wrought for me,
But I have lost my skill to weave
Since I can see.
For while I sang, ah swift and strange!
Love passed and touched me on the brow,
And I who made so many songs
Am silent now.
I Many Times Thought Peace Had Come,
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

I many times thought peace had come,
When peace was far away;
As wrecked men deem they sight the land
At centre of the sea,
And struggle slacker, but to prove,
As hopelessly as I,
How many the fictitious shores
Before the harbor lie.
Corner Store Fifties Reveille
by Paul Cameron Brown

I met Bear at the 5 n' dime
sipping a Cream Soda
he was voluble &
needed to talk...
"I got a shit-load on my mind,"
mumbling something about some
run-in with a Mountie - tampering
with Crown Evidence, the purloined Honey Jar,
in question, Jimmy Dean was there, too,
polishing his coolness though he would
have his own Run-In later in the evening.
As Marilyn had left,
I decided to forgo Bear's company,
still slurping his Soda &
crying into the bubbles,
some things never change.
Griefs.
by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

I measure every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.
I wonder if they bore it long,
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.
I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.
I wonder if when years have piled --
Some thousands -- on the cause
Of early hurt, if such a lapse
Could give them any pause;
Or would they go on aching still
Through centuries above,
Enlightened to a larger pain
By contrast with the love.
The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies, --
Death is but one and comes but once,
And only nails the eyes.
There's grief of want, and grief of cold, --
A sort they call 'despair;'
There's banishment from native eyes,
In sight of native air.
And though I may not guess the kind
Correctly, yet to me
A piercing comfort it affords
In passing Calvary,
To note the fashions of the cross,
Of those that stand alone,
Still fascinated to presume
That some are like my own.